Mind you, said Blue Peter to himself, the fellow Frank Benjamin was in fine spirits. The coach-ride that took us into the City of London itself would have been a mumpish affair without Frank jesting about yokels losing their hearts to pretty ewes, and hallooing and waving his hat at the country-girls we passed along the road. Once the coach had left the little knot of taverns and warehouses fronting the Pacific Wharf at Rotherhithe they had been rolling through open countryside, rich with fields of crops despite the lateness of the year, the red-brick of the occasional farmhouses standing out against their greenness. That England is what I wished to see, perhaps, mused Blue Peter, the strong bones of Albion. Perhaps it is only London that I don’t like. What was it that the wit Sam Johnson called it? ‘The Great Wen’, that was it. London is not easy to love, despite the fine great dinner we had, and those French wines which were worthy of the well of Hippocrene itself. The Red Cow at Wapping was perhaps a poor choice of tavern, though, being so close to Execution Dock where pirates such as we are hanged, and the tarred corpses of a couple of them hanging from a gibbet almost outside the window of the upstairs room where we dined. Frank Benjamin is a good fellow, thought Blue Peter, as he felt himself falling asleep at last. He was very enthusiastic for the game of pall-mall, there were wooden balls flying everywhere like a cannonade, and none through the hoop. He is an empirical fellow, though, with a passion always to try things out to see what happens, and that is both a curse and a blessing; I must be careful if I ever let him near the guns, for he is sure to ask. Ha! That strutting fool of a bruiser on the door of the Red Cow called me a blackamoor, but Frank snarled at him that he is not as black as your black heart, you whoreson jackanapes, and the bruiser had quailed before the Frank’s fiery indignation. Blue Peter smiled, then he started to snore.
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges awoke at first light with a hangover. He blinked a couple of times, then sat up and swung his legs onto the deck, the painted canvas deck-covering cold to the touch of his feet as he steadied the swinging of the hanging bunk. He rubbed his face and shouted for Mumblin’ Jake. Despite his crapulence there were things to do, and he must be about them. Mumblin’ Jake came, mumbling curses under his breath, with a cannikin of hot coffee which he thrust into the Captain’s hand then went out again, still mumbling. He returned with a bowl of hot water and shaved the Captain’s head while he drank the coffee, then, on the Captain’s instructions, applied brown boot-polish to his green beard where the previous application had rubbed off on the pillow, mumbling about the hard, the washerwoman’s, work to get boot-polish out of linen pillowcases, damn yer eyes, yer sod.
The Captain dressed himself carefully, not in his accustomed black, nor in the fine gold-frogged powder-blue uniform of a kapitein van schip in the Dutch East India Company, but in an unremarkable buff coat and breeches, grey hose and stout buckled shoes; he had no intention of drawing attention to himself.
While Mumblin’ Jake fetched him some breakfast he took out his writing-case and penned one last letter to add to the bundle that he had written the day before. It read:My dear friend Muhammed,
I trust this missive finds you and your family in good health and prosperity, and that your fine crew of corsairs is in good spirits.
I recently had an excellent lunch with the pipsqueak Billy Pitt, who asked to be remembered to you, and spoke of you with great fondness. He had news of your old chum Stinky Bodfish. An uncle of the fellow’s passed away last year and, since he expired without issue, Humbertus de Pfeffel Bodfish is now the Earl of Jobberknowle and possessed of a very considerable fortune. Bodfish has wasted no time in putting his new-found wealth to work. He has purchased a colonelcy in the Royal Bumbleshire Light Horse (known as the ‘Never-Show-Fears’ because of the brown breeches of the regimental uniform) and has used his presence at Horse Guards Parade and the influence of his inheritance to have himself appointed an attache to Britain’s Consular Mission to the Kingdom of Naples. He will be taking up this posting in the spring of the New Year, and will in consequence be travelling from the port of Southampton to Napoli aboard the barquentine Alcibiades, his voyage commencing shortly after the midwinter festivities of Yuletide. As he will be passing through the Mediterranean Seas I am sure that you will be eager to take the opportunity to meet him again to renew old friendship and to congratulate him on his accession to an Earldom and his acquisition of such a large fortune. I am sorry that I shall not be able to be there for such a joyous reunion of old school-friends!
