"Yes. Let's have a look at 'em, by all means," the Captain continued.
Sergeant Leese led the two officers below and out the Admiralty door into the torch-lit darkness, where a small crowd of mixed onlookers still loitered about. One at least was a gentlewoman, and an oddly familiar one at that, for Hoare heard an unmistakable seagull titter.
"Come away, damn you, Lyd!" It was the croaking voice of Martin Frobisher. "We've no business here!"
"But I want to see! Where's Walter? I want Walter! Let go of me!" There was a scuffle. Hoare had no time to crane about in search of the speakers, for Captain Trelawney, preceded by Leese, was thrusting through the crowd.
"There he is!" called a woman's voice.
"Wot's the green man, an American?" asked another.
"No, ye fule, 'e be one oft' Yeomen oft' Guard."
Guessing wildly at the tenor of the calls, Hoare concluded that one of the assaulted officers-Delancey, probably-upon his leaving as his Admiral had ordered had given the people a brief account of the fracas and the part Leese and his men had played.
"Where did you station Baker and your prisoners?" asked Trelawney.
Leese took them around the corner of Admiralty House and into the mews that lay behind it.
Three disordered heaps lay against the back wall of Admiralty House, lit by the waning moon. Two were in civilian dress, still bound hand and foot, as Leese had left them. From their turned-out pockets, they had been thoroughly searched. Their throats had been cut.
The third body, badly cut about the arms, which still gripped its rifle, wore Rifleman's green. It had been stabbed deep in the back, and its head was missing.
"A formidable crew, perhaps," Captain Trelawney calmly observed to Hoare, "but not always unbeatable, it seems."
Chapter VIII
Go right in, Captain Hoare," Delancey said. "Sir George is expecting you."
Despite his fading black eyes, Admiral Hardcastle's Flag Lieutenant looked quite sprightly, in Hoare's opinion- even smug. Hoare remarked as much to him as he passed.
"Yes. He's given me the Niobe brig," Delancey said. "Eighteen guns. We're to join the Mediterranean fleet in three weeks' time."
Hoare wished him well in his new command.
The Admiral still wore his arm in a sling and the gauze about his wounded throat, but he, too, was clearly recovering apace.
"I'm pleased to see you looking so thrifty, sir," whispered Hoare. "The other night, when I saw you last, you looked like death… And Mr. Delancey is obviously none the worse for his experience, though he still looks as though he's gone forty rounds with Tom Cribb. I gather he stood by you manfully."
The Admiral began to nod, then winced and stopped himself as though the motion hurt his head.
"Indeed, he did, Hoare, and I'm seeing him recognized for it, by God. I've ordered him into Niobe, 18, as soon as she's rigged. But I imagine he's told you that; he's quite puffed. He'd been mopin' so much over losin' my Felicia to young Gladden, I'd already about decided to rid myself of him."
Hoare feared he would have to endure hearing that news of another officer's advancement for another three weeks. Once was quite enough, he told himself. But when he reminded himself that a brig like Niobe rated only a Lieutenant in command, while he carried a Commander's swab-brig or no brig-he felt much better. Niobe, he remembered, was the brig with which Royal Duke had barely escaped collision the other morning.
"Now tell me," the Admiral went on, "what have you done to find those impudent knaves who attacked me and Delancey? D'ye know, I do think the bastards were after our heads?"
He touched the cut in his neck with gingerly fingers.
"Bugger sewed me up," he explained. "Stitches itch like hell."
"I believe you're right, sir," Hoare said. "You know the man set on guard over the two prisoners was beheaded and the prisoners' throats slit?"
"I know. Trelawney told me. What are you doing about it?"
Hoare told Admiral Hardcastle how he had chosen Dabney, one of Royal Duke's sharpest men, to examine the bodies and the mews where they had been found. He did not tell him he had done so on Mr. Clay's recommendation.
"The dead marine, Baker, was taken by surprise, with his back turned to his killer. That probably meant that it was a man he knew, or at least someone he trusted… Whoever it was, he cut Baker's throat with one neat slice and then did the same for the Marine's prisoners.
