A Sea Unto Itself

by Jay Worrall

  “She’s been moved to the victualing wharf, sir,” Sykes explained. “It’s only just around that bend yonder. As you can easily walk, I thought it best to send the boat back.”

  Charles introduced the midshipman to Jones and the two women. Sykes, he noticed, eyed Constance admiringly and greeted her with sputtered enthusiasm. Good luck to you there, Charles thought.

  A short way, with the carriage following, brought them to his ship, moored fore and aft to bollards on the dock. Charles was pleased to see numbers of Cape Town’s marines lined along the wharf to prevent desertions. Hogsheads of foodstuffs, livestock, and casks of fresh water were being assembled alongside, there to be swayed across. They boarded by means of a gangway. He repeated the introductions to the other ship’s officers. The elder of the Mrs. Jones promptly announced, “I am fatigued and wish to retire. If you would show me to our cabin, please.”

  Charles had considered this problem earlier, without reaching a conclusion. There were, of course, no spare cabins on Cassandra. Indeed, there was hardly any free space between decks even to swing a hammock. There was the women’s privacy to be considered and, where Constance was concerned, the safety of his crew. The most suitable accommodation on board was his own quarters. He hated to give it up. The only real alternative being to turn over two or even three of the wardroom cabins. That would mean displacing a similar number of his officers to the already cramped gunroom where they would have to berth with the midshipmen.

  “I’m sure the captain’s cabin will suit, my dear,” Jones announced airily. “It will be a little cramped, but we must all make sacrifices.”

  Charles racked his brain one last time to find an alternative, without success. He observed Bevan grinning at his discomfort. “Of course,” he said, surrendering to the inevitable. “Mr. Sykes, if you would be so good as to show the way.”

  The moment the Jones’ departed, he turned to his lieutenants. “Daniel, I will be pleased to accept your gracious offer of the loan of your cabin. You may have Winchester’s smaller one. Stephen, you are awarded Beechum’s palatial accommodations; and you, Mr. Beechum, have the honor of berthing with the midshipmen.” No one seemed pleased with this change of arrangements, which gave Charles some small satisfaction.

  The supplies of water, firewood and foodstuffs were completed by midmorning the next day. The damaged mizzen boom had been quickly replaced and re-rigged. Only then was Cassandra kedged back into the harbor where the required powder and shot were lightered out and stowed away. Late in the afternoon, as the last of the shot were lowered into their lockers, Admiral Cobbham had himself ferried out and climbed aboard.

  “I want to express my thanks for the promptness with which our needs were attended to,” Charles said sincerely.

  “Only too pleased, don’t you know?” Cobbham answered. “I’ve only come over to wish you luck and a speedy voyage, eh? Mrs. C. and Arabella were hoping that you’ll call to dinner when you’re next back this way. Perhaps you’ll bring along your officers, what? Any single?”

  “I would be honored, sir, and I am sure I speak for my two unmarried lieutenants as well. Please convey my fondest regards to your wife and daughter.”

  Midshipmen Hitch and Aviemore, who had overheard this conversation, stood smartly by the entry port as Cobbham descended. They passed the remainder of the evening with an ‘eh,’ or ‘what,’ or ‘don’t you know’ at the tail of every sentence until Charles snapped at them to stop it.

  At dawn the next morning, at the start of the run of the tide, Cassandra weighed her anchor. A brilliant late-summer sun warmed the air, the barren crags at the tip of southern Africa receding over the aft port side quarter. With an increasingly brisk beam wind they weathered the Cape of Good Hope before noon and Cape Agulhas, the true southernmost extremity of the continent, by nightfall.

  Charles spent the day pacing the quarterdeck, unwilling to return to the closet-sized space that was now his cabin, attempting to untangle what he might actually find when he arrived at the mouth of the Red Sea.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Captain Charles Edgemont stood on the windward side of his quarterdeck looking out at the rugged heights of the mountains of Yemen, hard and deeply ravined, on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. At their base, almost as if resting on the sea, he could just see the port of Aden. If he used his glass, he could make out the shapes of the whitewashed, flat-roofed buildings in the town. The sky stood an unbroken expanse of deep blue, shaded darker in the east, a blaze of blood-orange sun settling into the horizon off the bow. A golden highway reflected across the wave tops in a line, as straight as any rule, connecting living ship and dying light. He felt a twinge of anticipation that the end of the long voyage lay just a day ahead.

