The Complete Midshipman Bolitho Read online

  The door in a further screen opened and the servant said, “This way, sir.” He was watching Bolitho with something like despair.

  The great cabin. Bolitho stood just inside the door, his cocked hat wedged beneath one arm as he stared at the broad expanse of his captain’s domain.

  The cabin was splendid, and made further so by the huge stern windows which were so streaked with salt and dappled spray that in the grey dawn light they looked like those of a cathedral.

  Captain Beves Conway was sitting at a large desk, leafing slowly through a sheaf of papers. A mug of something hot was steaming by his elbow, and as the lantern above the desk swung this way and that Bolitho saw that he was already dressed in a clean shirt and breeches, and his blue coat with its broad white lapels was laid carefully on a bench seat, his hat and boat-cloak nearby. There was nothing about the man’s face or appearance to suggest he had just returned from the deck and the bitter wind.

  He looked up and studied Bolitho without expression.

  The captain said, “Name?”

  “Bolitho, sir.” His voice sounded different in the broad cabin. “Yes.”

  The captain half turned as his clerk entered the cabin by another small door. In the lamplight and the angled glow from the stern windows Beves Conway had an alert, intelligent profile, but his eyes were hard and gave nothing away.

  He was speaking curtly to Scroggs, his tone clipped, matter of fact, about things which Bolitho could only guess at.

  He glanced to one side and saw himself for the first time in a long, gilt-framed mirror. No wonder the cabin servant had looked worried.

  Richard Bolitho was tall for his years, tall and slim, with hair so black that it made his tanned features seem pale. In his seagoing coat, one which he had bought eighteen months earlier and had all but grown out of, he looked more like a vagrant than a King’s officer.

  He realized with a start that the captain was speaking to him.

  “Well, Mr Midshipman, er, Bolitho, due to unforeseen circumstances it seems I must rely on your skills to assist my clerk until Mr Marrack is recovered from his, er, injury.” He regarded him calmly. “What duties have you in my command?”

  “Lower gun deck, sir, and with Mr Hope’s division for sail drill.”

  “Neither of those require that you should look like a dandy, Mr, er, Bolitho, but in my ship I need all my officers to set a perfect example, no matter what duty they are performing. As a junior officer you will be ready for anything. In this command you lead, you set an example, and wherever this ship takes you, you will not only represent the Navy, y ou will be the Navy! ”

  “I understand, sir.” Bolitho tried again. “We had been aloft to shorten sail, sir, and . . .”

  “Yes.” The captain gave what might have been a wry smile. “I gave that order. I had been on deck for several hours before I decided it was really necessary.” He pulled a slim gold watch from his breeches. “Return to your berth on the orlop and put yourself to rights. I want you aft again in ten minutes.” He closed the watch with a snap. “Precisely.”

  They were the shortest ten minutes in Bolitho’s memory. Helped by Starr and Midshipman Dancer, and hindered by the luckless Eden, who chose the moment to be sick again, he eventually found his way aft to confront the same sentry by the door, but to discover the great cabin already busy with visitors. Lieutenants with questions or reports on storm damage. The master, who, from what Bolitho could gather, was either for or against the possible promotion of one of his mates. Major Dewar of the ship’s marines, his jowls as scarlet as his uniform, even the purser, Mr Poland, a veritable weasel of a man, appeared to be calling on the captain. And it was only dawn.

  The clerk led Bolitho unceremoniously to a small desk by the streaming quarter windows. Outside, through the thick glass, he saw the dull grey sea, the long streaks of breaking foam on every crest. A cluster of gulls dipped and wheeled around the Gorgon’s high counter, obviously expecting something to be flung overboard by the cook. Bolitho felt his stomach contract. They would be unlucky, he thought. Between them, the cook and the miserly purser left few scraps for gulls.

  He heard the captain discussing fresh water with Laidlaw, the surgeon, and something about scouring the empty casks to make them purer for a long voyage.

  The surgeon was a tired-looking man with deep, hooded eyes and a permanent stoop. Too long in small ships, or too long bent over his luckless victims, Bolitho could only guess.