"To keep their mouths shut, I suppose. He finished by completing his job on Baker and went off, taking the head with him… Dabney was better than I would have been at deducing what happened in the mews. Almost as good, I think, as Thoday would have been."
"Today, yesterday, tomorrow," the Admiral burst out. "If Thoday's the better man, I want you to put him on the job, not some secondhand piece of baggy-wrinkle. Where is Thoday, anyhow?"
"In Dorchester, sir, on the trail of the people who beheaded the Getchell brothers."
"Get him here, you nincompoop."
"With respect, sir, I think…," Hoare began.
"Damn you, you're not paid to think. Do as you're told."
"Again with respect, sir, I am."
"You are what?"
"Paid to think, sir. That's why Admiral Abercrombie chose me to command the Navy's thinking ship."
At this, Sir George did his best to turn purple and roar, but he was still too short of blood to succeed. Instead, he began to laugh. Again he must needs stop and clap his hands to his head.
"You're right, of course, Hoare. But I order you-order you, d'ye hear? — never, never to refer to Royal Duke or any other of His Majesty's ships as a 'thinking ship.' What with your silly voice, people will say you were a lisper as well as a whisper. And it would never do for an officer of the Navy to speak of his command as 'sinking,' eh?"
Hoare gulped and took his courage in both hands.
"Speaking of Royal Duke, sir… I have a request of you, sir, on behalf of her and her crew," Hoare whispered.
"Don't expect me to fall all over you for saving me life, I warn you," the Admiral said. "You didn't. Delancey did, and that fool doctor did, and your damned green lobsters. I don't owe you a bloody thing. Now, what is it you want?"
"Sir, after our recent performance in harbor, you can imagine the reputation Royal Duke has apparently already gotten among the crews of her… sister ships here in Portsmouth. I've already heard men from other ships, calling out remarks like, 'What ho, the Dustbins!' as our men row by. Or 'Shape up, ye whore's delights!' "
Did Hoare hear his Admiral suppress a splutter of laughter? Never mind.
"Understandably, sir," Sir George said, "and deservedly, considering the appalling performance your ship's company made of a simple maneuver like warpin' a brig a cable's length in to a pier. Oh, yes, sir, I was watching. And your command's hideous condition when the Duke of Cumberland himself condescended to inspect you. D'ye come whinin' to me like a schoolboy who comes to his master a-blubberin' that the other lads are callin' him names? You shan't get any coddlin' out of me, I'll have you know. That bedlam brig of yours deserves whatever name the Fleet tacks onto her."
"I must agree, sir," Hoare said. "We have fewer than five experienced men aboard, and one of them's a woman, though how she got the experience I have yet to learn. Most of the rest have not even been aloft…
"… They moved her back to her original mooring this morning, sir, but their performance was still enough to make a man weep… Those eight pretty, shiny little brass guns-the ones His Royal Highness admired so much the other day-have never… even been fired. Never. What I need, sir, is the loan of one or two more seamen-men who can teach my poor landsmen their trade. They're willing enough and smarter than your average landsmen… They should shape up handily.
"I had your men, Bold and Stone, in Uninhabitable, Inconceivable, Alecto now, I mean-in my own little yacht, anyhow-not so long ago. I'd like 'em back, sir."
Bold was a coxswain, competent to be boatswain in any vessel of twenty-eight
guns or less, Stone a seasoned gunner. With them, Hoare could leave Thoday to his detection and send poor old Joy to some sinecure ashore.
Hoare had needed to interrupt himself repeatedly during this speech; now he ran out of breath entirely and stopped to cough. It was an awful sound.
Feeble though the Admiral still was, the level look he gave Hoare went through him like a knife through butter.
"I twig your game, sir. You want to take your command to sea," he said when Hoare had got his coughing under hatches and could hear him. "Well, you shall not. You're under standing orders from Admiral Abercrombie in London to stay inshore, and you know why. You have your copy of those orders, and I have mine."
"Inshore can mean more than lying tied up at a pier, sir," Hoare dared say, "or swinging round a mooring till we ground on our own beef bones. It can mean simply staying within sight of land."
