A Shot Rolling Ship Read online

  ‘Mr Short,’ Colbourne called, as he slammed shut the list of statutes and returned the book to his pocket, ‘the muster book if you please.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Pearce looked for the voice, and found it to the rear of the companionway, in probably the only person aboard standing to his full, insubstantial height. At first he thought it a youth, but a step forward into a pool of light showed a pallid, lined, adult face and a truncated squat body, dressed in a midshipman’s blue coat. He was carrying a large leather-bound book, as well as a lidded inkpot, which he placed on one of the rungs beside his superior, before extracting a quill pen from his pocket. Beside him Pearce could feel Michael O’Hagan shaking with silent laughter, and it was several seconds before he realised the connection that his friend had made immediately.

  ‘Sure, they named him right, John boy, there’s barely half a pint of the sod. Jesus, he’d fit in my breech pocket.’

  ‘Mr Short will enter you into the ship’s books and allocate you the number of your mess. None of you has a rating, and you told me you are new to the service, so you will be entered as landsmen.’

  ‘I ain’t no landsman, your honour.’

  Colbourne lent forward to detect the speaker, his gaze alighting on a sailor from the Lady Harrington who had been forced aboard to make up the number the lieutenant required. The crew of the merchantman had drawn lots and this poor fellow had lost. Pearce thought of him like that but had to acknowledge that he had accepted his fate, if not with enthusiasm, then certainly with a palpable degree of equanimity, his main concern seeming to be that any monies he was due from his merchant service, as well as news of his impressment, should go to the right place. The man was a sailor by profession, always liable to be taken up by the Press Gang and so perhaps accepted what had happened to him as just one of the hazards of that occupation.

  ‘I should be rated able, your honour. I can hand and reef with the best of ’em, and I ain’t no slouch in the tops, either.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Littlejohn, your honour.’

  ‘Mr Short, enter Littlejohn here as able.’

  It was not only Michael who got that one; the whole crew began to laugh, some of it suppressed sniggering, in a couple of others less controlled, outright guffaws. Pearce was taken by the way Colbourne reddened in undisguised embarrassment, since it gave him another clue to his personality; he too saw the pun and was brought to the blush by the fact. A quick glance at the midshipman showed the pained expression of someone who had been, many times in his life, the butt of such jokes.

  ‘Carry on,’ Lieutenant Colbourne mumbled, before spinning round to make his way, hand over hand, back on deck.

  Book held in one hand, Short had entered the able seaman, his next act being to point his quill at Pearce, who stepped forward and gave his name in a loud and clear voice. He could feel rather than see the reaction of his fellow Pelicans, and he was close enough to Cornelius Gherson to note a look of disappointment that his action engendered. Such a response was understandable given the way he had tried to protect his name the last time this had happened. On being mustered into Ralph Barclay’s crew aboard his first ship, Pearce had refused to give a name for fear that it would expose him as a possible felon. That subterfuge had not held; his real name, if not his reasons for withholding it, had soon become common knowledge.

  ‘That was bold of you, John boy,’ Michael opined, just after he had entered his own name, soon to be joined by Charlie Taverner and Rufus Dommet, who made the same point. Gherson, who joined the cluster, said nothing, just looked at him with deep suspicion. Being naturally untrustworthy himself, he would only see deep subterfuge in what was, to Pearce’s way of thinking, common sense. And quite possibly Gherson had harboured a notion to use his knowledge for some advantage; for himself, of course, he not being given to thinking of any one else.

