Mr Blackmore languidly acknowledged his report. Drinkwater went below. He had half expected to find Morris on deck, not wishing to encounter him in the cockpit. So intense was Drinkwater's loathing of Morris that he would return to the deck rather than remain in his company below. There was something, something indefinable, about him that Nathaniel found distasteful without knowing what it was.
Between decks Cyclops was dim and almost silent. The creaking of her fabric went unnoticed by Drinkwater. A few men sat at the mess tables slung between the guns, lounging and talking. Some swung in hammocks and several watched Drinkwater with idle curiosity. Then one, a fox-faced man named Humphries, nudged his neighbour. A large topman turned round. Drinkwater scarcely noticed the malice that appeared in Threddle's eyes.
He descended to the orlop and turned aft to where, screened off with canvas, the frigate's 'young gentlemen' lived. Drinkwater was happily oblivious of the menace in the air. The foetid atmosphere of the orlop was dark; a darkness punctured by swinging lanterns suspended at intervals from the low deckhead which glowed dimly in the poor air. Drinkwater approached the canvas flap which answered the midshipmen for a door.
He was stopped in his tracks.
At first he was completely uncomprehending. Then the memory of similar, half-glimpsed, actions, and a pang of instinctive recognition in his own loins brought the realisation slamming home to him.
He felt sick.
Morris was naked from the waist down. The handsome young seaman from the main top was bent over a midshipman's chest. There was little doubt what was happening.
For a few seconds Drinkwater was rooted to the spot, helplessly watching Morris's breathless exertions. Then Drinkwater noticed the initials on the chest: 'N.D.' He turned and ran, stumbling along the orlop, desperate for the cool freshness of the upper deck.
He ran full-tilt into Threddle who hurled him back. Drinkwater staggered and, before he could recover, Threddle and Humphries were lugging him aft. Drinkwater struggled in pure terror at re-entering his dismal quarters.
Threddle threw him forward and he fell on his back. For a minute he closed his eyes then a kick in the kidneys forced them open. A fully dressed Morris stood looking down at him. Threddle and Humphries were behind the midshipman. The handsome seaman had shrunk into a corner. He was crying.
'What are we goin' to do wiv 'im, Mr Morris?' asked Humphries his eyes glittering with possibilities. Morris looked at Drinkwater his own eyes veiled. He licked his lips considering the physical possibilities himself. Perhaps he read something in Drinkwater's expression, perhaps his lusts were temporarily slaked or perhaps he feared the consequences of discovery. At last he came to his decision and bent over Nathaniel.
'If,' Morris laboured the word, 'if you mention a word of this to anyone we will kill you. It will be easy — an accident. Do you understand that? Or perhaps you'd like friend Threddle here…' the seaman shuffled forward eagerly, a hand passing to his belt, '… to show you what a buggering is?'
Drinkwater's mouth was quite dry. He swallowed with difficulty.
'I… I understand.'
'Then get on deck where you belong, lickspittle.'
Drinkwater fled. The normality of the scene on deck shocked him profoundly. As he arrived in the waist Tregembo came up and gave him an odd look, but the midshipman was too terrified to notice. 'Mr Blackmore wants you, sir,' called Tregembo as he rushed past.
Drinkwater went aft his heart thumping, doing his best to master his shaking limbs.
A week later Gibraltar was once more closely invested by the besieging Spanish. Rodney had sent the transports on to Minorca and the units of the Channel fleet back to home waters under Rear Admiral Digby. The empty transports had gone with them. His task fulfilled the Admiral sailed for the West Indies with reinforcements for that station.
It is 500 miles from Gibraltar to Port Mahon. The brief respite in the weather was over. A Lleventades blew in their teeth as Cyclops and her consort Meteor struggled to keep the transports and store-ships in order. The convoy beat to windward, tack upon weary tack. At first they kept well south avoiding the unfavourable current along the Spanish coast and the flyspeck island of Alboran but, having made sufficient easting, they held to a more northerly course until they raised the high, snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas and could weather Cape da Gata. With more sea room the convoy spread out and the escorts had even more trouble shepherding their charges.
