Blown Off Course

by David Donachie

  ‘Be assured, sir, that my relationship with Lieutenant Pearce is a social one, and “strained” would be the best way to describe it. In fact, I cannot abide the man!’

  ‘These matters are none of my concern, Mrs Barclay, and I suspect it is not the subject on which you wished to consult me.’

  ‘No, it is not.’ Studdert nodded, inviting her to continue, but Emily had another question, which threw her previous statement into doubt: it really was foolish of her to ask the lawyer, before she proceeded to other matters, if he had an address for John Pearce.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For all it was one of the best-travelled roads in the country and was maintained by the government as an important artery, there was nothing restful about coaching to Portsmouth, either in the ten hours it took or the solace afforded to the passengers, so it was an irascible John Pearce who, after an overnight journey, arrived in the naval port – a mood not improved when he discovered that HMS Fury no longer lay out in the Spithead anchorage, but was alongside the dockyard mast house with her old poles already removed, her crew broken up and every officer aboard her from captain to the most junior lieutenant reassigned.

  He could not enquire for his Pelicans until he knew if they had managed to stay aboard and, if they had not, to where they had either gone or been taken. Once on the ship, watched with some curiosity by the dockyard workers, he called out along the gun deck for his friends, but there was no reply in a vessel small enough for him to be heard even on the orlop, and that brought on a terrible sinking feeling – had he once more delayed too long and let them down? That the fault did not lie with him was scant comfort.

  He went in search of those who might know, unaware that the gunner had seen him coming along the wharf and warned the carpenter, they being the only warrants still aboard: both had taken great care to make themselves scarce, their attitude being that the only man who had to deal with him, the purser, was not on board, leaving Pearce to enquire of those whom he could talk to. He had no real experience of dealing with dockyard workers, though he had heard from every naval lip that they were the most pernicious bunch of scoundrels in creation, thieving bastards who would steal your eyes and come back for the holes. He had always assumed a degree of exaggeration in these tales, but his contact with the breed working on the wharf, as he passed them, made him wonder if that were indeed true.

  Going further below in search of information brought him across knots of mateys sitting around smoking pipes – a wonder, until he discovered, and it was a fact given with little grace, that the hull was being surveyed. His question as to why that had not been undertaken before the vessel was warped into the dock was met with incomprehension, even when it was posed to the surveyor himself.

  ‘And what damned business, sir, is that of yours?’

  ‘Mere curiosity, which I am told is a human condition.’

  ‘I suppose that is an indulgence in levity!’ the man snapped.

  He was not a big fellow, this surveyor, he was small and flabby, his most prominent feature being a belly that, slack as it was and hanging over his belt, spoke of idleness, his purple face implying he was wont to wash down what he ate with generous quantities of wine, not that added height or muscle would have altered Pearce’s response. He had that air of the functionary about him, which John Pearce had encountered too many times in his life, an expression that implied that nothing at all was any of his business.

  He had been dunned by an avaricious Admiralty doorman, paid out to a supercilious clerk nine golden guineas for protections, been refused representation by an attorney and had not slept properly but uncomfortably in a post house, this backed up by dozing in a crowded coach and it was quite possible the men he had come to rescue had been shipped off as they had been the last time. His mood was therefore not forgiving.

  ‘Can you swim, sir?’ he asked, in a cold tone.

  ‘I fail to see that is relevant.’

  ‘It is that, for if you address me in that way again I will toss you bodily into the harbour.’ The man opened his mouth to protest but Pearce was not finished. ‘I am about to ask you a question and any answer less than civil will, I assure you, test the nature of my threat.’

  ‘I will have the magistrate upon you, sir.’

  Aware that those dockyard workers close by were grinning and nudging each other – clearly this popinjay was not loved – Pearce felt secure: if he took this fellow by the scruff of the neck they would not intervene.

  ‘He will take an age to arrive, by which time you will either be drowned or a laughing stock. Where, in the name of creation, are the warrants?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘But they are aboard?’

  ‘The carpenter is, as for the rest I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you know where the carpenter is?’

  The surveyor was in the process of recovering some of his conceit, it was in his face, but that melted under the stony glare he was getting from this naval lieutenant. His reply was accompanied by a slap on one of the hanging knees.

  ‘He should be here, sir. We are, after all, discussing the parts of the ship for which he is responsible and a damned poor state they are in. The scantlings are bad but these knees are soft enough to take my finger …’ The man stopped, given the impatient growl from Pearce was very audible. ‘He said he needed to go about his occasions, so I suspect he is in the roundhouse.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pearce replied, striding off.

  Behind he heard the man hiss. ‘Damn cheek of the fellow, why if I were ten years younger he would pay for addressing me in so cavalier a manner.’

  ‘Ain’t gone far, Your Honour,’ a sarcastic voice replied, obviously one of the lounge-about mateys. ‘You’se still has a chance to put the upstart in his place.’

  ‘I have work to do,’ the surveyor replied, his voice louder and still carrying enough to reach the companionway, ‘and I suspect that you too have labours which require your attention.’