  He was saying, “It’s a bad bit of coast there, sir.”

  The captain replied tersely, “I know that, damn it. I did not choose to take this ship and all her people to the west coast of Africa just to test your ability at curing ills!”

  The clerk leaned over the little desk. He had a dank smell, like unwashed bedding.

  He said dourly, “You can begin by copying these orders for the captain. Five of each. Nice and clear, with a firm hand, or you’ll be in trouble.”

  Bolitho waited for Scroggs to shuffle away and then cocked his ear towards the little group around the captain. While he had been struggling into one of his clean shirts and a fresh neckcloth, he had discovered that his first awe at meeting the captain had begun to shift to resentment. Conway had dismissed his reason for being improperly dressed as unimportant, even trivial. In its place he had presented his own image, that of the captain always on call, tireless and never without a solution for anything.

  But now, as he listened to Conway’s calm, unhurried voice, the mention of some four thousand miles to be sailed, the most profitable courses to be used, food, fresh water, and above all the training and efficiency of the company, he could only marvel.

  In this cabin, which for a few moments he had regarded as the height of luxury, the captain fought his own private battles. He could share his anxieties with nobody, could divide his responsibility not at all. Bolitho shivered. The great cabin could become a prison for any man who lost his way in doubt.

  He recalled his own childhood when he had visited his father’s ship on those rare and privileged occasions when she had anchored at Falmouth. How different it had been. His father’s officers smiling and friendly, some almost subservient in his presence. Rather different from his later introduction as a midshipman, when lieutenants had appeared bad tempered and intolerant.

  Scroggs was at his side again.

  “Take this message to the boatswain and come back immediately.” He thrust a folded piece of paper into his hand.

  Bolitho picked up his hat and hurried past the big desk. He was almost through the screen door when the captain’s voice halted him in his tracks.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Bolitho, sir.”

  “Very well. Be off with you, and mark what I said.” Conway looked down at his papers and waited for the door to close.

  When he glanced up again at the surgeon he said shortly, “No better way to inform the people of what we are about than to let a new midshipman overhear.”

  The surgeon regarded him gravely. “I think I know that boy’s family, sir. His grandfather was with Wolfe at Quebec.”

  “Really.” Conway was already studying the next paper.

  The surgeon added softly, “He was a rear-admiral, sir.”

  But Conway was elsewhere in his thoughts, his features set in a small frown.

  The surgeon sighed. Captains were quite unreachable.

  3 The city of ATHENS

  SOUTH-WEST AND THEN SOUTH , day in day out, with barely a pause from backbreaking work. While the Gorgon thrust her heavy bulk clear of the English Channel and headed down towards the notorious Bay of Biscay, Bolitho and his new companions drew closer together, as if to use their combined strength against the ship and the sea.

  He had heard Turnbull, the master, say that the weather was as bad as he could recall for the time of year, and for someone who had seen some thirty winters in the Navy it was a statement to be taken seriously. Especially now that Bolitho had lost his temporary work in
the great cabin. When Marrack had returned to duty after injuring his arm in the first storm, Bolitho had joined Dancer at the foremast whenever the call to make or shorten sail had been piped.

  If he found a moment to consider his progress in his new ship, which was not often, Bolitho thought more of his physical than his mental state. He was always hungry, and every muscle and bone seemed to ache from constant climbs aloft or the other demands of gun drill on the lower batteries of thirty-two-pounders. When the sea and wind moderated, and Gorgon headed south under almost a full set of canvas, the ship’s company went to quarters to learn, exercise and sweat blood over the heavy and cumbersome tiers of guns. On the lower deck it was made doubly difficult by the lieutenant in charge.

  Grenfell, the senior midshipman, had already warned Bolitho about him, and as long days ran into longer weeks, while the ship pushed her beakhead between the Madeiran Islands and the coast of Morocco, all invisible even to the masthead lookouts, the name of Mr Piers Tregorren, the fourth lieutenant and the master of Gorgon’s twenty-eight heaviest cannon, took on new importance.

