The Captain's Nephew

by Philip K Allan

  ‘Excellent mug of bishop, that,’ he muttered, before continuing.

  ‘Now your line of longitude is an altogether more slippery cove, with only two ways of calculating it. The truly accurate way is via the stars, which is how we did it with Cook in the Pacific, but it ain’t simple. You need a clear sky. You need to know the heavens well, and have some skill at celestial observation. You also need a navigator with the arithmetic skill to fleece Pythagoras himself.’

  Booth rose from the table, and made his way across the cabin, a little more unsteadily than the gentle motion of the ship should have induced. He stopped at a small cabinet, fixed to the bulkhead. He turned towards the table, and paused for dramatic effect, before he continued to speak.

  ‘The second method of calculating longitude, Mr Fleming, is via the wonders of... the Time Machine!’ The ship’s master flipped open the cabinet with the air of a magician to reveal a line of three small, rather ordinary brass clocks of different designs, each with an ornate round face.

  ‘Ah they not things of utter beauty?’ he asked. ‘Gentlemen, in the age of wonder in which we are blessed to abide, I believe there are few devices that can rival the naval chronometer. They are a marvel of design, engineering and craftsmanship in which England can truly be said to lead the world. They are also fabulously expensive.’

  ‘Mr Booth, can you explain why all three of your wonders show the wrong time?’ asked Wynn, comparing the marvels of the age with his more humble pocket watch.

  ‘Sir! They show the right time!’ said Booth, swelling with indignation. ‘The time they show is that of Greenwich. When the sun is due south of us, it is noon here. By comparing that time with the time in Greenwich which we carry with us in our chronometers, we know how far around the globe we have travelled, hence our longitude.’

  There was a lengthy pause while Fleming, Wynn and Munro struggled to follow the master’s explanation. The tropical heat, the heavy meal and heavier wine were not proving helpful. Munro was first to speak up, with what he thought was an intelligent question.

  ‘Why would you be having three, if they are so expensive?’ he asked.

  ‘Even the finest technology can go awry,’ Booth conceded. ‘If we only had one, we might never know that it was unsound till we were upon the rocks. With two, should they show different times, which would we follow? Three at least permits us to follow the two that agree, so is really the minimum one should carry.’

  ‘If I may interrupt our esteemed master,’ said Follett. ‘Diverting as all this is, I believe the point of Mr Fleming’s original remark was why we are so certain that the French will be found on fourteen degrees of latitude. It is because to follow that line gives them the most certain method of navigation. Celestial observation is difficult, and not really practical aboard a man-of-war, and while the Agrius is blessed with three chronometers I doubt if the Courageuse will have any at all. The few Ferdinand Berthoud chronometers the French navy possesses are generally issued only to their flagships.’

  ‘How soon will it take us to reach fourteen degrees north of the equator, sir?’ asked Munro. Follett looked across to the ship’s master, but decided not to risk another lecture. ‘Mr Clay?’

  ‘If this wind holds we should be there sometime tomorrow, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Follett. ‘And then, we will head west across the Atlantic. They say a stern chase is a long chase, but we have a swift ship, and if we all do our duty we will soon catch our Frenchman.’ The captain picked up his glass, and held it aloft. The officers around the table all did likewise.

  ‘Gentlemen, I give you a successful hunt,’ said the captain, amid calls of hear him, and a thunder of hands beating on the table top.

  Chapter 10

  Hunt

  The following noon Clay sighted through the eye piece of his sextant while swaying a little with the motion of the ship. The glass plate at the centre of the sextant was split into two halves. Through the clear glass half of the plate he could see the horizon. He pushed the index bar of the sextant forward till he could see the sun in the other, mirrored half of the plate. Even through several layers of smoked glass it was still painfully bright. He reached forward and swung another smoked glass filter into place, and then fine-tuned the index bar again until the sun was aligned with the horizon. He clamped his sextant with a grunt of satisfaction and read off the result. He made the necessary corrections and turned to the ship’s master.