"When I use a word," the Admiral said, "it bloody well means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less. I am in charge of my own bloody words."
That was a rather good line, Hoare thought. Perhaps I should add it to my little commonplace book. Then, after I die, brother John or some other lucky being can use it himself or hand it on to someone who will.
"Yes, sir," he said, "but…"
The Admiral must not yet be himself, because after prolonged haggling, he conceded that Hoare, or rather Clay under Hoare's direction, might take Royal Duke on brief training excursions that did not take her out of sight of the shoreline.
"And I don't mean 'sight of land,' either, sir, d'ye understand? I mean that you must be able to see the shoreline. From on deck. Tidewater, sir; not a fathom farther offshore," he added as he read Hoare's thoughts.
And, yes, he could have the loan of Bold and Stone, at least until Admiral Hardcastle was strong enough to go about in his barge, of whose crew the two seamen were essential members.
"Er, Hoare," the Admiral said as Hoare turned to leave the sickroom, "I've given in to your request, not because it is insolent and presumptuous-which it is-but because I owe you amends for having failed you."
"Failed me, sir?"
"Yes. In the Navy, loyalty should work both ways. I failed to protect you from bein' bullied by that Hanoverian poltroon. Go on, now; put your vessel into order. But only at your peril do you take your Dustbin beyond the bounds I've given you."
"Aye aye, sir."
As Hoare was on the point of leaving Admiralty House, Delancey-as if to rub salt in his wounds-condescendingly invited him to be present when he read himself in as Niobe's Lieutenant in command. Delancey was to go to sea, while Hoare was still all but shorebound.
"'Mother, may I go to swim?'
'Yes, my darling daughter;
Hang your clothes on a hickory limb,
And don't go near the water,' "
Hoare muttered to himself as the gig's awkward, willing oarsmen took him back out to his own command. But now he could try to remedy Royal Duke's hopeless performance as a man-o'-war. To be sure, Hoare admitted to himself, if his cockleshell were to continue being an efficient seagoing office, she could never become a crack cockleshell. And the Admiral's prohibition against taking to the open sea, of course, violated every sailor's fear of being too close to shore. Every piece of land bore teeth. Nevertheless, he could hope she would at least cease being the Fleet's laughingstock.
With this thought, the idea that had eluded Hoare last night came home to roost. There might be a way to bring his own pinnace into play as well, thereby keeping her out of the clutch of Ernest, Duke of Cumberland.
So he could address his crew directly instead of through his Lieutenant, Hoare ordered Joy, the doddering one-eyed boatswain who had so maltreated Alecto, to muster all hands below decks, in their work space. Clay stood at his elbow-in case he faltered, he supposed-and Hoare's two new hands behind him. Hoare had cleared his feeble throat and was about to launch into his prepared speech when Joy stepped forward and forestalled him.
"Permission to speak to the Capting on be-be'alf of yer crew, sir," he said in a trembling voice.
"What is it, then, Joy? Speak up, but be quick about it, for I have much to say to you."
"The Royal Dukes wishes to make their shame an' sorrer known to you, sir. We 'ave left undone those things what we ought to have done, an' we 'ave done those things that we ought not to 'ave done, an' there is no 'ealth in us." Joy's voice was a virtual chant.
Hoare found the man's words oddly familiar. "What on earth are you getting at, Joy?" he asked.
"We're bein' bad-mouthed about the Fleet fer our lack o' seamanship, sir, an' we don't like it, and we ain't goin' to 'ave it," Joy blurted.
"The Dustbins, they're calling us." The voice came from the midst of the gathering.
"That's what I understand," Hoare said. "How do you like it?"
There was a muttering and a shuffling of feet.
"Our David Davies took on three Niobes when they threw gash on 'is uniform," said a Marine. "Showed 'em what our lads can do, 'e did."
"Pipe down, Griffith," Sergeant Leese snapped.
"Well, men-er-and women," Hoare said, "once a ship gets a name, she's stuck with it. She'll never shake it loose, no matter what. What we have to do… is change what people think of us. That will be when we show them that our Dustbin may be small, but she's a fighting man-o'-war of the Royal Navy just the same.
