The Rape of Venice (18 page)

As he had expected, most of the passengers were now on deck enjoying the sunshine; and near the quarter-deck, a little apart from the rest, Sir Curtis and Lady Beaumont were
occupying two chairs that had been specially placed there for them. Halting before them he made his bow and with a grave face enquired how they had slept.

‘Not too badly for a first night at sea,' Lady Beaumont smiled, and her hook-nosed husband added, ‘Tolerably, tolerably; and I hope, Sir, you fared no worse?' Then he offered Roger snuff.

Roger accepted a pinch, flicked his lace handkerchief and replied with a sigh, ‘Alas, I got not a wink of sleep, but was kept from my berth all night by the most plaguey infuriating happening that ever did befall a man.'

On their both expressing their surprise, and asking him to tell them the cause of his plight, he turned towards the judge's plump, motherly wife, and said, ‘It is to you, Ma'am, that I should principally address myself; for, unless you consent to afford me your charitable assistance, I know not what I shall do.'

Then he told them the same story about Clarissa as he had told Captain Finch; and ended by saying, ‘So you see, I am landed for the voyage with a wilful though, to give the chit her due, quite passably good-looking niece. Since she is unmarried it is a certainty that she will become the centre of attraction for all the young officers abroad; and, as I entirely lack experience in handling such a situation, I fear it will prove beyond my control. Would you, therefore … could you … may I beg that you will do me the honour and kindness to act as her chaperon?'

‘Why, of course I will,' Lady Beaumont replied at once. ‘She certainly sounds a most wayward miss and, I trust, will not prove too much of a handful for me. But your request is a most proper one. ‘Tis unthinkable that an unmarried girl of good family should make so long a voyage without an older woman to act as her confidante, and protect her reputation; so I will willingly oblige.'

Roger overwhelmed her with thanks and, declaring that she had taken a great weight off his mind, became his usual gay self again. Sitting down on a nearby coil of rope he gave the Beaumonts an account of Clarissa's background and, on learning that she was an orphan, Lady Beaumont exclaimed:

‘Having lacked a mother's care is some excuse, at least, for her unruly, headstrong act; it makes me all the more willing to take the poor child under my wing. I am all eagerness to meet her.'

‘I doubt if she will have finished titivating herself,' Roger replied, ‘so we had best give her another half-hour; then I'll go fetch and present her to you, Ma'am.'

When he did go down to the cabin, he found Clarissa fully dressed but still fiddling with her hair. It had lost its curl and she had cut off the last six inches of the golden lovelocks which she normally displayed so attractively dangling over her breast. As she had no means of heating her curling irons she was in a great state about how best to dress it.

Roger pointed out that she would have ample time to experiment with new styles later, and that for the early part of the voyage it would be all to the good that she should wear it simply dressed, as the younger she looked the more appropriate she would appear in her rôle as his niece. As he helped her fix it finally with a big bow at the back of her neck, he told her that Lady Beaumont had agreed to chaperon her, then they went up on deck.

The whole of its forepart was now crowded with soldiers, and the remainder of it well sprinkled with officers and passengers. A moment after they emerged from the hatchway, the laughter and chatter dwindled, then it ceased completely. In dead silence and with a hundred pairs of surprised, curious eyes fixed upon them, Roger, with Clarissa on his arm and a severe expression on his face, led her to the quarter deck.

The judge and his wife stood up as they approached. Spreading her skirts wide, Clarissa sank down in a graceful curtsy and, instead of rising at once, remained there with her head bowed for a moment. Lady Beaumont stepped quickly forward, raised her by the arms and kissed her on both cheeks, exclaiming:

‘You sweet, wicked child! How lovely you are, and how pleased I am that for a while you are to be my daughter.'

The stern ‘Uncle' now permitted himself a smile. ‘Sweet and wicked', he was thinking, were fair enough, but ‘child' hardly applicable if one knew the truth; and he wondered what the good lady would say if she learned that only a few hours ago Clarissa had been hoping to pass the night in his arms. But, after Lady Beaumont's reception of her in front of nearly the whole ship's company, there was no danger of anyone suspecting that. He had played his cards well and timed her presentation perfectly.

