The Price of Glory

by Seth Hunter

  He was diverted from these painful thoughts by Gilbert Gabriel who brought the welcome news that breakfast was ready.

  Breakfast had become something of a ritual since Nathan’s return to the Unicorn. He usually invited a small selection of his officers to share it with him in his day cabin and found it a much less formal occasion than dinner and much more conducive to relaxed conversation, even with George Grimaldi in attendance.

  There had been a number of changes in the gunroom during his absence. Tully and Holroyd had both passed their examination for lieutenant but had been superseded in authority by a new first, Mr. Duncan, who had joined the ship in Portsmouth where she had been given a complete refit after her ordeal in the mouth of Morbihan. The sailing master, Mr. Graham, had been taken ill and replaced by an older, calmer man, Mr. Perry, who had served for many years as the master of a Levanter and knew the Mediterranean well. They had also taken aboard three new midshipmen, all sons of men to whom Nathan owed favours of one kind or another, as was the way of the service.

  So it was a mix of old and new faces that greeted Nathan for breakfast. There was Tully, of course, a more or less permanent fixture; McLeish, the ship’s surgeon, and Midshipman Lamb, both of whom had been with him in the Caribbean; Midshipman Anson, one of the newcomers, a fat little boy of twelve and a great-grandson of the legend ary admiral who had sailed round the world and been First Lord of the Admiralty during the Seven Years War. And Duncan, the new first lieutenant. Duncan was an odd fish for the service, having been educated at Saint Paul’s School and intended for the law—and doubtless politics in due course, for his father was a wealthy London alderman and his godfather no less a personage than Lord Chancellor Thurlow—until he “ran away to sea” as he put it. He was apt to declaim on subjects which were of little interest to the rest of the company—and was doubtless a great loss to both professions on that account—but he displayed a wry humour at times which Nathan found encouraging and though he was not a natural born seaman, he appeared to be an excellent manager of men and organiser of their duties, which was the most you could expect of a first lieutenant.

  The table had been set with Nathan’s best white linen and the white-and-blue Delftware that his mother had presented to him when he was first made commander of the brig sloop Nereus in 1792, the last year of peace. It was a marvel to Nathan that despite the damage caused to the ship’s timbers and rigging, and the murder and mutilation of so many of her crew, this delicate porcelain had survived the intervening years of combat and storm almost intact. And upon the sideboard, the weather being calm, were set a number of pewter dishes containing the best the Angel Gabriel and Nathan’s private larder could contrive. There was oatmeal with sweet cream, smoked herrings and sardines with mustard sauce, grilled kidneys, bacon and sausages, fresh eggs provided by the ship’s hens and newly-baked bread from the ship’s ovens with a choice of spreads including butter, honey, orange marmalade and several jams.

  “Do not deny yourself, Mr. Lamb,” Nathan instructed the elder of the two midshipmen, unnecessarily judging from the amount already heaped upon his plate. “I doubt you will find it as appetising as your rat suppers but we will do our best to tempt you with our less noble delicacies.”

  A restrained smile from Mr. Lamb who was watching Mr. Anson carefully to ensure he did not gain any advantage over him in the matter of sausages.

  “I am told you are the best rat-catcher aboard the ship, Mr. Lamb,” remarked the first lieutenant as he helped himself to the kidneys, “and that you keep them in a cage, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, to fatten them up with weevils for times of famine.”

  Lamb blushed and shot a fi erce glance at his fellow to see if he blushed in turn and revealed himself an informer.

  “When I was a midshipman aboard the old Hermes I used to serve them spatch-cocked with a bread sauce,” remarked Nathan with a distant air. “It was condemned as effeminate by my critics but held by the majority to be superior in every way to the straight, roasted variety cooked upon a spit.”

  This information reduced the company to a thoughtful silence for a moment until Dr. McLeish diverted them with a discourse on the superiority of rat’s meat to rabbit, the latter being confined to eating grass while the rat’s diet was usually more varied and when fed upon grain or rice quite delicious.