Please excuse the briefness of this communication, but I have much business to attend to at the present, and but little time for its accomplishment.
Your friend ,
Sylvestre de Greybagges
After the last scritch-scratch of his quill as he signed his name with a flourish Captain Greybagges sanded the letter, read it through again, smiled to himself and sealed it with the green sealing-wax that he had recently bought. He tucked the letters into an inside pocket of his coat, tucked a small double-barrelled pistol into a waistcoat pocket, clapped a short brown scrub-wig and a brown felt hat upon his bald head and called for Mumblin’ Jake to send for two bully-boys.
On the wharf Captain Greybagges found that there were no coaches willing to go to the City; those that were there had all been secured to wait for clients by non-payment of the outward fee and promises of a tip after the return. He was annoyed by this, but returned to the Ark de Triomphe and had the longboat launched, with four of the new intake of crew to assist the bully-boys in pulling the oars. As the longboat was pulled against the slackening tide up the river he was glad that he had done so. He never really felt comfortable in a coach – nasty rattling contraptions, unlike a ship or a boat – and the day was pleasant, although cold. After rounding the first bend Captain Greybagges shed his buff coat and took an oar for a while to warm himself, He found his hangover and sour mood lightening to a more equable state of mind, and he chaffed the new crewmen to put them at their ease, the two bully-boys pulling steadily and saying nothing. It took nearly an hour and a half to reach Blackfriars, where he leapt nimbly ashore. The bully-boys followed him, slipping oaken cudgels under their coats. He left the four new crewmen to watch the boat, tossing them a few coins for an ale and a pie each, warning them with a wink to keep a sharp lookout for wicked pirates.
Captain Greybagges sent some letters from a postal agent’s office, then went to the representatives of Tristero’s secret mail service, a ramshackle shop dealing in second-hand clothes and moth-eaten wigs. The place smelled sourly of old sweat from the piles of apparel, none of which seemed to have been washed, but he found the box marked W.A.S.T.E behind a pile of ragged undergarments and slipped a bundle of sealed and stamped letters into it. The keeper of the shop, a fat slatternly woman in a mob cap and shawl, had no letters for him. He tossed her a silver coin anyway, which she bit, then winked at him lewdly as she hid it in the folds of her gown. The bully-boys waited patiently for him out in the narrow street, but as he was about to walk away he saw a shop nearly opposite. The dusty window was full of bottles on wooden stands. His curiosity made him walk over and peer through the dusty glass. Each of the bottles had a small ship inside it. The Captain felt a pleasurable surprise; how did the little barky get into the bottle through so small a neck? He smiled, as though at a sudden thought, bade the bully-boys to wait, and entered the shop, a bell above the door jangling discordantly.
The shop was filled with bottles of all shapes each containing a tiny ship, and unbottled models of ships of all sizes and types, crammed onto shelves, in glass-fronted counters, hanging from hooks in the the ceiling. A teak model of a pleasure-yacht as large as a kayak, gaff-rigged with red cotton sails, sat on the floor in a cradle of varnished yellow deal. Next to it was a very small ship’s cannon with a bore of no more than an inch, perfect in every detail, even to tiny Chatham proof-marks stamped into the brass barrel next to the touch-hole.
“Can I assist you, good sir?” came a deep voice from the rear of the shop.
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The Captain walked towards the voice, pausing to admire a beautiful Spanish galleon in a two-gallon rum-jug, its sails of silk stiffened with starch to appear filled with a stiff breeze, the pennons flying from its mastheads almost seeming to wave.
“Come, sir, let me see you!” said the voice.
