At the familiar voice, Hoare stopped and turned. As he had thought, it belonged to Lemuel Rabbett, the Admiralty clerk who had come so near to having his head lopped off at the Nine Stones Circle while in Hoare's service. Hoare was genuinely delighted to see the little man; he had grown significantly in confidence if not in stature during their association, and Hoare had found that one always loves the one he has helped at no cost to himself. Liking the thought, he tucked it into the little commonplace book he kept in a corner of his mind.
'Why, Rabbett!' he whispered. 'So you are back in the… saddle?'
'Back in the hutch, rather, sir,' Rabbett replied. 'May I make so bold as to wish you happy?' He reached out a tentative hand, and Hoare gripped it firmly.
'Thank you, Rabbett. I hope the same for you, in due course.'
'Sir… sir, I knew you would be calling on Sir George today, so I brought with me a little memento for yourself and your good lady' Shyly, Rabbett reached into his fob pocket and produced a small object, which he offered in the palm of his hand.
'From my mother and myself,' he said.
Hoare must take it, or else hurt the other's feelings. He looked down to inspect it closely. About the size of his thumb to the first joint, it was a carving in mellow ivory in the shape of a crouching rabbit. Its long ears fused near their tips, forming a hole through which a loop of plum-colored braided silk was inserted.
Hoare thought he had seen a similar object in the collection of a former captain who had spent some time attempting to break into the reclusive islands of Japan. He could not remember what they were called-something that had to do with fishing, if he remembered. It was a thing of beauty.
'But this is precious, Rabbett,' he whispered. 'You must not give it away.'
'My mother and I wish you and Mrs. Hoare to have it, sir,' the clerk said in a firm voice. 'While I may not be fit to go to sea with you, you will at least have one rabbit with you. Please, sir.'
'Then thank you, Rabbett, with all my heart.' Again, Hoare turned to leave.
'One more thing, sir. In October, when Mr. Thoday and I were serving you, you asked me if, when I returned to this office, I would investigate the source of some leaks of secret information. You said they had to occur somewhere between Royal Duke, this office, and Whitehall.'
'I remember,' Hoare said.
'Well sir, I have made my investigation. I can assure you- and I know whereof I speak, sir-that the leaks have not emanated from here. Of that, you may have my absolute, confident assurance.'
'Which I accept, Rabbett. Thank you again, and thrive until we meet once more.'
He escaped at last. The tide was on the turn; if he stepped lively, Royal Duke could just catch the up-Channel flood. Rabbett's replica was welcome; his news was not. If the clerk was correct-and Hoare respected his competence in the field-the leaks had to be coming from the Admiralty, or from his own command. Neither was a palatable dish. It was a good thing, perhaps, that he was taking Royal Duke to London.
Chapter III
Squelching through the night on the oblong disks that kept him from sinking to his knees in the foul Thames ooze, the mudlark made his way toward the promising mound at the edge of tidewater. If he knew his corpses, this was a corpse. And a fresh one, too, likely. For once, he might be in luck. But he'd best make haste, for the tide had turned already.
Yes, by God and his father, he was right for once. A dead 'un it was. Fully clothed, too; too fresh to stink, yet with the death-shit already washed away. A hot bath and bottle of Blue Ruin there'd be, at the end of this night, and a willing dollymop to share 'em both. He rolled the corpse over and began to rifle its pockets. That there was a charred hole in the placket of the breeches drawn tightly over its belly troubled him not at all.
And, omygawd, a pogue! A loaded wallet!
Off upstream, from under the bridge, the mudlark heard the same sloshing sound he himself had made in getting out to the bloater. More than one. He wasn't going to chance it, not he. He'd leave 'em the joy of turning out the bloater and taking his clothes, brass buttons, hole in the breeches an' all. It 'ud hold 'em up from chasing him through the mud, back to solid ground.
Never mind. It 'ud be two pretty judies for him, an' he'd be on the randy for a month.
Close-hauled, her weather shrouds humming with the strain in the raw January northerly, Royal Duke heeled to her task. A light wash poured into her scuppers with each leeward roll, then out again as she righted. A pair of gulls swept effortlessly across her wake, heads turning as they wheeled, in their never-ending search for nutriment. The low clouds dumped an occasional spatter to support the light spray thrown from her weather bows. There would be no need to wash down the decks this morning, Hoare told himself. Instead, the watch could continue to accustom themselves to working below while under way. In his opinion, the ordinary cipher clerks and file-matchers would have no trouble, though the two forgers-'screeners,' he had learned, they were termed in thieves' cant-might find it hard to keep a steady hand.
At Hoare's side, Mr. Clay grinned ecstatically into the wind, his hair, short though it was, whipping behind him.
'Her best point of sailing, I do believe, sir,' he declared. 'We're overhauling that transport to windward. She bears a full point farther off the weather bow.'
Hoare could hardly expect the other to hear his whisper, so he merely nodded with an answering smile. It was exhilarating travel, indeed.
'Shall I have the log cast, sir?' Clay asked. Hoare nodded assent, and Clay roared out the order.
One of Sergeant Leese's Green Marines clumped forward to handle the timing glass. Since Royal Duke carried no midshipman, Taylor undertook the heaving of the log. Newlywed Hoare might be, but the sight of Taylor's statuesque figure as she went about the task stirred his own maturing loins. It would, he thought, have stirred those of the yacht's coroneted figurehead, had it been so mutinous as to peer aft with its painted china-blue eyes.
'Mark!' Taylor cried, and tossed the log over the side. Its thin cord whipped through her horny hands until the marine, in belated echo, called, 'Mark.'
'Turn.'
'Stop.'
She nipped the line to check the log and release its chip, and brought the instrument back aboard with a thump. After reading the nearest marking on the line, coiling it as she overhauled it, she called out the result. 'Ten knots and a fathom, sir!' she announced to Mr. Clay. She sounded triumphant. Another echo, Clay repeated the finding to the captain at his elbow, in his powerful voice.
'She moves along, doesn't she?' Clay said. Fleetingly, Hoare thought of responding with a question as to which 'she' his lieutenant meant, but decided that this was no occasion for double entendres. Instead, he merely whispered, 'And lies most amazing close to the wind.'
His mouth was close enough above Clay's ear so he could be reasonably sure of being heard. And if not, what matter? It was a casual, trivial remark, one he was sure would not be missed.
He watched Taylor coil log line and chip, deftly and in Bristol fashion. Like a surprising number of her shipmates, almost all of whom were volunteers taken aboard on account of skills quite unrelated to the sea, she had made astonishing progress as a sea-'man' in a matter of weeks. All credit to Clay and the few seasoned hands-and the unusually high level of their intelligence. Already, out of the thirty-four Royal Dukes, he would not hesitate to rate a good ten of them topmen. As gunners, now… if only they could master their gunnery as well, he could rest satisfied that his peculiar command would do him credit against any other bantam brig afloat.
–
A sudden notion crystalized in his mind.
'You have the deck, Mr. Clay,' he said. 'Thus, thus, call me if anything untoward takes place.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' Bare-headed at the moment, Clay touched his forelock, gamekeeper-style. Hoare, with his notion in mind, slipped below to make a certain inquiry of Stone, Royal Duke's acting gunner, and Titus Thoday, official holder of the gunner's. At this speed and with this wind, Royal Duke would easily reach the Straits of Dover