  Fifty-one days from Cape Town, he calculated. Cassandra had made good progress northward following the so-called ‘inner channel’ between Madagascar and the African mainland in order to avoid any possibility of running afoul of French naval forces based at Mauritius. More particularly, it was one hundred and thirty-three days since they had weighed anchor in Chatham dockyard, and eleven more-as if he hadn’t counted them-since he had parted from Penny at their home in Tattenall. Four and a half months had passed since he had heard anything of her. She must have given birth by now. He found it troubling that he could no longer see her face before his eyes or hear her laughter whenever he chose to do so, but the image would come to him unbidden when his mind was elsewhere, sometimes with startling clarity, leaving a void as it faded. He had learned not to dwell on the subject unduly, else there was no bottom to the well of self-pity he would fall into. He forced his attention on the sails, full bellied, and braced around sharply to catch the wind. He saw nothing amiss that he should call to Bevan’s attention, so he decided to speak with the master instead. “Mr. Cromley, a word if you please,” he said crossing the deck.

  “Sir?” Cromley answered from his customary place near the binnacle.

  “How long do you reckon before we try the straits?” Ninety miles farther along the coast, the Gulf of Aden narrowed like the waist of an hourglass at the Straits of Mandeb, the entrance to the Red Sea. Mocha, his rendezvous with Admiral Blankett’s squadron, lay only fifty miles or so beyond on the Arabian side. He expected to encounter one or more of Blankett’s force on patrol well before reaching the port.

  Cromley answered without hesitation. “It’ll be too late to make the passage tonight.”

  “I see,” Charles said. “I take it you do not wish to try the straits in the dark?”

  “No, sir, not even with a full moon. It’s not more than fifteen mile across, and that with Perim Island and the Seven Brothers islands and plenty of shoals. It might be attempted for good reason. I wouldn’t advise it unless there were urgent cause.”

  Before Charles could respond to this he heard the lookout in the mainmast tops shout down, “Deck! Sail ahead, direct on the bow.” He looked forward, only to shield his eyes against the glare of the sun.

  To Winchester, doing his turn as watch officer, he said, “Stephen, who is the sentry at the masthead?”

  “George Crowe, I believe.”

  “Send up a replacement and have him report on deck, if you please.”

  Within moments the seaman Crowe, a deeply tanned man, thin as a stick, with a bowlegged gait, came onto the quarterdeck. He cautiously approached and pressed the knuckles of his fist against his forehead. “Yer sent fer myself, sur?”

  “I did. You must have uncommon eyes. How could you see anything into that sun?”

  “It weren’t direct in t’ sun, sur. It were just ofter t’ side. If’n yer peer through t’ gaps in yer fingers, yer can see fair keen. ‘Tis a trick I learnt.”

  “And very useful it is. What can you tell me about the craft?”

  Crowe pulled on his lower lip, then caught himself and scratched at his nose instead. “Well, I’d say they be about as far as yer can see, mebby ten league. T’were only a touch o’ t’eir t’gallants I saw, sur.
”

  “They? Were there more than one?”

  “Might o’ been a pair. I only seen one fer sure. Her masts in a line, braced up tight, bearing away like.”

  Charles smiled his appreciation. “I thank you for your alertness, Crowe. You may have the remainder of the watch at liberty as a consequence.”

  “T’ank yer, sur,” the seaman knuckled his forehead again and backed away.

  “What do you make of it?” Winchester asked. He had been standing nearby, listening intently.

  “I’m sure it’s Admiral Blankett’s frigates patrolling the exit to the Red Sea. They seem a fair distance afield though.”

  “I would have thought they might have signaled, or run down on us to see who we are,” Winchester offered.

  Charles pondered this for a moment. “Possibly we’re at such a distance they didn’t see us.” He had an uncomfortable sense that, with the last of the sunlight before them, Cassandra's sails should have stood out in bright contrast against the darkening sky behind.