The weather worsened. Cyclops was a misery. Damp permeated every corner of the ship. Fungi grew in wet places. The companion-ways were battened down and the closed gunports leaked water so that the bilges required constant pumping. The lack of ventilation between decks filled the living spaces with a foul miasma that made men gasp as they came below. Watch relieved watch, four hours on, four off. The galley fire went out and only the daily grog ration kept the men going, that and fear of the lash. Even so tempers flared, fights occurred and men's names were listed in the punishment book.
Things did not improve when Meteor signalled that she would keep the convoy company in Port Mahon while Cyclops cruised offshore and waited for the ships to discharge. Meteor's captain, though half the age of Hope, was the senior. He was known to have a weakness for good wine, dark-haired women and the tables. It was Meteor therefore that secured to a buoy in the Lazaretto Reach and Cyclops that stood on and off the coast, hard-reefed and half-hearted in her lookout for Spanish cruisers.
The fourth day after they had seen the convoy safe into Mahon Humphries went overboard. No one saw it happen, he just failed to answer the muster and a search of the ship revealed nothing. When he heard the news Drinkwater was suddenly afraid. Morris shot him a malignant glance.
On the seventh day the weather began to moderate, but the ocean with typical perversity, sent one misery to succeed the last. Towards evening the wind fell away altogether and left Cyclops rolling viciously in a cross sea, a swell rolling up from the south east.
So chaos remained to plague the frigate and filled Midshipman Drinkwater's cup of misery to overflowing. Somehow the happiness he had felt in Gibraltar seemed unreal, a false emotion with no substance. He felt his own ingenuous naivety had betrayed him. The ugliness of Morris and his perverted circle of lower deck cronies seemed to infect the ship like the dampness and the rank stink. Indeed it so associated itself in his mind with the smell of malodorous bodies in cramped, unventilated spaces that he could never afterwards sense the taint in his nostrils without the image of Morris swimming into his mind. It had a name this thing; Morris had used it with pride. The very recollection made Drinkwater sweat. He began to see signs of it everywhere though in truth there were about a dozen men in Cyclops's crew of over two hundred and sixty who were homosexual. But to Drinkwater, himself in the fever of adolescence, they posed a threat that was lent substance by the continuing tyranny of Morris and the knowledge that Morris possessed henchmen in the form of the physically heavyweight Threddle and his cronies.
Drinkwater began to live in a cocoon of fear. He wrestled unresolvedly with the possession of knowledge he longed to share.
Free of the disturbances of bad weather at last Cyclops cruised a week in pleasant circumstances. Light to fresh breezes and warmer winds took March into April. The frigate smelt sweeter between decks as fresh air blew through the living spaces. Vinegar wash was applied liberally and Devaux had the waisters and landsmen painting and varnishing until the waterways gleamed crimson, the quarterdeck panelling glistened and the brasswork sparkled in the spring sunshine.
On the last Sunday in March, instead of the Anglican service, Captain Hope had read the Articles of War. Drinkwater stood with the other midshipmen as Hope intoned the grim catechism of Admiralty. He felt himself flush, ashamed at his own weakness as Hope read the 29th Article: 'If any person in the Fleet shall commit the unnatural and detestable crime of buggery or sodomy with man or beast he shall be punished with death…'
He bit his lip and with an effort mastered the visceral
fear he felt, but he still avoided the eyes of those he knew were staring at him.
After the solemnly oppressive reminder of the Captain's power the hands had been made to witness punishment. In the recent bad weather two men had been persistent offenders. Hope was not a vicious commander and Devaux, with a simple aristocratic faith in being obeyed, never pressed for strict action, infinitely preferring the indolence of inaction. He was content that the bosun's mates kept Cyclops's people at their duty. But these two men had developed a vendetta and neither captain nor first lieutenant could afford to stand for that.
A drum rolled and the marines stamped to attention as a grating was triced up in the main rigging. A man was called out. Before passing sentence Hope had endeavoured to discover the source of the trouble but to no avail. The lower deck kept its own counsel and guarded its own secrets. The man came forward to where two bosun's mates grabbed him and lashed his wrists to the grating. A piece of leather was jammed into his mouth to prevent him from biting through his own tongue. It was Tregembo.
