Beyond the Reef

by Kent, Alexander

  Bolitho, more than any other, knew how Keen hated the use of flogging. But discipline had to be upheld, especially in a ship sailing alone, and each day standing deeper and deeper into the Atlantic.

  Keen was equally unbending with his lieutenants and midshipmen. The former he would take aside and speak to in his quiet, contained fashion. If the officer was foolish enough to ignore his advice, the second interview was of a very different nature. James Cross, the sixth lieutenant who had accompanied the barge to ferry Bolitho from Portsmouth Point, was a case in point. He seemed eager enough, but at most duties he had displayed an incompetence which made even the most hardened petty officer groan.

  Allday had been heard to comment, “He’ll be the death of someone afore long. Should’ve been strangled at birth!”

  The midshipmen, for the most part, came from established naval families. To sail in the flagship under an officer so renowned, or notorious as some insisted, was a chance of advancement and promotion which could not be overlooked. It was strange that after so many years, victories and setbacks, bloody battles and the demanding rigours of blockade duty, there were many who still believed that the war would soon be over, especially now that English soldiers stood on enemy soil. For young officers hoping for a rewarding life in the King’s service, it might be a last chance of making a name for themselves before their lordships cut the fleet to the bone, and cast their sailors, from poop to forecastle, on the beach: such was a nation’s gratitude.

  Ozzard opened the screen door and Keen stepped into the cabin, his cheeks glowing from the sharp northerly wind.

  “Coffee, Val?”

  Keen sat down, but his head was still tilted as if he was listening to the activity on the upper deck.

  Then he took the coffee and sipped it gratefully. Bolitho watched him, thinking of Joseph Browne’s old shop in St James’s, to which Catherine had taken him during their visits to London, and where she must have arranged for all the fine coffee, cheeses and wine to be sent to the ship. Close by had been another shop, Lock’s the hatters. Bolitho had been reluctant for her to indulge in what he had believed extravagance when she had wanted to buy him a new gold-laced hat, to replace the one he had tossed to Julyan the sailing-master when they had sailed to meet the great San Mateo. She had insisted, reminding him, “Your hero purchased his hats here. Did he, I wonder, deprive his Emma of the pleasure of paying?”

  Bolitho smiled at the memory. So many things found and enjoyed in that other London, which he had never known until she had shown him.

  Keen said absently, “The master says we have logged some 860 miles, give or take. If the wind eases I’ll get more canvas on her. I am heartily sick of this!”

  Bolitho looked at the salt-caked stern windows. Six days. It already felt a month or more. He had not kept his promise to raise a glass to Catherine on the night of his birthday. There had been a great gale, the one when they had lost a man outboard, and he had been on deck rather than endure the torment of listening and wondering. As the old heron-like surgeon, Sir Piers Blachford, had remarked, “In your heart you are still a captain, and you find it hard to delegate that task to others.”

  Keen remarked, “I wonder what Zenoria is doing. To have thought her husband lost, and to recover him only to lose him again is sour medicine. I would gladly spare her it.”

  Bolitho glanced at the books, one of which was lying open, as he had left it. Such good company. It was as though he read to her in the late watches of the night, and not merely to himself. When he closed his eyes he could see her so clearly, the candlelight playing around her throat and high cheekbones; could imagine the silk of her skin beneath his hands, her eager response. What would he feel when the ship anchored at English Harbour? She would be thinking about it, remembering the inevitability of it. Fate.

  The sentry tapped his musket on the deck and shouted, “First lieutenant, sir!”

  Keen grimaced. “Why do they bellow so much, I wonder? You would think we were in an open field.”

  Ozzard opened the door, and Lieutenant Sedgemore stepped swiftly inside.

  “I do beg your pardon, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho listened to gun trucks squealing somewhere. The middle gun deck most likely, the seamen gasping and slipping as they ran out the twenty-four-pounders, each action made more dangerous by the tilting obstinacy of the damp planking.

  But Keen knew what he wanted, and would take no secondbest.

  Bolitho said, “If it is the ship’s business that cannot wait, my quarters are yours, Mr Sedgemore.”

