by the process. 'As you can hear, I never speak above a whisper, so I shall usually relay my orders through Mr. Clay. I do have certain signals, however…'
He broke off, withdrew his boatswain's pipe, and blew 'All Hands.'
'You know that one, I see,' Hoare whispered, Clay echoing his whisper out loud for the crew at large. Hoare pocketed the pipe. 'But you do not know this one…'
Putting two fingers of one hand to his mouth, he emitted a piercing, rising whistle. Clay jumped, and so did a good half the crew. There was also a fluttering noise dead aft, behind Hoare's back. He forbore to turn in search of the noise's origin.
'That,' he continued, 'was my summons to Mr. Clay. I have many more such signals, which I wish you to learn in time. You will find me firm but fair. Do your duty, and you will have nothing to fear.
'Dismiss the hands, Mr. Clay.'
Hoare took the next few minutes to walk the flush deck of his new command, guided by his new Lieutenant. She was a conventional Navy brig in half-scale. If he remembered Beetle correctly, she was perhaps less cluttered than her sisters. Beetle had been Hoare's very first ship; she had made his fortune for him before he was nineteen. It was all very well that Royal Duke's eight brass four-pounders, bowsed tight against her low bulwarks, gleamed to perfection in the October sun. All the same, they looked like toys and would have little more striking power than so many firecrackers. Her broadside would be a fearsome sixteen pounds, equal to no more than the blow of a single one of a frigate's main guns. Hardly fit to stand in the line of battle, Hoare repeated to himself.
Two strange high wooden cases squatted in her stern sheets. They would surely carry away at the first sign of a breeze. Whatever they were, he must have them stowed elsewhere-if, that is, Royal Duke was going to sea, a supposition that was already beginning to stir in Hoare's mind. For now, though, he suppressed issuing an order to have the obtrusive cases pitched overboard, since upon closer inspection he saw that the cases were neatly divided into pigeonholes. That, he realized, was exactly what the boxes held-holes, pigeons, for the use of. In fact, a few were occupied by murmuring birds. One occupant and then another took wing, circled, and returned; the fluttering that had taken place at his whistle a few moments ago explained itself.
Belowdecks, Hoare found Royal Duke's architecture bewildering. Forward of the guarded doorway to the cabin suite that was to be his own new home, a clean sweep reached into her forepeak. It was low but surprisingly spacious. Unlike every other vessel's he could remember, her 'tween-decks was well lit; thick glass prisms were let into the overhead at frequent intervals, and several skylights admitted the cool October sunshine. Its overhead itself was high enough to accommodate Hoare's height without his needing to stoop. Long hanging tables, interrupted only by the brig's masts and flanked by hanging chairs and benches, stretched along her center line.
But it was the arrangement of compartments stretching the full length of the space, on both sides, that was most unusual. Between their louvered doors-there were no fewer than eight to a side-the brig's builder had set ranks of cabinets and bookshelves.
Several of the crew had already reseated themselves at their tables and were at work over various papers, while others looked over their shipmates' shoulders and still others had congregated into groups. One of these had gathered round a messmate who seemed to be doing magic tricks for them. Any ship's officer who was attentive to his duty would have sent these people about theirs, Hoare thought, and was about to chide Clay but then realized that perhaps they were about their business.
The woman Taylor-'Master's Mate,' as she had named herself-had donned spectacles to resume a task that apparently involved the use of mathematical tables and an abacus. Double the length of her neighbors' queues, her own thick sandy pigtail reached the bench on which she sat. A Mate, indeed, Hoare thought.
All in all, the 'tween-decks space of HMS Royal Duke reminded Hoare less of a man-o'-war than a counting- house or some other kind of lay monastery that, like those of the early Irish Christians, accommodated both sexes in mutual, uncomfortable celibacy. If his command was intended to be a countinghouse, what was he doing here, he who had never in his life more than walked through one? His heart sank.
'May I show you your quarters, sir?' came Clay's voice at his side.