  “I once ate a Spanish dish called a paella,” he disclosed, “which was a mess of rice and peas flavoured with rata de marjal—which, loosely translated, means rat of the wetlands. I would very much recommend it,” he informed Mr. Lamb, “for your next experiment in the culinary arts.”

  Not to be outdone, Mr. Duncan regaled them with a story of when he had shipped some Russian troops in the Black Sea and observed them scraping the tallow from the bottom of the lanterns and rolling it into small balls which they would swallow and wash down with a drink of vodka.

  “They were the dirtiest troops I ever saw,” he said. “They would pick the vermin off each other’s jackets and eat them quite composedly as if it was the most natural thing in the world.”

  This led to a discussion on the merits of weevils, which were said to be at their finest when the biscuit which they inhabited was at an advanced age of decay and crumbled into dust when tapped upon the table. The smaller sort were widely held to be easier to digest than the larger variety known as boatmen, their fat white bodies and black heads being somewhat off-putting to the more delicately minded unless, as Mr. Tully observed, you closed your eyes and thought of whelks.

  “I have never eaten a weevil,” McLeish remarked to great astonishment. “What does it taste like?”

  “Cold,” replied Mr. Duncan after some consideration. “And bitter.”

  “But quite succulent,” added Mr. Lamb in the interests of accuracy. “Hence the expression, ‘pop goes the weevil,’” contributed McLeish, miming the action of squishing one between finger and thumb.

  Nathan saw Signor Grimaldi push aside his oatmeal in distaste but the rest of the company settled down to their feast with every appearance of complacency. He was about to start upon his own when he heard the faint shout of “Sail ho!” from the tops but it was a routine-enough alert in the Mediterranean and Holroyd, who had the watch, would let him know soon enough if it was of any consequence.

  “When was you in the Black Sea, Mr. Duncan?” he ventured, being desirous of drawing out the lieutenant whenever the occasion presented itself, for he was still something of an unknown quantity aboard the Unicorn. “And how was it that you came to be shipping Russians?”

  “I was in the Russian service for a time,” replied Duncan, “during the war with the Turk.” He clearly enjoyed the sensation this caused. “I was then a lieutenant upon half pay,” he explained, when pressed, “and as it was a time of peace I was permitted by the Admiralty to enrol in the Russian Black Sea fleet as a volunteer. I served aboard the flagship Vladimir under the American admiral, John Paul Jones, who caused us such mischief during the last war. He had by then transferred his services to the Russians and was a great favourite with the Empress Catherine who declared that he would get her to Constantinople before the year was out. But unfortunately this aroused the antagonism of her lover, Prince Potemkin, who assailed his private character with allegations of sexual misconduct and had him dismissed.”

  This was all very exotic for the captain’s table of the Unicorn and the company was reduced to silence for a while, save for the chomping of midshipmen’s jaws continuing their remorseless advance.

  “And was you ever in action against the Turk?” asked Tully with interest.

  A snort from Mr. Anson, who was susceptible to the giggles and for some reason seemed to find this amusing. He pretended to have choked upon a sausage and Mr. Lamb, who was aware of his weakness and encouraged it whenever possible, patted him solicitously upon the back.

  “Regrettably I was not,” replied Duncan, “being taken with the dysentery off Yevpatoria and I was like to be shite for the kites, as the Khazaks say …” a
strangled cry from Mr. Anson “had I not been shipped home in an English vessel we encountered off Sevastopol.”

  Nathan suspected the first lieutenant of playing to the gallery for both young midshipmen were now thoroughly discomposed. He wondered if it was bad for discipline but decided he was getting old. He was contemplating whether he should have a second helping of the bacon and sausage or move directly on to the preserves when young Quinn entered with Mr. Holroyd’s compliments and he was very sorry to interrupt the captain’s breakfast but thought he should come up on deck to look upon a sail that was giving him cause for concern.

  By the time Nathan had climbed into the maintop, Holroyd’s concern had become more apparent, even to the naked eye. She was a ship-of-war—Nathan could just make out her topgallants and royals—hull up on the horizon at a distance of between three and four miles to the south-west and bearing down on them with all the sail she could make.

