Fletcher's Fortune

by John Drake

  *

  Pendennis did not worry at first when Edward Lucey was late for dinner. He kept asking Mrs Jervis to delay serving the meal until at length she told him that either it came to table now that minute — or it burned. So he ate a miserable meal alone. Knowing what a sensible lad Edward was, he did not get angry at all, but a heavy feeling of dread fell upon him. He imagined every disaster that could blight a stranger in London, from falling in the Thames to being trampled under a team of dray horses. As darkness fell he worried more, and such was his agitation that he joined Mrs Jervis and her husband in their kitchen, for the comfort of their company.

  Later, Pendennis and Mr Jervis roused the neighbours to search the streets in case Edward had lost his way. After some hours, having found nothing, all parties gave up and went home. Pendennis and Mr and Mrs Jervis then sat wringing their hands together until shortly after St Giles’s clock struck two in the morning, when they heard a carriage stop at the entrance to Clerk’s Court. Instantly its door slammed and the horses were whipped up to draw it rapidly away. Seconds later there came a faltering tap at the front door-knocker.

  Pendennis and the Jervises raced to open the door and there, crouched on the doorstep, was a figure whom they hardly recognised: dishevelled and hanging his head like a man drowned in shame.

  “Edward!” cried Pendennis. “What have you done? Where have you been?” In reply Lucey covered his face and wept. They drew him inside into the kitchen where the fire was still burning. Edward sat where he was put, swaying unsteadily in the chair and holding his head in his hands. The drink on his breath could be smelt from one end of the room to the other. Pendennis was embarrassed in the extreme. He could see the sidelong glances passing between Mr and Mrs Jervis. They thought it only too obvious where Edward had been and what he’d done!

  “Madam,” Pendennis said to Mrs Jervis, “I beg that you leave me to talk with the boy. I must get to the bottom of this, and he’ll talk more freely to me alone.”

  “As you wish, sir,” said Mrs Jervis, thinking how she’d worried half the night, and stalked off on her dignity, followed by her husband.

  But Pendennis got not a word of explanation out of Edward Lucey. Whether he pleaded, argued or raged, all that Lucey would say was that he could no longer join in the work of liberating Jacob Fletcher and bringing him to his fortune. He said it with sobs and gulps until, as Pendennis was shaking him by the shoulders, he was hideously sick all over Pendennis’s breeches and shoes.

  Next day Lucey was extremely ill and unable to get out of bed until late in the evening. His shame was deeper still and he would not look Pendennis in the eye, but begged to be sent home to Lonborough. Pendennis was mystified. He knew the debaucheries that young men got into and he knew that they were usually ashamed afterwards. But this was excessive. Pendennis was sure that something more was involved, but Edward Lucey would not, or could not, say what.

  Pendennis put up with this situation for two or three days, to give Edward the chance to get better. But he didn’t. If anything he got worse, moping around and refusing absolutely to take any part in the enterprise that had brought them to London. Finally and with real regret, Pendennis sat down to write a letter for Edward to take home to his father.

  16

  The day after my fight with Mason, the Bosun came up to me with a proposal. He beamed from ear to ear, still relishing his successful wager with Sergeant Arnold, the two being great rivals.

  “Now then, young Fletcher!” says he, poking me in the ribs, “How’d ye like to better yourself aboard this ship?”

  “I’d like it very well, Mr Shaw!” says I.

  “Well and good,” says he. “I’ve the need for another mate in my department, to keep the crew sharp, and you might be the lad for the job.”

  I was. Indeed I was. And in more ways than he knew. I could hardly contain my delight. He, of course, saw only the superficial case: as Bosun, he was responsible for the smartness of the crew in all matters of seamanship. Which meant clouting their backsides to send them more speedily on their way; the genial duty of Bosuns since time began. And the more the men feared the Bosun the easier was the task. But Mr Shaw was getting fat, and the grey stubble on his chin told that he was not so young as he had been. So he looked to his mates for support and at present he had four, all chosen for ugliness and the size of their fists. I suspect he saw me as the flagship of his little fleet and he made my duties crystal clear.

