A New War

by John G. Cragg

  “Balls cost money and I don’t have any.”

  “I would talk to Miss Moorhouse about that also. I believe that Mr. Moorhouse would be happy to cover the expenses.”

  “You really do want me to meet with your Miss Moorhouse, don’t you, Captain Bush?”

  “She is not my ‘Miss Moorhouse’. She is very much her own person. And if she were anyone’s ‘Miss Moorhouse’, it would be your brother’s”

  Bush soon after took his leave. He didn’t know if Lady Marianne would follow any of his advice, but he could hope that she would and reconcile himself if she did not by being assured that he had at least tried.

  Lady Marianne did take Captain Bush’s advice. Her first step was to send a note to Dipton Manor asking Miss Moorhouse to visit at her convenience. Daphne was happy to comply. She was delighted to learn that Lady Marianne was somewhat in favor of the ball, seemed anxious to undo some of the damage she had done earlier to her chances of having pleasant social interactions with her neighbors and was seeking her advice on young men who might make up the numbers at a dinner party. Maybe they could get along tolerably, at least if Lady Marianne did not try to tell her how to improve the garden.

  Daphne left Dipton Hall well content with the result of Captain Bush’s intervention. She thought that she would probably never like Lady Marianne, but at least the Ball would be forthcoming and perhaps the social turmoil caused by Lady Marianne’s arrival would now die away.

  Chapter X

  Captain Giles awoke in the late afternoon with a splitting headache. The ship was swaying easily, with the main sail backed, in a light wind. Sunlight streamed through the cabin windows. His mind felt fuzzy and he seemed to have trouble focusing on the details of his cabin. He felt a terrible sense of urgency, but could think of no action he should be taking. He remembered that his ship had been going into action with her rival and a vision of a spark setting off the powder trail came to his mind. But nothing further could he remember. He had no idea how he came to be lying in his hanging berth, but clearly he must be needed on deck.

  Giles struggled to get out of bed. His movements roused Carstairs who had been sitting in the armchair in shadow where Giles had not seen him.

  “Easy, Captain, easy. You should stay where you are until you get your bearings.”

  “I must get on deck. What happened to the French frigate?”

  “She blew up, Captain. Don’t you remember?”

  “She blew up? Were there survivors?”

  “None, Captain.”

  “And Patroclus? Was she damaged?”

  “Some, Captain. The mizzenmast went by the board and the bowsprit was damaged. Mr. Davies and Mr. Hendricks have almost finished their repairs.”

  “I must get on deck. Help me up, Carstairs.”

  “Is that wise, sir?”

  “Damn your insolence, Carstairs. Help me up!”

  Carstairs helped Giles to the deck where he stood swaying, supported by Carstairs. Carstairs half carried him over to the armchair into which his captain collapsed. Giles felt so tired, but he must fulfill his duties to the ship.

  “Carstairs, pass the word for Mr. Foster … I mean Mr. Davis … and Mr. Brooks.”

  When the two officers appeared, they were glad to see their Captain awake, but they were shocked by how weak he seemed to be, and how disoriented. This was evident from the moment they laid eyes on him.

  “There you are,” muttered the Captain. “Tell me, did we win the battle this morning?”

  “Captain,” said Mr. Davies, quietly, “you have been unconscious for two days.”

  “Well, did we win?”

  “Yes, sir. The other ship blew up.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, Carstairs did tell me. And the damage?”

  “The mizzenmast broke where it had been injured previously. We were able to retrieve all the top hamper. Mr. Hendricks and Mr. Shearer have been able to pull out the stump of the mizzenmast and stepped the remaining part of the mast. She can only carry a much reefed driver, of course. The sail master has almost finished re-cutting the sail. Patroclus will be able to sail as well as before, maybe better than we could after the mizzen was damaged by l’Hercule.”

  Even as this report was being made Giles’s attention seemed to wander.

  “I am so tired. I must lie down again. Mr. Foster, we must find the French frigate and sink her. Crack on sail. We cannot be idle. Carstairs, help me into bed.”

  It was a very disturbed pair of officers that saw Carstairs half carry Giles to his bed. His Majesty’s Navy had well established procedures for junior officers to take when their captain was killed or rendered unconscious. Nevertheless, a captain who was injured in such a way that his mind was affected, or even one who developed madness during a voyage, presented a problem that was fraught with danger for them. If they obeyed crazy orders that put the ship or her crew into needless danger, they could be blamed if the outcome were disastrous. If they failed to obey, they stood the danger of the captain regaining his senses and having them court martialed for disobeying orders. Giles’ final orders had clearly made no sense. They would ignore them and fail to log them. However, if Giles’s condition continued, there were decisions to be made which were the Captain’s responsibility and the officers could only hope that the orders were such that they could obey them in good conscience.

  Giles didn’t awake again until the following morning. He felt considerably refreshed and even his headache had diminished. When Carstairs helped him from his bed, he was a good deal steadier and he felt that he could get dressed without Carstairs’ help. Dressing did tire him and he was glad to sit while Carstairs arranged for coffee and breakfast. He was tempted to continue sitting in his cabin after breakfast, and maybe summon his officers later for their reports, but he knew that his duty lay in going on deck and being seen by the crew, even in his weakened state.

