To the Ends of the Earth (27 page)

Captain Anderson was speaking and apparently addressing the sky.

“Aloft there!”

Young Mr Taylor answered from the rigging.

“All ready, sir. She missed us, sir.”

“That was a signal gun, you young fool!”

“Signal gun,” muttered Deverel, “that’s just what the Frogs would do to make us show ourselves. There’s still hope of a battle, my lads! Here she comes!”

Before my eyes the green after-image of the explosion was fading. I stared where Deverel was pointing with his sword. Like hills appearing through mists, or—but I cannot find a comparison. Like anything, the appearance of which is doubtful and gradual then suddenly and 
unquestionably
there
, the dark bulk of a huge vessel came into view. She was broadside on to us. Good God, I thought, and my knees trembled for all I could do—she is the same rate as
L’Orient
, 120 guns!

Then high up in her rigging, sparks appeared. Directly after, the sparks took fire, became three dazzling lights, two white lights with a red light between them. The lights danced and glared and smoked and spilled down drops and sparks that joined their own reflections in the water. I heard Taylor shouting something, then above my head but outboard there was an answering dazzle—two white lights and a blue one! A cascade of drops fell before me like blazing rain. I saw Deverel staring up from one set of lights to the other. His mouth was open, his eyes wide, face gaunt in the glare. Then with a shouted or perhaps screamed stream of imprecations, he struck his sword inches deep into our rail! Captain Anderson had been using a speaking trumpet but I had not heard what he said. A voice spoke from the other ship, a hollow voice through a speaking trumpet so that it seemed the man hung among the brilliant rain from all the lights.

“His Majesty’s frigate
Alcyone
, Captain Sir Henry Somerset, twenty-seven days out of Plymouth.”

Deverel’s sword remained fast in the rail. The poor
fellow
himself stood by it, his face in his hands. The isolated voice through the speaking trumpet went on.

“News, Captain Anderson, for you and your whole ship’s company. The war with the French is over. Boney is beat and abdicated. He is to be King of Elba. God save our gracious King and God save His Most Christian Majesty, King Lewis of France, the eighteenth of that name!”

The roar that followed these words was almost as
extraordinary
as the sound of the cannon shot! I saw Captain Anderson swing round and aim his speaking trumpet down into the waist but he might as well have had no voice.

Our ship was all filled with moving, and, yes, capering figures. Here and there lights were appearing as by magic though the signal flares had dropped one by one into the sea. Men were carrying lanterns up into the rigging of our ship. Someone was drawing the screens from our great stern lanterns. For the first time in my experience the poop and quarterdeck were irradiated by the powerful light of their oil lamps.
Alcyone
was moving closer and strangely enough was becoming smaller as she came. I saw that she was much of our length, though somewhat lower in the water. Summers was standing on our fo’castle and his mouth was opening and shutting but no sound could be heard. There was a petty officer or boatswain or the like roaring his head off with commands about ropes and fenders while an anonymous voice—could it be Billy Rogers?—was shouting for three times three so that huzzahs resounded endlessly to be answered from the deck of
Alcyone
! Now she was so close that I could distinguish beards and bald heads, black, brown, white faces, eyes and open mouths and grins by the
hundred
. It
was
a bedlam, and I, with light and noise and news near enough as mad as the others!

Then I knew that this was no conceit and I was mad indeed. Before ever a gangway was securely in place between the two ships, a man climbed up cleverly from her bulwark to ours. He was, he must be an hallucination! 
For it was Wheeler, that sly servant who had been lost overboard and drowned many days before—Wheeler who knew so much and contrived so much! It was the man himself, his once pale face blotched with the wounds of too much salt and sun, those two puffs of white hair still standing out on either side of his baldness. Now he was speaking to Summers and now he was turning, walking towards the quarterdeck where I still stood.

“Wheeler! Curse it, you was drowned!”

A strong convulsion shook the man. He said nothing, however, but stared at the cutlass in my right hand.

“Drowned! What the devil!”

“Allow me, sir.”

He took the cutlass out of my hand with a slight inclination of the head.

“But, Wheeler! This is—”

Once more, that convulsion.

“The life was too strong in me, sir. You are wounded, sir. I will bring water to your cabin.”

I was suddenly aware that my feet had been stuck in the same place and position for an age. It seemed they were embedded in the deck. My right hand was creased with the imprint of a hilt. My head, I discovered, was in a fearful state of pain and confusion. I was suddenly aware of what a figure I must present before so many new people and I hurried away to make myself as neat as possible. Peering into my small mirror I saw my face was indeed bloody and my hair matted. Wheeler brought water.

“Wheeler! You are a ghost. You were drowned, I said!”