  “You must stick close to my elbow and pay attention to me. That way you shall learn your craft. But most partic’lar of all,” says he, frowning in concentration, “should ever I point out one o’ the hands, like this ... and should I just wink at you like this ... ” and he did a little pantomime of actions to demonstrate, “Why, you just knock the bugger senseless!”

  “Aye aye, Mr Bosun,” says I, and he nodded in contentment, simple soul that he was.

  And, of course, I could do what he wanted; there was no man on the ship that could stand up to me now. Which in its way is a fine and wonderful thing. Many’s the time in my career that I’ve been grateful for Mother Nature’s making me so almighty strong. But to my mind, a bear is strong, and so is an ape, but I see no particular merit in either beast because of it. I don’t for instance think them better than a man, and I’ve never thought that I was better than other men just for my being so strong. No, to my mind I have far more important talents — talents that were going to be fully exercised in the Bosun’s department.

  What I cared about was the fact that the Bosun was responsible for the ship’s stores of rigging, blocks, cordage, cables, tar, paint, and her boats and all their fittings. All of which commodities were highly valuable on the open market.

  Oh joy! Oh rapture! Only the Purser had a better opportunity for private dealings than the Bosun did. And here was I about to enter in upon this happy fraternity. The Bosun bought and sold for the ship, he was courted by tradesmen and was a trader in his own right, selling off materials “condemned as useless” to the King’s Service. And best of all, while Mr Shaw was a good seaman and master of the horny-handed part of his work, one look at him told me that he was a mere clod where accounts and book-keeping were concerned. I saw a happy future for myself once I had secured his confidence and made myself invaluable in helping out with the important side of things.

  And so pride goeth before a fall. Mr Shaw said he’d speak to Lieutenant Williams to confirm my rating as Bosun’s mate, and I walked on air to find Sammy Bone and tell him of my good fortune. I blurted it all out, full of merriment and he nodded and smiled a strange smile at me and pointed out one or two things I hadn’t considered.

  “Well done, lad,” says he. “Of course I’m glad to see you making your way ... but you know it makes you a man apart, don’t you?”

  “What?” says I in surprise.

  “Well,” says he, “who is it swings the cat aboard a man o’ war? Might make it hard for you to stay in the mess ... ” Then the full meaning of his words dawned upon me, and a great hollow ache opened in my breast. I’d never had a family of any sort (I certainly didn’t count Dr Woods and his scraggy sister) and I realised how much my messmates meant to me. So what if one of my mates got himself a flogging ... and I had to give it?

  “Hold hard,” says Sammy, seeing my expression. “I only said maybe. I’ll talk to the lads and see what they think.”

  He did, and the verdict was that I should stay in the mess for the time being, rather than going in with the Bosun and his mates. This was a great relief since they were a coarse and stupid lot, but more important was the simple fact that my messmates wanted me to stay. So I was able to continue much as before. It had been a shock, though. Always before I’d never had to bother with anyone but myself, and suddenly here I was tied to five others! So I stayed in the mess, looked after my grog and baccy enterprises, and saw to it that my messmates dined off the best that the ship could provide. Also, I began to work my way into the Bosun’s confidence.

&nbs
p; This took a while but eventually I had the full picture. As I had thought, his accounts were ludicrous: scraps of blotched paper, scrawled upon in a clumsy fist and jammed into an old ledger without the least semblance of order. His heart was in the right place, poor fellow, and he’d done his best: some paint here, a barrel of tar there, sold to friends in the merchant service. But he hadn’t the least idea how to balance his accounts and only kept his head above water by payments to sweeten the clerks from the Navy Board who were supposed to audit his accounts. Fortunately I was able to show him the right path and within a couple of weeks of my promotion, we had a nice little nest-egg of stores laid aside, all duly entered in our books as lost or destroyed and only awaiting the first opportunity to be sold off.

  And I played fair with him. I could easily have deceived him and taken the lion’s share, but it has always been a principle with me that business should benefit all parties.

  “Blessed if I knows how you do it,” says he, the first time he came to look at the splendid neatness of our new accounts, “but you’re a wonder, you are, Fletcher. Blessed if I know how I ever did without you!” He nodded at me thoughtfully and rasped his thumb over his bristly chin. “You know what, my lad?” says he. “I reckon you’ll go far in the Service.” (This I solemnly enter on record as the first time that such a thing was ever said to me.)

