Nizams Daughters

need (for they could make no more than five knots), Hervey had been pleased at the opportunity it gave for him to learn the sail plan — and he had gained some approval from the crew by his eagerness to visit the tops. By the time they had reached the Cape Verdes the wind had freshened and they had cruised then on, for the most part, without jibs and staysails. On the run southeast to the Cape they had topsails only, and occasionally the foresail, and she had come up past Mauritius and the Maldives on the south-westerlies of the dying monsoon without Peto once needing to set the topgallants.

These were unknown waters for him, however. He had seen the River Plate a year or so after Trafalgar, he had crossed the North Atlantic half a dozen times, and he had regularly patrolled the Azores. But his fighting had been in the Mediterranean. The sultry breezes of the Indian Ocean were as new a pleasure as they were for Hervey. He was mindful, though, of the greater need for caution in the tropics, for the heat of the sun played tricks on sea currents and wind alike. But these breezes held a sensuous promise too, the breath of the Spice Islands — the ‘Islands of Spicerie’, an earlier locution that had fascinated him since first he had seen it, as a captain’s servant more than a decade before, on an old chart. He stood by the rail now, luxuriating in the warmth and the recollection.

‘Do you wish you might be with the East India Squadron for some more definite period?’ asked Hervey, having joined him from a full half-hour’s strapping.

Peto nodded thoughtfully. ‘I should wish to see the great anchorage at Trincomalee: it has no equal, I have heard. And yes, I should welcome a cruise in warm waters. Any seaman would. I should wish to weather a typhoon once in my service. The China Sea’s reckoned the most dangerous in all the oceans — shoals and reefs so steep-to that the sounding line can give no warning of their proximity.’

‘But…?’

Peto sighed. ‘I have no appetite for squadron work, unless I should be commodore. Now that peace is come, advancement will be slow. I shall not see a seventy-four, likely as not. I should as soon take my pleasure under Admiralty letter in a frigate, therefore.’

Hervey would have imagined it thus. Peto, he now knew, was his own man.

* * *

Within the hour the wind was falling unaccountably, and by late morning Nisus had every yard of sail set but could make little steerage way. In the afternoon Peto conceded that they were becalmed and was contemplating the unwelcome prospect of dropping anchor for the night: being in unfamiliar waters, he was doubly wary of drifting closer to the shore than he would wish. And, thus becalmed, her crew were put to making and mending, and a boat was lowered so that Peto might take a closer look at the bottom, for he very much feared that weed was growing, she being overdue for recoppering. By the chart they were but a few miles south of the old French settlement of Pondicherry — Hervey climbed the mainmast for a glimpse of the place whose name had possessed almost magical qualities since his first schoolroom meeting with Robert Clive. But the great fort there remained just a little too distant for his telescope, and so he had to content himself with listening to one of the mates recounting how he had weathered a typhoon in an East Indiaman before the turn of the century.

The long warm hours were a great pleasure for the crew, now able to aerate their hammocks and wash and hang to dry all manner of things without the usual risk of salt spray spoiling their hussifry. Peto was pleased with this contentment, for there were few favours remaining in the purser’s store with which he might reward them, and he had of late been increasingly exercised by the leak below the waterline, as well as, now, by the accumulation of weed. The leak was too near the keel for the carpenters to make good, and several times a day hands were sent below to the pumps. This back-breaking work, in the hot and stuffy conditions below deck, had not made for the happiest of crews before this day’s respite and, with weed as well as a leak, Peto resolved to put his ship into dry dock as soon as they reached Calcutta.

