The Bomb Vessel

derive a certain satisfaction. His messmates took no notice of the quiet man amongst them, they lived cheek by jowl with greater eccentricities than his. But the gestures did not go unnoticed by Mr Jex.

'Come man, lively with that cask, damn it.' Mr Jex stood over the three toiling landsmen as they manoeuvred the cask clear of the stow, sweating with the effort of controlling it as the ship pitched and rolled. Mr Jex's rotund figure condescended to hold up a lantern for them as they finally succeeded in up-ending it.

'Open it up then, open it up,' he ordered impatiently, motioning one of the men to pick up the cold chisel lent by Mr Willerton. He watched Waters bend down to take the tool and dismissed the other two with a jerk of his head. Things were working out better than he had supposed. Waters grunted as he levered the inner hoop of the lid and Jex held the lantern closer to read the number branded into the top of the cask.

'Get the damn thing open then,' Jex was sweating himself now, suddenly worried at the notion of being alone in the hold with a murderer. He had to force himself to recover his fugitive mood of moral ascendancy. Circumstances again seemed to come to his aid. Waters staggered back appalled at the smell that rose from the cask of salt pork. Jex's familiarity with the stench ensured he reasserted himself.

'Not used to the stink eh? Too used to comfortable quarters,' Jex paused for emphasis, 'comfortable quarters like the Blue Fox, eh, Mister Drinkzvater?' Jex's tiny eyes glittered in the lamplight, searching Edward's face for the reaction of guilt brought on by his accusation.

But the purser was to be disappointed. That slight, emphatic pause had alerted Edward to be on his guard. The quick instinct that in him was a gambler's intuition, while in his brother showed as swift intelligence, caused him to look up in sharp surprise.

'You're mistaken, sir,' he said in the rural Middlesex accent of his youth, 'my name is Waters,' he grinned, 'I'm no relation to the cap'n, Mr Jex.' He shook his head as if in simple wonderment at the mistake and looked down at the mess inside the cask as though swiftly dismissing the matter from his mind.

Jex was non-plussed, suddenly unsure of himself, and yet…

Waters looked up. Jex was still staring at him. He shrugged. 'As for the Blue Fox, was that what you said? I don't know anything about such a place. Tavern is it? Strewth, if I could afford to live in a tavern I'd not be aboard here, sir.'

That much was true, thought Edward, as he strove to maintain a matter-of-fact tone in his voice though inwardly alarmed that he had been discovered.

But Jex was not satisfied. 'Landsman volunteer aren't you?'

'That's right, sir.'

'What did you volunteer for?'

'Woman trouble, Mr Jex, woman trouble.'

'I know,' began Jex, a sudden vicious desire spurring him to provoke this man to some act of insubordination that would have him at the gratings to be flogged by his own brother. But his intentions were disturbed by the arrival of Mr Quilhampton with a message that the purser was to report to Lieutenant Rogers without delay. He had lost his chance, and Edward was doubly vigilant to avoid the purser as much as possible, and even, if necessary, take matters into his own hands.

Drinkwater watched the brig beating up from the east with the alarm signal flying from her foremasthead. She reminded him of Hellebore and would pass close under Virago's stern as she made for London to speak with the admiral.

'The Cruizer, sir, eighteen-gun brig, same as our old Hellebore.'

'I was just thinking that, Mr Trussel.' The two men watched her approach, saw her captain jump into the main chains with a speaking trumpet. Drinkwater had met James Brisbane in Yarmouth and raised his hat in salutation.

'Afternoon Drinkwater!' Brisbane yelled as his ship surged past. 'We sighted land around Boubjerg. We must be twenty leagues south of our reckoning!' He waved, then jumped inboard as his brig covered the last two miles to the flagship.

'God's bones!' Drinkwater muttered. Sixty miles! A degree of latitude, but it was no wonder, since they had seen neither sun, moon nor stars since leaving Yarmouth. It was equally surprising that the bulk of the fleet was still together.

A little later the flagship signalled, firing guns to emphasise the importance of the order. The fleet tacked to the north west and once more clawed its way offshore.

The following day the battleship Elephant arrived with the news that the Invincible, which they had last seen leaving Yarmouth Roads by way of the Cockle Gat, had been wrecked on the Haisbro Sand with the loss of most of her crew. As this intelligence permeated the fleet Drinkwater was overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom, that the whole enterprise was imperilled by the omens. And his fears for Edward and himself only seemed to lend potency to these misgivings.

That evening the weather showed signs of moderating. Shortly after dark as he sat writing up his journal by the light of a swaying lantern Drinkwater was disturbed by a knock at his cabin door. 'Yes?'

Mr Jex entered. He was flushed and smelt of rum. He held what appeared to be a newspaper in his hand.

'Yes, Mr Jex? What is it?' Jex made no reply but held out the paper to Drinkwater. Unsatisfied with the replies of Waters, Jex sensed the landsman's cunning was more than a match for him. And the purser was nervous of a man he suspected of murder. To himself he disguised this fear in the argument that it was really Lieutenant Drinkwater who was the target for his desire to settle a score. The rum served to restore his resolve to act.

Drinkwater bent over the print. As he read he felt as though a cold hand was squeezing his guts. The colour drained from his face and the perspiration appeared upon his forehead. He tried in vain to dismiss the image the description called to mind.

From somewhere above him came Jex's voice, filled with the righteous zeal of an archangel. 'I know the man you brought aboard in Yarmouth is your brother. And that he is wanted for this murder.'

Chapter Twelve A Turbot Bright

 29-23 March 1801

The cabin filled with a silence only emphasised by the creak of Virago's fabric as she worked in the seaway. The rudder stock ground in the trunking that ran up the centre of the transom between the windows and stern chasers.

Drinkwater crossed his arms to conceal the shaking of his hands and leaned back in his chair, still staring down at the newspaper on the table. Its contents exposed the whole matter and Jex, of all people, knew everything. He looked up at Jex and was made suddenly angry by the smug look of satisfaction on the purser's pig- like features. His resentment at having been forced into such a false position by both Edward and this unpleasant little man before him combined with his weariness at trying to argue a way out of an untenable position. His anger boiled over, made worse by his awareness of the need to bluff.

'God damn it, sir, you are drunk! What the devil d'you think you are about, making such outrageous suggestions? Eh? Come, what are these allegations again?'

'The man Waters is your brother…'

'For God's sake, Mr Jex, what on earth makes you think that?'

'I saw you together in the Blue Fox, a house in which I have an interest.'

A piece of the jig-saw as to how Jex had discovered his deception was now revealed to Drinkwater. Even as he strove to think of some way out of the mess he continued to attack the purser's certainty. He barked a short, humourless and forced laugh.

'Hah! And d'you think I'd turn my brother forward, eh? To be started by Matchett and his mates?'

'If he had committed murder.' Jex nodded to the paper that lay between them.

Drinkwater leaned forward and put both hands on the Yarmouth Courier. 'Mr Jex,' he said with an air of apparent patience, 'there is no possible connection you can make between a man who