  “She changed course even as we first sighted her,” the lieutenant reported. “I cannot make out her colours, even with the glass, but I thought it better to be more safe than sorry.”

  “Quite right,” replied Nathan, though his stomach expressed displeasure. He took the glass and steadied it upon her. She was ship-rigged, almost certainly a frigate, and quite a large one. As Holroyd had indicated her colours were quite obscured, if indeed she was flying them, and there was no other clue to her identity. The chances were she was British even so close to the shores of Provence for the French fleet had been well worsted off Genoa no more than a few months since and rarely ventured out of Toulon. But Admiral Jervis kept a loose blockade in the hope of tempting them out again and it was not unknown for the odd cruiser to slip past the few pickets he had placed there.

  “What was her course when you first sighted her?” Nathan enquired.

  “Nor’-nor’-west,” replied Holroyd promptly and with a subtle significance in his tone. “About six points to the wind.”

  Nathan took his eye from the glass and gave him a searching look, though Holroyd was unlikely to have got it wrong. Even so, six points was about as close to the wind as any square-rigged ship could lie and would only be contemplated if she was involved in a chase or setting a direct course to her destination. And in this case, nor’-nor’-west would take her on a direct course to Nice or possibly Menton, where Buonaparte was known to have his headquarters.

  Still, this did not mean a great deal. She might have been sent by Jervis to look in on either port or clawing her way up the coast and sailing as close to the wind as she dared.

  “Break out the ensign and hoist the private code,” he said.

  Holroyd had already consulted the code book and the flags were bent on to the halyard. Nathan watched as they were run up. The two ships were still at some distance but the signal should be clearly visible with the glass. He raised his own. Nothing. She was still coming on and still he could not see her colours.

  “Very well,” he said, reluctantly. “Beat to quarters.”

  His orders were to avoid combat until he had safely delivered Grimaldi to Genoa unless such combat were unavoidable or could be contemplated without compromising his mission. Nathan silently cursed whichever underling at the Admiralty—if it was not the First Lord himself—who had added this caveat, for it threw the onus straight back upon him. Clearly it would compromise his mission to engage with a ship of the line, but where did he stand with a ship of the fifth- or sixth-rate? Could he contemplate a fight with a 32-gun frigate, with which the Unicorn was equally matched, but not one of 36 guns? Indeed, even an unrated brig or a gunboat might inflict considerable damage in the uncertainty of battle. A lucky shot might carry away the Unicorn’s rudder or a mast and she might be driven upon the shore. Or she might catch fire, for it was rumoured that the new Directory in Paris had instructed all their ships to use heated shot. And unless he made his esteemed passenger crouch like a rat on the orlop deck, a stray shot might, heaven forefend, take off his head. Would the Admiralty find the Unicorn’s captain culpable in such a circumstance? Without a doubt.

  The martial beat of the drum rolled out across the still waters and within seconds the starboard watch was pouring up from below. Nathan’s breakfast party disgorged upon the quarterdeck, looking as bloated as he felt. The Angel Gabriel would be in a terrible stew as they cleared the decks for action, the great lumbering oafs crashing about the captain’s cabin, taking down the bulkheads, breaking up his table into its several pieces, tearing up his carpet of chequered canvas, the precious porcelain bundled into its straw. And the drum beating and the rumble and squeak of iron upon timber as they ran out the guns. The shouted orders and the scamper of running feet. The scrambling up the ratlines and out along the yards. The heavier clumping tread of the marines in their red coats with their blancoed belts and their polished brass and their muskets. It all seemed so wrong somehow, so utterly alien, on this golden morning, and the two beautiful white ships in their sparkling pool of blue water and the snow upon the distant mountains. And the drum beating.

