An Eye of the Fleet (29 page)

‘Which,' said Devaux choosing his moment, ‘brings me to
the matter of Morris sir. I'd be obliged if a transfer could be arranged . . .'

‘That is a little drastic, is it not, Mr Devaux. What's behind this request?'

Devaux outlined the problem and added the remark that in any case Morris would resent serving under Drinkwater. Hope snorted.

‘Resent! Why I've resented serving under half the officers I've submitted to. But Morris is fortunate, Mr Devaux. Had I known earlier I'd have broken him. Another time I'll trouble you to tell me as soon as you have any inkling of this kind of thing . . . it's the bane of the service and produces officers like that loathsome Edgecumbe . . .' Hope added expansively.

‘Yes, sir,' Devaux changed the subject hastily. ‘What are the Admiral's intentions, sir?'

Again Hope snorted. ‘Intentions! I wish he had some. Why he and General Clinton sit here in New York waving the Union Flag with enough soldiers to wipe Washington off the face of the earth. Clinton shits himself with indecision at the prospect of losing New York and saves face by sending General Philips into Virginny.

‘However I hear that Arbuthnot's to be relieved . . .'

‘Who by, sir?'

‘Graves . . .'

‘Good God, not Graves . . .'

‘He's a pleasant enough man which is more than I found Arbuthnot.'

‘He's an amiable incompetent, sir. Wasn't he court-martialled for refusing battle with an Indiaman?'

‘Yes, back in 'fifty seven . . . no 'fifty six. He was acquitted of cowardice but publically reprimanded for an error of judgement under the 36th Article of War . . . you must admit
some
Indiamen pack a punch . . .' Both officers smiled ruefully at memories of
La Creole
.

‘D'ye know, John, it's one of the great ironies that on the very day the court at Plymouth sentenced Tommy Graves, a court at Portsmouth got John Byng for a similar offence which was far more strategically justifiable. You know what happened to Byng. They sentenced him under the 12th Article . . . he was shot on his own quarterdeck . . .' Hope's voice trailed off.

‘
Pour encourager les autres
 . . . ,' muttered Devaux. ‘Voltaire,
sir,' he said in explanation as Hope looked up.

‘Ah, that Godless French bastard . . .'

‘Does anyone know what's happened to Cornwallis, sir?'

Hope stirred. ‘No! I don't believe any of 'em know anything, John. Now what about my main to'gallant . . . ?'

The next morning Devaux sent for Drinkwater. The lieutenant was staring north up the Hudson River to where the New Jersey Palisades could be seen, catching the early sunlight.

‘Sir?'

Devaux turned and regarded the young man. The face had matured now. The ragged line of the wound, rapidly scarring, would hardly alter the flesh over the cheekbones though it might contrast the weathered tan. The figure beneath the worn and patched uniform was spare but fit. Devaux snapped his glass shut.

‘That hanger you had off
La Creole
's lieutenant . . . D'ye still have it?'

Drinkwater coloured. At the end of the action he had found himself still clasping the small sword. It was a fine weapon and its owner had not survived long after the capture of his ship. Drinkwater had regarded the thing as his own part of the spoil. After all the gunroom officers wallowed in the captured wine for weeks afterwards and he felt the weight of a dirk too useless for real fighting. The sword had found its way to the bottom of his sea chest where it lay wrapped in bunting. He did not know how Devaux knew this but assumed that omniscience was a natural attribute of first lieutenants.

‘Well, sir?' queried Devaux, a note of asperity in his voice.

‘Er, yes, sir . . . I, er, do have it . . .'

‘Then ye'd better clap it on y're larboard hip!'

‘Beg pardon, sir?' The young man frowned uncomprehendingly.

Devaux laughed at Drinkwater's puzzled expression. ‘The captain is promoting you acting third lieutenant as of now. You may move your chest and effects up on to the gundeck . . .' He watched the effect of the news on Drinkwater's face. The lad's mouth dropped open, then closed. He blinked, then smiled back. At last he stammered his thanks.