Half-an-hour later, the after-deck began to clear, as the passengers went down either to change or at least tidy themselves
for dinner. At two o'clock they assembled in the cuddy for the meal. Clarissa was duly presented to Captain Finch, Lady Beaumont introduced her to Mrs. and Miss Armitage, and the other officers and passengers were in turn presented to her. The only sour looks came from Mrs. Armitage and her pimply daughter, Jane. Everyone else expressed themselves as enchanted that Clarissa was to make the voyage with them. Within a few minutes all the younger men were buzzing round her like bees around a honey-pot, and as the dishes were brought in had to be almost driven away to their tables.

The Commander's table consisted of the Beaumonts, Roger, Clarissa, Mr. Winters, a senior servant of the Company named Cruishank, a Colonel Jeffs, a Major Routledge, and a dashing youny subaltern of Hussars, the Honourable Gerald Keeble. The last, it soon became known, belonged to a rich and influential family, but was going out to India on account of the mountain of debts he had accumulated at home. The Major was an engineer and a taciturn man who seemed to have few pleasures in life except food. Mr. Cruishank and Sir Curtis were old friends and both had the dry pleasant wit that so frequently accompanies a high degree of education, coupled with a sense of humour. The Colonel was a red-faced gouty man, but of cheerful and kindly disposition when not suffering from a bout of his affliction.

Such a well-assorted little company could provide many topics of conversation and, the majority of them being genial by nature, bade fair to make the voyage more enjoyable than was usually the case with small parties cooped up for many months together. The meal was a leisurely one and the ladies did not leave the table till nearly four o'clock; the men sat over their port for an hour, then joined them in the saloon. Tea was served at six and a light supper at nine. Ten o'clock was the ritual hour for them to retire to their cabins.

Next day was Sunday, and for the first time Roger and Clarissa were able fully to appreciate how different an East Indiaman was to any other ships in which they had sailed. The average tonnage of merchant ships trading across the Atlantic or to the Baltic was little more than 300 tons, whereas the hundred-odd ships that made up the Company's fleet were incomparably larger. They were of three grades, the smallest being 500 tons, the mediums 800, and the top class over 1,100. The
Minerva
was an 800 tonner.

But the difference did not lie in size alone. Most merchant
ships were officered by men who had worked their way up from before the mast; sometimes no more than two of them were really capable navigators, and their Captains were often drunkards; whereas the officers of the Company's ships ranked nearly as high as those of the Royal Navy. Indeed, transferences between the two Services were frequent, particularly from the Navy to the Company in peace time, as the Commander of an Indiaman, although usually financed by City Merchants, could often show a profit of as much as £10,000 on his personal trading in a single voyage.

In addition to six mates and four midshipmen, the average Indiaman carried a purser, surgeon, surgeon's mate, boatswain, gunner, coxswain, six quartermasters, captain's steward, captain's cook, barber, armourer, sáilmaker, caulker, cooper, butcher, baker, poulterer, and teams of carpenters, cooks and stewards. The crews of such ships were well-drilled in arms and they were equipped with as many as thirty-two guns; so convoys had nothing to dread from sea-rovers, and had often given a good account of themselves when attacked by enemy squadrons during the wars with France.

It was on Sunday mornings that these fine ships were seen at their best, as the officers donned their uniforms, which differed only slightly from those of the Royal Navy, all beardless seamen had to shave, the whole ship's company put on their best clothes, and everything was made spick and span for the Commander's inspection. He began by making a round of the whole ship while the men stood to attention at their various posts, When he had finished, drums beat to quarters and everyone, including the male passengers who were armed with boarding-pikes, went to their action stations. Afterwards the Commander held a service, and the rest of the day was one of leisure for the crew.