As the Captain reached the back of the shop he saw a broad black-haired bearded face peering over a counter-top, and the gaping brass mouth of a blunderbuss post-carbine pointing unwaveringly at him. Bright blue eyes regarded him from under bushy black brows. He was about to ask the fellow why he was on his knees, but the bearded head moved along the top of the counter and around the end and he realised that the man was a hunchbacked dwarf, his chin barely higher than the Captain’s belt. He had the appearance of a keg on stumpy legs, his arms heavily muscled and covered with tattoos. The gun pointed unwaveringly at the Captain’s midriff.
“Come, sir! Can you not speak?” he rumbled.
“My apologies, sir. I am Captain … er … Oplichtenaar. I mean you no harm, I vow!” said the Captain, removing his hat and bowing politely.
“No, perhaps you do not,” said the dwarf, lowering the gun, carefully slipping the flint to half-cock before placing it behind the counter, “but one cannot be too careful. There are many wicked thievish characters a-circulating around these opprobrious lanes, rascally cullies – aye, and infandous mollies, too! - alike to pi-dogs around a shambles. Now, how may I be of assistance to you this day?”
“How do you get the ships into such tiny bottles? I confess myself amazed!”
The dwarf put back his head and roared with laughter. “Hah! Maybe you would not steal my purse, but you would surely steal my arts, if you could! As would many curious and grasping knaves! Why only last month the fool of a pie-maker next door drilled a hole through yonder wall hoping to espy me about my labours and to learn my secrets. I squirted vinegar and pepper in his stupid eye with a barber’s ear-syringe, then sued him for the cost of repairs to the wall. The lawyer took as his fee a brandy-bottle with a little desk inside, and upon it a wee ink-pot and quill, some papers tied about with pink ribbon and a wig on a stand. The pink ribbon was the very devil, but by chance I found some very wispy French silk knickers, cut thin strips of the fabric, treated them with a special solution and made them flat with a pressing-iron the size of a thimble. ”
The Captain joined him in his merriment, until he had to wipe tears from his eyes.
“My heart and liver, sir, but you are a droll fellow! I confess myself very pleased to make your acquaintance!” Captain Greybagges shook his head. “Your ship-models, your mijnheertjes, as a Dutchman might say, are not only finely-wrought but also very accurate in their representation of the full-sized article. Am I correct to assume that you have been to sea?”
“I have indeed. I was a ship’s carpenter for many a long year. Sailed upon many seas, upon waters grey, white and blue. Across the German Ocean, back and forth until I could tell the longtitude by my sense of smell alone. To the Americas. To far Cathay. Sailed in rotten tubs not fit to be broken up for kindling-wood, and in fine ships with bottoms of copper and gold-leaf upon their transoms and figureheads. Served under some of the greatest captains, and endured servitude under dunces, and tyrants, too – I will not dignify them as captains, nor even as commanders – who had but little claim to be even the basest forms of humanity, more alike to devils.” He regarded the Captain steadily from under his bristling brows. “Jebediah Vane was the worst. Couldn’t keep his hands off a coin. Couldn’t keep his manhood in his britches. Couldn’t keep a bottle from his lips. The crew voted him out at the last, and we pleaded for pardon from the governor of Virginia, who obliged us in that for only about half of what we possessed. T’was Vane that gave me the notion for my business, though. He would always be a-mocking me for my size. ‘Har-har-har!’ he’d say, ‘ship’s carpenter be yuz? Yuz be such a damn-yer-eyes runt yuz oughta make little ships for sailin’ around in the bottoms of bottles, round ‘n’ round ‘til yuz goes aground on the lees, ye swab! Har-bloody-har-har.’ When I heard he’d been hanged I am ashamed to say I celebrated, which is how I came across the wispy pink French silk knickers, for I am not a frequenter of such places in the normal course of things, only when I have had one too many.”
“Good Lord!” said Captain Greybagges, eyebrows raised. “Do you mean to say that you were once a pirate?”
“No more than you, Captain Oplichtenaar, who has two pistols in his weskit pockets, a stiletto in an arm-sheath in his left coat-sleeve and two bully-boys outside big enough to pull a ox-plough.” The bearded dwarf managed to look innocent and amused simultaneously. Captain Greybagges regarded him for a second, then burst into laughter again.