For the rest of the day Nisus lay motionless in the water — at least as far as forward progress was concerned, for by late afternoon it was evident that she had drifted west towards the coast, with now not twenty fathoms beneath her. And so Peto, for the first time since they had left France, ordered that her anchor be dropped for the night. He did so reluctantly, but he had no wish to find himself on a lee shore when dawn came. At about eight-thirty, however, a southeasterly blew up, as if from nowhere, and at once Nisus was a bustle of activity again, hands piped to their stations with an alacrity which would have done them credit had they been beating to quarters. And much to Peto’s satisfaction it was too, for at that time of an evening it was a very fair test of a crew’s handiness to have the best part of half of them turned out from their hammocks or recreation so fast. Hervey had been sponging Jessye down when he felt the first breath of wind, and he began drying her off as the mates’ pipes began shrilling. Yet even in the short time it took him to rub her down the capstan was turning, the muscles of three-score marines and seamen straining at the bars, and the topmen were making ready to loose sail. Nisus was under way in less than a quarter of an hour from Peto’s first order, the breeze freshening throughout that time, so that by nine-fifteen, when at last the captain went to his quarters for some supper, she was making six knots with unreefed topsails and her foresail set. Now very much gratified by the address which all had shown, he lit a cigar, resolved to open his last bottle of malmsey and sent Flowerdew with an invitation for Hervey to join him.

‘Well, Captain Hervey,’ he began, as they each took a chair by the stern windows, Peto looking out at the wake for any sign of increase in their speed, for the evening was still light; ‘we should make Calcutta in ten days if we can count on this wind, and then, I think, our paths must diverge.’

Hervey sipped his malmsey and lit a cheroot. Though he looked forward keenly to release from his confinement, he would nevertheless miss these opportunities for intimacy. ‘Captain Peto, I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have extended. As I was saying to you only yesterday, the passage has been all ease.’

Peto inclined his head slightly, a gesture of both acknowledgement and pride. But before he could make reply there was a sudden commotion outside, making him sit bolt upright with indignation. ‘What in heaven’s name —’

The door burst open. A midshipman stumbled in, and quite overcome by the surroundings seemed unable to say a word. ‘Fire, sir!’ he shouted suddenly.

Peto was on his feet at once, dousing his cigar in his glass. He raced from his cabin to see smoke billowing from the galley ventilators and long tongues of flame sending sparks into the foresail. He bounded up a companion- ladder to the quarterdeck, roughly pushing aside another midshipman: ‘Hard-a-lee!’ he bellowed.

The officer of the watch had already put the helm over and Nisus was answering to starboard.

‘Beat to quarters, Mr Belben,’ he barked. ‘Close starboard gunports!’

The Marines bugler sounded ‘Alarm’. Firemen, one from each gun, raced to their posts. Gun captains on the weather side slammed closed the gunports (even on an open deck Peto was not about to risk additional vent). The carpenters were already connecting hoses to the suction pumps. There was — thank heavens, he sighed — enough water to be able to get up force at once rather than having to wait for the seacocks to be opened. The decks were all activity, but perfect order. Nisus had a well-drilled crew. Peto had heard too much as a young midshipman of the explosion aboard the Boyne, and the loss of the first Amphion, ever to take fire drill for granted. Men at their quarters, with the officers under whom they worked in action, were less susceptible to the blind panic which had overtaken the Boyne in its dying moments. He cast his eye about: no sign of panic here, thank God. But why was this fire so fierce? What was fuelling it?

At the alarm the surgeon and his mates took station on the quarterdeck rather than the orlop, and soon they were attending to burns, the Marines sentries at the companionway first satisfying themselves that the wounds were serious enough for prompt attention. The foresail was now well alight but the hoses were at least having some effect in keeping the flames from spreading, dousing as much canvas as the jets could reach, with one playing directly into the galley ventilator. Two lines, one of sailors, the other of marines, were passing buckets to and from the cisterns at the head of the chain pumps by the mainmast. Hervey had gone straight to Jessye’s stall, where Johnson was already trying to calm her, and he got the marines to throw water over the roof and onto the bed. He pulled one of her blankets from the tackling chest, plunged it in her water butt and threw it over her head and shoulders, then pulling out a second, dousing it and throwing that over her back. Even with her head covered, with Hervey and Johnson standing by, and her head collar on, she was almost frantic, for nothing could keep the smoke out of her nostrils, and it was smoke that tokened fire — as she had known more than once in stables in Spain. She reared and struck her head on the roof. She reared a second time and dislodged one of the timbers. Never had