A Man of No Country Page 22

  ‘There is still something I don’t get,’ said Sedgwick. ‘Your journal is full of killing prisoners and talk of the dead telling no tales. Why was the master and crew of that English trader we recaptured spared?’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t do such things to English ships,’ said Grainger. ‘Partly it was through fear that the Navy would come and hunt us down, but mainly because the crew wouldn’t wear it.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because a good third of them were ex-navy man-of-war’s men, deserters and the like. They might do such things to foreigners, but would not have it done to their own.’

  ‘Royal Navy sailors did what you set down in your journal?’ said Sedgwick in disbelief.

  ‘You have little notion of what extremes a man may go to,’ replied Grainger, his face bleak. ‘Believe me, I know only too well.’

  ‘You may be right,’ mused Sedgwick. ‘Perhaps I have failed to see what a desperate man might do in this case, too.’

  ‘Do you still hold me to be your murderer?’

  Sedgwick thought about this for a moment before he replied. ‘No, I believe you to be innocent, of this crime at least,’ he said. ‘In part because you have convinced me, but also because I have just remembered something of great import. Something that was said, that I should have given much more notice to at the time.’

  *****

  It took several weeks for the Titan to catch up with the rest of the fleet. They had searched for them off the coast of Crete, without success, and then had pressed on eastwards for mile after mile of empty sea. In the last few days, the wind had swung round to the northwest, which had brought a welcome drop in temperature, and had allowed the ship to fly along with the breeze on her quarter and every sail set. The southern coast of Cyprus had been in sight for some hours when the lookout first spotted the distant mastheads. As the frigate grew nearer, the topgallant sails of warships, tiny spots of white like the summits of distant snow capped mountains, appeared just proud of the horizon. The ship surged up in the wake of her more massive fellows to rejoin Nelson’s fleet at last.

  Some hours later, Clay was ushered into the great cabin of the Vanguard. The curtains had been drawn across the windows at the rear of the ship, making the cabin very dim. He had just been rowed across a brilliant blue sea in bright sunshine by Sedgwick and his barge crew, and his eyes took a little while to adjust to the gloom. When they did, he saw the small figure of Nelson as he came from behind his desk and held out his left hand.

  ‘I am delighted to see you again, Captain Clay,’ he said in his Norfolk accent. Clay returned his right hand to his side and shook hands awkwardly with his left. ‘Apologies for the rather indifferent lighting, but I find bright sun sometimes troubling for my eye. I did have a patch that my surgeon had fashioned for me, but I’ll be damned if I shall wear such an absurd thing. I am a King’s officer, not a damned pirate! May I offer you some refreshment?’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Horatio,’ he replied. He picked up the glass that a steward held out on a tray. ‘How was it that you came by your injury?’

  ‘Oh, it was no great matter,’ said the admiral. He waved him towards a chair on the far side of his desk with his hand. ‘I was involved in the capture of Corsica, in the first year of the war. During the siege of Calvi, I was stood altogether too close to a parapet when it was struck by a canon ball from the enemy. A deal of sand and grit was driven into my face and I was rather knocked about. The sawbones who treated me thought I should lose my eye, but they were wrong as usual. I have it yet, although it serves only to distinguish night from day. But I find I can manage well enough with the eye I have been left with. It is certainly good enough for me to study these.’

  Nelson picked up a large sheaf of papers, each one containing a diagram of some kind with lines and arrows, annotated in his shaky script. He let them flutter back down on to the desk.

  ‘What is the nature of the documents you have there, Sir Horatio?’ asked Clay.

  ‘They are the many and various ways that I plan to defeat the enemy,’ said Nelson. ‘On every occasion, when weather has permitted, I have had my captains onboard to develop and rehearse projects of attack to cover all eventualities.’ He picked up a few sheets at random and peered at them. ‘Attacking the enemy fleet in company with the transporters, attacking the warships alone, in open water, close to land, from the windward side, from the leeward side, in the day, at night, at anchor, plans, plans, plans. I tell you Clay, there never was a fleet half so well prepared for battle as mine. All that is missing is an enemy for them to fight. Pray God you bring me some intelligence of them. Have you found the French?’