Cyclops
lay at her anchor with Arbuthnot's squadron through May and June. During this time Drinkwater's prime
task was to get a new broadcloth coat from a New York tailor. The ship had recruited its complement from the guardships but there was little for the men to do. Then, on 12th July, things began to happen. Admiral Graves arrived, a kind, generous but simple incompetent who was to be instrumental in losing the war. Then Rodney's tender
Swallow
arrived with the intelligence that Admiral De Grasse had left the West Indies with a French fleet bound for the Chesapeake. Graves chose to ignore the warning despite its significance. Since May Lord Cornwallis had abandoned the Carolinas and was combining his force with General Philips's in Virginia. If Cornwallis had De Grasse sitting on his communications with New York he would be cut off. Captains and officers had themselves rowed about the fleet while they grumbled about their admiral's failure to grasp the simplest strategic facts. Cornwallis was retreating to the sea for the navy to support him . . . but the navy was in New York . . .

Once again the opinion was expressed that in executing Byng their Lordships had taken more leave of their senses than was usual; they had shot the wrong man.

Another message arrived via
Pegasus
that urged Graves to sail south and join Sir Samuel Hood, to whom Rodney had relinquished command through ill health. But the fleet remained supinely at anchor.

At the beginning of August Clinton decided to act, not against Virginia, but against Rhode Island where French troops and men o' war were based. Admiral Graves ordered a number of ships down to Sandy Hook in preparation. One of these was
Cyclops
.

It was at this time that Midshipman Morris left the frigate.

When
Cyclops
left the Galuda her ship's company were hard put to fight the elements, guard their prisoners and simply survive. The remaining lieutenants were on watch and watch, with the mates and midshipmen equally hard pressed. Drinkwater and Morris were in opposite watches and the preoccupations of working and sleeping allowed no-one the luxury of contemplating the events of past weeks objectively. It would not be true, however, to say that the events and circumstances that had occurred were forgotten. Rather they lay at a level just above the sub-conscious, so that they influenced conduct
but did not dominate it. Drinkwater was particularly affected. The horrors he had seen and the guilt he felt over his involvement in the death of Threddle impinged on his self-esteem. And his knowledge of the manner of Sharples's death lay like a weight upon his soul.

Although Sharples had been the true murderer of Threddle, Drinkwater knew that he had been driven to it. Morris's cold-blooded execution of the seaman at the mill, however, was another matter.

To Drinkwater's mind it was a matter for the law or, and he shuddered at the thought, a matter for vengeance.

When
Cyclops
arrived at New York there was time, too much time, for the mind to wander over possible causes and effects and the consequences of action.

In the midshipmen's mess some contact with Morris was unavoidable and there had been potentially disruptive scenes. Drinkwater had always avoided them by walking out, but this action had given Morris the impression of an ascendancy over Nathaniel.

Morris had entered the mess some time after, but on the day that Drinkwater had been told of his promotion.

‘And what's our brave Nathaniel up to now?' There was silence. Then White came in. ‘I've taken your boat-cloak and tarpaulin to your cabin, Nat . . . er, sir . . .'

Nathaniel smiled at his friend. ‘Thanks, Chalky . . .'

‘Cabin? Sir? What bloody tomfoolery is this . . . ?' Morris was colouring with comprehension. Nathaniel said nothing but continued to pack things in his chest. White could not resist the chance of aggravating the bully at whose hands he had suffered, particularly when he had a powerful ally in the person of the acting third lieutenant.

‘Mr Drinkwater,' he said with gravity, ‘is promoted to acting third lieutenant.'

Morris glared as he assimilated the news. He turned to Nathaniel in a fury.

‘The devil you are. Why you jumped-up little bastard you don't have time in for lieutenant . . . I suppose you've been arse-licking the first lieutenant again . . . I'll see about this . . .' He ran on for some minutes in similar vein.

Drinkwater felt himself seized again by the cold rage that had made him so brutal with the wounded French lieutenant
of
La Creole
. It was a permanent legacy of that horrendous march inland and was to stamp his conduct in moments of physical confrontation. As the influence of his widowed mother had made him soft clay for Morris's viciousness, the events of the Galuda had tempered the latent iron in his soul.