  *****.

  Bevan and Charles stood by the rail of the quarterdeck, the day lit by the just-risen sun. Even in the early morning the heat intruded like an unwanted blanket. The two looked out to where the coastline of the Arabian Peninsula turned away toward the north, the small lump of Perim Island, and the faint line of the African continent hazy in the west. The deep channel into the Red Sea lay on the far side of the island, Cromley had informed him. The entirety of the sea around them, and as far as the lookout in the crosstrees could see, was bare of any shipping.

  “Whoever we saw yesterday, they’ve gone on,” Bevan observed. “Up through the straits, most likely.”

  Charles thought that much as clear. “Yes,” he said. “But in the night? I would have thought them to lay to and wait for daylight.”

  “Maybe they had some pressing need. Could have been in a hurry.”

  “What kind of hurry? They’re most likely bound for Mocha. They would have arrived in the middle of the night. There’s no need to risk running upon a reef for that.”

  “I don’t know, Charlie,” Bevan said easily. “But it’s clear they didn’t care to dawdle.”

  “I suppose so,” Charles said. His feeling of discomfort did not leave.

  Cassandra soon came about to put the wind on her beam, her bow cutting through the moderate chop northwestward into the channel. The low, arid form of Perim Island passed to starboard, the desert plateau of Somalia to port. Charles studied the occasional villages along the shore as they passed, miserable mud-and-wattle places with reed roofs set among scrub and palms. Rough fishing smacks lay where they had been pulled up on the beach. As the sun climbed, the air became oppressively warm with a stultifying humidity that brought rivers of sweat at the smallest exertion. He ordered lookouts in all three mastheads to keep a sharp eye for any ships of war, in particular English warships that would be Admiral Blankett’s frigates watching the entrance to the sea. He had even spoken with Sykes about the appropriate salute when this occurred. It did not occur; no ships of any kind were encountered.

  Early in the afternoon watch, a substantial walled town, its battlements and towers salmon pink in the shimmering haze, came into view along the Yemeni coast. It the midst of its tightly packed buildings rose a slender minaret and the glistening golden dome of a mosque alongside. Behind, a dun-colored plain stretched eastward to the sharp peaks of mountains in the distance. To Charles it was fantastic, a mysterious scene straight from the Arabian Nights. Of more immediate interest were four European warships at anchor in the roads a mile and a half off the port. They were soon revealed as a two-decked, fifty-gun ship, two frigates, and a brig-sloop. From each of their mizzen peaks fluttered the blue ensign of the British navy. The fifty, the smallest two-decker in the navy’s arsenal, showed a broad pendant trailing languidly from the main.

  “Am I correct in assuming that to be Mocha, Mr. Cromley?” Charles asked.

  “Aye, sir,” the master answered. “Famous for its trade in coffee, but you can get almost anything in the suq—that’s what the locals call a market. They’ll have all manner of merchandise: gold, pearls, hashish, girls, young boys. Whatever it is suits your fancy.”

  “I thank you for the information,” Charles said. “I do believe I’ll settle for calling on Admiral Blankett at the moment. Mr. Sykes!”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy came hurrying up.

  “You may send up our colors and recognition signal. If you would be so good as to begin the salute afterward.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The flags ran up Cassandra’s halyards and guns boomed out, soon to be answered by the flagship. Charles turned his mind to the things he needed to accomplish while in port. In addition to the resupply of water, foodstuffs, and firewood, there was the question of leave for the crew. From what he observed, and his officers reported to him, their temper had improved. There had been no further outbreaks of fighting, or even the generously shared insults that had been common enough before. Still, the men went through their work with a certain grimness, he thought, performing their assigned tasks readily enough, but without enthusiasm. He put this down to their having been denied leave or even visitors from the bumboats while at Cape Town. He could make up for that now and allow them ashore. He glanced once more at the heat-soaked jumble of mud-brick structures and wondered what delights the men might find there. He imagined some would be unusual indeed. At least it would be a change for them, and he was comfortable that few would choose to desert in such an isolated and inhospitable place. He saw the signal flags as they rose the flagship’s mast.