Wheeler turned from the canvas basin into which he had poured a can of cold water. His gaze reached my neck but came no further.

“Yes, sir. But only after three days, sir. I believe it was three days. But you are right, of course, sir. Then I drowned.” 

My hair prickled. His eyes rose now to meet mine. They never blinked.

“I drowned, sir. I did—and the life in me so strong!”

Really, it was disconcerting and disturbing to be talked at so. Besides, the man needed calming.

“Well, Wheeler, you are a lucky dog. You was picked up and there’s an end to it. Tell Bates I shall no longer require his services.”

Wheeler paused. He opened his mouth and for a moment I thought he had some more to say, but he closed it again, bowed slightly and withdrew. I stripped to my shirtsleeves and washed as much blood as possible from my face and hands. When I had done I collapsed in my canvas chair, exhausted. It was becoming evident that I must pass this strange time in a wounded state where all was like a dream. I tried to realize what the news meant and could not. The war—except for the brief and deceitful peace of the year ’08—had been the only state I knew. Now the war was gone, the state changed and I could not fill emptiness with anything which had meaning. I tried to think of a Louis XVIII on the throne of France and could not. I tried to think of all the glories of the ancient regime—now surely to be called the modern regime!—and found that I could not believe they would ever come again; common sense, a
political awareness
would not suffer it! The state of the world was too changed by catastrophes—the state of France, the ruin of her great families, a generation exposed first to the seduction of an impossible liberty and equality, then to the hardships imposed by tyranny, poverty and the draining of her conscripted blood—it would be a sad world which our people were greeting so noisily, that was my unwilling thought. But my head still rang with noises of its own; and though no man could think of sleep at such a moment I did not know if my strength was sufficient for the ordeal of our rejoicing! I tried once more to realize the 
fact—a turning point in history, one of the world’s great occasions, we stood on a watershed and so on—but it was no use. My head became the arena of confused images and thoughts. A full shot garland such as the one I had crouched by on the gundeck seemed emblem of all the
millions
of tons of old iron lying about in corners of the
civilized
world—now never to be used, rusting cannon which would do for rubbing posts, muskets and musket balls sold as curios, swords, my famous cutlass—there seemed in my head no end to iron and lead. Then the ships newly built but now never to be launched!

I must own to a most eccentric feeling in the
circumstances
. It was one of fear. For a moment the reality of the situation did at last penetrate to my confused awareness. The fear was not a gross, common fright such as had rooted my feet to the deck when I heard as I thought my first shot fired in anger, but wider, almost a universal fright at the prospect of peace! The peoples of Europe and our own country were now set free from the simple and
understandable
duty of fighting for their king and country. It was an extension of that liberty which had already turned ordered societies into pictures of chaos. I told myself that one of the “political branch” should welcome this since affairs were now no longer put to the mortal arbitrament of swords. It was the politician’s turn, our turn, my turn! But the moment of realization had passed and my head was all confusion again. The fact is that, for a while, I believe I wept.

But I could hear our ladies laughing and chattering as they passed by my door and issued into the waist. I even heard Miss Granham exclaim in a high voice: “And the skirt quite, quite beyond cleaning or repair!” It was time I emerged. I went into the waist, which was now full of light and people busy rather than hysterical with rejoicing. Our two ships were now fastened together by cables and though 
Alcyone
was lower than we, it was no more than by the height of a deck. The whole area of our little world had expanded. There were so many new people! Good God, the Emperor of China had no more crowded and confused a country! But our “tumblehome” and theirs kept the people a few feet apart. Our officers were in a state of grave displeasure with the people: and the petty officers for the first time in my experience were using their “starters” in earnest. It was, of course, the prospect of a release from the discipline of the service coupled with those minutes of complete indiscipline which had done the damage! I reminded myself, selfishly enough I fear, that we could now hang up our arms and let common sense take charge. I climbed to the quarterdeck and then to the poop. Captain Anderson was standing by the larboard rail, hat in hand. Sir Henry Somerset, a gentleman of a full habit and a somewhat florid complexion, was perched in the mizzen shrouds of
Alcyone
so that he and our captain were at an equal height. Sir Henry had one foot on each of two rungs, sat on the third, held the fourth with his right hand and his hat in the left. He was speaking.

“—bound for India with utmost dispatch and may arrive there with the news just in time to prevent a very pretty battle! Devil take it, sir, if I succeed I shall be the most unpopular man east of Suez!”

“What of the Navy, sir?”

“Oh, Lord, sir, not a day passes but the order comes down to lay up another dozen ships or so. The streets are full of seamen waiting to be paid and begging. I never knew we had so many rascals in our ships! We are well out of it together, sir. But that’s peace for you, curse it. Who is this gentleman?”