The drum rolled and a third bosun's mate wielded the supple cat o'nine tails and laid on the first dozen. He was relieved for the second and his relief for the third. After a bucket of water had been thrown over the wretched prisoner's body he was cut down.
With difficulty Tregembo staggered back to his place among the sullen hands. The second man was led out. Threddle's powerful back testified to previous punishment but he bore his three dozen as bravely as Tregembo. When he too was cut down he stood unsupported, his eyes glittering with tears and fierce hatred. He looked directly at Drinkwater.
The midshipman had become inured to the brutality of these public floggings; in some curious way the spectacle affected him far less than the sonorous intonation of that 29th Article of War.
Like many of the officers and men he managed to think of something else, to concentrate on the way the row of fire buckets, each with its elaborately painted royal cipher, swung to the motion of the ship. He found the device reassuring, helping him to master himself after the disquiet of that uncompromising sentence. It was thus disarmed that Threddle caught his eye.
Drinkwater felt the occult force of loathing hit him with near physical impact. The midshipman was certain that he was in some strange way connected with the animosity that existed between these two men that had broken out in persistent and disruptive fighting. It was only with difficulty that Drinkwater prevented himself from fainting. One seaman did. It was the handsome young topman who had been Morris's pathic.
Later in the day Drinkwater passed close to Tregembo as the man worked painfully at a splice.
'I am sorry you were flogged, Tregembo,' he said quietly.
The man looked up. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow, evidence of the agony of working with a back lashed to a bloody ruin.
'You don' have to worry, zur,' he replied. Then he added as an afterthought, 'It shouldn't have to come to that…' Drinkwater passed on, musing on the man's last, incomprehensible remark.
Later that night the wind freshened. At 4 a.m. Drinkwater was called to go on watch. Stumbling forward to the companionway he was aware that once more Cyclops was pitching and tossing. 'They'll shorten sail soon,' he muttered to himself struggling into his tarpaulin as he emerged on deck. The night was black and chilly. A patter of spray came aboard, stinging his face. He relieved Beale who gave him a friendly grin.
At a quarter after four the order came to double reef the topsails. Drinkwater went aloft. He thought little of it now, nimbly working his way out to the place of honour at the yardarm. After ten minutes the huge sail was reduced and the men were making their way to the backstays, disappearing into the darkness as they returned to the deck. As he came in from the yardarm and transferred his weight to a backstay a hand gripped his wrist.
'What the hell…?' He nearly fell. Then a face appeared out of the windtorn blackness. It was the good-looking topman from the main top and there was a wild appeal in his eyes.
'Sir! For Christ's sake help me!' Drinkwater, swaying a hundred feet above Cyclops's heaving deck, yet felt revulsion at the man's touch. But even in the gloom he saw the tears in the other's eyes. He tried to withdraw his hand but his precarious situation prevented it.
'I'm not one of them, sir, honest. They make me do it… they force me into it, sir. If I don't they… kick me, sir…'
Drinkwater felt the nausea subside. 'Kick you? What d'ye mean?' he could hardly hear the man now as the wind whipped the shouted confidences away to leeward.
'The bollocks, sir…' he sobbed, 'For Christ's sake help me…'
The grip relaxed. Drinkwater tore himself away and descended to the deck. For the remainder of the watch as dawn lit the east and daylight spread over the sea he pondered the problem. He could see no solution. If he told an officer about Morris would he be believed? And it was a serious allegation. Had he not heard Captain Hope read the 29th Article of War? For the crime of sodomy the punishment was death… it was a serious, a terrible allegation to make against a man and Drinkwater quailed from the possibility of being instrumental in having a man hanged… and Morris was evil, of that he was certain, evil beyond his own perversion, for Morris was allied to the huge physical bulk of Able-Seaman Threddle and what would Threddle not stop at?
Drinkwater remained in an agony of fear for himself and helplessness at his inability to aid the topman. He felt he was failing his first test as an officer… Who could he turn to?
Then he remembered Tregembo's remark. What was it he had said? He dredged the sentence out of the recesses of his memory: 'It shouldn't have to come to that.' To what? What had Tregembo said before his final remark…
'You don't have to worry.' That was it.