  ‘Watching you be toil enough, mate.’

  Striding along the gun deck, Pearce was increasingly both worried and angry, so when he opened the forepeak doorway to the heads, to find two men standing there talking softly, who, by their shocked expressions, had to be people seeking to avoid him, he was ready to do murder – a mood not enhanced when the gabbled explanation was provided as to how his Pelicans had got off the ship.

  ‘We had to get them away, sir, or they would have been taken up for certain and a boat was the best option.’

  ‘Who took them?’

  ‘I did,’ the carpenter replied. ‘Dropped them off past Hayling Island.’

  ‘I need you to be more precise.’

  ‘I grounded at Bracklesham Bay, just past the sandbar known as East Head.’

  ‘And what are their chances of getting clear from there?’

  The gunner wouldn’t look him in the eye. ‘Master drew them a map of sorts, though none of your lads can read, but they knew the names to avoid and the route to follow.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘We did our best for ’em, Your Honour,’ the carpenter protested.

  ‘I need to follow in their footsteps. Which is the best way to get to where they landed?’

  ‘Boat, Your Honour, same as I did, and any local man will know East Head.’ About to hurry away, Pearce was brought up with a round turn when the man added, ‘Mind, there is a bill from the purser you has to settle, for he saw to the needs of your men, though if I was you, Your Honour, I would argue about the total, ’cause he be as tight as a duck’s arse.’

  ‘He will have to wait.’

  ‘You have no idea, sir, how that cheers me.’

  Hiring a wherry in Portsmouth was easy enough – they were ten a penny in such a busy anchorage and those who manned them were secure from the press – though he got a curious look when he named the destination. It was not long, in the nature of things, before he was conversing with the man steadily rowing him, a cove with a weather
-beaten face and a pleasant manner, with Pearce intimating he was on a social errand. What he discovered, when, in a very roundabout way, he alluded to press gangs and the like, was not information to make him feel happy.

  ‘A happy hunting ground for ’em round Wittering and Bracklesham. It ain’t a part of the world I go to without I had my protection, an’ even then I will not hang about once I land you.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Stands to reason, sir, for it takes no genius to see that getting off Portsea Island, or Hayling for that matter, is hard, seeing as it means you’se obliged to cross a guarded bridge. Bracklesham Bay is the first bit o’ land that gives a clear run without crossing water, so it be a place much made for by those on the run from the Spithead fleet.’

  ‘A fact no doubt known to those who would take them up?’

  ‘Both kinds, and though the press might respect my paper, there be lobcouses who work that area who would take me up and damn my protection.’

  ‘How long have you been a waterman?’ asked Pearce, changing what was a worrying subject.

  Pearce had no way of knowing if he had arrived in exactly the same place as his Pelicans and it was a very forlorn hope indeed that they might catch sight of him and come rushing to make contact. His boatman was as good as his word, rowing quickly away from the shore once his passenger had landed, leaving behind a man thankful for the service and also the way the fellow had advised him to go just before the boat grounded.

  ‘Just keep the water in sight on your left hand, Your Honour, and afore long you will see plain the tower of Wittering Church. Make for that and you can get directions to where you is heading from there.’

  He crossed the shingle strand and stood atop the dune, looking over the same featureless landscape which had greeted his friends, but there was scant point in stopping – his task was simple: to find out if his friends had got away from this shore or had been captured by the men who patrolled it. In another time it would have been a pleasant enough walk over land that, edging the sea, had at many times been inundated, making it perfect pasture for sheep and, where there was rise enough to keep the ocean at bay, fine farmland. The numerous watercourses that cut into the shore were well bridged, and edged with tamarisk hedge. The trees, where they stood in clumps, rose to a decent height, where they were individual they showed by their bent nature the power of the winds that could lash this exposed coast.

  Walking in such a setting took him back to better times. More than once John Pearce had traversed this kind of landscape in the company of his father, just as he had experienced every other type in the extensive travels they had undertaken together: hill and dale, flat farmland, endless towns, the odd city – he had seen as a growing lad more of his country than most. Sometimes, when they had been static enough to allow him some formal schooling, those with whom he mixed had alluded to the peripatetic life he normally led as strange, when what was alien to him was to be in one place for any length of time; a bed was as likely to be under the stars as under a roof and that seemed natural, for he had known precious little of any other.

  Education for him had been an ‘all day, every day’ affair, not just in the rudiments of Latin, Greek and numbers, books which he carried in his satchel, but it also encompassed what lay around him in the countryside through which he and Adam travelled. Thus he knew, without much in the way of registering the fact, the cries of the different birds – terns, lapwings and curlews – knew the markings of the different types of ducks that filled the watercourses and crabbing pools, could register sea lavender or a yellow-horned poppy as he passed by them.

