by J. D. Davies
But I took no heed. I had observed enough of veteran topmen going aloft to know the manner of it. Hand over hand, as sure of their footing as spiders...
I climbed with the blind determination of a man fleeing a pursuing demon. At one step, the demon seemed to take the form of an Irish renegade in a red uniform; at another, a plausible, cunning bride; at another, a smiling, duplicitous monarch. Up, to the foot of the futtock shrouds that stretched out to the edge of the maintop. The true seamen went that way, scorning the lubber's hole through the top itself. Matthew Quinton, true seaman, would go that way, then.
I pulled myself outward, then up, then over, fearing nothing, and at last stood on the top, clinging with one hand to the maintopmast. I looked about me, and was amazed by the glories of what I beheld. At that height, the fog was all but gone, consigned to the parts beneath. I could see the lookout on Mary, staring quizzically across at me, and the masts of the myriad of ships that lay within the Downs. I could see the square mass of Dover's great keep, standing sentinel above its cliff to the south. And there, in the far distance, the matching white cliffs of France, my grandmother's homeland .
Kit Farrell pulled himself up behind me, having maintained a respectful distance (although in truth, if he had been so minded he could have reached the top in a fraction of my time).
'Well done, Captain!' he cried. 'To be fit for the yards and tops—the mark of a true seaman, by God!'
But in that moment the breeze freshened a little, and the ship lurched. I felt the momentary terror of losing my grip on the maintop as my body followed the pitch. I clutched desperately for the maintop. As I regained my grip, I could see the fog roll away from the deck beneath, like the parting of a curtain.
The deck so very far beneath.
There were our great guns; not great now, but very small indeed, no more than little tubes. And there, some of my men. Why, even Musk, now staring aloft in some apparent dismay, was no larger than a mouse upon the floor...
A strange picture flashed across my mind; a scene unrecalled for almost twenty years. A small excited child taken by its father to the pinnacle of a church tower, there to be shown his ancestral lands stretching all around—only to dissolve in screaming terror at the thought of such a great height, and the child's unshakeable conviction that he would inevitably throw himself from it.
'Kit,' I said, 'I fear I have been proud. Impulsive. A fool.' I swallowed very hard. 'Kit. Can't move. Can't breathe.'
The young man must have grasped my meaning at once. My face must have told its own story, for it felt strangely cold of that sudden; as cold and clammy as it feels now, here in my dotage, as I step ever nearer the graveside. My friend took hold of my free arm and forced me both to grip the maintop with both hands and to look upwards, away from that fascinating, horrifying sight beneath. With all my heart, I cursed my precipitate flight from the merely unpleasant company of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer to this far more terrible predicament.
The swell caught the hull again, and the mast lurched once more. My head throbbed, my eyes clouded and darkened. I tried to swallow, but could not, for my throat felt dry and hard. I clung ever more tightly to the maintopmast and prayed, silently but with a sudden and rare zeal, to the Anglican God of my fathers and, for good measure, to the papist God of my French grandmother.
Kit blew a short, shrill pipe on his whistle, to what end I knew not. Then he turned to me in a matter of fact way and said, 'Not proud at all, sir. The opposite, I reckon. Not many captains are willing to risk all on an ascent. And none I know who possesses a dread of heights. The men will respect you the more for it, Captain Quinton, that they will.' At that moment I cared not a jot for the respect of the men, but I was too consumed by terrors to tell Kit that. As it was, my boatswain continued his discourse as though we were whiling away a pleasant evening in an alehouse. 'Why, the first year or more that I was at sea, I feared the masthead more than Old Nick. Even fell off it once, straight into the sea. Fortunate for me, sir, it was only my uncle's ketch, so the mast was far less than half the height of this—and we were in shoal water, close off the Orford Ness, so there was but little difficulty in fishing me out. But it was a mighty fright, all the same.'
I was still very young, but Kit, of my own age, had evidently already learned a lesson that it took me many more years to master: that soothing, distracting words can diminish even the darkest of horrors. I envied him then, and not for the first time. My own age, but master of the situation. Master of the right words. Master of his captain.