  “Anchor to leeward,” Sykes reported, the signal book open in his hand.

  “Thank you,” Charles said. “Mr. Cromley, we will come to anchor as ordered, if you please.”

  Cassandra glided past the other warships, taking in her topsails and courses as she went. He identified them as Hellebore, the brig-sloop; Daedalus and Fox, smart thirty-two-gun frigates; and the flagship Leopard. He thought it a light force for protecting against something potentially as important as the French entering or leaving the Red Sea. In all likelihood there would be others on patrol beyond his sight.

  A half cable’s length beyond the flagship, Cassandra’s foretopgallant braced around to lie against the mast. “Let go!” he heard Beechum’s voice forward, and the anchor cable begin to run out through the hawse. The hands aloft fisted in the remaining sails and tied them off. Cassandra snubbed once at her anchor and stilled, swinging slowly on the barely existent current. Charles ordered the jollyboat hoisted out over the side and waited for the signal calling him to report on board. The satchel of mail and dispatches for the squadron was passed down, followed by the boat’s crew. No signal showed. The five warships lay quietly at anchor in the glaring heat of the bay as if forgotten toys in a pond. He waited by the entry port for ten minutes, fifteen, with Bevan standing beside him. The ship’s bell dinged out four times, marking two hours into the afternoon watch.

  “Maybe Blankett’s learned of your reputation and is just hoping you’ll go away,” Bevan offered. “Can’t say as I’d blame him.”

  “I’m going across anyway, invitation or no,” Charles said, growing impatient at the lack of communication. He swung out and climbed down into the boat. Augustus had taken his place on the stroke oar, he noted, more carefully dressed than was usual in anticipation of Charles’ going ashore and requiring protection. He almost regretted disappointing him. “The flagship,” he said to Malvern. The climb up Leopard's sidesteps brought pools of sweat under his uniform coat.

  “The admiral is ashore, sir,” Edmund Danforth, the Leopard’s too carefully dressed first lieutenant, said. “I am sure he will call for you on his return.” Charles noticed that the flagship was in perfect order—her decks holystoned pristine white, the brightwork glistening, her yards perfectly squared, and the falls flemished down. She looked as if she had been prepared to receive an inspection from the king himself.

  “Wh
en will that be?” Charles asked.

  “When his business is completed,” Danforth answered pertly. “I suggest you employ the time smartening your ship. The admiral expects a shipshape appearance.”

  Charles took this as an implied insult, but ignored it. “What is the strength of the squadron?” he asked. “How many are out on patrol?”

  “Come now, captain. This is the foot of the Red Sea, the closest place on earth to Hell. Nothing happens here. We are not conducting the blockade of Toulon.” He chuckled at his joke.

  Charles decided that the lieutenant was being intentionally unhelpful. “How many ships?” he repeated.

  “The squadron is just what you see,” Danforth answered finally. Charles recalled the sails he had seen making for the Straits of Mandeb. “Do you tell me that there is no one on patrol to look out for ships passing into or out of the sea?”

  Danforth smiled knowingly. “Patrol? Of course not. You’ve only just arrived, or you’d know there is no need for it. Daedalus was out a week ago. She reported nothing, as you would expect. The Admiral considers it a waste of time.”

  “No one’s come or gone from this anchorage since then, no one at all?” Where were the two ships that had passed the straits immediately before him?.

  “No,” the lieutenant answered flatly. “Now if you will excuse me, I have . . .”

  “Where in the town is Admiral Blankett,” Charles interrupted. “I insist on reporting to him at once.”

  “I told you, it would not be convenient. He is involved in negotiations with the local authorities. He cannot be . . .”

  “I do not care whether it is convenient or not, Lieutenant,” Charles snapped. “You will provide someone to take me to the admiral at once, or I will go with my marines and turn Mocha upside down until I find him.”

  Danforth assumed a displeased expression, then sighed in resignation. “He is at Mr. Underwood’s residence. Mr. Underwood is the British commercial agent in Mocha. He trades in coffee and such, I believe.”