Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the matter of treason

Never mind. It 'ud be two pretty judies for him, an' he'd be on the randy for a month.

Close-hauled, her weather shrouds humming with the strain in the raw January northerly, Royal Duke heeled to her task. A light wash poured into her scuppers with each leeward roll, then out again as she righted. A pair of gulls swept effortlessly across her wake, heads turning as they wheeled, in their never-ending search for nutriment. The low clouds dumped an occasional spatter to support the light spray thrown from her weather bows. There would be no need to wash down the decks this morning, Hoare told himself. Instead, the watch could continue to accustom themselves to working below while under way. In his opinion, the ordinary cipher clerks and file-matchers would have no trouble, though the two forgers-"screeners," he had learned, they were termed in thieves' cant-might find it hard to keep a steady hand.

At Hoare's side, Mr. Clay grinned ecstatically into the wind, his hair, short though it was, whipping behind him.

"Her best point of sailing, I do believe, sir," he declared. "We're overhauling that transport to windward. She bears a full point farther off the weather bow."

Hoare could hardly expect the other to hear his whisper, so he merely nodded with an answering smile. It was exhilarating travel, indeed.

"Shall I have the log cast, sir?" Clay asked. Hoare nodded assent, and Clay roared out the order.

One of Sergeant Leese's Green Marines clumped forward to handle the timing glass. Since Royal Duke carried no midshipman, Taylor undertook the heaving of the log. Newlywed Hoare might be, but the sight of Taylor's statuesque figure as she went about the task stirred his own maturing loins. It would, he thought, have stirred those of the yacht's coroneted figurehead, had it been so mutinous as to peer aft with its painted china-blue eyes.

"Mark!" Taylor cried, and tossed the log over the side. Its thin cord whipped through her horny hands until the marine, in belated echo, called, "Mark."

"Turn."

"Stop."

She nipped the line to check the log and release its chip, and brought the instrument back aboard with a thump. After reading the nearest marking on the line, coiling it as she overhauled it, she called out the result. "Ten knots and a fathom, sir!" she announced to Mr. Clay. She sounded triumphant. Another echo, Clay repeated the finding to the captain at his elbow, in his powerful voice.

"She moves along, doesn't she?" Clay said. Fleetingly, Hoare thought of responding with a question as to which "she" his lieutenant meant, but decided that this was no occasion for double entendres. Instead, he merely whispered, "And lies most amazing close to the wind."

His mouth was close enough above Clay's ear so he could be reasonably sure of being heard. And if not, what matter? It was a casual, trivial remark, one he was sure would not be missed.

He watched Taylor coil log line and chip, deftly and in Bristol fashion. Like a surprising number of her shipmates, almost all of whom were volunteers taken aboard on account of skills quite unrelated to the sea, she had made astonishing progress as a sea-"man" in a matter of weeks. All credit to Clay and the few seasoned hands-and the unusually high level of their intelligence. Already, out of the thirty-four Royal Dukes, he would not hesitate to rate a good ten of them topmen. As gunners, now… if only they could master their gunnery as well, he could rest satisfied that his peculiar command would do him credit against any other bantam brig afloat.

–

A sudden notion crystalized in his mind.

"You have the deck, Mr. Clay," he said. "Thus, thus, call me if anything untoward takes place."

"Aye, aye, sir." Bare-headed at the moment, Clay touched his forelock, gamekeeper-style. Hoare, with his notion in mind, slipped below to make a certain inquiry of Stone, Royal Duke's acting gunner, and Titus Thoday, official holder of the gunner's. At this speed and with this wind, Royal Duke would easily reach the Straits of Dover by nightfall and, if the wind were to back, might even break into the Thames estuary by dawn. But however handy the crew might be, it lacked practical sea time, and the brig's course through these crowded waters, in darkness and with no vessel showing running lights, would be fraught with danger. An awkward encounter with some wayward Englishman was the most likely hazard, but one had to bear in mind as well that Trafalgar had not swept the Channel clean of every mischievous predatory Froggy bottom.

The orders of Sir Hugh Abercrombie himself had forbidden Hoare ever, ever, to put to sea in Royal Duke, yet here they both were, by that same admiral's command, hard on the wind in mid-Channel, in the gathering darkness of a raw January night, a weakling at the mercy of all comers.

Having made his inquiry of Stone and issued certain corrective instructions, Hoare now removed to his truncated cabin and called for his silent servant Whitelaw. Unlike his master, Whitelaw had a perfectly healthy man's voice; he simply forbore to use it except in extreme need, a trait that Hoare found quite desirable in a captain's servant. Within two minutes and without orders, Whitelaw brought him a supper of soft bread, a chunk of hard cheese, and a few slices of ham, with a carafon of adequate Burgundy to wash it down. While consuming these, Hoare jotted down his rough log for the day. He read a scene or two of As You Like It in the selection of Shakespeare's works, which- with the chess set whose mysteries she had not yet had time to unlock for him-had been Eleanor's wedding gift. At last he disrobed, blew out the lamp, and turned in to his swinging cot.

On the larboard, windward side of the cabin, the enormous special chair that had been kept for Sir Hugh Abercrombie swayed gently in unison with the cot. To the sound of Royal Duke's quiet working and the occasional mutter of her sea-pigeons in their quarters of unearned privilege aft of the bulkhead, he fell asleep.

It seemed no more than a minute before the brig's change of course awakened him. For another minute he lay confused. He had been awakened at the climax of a highly erotic dream in which the body he embraced mingled Eleanor's firm roundness with the muscular limbs of Sarah Taylor. This must cease, he ordered himself as he swung his feet to the deck. The sound of Mr. Clay's roaring voice told him that his lieutenant was simply tacking ship; he supposed Clay had chosen to tack rather than wear, so as to give the watch the challenge of groping its way through the more difficult maneuver in the dark. The brig did not fall into irons but eased to an even keel and, with a slatting of canvas and a banging of blocks and Mr. Clay's great bellows, came 'round nimbly enough, falling off onto the larboard tack.

So far, so good. If he could put Royal Duke about in the dark with her half-trained crew, Clay was as good a seaman as himself. If not better, Hoare admitted. He should be as good, heaven knew. Clay had been at sea since boyhood without interruption, while Hoare had been shore-bound for eleven years. He feared he had lost the exquisite timing it took to execute even the basic maneuver Clay had just made. But the handling of small fore-and-aft-rigged craft, slooplings like his beloved pinnace Nemesis, now towing obediently behind Royal Duke, Hoare knew he still had no master.

Hoare thoughtfully dressed himself in the dark. He took down the superb set of French foul weather gear that he had brought aboard from the pinnace, donned it, and went on deck into the spitting midnight gloom.

"I was on the point of calling you, sir," Mr. Clay said into his ear. "The lookout in the fore crosstrees is sure he glimpsed the loom of some vessel to windward, off the larboard bow."

"Hail him for details."

"Deck there!" came the reply. "She be about a cable's length to windward, steerin' the same course as we be! We be closing' on 'er fast!"