A shuffling and a familiar grunt heralded the arrival of a second man on the maintop—John Treninnick, the stunted monoglot Cornishman whose dexterity upon the yards was the stuff of legend upon our lower deck. Thus the purpose of Kit Farrell's whistle revealed itself.
'Now, Captain,' said Kit, 'I'll go down beneath you, and Treninnick at your side. Through the lubber's hole this time, I think, sir.'
Reluctantly, I glanced downward, and located the edge of the lubber's hole with my foot. Kit dropped lightly through it and gripped the shrouds beneath. One force, and one force alone, impelled me to loosen my grip on the maintopmast and haul myself through the hole: my ferocious determination not to be carried down to the deck in Treninnick's arms, like some swaddling babe, thereby dishonouring at a stroke the many illustrious generations of the House of Quinton. Once I had begun the descent, a rather more practical consideration revealed itself. Treninnick, who could have been up and down the mast thrice in the time it took me to get down, was not a patient man, and clearly had to restrain himself from overtaking me. Despite his remarkable agility, he was not a markedly light man either. Thus the prospect of my fingers being crushed beneath Treninnick's calloused and pungent bare feet drove me ever downward. And all the while, as I continued to look straight ahead at the mainmast (a sight far preferable to the upward spectacle of Treninnick's feet and arse), Kit Farrell kept up his ceaseless, calming banter: 'Of course, you'll find Myngs at his masthead at the slightest excuse, but that's affectation—a proud Norfolk tarpaulin, Myngs is, and he'll ever chance to prove himself better than any man of his company. Now Lawson, well, he started on the colliers, so he's not a man to climb the shrouds—'
With that, my foot struck the starboard rail, and I swung on the shroud to deposit myself upon the Seraph's deck once again.
Quite a crowd of the curious had gathered upon the upper deck by now, a plainly disapproving Phineas Musk at the head of them. I controlled myself with some difficulty, looked about me, and said casually, 'As you say, Boatswain, the Mary seems to be in some danger of fouling her bower. But our deck appears in order apart from that small matter of the poor stowing of the sheet shot. Order a party to see to it, if you please.'
Kit saluted and smiled knowingly.
With that, I turned on my heel and retired to my half-cabin, where I shivered, sweated, and retched long and hard.
Fourteen
The Seraph and Jersey were thirty-eight days out of the Downs and seven days south-west of the Lizard. This unconscionable delay in getting from one end of the English Channel to the other was caused by weather as foul as only an English winter can bring: a dirty storm, followed by dense fog, followed by a still dirtier storm before the whole process began anew. We hove to repeatedly, bringing down our yards and topmasts; this would not always have been necessary for warships, but we had to defer to the lesser sailing qualities of the Prospect of Blakeney. Cooped up between decks for so long, arguments and fights between Bristolians and Cornishmen broke out almost every watch, so Boatswain Farrell and his mates were kept fully occupied. The little fleet spent Christmas Day hove to and soaked to the skin in Saint Helen's Bay off the Isle of Wight, praying for the slightest glimmer of seasonal cheer and goodwill to all men. It never came. Of course, we did our best, in the true old traditions of the navy: the trumpeters came round the ship at four in the morning, playing a greeting at every officer's cabin despite being flung across the deck and into bulkheads after almost every not
e; Francis Gale preached on Zechariah Chapter Nine, Verse Nine, despite having to do so below decks with two men holding him relatively steady as he read from Holy Scripture; and we ate Bradbury's cremated Christmas repast of beef, plum puddings and mince pies, each man cutting his food as hastily as he could while his neighbour held his goblet steady, then each returning the favour to the other. As I stood on the quarterdeck that Christmas afternoon, watching through biting rain as the shore of Wight rose and fell crazily, I wished I was sitting with Cornelia in front of the great log fire in the library at Ravensden. Yet again, I wondered what insane urge had made me turn down my King's offer of a safe commission in the army. His Majesty's horse guards would be warm and dry in barracks. His Majesty's horse guards would not be voyaging to a land of oblivion in search of a 'mountain of gold' that did not exist. His Majesty's horse guards would...
