Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the headless Captains

Going on deck, he beckoned to his lieutenant.

"Get under way, Mr. Clay."

"What course, sir?"

"Brightstone, I think. Yes, set a course for Brightstone. We'll heave to there, and then we'll see what we shall see."

"Aye aye, sir," Clay said.

Off Brightstone, the seas were heavier. Royal Duke bucked lightly against them during her approach. When Clay hove her to as Hoare had ordered, the slight roll she added made for a gentle corkscrew motion. There were a few moans from the watch on deck. Two or three of the watch below came topside as well, to join their shipmates at the leeward rail under their petty officers' watchful eyes.

"What now, sir?" Clay asked.

"Remain hove to until further orders, Mr. Clay," Hoare whispered.

"Aye aye, sir. May I exercise the watch on deck?"

"Of course. And you might include those of the watch below who have found business on deck."

With this, Hoare made himself comfortable on the new hatch leading to the pigeons' quarters and settled down to wait. Clay looked his Commander askance for a moment, then began issuing orders.

Three times, the Marine on deck went forward to strike the bell. At eight bells, the watch changed. Still Royal Duke lay hove to. Her Commander went below once, just long enough for a solitary dinner in his truncated cabin.

Before he returned to his seat on the pigeons' hatch, Hoare made his way into the forepeak. He had not yet quite regained his sea legs himself and must clap onto anything he could reach as the brig tossed in the chop off Brighthead.

By now, he thought, Spurrier should be more than ready to cough up the answer to any question he was asked, if he could only be left free to die of nausea in peace. Hoare was averse to torture, but seasickness, unpleasant though it might be for its victims, could hardly be classified as torture. After all, it was well known that Admiral Nelson himself suffered from chronic seasickness. "Had suffered," Hoare told himself sadly.

When Hoare opened the little hatch through which his Marines had thrust the prisoner, the stench that poured out nearly left him, too, retching. Spurrier must have puked himself dry by now; he had evidently also lost control of bladder and bowels.

Hoare reached in and gingerly lifted his prisoner's head by its lank yellow hair. The man's face was slack, a ghastly, beslobbered greenish yellow. A dreadful mess washed about his feet, compounded of vomit, excrement, and sea-water.

"Come now, Mr. Spurrier," Hoare said, suppressing his own nausea and dodging the other's breath as best he could. "I do not wish you to suffer. Are you prepared to name your master? If so, I shall gladly have Mr. Clay ease my ship's motion and have you brought on deck, into the fresh sea air."

So speaking, he felt himself the worst of hypocrites.

Spurrier's answer was a gurgling cough.

"Well, sir?"

Silence.

Hoare closed the hatch, returned to his perch on deck to wait until Spurrier had finally had his fill of Royal Duke's tossing. The breeze picked up, then died down.

Midway through the first dogwatch, Hoare bestirred himself again and summoned Leese.

"The prisoner has been confined in the forepeak long enough to have become really seasick," he said. "Let's see if he is prepared to talk now. Bring him back on deck. If he isn't ready, we'll masthead him."

A few minutes passed; then Leese reappeared. He was alone.

"Where's the prisoner?" Hoare asked.

"Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but 'e's dead."

" What?" Hoare croaked. Then, in his normal whisper, "Get him on deck, man."

Summoning one of his men, Leese scrambled below. The two came on deck at last, bearing Spurrier between them. Spurrier's face, yellow-green when Hoare had left him, was now gray-green. His limp body was covered with stinking vomit. He was not breathing.

"Roll him over a barrel, someone," Hoare said. "Maybe he's choking on his own vomit. And call Tracy."

Samuel Tracy, failed apothecary, was Royal Duke's nearest approach to a surgeon. He took one look at the prisoner and rose to his feet.

"He's dead, sir," he said.

"No one ever died of seasickness, man," Hoare was about to say, but Tracy forestalled him.

"Someone has now, sir," Tracy said firmly. "Choked on his own vomit, I suppose. Look. He was hitched to a cleat, lying on his back, and couldn't move his head."

"›"Damn," Hoare whispered. It had been his doing, then. It had been he, Bartholomew Hoare, who had directed that Spurrier be confined up here. He, Bartholomew Hoare, had hoped that the agony of seasickness would compel Spurrier to name his master, despite his fear. That master might have been Sir Thomas Frobisher, but Hoare was far from sure. There had been a Byzantine, corrupt quality about the whole affair that did not suit the Knight-Baronet's blunt, deluded nature. In any case, here was another death to lay on the altar of his conscience, and this time a useless one. He had blundered again. He had let Spurrier spill his innards to death, indeed, but his voice had spilled nothing.

"Untie him, someone, and clean him up," Hoare whispered sadly. "We must take him back to the authorities."

In Weymouth, Hoare knew, "the authorities" were Sir Thomas Frobisher. He dreaded the thought. He would not do it; he would return to Weymouth, but he would keep his prisoners and his corpse aboard until he could get them to Portsmouth.

"Make for Weymouth, Mr. Clay," he whispered. "I'll be in my cabin, preparing my report to London."

Hoare almost felt sorry for Spurrier. The man had gained standing of a sort in Dorset, as Sir Thomas Frobisher's tame bully. But then hubris had got the better of him. Using that as a platform, he had put himself in the hands of the master agent of the French, the man whose puppets knew him only as "Himself," and set out to spread alarm and despondency among the Royal Navy by beheading its senior officers. And he had striven to enlist Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, in his unsavory cult, only to discover that the jaded royal had, as he had told Spurrier, "by the time I was fourteen, seen more, and done more, than you could dream up in a hundred opium dreams."

Somewhere, an unidentified puppet master was making his marionettes play out a vast malign joke, a joke that would soon be on England if the strings were not cut.

With that thought, Hoare drew himself up at the desk in front of his cabin window, dipped pen in Standish, and began to write his report to Sir George Hardcastle, for him to read and forward to Sir Hugh Abercrombie at the Admiralty.

Spurrier's body had been sewn into a shroud of airtight canvas, the forepeak aired out, and the henchmen stowed in less discomfort, until Royal Duke could deliver them all in Portsmouth. Hoare had sent Rabbett off in a hired chaise, all by himself, with his report. The clerk promised to place it in Sir George's hands without delay and to see that as soon as that officer had read it, it went on to London. Before he left, the clerk had taken Hoare aside and placed his hand in both of his.

"You saved my life, sir," he declared. "I shall never forget it, or the great adventure in which you allowed me to join. Please, count on me in any situation where you believe I can be of aid."

"I shall, you may be sure, Rabbett," Hoare whispered. "I shall consider you at least an honorary member of the brig's crew."

In truth, as he had noted before, Rabbett had grown during their acquaintance, in confidence of spirit, if not in bulk. He had become all but doughty.

"Oh, thank you, sir." With that, Rabbett relinquished Hoare's hand but continued to speak; he had obviously prepared this speech, and he would speak it to the end, come what may.

"You must be proud, sir," he continued. "Admiral Hardcastle commanded you to track down the villains and rogues who killed the Captains and tried to kill him, too. And that was what you did. It is not given to every man to accomplish…" His voice choked. He climbed into the chaise, signaled to the driver, and rolled away. Hoare had forborne to remind Rabbett that it had been he, Bartholomew Hoare, who had sent him into peril in the first place.