  ‘Call it a benefit of experience,’ Pearce said, dropping onto his haunches to relieve the strain on his back, the others doing likewise. ‘I think we erred aboard Brilliant in the way we sought to fight not just Barclay but the whole crew. Given that he had caused most of the trouble it was Pearce’s turn to feel a tinge of embarrassment, as he observed Michael, Charlie and Rufus agree in their various ways. Cornelius Gherson’s expression did not alter, and a hard look from Pearce made him move away, for he was not really part of their group, having arrived in the same situation as them after being fished out of the River Thames. Experience since then had taught all of them to mistrust him and never to discuss matters of import in his presence. Once he was gone his three companions looked at Pearce with eager expressions, which brought forth a resurgence of his previous annoyance. What was it about them that they gave way so easily to his notions, even Michael O’Hagan, who would fight anyone taking the least liberty? It had been like that almost from the first; they made out that they wanted to get free of the Navy just as much as he did himself, yet seemed incapable of forming any method for doing so!

  Right now, the looks he was getting forced him to continue. ‘They were not all bad aboard Brilliant, were they? There were some good men among them.’

  ‘None that I saw,’ snapped Charlie Taverner.

  Pearce knew he was wrong, and was sure Charlie did too; it was only his natural bluster that had him denying the truth of what was being said, for some of the men on the frigate, if they had not been helpful about the Pelicans deserting, had gone some way to alleviate their discomfort. One or two had gone further than that, and told Ralph Barclay in no uncertain terms that on one occasion, in the article of punishment, he was coming it too high.

  ‘We must get some of the crew on our side,’ Pearce continued, ‘or at least to act towards what we aim to do with indifference.’

  ‘I doubt there’s many of them,’ said Charlie, not willing to concede an inch. ‘To my mind these tars are bastards to a man.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ added young Rufus, who tended to follow Charlie in most things.

  Pearce’s response was terse. ‘Then let us, at least, lull them into not paying us too much attention. Look at Littlejohn and Gherson.’

  The sailor was sat on a barrel, hugger mugger and chatting away to his new shipmates, no doubt looking for places and people that would make a connection, for the men of the sea were like a tribe. Cornelius Gherson, all tousled fair hair and gaucherie, was grovelling in front of another group headed by Latimer, which was his way, trying to ingratiate himself towards some kind of advantage. Hard to imagine in so crowded a space, but Pearce and his trio of fellow Pelicans had already managed to isolate themselves.

  ‘You.’

  The finger, poked really hard into his shoulder, made Pearce look up, though he did not have to go very high to find himself in eye contact with Midshipman Short. Close to, the lines on the pasty face were more obvious, but it was hard to tell if the fellow was prematurely aged or suffering from some affliction that made him appear so.

  ‘Quit your lazing about. You’re not aboard your merchantman now, there’s work to do, so get moving.’

  The last word was delivered with another hearty jab of the mid’s finger. The temptation to poke a fist very hard into that face was almost overwhelming; indeed John Pearce’s right hand had balled ready to do so without conscious effort, and he felt, as he always did when tempted to physical violence, the tremors that affected his body. But he forced himself to smile, and even touched his forelock as he responded in a meek voice.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Not reacting to the cry from the masthead of HMS Brilliant gave Captain Ralph Barclay a small frisson of pleasure, particularly since his young wife, Emily, had looked up sharply from her embroidery at the muffled shout of ‘sail ho’ – muffled because of the need to penetrate the closed skylight above their heads. He enjoyed demonstrating to her the authority he held, one that did not oblige him to respond immediately to everything that happened aboard ship; let others do that, then report to him
if they, given what they observed, thought it necessary. There was another feeling in his breast, that being relief; the sighted sail would be one from the convoy he had been tasked to escort from Deal to Gibraltar, fifty-seven ships he had deserted in the face of standing Admiralty orders to pursue a single French intruder, in a way that could only be called, even in the most benign interpretation, a pursuit for personal gain.

  The knock at the door was anticipated; the person who entered when commanded to do so, his acting First Lieutenant, was not. What was he doing undertaking a task that was properly that of the lowest midshipmen? Henry Digby removed his hat in the regulation fashion and tucked it under his arm, nodded to the top of Barclay’s lowered head, before turning to add a small bow in the direction of his wife, that acknowledged with a sweet smile. Her husband felt another frisson – this time less pleasant – thinking that Digby could only have come below personally to afford himself a chance of such an encounter. The thought made him speak in a sharper tone than he intended.

