The Bomb Vessel

'As I said, my dear, you are very perceptive.'

He did not notice the tears in her eyes, though she saw the anticipation in his.

Chapter Two A Knight Errant

 October-November 1800

'Drinkwater!'

Drinkwater turned, caught urgently by the arm at the very moment of passing through the screen-wall of the Admiralty into the raucous bedlam of Whitehall. Recognition was hampered by the shoving that the two naval officers were subjected to, together with the haggard appearance of the newcomer.

'Sam? Samuel Rogers, by all that's holy! Where the deuce did you spring from?'

'I've spent the last two months haunting the bloody waiting room of their exalted Lordships, bribing those bastard clerks to put my name forward. It was as much as the scum could do to take their feet out of their chair- drawers in acknowledgement…' Rogers looked down. His clothes were rumpled and soiled, his stock grubby and it was clear that it was he, and not the notorious clerks, that were at fault.

'I must have missed you when I tarried there this morning.' Drinkwater fell silent, embarrassed at his former shipmate's penury. All around them the noise of the crowds, the peddlers, hucksters, the groans of a loaded dray and the leathery creak of a carriage combined with the ostentatious commands of a sergeant of foot-guards to his platoon seemed to emphasise the silence between the two men.

'You've a ship then,' Rogers blurted desperately. It was not a question. The man nodded towards the brown envelope tucked beneath Drinkwater's elbow.

Drinkwater feigned a laugh. 'Hardly, I was promised a gun-brig but I've something called a bomb-tender. Named Virago.'

'Your own command, eh?' Rogers snapped with a predatory eagerness, leaning forward so that Drinkwater smelt breath that betrayed an empty belly. Rogers seemed about to speak, then twisted his mouth in violent suppression. Drinkwater watched him master his temper, horrified at the sudden brightness in his eyes.

'My dear fellow… come…' Taking Rogers's elbow, Drinkwater steered him through the throng and turned him into the first coffee house in the Strand. When he had called for refreshment he watched Rogers fall on a meat pie and turned an idea over in his mind, weighing the likely consequences of what he was about to say.

'You cannot get a ship?'

Rogers shook his head, swallowing heavily and washing the last of the pie down with the small beer that Drinkwater had bought him. 'I have no interest and the story of Hellebore's loss is too well known to recommend me.'

Drinkwater frowned. The brig's loss had been sufficiently circumstantial to have Rogers exonerated in all but a mild admonishment from the Court of Enquiry held at Mocha the previous year. Only those who knew him well realised that his intemperate nature could have contributed to the grounding on Daedalus Reef. Drinkwater himself had failed to detect the abnormal refraction that had made the reckoning in their latitude erroneous. Rogers had not been wholly to blame.

'How was it so 'well known', Sam?'

Rogers shrugged, eyeing Drinkwater suspiciously. He had been a cantankerous shipmate, at odds with most of the officers including Drinkwater himself. It was clear that he still nursed grievances, although Drinkwater had felt they had patched up their differences by bringing home the Antigone.

'You know well enough. Gossip, scuttlebutt, call it what you will. One man has the ear of another, he the ears of a dozen…'

'Wait a minute Sam. Appleby was a gossip but he's in Australia. Griffiths is dead. I'll lay a sovereign to a farthing that the poison comes from Morris!' Rogers continued to look suspiciously at Drinkwater, suspecting him still, of buying the pie and beer to ease his own conscience. Drinkwater shook his head.

'It was not me, Sam.' Drinkwater held the other's gaze till it finally fell. 'Come, what d'you say to serving as my first lieutenant?'

Rogers's jaw dropped. Suddenly he averted his face and leaned forward to grasp Drinkwater's hand across the table. His mouth groped speechlessly for words and Drinkwater sought relief from his embarrassment in questions.

'Brace up, brace up. You surely cannot be that desperate. Why your prize money… whatever happened to reduce you to this indigent state?'

Rogers mastered himself at last, shrugging with something of his old arrogance. 'The tables, a wench or two…' He trailed off, shamefaced and Drinkwater had no trouble in imagining the kind of debauch Samuel Rogers had indulged in with his prize money and two years celibacy to inflame his tempestuous nature. Drinkwater gave him a smile, recollecting Rogers's strenuous efforts in times of extreme difficulty, of his personal bravery and savage courage.

'Empty bellies make desperate fellows,' he said, watching Rogers, who nodded grimly. Drinkwater called for coffee and sat back. He considered that Rogers's chastening might not be such a bad thing, just as in battle his violent nature was such an asset.

'It is not exactly a plum command, Samuel, but of one thing I am certain…'

'And that is?'

'That we both need to make something of it, eh?'

Drinkwater lent Rogers ten pounds so that he might make himself more presentable. Their ship lay above Chatham and Rogers had been instructed to join Drinkwater at his lodgings the following morning. In the meantime Drinkwater had to visit the Navy Office and he left the latter place as the evening approached, his mind a whirl of instructions, admonitions and humiliation at being one of the lowest forms of naval life, a lieutenant in command, permitted into those portals of perfidy and corruption. It was then he had the second encounter of the day.

Returning west along the Strand he came upon a small but vicious mob who had pulled a coachman from his box. It was almost dark and the shouts of disorder were mixed with the high-pitched screams of a woman. Elbowing the indifferent onlookers aside Drinkwater pressed forward, aware of a pale face at the carriage window. He heard a woman in the crowd say, 'Serve 'im bleedin' right for takin' 'is whip to 'em!'

Drinkwater broke through the cordon round the coach to where a large grinning man in working clothes held the tossing heads of the lead-horses. The whites of their eyes were vivid with terror. Rolling almost beneath the stamping hooves, the triplecaped bundle of a bald-headed coachman rolled in the gutter while three men, one with a lacerated cheek, beat him with sticks.

The offending whip lay on the road and the coachman's huge tricorne was being rescued and appropriated by a ragged youth, to the whoops of amusement of his fellows. Several hags roared their approval in shrill voices, while a couple of drabs taunted the woman in the coach.

Drinkwater took in the situation at a glance. A momentary sympathy for the man who had been whipped faded in his angry reaction to disorder. The noise of riot was anathema to him. As a naval officer his senses were finely tuned to any hint of it. London had been wearing him down all day. This final scene only triggered a supressed reaction in him.

Still in full dress he threw back his cloak and drew his hanger. His teeth were set and he felt a sudden savage joy as he shoved his heel into the buttocks of the nearer assailant. A cry of mixed anger and encouragement went up from the mob. The man fell beneath the pawing hooves and rolled away, roaring abuse. The other two men paused panting, their staves ready to rebuff their attacker. Drinkwater stepped astride the coachman, who moaned distressingly, and brought his sword point up to the throat of the man with the whipped face. With his left hand he felt in his pocket.

'Come now,' Drinkwater snapped, 'you've had your sport. Let the lady proceed.'

The man raised his stave as though about to strike. Drinkwater dropped the coin onto the back of the coachman. The glint of the half-crown caught the man's eye and he bent to pick it up, but Drinkwater's sword point caught the back of his neck.

'You will let the fellow go, eh? And set him upon his box if you please…' He could feel the man's indignation.