Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

"We'll see how busy you and your Mr. Whore are after our little meetin'," Wallace said over his shoulder as he began to press through the gathering crowd to find a friend to act for him. He looked a bit steadier but still filled with wrath.

"It's very odd," Hoare said sadly, "but I find nothing attracts attention like a whisper."

"Paradoxical," Bennett replied.

"Until tomorrow, then," Hoare said. "I must be off. I have preparations to make."

"I shall be at the Swallowed Anchor a half hour before dawn," Bennett said. He turned to acknowledge the other, younger Marine who bustled up to him, bright-eyed and officious, ready to serve as his fellow Johnnie's second.

Having told himself to wake at four bells in the morning watch, Hoare slept peacefully until then. He donned clean black clothing before leaving the inn in the growing dawn.

At the usual place, a narrow field overlooking the town, the party had to wait while two trembling striplings and their entourage conducted their own meeting.

"I had a few words with your adversary's second," Bennett confided as they stood. "He was unaware of your interesting record until I told him of it. He intended to mention it to his principal."

As Hoare nodded, both boys' pistols went off with faint pops. Evidently, their referee had used his common sense and put half-loads into them. One duelist dropped his weapon and grasped his grazed hand with a yelp of pain; the other puked messily onto himself. Then the embattled youths and their entourage left the field arm in arm, leaving behind an inspiriting scent of burnt powder and a depressing scent of vomit.

The party of Hoare's own adversary arrived in a light carriage as the boy duelists departed. They brought with them a case of matched pistols and Vantage's sleepy surgeon. Mr. Bennett agreeing, the surgeon, a Mr. Hopkin, had also agreed to umpire the affair. The Marines' coats were still a mere gray in the faint light. Mr. Wallace's face was equally gray.

Wallace's second approached the two naval officers, hat in hand. A bit of a coxcomb, Hoare thought.

"Gentlemen," the second said stiffly, "my principal wishes me to say he wishes he had never uttered his words of yesterday evening."

"Does he apologize for them?" Bennett inquired sharply.

"Well, er…"

Bennett conferred briefly with his principal, who shook his head and doffed his coat.

"A wish of that kind does not constitute an apology, sir," Hoare said. "With no apology, the encounter must take place."

With no more ado, Mr. Hopkin chose a spot well to windward of the puddle of puke. He opened the case of pistols, loaded both while the seconds watched, and offered the pair to Hoare for his selection. Hoare had been the insulted party, yet the thrown wine had been the direct cause of the challenge, so the choice of weapons was his.

"I see you have both been out before," said Hopkin. Indeed, Hoare and Wallace had already taken position back to back without his instructions. "The parties have agreed to exchange one shot each; the exchange of shots will suffice to satisfy honor.

"I shall count ten paces, after which you gentlemen may turn and fire at will. One… two…"

At Hopkins "ten," Hoare turned and took aim in a single move, to see his white-shirted opponent just raising his pistol. He held fire for a heartbeat, and the two shots sounded as one. Hoare felt the faint breath of Wallace's ball pass his head. The Marine grunted, dropped his weapon, and grasped his arse, across which his precious blood was already spreading. Hopkin rushed forward to examine the wound, then rose to confront Hoare and Bennett.

"A clean shot through the right gluteus maximus," Hopkin reported. "I declare honor satisfied." He bundled his patient ahead of him into the waiting chaise and departed at a brisk trot.

"Thank heaven. I certainly did not wish to shoot the poor Lobster dead," said Hoare as he and Bennett strolled down the slope to the Swallowed Anchor so he could change his clothes. When he boarded his recent opponent's vessel he wanted to be impeccably uniformed.

"At least he angled himself so I missed one cheek," he went on. "He should be able to shit without too much pain."

"It never occurred to you that you might be the one that was shot, then?"

Hoare shrugged.

"I never have been," he said. "I hardly know why."

After a comfortable breakfast, Hoare and Gladden went out to Vantage from the pair-oared wherry they had engaged at the Portsmouth Hard. Had Hoare been the frigate's first himself, he would have had no complaint about her state. Lines were properly flemished down, the guns bowsed up to their ports, topsails given a snug harbor furl.

As Vantage's first, David Courtney commanded her until the Admiralty replaced the late Captain Hay. Mr. Courtney received Bennett's letter and welcomed them cordially enough. Mr. Wallace of the Marines was not about Vantage's deck. He was abed in his tiny cabin, face down, under the surgeon's care.

Mr. Courtney was overburdened with the need to make decisions about stowage, absent boatswain's supplies gone adrift, the disciplining of a distracted new hand, fresh from the plow.

"The foolish lad struck a boatswain's mate," Mr. Courtney said. "Admitted it. 'Strook 'im back, zur,' he told me.

"As you know, gentlemen," Courtney continued, "this could mean death for him. That would not do at all at this early stage of our life together as shipmates-not at all. I must catch Gower, the petty officer in the case, and persuade him to put it about that the blow was accidental."

"Of course, sir," Hoare whispered.

Upon learning his visitors' mission Mr. Courtney, with a routine apology, handed his visitors on to Peregrine Kingsley, second in the frigate. He instructed that officer to escort them to the late captain's cabin and see that any members of the ship's company they wished to question were brought there.

The two stopped on the quarterdeck long enough to quiz Mr. Kingsley He had nothing good to say about his late captain. Arthur Gladden had been by no means the only officer to suffer from Adam Hay's intemperate tongue. A few days before, Kingsley himself had withstood a half-hour diatribe on his slipshod work aboard and his whoremasterly work ashore. But unlike Arthur Gladden, Kingsley had kept tongue and temper in hand and had escaped undamaged except in his pride.

"He could say what he pleased about me performance as one of his officers," said Kingsley, "but he had no business criticizin' me as a man of parts. Me parts are me own business, damn him," he said. He sounded, Hoare thought, a trifle smug.

Hoare already knew this swarthy, saturnine officer by reputation. He had hired a little sailing shallop that he kept in the same slip where Hoare kept Insupportable. Kingsley was known to be a "man of parts" indeed, a ready and randy man with busy privates. He apparently cared nothing for a female's age or her looks as long as she was usable. Many hearts would weep for Peregrine Kingsley when Vantage sailed. There was a rumor that one heart in particular, one that should have been devoted to its owner's husband, was heavily smitten. However, the woman's name had not reached Hoare.

Mr. Kingsley had witnessed Arthur Gladden's flight from the cabin and had been one of the fascinated crowd that invaded it when word of the murder spread. That was all he knew, he said. Now, would the gentlemen mind if he deputized an intelligent midshipman to act as messenger for them? Things were a trifle busy aboard Vantage, as they may have noticed, and he had ten green gun crews to whip into shape.

The cabin reeked of stale shellfish and old tobacco smoke. Andrew Watt, captain's clerk, was already there, leafing anxiously through the papers littering his late master's table.

"A file is missing," he said accusingly as the visitors entered.