Meaning that he, Drinkwater, did not have to worry. But another doubt seized him. He had only expressed regret that the seaman had been flogged for fighting. Then he realised the truth. Tregembo had been flogged for fighting Threddle and had said the midshipman did not have to worry. Tregembo must therefore know something of what had gone on. 'It' should not have to come to Drinkwater himself worrying? Would the lower deck carry out its own rough justice? Had it already passed sentence on and executed Humphries?
Then Drinkwater realised that he had known all along. Threddle's eyes had blamed his flogging on Nathaniel and subconsciously Drinkwater had acknowledged his responsibility for Tregembo's pain.
He resolved that he would consult Tregembo…
It was the second dog watch before he got Tregembo to one side on the pretext of overhauling the log for Mr Blackmore.
'Tregembo,' he began cautiously, 'why did you fight Threddle?' Tregembo was silent for a while. Then he sighed and said, 'Now why would you'm be axing that, zur?'
Drinkwater took a deep breath. 'Because if it was over what I believe it to have been then it touches the midshipmen as well as the lower deck…' He watched Tregembo's puzzled frown smooth out in comprehension.
'I know, zur,' he said quietly and, looking directly at Drinkwater, added 'I saw what they'm did to you in Gib, zur…' It was Tregembo's turn to be embarrassed.
'I kind of took to 'ee, zur,' he flushed, then resumed with a candid simplicity, 'that's why I did fur 'Umphries.'
Drinkwater was shocked. 'You murdered Humphries?'
'E slipped and I 'elped 'im a bit.' Tregembo shrugged. 'Off'n the jibboom, zur. 'E ent the fust,' he said to alleviate Drinkwater's obvious horror. The midshipman absorbed the knowledge slowly. The burden he had borne was doubled, not halved as he had hoped. The respect for the law engendered by his upbringing was suffering a further assault. Tregembo's lawless, smuggling, devil-may-care attitude was a phenomenon new to him. His face betrayed his concern.
'Doan ye worry yerself, Mr Drinkwater. We're used to buggers and their ways. Most ships 'ave 'em but we doan like it when they doan keep it to 'emselves…' He indicated the handsome seaman coiling a rope amidships. He looked up at them. There was appeal and desperation in his eyes, as though he knew the substance
of a conversation taking place sixty feet away.
'Yon Sharples is a good topm'n but 'e's scared of 'em, see. I doan wonder if ye'd seen what they done to 'im…' Tregembo reached into a pocket and slipped a quid of tobacco into his mouth.
'E won't 'ave owerlong to wait,' he concluded ruminatively.
Drinkwater stared sharply at Tregembo. 'The lower deck'll look after its own, zur, but Mr Morris 'as a cockpit problem. Cockpits usually 'ave their own justice, zur.' Tregembo paused sensing Drinkwater's sense of physical inadequacy.
'You'd easy outnumber 'im, zur, wouldn't 'e?'
The log line was neatly coiled in its basket and Tregembo rose. He walked forward knuckling his forehead to the first lieutenant as he passed. Drinkwater remained aft at the taffrail staring astern unseeing. He felt no shame at the suggestion that he was alone unable to thrash Morris… yet it saddened him to think that Morris could terrorise not just him and his fellow midshipmen but the less fortunate Sharples… There was so much in the world that he did not comprehend, that was at variance with what the picture books and learning had given to his mind's eye… perhaps… but no it was not possible…
He turned to walk forward. The whole of Cyclops lay before him. Devaux and Blackmore were at the foot of the mizen mast. The boom and spanker overhead. She was a thing of great beauty, this ship, this product of man's ingenuity and resolve to conquer. For mankind went onwards, following an undirected destiny at no matter what cost to himself. And in the echo of that resolve, exemplified by the frigate, he cast about for the will to do what he thought was right.
Chapter Six
Prize Money
May 1780
His Britannic Majesty's frigates Meteor and Cyclops saw their charges into Spithead in the last week of May 1780. News had just come in from the West Indies that Admiral Rodney had fought a fleet action with De Guichen off Martinique on 17th April. But the battle had not been decisive and there were disturbing rumours that Rodney was courtmartialling his captains for disobedience.
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