  Nathan looked back at the approaching vessel, still cracking on apace. He could see the gunports now—a surprising number of them for a single-decker … He had a moment of deadly suspicion before he raised the glass and then he knew. She was a razee, or to give it the correct French term, a vaisseau rasé, a two-decker ship of the line “razeed down” to make a large, single-deck frigate. There were only three such ships in the British Navy—the Anson, the Indefatigable and the Magnanime—and to Nathan’s certain knowledge none of them was serving in the Med. There was just a faint possibility she was a Spaniard or a Neapolitan but Nathan very much doubted it. She was a Frenchman; he would stake his shirt on it. He even thought he knew which one, for he knew every ship in the French fleet by heart: her name, her rating, her history, even, in many cases, the name of her captain. He tried to focus on the figure-head at her bows but she was still too distant. He counted the gun-ports again and nodded to himself in silent confirmation. She was the Diadème. No, that was in her previous life. The Brutus, she was called now, for she had been born again since the Revolution. She had been launched as a 74-gun ship of the line back in the fifties and seen service in the Seven Years War and the American War; if he was not much mistaken she had fought with De Grasse at the Battle of Chesapeake Bay which had delivered Yorktown to the combined armies of Washington and Lafayette, effectively sealing the fate of the colonies. But in 1792—Year 1 of the Revolution—she had been renamed the Brutus, for in Republican circles Brutus was an honourable man, and shortly after razeed to a 42-gun frigate. A brute of a frigate.

  The one thing Nathan did not know was the calibre of those guns. As a ship of the line she had mounted twenty-eight 36-pounders on her lower gundeck with thirty 18-pounders and sixteen 8- pounders above. But now he was not sure. He cursed himself for his ignorance for it mattered a great deal. He wondered if any of his officers knew. He looked down to the quarterdeck and saw them staring up at him; those who were not staring out towards the distant frigate on their starboard quarter. But this was a waste of time; he was fooling himself and he knew it. Whatever the size of her guns and for all the ambiguity of his orders he could never persuade himself, much less their lordships, that a fight with a 42-gun razee could be contemplated, to use their own term, without compromising his mission.

  For all the anguish it would cause him—and the respect it would lose him with his new officers and those of the crew that had not been with him when he had fought the Virginie—he had to run.

  He glanced up and around him at the sail he was carrying and then out towards the enemy. He guessed they were fairly matched for speed but little by little she was closing upon them and he thought he knew why. She was sailing large with a quartering wind—perhaps three-and-a-half or a full four points off her quarter—almost certainly her best point of sailing, while the Unicorn was sailing parallel to the coast with the wind almost directly astern. If each ship held steady to its present course, the Brutus would soon
be within firing range and being French she would fire into their rigging with a fair chance of bringing something vital down. Then she would close with them and with her heavier broadside she would have a clear advantage.

  Nathan went down the ratlines considerably faster than he had climbed them. If he was to keep ahead of her, and well out of range, he had to alter course, to bring the wind further round on his own beam and run to the north-east. But there was a problem with that. He could see it written on the face of his new sailing master even as he reached the quarterdeck and gave the order and he could see it in his own mind’s eye as clearly as if he were looking upon the chart. For five miles ahead, jutting out from the mountains, was the long, jagged spur of Capo Mele and the new course he had set would bring them running down upon it within the hour.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  the Razee

  THE UNICORN HAD SPREAD HER WINGS. With topmast and topgallant studding sails set on the fore, her spritsail stretching forward along that slender neck of a bowsprit, she might have been taken by some watcher upon the shore for a great white swan, Nathan thought, speeding across the still blue waters of the bay before taking flight to soar over the cliffs of Capo Mele.

  If only. For every few minutes brought her another few hundred yards closer to disaster at the foot of that menacing spur: distinct now despite the haze, at a distance of about a mile and a half off their starboard bow. Nathan dragged his eyes away from the line of gently breaking surf and looked back toward their pursuer, at much the same distance in a diagonal line from their stern. That distance had hardly wavered since their change of course. For all his studdingsails and spritsails, for all the other little tricks in his book: lower lifts, braces and trusses hauled as taut as possible, topgallant clewlines set up tight, top-burtons and preventer lifts rigged and the mainsail weather-clewed to take full advantage of that quartering wind, the frigate could not lengthen the distance between them. The Brutus clung on grimly, neither gaining nor falling away. The same mythical watcher upon the shore would have imagined her driving the Unicorn before her into the deadly enclosure formed by that curving line of coast. Not so much a swan now as a farmyard goose to the slaughter.