'If you would be so kind, Mr. Clay.'
The other went to the glossy teak door set high in the after bulkhead of Royal Duke's great main compartment and signaled the Marine sentry to open it for his commander. The man wore the same uniform as his mates. On this second sight, Hoare found it oddly familiar.
'What's your name?' he asked.
The marine looked about him to see whom his Captain might be addressing. 'Me, zur?' he replied at last.
'Yes. You.'
'Yeovil, if you please, zur. Gideon Yeovil, of Harrow-barrow. That's north of Plymouth…'
'Very good, Yeovil. And… isn't that a rifle you're carrying?'
'Yes, zur. We Johnnies in Royal Duke, zur, we'm all Riflemen.'
That explained the green uniform. It was the same as the one some unknown genius had designed during the late American war, for the first Riflemen in the Army. Hoare had seen it in Halifax then, but hardly ever since. As sharpshooters, Riflemen were better off unseen, and the lobster coat had drawn fire as a whore did sailors. Hoare wondered if the same principle might not save lives among the soldiery in general but set the idea aside as absurd. After all, he supposed, Lobsters were meant to stand there and be shot at. But not his lobsters, by God. Now that he had his very own live, unboiled green lobsters, he would guard their lives just as they guarded his.
Hoare stepped into a blaze of sunlight pouring through the cabin windows. Struck not only by the sun, he stood stupefied. Though he must still stoop, this was luxury.
The book-lined space might be lower than the Captain's quarters in a fifty-gun, two-decker fourth-rate ship of the line and half the breadth, but it was little shorter. It was laid out in a similar fashion. A wide, heavy table stood before a comfortable chair just forward of the glazed window opening onto Royal Duke's gallery, his gallery. Other chairs stood about the black-and-white diaper-patterned canvas laid on the deck underfoot. Suspended from one overhead beam was an enormous construction whose purpose eluded him. It was evidently still another chair-but a chair for what? It could have held a young elephant.
'What on earth is this?' Hoare whispered.
'Sir Hugh's special chair, sir,' Mr. Clay replied. 'Admiral Abercrombie was wont to visit Captain Oglethorpe quite frequently when we lay in Greenwich.'
'Sir Hugh Abercrombie must be a very big man.'
'A very great man,' Clay said in a neutral voice. Personal size, Hoare realized, might be as sensitive a topic for this wee man as commercial sex or whispering was for himself. He would have to be very mindful of this.
He was about to ask Mr. Clay to assemble the officers when he remembered that in addition to the two of them, if his memory was correct, Royal Duke counted only King's warrant officers in her complement, plus, of course, the seamen and a boy or two. He decided, instead, to query Clay about their mission.
'Take a seat, won't you, Mr. Clay?' Clay complied. Hoare noted in passing that the poor man's toes did not reach the deck when he sat.
'Did Captain Oglethorpe leave a servant when he died?'
'Oh, yes, sir. Whitelaw by name.'
At the sound of his name, Whitelaw himself entered, bringing with him a tray of delicacies: a decanter of what looked like a tawny port, glasses, and a plate of biscuits. He was portly, but portly in the way of a wild boar: heavy, solid, and probably extremely strong. He placed the refreshments on the table and withdrew without a word.
'Tell me about yourself, Mr. Clay,' Hoare whispered when he had poured each of them a glass.
The little Lieutenant was quite willing to speak of himself When he first went to sea, he told Hoare, he was no smaller than other midshipmen of the same age.
'I simply failed to grow,' he explained, apparently feeling no more embarrassment about his stature than Hoare did about his silence.
Hoare needed little time to learn that his Lieutenant was mentally quick. Though small, he looked physically fit-nimble, in fact. He had, he said without affectation, been out twice and obtained satisfaction each time.
'I chose swords both times,' he said. 'My adversaries were so surprised at being up against such an unexpectedly long reach on the part of such a miniature opponent that, on each occasion, I drew first blood with no ado.'