  ‘Not exactly, Sir Horatio, but I believe I know where they may be bound.’

  ‘Now, that is good to hear!’ exclaimed the admiral. He leant forward in his seat. ‘All this damned futile searching is destroying my nerves. Where do you suppose them to be headed?’

  ‘We captured a large brig off the west coast of Greece with a cargo of cavalry horses, which we deduced must be intended for Bonaparte’s Army,’ said Clay.

  ‘Like enough,’ said Nelson. ‘So where were they bound?’

  ‘The ship’s master would not say,’ explained Clay. ‘His English was poor, and my first lieutenant was struggling to get him to tell us. But when my name was first said to him he misheard it, and said something to the effect that we already knew where he was bound. Do you see, sir? My name is Alexander, but he heard it as Alexandria.’ The admiral’s face fell at this news.

  ‘Alexandria! Not that place again!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am sorry to say you have been cruelly deceived. I had also thought it likely that Egypt might be their objective, and I had a very similar tale to yours from Saumarez when he returned from his searching. Which was why I was off Alexandria not eight days ago with the fleet. All was quiet, with the port as empty as a eunuch’s britches. Not so much as a sniff of the French. No, I am afraid that will not answer at all.’ Nelson ran his hand through his hair and stared down at the desktop. ‘This is a cruel disappointment. Oh damn the eyes of every Frenchman! How can they have hidden such a vast armada from me? We have failed to do our duty to our King, Clay. We have failed him.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Sir Horatio,’ said Clay. ‘Consider how slow the French may have been. With so many ships to marshal, they will have hardly advanced at all while that easterly wind was blowing.’

  ‘I suppose it is possible,’ said Nelson.

  ‘I submit more than likely. I am certain that you have simply run ahead of your opponents, and arrived first at their destination.’

  ‘It would not be out of character for the French to have been lubbers in their seamanship,’ mused the admiral. ‘But what of the risks we run? The sole injunction that Lord St Vincent gave me was not to allow the French to slip past us to the west. What if they are even now pressing towards the Atlantic?’

  ‘Your inclination was for Egypt, and both Sir James’s findings and mine point in the same direction, Sir Horatio,’ urged Clay. ‘It is the only sure intelligence we have. Let us return there, and I am sure the French will appear. They may even be there already.’

  Nelson fixed him with a thoughtful look as he considered what he had said. Just as when they had first met, Clay found himself torn over whether to rest his gaze on the animated blue eye or the blank one. After a while Nelson moved his pile of plans to one side, picked up a lock of chestnut hair from the desk and began to toy with it. Clay looked at the hair for a moment as the admiral held it to his nose. Strange, he thought, I could have sworn that Lady Nelson’s hair was fair.

  ‘Was you ever in love, Captain Clay?’ he asked at last. He placed the strand of hair back on the desk and turned to face his subordinate.

  ‘In love, Sir Horatio?’ said Clay, surprised by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘Why yes. It is only ten months since I was wed.’

  ‘Ah, but being married, and being in love, are not the same at all, you will own,’ said Nelson. ‘So much else gets pu
t upon a marriage, station, property, advancement, the need for a suitable match. It is not so very strange that many marriages are formed that leave precious little space for true affection. So was you ever truly in love?’

  ‘Yes, I am now, Sir Horatio’ he said. ‘Whether through folly or not, I did not allow any other considerations to influence my choice of wife. I love her very much indeed. Most of my short time of marriage has been spent at sea, and I must confess that I miss her terribly.’

  ‘Now that was well said,’ smiled Nelson. ‘I too am in love, you know? With a lady of singular merit, who I feel in my heart is all goodness and charity. Her character is so animated, and wholly without conceit. She seems to understand me as no woman has done before.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ muttered Clay. ‘I give you joy in your, eh, acquaintance. But, Sir Horatio, I am a little unclear as to where this conversation tends? We were discussing the French.’