All voyages have these moments when it seems that the weather will never alter and one will never be dry again. But alter it will, and a man's mood alters with it. Thus it was that on a January day, when England would be shivering under a blanket of frost and snow, the Seraph had most of her sail aloft on a truly glorious day, with sun glinting upon the waves and a steady, warming breeze from West North West.
Alas, the weather is not the only thing that can alter a man's mood. In that moment, Brian Doyle O'Dwyer came on deck.
'A very good morning to you, Captain Quinton!' he cried with unwonted good humour. 'You slept well, I trust?'
'Indeed, sir.' This was a loose translation of my rather franker private opinion: No I did not, you foul renegade, partly because of your unearthly snoring, partly because of your very presence but a few feet from my own. Such were but two of the unwelcome consequences of the presence of our guest aboard the Seraph; but there were others, not all so personal to me. The dinners of the officers of a king's ship should be occasions for boundless good cheer engendered by the fellowship of the sea. They should be times when men talk freely, delight in each others' company and raise toasts to wives, friends or kings. They should not make the guts churn with foreboding. But that is what every single meal partaken of by the officers of the Seraph became. It was as though a company of good fellows had invited a last guest unknown to all of them, and suddenly discovered he was the Antichrist.
Of course, O'Dwyer ignored it all, or affected to. He talked. And talked. Then he talked some more. He had experience and opinions on every matter under the sun. He advised Mister Shish on ways of remedying his problematic chain pumps. He spoke authoritatively to Lindman about the relative merits of sakers and minions, and to Negus on the tides of the Straits of Gibraltar. But above all, he talked with Francis Gale; and Francis, being Francis, at least presented an appearance of being interested in the man's words. They spoke of theology and the holy book of the Prophet, although O'Dwyer seemed to have abandoned that book's precepts as readily as he had thrown off the identity of Omar Ibrahim, judging by the way in which he consumed all the wine, sack and punch that could be placed before him. They talked of the thousands of white slaves held hostage in Algier and the other Barbary regencies—O'Dwyer admitting a little too flippantly that he had been responsible for the capture of some hundreds of them—and of the pitiful, half-hearted gestures at redeeming them made by every European nation, England included. So it went on, day after day.
Yet little by little, I started to pay more heed to what the man said: he talked well, and had knowledge and interests far beyond those of the stolid tarpaulins at the table. At first, though, he conversed very little with me when we ate, and the same was true also of Lieutenant Castle. But then, we were the two officers on the Seraph who had also been aboard Wessex, and had thus seen O'Dwyer as he was before he reinvented himself. We had witnessed his Moorish self, and his humiliation. I wondered, too, whether his distance from me was due to the fact that unlike almost all of the others, I knew that despite all his bravado, O'Dwyer was truly as a fox in a hunt, with Montnoir as relentless in his pursuit of his quarry as old Actaeon himself.
On this particular morning, O'Dwyer seemed to have no thoughts of Montnoir, nor of the mountain of gold. He looked about with interest at the work of the ship; we were making excellent time, averaging some forty to fifty leagues a day by the log, but even so, we were making ready to put up our spritsail topmast as well. Thus men were busy on the forecastle, securing ropes and blocks—garnet-tackles, they seemed to be called—to guy-ropes slung between foremast and bowsprit preparatory to the hauling out of the small mast to the very front of the ship. Such activities had been sublime mysteries to me until very recently, but now I was beginning to understand the reasoning behind placing that tackle at that point, where it could take the strain when those men hauled upon it.
O'Dwyer watched for some minutes, then turned to me and said, 'So much more complicated than a galley, Captain! So many moving parts. So much more that can go wrong. And, of course, of no use at all in a flat calm.'
'Well then, Colonel,' I said, 'if you're missing your galleys so much, perhaps you will seek the command of one again ere long. Or are the Barbary regents not as forgiving as our King?'
The Irishman laughed. Ah, Captain, now why should I seek to return to my former employers, when King Charles has been so much more mightily generous to me? Being a colonel for him suits me well enough, I think. And a ship captain's cabin is markedly more comfortable than that on a galley. Even half a cabin,' he said, mischievously.