  ‘What do you make our position to be, Mr Booth?’ he asked. Booth held up a restraining hand as he continued to chalk numbers on his slate. He too had just completed the same observation with his sextant, and was busy on his calculation.

  ‘Two seconds south of fourteen degrees, Mr Clay.’

  ‘Precisely so, Mr Booth,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘Mr Croft! My compliments to the captain, and we are now at fourteen degrees of latitude.’ Croft ran off below.

  ‘Are you both in agreement, gentlemen?’ asked Follett as he hurried onto the quarterdeck.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ both men replied in tandem.

  ‘Good, then let us make it so.’ He turned to Sutton who was officer of the watch.

  ‘Mr Sutton, please set a new course. Due west if you please.’

  The Agrius swung round, and gathered pace as her sails were trimmed to catch the wind. Follett looked up at the commission pennant streaming out from the masthead, and then over the side. He shook his head and turned back towards his third lieutenant.

  ‘What speed are we doing, Mr Sutton?’ he asked. Sutton consulted the traverse board.

  ‘We were making a little over eight knots at the last heave of the log, but we will move faster on this course, sir,’ he answered.

  ‘So we dammed well should, broad reaching before this fine trade wind,’ Follett scoffed. ‘Let’s get the royals on her, and take another heave of the log.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Sutton. He pulled the speaking trumpet out of its becket.

  ‘All hands! All hands to make sail!’ he ordered.

  The Agrius’s royal sails were the smallest of her square sails, but they were placed where the wind was strongest, at the very top of her masts. Once set, Clay could feel the Agrius surge forward. As more and more canvas drew, the deck began to heal over, the sea foaming along her lee rail. From out of nowhere a school of dolphins streaked alongside, their glistening bodies polished curves of grey as they broke the surface. Over by the rail, Croft organised another heave on the log.

  ‘Turn!’ called Croft as he flipped over the minute glass. The line ran out through the seaman’s hand, his lips moving as he counted the knots sliding past his fingers. ‘Nip!’ called Croft, as the last grains of sand fell through.

  ‘Ten and a half knots, sir,’ reported Croft to Sutton, who relayed this to the captain.

  ‘Not enough, Mr Sutton. Let us try the studdingsails on the foremast.’

  Clay watched as the studdingsail booms extended out from the yards, probing wide to each side of the ship. The top men struggled to set the long studdingsails, suspended as they were far out over the sea. Eventually the sails were sheeted home, and the heel of the deck steepened till he found it difficult to stand upright. At the bows the ship was now crashing into each Atlantic roller she met, sending water cascading over her bows. A hanging sheet of spray flashed a brief rainbow into existence with each successive wave. At the rail Croft heaved the log once more.

  ‘Turn!’ he called. This time the line seemed to fizz off the real, almost too fast for the seaman to count the flashing knots. ‘Nip!’ called Croft at last.

  ‘Thirteen knots sir!’ he shouted, delighted with the fastest speed he had yet recorded. Captain Follett let out a grunt of satisfaction.

  ‘Keep her at that if you please, Mr Sutton. I will go below now, but I am to be called if there is any change in the weather.’

  Clay looked up at the royal yards, bent into arcs with the pressure of the wind, and felt the huge tension throb under his
fingers where they rested on the mizzen backstay. He sensed that the ship was close to the very limit of what she could cope with. Looking forward on to the main deck he could see the bulky form of Knight, looking up at his straining rigging and shaking his head at what he saw, while in the sea next to them the dolphins celebrated by diving backwards and forwards under the Agrius’s bows.

  *****

  ‘Oh! How long is this unseemly haste going to persist?’ moaned Fleming, clutching at his empty plate and full wine glass as they slid up against the lip of the wardroom table. The wardroom was set at the same steep angle as the rest of the ship, with the additional hazard that the whole room moved upwards and downwards as each large Atlantic roller travelled down the length of the keel and off into the boiling maelstrom of wake that the Agrius now dragged behind her. Up and up the room climbed till it hung, apparently free, for a stomach lurching moment, before dropping down and down to complete the cycle.

