The Nizam's Daughters

by Mallinson, Allan

Peto was, indeed, well pleased with the fair winds of late. At the outset of the voyage, as they crossed an uncommonly tranquil Biscay, Nisus had all sail set and, though Peto had chafed at the need (for they could make no more than five knots), Hervey had been pleased at the opportunity it gave for him to learn the sail plan – and he had gained some approval from the crew by his eagerness to visit the tops. By the time they had reached the Cape Verdes the wind had freshened and they had cruised then on, for the most part, without jibs and staysails. On the run south-east to the Cape they had topsails only, and occasionally the foresail, and she had come up past Mauritius and the Maldives on the south-westerlies of the dying monsoon without Peto once needing to set the topgallants.

  These were unknown waters for him, however. He had seen the River Plate a year or so after Trafalgar, he had crossed the North Atlantic half a dozen times, and he had regularly patrolled the Azores. But his fighting had been in the Mediterranean. The sultry breezes of the Indian Ocean were as new a pleasure as they were for Hervey. He was mindful, though, of the greater need for caution in the tropics, for the heat of the sun played tricks on sea currents and wind alike. But these breezes held a sensuous promise too, the breath of the Spice Islands – the ‘Islands of Spicerie’, an earlier locution that had fascinated him since first he had seen it, as a captain’s servant more than a decade before, on an old chart. He stood by the rail now, luxuriating in the warmth and the recollection.

  ‘Do you wish you might be with the East India Squadron for some more definite period?’ asked Hervey, having joined him from a full half-hour’s strapping.

  Peto nodded thoughtfully. ‘I should wish to see the great anchorage at Trincomalee: it has no equal, I have heard. And yes, I should welcome a cruise in warm waters. Any seaman would. I should wish to weather a typhoon once in my service. The China Sea’s reckoned the most dangerous in all the oceans – shoals and reefs so steep-to that the sounding line can give no warning of their proximity.’

  ‘But . . .?’

  Peto sighed. ‘I have no appetite for squadron work, unless I should be commodore. Now that peace is come, advancement will be slow. I shall not see a seventy-four, likely as not. I should as soon take my pleasure under Admiralty letter in a frigate, therefore.’

  Hervey would have imagined it thus. Peto, he now knew, was his own man.

  * * *

  Within the hour the wind was falling unaccountably, and by late morning Nisus had every yard of sail set but could make little steerage way. In the afternoon Peto conceded that they were becalmed and was contemplating the unwelcome prospect of dropping anchor for the night: being in unfamiliar waters, he was doubly wary of drifting closer to the shore than he would wish. And, thus becalmed, her crew were put to making and mending, and a boat was lowered so that Peto might take a closer look at the bottom, for he very much feared that weed was growing, she being overdue for recoppering. By the chart they were but a few miles south of the old French settlement of Pondicherry – Hervey climbed the mainmast for a glimpse of the place whose name had possessed almost magical qualities since his first schoolroom meeting with Robert Clive. But the great fort there remained just a little too distant for his telescope, and so he had to content himself with listening to one of the mates recounting how he had weathered a typhoon in an East Indiaman before the turn of the century.

  The long warm hours were a great pleasure for the crew, now able to aerate their hammocks and wash and hang to dry all manner of things without the usual risk of salt spray spoiling their hussifry. Peto was pleased with this contentment, for there were few favours remaining in the purser’s store with which he might reward them, and he had of late been increasingly exercised by the leak below the waterline, as well as, now, by the accumulation of weed. The leak was too near the keel for the carpenters to make good, and several times a day hands were sent below to the pumps. This back-breaking work, in the hot and stuffy conditions below deck, had not made for the happiest of crews before this day’s respite and, with weed as well as a leak, Peto resolved to put his ship into dry dock as soon as they reached Calcutta.