Captain Anderson, his hand on the rail where Deverel’s sword had almost divided it, introduced me. He
mentioned
my godfather and his brother and my prospective 
employment. Sir Henry was affable. He hoped to further our acquaintance and to present me to Lady Somerset. Captain Anderson interrupted our exchange of courtesies with his customary lack of
savoir-faire
. He hoped until we got a wind to have the pleasure of Sir Henry and Lady Somerset’s company. But now the people, or his people at least, should be brought up smartly with a round turn and a couple of half-hitches. Meanwhile—

Sir Henry agreed, letting himself down the shrouds with the casual dexterity of an old seaman, and went to address an officer on his deck.

Captain Anderson vented his roar. “Mr Summers!”

Poor Summers came running aft like a midshipman. In the glare of the lights from both ships I could see that his usually composed face was flushed and sweating. He thrust this man and that out of the way in his attempt to obey the captain’s summons. I thought it undignified and unworthy of him.

“Mr Summers, the men are breaking ship!”

“I know it, sir, and am doing my best.”

“You had best do better! Look at that—and that! Devil take it, man—we shall be robbed like a hen roost!”

“Their rejoicing, sir—”

“Rejoicing? This is plunder! You may say the last man out of
Alcyone
shall be strapped with a dozen and I promise the like from Sir Henry!”

Summers saluted and ran off again. Anderson aimed a grimace at me with a bit of tooth in the middle, then set himself to stump up and down the larboard side of the quarterdeck, hands behind his back, sour face staring this way and that. Once he stopped by the forrard rail and roared again. Summers answered him from the fo’castle but, unlike the captain, used a speaking trumpet.

“Mr Askew has taken in the packets of powder, sir, and had the quick match stowed. He is now drawing the shot.” 

Captain Anderson nodded and resumed his
unaccustomedly
swift stumping up and down. He ignored me and I thought it best to withdraw. By the time I got to the waist I understood some at least of our moody captain’s concern. There was too free laughter among the people. It was evident that some of them by means unknown to me, or I think to their officers, had obtained strong drink. The operation of Newton’s laws, if that is what it was—what else?—in bringing two ships together that had not intended the encounter was setting the Rigid Navy—my private phrase for the Royal Navy—some problems which were not in the book. For I saw a bottle fly from one ship to the other and disappear among a group of men who were engaged in securing the bridge, or should I say gangway, between the two ships; and though I watched as closely as my ringing head would allow I never saw it emerge from them. It vanished as completely and mysteriously as the cards in the hands of a stage magician. I could not but think that the gangway made the unlawful interchange of our crews even easier than before. But the confusion continued and the way was opened across the gap for social intercourse and thievery. My
restlessness
seemed endless. For all my buzzing head and the weariness of my limbs I could not endure the thought of my bunk. What, sleep when this hollow space in the hot mists of the tropics was lighted brilliantly as a
fairground
and as noisy? I remember that in my dazed state I felt it necessary to
do something
, but could not think
what to do
. I thought of drink and ducked into the lobby by my hutch but was almost knocked sprawling by a young fellow who rushed out. Phillips and Wheeler and another man came after him but gave up when they saw me. It did seem to me that a faint aroma, not of rum but of brandy, emanated from Phillips’s person. He addressed me breathlessly.

“That bugger was an
Alcyone
, sir. You best keep all locked.”

I nodded to him and went immediately to the passenger saloon. Here, who should be present but little Pike, his tears all dried and his chest out like the breast of a pouter pigeon! He trusted at once that I had recovered from my injury, though he believed I looked sadly. He left me no time to reply, however. I had noticed in him normally a marked modesty in the presence of other men, but now there was no quelling him.

“Only think, Mr Talbot, I have served at the guns! Then I stood by the tackle while the charge was drawn.”

“My congratulations.”

“Oh, it was nothing, of course. All the same—Mr Askew remarked before he dismissed us that a few days of gun drill and he would have turned us out as prime gunners!”

“He did?”

“Why, he said we would be fit to fight all the Frogs in the world let alone the damned Yankees!”

“That was gratifying. Yes, the brandy, Bates. Bates—would you consult Wheeler about leaving a bottle of brandy and a glass in my cabin?”

“Very good, sir.”

“A glass of brandy for Mr Pike here.”

“Oh no, sir, I could not! I am unaccustomed to brandy, Mr Talbot. It burns my mouth. Ale, if you please, sir.”

“You hear, Bates? That will be all.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“I was very sorry to see you struck down, Mr Talbot. At the time when you hit your head on the ceiling—I mean the deckhead, as we ought to call it—I had to laugh it seemed so comical though of course it must have been very painful.”