Fanny was very thankful, and Susan immediately set about making it, as if pleased to have the employment all to herself; and with only a little unnecessary bustle, and some few injudicious attempts at keeping her brothers in better order than she could, acquitted herself very well. Susan had an open, sensible countenance; she was like William, and Fanny hoped to find her like him in disposition and goodwill toward herself.
It was not to be wondered that the bridegroom—not the bride—was the more honoured guest during Fanny’s brief reunion with her family; as it was Mr. Crawford who had put William in the way of obtaining his promotion. He was the first to be served tea by Mrs. Price, the first to be toasted with madeira by Mr. Price, and while Fanny’s brothers did suffer her to kiss them, they all lined up eagerly to shake Mr. Crawford’s hand when the new-married couple excused themselves for the evening. Her father’s final benediction on the match was to make a coarse remark to her new bridegroom and to slap him heartily on the back as they left.
When bidding Mr. Crawford ‘good night’ at the Crown, Fanny thanked him most sincerely for his great kindness in bringing her to Portsmouth, and he, once again, enjoyed the sensation of being a fine fellow who had actually done some good for his fellow creatures, so that despite the vulgarity and disorder of the Price household, he retired to his separate chamber feeling well-disposed toward mankind in general and even all persons named Price.
And when he grappled with his buxom actress, for the first of several lively encounters that night, in various postures, he reflected that his wedding night exceeded his most sanguine expectations and his only regret was that he could not tell all his acquaintance about it—at least not for the present.
The next day was the Sabbath, and Henry had already resigned himself to staying in Portsmouth another day, as Fanny made her reluctance to travel clear; it was no great hardship, as he had a number of naval acquaintance in Portsmouth and was happy to call on them while his new bride spent the day visiting with her family.
Mrs. Price took her weekly walk on the ramparts every fine Sunday throughout the year, always going directly after morning service and staying till dinner-time. It was her public place: there she met her acquaintance, heard a little news, talked over the badness of the Portsmouth servants, and wound up her spirits for the six days ensuing. Fanny attended chapel with her family, and afterwards walked with them as she had not done for almost ten years. Before she had been sent away to Mansfield, she had been the little shepherdess to her younger brothers and sisters, but she was sorry to discover that, of the children still at home, only Susan retained any faint memory of her.
William was free to walk with them for an hour, and Fanny gloried in being once more on the ramparts with her brother. He pointed out the ugly hulk that was the Agincourt, anchored far out in the harbour, but since it was not the Solebay, Fanny could not be interested in taking a boat to go and tour it, nor did William think the rough-and-tumble atmosphere on the ship appropriate for his sister.
As they parted, and over his protests, Fanny gave him all of her paltry savings, knowing that he would need ready monies more than she, for he would have to pay for his share of the officers’ mess, and while Fanny was inexpressibly sorry to part with William, she preferred to make her adieux in the open air, in the haunts of their childhood, than back in the crowded, noisy, squalor and disorder of their Portsmouth home.
William hurried back to the ‘rondy,’ to escort a batch of new recruits to the launch that would carry them to the Agincourt. A detachment of marines with baleful expressions and glittering bayonets prodded the victims of the press gangs out of a dismal holding cell to the sally port, and they were rowed out through the harbour, past graceful frigates and plump merchant ships to the great, black, hulking shape of the Agincourt, already surrounded by small boats bearing sailors’ wives, and those who claimed to be sailors’ wives. The boats bearing these dainty damsels competed with merchants steering bumboats piled high with all sorts of merchandise and gimcracks, who likewise intended to separate the sailors from their earnings. The rowers on the launch shoved their way through the throng and accompanied by enthusiastic swearing and prodding, everyone was sent climbing up a rope net to the gun deck.
Price idly took stock of the impressed men, and noticed one slender young man with glasses who was taller by a head than everyone else. No tattoos, no tar-blackened hands, he thought to himself. He doesn’t walk like a seaman, nor dress as one.
William Gibson barely had time to look around him before he and his fellow pressed men were forced to climb a series of ladders down to the orlop deck—a gloomy, airless hole in the bowels of the ship. As the last of them clambered down—including two little boys who had run away from home and volunteered to be cabin boys and who were now trying not to weep for fright—an iron grating was dropped over the hatch.
The ceiling was so low that Gibson could not even stand up. He tried to find an unoccupied spot to sit down in the dark, and to avoid calling attention to himself, surrounded as he was by men who appeared to be mostly experienced sea-faring types of one sort of another. By sitting back and listening, he hoped to learn as much as he could about his strange new world, but he soon found himself intervening when some of the men, to pass the time, were amusing themselves