  None of his fellow officers heard the purser because the wardroom was so full of noise. The ship’s rudder hung on the counter that formed the rear wall of the room and its groaning battle with the sea was transmitted to them via the tiller that swung to and fro against the deck above. An echo of the thrumming strain from the fiddle-string tight rigging hummed off the shaft of the mizzen mast as it passed through the room. From all around them came the noise of the ship’s timbers, the frames groaned and cracked as they worked against their neighbours with each bend and flex of the hull. Just when the occupants of the wardroom thought the noise could get no louder, they heard the surreal sound of music over all, as the string quartet began to play for their captain just above their heads.

  ‘I said, how long are we to rush across the ocean with such haste?’ repeated the purser, rather louder.

  ‘I thought you were the natural merman who took to the sea as to the manner born,’ replied Booth, ‘what with your childhood among the rock pools of Ayrshire? Are you finding our little bit of rough sailing inconvenient?’ The master’s florid face was smug with the superiority of his many decades at sea, and the sure knowledge that he would never again suffer from sea sickness.

  ‘At least the coast of Ayrshire is not canted over at such an angle, nor does it rise and fall like a galloping horse,’ said Fleming in reply.

  ‘To answer your question, James,’ said Clay, ‘I fear that I can hold out little prospect of immediate relief. We have scant idea how far ahead of us the enemy is, so I believe we will persist with this speed till we overhaul the Courageuse, or we carry something vital away aloft. The captain is in a rattling hurry to come up with her.’

  ‘But surely this constant battering will do the ship no good? If the vessel should be broke, or this vital spar you speak of should carry away, will we not have little hope of catching up with them?’ asked Fleming. Clay and Booth exchanged glances. This was something they had discussed between them.

  ‘I would not want to criticise the captain, especially as he has not shared his orders with me. There may be some particular reason behind this haste which we are not party to,’ said Clay, ‘but what you say is correct, this speed does not come without some risk to the ship.’

  ‘You do him too much kindness, Alex,’ snorted Sutton. ‘With a deck full of puking soldiers, and loaded down with stores, the Courageuse should be easy enough to overhaul. Only the captain sailing us to destruction will save her.’

  ‘Here is your first course, gentlemen,’ said Hart, banging through the wardroom door, and lurching into the cabin. ‘One of your favourites tonight,’ he announced, placing the wardroom’s battered pewter soup tureen down on the table. ‘I give you pea soup.’

  The steward had no sooner let go of the soup tureen than it sped across the table towards an open mouthed Munro. Clay released his hold on his own dinner plate, which fell rattling to the floor, and lunged across the Ulsterman to save him from disaster. The tureen tipped alarmingly towards Munro’s beautiful scarlet tunic, the lid and a gill of soup shooting past his shoulder, but miraculously none went on him.

  ‘Your pardon, William,’ said Clay, once the tureen was back under control.

  ‘No, my eternal thanks to you, Alex,’ said the shocked Munro.

  ‘Hart, kindly take the soup away,’ ordered Clay. ‘Did you consider the conditions at all when you decided on soup as a starter?’

  ‘Is it merely coincidence or do we believe that there is some design in Hart’s choice of meal?’ wondered Fleming as the grumbling steward departed. ‘He does seem to be masterly at selecting the least appropriate food to serve.’

  ‘Well, in the absence of soup, at least we have wine,’ said Booth with a smile, ‘and it will allow time for that laggard of a surgeon to join us at last.’

  ‘Yes, where is Mr Wynn?’ asked Sutton. ‘It is infuriating how persistently late he is in appearing for meals. Doubtless he is at the other end of the ship engaged on some errand of mercy.’

  But Sutton was wrong about Wynn. He was actually lying in his cabin not six feet from where his fellow officers struggled with their meal. A few hours earlier he had proscribed himself six drops of laudanum to escape from the miseries of his seasickness, and now lay senseless in his cot. Robespierre, never a cat to miss an opportunity, had joined him in bed, and was stretched out against his warm but unresisting body.