  When he stood, Giles realized that he could go nowhere unassisted. In fact, when he stood, his head spun wildly and he had to grab the back of his chair to avoid collapsing onto the deck. He again engaged Carstairs’s help and the two of them made their way past the marine sentry and up the ladder to the quarter deck without incident. Giles sank gratefully into the chair that Carstairs had arranged to be placed for him abaft the mizzenmast. The brief exertion had tired him unreasonably. His officers left him alone, except for the routine report about the weather and the ship’s course and sails. There was, in fact, almost no wind, and the bright sunshine warmed both Giles’s body and his spirits.

  “Mr. Davies,” Giles called when he had somewhat recovered, “Any news of Swan?”

  “No sir. We are hoping to rendezvous with her here, but so far she has not appeared.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, sir. You remember that you signaled her to return to where we were engaging the French frigate. That is where we are now.”

  “It’s been three days since the fight?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then isn’t she overdue? Mr. Brooks, how far way is the French coast?”

  “About 100 miles, Captain. About 120 miles on the course that the ships were steering when last we saw them. But the wind has been very light and fickle since the engagement. I would not be surprised if Swan is delayed simply by the lack of wind.”

  “Yes, it is only three days. We’ll give her another three. Now, Mr. Davies, have we tested the new rig?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Everything is finished, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir”

  “Then we should set all plain sail to the topsails and see how she performs. I would like to see how she does in this light wind, especially going to windward and whether she will miss stays when we tack”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The maneuvers were carried for the rest of the morning. Patroclus could not go to windward quite as well as she had before, largely because the injured bowsprit could not take as much pressure, but, on the whole, the jury rig stood up well. Downwind she di
d as well as Giles expected her to, though noticeably slower. After two hours of concentrating on the performance of his ship and the set of the recut sails, he was exhausted. Leaving word to carry on, without any clear meaning attached to that catch-all phrase, he went below with Carstairs’s help and soon was sound asleep in his bed.

  The following morning brought with it a fresher wind and a fresher Giles. He was able to dress and mount the quarter deck by himself, though only by steadying himself at numerous stages along the way. He sank into his chair with relief, but soon he was taking a more active interest in the doings of the ship. He was about to order the resumption of gunnery exercise when there was a call from the masthead that a ship was in sight to the east. Minutes later it was reported that the ship was a schooner-rigged sloop on a converging course with Patroclus’s. Then the ship was recognized as Swan.

  When Captain Stevens came aboard, his report quite restored Giles, who had again been fading as his time on deck was extended. Swan had trailed the little convoy of vessels to the French coast, despite the attempts of the brig to drive her away. Swan was always able to avoid these sallies while keeping the group of other ships in sight. In the end, these ships disappeared into what appeared to be the mouth of a river in the low swampy land that marked that part of the coast. The brig blocked Swan’s access to the coast, so at the time Stevens had only a vague idea as to where the ships had gone. When the others had disappeared, Swan followed the brig of war to the coast where she too entered the same waterway.

  Commander Stevens had then been in a quandary. Should he return to Patroclus with the information he had acquired or should he follow the brig into the coast? He knew that the information of where the ships had vanished was critical, but his report would be more valuable if he could say something about the entrance he had found. He doubted that he could use Swan for any further exploration. She was too vulnerable to being trapped against a hostile shore if she ventured into the creek or whatever the opening might be and the nature of the surrounding marshy countryside made it all too likely that she might go aground without any pilot to guide her.

  Despite the temptation to undertake a bold stroke that might solve the mystery of the missing ships, Commander Stevens decided to seek out Patroclus before taking any further action to determine what might have happened to the missing ships. It had been frustrating that the lack of wind prevented him making a speedy passage.

  Giles’ reaction to Stevens’s report was immediate. As soon as Commander Stevens had consulted with Mr. Brooks to mark the location of the channel entrance on the master’s chart, the schooner was ordered to lead Patroclus to the site. The wind continued light and foul for the rest of the day and into the night, so the two ships did not arrive off the coast until noon on the following day. The coast here was a rather featureless stretch of swampy reeds and grasses, without a proper beach but instead with drying beds of grass and other water plants. A hundred yards or so back from the shore low shrubs appeared and behind them stunted trees. The passage inland could hardly be detected from seaward and would easily be missed if one did not know there was a waterway leading inland.

  Giles was surprised how close Patroclus could come to the shore before she reached a depth where it would be comfortable to anchor. He ordered Davies to drop the hook and signaled Swan to do the same. The lookouts aloft were doubled in order to assure him of an early warning should any other ship approach. It was a clear day, and with the land breeze blowing, he would have plenty of time to raise the anchor and get under way should the need arise.

