'Yes, Ogle?'
'I jest wanted to tell ye, sir. Sergeant posted me in the foretop with me rifle. I missed fire, sir.'
'Shame on ye, Ogle,' Leese said.
'But, sir, I brung up a musket fer Danny Quill, an 'e shot the Frog's captain, he did. Saw it wif me own eyes, I did.'
Hoare knew quite well that Ogle could have seen nothing of the kind. But he believed he had, and it was a creditable thing for him to believe. The Royal Dukes were learning to pull together.
'Well done,' he said through Clay's voice. 'Well done, the both of you.'
Three bells sounded now. He felt justified in dismissing the men with his thanks, and the feeling that his motives were better understood and his courage no longer questioned. For now.
'Thank you, Mr. Clay,' he said. His lieutenant might have spoken his words in truth, or he might not. They had sounded convincing enough. Suddenly he recalled that Clay had stood watch for a good eighteen hours without relief, fought the skirmish just passed, and been rebuked by his commanding officer. The man had had enough, Hoare felt. He relieved the other and sent him below. He gave the deck to Taylor but remained on deck himself lest she run into danger.
The events of the past hour had shown him that, while Mr. Clay was undoubtedly a gallant officer, a fine seaman, and-he believed-well-disposed toward him, he wanted the cool judgment that the commander of this little craft, with its peculiar mission, must possess. Before they went into action again… Here, Hoare stopped himself with a wry internal laugh. Royal Duke must never again go into action.
'Permission to speak, sir?' It was Taylor.
'Permission granted, Taylor.'
'Before we go too far on our course, sir,' she said, 'the tide is just turning. Could we not take two hours-no more, sir- return in our tracks, and see if we might not recover our tender? She has been a valuable asset to the ship, and it would be almost criminal to leave her behind before we have exercised due diligence in searching for her.'
Put this way, the argument was an appealing one. In a manner of speaking, his pinnace was part of the brig's equipment, just as he himself was, and all his possessions-including Nemesis. From that point of view, he would even be wanting in attention to his command's condition were he to leave the pinnace behind without 'exercising due diligence' in preserving it.
Suddenly it struck him. Perhaps, having spent time in Nemesis herself during the Nine Stones affair, the little craft had seduced this big woman just as she-the pinnace, not the person, as he reminded himself sharply-had seduced Hoare himself.
He thought. The picture of his crisp little craft lying in the trough of the Channel seas, abandoned, bereft, there to be caught up by any passing stranger, made him bleed anew. By God, he'd do it.
Three hours ago, Hoare, seeing Taylor grinning triumphantly astern at the recovered Nemesis, had left the deck to her and turned in himself. She had handled the recovery masterfully, and without calling the watch below, though the alert Mr. Clay, weary though he was, had awakened when Royal Duke wore, not to return below until Hoare all but thrust him along.
Hoare himself was awakened now, as he was almost every morning, by the snuffling, scratching sound of the bear on the deck over his head. He knew the bear well; in keeping with Royal Duke's size, it was a small bear. It might, in fact, be considered a bear cub, Hoare thought sleepily, for it needed only two men to draw it back and forth between them across the yacht's deck. Like an organic sandpaper, the bear's coarse coir surface smoothed the deck for the day, while producing its peaceful snuffling sound. Hoare was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but remembered that, upon arriving in the Thames estuary, he was to appear before his master at the Admiralty. Besides, last night's brush with the French had thrown Royal Duke's schedule all awry It had gone six bells already, he saw, yet the watch on deck was still preparing her for her arrival.
On deck, in the gray morning, he found matters had progressed well, bear or no bear. The four light smears of soot from last night's single broadside had been cleared away. A brace that must have been parted by one of the few musket shots the Frenchman had been able to get off had been spliced. The bear leaders were already returning their charge to its den in the fore-peak; and Mr. Clay, up again, stood beside the helmsman, small, brisk, and proud. The hands were cheerful enough as they moved about their duties. Hoare could sense no residue of ill temper. The brig was close-hauled on the starboard tack, sailing briskly full and bye, heeling to the icy January breeze and bowing to the short chop. Sarah Taylor, master's mate, was not to be seen.
