‘Colonel! Colonel Wesley!’
He turned and saw a figure making his way forward along the quarterdeck. A fluke of wind blew the rim of the newcomer’s oilskin hat flat against his forehead, and Arthur recognised Captain Hodges. Hodges was an experienced sailor and strode forward comfortably enough as the deck heaved and swooped beneath his boots. As he closed up on Arthur he cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, ‘I’d advise you to get below, sir!’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Not yet! I want a last look at England!’
Hodges stared back for a moment and then shrugged as he turned back towards the quarterdeck. ‘It’s your funeral, sir.’
In truth Arthur just wanted to delay returning to the narrow cabin that had been allocated to him close to the stern of the ship. The soldiers had been ordered to stay below and keep out of the way of the sailors, but the world below deck was a hellish chaos. There was no fixed point of reference for the eye relative to the motion of the ship and within minutes the wild motion had stricken scores of men with nausea and several were vomiting into the first slop bucket that came to hand. Their suffering was made worse by the stink wafting up from the ship’s bilges. Some of the men were too terrified to feel unwell and sat wedged in corners against the great compass timbers of the ship that groaned and creaked with the strain of battling the storm. Their lips moved in silent prayer, or curses, and the cumulative effect of it all drove Arthur up on deck where he had sought Hodges’ permission to stay there a while, out of the way of the crew.
But now it was growing dark, and already the lead ship was no longer visible, just the bright spark of the heavy lantern lashed halfway up the mizzen mast. As night closed in round the transport, Arthur finally picked his way back towards the gangway that led to the cabins, and with a final glance at the black mass of the sea surrounding the transport he ducked down and carefully descended the steep stairs into the narrow passage. His cabin was one of the more spacious, but even so it was not very much larger than the cot it held. Arthur stripped off his oilskins and cloak, placed them over his sea chest, and then called for one of the ship’s servants to bring him a drink. As he settled into his blankets to go to sleep his ears were filled with the protesting creaks of stressed timbers, the deep moan of the wind, and the thud-crash of the waves.
The morning brought fresh problems. The convoy had been scattered during the night, and when Arthur joined Hodges on the deck in the wan glow of the light filtering through the dark grey clouds rolling overhead he could see the pale streaks of the sails of only two ships on the surrounding sea.
‘Are any of the other transports in sight?’
‘Lookout reports two more, hull down to the south of us.’
‘What’s happened to the others?’
‘Could be many miles away by now. If they haven’t foundered.’
‘Deck there!’ a voice cried out, just audible above the wind. Arthur glanced up and saw a figure in the ratlines of the main-mast, clinging on as the mast inscribed crazy circles against the clouds. ‘The
‘What does it say?’ Hodges bellowed back through a speaking trumpet.
There was a delay as the lookout raised a telescope and tried his best to fix it on the frigate. At length he lowered the glass and called down, ‘Make sail, course south-west, until further orders.’
‘South-west?’ Arthur frowned. ‘Why south-west?’
‘For safety.We head south and we might come up on Ushant. West and we might hit the Cornish coast.’
‘In all this sea?’ Arthur shook his head. ‘Surely not. They are hundreds of miles apart.’
‘True,’ Captain Hodges admitted.‘But do you know where we are at this moment? Precisely where we are? Neither do I, and I won’t until I can shoot the sun. In this weather who knows how long that will be. So until then, we play safe and steer south-west.’
The following dawn revealed a storm-tossed horizon clear of any ships and Captain Hodges kept to the course he had been given. More days passed with grinding monotony as the transport sailed with the wind on her port quarter, rising up on each wave, then lurching and swooping into the trough as the wave passed on ahead. Rain squalls constantly swept over the ship and water found its way between decks so that soon nothing seemed dry and it was almost impossible to keep warm.
One morning, as Arthur emerged for his regular attempt at a walk up and down the quarterdeck, Captain Hodges came over to greet him with a brief knuckle to the brim of his hat.
‘Good day to you, Colonel.’
‘Any sign of the other ships?’
‘None, sir. Not for several days now.’
‘Any idea how far we’ve come?’
‘Difficult to say. We’re making six knots through the sea, but over the ground?’ He shrugged. ‘But if the wind stays steady, it’s fair for the West Indies and we’ll make good time.’
‘That’s something of a comfort.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hodges nodded and turned back to keep an eye on his ship, then paused and glanced back at Arthur. ‘One other thing, sir.’
‘Oh?’
‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Christmas? Oh, Christ, of course it is.’Arthur laughed.‘Merry Christmas to you too, Captain!’
The next day the wind began to veer. Slowly, degree by degree, until it had shifted far enough to the west to force the captain to change course and he tacked for six hours at a time before going about and clawing back with the wind on the opposite bow, pointing as close to the wind as the ship would steer. And still the storm continued, day after day, week after week, until nearly seven weeks into the voyage the lookout called down to the deck.
‘Land ho!’
‘Where away?’ Hodges called back.
‘Two points off the starboard bow!’ The lookout thrust his arm out and the officers on the quarterdeck turned to scan the horizon in that direction. For a while they could see nothing; then the ship lifted on to the crest of a large ocean roller and there was the coast, a thin dark strip with flashes of white cliffs.
‘What land’s that?’ Arthur squinted. Hodges was quiet for a moment, bracing his legs as he trained his glass on the distant coast before the ship slumped down into a trough and he snapped the telescope shut. He laughed bitterly.
‘It’s the Needles.’
‘The Needles?’ Arthur shook his head. ‘Impossible! How can it be? We’ve been at sea for nearly two months.’
‘It’s this bloody storm. We’ve made no headway against it. Now it’s blown us back to England.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do? We’ve consumed two months’ provisions, the rigging has been strained to breaking point and two of my sails have been torn to pieces in the wind. We’re heading back to port.’
The next morning the transport eased its way up Southampton Sound on reduced sail. Hodges joined Arthur at the rail and pointed to a cluster of ships moored in the sound. ‘Recognise them? That’s the rest of the convoy.Wonder how long they’ve been here?’
As soon as the transport had taken on the mooring line and reefed in all the sails Arthur went ashore in one of the ship’s boats. Stepping on to dry land was a strange experience after seven wild weeks at sea. The very cobbles beneath his boots seemed to cant and tilt as wildly as the deck of the ship and Arthur frowned angrily as his sea legs took him clumsily down the quay to the harbour master’s headquarters. The current office-holder was Rear Admiral Porter, a relic of a bygone age in his powdered wig. As Arthur was ushered into his office Porter eased himself stiffly up from his chair and pumped Arthur’s hand.
‘Good to see you again, Colonel. Just beginning to wonder if your ship had foundered. Rest of the convoy’s been in port for the best part of a month.’
‘A month?’ Arthur shook his head. While Hodges and his crew had been battling the elements to win every scrap of distance they could to the west, the other crews had been sitting snug in the sound.
‘Ah!’ Porter raised a hand. ‘While I think of it, you have new orders. Arrived from London last week. Over there on the table. Go and get them, man, and I’ll order you a drink. What’s your poison, Wesley?’
‘Tea, please, sir. A nice hot pot of tea.’