  The lieutenant looked at him uneasily, as if expecting another motive, or some new sarcasm.

  “Er—thank you, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho hid a smile. I have obviously passed the test.

  To Keen the first lieutenant explained, “The masthead reported a sail to the nor’-east during the morning watch, sir.”

  Keen waited. “I know. I bid the midshipman insert the sighting in the log.”

  Another flicker of surprise, as if Sedgemore had not expected his captain to concern himself with the ordinary deck-log.

  Bolitho commented as he glanced around the spacious cabin, “This is no Hyperion, Val. I could hear almost everything from my quarters then!” They smiled briefly at one another, sharing the memory.

  Sedgemore said, “She has just been sighted again, sir. Same bearing.”

  Keen rubbed his chin. “Not much choice in this wind.” He looked at Bolitho. “Not another case of Golden Plover, surely, sir?”

  Bolitho said, “If the stranger is an enemy he will keep his distance, and we are surely too slow to run him down. As for secrecy, I expect half of England knows what we are about, and our eventual landfall.”

  Keen was thinking aloud, “Mr Julyan predicts a clear sky this afternoon—like Allday, I think he has an ear in the Almighty’s court. I’ll have our new ‘volunteer’ go aloft, with a glass if need be. Some eyes cannot be trusted.” He hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “I am a fool, Sir Richard. I meant no comparison.”

  Bolitho touched his arm impetuously. “You are no fool, and you speak good sense.”

  Keen said, “Secure the gun crews, Mr Sedgemore. We will exercise repel-boarders drill at six bells.”

  Sedgemore backed out, his eyes everywhere until the door was shut.

  “How is he progressing, Val?”

  Keen watched him anxiously as he touched his left eye with his fingertips. He guessed that Bolitho did it unconsciously: the irritation was never far away. Like a threat.

  “He is not yet quite ready to assume my command, sir, but it does no harm to allow him that belief!”

  They laughed, the threat once more held at bay.

  That same afternoon the northerly wind eased slightly, and the sea’s face showed some colour as the scudding clouds began to scatter. But when the sun eventually revealed itself it held no warmth, and the salt-hardened sails shone in the glare but gave off no tell-tale steam.

  Bolitho went on deck and stood with Jenour by the quarterdeck rail, keeping out of the way as both watches of the hands were turned-to for making more sail as Keen had hoped. Keen was on the opposite side, looking aloft as the first topmen dashed quickly up the quivering ratlines—the captain, his own world revolving around him. Bolitho felt the old touch of envy, and wondered what Zenoria would say if she could see her husband now. His eyes squinting against the hard sunlight, wings of fair hair flapping from beneath his plain, seagoing hat, he was in command and controlling a dozen things at once.

  The senior midshipman, a haughty youth named Houston, was beckoning to the seaman William Owen. Due for lieutenant’s examination at the first opportunity, Houston was very aware of Bolitho’s nearness.

  He called importantly, “Wait!”

  Allday was below the poop with Tojohns and said scornfully, “Look at him, cocking his chest like a half-pay admiral! He’ll be a proper little terror when he gets made up!”

  Tojohns grinned. “If someone don’t stamp
on him first!”

  Keen looked round and smiled. “Ah, Owen! How are you finding life in a somewhat larger craft than your last, eh?”

  Owen chuckled, the midshipman forgotten. “It’ll suit, sir. I just wish her ladyship was here to give some advice to the cook!”

  Bolitho approved. Keen had shown the arrogant “young gentleman” that Owen was a man, not a dog.

  Keen glanced across. “Shall he go aloft, Sir Richard? I’ll not make more sail until he has looked for our companion.”

  Bolitho called, “Take the signal midshipman’s glass, Owen. You may scorn such things, but I think it will aid you.”

  Another memory. In an elegant London shop selling navigational instruments, he had seen Catherine examine a telescope, and heard the establishment’s rotund owner explaining that it was the very latest and best of its kind. He had been very conscious of her inner battle while she touched the gleaming glass; then she had shaken her head, and Bolitho thought he knew why. She had been remembering Herrick, and the beautiful telescope which had been Dulcie’s last present to him. She wanted no part of it, nor any sort of comparison.