  ‘My point is that if you have ever enjoyed such a union of spirits, you will know that in love you must trust to your instincts’ said Nelson. ‘Even if they lead you in a direction that is against the general urgings of society. And what is so for love is doubly so for war. My instinct tells me that you are right. I should have remained true to my initial inclination. We shall sail for Alexandria, as you have urged me to do, and let us pray to God that we shall find the enemy there at long last.’

  *****

  The fleet was together once more. Nelson’s ships were spread in a long, regularly spaced line, with each huge seventy-four following in the wake of the one ahead, with every mast a towering pyramid of snowy white sails. A keen northwest wind drove them southward towards the distant coast of Egypt. Two miles to windward, the Titan kept station on the flagship in the centre of the line, and repeated each signal the admiral made.

  All was calm aboard the frigate, until six bells in the afternoon watch rang out from the belfry on the forecastle. The last echo of the final bell stroke had hardly faded away across the brilliant blue water before it was replaced by the harsher squeal of boatswain’s pipes, echoing along the lower deck, just as it had at the same time on every day of the commission so far, except for Sundays.

  ‘All gun crews!’ roared Hutchinson, the boatswain. ‘Man the guns there! Look lively now!’

  Number seven eighteen-pounder was placed in the middle of one of the lines of cannon that squatted massively along the sides of the main deck. Ten feet or so behind the dull red gun carriage was the coaming of the ship’s main hatchway, and behind that, the huge column of the main mast soared up as thick as the trunk of some forest giant. Like all the other great guns aboard the ship she had been allocated a number which, like every other gun aboard, was never used by her proud crew.

  ‘How you doing, Shango, me old cock?’ said Evans, as he swept a little rope dust from the top of the barrel where the gun’s name had been picked out in swirling white letters on the black metal.

  ‘Shango!’ exclaimed one of the crew of Belcher, the eighteen-pounder immediately aft of Evans’s cannon. ‘What manner of name is that? Sounds right bleeding foreign.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him at all, Sam,’ said O’Malley, who looked up from rigging the gun tackle to the side of Shango’s carriage. He glanced across at their rival’s gun. ‘Belcher is it? Well that’s a grand name. It will have taken you scholars a while to come up with that. Why, there can’t be above a hundred Belchers in the fleet.’

  ‘It ain’t what you might call unique, I grant you. We was going to call her Dan Mendoza, after the prize fighter like, but the crew of number two cannon had already nabbed him,’ explained the rival gun captain. ‘Who’s this Shango bloke then? Is he another prize fighter?’

  ‘Is he a prize fighter!’ said O’Malley with distain. Trevan shook his head in disbelief from his place on the other side of the gun.

  ‘No he bleeding ain’t,’ said Evans. ‘He is only the God of Thunder in Africa. Sedgwick told us about him. Now that’s a proper name for a gun.’

  ‘Come on, lads,’ urged Rosso, who was Shango’s captain. He was fitting a length of slow match to his linstock. ‘Get the rammer out, Sam. Adam, go and get a bucket of water. Gun drill will start in a moment; I don’t want that git Blake on me arse for being the last gun ready, again.’

  Lieutenant John Blake stood by the main mast and waited for his officers to report to him that their division’s of guns were ready. As second Lieutenant of the Titan, he was responsible for the main deck cannon, and it was a responsibility he enjoyed. He looked with approval, as all along the gun deck the crews stripped to the waist and rolled their neck cloths into the bandanas that would protect their ears from the roar of the firing.

  ‘Larboard side guns ready, sir,’ said Midshipman Butler as he came hurrying up and stood to attention.

  ‘Starboard side ready too, sir,’ added Midshipman Russell.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen,’ said Blake. He pulled out the silver fob watch that he had bought with some of the prize money won on the Titan’s last commission. It was his pride and joy. Unlike his previous watch, this one had a minute hand. ‘Let us commence with forty-five minutes of dumb show, give the hands five minutes of stand easy, and then we will proceed to live firing.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the two young officers.