  And then this happy period of my time aboard Phiandra came to a close. In due time, the Admiral considered he was safely beyond the power of the French, and gave leave for his escorting warships to turn for home. The flagship and a couple of the frigates were bound for the Indies with the merchantmen, and the seventy-fours and most of the frigates were under orders to return to Portsmouth at the first opportunity. On April 15th they parted company from the convoy in an impressive display of fleet manoeuvring. I was seaman enough to appreciate it by then, and to understand the monstrous effort of human skill and muscle that set a dozen great ships, thousands of tons of oak and iron, moving together like dancers in a ballroom.

  But Phiandra neither stayed with the convoy, nor turned for Portsmouth. Instead she reaped the benefit of being commanded by the man who’d got the First Sea Lord’s nephew in his ship. Captain Bollington revealed a special commission from their Lordships, to cruise the French coast, at his discretion, to wreak havoc upon the enemy’s trade.

  This best of all possible duties meant that we were free to grab every French merchantman we could lay our hands on and send it home for an English Prize Court to buy from us. Naturally, the bulk of the prize money went to Captain Bollington and the officers, but every soul aboard would share in the loot and all hands were overjoyed at this wonderful, wonderful news. Thus did Captain Bollington become a licensed pirate, as did Nelson, Collingwood and all the others in their time. So those of you who frown upon the selling-off of the King’s tar and paint might like to bear in mind what it was that drove some of our noblest and best to engage the enemy.

  But first we had to bid farewell to the flagship with all due ceremony. And for this we were all tricked out in our Sunday best with yards manned and the ship spotless clean. As we came alongside the great three-decker the Admiral could be seen on the poop, gleaming in his gold lace, in the midst of his gleaming officers. Our band gave “God Save the King” and theirs replied with “Heart of Oak” (but not half so well as our Sicilians).

  “Good day to you, Phiandra!” calls the Admiral.

  “Good day to you, sir!” cries Captain Bollington. “Permission to leave the fleet, sir?”

  “You may proceed about your duties, sir!” came the reply and we treated the fleet to a flashy display of seamanship as we bore away on our new course towards the far-distant French coast. We’d got very slick at our trade by then and the whole thing was done without a word said or command given. Two hundred men working as a united team. It almost made me proud.

  We enjoyed fair winds for a couple of weeks and were no end of a jolly company as we ploughed steadily back towards fat prizes and wealth for all hands. It was common knowledge that our destination was the great bay of the river Aron, south of Bordeaux and just north of the French border with Spain. Captain Bollington had special knowledge of the area as he’d lived there as a child when his father was in the Diplomatic service.

  The great anchorage of Passage D’Aron was a major centre of French merchant shipping and Captain Bollington aimed to put his special knowledge to practical use in some sort of large-scale cutting-out expedition. Excitement aboard Phiandra was intense and the ship ran with rumours as to exactly what the Captain had planned.

  In the event, we might have saved ourselves the trouble, for what our Captain had planned was as nothing compared with what the sea had planned. We were a couple of days sailing from France when the weather turned nasty. The sky went dark and the air got cold, and all hands were turned up to make ready for what was coming. Captain Bollington bawled and hollered, the topmen swung like monkeys and there was a vast deal of hauling on lines for the rest of the crew. The object was to take in as much sail as possible, to remove completely the upper yards (t’gallants and royals) and to secure the rest with preventer slings and braces. Also, hand-lines were rigged all about the fo’c’sle, quarterdeck and gangways, to give us something to hold on to.

  Hand-lines! What a jolly sight they are to see. Because what they mean is that very soon it’s going to be so bloody rough and the decks are going to bounce so bloody high that even the saltiest old tar among you (stap his vitals and shiver his timbers) won’t be able to stand still and break wind without hanging on for dear life. So if ever you’re on a ship where they rig the hand-lines, then take my advice: go below, get the largest bucket you can find and stand by to heave.

  With a south-wester blowing us straight towards France, Captain Bollington chose to run with the storm rather than lie to.

