Man Of War

depart from it when the ways become heavy, for all roads have their difficulties. It was on the best road in the country that my good friend Major Strickland was killed, a road well made and fast – admitting of too much speed indeed.’ He suddenly wondered if the morbid metaphor were entirely apt.

‘I do not believe I agree with you, Papa, but I understand what it is that you say, and Aunt Elizabeth has always impressed on me that that is as it must be.’

Hervey could not have faulted his sister’s regulation. He nodded.

‘Aunt Elizabeth always says we must be especially attentive to what you say because we may not see things as do you, who moves in society.’

Hervey stifled an embarrassed cough. He reckoned he probably owed more to Elizabeth’s sound sense, learned as it may have been very parochially, than to that of elevated society. ‘Yes, well, that is very proper of your aunt.’

‘Will you come with us to Major Heinrici’s, then, this afternoon, Papa? The youngest Miss Heinrici has her birthday today – she is seven – and there is to be a party.’

In that instant, Hervey almost said that he would, not for his sister’s sake (although he would have to admit to the merest softening in his attitude on account of Georgiana’s advocacy), but because seeing his daughter’s delight at the prospect was truly engaging. To do so, however, would be an implicit disloyalty to his friend Peto; and his scruple – and his stomach – would not permit it. Elizabeth had lost her way. These things happened while travelling. It was not always easy to tell that a road led nowhere. Even the best of guides could take the wrong turning in a storm. But he, Elizabeth’s brother, could see things very well. He knew which was the right road, and what steps she must take to regain it. He would help her. That was his brotherly duty, unwelcome as first it might be.

VI

THE COMMON ROUND

HMS Prince Rupert, the first morning at sea

The unlit sail gave Peto a night of broken sleep.

A quarter of an hour after first sighting, the ship had turned east to steer the same course as Rupert, some half a mile off the starboard beam. Lieutenant Lambe reported this while Peto and Rebecca Codrington were still at table. Peto had listened with care but with no great concern. Sailing as they both now were before the wind, the other ship no longer had the advantage. He asked where was Archer: Lambe said she was eight or nine cables, a mile perhaps, ahead and to larboard still. It was where Peto would have expected her to be – pity, since intercepting an unknown ship was precisely the thing a sloop did well. He had a mind to order a warning shot across the unlit’s bows, which would have the merit too of signalling to Archer to attend on new orders, but that would mean the sloop heaving to while Rupert came up within hailing distance. They could signal with lights, but Peto knew it was a hit and miss affair for all but the simplest of codes. If he were really troubled by having an unlit sail on his starboard beam he would clear for action, yet the likelihood of there being a Turkish man-of-war this far west was surely very slim; and he was not going to turn out the entire crew merely to demonstrate that he had the will to do so.

He therefore told Lambe to have the watch keep a sharp eye, to fire a warning gun if cloud covered the moon and the lookouts lost sight of her, and to report to him hourly. Then at first light the midshipman on the forecastle recognized her as a Genoan pinnace, and Lambe signalled Archer to intercept her and enquire why she sailed unlit – which by four bells of the morning watch she was able to do. Archer reported that the Genoan’s captain claimed she had been shadowed by pirates since leaving Ceuta, and, darkened, had sought to shake them off while taking ‘sanctuary’ close on a man-of-war. Peto had no reason to doubt him, and wished the Genoan well by return, especially since her captain sent across a fair-sized parmijan and half a dozen flasks of Tuscan red.

Pirates: the very devil, the whole of the Barbary coast and beyond – Peto had given many of them a watery grave and had hanged almost as many more when he had been commodore of the frigate squadron; when, indeed, he had gone into their very nests with the Americans (fine fellows, Americans; he was glad he had never used powder against them in the late war). They would be plying in and out of Algiers no doubt, exactly as before. When the Turks were sent back to Constantinople he expected Codrington would turn his attention to them. Not that that would be a job for a three-decker; they might stand in at Malta for a week or so until their lordships recalled Rupert to home waters – back to being a guardship, with a skeleton crew and long days ashore. Or even back into the Ordinary, dismasted and ungunned. But why worry himself about that now? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

There would be evil today right enough: it was not possible to inspect a King’s ship, no matter how diligent its lieutenant, without finding something amiss. All he could hope for when he made his first rounds was that the faults could be righted by sweat rather than blood, and from within the ship’s own resources. His old friend the commissioner at Gibraltar had told him he believed Rupert to be well found, but he would only know for certain when he had seen for himself.

At eight o’clock Peto came on to the quarterdeck. For three hours the idlers and larboard watch had been holystoning the decks and swilling the dirty sand into the waterways and scuppers. The swabbers had flogged the decks until they were dry, and the trusted hands had brightened the brasswork about the rails and bitts. And when the sanding, holystoning, swabbing and polishing was done, other hands had flemished down the ropes and stowed the washdeck gear, so that by seven o’clock the work had been practically finished. When Lieutenant Lambe came back on deck after his morning shave he had professed himself pleased with things – as well he might, for this was but the day’s routine (every day barring Sunday), although the boatswain’s mates had known full well that a keener eye would be cast on their charges on this morning. At half past he had sent the mates below to pipe ‘All hands. Up hammocks’, and the entire crew – sleepers as well as watch – had scurried with their lashed-up bedding to the upper-deck nettings, where the quartermasters and midshipmen supervised the stowing, after which Lambe had been able to dismiss them to breakfast.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said brightly, touching his hat. ‘Seven knots at present, five in the night.’

Peto nodded. It was a morning exactly as the evening’s red light had promised – the shepherd’s delight, but the sailor’s even more so. He loved Norfolk as loyally as any man (his father, and his father before him, had been born next-the-sea) but the fairest day in Nelson’s county could not compare with such a morning at sea, the sun on his face, the wind filling the sail, and the air as pure as the water of the Arethusa spring. He glanced at the rate- of-sailing board: a following wind and twenty miles during the middle watch (the calculation was simple enough). ‘Thank you, Mr Lambe. Have the master set royals and t’gallants when I am finished my inspection, if the wind does not freshen by much. We ought to be making nine knots while the sea is favourable.’

‘Ay-ay, sir.’

‘Have you had your breakfast?’

‘I have, sir.’

‘Do you have any objection to a little more?’

Lambe looked faintly bemused. ‘By no means, sir.’

Peto turned to his steward, who had come on deck with a coffee pot and cups. ‘Would you bring us a plate apiece of the ship’s burgoo?’

Flowerdew poured them coffee and then shuffled off in the stooping gait he adopted when asked to do something he found contrary to his own ideas of what was proper (or expedient).

‘Is that Mr Pelham I observe on the poop?’

‘It is, sir. He stood the middle watch, and came back on deck as soon as it was light enough to signal to Archer.’