‘Have a care, sir,' he said, his voice low and menacing, ‘have a care in what you say . . . you forget I have passed for master's mate which is more than you have ever managed . . . you also forget I have evidence to have you hanged under two Articles of War . . .'

Morris paled and Drinkwater thought for a moment he was going to faint. At last he spoke.

‘And what if I tell of your conduct over Threddle?'

Drinkwater felt his own heart thump with recollection but he retained his head. He turned to little White who was staring wide-eyed between one and the other of the older midshipmen.

‘Chalky, if you had to choose between evidence I gave and evidence Morris gave whose would you favour?'

The boy smiled, pleased at the dividend his revenge was receiving, ‘Yours, Nat, of course . . .'

‘Thank you. Now perhaps you and Morris would be kind enough to carry my chest to my cabin.'

Drinkwater luxuriated in the privacy of his little cabin. Situated between two twelve-pounders on the gundeck it dismantled when the frigate cleared for action. He no longer had to endure the constant comings and goings of the cockpit and was able to read in privacy and quiet. Perhaps the greatest benefit his acting rank conferred upon him was the right to mess in the gunroom and enjoy the society of Wheeler and Devaux. Appleby, though not at that time technically a member of the commissioned officers' mess was a frequent, indeed a usual, visitor. In New York Drinkwater obtained new clothes and cocked hat without braid so that his appearance befitted his new dignity without ostentation, though he was rarely on deck without his captured sword swinging, as Devaux put it, ‘upon his larboard hip'.

His acquaintance with the multifarious duties of a naval officer increased daily as there was a constant stream of boats between the ships and town of New York but his social life was limited to an occasional dinner in the gunroom of another vessel. Unlike Wheeler or Devaux he eschewed the delights of the frequent entertainments given by New York society for the garrison and naval officers. This was partly out of shyness,
partly out of the deference to Elizabeth, but mostly due to the fact that the other occupants of the gunroom now had a junior in their midst sufficiently subordinate not to protest at their abuses of rank.

Drinkwater's chief delight at this time was reading. In the bookshops of New York and from the surgeon's small travelling library he had discovered Smollett and made the consequential acquaintance of Humphry Clinker, Commodore Trunnion and Roderick Random.

It was the latter that led his thoughts so often to Elizabeth. The romantic concept of the waiting woman obsessed him so that the uncertainty of Elizabeth's exact whereabouts worried him. That he loved her was now beyond a doubt. Her image had sustained him in the dreary swamps of Carolina and he had come to think of her as a talisman against all evil, mostly that of Morris.

There was more to his enmity with Morris than a poisonous dislike. He was convinced that the man was an evil influence over his life. Buried deep in the natural fear of the green young midshipman of two years earlier this idea had grown as successive events had seemed to establish a pattern in his imagination. That they had served to strengthen him and his resolution seemed inconsequential. Had he not been made aware of Morris's depravity and the fate of Sharples? Could not someone else have come in from the yard arm that night the topman had begged for help? Could not another midshipman have been sent forward to ask Kate Sharples to leave the deck that day in Spithead?

But now there was a more vivid reason for attributing something supernatural to Morris's malevolence. For Drinkwater was subject to a recurring dream, a nightmare that had its origins in the swamps of Carolina and haunted him with an occasional but persistent terror.

It had come first to him in the exhausted sleep after the taking of
La Creole
and occurred again in the gales off Cape Hatteras. Twice while
Cyclops
lay in New York he had suffered from it.

There was always a white lady who seemed to rear over him, pale as death and inexorable in her advance as she came ever nearer, yet never passed over him entirely. Sometimes she bore the face of Cranston, sometimes of Morris but, most horribly
of Elizabeth, but an Elizabeth of Medusa-like visage before which he quailed, drowning in a vast noise like the clanking of chains, rythmically jerking . . . or of
Cyclops
's pumps . . .

It was therefore with relief that Drinkwater learned of Morris's transfer. Since his promotion he had not sought to impose his new found authority upon Morris and simply heard that he was joining a ship in Rear Admiral Drake's division with an inner and secret lightening of the heart.