Ebb tide

sheets. He did not look back.

That evening the gunroom held a valedictory dinner in the vacated captain's cabin. Wallace, as acting first lieutenant, presided in name only, for in reality it was Wheeler's evening. The midshipmen were guests, as were the senior warrant officers and senior mates, and the intention was to drink off the remaining wine in the possession of the gunroom officers, a quantity of the former having been taken out of L'Arcadienne before the fire had driven back the looters. Once the eating was dispensed with, the serious business of the evening commenced. Amidst the wreckage of chicken bones and suet dumplings, bumpers of increasing extravagance were drunk to toasts of increasing dubiety.

The whole evening was a marked contrast to Drinkwater's first formal dinner on board when Captain Hope had dined with Admiral Kempenfelt and he had been compelled to toast the company. He was a very different person from the ingenuous and inebriated youth who had risen unsteadily to his feet on that occasion. The harsh path of duty had matured him and his capacity for wine had much improved. Now he joined lustily in the singing of 'Spanish Ladies' and 'Hearts of Oak', and clapped enthusiastically when O'Malley, the Irish cook and the ship's fiddler, scraped the air of Nancy Dawson' on his ancient violin.

Finally Wheeler rose unsteadily to his feet. His handsome face was flushed, but his cravat remained neatly tied under his perspiring chin as he called the lubberly company to order.

'Gennelmen,' he began, 'gennelmen, we are gathered here tonight in the sight of Almighty God, the Devil and Mr Surgeon Appleby, to conclude a commission memorable for its being in an infamous war in which I believe all of us here executed our duty with honour, as behoves all true Britons.' He paused for the cheers that this peroration called forth from the company to die down. 'Tomorrow ... tomorrow we will be penniless beggars, but tonight we are as fit as fighting cocks to thrash Frenchmen, Dons and Yankees ...'

Wheeler paused again while more cheers accompanied Midshipman White's disappearance as he slid slowly beneath the table, his face sinking behind the cloth like a diminutive setting sun, to lie unheeded by his fellows whose upturned faces awaited more of Wheeler's pomposities. 'Gennelmen, I give you a toast: A short peace and a long war!'

The company cheered yet again and some staggered to their feet. They gulped their wine and thumped the table, calling for more.

'Silence! Silence!'

Hisses were taken up and some sort of order was re-established. 'It has been brought to my notice by the purser,' continued Wheeler, 'as Christian a gennelman as ever sat on a purser's stool mark you, that we are down to our last case of wine, which is... which is... which is what, m'dear fella?'

'Madeira.'

'Madeira, gennelmen, madeira...'

Wheeler collapsed into his chair amidst more cheers. The vacuum was filled by the last bottles being set out and the ponderous figure of Appleby rising to his feet. An attempt was made to shout him down. 'No speeches from the surgeon!'

'You're a guest! Sit down!'

But Appleby stood his ground. 'I shall not make a speech, gentle-men ...' His voice was drowned in further cheers, but he remained standing when they died away. 'I shall simply ask you to raise your glasses to fallen comrades ...'

A hush fell on the company and a scraping of chairs indicated a lugubrious assent to Appleby's sentiment. A shamefaced mumbling emanated from bowed heads as they recalled those who had started the commission and had not survived it — Hope, Blackmore and many others.

'And now...', resumed Appleby, and the mood lightened immediately.

'No speeches, damn your eyes!'

'Appleby, you farting old windbag, sit down!'

'And now,' Appleby went on, 'I ask you to raise your glasses in another toast...'

'For God's sake, Appleby, we've drunk to everything under heaven except your mother and father!'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' roared the surgeon, 'We have forgotten the most important after His Majesty's health ...' Silence, apart from White's brutish snoring under the table, again permeated the cabin. 'I prithee charge your glasses ... Now, gentlemen, I ask you to drink to this one-eyed frigate, gentlemen, this Cyclopean eye-of-the- fleet. Just as you are closing both of your limpid orbs in stupor, she is closing her noble eye on war. Gentlemen, be upstanding and drink to the ship! I give you 'An eye of the fleet, His Britannic Majesty's frigate Cyclops!''

There were punning shouts of 'Aye, aye!', much nudging of neighbours' ribs and more loud cheers which finally subsided into gurgling, dyspeptic mumblings and an involuntary fart from Wheeler. Suddenly the cabin door flew open and Sergeant Hagan entered wearing full dress uniform. Wheeler looked up blearily as the sergeant's boots crashed irreverently upon the deck and his right hand executed an extravagant salute circumscribed only by the deck beams above.

'Sah!'

'Eh? Whassa matter, ser'nt?' Wheeler struggled upright in his chair, affronted by the intrusion and vaguely aware that the sergeant's presence in parade dress augured some disagreeable occurrence elsewhere. Wheeler fixed the man with what he took to be a baleful stare, the vague disquiet of a summons to duty intruding upon his bemused brain.

'I have the honour to escort the officers' cheese, sah!' Hagan replied, looking straight into his commanding officer's single focused eye.

'Cheesh, ser'nt? Whadya mean cheesh?'

'Mr Dale's orders, sah!'

'Dale? You mean the carpenter?' Wheeler shook his head in incomprehension. 'You don't make yourself clear, ser'nt.'

'Permission to bring in the officers' cheese, sah!' Hagan persisted patiently in pursuance of his instructions, holding himself at rigid attention throughout this inane exchange.

Wheeler looked round the company and asked, 'We've had cheesh, haven't we, gennelmen? I'm certain we had cheesh ...'

But his query went unheeded, for there were more table thumpings and cries of 'Cheese! Cheese! We want cheese!'

Wheeler shook his head, shrugged and slumped back in his chair, waving his assent. 'Very well, Ser'nt Hagan. Please escort in the cheese!'

'Sah!' acknowledged Hagan and drew smartly aside. Two of the carpenter's mates entered bearing a salver on which reposed the cheese, daintily covered by a white damask napkin. At the lower end of the table, midshipmen drew apart to allow the worthy tarpaulins to deposit their load. They were grinning as they withdrew and Wheeler's numbed brain was beginning to sense a breach of propriety. He rose very unsteadily, leaning heavily upon the table. 'Sergeant!'

'Sah?'

'Whass that?' Wheeler nodded at the napkin-covered lump.

'The officers' cheese, sah!' repeated Hagan in the reasonable tone one uses to children, and executing another smart salute he retreated from the cabin, closing the door behind him.

Wheeler's misgivings were not shared by his fellow-diners who had just discovered that the remaining stock of wine amounted to at least one glass each. The demands for cheese were revived and with a flourish Drinkwater leaned forward and whipped off the napkin.

'God bless my soul!'

'Stap me vittals!'

'Rot me cods!'

'God's bones!'

'It's the festering main truck!'

'The what?'

'It's the god-damned truck from the mainmasthead!'

And there, amid the wreckage of what had passed for a banquet, sat the cap of the mainmast, pierced and