Ричард Вудмен: The flying squadron

'Once we run out of fresh food, I expect,' Drinkwater added.

'Yes, sir,' Frey thought of the cabbages stowed in the boats on the booms and the rupture they had caused between himself and the first lieutenant. Relations between Mr Metcalfe and himself were not cordial.

'Happily this passage should settle most of them into the ship's routine and teach them their business,' Drinkwater went on, thinking of White's caution. 'Thank heavens we ain't keeping watch and ward off Ushant with the Black Rocks under our lee and the guns at St Matthew contestin' the point every time we stick our nose into Brest Road ... Good Lord…'

Drinkwater broke off, excused himself and walked forward as the pale figure of Vansittart appeared, rising cautiously from the companionway.

'Good mornin', Vansittart. How d'you fare today?'

Vansittart drew a dank lock of hair back from his forehead, looked upwards and caught sight of the swaying mastheads. Frey saw him swallow and seize the rail with white knuckles.

'Stare at the horizon, man,' Drinkwater snapped sharply, catching hold of him. 'Come, sir, walk to the rail. There, 'tis easy once you have the knack of it.'

Beneath their feet the deck bucked as Patrician slammed into a wave. Vansittart staggered, but kept his balance and reached the bulwark. Sweat stood in beads upon his face and he slowly shook his distressed head. 'Dear God, Captain, if I had known ...' 'The horizon, sir, keep your eyes on the horizon.' The four men at the frigate's double wheel wore broad grins. Two of them, landsmen manning the after wheel, had been in a similar condition a few days earlier. They chuckled with the relish of the relieved.

'Mind your steering there,' Frey growled, suppressing his own amusement. He regarded Vansittart's stained and unbuckled knee breeches, the rumpled stockings, loose stock and revolting shirt. The contrast with his first dandified appearance aboard Patrician was most marked, the more so since his ensemble was the same. Such disregard for his person indicated the extremity of his illness.

'You will become accustomed to the motion, I promise you,' Drinkwater was saying, 'but you must have some breakfast.'

'Zounds, sir, no breakfast, I beg you ...' Drinkwater turned, his eyes twinkling. 'Pass word for my steward,' he ordered, and when the man made his appearance, said, 'Mullender, bring some cushions on deck.'

Solicitous for his guest, Drinkwater had them placed on the inboard end of a quarterdeck gun-truck and helped Vansittart ease himself down on to them.

'An hour sitting in the sunshine and you'll have an appetite like a midshipman, Vansittart. Now heed what I say and keep your eyes on the horizon ... good man.'

Vansittart mumbled his thanks and Drinkwater left him. One bell was struck forward as Drinkwater paused at the top of the companionway.

'I'm goin' below to break my fast, Mr Frey. When the watch changes and you're relieved, give Mr Metcalfe my compliments and tell him we'll exercise the guns during the forenoon.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'And keep an eye on our guest,' he added in a low voice.

'Beggin' yer pardon, sir,' the quartermaster asked Frey when the captain had gone, 'but who is 'e?' The man jerked his head at the crumpled figure sitting miserably on the gun-truck.

'Mr Vansittart's a King's Messenger,' Frey explained.

'Bloody 'ell! Can't 'is Majesty find someone more fit to the task, sir?' The old man dropped his voice and muttered, for the benefit of his companions at the wheel, 'Reckon 'e's proof the King's bleedin' barmy.'

'Fire!'

Beside him, Drinkwater was aware that Vansittart winced for the eighth time, shocked by the concussion of the starboard battery which was now, after the fourth broadside, almost simultaneous in its discharges.

'Very well, Mr Metcalfe, you may secure the guns and pipe up spirits.' Drinkwater turned to Vansittart who had earlier expressed a wish to 'see the cannon fired'.

'I'm afraid, sir, you'll have little option,' Drinkwater had said at breakfast when he had announced his intention of exercising the gun-crews. 'When we clear for action the bulkheads will be removed and your cabin will cease to exist.'

Vansittart's look of mistrust, of being wary in his nautical inexperience of being mocked, had amused Drinkwater. But so it had proved, and the transformation of the ship had astonished Vansittart. The secluded comfort of his small but neatly appointed cabin was suddenly invaded by a gang of barefoot and grinning seamen even before the bosun's mates had finished their dreadful squealing at the hatchways and while the marine drummer still rattled his snare drum in the ruffle that signalled the ship was beating to quarters.

Volubly protesting, Vansittart's valet Copford had scooped up his master's silver-mounted mirror and brushes, his jade pomade pot and writing-case, together with his books, papers and dispatch box, before the coarse hands of the seamen threw them unceremoniously into a spare chest Mr Gordon, just then officer of the watch, had thoughtfully sent down. The chest of drawers and washstand vanished before Vansittart's eyes and he was left contemplating two huge, 24-pounder cannon of whose existence he had only hitherto been vaguely aware. At that moment, sent from the quarterdeck above, Mr Midshipman Porter had plucked at his sleeve.

'Captain's compliments, sir, and would you care to join him on the quarterdeck.'

It sounded neither complimentary, nor a question; beneath its formal veneer it was a command and it irritated Vansittart. He had only just mastered sea­sickness; now the wretched comforts of what passed at sea for civilization had been rudely snatched from him and this greasy, red-faced boy was dancing impatiently round like an imp.

'Damn it,' he began, choking the protest off in a masterly effort to retain his sang froid before Porter. He had nowhere else to go and he was now being rudely jostled as the powder monkeys ran about the place and the seamen round the guns stretched tackles and hefted rammers and sponges. Mr Gordon appeared, his hanger bouncing belligerently upon his left hip, gesticulating, Vansittart observed, with a hand wanting two fingers. The normally mild officer had a gleam in his eye that lent force to his 'If you please, sir ...' which dissolved into a shout at his gunners. 'Clear away there, starbowlines, look lively and beat those lubbers to larboard.'

'Careful, damn your eyes,' snarled Porter at a passing landsman who slopped water from his pail over Vansittart's feet. 'This way, sir...'

And Vansittart bowed to the inevitable and allowed himself to be drawn, squelching miserably in sodden shoes, on to the quarterdeck.

For three-quarters of an hour he wondered what all the fuss had been about. On deck, he could no longer see the main batteries properly, though he caught glimpses of activity beneath the boat booms in the waist. The upper-deck gunners manning the quarterdeck 18-pounders seemed to squat idly round their guns for some time while a tirade of shouted orders in which the clipped voices of Frey and Gordon, each in charge of a 24-pounder battery on the gun deck, were interspersed with shouted exhortations from Mr Metcalfe.

The first lieutenant's most offensive weapon was a silver hunter which he consulted with maddening and incomprehensible regularity, dictating numerous time intervals to Porter who ran after him with a slate as he went from waist to quarterdeck and back, pausing now and again to make some remark to Captain Drinkwater.

The captain appeared to take very little interest in the proceedings but stood by what Vansittart was now able to identify with some pride as the mizen weather rigging, addressing the occasional remark to Mr Wyatt, whose face bore a sort of disdain for the present activity. Vansittart knew Wyatt was specifically charged with the frigate's navigation and supposed it was some esoteric point on this to which he and Drinkwater referred.