  For the rest of the day Nisus lay motionless in the water – at least as far as forward progress was concerned, for by late afternoon it was evident that she had drifted west towards the coast, with now not twenty fathoms beneath her. And so Peto, for the first time since they had left France, ordered that her anchor be dropped for the night. He did so reluctantly, but he had no wish to find himself on a lee shore when dawn came. At about eight-thirty, however, a southeasterly blew up, as if from nowhere, and at once Nisus was a bustle of activity again, hands piped to their stations with an alacrity which would have done them credit had they been beating to quarters. And much to Peto’s satisfaction it was too, for at that time of an evening it was a very fair test of a crew’s handiness to have the best part of half of them turned out from their hammocks or recreation so fast. Hervey had been sponging Jessye down when he felt the first breath of wind, and he began drying her off as the mates’ pipes began shrilling. Yet even in the short time it took him to rub her down the capstan was turning, the muscles of three-score marines and seamen straining at the bars, and the topmen were making ready to loose sail. Nisus was under way in less than a quarter of an hour from Peto’s first order, the breeze freshening throughout that time, so that by nine-fifteen, when at last the captain went to his quarters for some supper, she was making six knots with unreefed topsails and her foresail set. Now very much gratified by the address which all had shown, he lit a cigar, resolved to open his last bottle of malmsey and sent Flowerdew with an invitation for Hervey to join him.

  ‘Well, Captain Hervey,’ he began, as they each took a chair by the stern windows, Peto looking out at the wake for any sign of increase in their speed, for the evening was still light; ‘we should make Calcutta in ten days if we can count on this wind, and then, I think, our paths must diverge.’

  Hervey sipped his malmsey and lit a cheroot. Though he looked forward keenly to release from his confinement, he would nevertheless miss these opportunities for intimacy. ‘Captain Peto, I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have extended. As I was saying to you only yesterday, the passage has been all ease.’

  Peto inclined his head slightly, a gesture of both acknowledgement and pride. But before he could make reply there was a sudden commotion outside, making him sit bolt upright with indignation. ‘What in heaven’s name—’

  The door burst open. A midshipman stumbled in, and quite overcome by the surroundings seemed unable to say a word. ‘Fire, sir!’ he shouted suddenly.

  Peto was on his feet at once, dousing his cigar in his glass. He raced from his cabin to see smoke billowing from the galley ventilators and long tongues of flame sending sparks into the foresail. He bounded up a companion-ladder to the quarterdeck, roughly pushing aside another midshipman: ‘Hard-a-lee!’ he bellowed.

  The officer of the watch had already put the helm over and Nisus was answering to starboard.

  ‘Beat to quarters, Mr Belben,’ he barked. ‘Close starboard gunports!’

  The Marines bugler sounded ‘Alarm’. Firemen, one from each gun, raced to their posts. Gun captains on the weather side slammed closed the gunports (even on an open deck Peto was not about to risk additional vent). The carpenters were already connecting hoses to the suction pumps. There was – thank heavens, he sighed – enough water to be able to get up force at once rather than having to wait for the seacocks to be opened. The decks were all activity, but perfect order. Nisus had a well-drilled crew. Peto had heard too much as a young midshipman of the explosion aboard the Boyne, and the loss of the first Amphion, ever to take fire drill for granted. Men at their quarters, with the officers under whom they worked in action, were less susceptible to the blind panic which had overtaken the Boyne in its dying moments. He cast his eye about: no sign of panic here, thank God. But why was this fire so fierce? What was fuelling it?

  At the alarm the surgeon and his mates took station
on the quarterdeck rather than the orlop, and soon they were attending to burns, the Marines sentries at the companionway first satisfying themselves that the wounds were serious enough for prompt attention. The foresail was now well alight but the hoses were at least having some effect in keeping the flames from spreading, dousing as much canvas as the jets could reach, with one playing directly into the galley ventilator. Two lines, one of sailors, the other of marines, were passing buckets to and from the cisterns at the head of the chain pumps by the mainmast. Hervey had gone straight to Jessye’s stall, where Johnson was already trying to calm her, and he got the marines to throw water over the roof and onto the bed. He pulled one of her blankets from the tackling chest, plunged it in her water butt and threw it over her head and shoulders, then pulling out a second, dousing it and throwing that over her back. Even with her head covered, with Hervey and Johnson standing by, and her head collar on, she was almost frantic, for nothing could keep the smoke out of her nostrils, and it was smoke that tokened fire – as she had known more than once in stables in Spain. She reared and struck her head on the roof. She reared a second time and dislodged one of the timbers. Never had Hervey seen her so terrified. He called to the marines, who were reluctant at first to come into the stall until Johnson’s tongue left them no other honourable course. ‘We must get her on her side,’ called Hervey above the din. ‘Johnson, turn her head this way. You men get your shoulders to her flanks and be ready to push when I get her forelegs from under her.’