  Giles would have to send a boat up the channel to get any more information. A meeting with his officers left two of them very disappointed. Swan was ordered to return to Falmouth to deliver Giles’s reports about the destruction of the French raider and of the discovery of where the French captures seemed to be hidden. Commander Stevens had hoped to lead the expedition inland to find out more, but he recognized that Swan’s proper role was to carry news. Davies thought it his right as first lieutenant to lead the exploration and to get credit for what was discovered. Giles recognized the validity of his claim, though he most certainly did not tell the lieutenant that he did, but his officer was very young and inexperienced and Giles doubted that Davies would fully appreciate what he might see. Giles also knew that, however accurate and complete might be his subordinate’s report, his own nature would require him to verify the finding for himself. While Giles knew that this was a failing on his part, he still wanted to be the one to collect the information on which he would evaluate the situation.

  Giles’ orders were crisp and definite. He would take the long boat with Carstairs and Midshipman Correll. The oarsmen were to be carefully selected so that the crew consisted of those who could row most quietly. Lieutenant Davies would command Patroclus while Giles was gone. An hour before sunset the lieutenant was to raise the anchor and head off shore. In the morning he was to return to await Giles’s return. If Giles did not return during the next day, the procedure was to be repeated for the next two days, after which Patroclus should head for Falmouth. If an enemy vessel of small size appeared, Davies was to try to capture it without being pulled too far off station. If the vessel were a frigate or ship of the line, Davies should avoid battle if he could, but could use his discretion if he believed that victory was likely. As he issued these orders, Giles wondered to himself why he didn’t just let Davies command the expedition into the mystery passage. Giles’s head again hurt abominably and he was once more feeling waves of tiredness wash over him. Nevertheless, his own duty came first.

  The boat entered the channel rowing slowly with the lead going in the bow to establish the depth of the channel. There was enough water to allow quite large ships to pass. Patroclus would have had three feet below her keel and the tide had only just turned to the flood. The width of the channel was about one hundred feet before the bottom started to rise to the shore. It would be tricky for ships as big as Patroclus to be brought up the channel. Before they had proceeded very far inland, the channel entered a sharp S-curve. Near where the turn began a white painted stake had been driven into the bottom. Giles sounded all around the stake and discovered that it marked the starboard side of the passage and that the deep channel was narrowing as it entered the curve. A series of stakes continued to mark the starboard side of the channel as it rounded the curves. Giles did not trust that the stakes necessarily indicated the starboard side of the passage; if he himself were marking a hidden route, he might vary the positioning in the hope of lulling any vessel unfamiliar with the channel to go aground. As a result of this consideration, Giles ordered that they should take soundings all around each stake. So far there was no sign of trickery.

  They continued inland. The afternoon was advancing and the work of checking each marker was tedious. Giles fell asleep. He didn’t mean to; he just did. He was woken by Carstairs gently shaking his knee and whispering to him to be silent. The afternoon was now well advanced and the boat had just rounded another bend. Ahead they saw the end of a ship possibly moored to a dock where the channel next curved. No one was in sight, but they could be discovered at any moment.

  When Giles had gotten his bearings, he ordered the boat to back gently out of sight of the landing where the ship was moored and then to tie up in an indentation of the bank across the stream from the landing. Pulling the boat into some bull rushes meant that they were hidden. Telling Midshipman Correll to make sure that everyone kept quiet and to keep a good lookout, Giles went ashore together with Carstairs. Each had a cutlass and a pistol and Giles had his small telescope. They worked their way upstream, following animal paths that seemed to be leading in the right direction. When Giles judged that they had proceeded far enough upstream, they worked their way back to the bank of the river. It was a somewhat scratched as well a mosquito-bitten pair who finally were able to part some branches to look across the river.

  The sight that greeted them already answered many of the questions which were at the heart
of their remaining mission. Across from them were three frigates. As Giles studied them through his telescope, he concluded that they were British because he detected many small features that tended to be different in the French Navy from the British. Two of the frigates also showed signs of recent battle, which appeared to have been patched though not as well as a naval dockyard would fix them. Giles recognized the middle frigate as HMS Artemis, which he had seen once at Spithead. The others were unknown to him and to Carstairs, but that was not surprising since they neither of them had ever seen the other missing frigates. The Admiralty had provided Giles with descriptions of the missing frigates and these ones did fit those descriptions. There was no sign of the fourth missing frigate, so maybe it had perished at sea.

  Ahead of the frigates was the brig of war that Petroclus had seen in company with the frigate which they had destroyed. Ahead of the brig were moored three merchantmen. The commercial vessels seemed to be low in the water suggesting that they had not been unloaded. No one was visible on any of the ships.

  Behind the ships was a number of structures. Several appeared to be warehouses. Then came a large building with many windows which might have been a barracks. It looked to be of recent construction. The final edifice was a long, low building with few windows, but a large door at one end. It might be a stables or possibly some sort of cattle shed. Right now, there was no sign of life to show for what it might be used, but three guards with muskets lounged in front of it. No one else was in sight.

  Giles whispered to Carstairs asking whether he had any idea of what kind of a building would warrant guards, even such lackadaisical ones. Carstairs was just as mystified as Giles and answered with a shrug.

  A bit back from the waterfront there was a village of ten or twelve small, red-roofed houses with some farm sheds and a small church. The church had no steeple or tower, just a low belfry, which accounted to it’s not being visible from sea. No one could be seen moving about the village