Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the matter of treason

"Moreover," his lordship continued, "this court shall inform Bath King at Arms of your guilt, in the confident expectation that that order of knighthood will take appropriate action of its own in your case."

"No!" With this shout, the prisoner sprang to his feet. "I am-

"The prisoner will be silent." The justice did not raise his voice, but Sir Thomas subsided nonetheless.

"I declare this court adjourned," Hoare heard the justice conclude. "I've an appointment with a brace of fine lobsters, gentlemen. Good-day."

Not many days later, realizing that he had a moment to spare before meeting with the hunters of John Goldthwait, and that the tide was about to ebb, Hoare took the short walk upstream through a thin scattering shower, to Deptford Docks. From there, he had learned, HM armed transport Sanditon was about to cast off, destination Sydney Thomas Frobisher, baronet, was to be aboard.

Hoare found boarding all but complete. Convicts and their relatives, about to be parted, lined rail and dockside, howling their last farewells back and forth. Not all the howls were tragic: "Bring us back a parrot, Jem!" or "Take good care of Peggo wile I'm gone! Know wot I mean?"

A chaise drew up to the entry port, followed by a substantial wagon. From the first, the three Frobishers and Sir Thomas's guards emerged. One of the latter hailed Sanditon, summoned a deck officer, and the transfer of Sir Thomas's traveling chattels began. His would not be a hardship case, Hoare observed.

At last, the baronet himself embraced his ugly daughter and took the hand of his ugly son. He climbed slowly aboard the vessel that would be his home for the next hundred days or more.

"Cast off forrard!"

"Pick up the tow, there!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Aloft there, the larboard watch, and loose sails! One hand there, stop in the tops and crosstrees to overhaul the gear. Leave the staysails fast.

"Lay out there, four or five of you, and loose the headsails!

"Here, you, lay down out of that; there's enough men out there to eat them sails!"

And so it went, that old familiar, flexible ritual of getting underway from dockside, a blend between the fighting navy's sharp commands and the casual obscenity of a merchantman. As a transport, Sanditon had a foot in each camp. Transports were slovenly ships, and convict transports worse yet. For all his cravings for duty at sea, Hoare hardly envied Sir Thomas Frobisher the months ahead.

The baronet had inveigled one of his servants into accompanying him, Hoare had noted, but not Dan'l O'Gock. Hoare could not imagine a solitary Inuit among those antipodean blackfellows.

Now that Sanditon was out of easy hail from ashore, the crowd began to wander off. Before the young Frobishers could return to their chaise, Hoare stepped up to them and doffed his hat to the lady.

"Will you take tea, sir?" he asked Martin Frobisher. The other looked at him astonished, while his sister sniffed and tossed her head.

"Sir!"

"Come on, Lyd," Martin said. "Hoare's tryin' to make amends, can't you see? Delighted, Hoare."

Blassingame, it developed from Taylor's inquiry, was more fully acquainted with the Greenwich underworld than he had revealed. The next night, he asked leave for a run ashore, to bring together a cove or two that 'mought be able to bear an 'and under the circumstances, sir.' "

Upon Blassingame's return, at four bells in the morning watch, a sprinkling of snow had begun to sift from the night sky. He was accompanied by an apparition. Or was it "apparitions"? For the moment, Hoare could not be sure.

"Bubble and Squeak, sir," Hoare understood his man to say in introducing whatever it was.

"What?" Hoare whispered.

"Bubble and Squeak, sir. This-un be Bubble, this-un be Squeak."

As if to demonstrate that two separate entities confronted Hoare, Bubble made to knuckle his forehead. There was, Hoare thought, something peculiar about his gesture. Squeak essayed a bob, and emitted an eponymous sound.

Bubble was unquestionably the most hirsute man Hoare had ever seen. In the wintry gloom, nothing could be seen from behind the wild growth on his head but the dim glow of his eyes, the protrusion of a flat nose, and the gleam of a bashful grin. More hair thrust out of his rags, and below the chopped-off sleeves that covered his arms. Now Hoare could explain the oddity of the man's salute; he was devoid of hands.

"Bubble were topman in Diligence, storeship, sir, when the Algerines took 'er in ninety-three," Blassingame explained. " 'E were ransomed, sir, 'e's tole me, but 'e's tried to escape in a skiff, an' they chopped off'is mauleys 'fore lettin' 'im loose."

"Barstids," Bubble declared in a low placid, voice.

"They put 'im up in 'ospital 'ere," Blassingame went on, "an' Squeak took up wif'im."

"Squeak," said Squeak, a heap of miscellaneous rags enclosing what was surely a female being, and was clinging so closely to the handless man that Hoare could not tell where one ended and the other began.

"They jumped ship a few years back, they did," Blassingame said, "an' settled down to the hat-out lay 'ereabouts, a-beggin' off the sailors in from across river, an' a-dossin' down in the tunnels underneaf the buildin's a-runnin' back up 'ill. Between 'em, sir, they knows them tunnels up an' down, back an' forth. 'Ole warren of'em there be, ye knows, sir."

Hoare had heard.

"That barstid Ogle, what's took up with the toff from Town, 'e knows 'oles most as good as we does, sir," Bubble declared.

" 'E means Goldthwait, I'm sure, sir," Blassingame said.

"Then Goldthwait is hereabouts?"

"Sure of it, sir."

"Hmm," Hoare whispered. Like a snowman, a plan began to roll up and take shape in his mind.

"We are expecting snow tomorrow, I hear," he said.

"Or the next night, perhaps. Heavy at times, too," Mr. Clay said at his side.

"That would make for considerable inconvenience to all hands, I think." Snow and its accompanying ice, indeed, posed many extraordinary hazards for vessels under sail, as Hoare himself remembered much too well from the winters he had spent, on station in Beetle, off Cape Sable, years ago.

"No landsman, I'm sure, will be surprised if we take precautionary measures," he went on.

With this, Hoare began to prepare his battle plan. He remembered.

"You sailors use as many bells, it seems, as all the parishes of London put together," John Goldthwait had told him at that first meeting in Chancery Lane. He might consider himself not only omnipotent but omniscient as well. In fact, though, as Hoare knew from that one careless remark, beyond tidewater he was ignorant as any newborn babe. Admiralty official he might be, but he knew nothing of the sea and seamen's ways. "Keep close to my desk, and never go to sea, And I can be the ruler of the King's navee," Mr. Goldthwait might have caroled of a night. Liking the notion, Hoare promptly popped it into that little mental commonplace book of his. Its reappearance told him he had recovered from thirty-six hours on his feet.

Goldthwait's eyes might be ignorant of the sea, but they would surely be as sharp as his mind. So: to those eyes and those of any of his people, Royal Duke must appear unbuttoned, relaxed and roistering over her captain's escape, with his wife, from Gracechurch Street. From the Greenwich Port Captain, then, Hoare obtained permission to tow Royal Duke into the dock.

The memory of his first, horrible experience in command of Royal Duke in Portsmouth was vivid in Hoare's memory as he watched Mr. Clay and the seagoing clerks bring the brig handily in and make her fast, her larboard side next the pier, with doubled dock lines and springs leading forward from her quarter and aft from her bows.

It was not until deep dusk of the following day that they rigged the awning, and it was not until then that Hoare revealed his plan and made certain additional preparations.