  Wary of her hind legs, the marines edged around the stall. ‘Keep alongside ’er,’ snapped Johnson; ‘if she does lash out you won’t take t’full force of ’er feet that way.’

  ‘Ready!’ called Hervey, a hand on each fore cannon. ‘Now!’ And he snatched both feet back. She fell not too heavily, sliding down the side of the stall, and he whipped off the blanket from her head so that she might see him as well as hear his voice. Johnson lay across her flank as the marines edged back towards the stall sides to be clear of her still active legs. But in a few seconds she was calm again and Hervey dismissed them, to their obvious relief.

  He kept her down a full fifteen minutes, calming her the while – stroking, talking softly, lying on her neck, though she had more than enough strength to throw both him and Johnson aside had she wanted. In that time the crew managed at last to put out the fire, but smoke still drifted from below, and the smell of charred wood and rope hung heavily on deck. He would keep her down a while longer – until the wind and the hoses had got rid of the worst of it.

  Captain Peto was receiving the last of the damage reports from the carpenter when Hervey joined him half an hour after the flames had been finally doused. Things were bad; but they could have been much worse, of that Peto was sure. Before they had got up pressure on all the hoses, oil had run, burning, along the lower deck from the galley towards the hay and straw in the orlop. Two men were dead – both victims of their own panic more than the flames. One had missed his footing racing from the tops, falling across a spar and breaking his neck. The other had sunk like a stone when he threw himself into the sea, somehow persuaded by drink that it was the safer station. Midshipman Ranson had dived after him at once, but it was an hour before a boat fished the man out. Several of the crew were sorely burned. The cook, whose galley had been the source of the conflagration, was so badly scorched about the face that the surgeon did not expect him to live. His skin looked for all the world like that of the pig which had been roasted for the crew when they left France. Peto knew he was unlikely to learn, therefore, what had caused so fierce a blaze, or one so hot, for it had driven all back at first, even when pressure had been got up high on the hoses. Hervey could see well enough his chagrin, and he resolved not to be the first to speak.

  ‘You shall be delayed as little as is expedient, Hervey,’ said Peto – not sharply, but with exaggerated briskness nevertheless. ‘But I shall have to put in somewhere before Calcutta. To begin with, I have broken pumps, and we have shipped so much water – the hoses have sluiced us from top to bottom. I want to put the injured men ashore, too. I fear, in any case, that all your bedding and fodder is ruined.’ Hervey nodded. It was some time before he summoned the nerve to ask where they might put in.

  ‘Madras,’ replied Peto, ‘though there’s no wharfage there: everything has to go through the surf.’

  He left the captain to his thoughts, and the occasional brisk word of command, for a good ten minutes. ‘How long might we be at Madras?’ he ventured when he sensed the ship’s routine was returning.

  ‘Four days, perhaps five.’

  ‘Then, with your leave, I would take Jessye ashore: she was excessively restive during the fire, and it will be well to let her run about. And it has been six months, sir: I am all anxiety myself to see what the country is about.’

  THE HONOURABLE COMPANY

  Madras Roads

  Nisus dropped her anchor at two the following afternoon within sight of the great fort of St George, where Robert Clive had begun his service – a beginning that had taken him, as Hervey knew from his earliest lessons in the schoolroom, to Plassey and immortality. He climbed the shrouds better to spy their landfall, and soon he was able to make out the palaces extending for a mile or so along the shore – perfectly white, colonnaded, bespeaking a dignified wealth, a confident power. The massive walls of the fort – as big as those of any fortress he had yet seen – enclosed buildings of such grace and proportion as to suggest that Wren himself might have been here, the fine spire of St Mary’s church looking almost as if it were standing in the square mile of the City of London. How strange it seemed. He had expected an altogether more . . . native picture – the jungle encroaching, perhaps; domes and cupolas instead of the colonnades. Meanwhile, the quarterdeck having regained its spirits, Captain Peto was engaged in an exchange of signals with the fort, from which he emerged tolerably content to give instructions to make ready the boats.