“I shall ask you no questions, mind you!” said the dwarfish man, “for your business is yours as my business is mine, and I think you wish to consult me in my professional capacity, not I in yours, and that may be done more companionably over a glass or two of hot rum-grog, surely? Tell your two bruisers to take a drink in the corner ale-house. I will put up the ‘back-in-an-hour’ sign and nobody will bother us while we yarn awhile.”
“A very singular fellow, is Alf Docklefar,” said Captain Greybagges, “very singular, indeed.”
The remains of a very late supper covered the table in the wardroom of the Ark de Triomphe: a ham, with not much ham left upon its bone; the skeletal remains of several roasted chickens; heels of loaves; the crumbs of a Spotted Dick, soaking up the last dribbles of a warm sauce of Muscovy sugar, spices, egg-yolks, cider and rum; rinds of cheeses; a large brown-glazed ale-jug and assorted wine-bottles.
“And here is a very singular bottle for you. One which you may not empty, but wonder instead at how it came to be filled.”
Captain Greybagges passed a cloth bundle to Bulbous Bill Bucephalus. The sailing-master unwrapped a clear glass wine-bottle and peered at it.
“It be a tiny ship! A barquentine … no, a hermaphrodite brig! … no, more of a brigantine, hmm….”
“Give it here, you lubber, wi’ a curse!” said Israel Feet, taking the bottle and pering into it. “It be more of a large poleacre, upon my oath!”
“I thought it more of a balener, though it could be a ballinger. Tis surely not a barque, a bilander or a bergantina, that much is clear,” said the Captain, sipping ale, and winking at Blue Peter. “The after-mast being a luffing gaff-rig throws it all into the darkest of confusion, d’you see? And that stun-sail on the topmast royal is ambiguous to say the very least. Alf Docklefar makes ‘em.”
“That cannot be a stun-sail!” said Bill hotly. “It can only be a sky-scraper trysail, jury-rigged in the Corsican manner! Given the shape o’ the rest o’ the riggin’, o’ course.”
“I think the puzzle is not what type of vessel it is,” said Blue Peter, who had taken the bottle in turn, “but how the vessel got into the vessel, ho-ho!”
Frank Benjamin took the bottle and studied it.
“Is there some doubt about which type of boat this is?” he said, examining the small model closely, his pince-nez spectacles on the end of his nose.
“Mr Docklefar has a prodigious knowledge of ships, and that small facsimile is cunningly wrought so that it cannot be easily categorised or given a name. An amusing enigma for sailors to ponder and dispute over. Why! One could claim the lower gun-ports were really unused oar-holes and it thus could be a dromond or even a galleass!”
“How it is put inside is no mystery,” said Mr Benjamin. “One’s first thought is that the bottle has been cracked open and then re-joined with a transparent spiritous glue, but even the finest shellac has a slight yellow tinge and there is no sign of that. The ship must necessarily have entered through the neck of the bottle, therefore. I think I can see how that could be done, but I shall forbear to say more. Is Alf Dockelfar the only manufacturer of such trifles?”
“Alf claims to be the originator of the art, but others have followed his example,” said the Captain. “A tar can work on s
uch a thing in a berth below decks and keep it in his seamen’s chest between-times, alike to scrimshaw work on bones and on walrus-ivory. Many of the bottled argosies in his emporium were made by sailormen. He acts as a sort of pawnbroker for them, gives loans on ‘em and buys and sells ‘em. There is a demand for them in London, as it sees itself as the great mercantile port of the world. I do not doubt that soon there will be a ship in a bottle in every ale-house, every broker’s office and on the mantelpiece of every shipping-clerk. He does make models of ships that ain’t in bottles. Shipwrights use miniature representations to show to customers what they will be getting for their money. Toys for the children of the wealthy, too, little toy yachts and jolly-boats to sail on duck-ponds. He sells bits and pieces to the other fellows that make little ships. Little anchors of cast printers-lead, little cannon barrels of brass lathed on a watchmaker’s turn, that sort of thing, in all sizes.”
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