  ‘Live fire will be a little different today,’ continued the lieutenant. ‘I have prevailed on the cooper to let me have some empty casks for them to aim at. Mr Preston will drop them from the launch as targets later.’

  ‘So they are not to just rattle the guns in and out as usual, to achieve the captain’s three broadsides in two minutes, sir?’ queried Butler.

  ‘By no means,’ said Blake. ‘They must still fire briskly, but I have noticed of late the men have taken to only concentrating on speed. Yesterday the fall of shot was very indifferently grouped. I shall expect better today with a mark for them to aim at.’

  Although the weather was less hot than it had been, the gun crew’s torsos soon ran with sweat as they dashed through the routine of pretending to load and fire their guns. Blake walked up and down the long rows of cannon, watching the gun drill with care, looking for where the next tiny improvement might come from.

  ‘Sponge out!’ roared the petty officer next to him to his section of guns. ‘Load charge, ram home!’ These men are working well, thought Blake. I wonder how they will respond to an unexpected problem?

  ‘Rammer men, you have all been killed or wounded,’ he announced. ‘Drop your equipment and come and join me here. Carry on with the drill if you please, Jamieson.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the petty officer. He turned back to his guns and scratched at his chin. After a few seconds of thought, his face cleared. ‘Hand spike men, take the place of the rammer men. Load ball!’ With the slightest of hesitation while the men traded roles, the gun drill recommenced and went smoothly on, despite the crew’s reduced manpower. Blake watched for a little longer, before he gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  ‘Well done, Jamieson,’ he said. ‘Rammer men resume your places.’

  Once he had completed his circuit of the guns, pausing to issue advice here and making a small change there, Lieutenant Blake returned to his place beside the main mast. He glanced at the nearest gun and frowned. The gun captain had just brought his linstock down on the touchhole, yet he had shouted no warning to his crew.

  ‘Rosso!’ he bellowed. The offending sailor looked round. ‘Why are you not attending to your duty? Where was your call to your crew to stand clear? Trevan’s foot was directly behind the gun carriage when you fired. If the gun had been loaded in earnest, it would have been crushed.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ mumbled Rosso. ‘I was a bit distracted, like.’

  ‘I have no place for a gun captain that endangers his crew,’ said Blake. ‘The enemy will seek to do that well enough, without your assistance. Mr Butler! Kindly watch this gun closely for the remainder of the drill, if you please. Report any further cases of neglect to me.’
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  *****

  In the cool of the evening, the larboard watch took their ease after dinner. The temperature had only recently dropped below thirty degrees, but the men had still been fed on a pound of hot salt pork, accompanied by half a pound of boiled pease. This was the Victualling Board’s proscribed ration for a Thursday, whether the warship concerned was on the edge of an Arctic ice shelf or deep in the tropics. Even for some of the older hands aboard the Titan, long accustomed to such fare, their evening meal sat heavy upon them. As a result, almost all had quit the stifling lower deck to enjoy the fresh air and cooling breeze that was to be had on the forecastle. In consequence most of the mess tables were empty, but at one Joshua Rosso and Able Sedgwick sat opposite each other with the coxswain’s journal between them.

  ‘You must have worked on this with proper diligence, Able, to have finished it already,’ said Rosso. ‘I barely helped you at all. Does it come right up to the present day?’

  ‘No, Rosie, I stop the tale just after I escaped from Haynes’s plantation in Barbados and joined the navy,’ said Sedgwick. ‘I wrote that last part a mite vague, so as not to finger them as helped me escape. Apparently, they can yet be prosecuted if I am too open. So I end it like this.

  “‘With the assistance of a number of noble souls, I was able to swim out to a Royal Navy ship at anchor in the roadstead at Bridgetown. Once aboard, I made haste to volunteer to serve King George as a man of war’s man. I was read in, and seven long years after my freedom had been so violently seized from me, I was a free man once more.’”