  The marines reassembled the sling tackle which had brought Jessye aboard, and lowered the canvas cradle into her stall. Private Johnson deftly fastened her in, and two dozen sweating men heaved on the halyards to lift her out of the square twelve feet that had been her stable these past months. She was swung out over the side with nothing more than a whicker, as she had been swung aboard, to Johnson’s evident relief and satisfaction. Hervey was already in the captain’s barge as the cradle descended slowly, watching apprehensively as Jessye began the instinctive treading motion when her feet felt the water. When she had reached her natural buoyancy and begun to swim properly, although still restrained by the sling tackle, Hervey leaned out to clip a leading-rope to her head collar. Although he did not suppose she would have difficulty following the boat, he knew she would feel more secure if he were leading her. As soon as it was fastened and the strain on the hoisting rope slackened, he leaned out as far as he could to unfasten the tackle and free her from the sling. Once she was safely astern, the oars struck for the shore, Hervey encouraging her the while.

  At first all was well. Jessye kept up easily with the stroke of the oars. As they left the calm of the ship’s lee, however, she began to fall back, and the swell kept putting her out of sight. She was rapidly becoming distressed, and though there was but a half-mile to the shore, Hervey became anxious too, for at Corunna he had seen strong horses drown in their panic. ‘Captain, will you hold the rope?’ he asked. ‘I’d better go to her.’

  Peto raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course, if you must,’ he replied, sighing as he handed the rope in turn to the midshipman in command of his barge.

  Hervey threw off his coat and shoes, and slipped over the side. He had a moment’s vision of the sea snakes, shuddered at the thought, but then struck out for his mare. The water was warm, perhaps even warmer than the mill-race at Horningsham in summer, and he reached her in a couple of dozen strokes. She settled at once, with a whicker of contentment as soon as he touched her neck, and, the current taking them easily towards the shore, he even thought he would have
a pleasant time of their swim. He was not as fast through the water, however, Jessye swimming in the only way she knew. A little abashed, he had to grab hold of her mane, taking care to keep his arm well stretched to stay clear of her busy legs. Once settled to the rhythm, however, they both seemed to enjoy it as much – more, for sure, than the times they had swum the half-frozen rivers of northern Spain. Then, sooner than expected, they were amid the breakers. The beach shelved gently and Jessye found her footing before her master did. But as soon as his feet touched bottom he sprang astride her.

  The joy was instant – to be up on his little mare again after so many months – and she, kicking up through the surf, was likewise full of spirit once more. He was sure he could never describe it in any letter home – though try, in due turn, he must. He looped the rope about her neck and put her (or allowed her) into a canter along the water’s edge of the flat, sandy shore. She did not even buck. Months of box-rest, and here she was as good as gold! How genuine a horse could a man want? He could imagine no other as they slowed and turned after a quarter of a mile (for he wanted no strains), and he talked to her every yard of the way, encouraging, praising. She had stood patiently in that stall, in fair weather and foul, for half a year, and now she was responding to his leg and voice as if she were in the riding school at Wilton House. If only his old Austrian riding master could see them now: what pleasure would that eminent equestrian take in seeing the practical effects of his instruction!

  Spain had been hotter – much hotter. But there the heat had come unquestionably from the sun. Here it was as if the air had been warmed in some vast oven, for it touched every part of him the same. There was no hiding from it, no shade. Seeking shade was anyway of no help, for the sun had no especial strength. This was the heat of the land, collected, stored, year after year. This was a heat that annealed rather than scorched, invigorated rather than weakened. He looked about as they trotted back to where the captain’s barge was being hauled ashore. Faces were turned towards them – open, warm-looking. It took a while for him to tumble – black faces. Or rather, brown; darker, certainly, than he had somehow imagined, and in stark contrast to the pearl-white buildings behind them. And the colours of their clothes – so bright, so unrestrained. Never had he seen their like. Heavens, but these women were arresting – shapely, graceful, smiling unselfconsciously. He wanted to jump from Jessye’s back to embrace them. How a head could be turned in this place!