prize money it can yield, but ours has been a quiet voyage thus far—a blessing, as a squall our first week out employed ten hands at the pumps for two days straight and brought down our foremast. The ship’s carpenter built a jury mast that should—barring further trouble—carry us until we reach a port for repairs.
Life aboard ship for a lieutenant differs from what I have previously known, beyond the increase in responsibility. I have my own tiny cabin off the wardroom, made smaller by the fact that I share it with one of the ship’s cannons. Its walls and “door” are but canvas stretched across frames that are removed when we prepare for battle, but these accommodations nevertheless afford me more privacy than I knew in any midshipmen’s berth. We have shared wardroom servants, including our own cook.
As officers, we eat fairly well. The lieutenants mess in the wardroom with the master, chaplain, and captain of marines. We pool our messes, and our cook supplements the standard rations with provisions purchased with our own funds. St. Clair acts as our caterer; he contracted for the provisions, and we each subscribe for a share. I have fewer dining companions than I did as a midshipman, especially since one lieutenant is always on watch and St. Clair is invited to the captain’s table more often than are the rest of us. Sometimes we invite the surgeon to join us, for variety of company and discourse. We also have entertained the captain himself on occasion; Tourner is a gracious guest, though the wardroom definitely lacks the ambiance of his lavishly appointed cabin, and the meal, despite our cook’s sincere efforts, cannot help but be inferior to what he enjoys in his own quarters. Captain Tourner likes his luxuries and keeps an abundant table.
The confines of a ship can feel all the smaller for the individuals who occupy it, and tolerance of varying temperaments is essential to harmony among the officers. The captain of any ship establishes its tone, but that set by Tourner changes, it seems, with the tide. He is moody as the sea; we bask in his calm days, and do our best to ride out his turbulent ones. I am told he was never a particularly strong leader in his youth, and that age has made him even less so. Some years ago, as captain of the Stalwart, he lost his ship to capture and spent many months in a Spanish prison. It is said that he has not been the same since. He seldom initiates engagements with the enemy; I have overheard the men complain of his reluctance to pursue even merchant ships that might be seized as easy prizes. Any ship under his command is not a vessel set on a course to quick wealth. The crew is careful, however, not to voice their complaints too loudly, lest Tourner hear them and order out the cat-o’-nine-tails.
As for my fellow lieutenants—St. Clair is not the man I took him for at first. He is serious about his responsibilities and efficient in their execution; he holds himself in reserve and keeps his own counsel. Yet there is in him an amiability that emerges upon better acquaintance. Wilton, however, does not see this, and continues to nurse resentment over his own second-lieutenant status, a bitterness that at times spills over to encompass Fletcher and me—if Wilton cannot be first lieutenant, he will employ the full measure of his authority over the third and fourth. Fletcher is of an easy enough disposition to mollify Wilton’s waspishness; I endeavor to ignore it.…
* * * The West Indies are beautiful, but hot. We have been here now for three months, performing various assignments to protect Britain’s Caribbean interests. It is important work, and we have seen a few battles, but none have yielded much in the way of prize money, and the men grow restless as a result. They long to be closer to the main action of the war. Their wish will soon be granted, for we leave Kingston on the morrow.
We are under orders to escort two merchant ships back to England. They carry cargoes comprising mainly Jamaican rum and sugar (muscovado—brown sugar that will be further refined in Bristol or London; I have learned more about the sugar trade in three months here than I ever expected—or wanted—to know). The owner of one of the ships—the Montego—has won over our crew with a gift of numerous casks of rum for the men’s consumption during the voyage home. He is a wise man—doubtless, they will now defend the Montego with extra zeal. He has also given each officer enough rum to last the voyage and then some, as well as casks of finished white sugar—illegal to import for sale in England, but allowed on board as part of our personal possessions. Rumors circulate that the captain’s private stores hold more Jamaican rum and sugar than wine and beef.…
* * * We are halfway home, and I look forward to our return to England’s fairer climate with each passing day. The sea has been calm—too calm—and we bake in the heat as our sails hang slack. The men are bored and frustrated. I believe the captain is, as well. He has formed the habit of inviting three passengers of the Montego to dine with him regularly. One gentleman, a Mr. Smith, is the owner of a sugar plantation between Kingston and Spanish Town; it is his sugar and rum the Montego carries, and which the crew and officers of the Magna Carta received in gift. Our crew does not grumble about having civilians aboard, or the trouble of transporting them from one ship to another for the sake of dinner, as the quality of Mr. Smith’s rum—which they enjoy on Sundays in lieu of their standard issue—is superior to Pussar’s. The best that can be said of the other two fellows is that they are unobjectionable, though one of them seems at pains to impress upon us that he is a future baronet.…
* * * A most extraordinary mystery presented itself today. Upon my return to the wardroom after watch duty, our cook begged a private word with me. We moved to my cabin and drew closed the canvas. He then recounted in a low voice how, while he was retrieving sugar from a partially used cask, the scoop struck something hard. He dug out the object—an incredible discovery—a small gold figurine fashioned in the form of some sort of fantastic creature. Additional excavation produced a second figurine of similar design.
The poor fellow was in some terror of this find, though it is difficult to name the greater source of his fright—superstitious dread of the wrath of whatever heathen god the idols represent, or fear of being accused of theft aboard ship and sentenced to flogging. He had been threatened with such punishment some days previous by a midshipman whom he had surprised in the stores taking inventory for St. Clair. I assured him of my faith in his innocence, took the idols into my possession, and told him I would handle the matter.
Where did the gold figures come from, and how did they find their way into our sugar cask? Did one of Smith’s slaves plant them for some superstitious purpose before the cask left the estate? Did a member of our own crew secrete them in there? Perhaps they are stolen, and the thief needed to hide them hastily. How else would such valuable objects come to be in such an odd, unsecure location?
Someone comes—
* * * The “someone” was St. Clair, and I confided to him the discovery. He appeared surprised—yet there seemed something disingenuous in his manner. He obliquely deflected my speculation as to the idols’ provenance, and discouraged me from bringing the matter to the captain’s attention. “He is entertaining Mr. Smith and the others at present,” said he.
I asked whether the cask in question appeared on the inventory, and he replied that all items on the ship had been entered in the manifest before we set sail. I clarified that I meant the inventory he had ordered Mr. Musgrove to complete last week. “Hart told me of it.”
“Did he?” There was a transient wariness in his expression, almost immediately eclipsed by something harder. “Do not concern yourself about the inventory.”
He was all brusque authority; there was none of the warmth I had come to know in months of service with him. He held out his hand. “Give that to me; I will attend to this myself. Meanwhile, say nothing to anybody else about it, and instruct Hart likewise.” He was in that moment entirely the First Lieutenant, and I, the Fourth. There was no question but that I must follow orders without argument.
I surrendered the idol I had shewn him, but they remain fixed in my thoughts. My conversation with St. Clair, far from relieving my suspicions, has only heightened them.
At present, however, we have more pressing concerns. I hear the drum—we are beat to quarters—my cabin must be cleared for the gun crew. Two warships have been spotted, bearing French colors.
* * * Darcy closed the diary. There were no further entries; the last had been dated the day of Gerard’s death.