"Now, I'm not going to make a speech to you, because that's not my way. It can't be… As you know, I can't talk very long. What I do want to say is this: if you're willing to put those sharp wits of yours to use at a trade that's new to most of you, and turn Dustbin into a… a name we're all proud to answer to with a laugh and a cheer, we sailormen are willing to show you how.
"In fact, Admiral Hardcastle himself has given us two good, tough, experienced sailormen to back up me and Mr. Clay in whip-sorry, no whips aboard this barky- getting the old Dustbin into fighting shape.
"Bold, Stone… come forward. The scuttlebutt may have reached you that these are the men I had aboard… when we rammed the French schooner-on purpose that time, it was." There was a subdued, rueful chuckle.
"With their help and that of the old hands we already have aboard, Mr. Clay here and I will turn us into a man-o'-war we can all be proud of. We may be small, but we'll be swift, and we'll carry a sting. Are you with us?"
Hoare ended. He stopped to cough, and cough.
There were no cheers but an eerie animal growl that would have been appropriate coming from a hardened crew but which, coming from this strange assemblage of eccentrics, he had not anticipated.
"Then," Hoare said, "the first thing we'll do is warp back in to the pier and back out here again. I don't care how long it takes you, but you'll do it right before we're through if we have to do it all week. But first, Mr. Clay, we'll splice the main brace."
This spirited conclusion aroused a sound that was less a cheer than a general determined snarl.
Chapter IX
"No, Sir," Taylor told her Commander, looking up from her worksheets and taking off her spectacles. She had decoded the paper Hoare had pilfered from his Admiral's desk.
"It's a different cipher, sir, a standard Admiralty cipher. Besides, the others, the ones you gave me before, were in French, if you remember."
She stopped, as if she had now said all that was expected of her. Hoare waited.
"Well?" he whispered at last. "What's the message?"
"I can't say, sir."
"Can't you read it?"
"Of course, sir. I did."
"Well, then?"
"It is not addressed to you, sir, but to Admiral Hardcastle. It deals with Fleet movements. With all respect, sir," she added before Hoare could recover his wits or explode at her, "I respectfully submit that it be returned to the Admiral, unread."
She handed Hoare the paper, fitted her spectacles back over her ears, and returned to the document she had been studying there in the 'tween-decks work space, leaving Hoare to betake himse
lf to his own cabin and seethe over Royal Duke's administration.
What, the Admiralty asked querulously, were these repeated indents for "grain"? Grain was not to be found in the table of authorized supplies, except as a subcategory of gunpowder. He begged leave to inform Their Lordships that the grain was to be categorized as "pigeons, for the maintenance of." He was sure that further correspondence would follow on the matter, as did night the day.
He only regained his temper by persuading himself once more that when he was through with them, he ought, indeed, to have a fighting crew as well as a thinking one, and a ship to match. In fact, the sentry at his door today was no Marine at all but a small, nimble man-Blassingame, the former pickpocket. Sergeant Leese and his entire detachment had been set ashore and marched inland, where they would remain overnight, practicing surprise attacks on suspicious outlying byres. Like the two longboats that cluttered Royal Duke's narrow deck, as many as were carried in a twenty-eight-gun frigate, his Johnnies had never been put to the use for which they had been sent aboard-making unobtrusive raids where they would have the most effect on the French. How, Hoare wondered, did Admiral Abercrombie imagine they would get into raiding position when he had forbidden Royal Duke ever to leave home? He had begun to dream of finding a useful stratagem for blooding them.
At last he had not only reconciled the gunpowder inventory and approved it but also replied to an Admiralty inquiry about the consumption of ink in his command. According to Whitehall, this would have sufficed to supply a flagship. Whitehall informed him that this simply would not do.
When he returned on deck, Hoare could see his own Alecto lying innocently astern, nameless for the moment, and looking like any other Navy-issue pinnace. He rather looked forward to the appearance of some blue-blooded booby of a Cumberland courtier, demanding to know where the yacht was that H. R. H. had commandeered.
"Lost at sea, sir, lost at sea," he would answer. "Totally dismasted."
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