  Beneath his feet it was as often sand as salt marsh grass and as he plodded along, his mind moved from worries about his at-risk friends to mix with memories of his father, and that led to recollection of many of the places Adam had stopped to speak as well as the many variations in the way they had been greeted. Sometimes they had been obliged to depart in such haste that they barely managed to stay ahead of the stones aimed at their backs. At the other end of the scale – and there had been every variety in between – they had received such a warm welcome that to leave after several days was like a wrench, while on more than one occasion a local worthy, men of open mind and keen to dispute, had set them up as guests in their own homes and let them stay for months.

  Such thoughts led on to a re-examination of subsequent events and the eventual need to flee. In truth, what his father had expounded in both his written and spoken words should have been tolerated in a secure society, but John Pearce knew that the lands ruled by King George were far from that, even if those with enough possessions to secure comfort and full bellies crowed about the freedoms of John Bull’s Island. The three polities of Scotland, Wales and England were a seething mass of inequality and discontent, for most in this land of plenty went without a morsel of meat in their diet – so much for the roast beef of old England. All Adam Pearce had sought to do was to point out the absurdity of so many people near to starving, especially in times of harvest failure, while those who owned the greater tracts of land existed in such conspicuous and arrogant luxury.

  ‘Never underestimate the indifference of the rich to the plight of the poor.’

  He had inadvertently spoken those words out loud, a quotation much espoused by his father and it was true, though there were exceptions to the mass who genuinely sought to alleviate suffering, good people who knew all was not well. But most men and women of means made pious noises before reassuring themselves that poverty was brought about by the sloth of the poor, not circumstances. Yet could he excuse himself? Pearce knew he might not be so very different: had he not taken the full measure of what had been available to him when they had fled to Paris, where his father was famous, while being aware of beggars in the streets? Was he, indeed, as much of a hypocrite as the mass of his fellow countrymen?

  Not a man to berate himself for any great length of time, thinking of Paris led to more pleasing memories. There he had come to manhood in what was a sparkling milieu of glittering salons and excited speculation, had mixed with great thinkers and engaged famous wits, met the most important men of the Revolution and, more pleasurably, their womenfolk. Some were esteemed for their conversation, but being his age, healthy, good-looking, tall and of fair unblemished skin, other matters took precedence and he had not been left disappointed, garnering to himself a beautiful mistress. It was her image that filled his mind when the church bells broke the pleasing train of thought.

  The village he entered was small, self-contained, with a jetty and a muddy main street that included some shops, a covered market and, at either end, that ubiquitous feature of the English town, the tavern. He made for the first of those, given he was sharp-set and his stomach was rumbling for a hunk of cheese, some bread and perhaps an apple. The interior was, as ever, smoke-filled and warm, with each of the small rooms having a healthy fire in the grate. Being a stranger, he was examined; being in a naval boat cloak over his uniform, such examination was not excessive, that is until, in one snug arbour, he espied a group of pipe-smoking men, a half-dozen in number, one in the same garb as he, albeit the coat was very well worn indeed, the remainder in short blue jackets, far-from-white ducks and wearing striped stockings.

  ‘Good day, gentlemen,’ he said, taking a chair not too far away. ‘I trust I find you in good cheer.’

  The looks he got were not actually unfriendly, they were just emanating from faces of overall ugliness that would find amiability impossible and he knew, without having to be told, that he was in the presence of a press gang, which, if it was fortuitous given his purpose, produced in his belly a slight tinge of utterly unnecessary apprehension: he was a naval officer and in no danger at all.

  ‘An’ good day to you, sir,’ came back a gruff reply from the lieutenant, a man with black eyes and several scars on a heavily pock-marked face. ‘Are you from these parts?’

  ‘Passing through,’ Pearce replied, ‘but it is good to see a blue coat.’

&nbs
p; ‘Not many pleased to see these coats,’ said another of the group, a remark that produced amused and general agreement.

  ‘Gentlemen, I suspect I know your purpose.’

  ‘Ain’t hard to guess,’ came the reply from the very furthest away; they seemed to be talking to him by turns. ‘Seeing there ain’t no ship o’ the line in the offing.’

  ‘I am told it a good station for the task you perform,’ Pearce advanced, adding, ‘the very necessary task.’

  ‘We takes up more’n a few,’ the lieutenant agreed.

  The fellow had a voice no more refined than his inferiors, not that Pearce was surprised: the Impress Service was no place for gentility and that extended to those who officered the bands. It also seemed to be something of a republic, the whole party drinking together and no sign of any deference to hierarchy in their manner or response, and they spoke as they chose. Momentarily distracted by a serving girl and his order for food and a tankard of ale, he resumed his conversation when she left.

  ‘Had much recent success?’

  It was as if he had thrown a bucket of cold water on what had been an already low level of bonhomie, for to a man their faces closed up. ‘Forgive me if I seem overly curious, but I have not met many men who undertake your kind of work.’

  ‘Never pressed?’ demanded one of the group, clearly incredulous.

  Pearce never had, yet he knew it would be foolish to say so, given every naval lieutenant would have, at some time in his service, even as a midshipman, been sent out with a party from whichever ship he was serving on to find men, willing or not, to man her in time of war, an almost common state of the nation for these last hundred years. Even those who thoroughly disagreed with the practice were obliged to undertake it.