  “Deck there!”

  Bolitho shook himself. Owen had reached the main crosstrees while he had been day-dreaming.

  “Sail to the nor’-east, sir!”

  Bolitho looked at the cruising white crests. The wind was still easing; he had no difficulty in hearing Owen’s cry. Yesterday, even this morning, it would have been lost in the violence of wind and sea.

  Bolitho said, “Fetch him down, Captain Keen. You are eager to make her lift her skirts, I’ll wager!”

  Owen arrived on deck even as the great main course and foresail boomed and thundered in noisy disarray until the yards were hauled round to trap the wind, and make each sail harden like a steel breastplate.

  “Well, Owen, what is she?”

  Men who were not actually working at halliards and braces, or fighting their way out on the great yards to free more canvas, loitered nearby to listen.

  Owen replied, “Frigate, Sir Richard. Not big— 28 guns or thereabouts.” He returned the long telescope to Midshipman Houston.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Houston almost snatched it, with such bad grace that Keen remarked, “Mr Sedgemore, I think a word during the last dogwatch would be useful.”

  The first lieutenant paused in the tumult of chasing men to their proper stations, in one case stopping to thrust a loose line into a man’s grasp, and stared at him. His eyes flashed dangerously as they settled on the midshipman and he said sharply, “ See me, Mr Houston, sir!”

  Owen continued in the same unruffled tone, “She wears no colours, Sir Richard, but I’d say she’s a Dutchman. I’ve been close enough to some of them, too close sometimes.”

  Jenour said, “Another enemy, then.” He sounded surprised. “I expected a Frog, Sir Richard.”

  Bolitho kept his features impassive. Once Jenour would never have considered voicing his own opinion; he had always been so trusting, willing to leave judgement and assessment to those who were better experienced. He was ready now, mature enough to offer what he had learned to others. Bolitho knew he would miss him greatly.

  “Sou’-west-by-west, sir! Full an’ bye!” Julyan the sailingmaster was beaming at his mates and rubbing his beefy hands together. Once again, he had been proved right.

  Keen shouted, “Secure and belay, Mr Sedgemore!” Loud enough for all those around him he added, “That was well done. Two minutes shorter this time!”

  True or not, Bolitho saw some of the breathless seamen looking at each other and giving reluctant grins. It was a beginning.

  He said, “Perhaps this fellow is under French orders. We have seen too much of that.” But he was thinking of the depleted squadron awaiting him in the Caribbean. They lacked frigates, and the French would know it. This was no Brittany coastline, or the cat-and-mouse encounters in the North Sea. Here there were countless islands, which would have to be patrolled and searched in case an enemy squadron was in hiding amongst them, and these waters abounded with craft of all kinds: Dutchmen and Spaniards, vessels from the South Americas, all ready to pass their intelligence to the French at Martinique and Guadeloupe. There were also the Americans, who had not forgotten their own fight for independence; they had to be handled with great care. They resented being stopped or examined as possible blockade-runners, and several serious complaints had been presented to the government in London by that young but ambitious nation.

  Bolitho smiled as he recalled Lord Godschale’s warning. “We need tact as well as initiative, and someone who is known to these people.” Bolitho was not quite certain what he had implied by known, but he had never considered himself particularly tactful.

  He said, “Thank you, Owen. I shall need you again presently.”

  Keen watched the man knuckle his forehead and stride away to rejoin his division.

  He said, “A valuable hand, that one, sir—I’ll rate him up to petty officer shortly. He makes many of our landmen look like bumpkins!”

  The wind got up again as darkness closed in around the ship, but the motion was less violent and the hands were able to consume hot food, and an extra ration of rum to make the long day seem less miserable.

