House for a cruise to the westward. Then he wrote a second message, this one to Rabbett and Thoday in Dorchester. A faint acrid scent of pigeon guano seeped from behind the ugly new bulkhead that blocked the brig's beautiful little stern window from view.
His messages written, Hoare summoned Hancock, the pigeon man, to send them off. Now, by God, was the time to put his plans for Royal Duke into effect. If only Niobe, too, were about to weigh anchor! He hoisted signal to Admiralty House: 'Preparing for sea,' and directed the same signal to the attention of Niobe. He vowed one of the ship's pigeons to Aeolus as a thank-you offering for the mild northerly breeze. Perhaps, given the gentle seas that would result, enough of Royal Duke's people would be able to keep their bellies in order to handle the brig. Hoare was lucky that his Marines were back aboard, for while they had pigeons with them that could bring him their news, he could send nothing by that means. The birds would be unable to find a moving destination like his live green Lobsters.
The Admiral must have been in good spirits, for it was less than ten minutes before Royal Duke's number rose to the signal mast at Admiralty House, followed by the expected: 'Why have you not weighed anchor?'
Hoare whistled for Mr. Clay.
'Sir?' Clay could read the signal as well as Hancock or Hoare. He was already at Hoare's side, breathing fire.
Hoare, too, stood straighter as his Lieutenant brought Royal Duke to life at last. It all came back to him.
'Set sail, Mr. Clay. Set her course for Weymouth.'
Mr. Clay nearly goggled at his Commander. Then he grinned and turned.
'All hands to unmoor!' he cried in a voice that would have roused a sleeping seventy-four. 'This is no drill!'
More calmly, as the astonished Royal Dukes set about obeying in earnest, he added, 'Let fall the topsails!'
In so small a vessel, topsails were commonly set before unmooring. Led aloft by the hooting Iggleden, the assigned topmen swarmed out onto the two topsail yards. His heart in his mouth lest one of his Jack Newcomes lose his footing and drop, Hoare craned his neck to watch them. The snowy virgin topsails dropped, flapping gently in the light air.
Clay had recovered his self-control. 'Tacks and sheets; cast for the starboard tack.'
The topsails, still flapping, were brought under control. Royal Duke jibbed like a filly, straining to go westerly but still restrained by her mooring.
'Ready there, forrard?'
'Aye!' came from the forepeak.
'Cast off, then!'
As the slip rope came aboard, Royal Duke gathered stern way momentarily, but when Clay called for tacks and sheets to be trimmed, the topsails gave a soft, brief thunder, took on their graceful sheer, and thrust the brig forward. Now the hands set topsails, fore-staysail, and spanker. For the first time in her career, Royal Duke was under sail in the charge of her own crew, proud and eager.
'Brace up forward. Make a course for Yarmouth, Mr. Clay,' Hoare ordered.
Hoare realized that he had hardly breathed during the entire simple maneuver. Royal Duke had run athwart no one's hawse; nothing had carried away; no one had gone overboard. Though woefully slow by Navy standards, her crew had unmoored as well as the average merchantman could, and a good deal more tidily.
'No jeers from our neighbors this morning, Mr. Clay,' Hoare said.
'No, sir.'
Royal Duke steadied on her course. Under easy sail, she threw only a small bow wave against the blue waters of the Solent. Now she heeled a strake or two. Her tender, Hoare's Alecto, chuckled along in her wake like a filly foal behind her dam.
A light leftover sea from ahead threw a sprinkle of foam over her bows; she gave a minute heave. In response, one or two smothered groans of distress arose forrard.
'To leeward, damn you, to leeward!' Clay bawled.
Stone picked up one sufferer bodily and heaved him to the larboard rail just in time to spew over the side. Other hands set to without orders to pretty up all lines once again-the one skill the Royal Dukes had learned during those endless months when their ship had lain in the Thames estuary, in danger of grounding on her own beef bones.
'Now, then, steady as he goes, Taylor,' said Lovable Bold, the borrowed bosun, as he turned the helm over to the cryptographer. 'Time you earned yer rating.'
Seeing that Taylor's lips were clenched in her teeth, Bold waited within reach until she had begun to learn the brig's ways before starting forward.
'How does she steer?' Hoare asked.
'She gripes a bit, sir,' Taylor said.
'Better than a lee helm.'
'Aye. Especially with this crew,' Clay inteqected. 'But if we want to make her easier, all we need do is move a handful of pigeon feed forrard.'
Hoare suppressed a snort of laughter. That had been the first witty remark he had heard his Lieutenant make. Perhaps getting under way at last was putting him at his ease; certainly it was unknotting Hoare.
The two now hastily put together a schedule of training that would break in the Royal Dukes between Spithead and their arrival off Weymouth.
'Perhaps, sir, we shall even be able to fire the great guns. It would surely encourage the crew were we to do so. The noise, you know.' Mr. Clay sounded eager. Since there was no longer any point in Hoare's keeping his plans from the other officer, he revealed them. Clay was visibly jubilant.
'Let us complete the day by saluting the sunset, then,' Hoare concluded. 'But first, let us put her through her paces.'
So, once they had cleared the Needles and were out of sight of the nearly empty anchorage, Clay set all hands to lowering Royal Duke's topmasts and topgallants and sweating them up again, stretching out onto her yards and back again, over and over, until their palms bled and they could barely stagger. Even then, they needed no urging. At the last, Clay even had them set the brig's stun-sails and her kerchiefs of royals. Under these, the little yacht swept seaward until Hoare recollected his orders and made his Lieutenant take in the little scraps so they could beat back into protected waters. All this while, Alecto towed obediently behind.
Finally, Hoare permitted Clay to drop off a beflagged cask. After working her up to windward, he shortened sail and put Royal Duke in position to sweep down again upon the cask, gliding westward a cable's length north of the target.
'Proceed, Mr. Clay,' Hoare said.
'Silence, fore and aft.'
The command was not necessary, for Royal Duke was only whispering across the water. Silence was already complete, expectant. Up flew the four larboard gun ports.
'Cast loose your guns,' Clay ordered. 'Out tompions.'
At each side-tackle, a man heaved, to roll the four-pounders inboard so the tompions could be removed from their muzzles. Long since, Mr. Clay had had the charges drawn and replaced. There had been a rat's nest in one of the guns, though how the rat had gotten inside the gun in the first place passed Hoare's imagination.
'Run out your guns.' Out trundled her gleaming miniature broadside.
'Level your guns.'
'Prime.' Each Captain broke the fresh cartridge at the bottom of his gun's bore, using the priming iron hung from a lanyard around his neck. The Captain of Number Two gun, however, fumbled at his throat and looked at his Lieutenant in agony.
Stone reached out with a spare. 'Ere, Gridley. But yer grog's stopped tonight.'
After using Stone's iron, Gridley returned it.
'Now get on with it, man. Catch up with the others; they're a-waitin'.'
'You may fire when ready, Gridley,' Clay said.
Hastily, Gridley poured a handful of powder into his gun's vent and stood to attention.
'Point your guns.' The four Captains leaned over to peer along their guns' barrels and heaved on the pry-bars