On week days, weather permitting, from eight o'clock onward, a good part of the deck was occupied by the army officers drilling their men to keep them as fit as possible. By half-past eight the space reserved for passengers began to fill up, and they either read their books or played games such as quoits, cup and ball, darts and shuttle cock, until one o'clock, when they went down to change for dinner. In the evenings they amused themselves with music, amateur theatricals, charades, spelling bees, poetry readings and guessing games.

At table the conversation, as was to be expected, turned frequently to Indian affairs. Even those who were going out
for the first time were fairly well informed upon them, as for the past quarter of a century they had been the subject of many a heated discussion in England, and Parliament had given as much time to debating them as it was later to do in the 1890's and 1900's to the affairs of Ireland.

Within living memory the whole sub-continent had been the Empire of the Great Moguls, whose capital was at Delhi. For two centuries they had ruled it through their Nizams or Nawabs, as were called the Viceroys to whom they delegated their authority over vast areas of the country. But early in the reign of King George II the Mogul Empire had begun to disintegrate.

The Persians invaded, and for a time annexed, the provinces in the north-west; the Nawabs of Oudh, Bihar and Bengal, in the north-east, asserted their independence, and all central and southern India also broke away. Hyderabad, Mysore, and the Carnatic became great sovereign states in the south. The Rajput Princes formed their own confederacy, and below it the whole of central India, from Gujaret on the Arabian sea to Orissa on the Bay of Bengal, became a still more powerful confederacy under the Maratha Princes, who had their capital at Poona. The result had been that during the middle decades of the century, these many nobles, great and small, had torn the country with a score of wars, each seeking to enlarge his territories or to overrun temporarily and plunder those of his neighbours.

This long period of strife and uncertainty had had a profound effect on the affairs of the Honourable East India Company. For a hundred and fifty years the Company had adhered to the Charter granted to it by Queen Elizabeth, in the heart of which stood the noble phrase, ‘for the honour of this our realm of England as for the increase of our navigation and the advancement of trade. …' The Company had never sought conquest and had resorted little to arms, except against its competitors: the Portuguese, Dutch and French; and its monopoly of the right to trade, which included China and the whole of South East Asia, had brought it enormous wealth. But with India divided into as many states as Europe, and a number of them ruled by treacherous warrior adventurers, the Company found itself compelled not only to wage minor wars in the protection of its interests, but, in certain cases, to protect them for the future by assuming permanent control over territories in which those interests lay.

Apart from outlying trading posts, these territories were three in number. The most important was in the most distant part of India: its extreme north-eastern province of Bengal. In the wide mouth of the Hooghly river there the Portuguese had very early established a settlement, but in 1632 Shah Jahan had exterminated it and soon afterwards, the Dutch and English managed to get a foothold; although it was not until sixty years later the Company received permission to move its headquarters farther up the river to a little fishing village, later to become the great city of Calcutta.

In the hundred years that followed, the Company's Servants penetrated deep into the interior to the north-west, through the rich provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Oudh up to Delhi and far beyond into the Punjab and Kashmir. The river of trade that flowed back had, by Roger's day, made Calcutta one of the great metropoli of India with its British residents and garrison already numbering several thousands.

The Company's next most important centre was at Madras, another small fishing village a thousand miles south-west of Calcutta, on the Carnatic coast, at which in 1640 they had been given permission to erect a fort. From it they traded right up the east coast of India, across its tip through Mysore to the Malabar coast on the west, and up into the great province of Hyderabad, which occupied nearly the whole of the central part of Southern India.

Lastly, more than half way up the west coast, six hundred miles from Madras and over a thousand from Calcutta—both across country as the crow flies—lay the island of Bombay. It had come to the British crown as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, and in 1667 King Charles II had leased it to the Company for £10 per annum. It was the finest natural harbour in India, no greater distance from London than Madras and a thousand miles nearer than Calcutta; but it had not developed to anything approaching the other two, the reason being that it was too far north to handle the Malabar coast trade and was cut off by difficult mountain country from the productive regions to the north and east. Nevertheless, it had grown into a considerable city and was a most valuable naval base.