Feet thumped on deck and he turned to see Triphook, the purser, crouching through the drizzle, a bulky ledger under his coat.
The purser grimaced.. 'Evil day, Mr. Herrick.' He gestured to the boats alongside. 'God damn those thieves. They'd rob a blind man, so they would.'
Herrick chuckled. 'Not like you pursers, eh?'
Triphook eyed him severely. He was stooped and very thin, with large yellow teeth like a mournful horse.
'I hope that was not seriously meant, sir?'
Herrick craned over the dripping nettings to watch the cutter hooking on to the chains. God, their oarsmanship was bad. Bolitho would expect far better, and before too long.
He snapped, 'Easy, Mr. Triphook. But I was merely reminding you. I recall we had a purser in my last ship. A man called Evans. He lined his pockets at the people's expense. Gave them foul food when they had much to trouble them in other directions.'
Triphook watched him doubtfully. 'What happened?'
'Captain Bolitho made him pay for fresh meat from his own purse. Cask for cask with each that was rotten.' He grinned. 'So be warned, my friend!'
'He'll have no cause to fault me, Mr. Herrick.' He walked away, his voice lacking conviction as he added, 'You can be certain of that.'
Lieutenant Soames came aft, touching his hat and scowling at the deck as he reported, 'Five hands, sir. I've been on the road all day, I'm fair hoarse from calling the tune of those handbills.'
Herrick nodded. He could sympathise. He had done it often enough himself. Five hands. They still needed thirty. Even then it would not allow for death and injury to be expected on any long voyage.
Soames asked thickly, 'Any more news?'
'None. Just that we are to sail for Madras. But I think it will be soon now.'
Soames said, 'Good riddance to the land, I say. Streets full of drunken men, prime hands we could well do with.' He hesitated. 'With your permission I might take a boat away tonight and catch a few as they reel from their damn ale houses, eh?'
They turned as a shriek of laughter echoed up from the gun deck, and a woman, her breasts bare to the rain, ran from beneath the larboard gangway. She was pursued by two seamen, both obviously the worse for drink, who left little to the imagination as to their intentions.
Herrick barked, 'Tell that slut to get below! Or I'll have her thrown over the side!' He saw the astonished midshipman watching the spectacle with wide-eyed wonder and added harshly, 'Mr. Penn! Jump to it, I say!'
Soames showed a rare grin. 'Offend your feelings, Mr. Herrick?'
Herrick shrugged. 'I know it is supposed to be the proper thing to allow our people women and drink in harbour.' He thought of his sister. Anchored in that damned chair. What he would give to see her running free like that Portsmouth trollop. 'But it never fails to sicken me.'
Soames sighed. 'Half the bastards would desert otherwise, signed on or not. The romance of Madras soon wears off when the rum goes short.'
Herrick said, 'What you asked earlier. I cannot agree. It would be a bad beginning. Men taken in such a way would harbour plenty of grievances. One rotten apple can sour a full barrel.'
Soames eyes him calmly. 'It seems to me that this ship is almost full of bad apples. The volunteers are probably on the run from debt, or the hangman himself. Some are aboard just to see what they can lay their fingers on when we are many miles from proper authority.'
Herrick replied, 'Captain Bolitho will have sufficient authority, Mr. Soames.'
'I forgot. You were in the same ship. There was a mutiny.' It sounded like an accusation.
'Not of his making.' He turned on him angrily. 'Be so good as to have the new men fed and issued with slop clothing.'
He waited, watching the resentment in the big man's eyes.
He added, 'Another of our captain's requirements. I suggest you acquaint yourself with his demands. Life will be easier for you.'
Soames strode away and Herrick relaxed. He must not let him get into his skin so easily. But any criticism, or even hint of it, always affected him. To Herrick, Bolitho represented all the things he would like to be. The fact he also knew some of his secret faults as well made him doubly sure of his loyalty. He shook his head. It was stronger even than that.
He peered over the nettings towards the shore, seeing the walls of the harbour battery glinting like lead in the rain. Beyond Portsmouth Point the land was almost hidden in murk. It would be good to get away. His pay would mount up, and go towards helping out at home. With his share of prize money which he gained under Bolitho in the West Indies he had been able to buy several small luxuries to make their lot easier until his next return. And when might that be? Two years? It was better never to contemplate such matters.
He saw a ship's boy duck into the rain to turn the hour-glass beside the deserted wheel, and waited for him to chime the hour on the bell. Time to send the working part of the watch below. He grimaced. The wardroom might be little better. Soames under a cloud of inner thought. Davy probing his guard with some new, smart jest or other. Giles Bellairs, the captain of marines, well on the way to intoxication by this time, knowing his hefty sergeant could deal with the affairs of his small detachment. Triphook probably brooding over the issue of clothing to the new men. Typical of the purser. He could face the prospect of a great sea voyage, with each league measured in salt pork and beef, iron-hard biscuit, juice to prevent scurvy, beer and spirits to supplement fresh water which would soon be alive in its casks, and all the thousand other items under his control, with equanimity. But one small issue of clothing, while they still wore what they had come aboard in, was too much for his sense of values. He would learn. He grinned into the cold wind. They all would, once Bolitho brought the ship alive.
More shouts from alongside, and Penn, the midshipman, called anxiously, 'Beg pardon, sir, but I fear the surgeon is in difficulties.'
Herrick frowned. The surgeon's name was Charles Whitmarsh. A man of culture, but one with something troubling him. Most ship's surgeons, in Herrick's experience, had been butchers. Nobody else would go to sea and face the horrors of mangled men screaming and dying after a savage battle with the enemy. In peacetime he had expected it might be different.
Whitmarsh was a drunkard. As Herrick peered down at the jolly boat as it bobbed and curtsied at the chains, he saw a boatswain's mate and two seamen struggling to fit the surgeon into a bowline to assist his passage up the side. He was a big man, almost as large as Soames, and in the grey light his features shone with all the brightness of a marine's coat.
Herrick snapped, 'Have a cargo net lowered, Mr. Penn. It is not dignified, but neither is this, by God!'
Whitmarsh landed eventually on the gun deck, his hair awry, his face set in a great beaming smile. One of his assistants and two marines lifted him bodily and took him aft below the quarterdeck. He would sleep in his small sickbay for a few hours, and then begin again.
Penn asked nervously, 'Is he unwell, sir?'
Herrick looked at the youth gravely. 'A thought tipsy, lad, but well enough to remove a limb or two, I daresay.' He relented and touched his shoulder. 'Go below. Your relief will be up soon.'
He watched him hurry away and grinned. It was hard to recall that he had been like Penn. Unsure, frightened, with each hour presenting some new sight and sound to break his boy's illusions.
A marine yelled, 'Guardboat shovin' off from the sallyport, Sir!'
Herrick nodded. 'Very well.'
That would mean orders for the Undine. He let his gaze move forward between the tall, spiralling masts with their taut maze of shrouds and rigging, the neatly furled canvas and to the bowsprit, below which Undine's beautiful, full-breasted figurehead of a water-nymph stared impassively to every horizon. It also meant that Bolitho would be returning. Today.
And for Thomas Herrick that was more than enough.
2. Free of the Land