  “Mr Williams!” says he, shouting over the rising weather.

  “Pick a pair of strong men to support the quartermasters.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” says he and turned immediately to me.

  “Fletcher! At the double now, stand by the quartermasters and give aid to steady the wheel!”

  So I took my place at the wheel, together with Nathan Miller, another of the Bosun’s mates: a man near as big as myself.

  Even landsmen know what a ship’s wheel looks like, so I’ll not describe it, except to say that Phiandra’s wheel was double. That is, she had two wheels, one in front of the other, fixed at either end of the drum about which the steering tackles were wound. These were raw-hide ropes that ran down to the lower deck where they ran through pulley-blocks to act upon the “sweep”, a twenty-foot beam, joined to the top of the rudder as a giant tiller. As we turned the wheel, the ropes pulled the sweep one way or the other to move the rudder. In normal use, two men steered the ship, standing one on either side of the foremost wheel. Each man had a compass in its binnacle before him so he could follow his course. This was an élite task and the chosen men, the quartermasters, were mature seamen of great experience.

  On that day, Nathan Miller and I manned the aftermost wheel to provide extra strength. We had not been more than a few minutes at the wheel when the main storm hit us. It came with a blast of wind that set every man leaning against it and clutching his hat. Mine was whisked away and went spinning into the dark like a mad bird. Not three paces away, Captain Bollington was shouting something into Mr Williams’s ear, his cupped hands nearly against the Lieutenant’s head. But I heard nothing over the shrieking of the wind. Then a blinding torrent of rain came down like steel rods, bouncing knee-high off the deck and stinging like a Bosun’s cane.

  Phiandra lurched forward under the enormous power of the wind and the wheel shuddered like an animal. The four of us heaved mightily to hold her then, for all the effort of our struggle, we stared upward as a series of piercing reports ... Crack! Crack! Crack! ... came from aloft, sounding over the storm like musket shots. And there were the fore and main topsails, torn from their gas
kets and streaming in tattered rags, ripped and shredded by the impact of the wind. And that was only the beginning. Even as we looked, the mizzen topsail went as well, with a crackling of rent canvas, torn from its lashings to join its fellows in ruin. But the reefed courses held and drove Phiandra onward to bury her bows in the sea. Spray crashed upward as she plunged onward and showered the length of her decks, so we never knew whether it was rain or sea that was drenching us.

  And after the shock of the wind came a great wall of water. A train of waves of such immense size that the seven hundred tons of our ship were whisked up bodily, leaving an unholy coldness in the floor of every man’s belly as she rose, then the very reverse as she dropped like a stone. This was my first real storm at sea and I could never have imagined the size of those waves. Some were fully the height of our topmasts, from their black troughs to their foaming crests. One minute we were high in the air, with a fine view of the torment all around, and the next we were sunk in a heaving valley of ocean with our line of sight ending mere yards away in a living wall of greeny-black water.

  And all the time we struggled with the wheel to hold her before the wind. It was vital to take the great waves on our stern. Any one of them, should it take us broadside on, would take out her masts and roll her over like a barrel.

  It went on for hours. The daylight went and the night came, lit by sheets of lightning. We were deafened by the wind, flogged by the spray and exhausted by the lurching, jerking wheel. One of the quartermasters suddenly dropped at the wheel and Lieutenant Williams instantly took his place. There was no chance to get the man below so Captain Bollington and Lieutenant Seymour lashed him to a carronade slide to keep him safe.

  The struggle with the wheel was immense, and as many men as could joined us to hold the ship on course. The Captain and all three Lieutenants took their full part in this. And then a great wave came down over our stern, roaring like a thousand cannon, and broke full upon the quarterdeck. The blow came like a giant’s hammer and buried us all in seething water. Instantly, the noise of the storm vanished in a green, swirling hiss as the waters closed over us. Lungs strained and eyes popped as the ocean tried to snatch us away. Then it was draining off, our heads were clear and we were coughing the salt water out of our throats. In that moment I saw a mad jumble of smashed gear — lockers, signal flags, shoes and the like — go slithering along in the flood. The compasses, binnacles, lamps and all were among the wreckage as it went over the side in the next roll of the ship.