grenades; several mantraps; a crossbow with twenty quarrels of various types; and powder and shot for the firearms. At considerable expense, Hoare had equipped the latter with the novel percussion caps.
And now his deadly Kentucky gun was gone.
Chapter III
Bartholomew Hoare's father, Joel Hoare, was of Viking stock. Joel brought that good name of his with him when he came south from the Orkneys as an orphan boy, and he had defended it successfully throughout his rise from ship's boy and through the hawsehole to master's mate, thence to post captain.
Both Hoare sons had defended that good name with fists and feet again and again while still in their nonage. Bartholomew's elder brother, John, had been badly injured in such an affray and still limped about the family property in Shropshire, debarred forever from the sea.
Even before Captain Hoare had negotiated his younger son a post as midshipman in Centurion, 60, Bartholomew had run a jeering schoolmate through the thigh with a carving knife. Now, more than thirty years later, it was a foolhardy man who mocked that good name of Bartholomew Hoare's; though thus far he had avoided killing a single opponent, he wounded at will with pistol, epee, or saber.
As befitted the descendant of Vikings, Bartholomew was not only a warrior but also a masterly seaman. While still a midshipman, he had been the sole deck officer in the brig Beetle to survive the great tempest of September '81, when a rogue sea swept her quarterdeck clean. That night he led her surviving crew in club-hauling the brig off the roaring rocks of the Isles of Shoals.
Not only that; as young Hoare was working Beetle to Halifax under jury rig he had taken a small Yankee privateer by a ruse-her master had drained her crew into his English prizes-and he brought her into Halifax in modest triumph. The privateer had carried specie from one of her captures. Moreover, the navy had bought her up, bringing Hoare the entire quarterdeck's eighth of the proceeds, plus the one-thirty-second share due him as a midshipman-one of the four surviving warrant officers.
Thus, even before being commissioned lieutenant in 1783, Hoare had gained a solid reputation for competence both in the field of honor and at sea. He had also gained what, for a mere midshipman at the bottom of the navy's ladder of success, was a sizable fortune. That amount, TБ6,127/5/8, paid him by the Halifax prize master, was such a shock to young Hoare that, running counter to the behavior of the typical mid, he invested the entire sum in the Funds and left it at Barclays Bank to accrue in industrious idleness as its owner worked his way up the tedious ladder of promotion.
But the spent musket ball fired from Eole on the first of June '94 had put paid to his career at sea. Since any deck officer must be able to hail the main masthead in a full gale, Staghound's captain had regretfully put his first lieutenant ashore, silenced for life, with a letter of high commendation, endorsed by Lord Howe himself. Never since that black day had Bartholomew Hoare gone to sea in anyone's vessel but his own, unless as a silent, frustrated passenger.
By good fortune, Hoare also had influence among the mighty. Captain Joel Hoare, of course, as a member of Parliament, still carried weight with Their Lordships of the Admiralty, and his Uncle Claudius, brother of Bartholomew's late mother, had married Lady Jessica, eldest daughter of Geoffrey, third Baron Wheatley. It had needed both these connections and Lord Howe's precious letter to find the beached, despairing Hoare a place on the permanent staff of the Port Admiral at Portsmouth.
'And what the hell do Their Lordships expect me to do with a lieutenant who cannot talk?' that officer had asked Hoare as he paced back and forth in front of the stricken lieutenant.
'Can ye speak French?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Read books of accounts?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Hand, reef, and steer?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Hail the fore topgallant?'
'No, sir.'
So the Admiral had gone on, firing a question like a broadside every time he passed athwart Hoare's hawse, until Hoare sweated where he stood.
He had evidently passed muster, for the Admiral had him assigned as a general dogsbody, trotting about at the command of either the Commissioner (who commanded the Portsmouth shipyards) or the Admiral himself, as Port Admiral in command of the Navy vessels at the Yard and at Spithead just outside the harbor's mouth. In practice, Hoare spent most of his time slaving for the port's regulating captain-master of the press-and the local masters of the Navy Board, Ordnance Board, Victualling Board, and Transport Board. He ran errands and took on any project that a voiceless officer could reasonably accept. The life kept him out of the countryside where the Hoare family remained; he had found the stink of bilges and the scurry of rats preferable to the stink of cow shit and the scurry of chickens.
As well as becoming intimately familiar from below with the bizarre, cobwebbed workings of the so-called Silent Service, he must have been found useful. For, even though Sir Percy soon hoisted his flag in Agamemnon-at sea again at last, leaving the forlorn Hoare behind him on the beach- succeeding Port Admirals had kept him in place, to roll about wherever ordered, aging but gathering little moss. By now, he was forty-three.
Unlike many beached officers-and all too many seagoing ones as well-Hoare kept himself fit. He frequented the salle d'armes of Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac, French emigre and master of escrime. Here he worked diligently at perfecting his skill with every weapon that might come to hand, including many that would never see the field of honor, being unsuited to the hand of a gentleman. He also developed a strongly accented fluency in French.
Whenever duty permitted, he wandered England's entire south coast in his odd little yacht. This not only kept his hands and muscles tough from fisting her canvas and heaving on her abrasive hemp but also kept his seamanly skills well honed.
A year or two ago, he had used the guineas won at a lucky run in the Long Rooms to buy the little sloop. As he had vowed upon his being beached, that prize money he had won in Beetle remained intact against his all-too- certain retirement as a half-pay lieutenant.
Insupportable had a cabin quite large enough to shelter him and his armory, an occasional guest, a week's supplies, a tiny galley stove, and certain equipment. For while she generally lay in the Inner Camber, just south of Portsmouth dockyard, or traveled about the coast on Hoare's whim, she occasionally carried her master on missions of significance. It was for this reason that Hoare had acquired his just-depleted armory.
Whatever Insupportable's name might be at a given time, Hoare almost always sailed her alone. He had rigged her oddly, with a leg-o'-mutton mainsail, its foot lashed from tack to clew onto a boom and its head reaching the considerable height of her pole mast, and a clubbed forestaysail. She could outpoint any of the clumsy ship s boats and wherries that plied Portsmouth Harbor and give any craft her length half an hour in the Sunday races.
To cut her leeway when working to windward, while retaining her ability to take the ground without damage, Hoare had shipped one of the new, controversial lead-weighted sliding keels. It made no difference to him or to her that the long case in which it nested when raised divided his cabin awkwardly, for it formed the base of a table set fore-and-aft between her two cushioned lockers.
It was near enough four bells of the afternoon watch before Hoare brought his little vessel into the Inner Camber.
NOW, EASING HIS way into her home harbor, he luffed up to check Insupportable's way, cleated a line, and tossed it ashore to a waiting docker. The man caught it with his one hand and dropped the bight in its end over a handy bollard. The two did the same with a stern line. After adding springs and trimming all dock lines to his own satisfaction, Hoare furled main and forestaysail. He locked the hatch leading below and went ashore by the floating brow, leaving Insupportable to snooze lazily in the long shadows of the June evening.