  ‘Perhaps I can offer you a little hope that conditions may improve, Mr Fleming,’ Clay said, once they had all been served their main course. ‘The glass is rising on the barometer, so I live in hope that this wind will moderate soon, which should make the motion easier. No more for me, thank you Hart,’ this said to the wardroom’s stony-faced steward. ‘I value a clean uniform above a full belly.’

  ‘But will the captain not simply put up more sail, if the wind should moderate?’ persisted Fleming.

  ‘He may, but the waves will reduce as well,’ explained Clay. ‘It is the swell that makes for this strange motion. Naturally having the wardroom at the extreme end of the ship does make it more exaggerated.’ As if to prove his point another surge of the ship sent a fresh cascade of plates and cutlery across the table.

  ‘Well, that is some comfort,’ replied the purser. ‘I think I have consumed all I can, consistent with the conditions,’ he continued, passing a plate of untouched food back to Hart. ‘Perhaps the table will behave more like a Christian when we break our fast tomorrow.’

  All about the table the officers gave up their attempts to eat, all save the veteran Booth.

  ‘The worse the weather gets, the more vittles I take on board, gentlemen,’ he announced to the table in general, ‘for one never can tell where the next hot meal may come from. When I was master’s mate on the Adventure we once went two weeks in the Southern Ocean when it blew so determined that the galley fire could not be lit. Two weeks in that icy void fed only on ship’s biscuit with never a hot meal!’

  ‘Well Mr Booth, I will take my chances on that,’ replied Fleming. ‘Hart, would you kindly pass the word for my servant, if you please? I believe I will retire now.’ Fleming pushed himself up from the table, and made his tottering way down the sloping deck towards his cabin. A moment later his uncertain step found the patch of pea soup that had narrowly missed Munro, sending him crashing to the deck. They all rushed to help him back to his feet, and called for Wynn to treat what looked to be a nasty sprained ankle. The surgeon himself, once they had followed the sound of persistent snores to his cabin, could no more be raised than if he was dead. What poppy fuelled visions he dwelt in were hinted at by the persistent smile that played across his lips through all of their best efforts to wake him up.

  *****

  Clay’s prediction of an improvement in the weather proved accurate. The next day, the North East trade wind continued to flow over the Agrius’s stern quarter pressing her ever forward, but it dropped from a topsail gale to a more moderate wind. The frigate’s speed eased, in spite of her captain spreading almost every sail she had to catch the wind, and with the drop in wind, th
e sea became calmer. Knight and his boatswain’s mates could relax their anxious vigil over their precious rigging a little. Fleming was able to hobble around unaided, his ankle swathed in a large bandage of his own creation. Wynn emerged from his self-induced coma to find his seasickness much improved and a large amount of cat hair in his cot. Even the taciturn Hart seemed pleased with the change, now that pea soup was back on the wardroom menu.

  Day followed day as they drove across an endless expanse of empty ocean. The captain now paced the quarterdeck for long periods of the day, hailing the masthead at regular intervals to see if any sail was in sight. In the morning he was on deck before dawn, dressed in the nightshirt and red cap that Clay remembered so well from the Channel and hoping that they had overhauled the French frigate in the night. As the sun rose it would drive back the tropical night, so that the disc of ocean visible from the masthead rushed out beyond twenty miles in every direction.

  ‘Masthead there!’ he would bellow. ‘Any sight of the enemy?’ A long pause as the lookouts scoured the horizon with care.

  ‘Deck there! Nothing in sight, begging your pardon, sir,’ came the reply.

  One morning there was a teasing moment of hope. When the first glimmer of light stole across the eastern horizon, the lookout had hailed down that a sail was at last in sight, but they had soon realised that the stubby little brig off the port side could not possibly be the stately frigate they were hunting. She proved to be a British merchant ship, a Guineaman engaged in the West African trade with no news of the Courageuse and anxious to head on her way.