Mr. Clay made his salute and his report. 'We rounded the North Foreland an hour ago, sir, and managed a good ten miles before the wind began backing westerly. We're still making progress, but of course we'll be headed by the tide before long. At this rate, we shan't be abreast of the Isle of Sheppey this tide.'
'Hmph,' was all Hoare could reply. Happily, it meant that the flooding tide would start helping them up the narrowing Thames at about the time they passed Woolwich. All the same, it would be evening by then. Royal Duke would be lucky to make Greenwich tomorrow, and would therefore have to risk sailing at night once again, with all the risk of collision that entailed. For the Thames estuary was packed with shipping, inbound and out. This was England's great artery that brought nourishment to her heart, and delivered so much of the power that held the French the other side of the Channel, where they belonged.
'With your permission, sir,' Mr. Clay said, 'I'll see that the people are at work below. There are some documents-correlations, I think they call them-that should be brought to a close before we bring them to Greenwich.'
'By all means, Mr. Clay,' was Hoare's reply. 'But, while you are about it, you might be considering a different station for Green. I suspect that Quill would make a better cook.'
'Perhaps she could be attached to Leese's marines, sir,' Clay offered, 'as heavy infantry.' With that sally, he went below. The monstrous Green had formerly been a terror among the 'brutes' that served and serviced the seaman population of Portsmouth; as a member of Hoare's crew, she had wielded a lethal cleaver at the Nine Stones affray last All Hallows' Eve.
It had been a good fifteen years since Hoare had been in these waters. They had a different, grayer color than the sea along the southern coast, a more choppy motion, and-above all-a different smell. Most likely, Hoare thought, it was the effluvium of London. The river served not only as an artery but as a sewer. As that thought passed through his mind, a bulbous, greasy object bobbed past in Royal Duke's leeward bow wave and disappeared in her wake. A dead dog, it would be, a long-dead dog. It was not hard to find an explanation for the name of the Isle of Dogs, which lay not too far ahead.
Hoare realized that he did not look forward at all to this mission. It was taking him out of his comfortable accustomed south-coast waters, and into the malodorous, trap-ridden capital. He would flounder, he felt certain, and fail. To jolt his mind out of this unwonted gloom, he began to compose his report to the Admiralty on last night's skirmish. It made him feel no better.
While Greenwich was a trivial port compared with the great yards at Deptford immediately adjoining, it still warranted a Port Officer of its own. Perhaps, Hoare thought, the honor was due to the town's faded glory as a favorite haunt of England's monarchs and their wives and concubines. Whatever the reason, the Port Officer existed, and it was to him that Royal Duke made her number and received berthing orders. She was to anchor close into shore, off the Crane Stairs.
The place was all but vacant now, deserted only a few days ago by the hordes that had assembled for the obsequies of the late Lord Nelson. His body had been landed here, had lain in state in the Painted Chamber, and then been carried, the center of a vast black-clad cortege, by barge up to London. Vacant the town might be, it remained littered with all that a great crowd can leave behind it-mislaid umbrellas, odd papers, empty bottles by the score. And little would remain in the line of sustenance, whether liquid or solid.
'So I missed him again.' It was Titus Thoday, titular gunner, beside him. Hoare knew it would be all but hopeless to demand more than the most superficial respect from this dignified, proud, gentlemanly, clever, meticulous man. He was a superb… detective, would that be the word?… but, as a sailor, he was a king's bad bargain.
Just as the news of Nelson's death had reached Weymouth, Hoare and Thoday had been fellow passengers in the chaise bearing them and their prisoner Walter Spurrier into the town.
'I shall never forget this moment,' Thoday had said then, in a voice pregnant with feeling. 'The morning of