  ‘We have come upon our charges, Mr Digby, I assume?’

  ‘No sir, our lookout reports a three-masted vessel, we think a barque.’

  ‘Not the convoy?’ Ralph Barclay tried but failed to keep any hint of anxiety out of the question and even if he had achieved that the way he suddenly raised his head slightly to look at Digby directly, he was sure, gave him away. ‘Flag?’

  ‘None flying, sir.’

  ‘Course?’

  ‘The same as our own, sir, we are coming up dead astern of her.’

  ‘What do you recommend?’

  Digby was surprised by that; Ralph Barclay was not a consulting captain, even when, as in this case, the answer was obvious. ‘Closing with them, sir, and obliging them to identify themselves.’

  ‘Then make it so Mr Digby, and inform me when they are hull up so I may take a look myself.’

  Emily spoke as the door closed. ‘Young Mr Digby seems to be settling well into his task husband.’

  There was a temptation to question the use of the word young, for there was little difference in their ages; if anything Digby might well be slightly the senior of the two. Odd that someone only approaching her eighteenth birthday should use such a word. No doubt it was the married state that allowed for such condescension.

  ‘He had better, my dear. It hardly looks as though his predecessor is going to make a swift recovery.’

  Emily threw him a look of sympathy then for, even if he would not admit to it, even if she was unsure of the true cause, she knew her husband to be worried. The events of the past week had seen his mood swing dramatically, starting at exultation when they had first sighted a French privateer – a potential prize – switching dramatically as he had been humbugged by a superior sailing vessel. Fury as that French dog had snapped up one of his charges, albeit one that was laggardly, and carried her into a seemingly unassailable berth. The losses the ship had suffered in finding out the meaning of impregnability had been frightful, and only a stroke of what seemed to Emily like pure luck had saved matters.

  During that period – the ups and downs – Ralph Barclay’s aura of husbandly superiority had suffered and his wife had discovered that she had no need to be meekly obedient to his every whim; she had found to her surprise that she had power in their relationship, that he craved her good opinion and was cast down if that was withheld. Discovery of such a thing had been heady, but Emily knew that whatever strength she had must be exercised sparingly, and never more so in allusion to recent events. In short, she could not be open and merely ask him outright to voice his disquiet.

  Concern over Digby’s predecessor, the badly wounded Lieutenant Roscoe, lying pale and silent in the surgeon’s berth, was unlikely to be the cause – that she did know, for her husband disliked the man and had made no secret of it even before the recent action. They had exchanged high words on deck about certain decisions and it was quite possible that a recovered Premier would demand a court martial to clear himself of whatever slights Ralph Barclay chose to put against his name. Uncertainty as to the true cause of these anxieties deepened the furrows that already creased her brow.

  Ralph Barclay could not face what he interpreted as a pitying look and for the umpteenth time that morning he opened the ship’s log and examined the loose sheets of paper he had stuffed in between the pages. These listed HMS Brilliant’s true position over the last few days; facts which he was reluctant to commit to the book, for once written up they could not be altered. One thing could be entered certainly, the removal of that damned pest John Pearce and his band of malcontents. The thought of Pearce made his blood boil; the palpable arrogance of the man, the way he had by insubordination driven a wedge between himself and his new wife, and even worse, engaged the sympathy of the whole ship’s crew against its lawful captain. That he had shown courage and resource in salvaging the bind that Ralph Barclay had created for himself was small recompense. He had taken the same occasion, the sending home of the East Indiaman Lady Harrington, to rid himself of his wife’s nephew, a useless young man who was, without doubt, cowardly to boot, thus removing another potential source of marital friction. The beauty of that manoeuvre was that he could make it look as though he was showing the boy favour.