William Castle came to my rescue, announcing that we were ready to commence the hoisting of the topmast into position. I nodded my acquiescence, though I was aware that my role in such an affair was still that of a cipher. Castle went forward to supervise the exercise, and I watched with O'Dwyer as a party containing Polzeath, Macferran, Treninnick and three of the Bristol men began to manhandle the short mast toward the bowsprit. There seemed to be some altercation among the men—Castle moved toward them, growling a warning—Upon a sudden, Macferran let go of the mast and let fly at one of the Bristolians, his young Scots fists pummelling the man about the chest and head. Two other Bristol men and a couple of Londoners joined the fray at once. Polzeath, Carvell and a couple of Cornishmen retaliated in the same instant, leaving the mast dangling forlornly. I had feared something of the sort since the early days of our voyage; some of the London and Bristol drafts were very rogues, Kit had reported much bickering in the messes, and I had already been forced to order punishments for such offences as lying and excessive drunkenness.
'What curious discipline,' said O'Dwyer, with insufferable sarcasm.
But discipline was already on its way. It came in the shape of Kit Farrell, striking men vigorously with his rattan cane, and two of his mates, who physically pulled the combatants apart. The two instigators, Macferran and the Bristol villain—a bearded creature named Russell—were manhandled away from the throng and hauled before the quarterdeck. Kit reported to me formally, saluting upon his approach, and requested to know my pleasure.
Now, this business was hardly a court-martial affair—if every brawl on every ship of war reached a court, the navy would spend its whole time doing nothing else. But in a sense, that made the matter more difficult for me. It was the sort of case that was left solely to the discretion of the captain, and that presented me with a terrible dilemma. I would order Russell flogged without a moment's hesitation; he probably deserved it for a dozen other crimes that had escaped even Kit's rigorous attention to detail. But Macferran was one of my own following, one of that heroic band who had fought alongside me in the life-or-death battle aboard the Jupiter off his native isle in Scotland. I liked Macferran, and although he was not Cornish himself, my Cornish coterie had adopted him as one of their own. I could hear the whispers among the Bristolians and the Londoners: 'One of Quinton's favourites. You watch. He'll get nothing, and Russell will get the lash.' Cornishmen scowled at the whisperers, but the expressions of many of them suggested that they were hoping for exactly that outcome.
I leaned upon the qu
arterdeck rail. 'I will not have this brawling!' I shouted. 'This is a king's ship, not some tavern, and every man on this ship is bound by the king's discipline! Every man!' I emphasised that, and for some reason, I glanced at O'Dwyer as I said it. 'Very well,' I continued. 'I have witnessed the incident. I do not need to hear depositions, or the justifications of the two men before me. You—Russell. Five lashes. You—Macferran. You were the original instigator. Whatever Russell said to you, no man can doubt that you were the first to use your fists. I witnessed it. So did we all. Eight lashes. Now!'
There was an audible gasp from the Cornish, and not a little muttering from the other contingents in the crew. Kit and his mates led the two reprobates forward to the capstan. Russell was the first to be stripped of his shirt and tied to the capstan spokes. His back provided clear evidence that this was not his first flogging; far from it, indeed.
Pegg, the best of the boatswain's mates, took the whip, and waited for my signal.
I nodded.
The whip lashed across Russell's back, immediately bringing up a great bloody welt. Pegg laid the next stroke across the first, making the form of a cross. The rogue made no cry. Three—four—five. At the last, Russell was cut loose from the capstan and given back his shirt. He donned it with apparent unconcern, shrugging off the solicitation of Surgeon Humphrey.
It was Macferran's turn. He was brave enough as they secured him to the capstan, but the first stroke from Pegg brought forth a pitiful hiss from the young Scot. His back, unused to the lash, was streaming with blood by the third stroke. Every human instinct within me demanded that I order an end to this, there and then; but on such a public stage, young Matt Quinton had to give way to Captain the Honourable Matthew Quinton, and the duty of the latter was beyond doubt.
Macferran was a brave fellow, but the lash has a way of probing to the very limits of a man's bravery. On the fifth stroke he screamed, and Kit stepped forward with a gag. The last three lashes were delivered onto a body heaving with sobs and soaked in blood. When it was done, Carvell, Polzeath and some others ran forward to hold Macferran upright, and Surgeon Humphrey stepped forward to administer salt to the wounds.