  Outside the wardroom which stretched across Black Prince’s massive beam, and was situated directly beneath the admiral’s quarters, Lieutenant James Sedgemore sat more comfortably on a locker with a goblet of madeira in one hand as he completed his onslaught on the senior midshipman. The latter stood like a ramrod, moving only to the ponderous lift and fall of the great hull, and all the men, weapons and supplies crammed into it. He gestured to the open screen doors, where, in the wardroom, Houston could see the officers he observed every watch in their very different guises. Drinking, writing letters, playing cards, while they waited for the last meal of the day. A few of the lieutenants who were feared for their sense of order and discipline sat or lolled in their chairs while a mess-boy bustled amongst them with a jug of wine. The surgeon, usually so grave-faced, was roaring with laughter at something the Royal Marines major had told him. The purser, Julyan the sailing-master: the very company Houston wanted to join, if not here then in another ship. He felt much as Sedgemore about his own future, but at present Sedgemore was in no mood for sympathy. “I’ll not have you throwing your weight about in my ship, simply because a man dare not answer back—do you understand?”

  Houston bit his lip. He had wanted the captain to notice him, but he had certainly never intended to bring all this down on his head.

  “And do not try to get your own back, Mr Houston, or you will think that the horned god of hell has fallen on your miserable shoulders! On our last commission, after Copenhagen— something which even you will have heard about from the older hands—there was one such midshipman, who was a little tyrant. He loved to see the people suffer, as if they didn’t have enough to deal with. They feared him, despite his lowly rank, because he was Sir Richard’s nephew.” He gave a fierce grin. “Sir Richard packed him off the ship, an’ Captain Keen offered him a court martial unless he agreed to resign. So what chance d’you imagine you would have?”

  “I—I’m sorry, sir. Really . . .”

  Sedgemore clapped him on the shoulder as he had seen Bolitho do on occasions. “You are not, Mr Houston, but by God you will be, if it happens again. You will become known as the oldest midshipman in the fleet! Now be off with you. It ends here.”

  The surgeon strolled past. “Busy, Mr Sedgemore?”

  The first lieutenant grinned. “We all go through it.”

  The surgeon made for the companion ladder. “Not I, sir.”

  On the quarterdeck Houston, still smouldering, reported to the officer-of-the-watch for the extra duties Sedgemore had given him. The lieutenant was Thomas Joyce. He was the third most senior, and had seen close action even at the tender age of eleven in his first ship.

  It was bitterly cold, with spray and rain falling from the straining canva
s and rigging like arctic rain.

  Joyce snapped, “Masthead, Mr Houston. A good lookout, if you please.”

  Houston saw one of the helmsmen give a grin as his face showed briefly in the compass light. “But—but there will be nothing in sight, sir!”

  “Then it will be easy for you, won’t it? Now up you go, or I’ll have the bosun liven your dancing for you!”

  Lieutenant Joyce was not an unduly hard man. He sighed and glanced at the tilting compass, then forgot the luckless youth high above the windswept deck.

  We all go through it.

  Down one deck further aft Allday sat in Ozzard’s pantry and watched the little man slicing cheese for the cabin.

  Ozzard asked testily, “What did you want to go and do a stupid thing like that for, John? I always thought you were a bit cracked!”

  Allday smiled. What did he really care about it? He had told him that he had left his share of the gold with Unis Polin at the Stag’s Head. Just in case.

  Ozzard continued, his knife flashing as a mark of his anger. “She could walk off with the lot! You see, I know you, John Allday—know you of old. A pretty face, a neat ankle, and you’re all aback! Anyway, you could have put it in the strongbox at the house.”

  Allday filled his pipe carefully. “What’s the matter with you, Tom? Don’t you like women or summat?”

  Ozzard swung round, his eyes flaming. It only made him look more brittle. “Don’t you ever say that to me again!”

  They both realised that the door was open, and a young seaman who had been cleaning around the great cabin stood staring at them, his eyes shifting nervously from one to the other.

  Allday roared, “Well? What do you want?”

  “Th’—the vice-admiral needs you, Cox’n!”

  Ozzard added sharply, “Be off with you!” The youth fled.

  Ozzard laid down the knife and looked at his hand as if expecting to see it shaking.