  The other loose papers were less cheering; not for the first time he damned an Admiralty, specifically Lord Hood, the man actually running the Navy, for saddling him with a set of officers who were strangers. Such a thing made life hard, for he could never be certain that the loyalty he had built up from men he had brought on in the service himself was there in the men imposed on him by Hood. The wounded Roscoe was a case in point; argumentative, unable to smoke his captain’s methods and preferences, forever questioning orders, showing no faith in those he was obliged to obey. He had demanded a court martial after a particularly high-worded spat the day before the action in which he had been wounded. Ralph Barclay tried hard to suppress the hope that his Premier would die of his wounds, his Christian beliefs fighting a hard and losing battle against self-interest.

  His anxiety to catch up with his convoy was many layered, not least the mere fact that it was quite possible to miss them completely, even if it did consist of over fifty ships; the ocean was vast enough to hide an armada. Roscoe was a problem that he could do nothing about. If his Premier recovered it would mean trouble, if he expired his complaints about his captain would go with him to the grave. A quite different but related problem presented itself in the case of Davidge Gould, the man who commanded the sloop HMS Firefly, the second protective vessel tasked to escort the convoy to Gibraltar, a ship he had quite deliberately cut out of the chase and the subsequent action. He would have Gould aboard as soon as he joined, with his own ship’s papers, including Firefly’s log which, no doubt, would have been kept scrupulously up to date; then and only then could he decide what to put in his own, facts about courses, times and positions that would make his actions appear in the best light.

  At some time in the future this book before him would end up at the Admiralty, and there was just a chance that some clerk, emerging from his habitual torpor, might cast an eye over it. So a little obfuscation would be necessary; not downright lies, for that would be too obvious, but just enough to ensure that should the two logs be read together, the facts would not, too obviously, jar. That was something of which he could be reasonably confident; the idea that such Admiralty clerks were eagle-eyed defenders of the nation’s needs was, Ralph Barclay knew, a myth. They were idle, claret-swilling placemen more interested in their salaries, pensions and post prandial naps than in the misdemeanours or minor peculations of naval commanders. They would sit, these logs, along with the purser’s accounts and myriad other papers gathering dust, very likely never subjected to more than a cursory look, but, should someone in authority, in the future, wish him ill, and seek for something in his background with which to damn him…

  Another sharp tap stopped that train of thought, as Midshipman Farmiloe, tall, fair of hair and gangling, kno
cked and entered. ‘Mr Digby’s compliments, sir, the chase is hull up.’

  ‘Chase, Mr Farmiloe? I was not aware that we were engaged in one.’

  Farmiloe knew better than to respond. ‘Mr Digby wished me to add that it’s odd, sir, that they don’t seemed to have smoked we are in their wake.’

  Ralph Barclay sat forward, suddenly all attention. ‘Say again?’

  ‘Well, sir, if they have lookouts aloft…’

  ‘Which they must surely have.’

  ‘…they are not looking over their stern.’

  Ralph Barclay got to his feet, and called for his hat.

  ‘From which we can deduce, Mr Farmiloe, that their attention is on something more tempting.’

  ‘The convoy, sir.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  The atmosphere on deck, the air of tension, told the ship’s captain that everyone on watch down to the ship’s cat had drawn the same conclusion. The midshipmen, normally content to remain snug in their verminous berth, were visible, as was the master, Mr Collins. Even the little surgeon Lutyens had come up and was now deep in conversation with Digby. That ceased as soon as his presence was noted, with everyone coming to attention and raising their hat. A glance aloft at the sail plan told Ralph Barclay that his previous instructions, to crack on, were being obeyed. A glance at the slate told him that HMS Brilliant was making eight knots on a steady wind that was coming in nicely over her starboard quarter, and a current that was aiding her passage. Taking a telescope from the rack he trained it on the ship in whose wake they lay, a barque as he had already been told, with a low freeboard and clean lines. Most obvious was the fact that she had reefed her mainsails – that she was not sailing at anything approaching her full speed.