  The fourth lieutenant was a massive figure, with the swarthy skin and lank hair more suitable to Spaniard or gypsy than a sea officer. The beams of the shadowy gun deck were so low that Tregorren had to duck and rise between them as he strode forward or aft to supervise the practise loading and running-out of each weapon. Big, belligerent and impatient, he was a hard man to serve.

  Even Dancer, who was usually so busy keeping out of trouble that he saved his strength for eating and sleeping, had noticed that Tregorren seemed to have taken a dislike to Bolitho. It was strange, Bolitho thought, for Tregorren was a fellow Cornishman, and usually that was one bond which survived even the cuts and bruises of discipline.

  Because of this animosity Bolitho had received three lots of extra duty, and on another occasion had been sent to the fore-mast crosstrees in a savage wind until ordered by the officer of the watch to descend. Harsh, unfair, it certainly was, but the punishment brought other sides of shiplife into the open. Young Eden produced a pot of honey which his mother had given him, and which he had been saving for some suitable occasion. Tom Jehan, the gunner, a really unsympathetic warrant officer, who messed beyond the screen and rarely deigned to speak with lowly midshipmen, brought a large mug of brandy from his private stock to restore some life to Bolitho’s frozen body.

  The endless, unrelenting training on sail and gun took other tolls, too.

  Before they had even passed Gibraltar two men were lost overboard, and another died after falling from the main yard and breaking his back on an eighteen-pounder. He was buried at a brief, but to the new men, moving ceremony, his corpse sewn in a hammock and dropped overboard weighted with roundshot, while the Gorgon tilted steeply to a brisk north-easterly.

  Further strains showed themselves like cracks in metal. Arguments broke out amongst the seamen, some trivial, some less so. A man turned on a boatswain’s mate who had ordered him aloft for the third time in a watch to splice some worn rigging and was consequently taken aft to be awarded punishment.

  Bolitho had seen his first flogging at the age of twelve and a half. He had never grown used to it, but he knew what to expect. The newer and younger midshipmen did not.

  First came the pipe, “All hands lay aft to witness punishment!” Next the rigging of a grating on one of the gangways, while the marines trooped athwartships across the poop, their scarlet coats and white crossbelts very clear against the dull, overcast sky. The ship’s company seemed to swell out of every hatchway and hiding place, until the decks, shrouds and even the boat tier were crammed with silently watching figures.

  And then the little procession wended its way to the rigged grating. Hoggett, the boatswain, and his two mates, Beedle, the unsmiling master-at-arms, Bunn, the ship’s corporal, with the prisoner and Laidlaw, the surgeon, bringing up the rear. On the quarterdeck, its pale planking dappled with droplets of spume and spray, the officers and warrant officers took their places in order of seniority and importance. By the lee side the midshipmen, all twelve of them, made two short ranks on their own.

  The prisoner was stripped and then seized up on the grating, his muscled back pale against the scrubbed wood, his face hidden as he listened to the captain’s austere voice as he read the relevant Articles of War before finishing with, “Two dozen, Mr Hoggett.”

  And so, between the staccato roll of a solitary marine drummer boy, who kept his eyes fixed on the main yard above his head throughout the flogging, the punishment was carried out. The boatswain’s mate who actually used the cat-o’-nine-tails was not a brutal man by nature. But he was powerfully built and had an arm like the branch of an oak. Also, he was well aware that to show leniency would probably invite his changing places with the luckless offender. After eight strokes the seaman’s back was a mass of blood. After a dozen it was barely recognizable as human. And so it went on. The roll of the drum and the immediate crack of the lash across the naked back.

  The youngest midshipman, Eden, fainted, and the second youngest, a pale-faced youth called Knibb, burst into tears, while the rest and not a few of the watching seamen were stiff-faced with horror.

  After what seemed like an age Hoggett called hoarsely, “Two dozen, sir!”

  Bolitho made himself breathe in and out very slowly as he watched the man being cut down from the grating. His back was torn as if mauled by some beast, the skin quite black from the force and weight of the lash. At no time had he cried out, and for a moment Bolitho imagined he had died under punishment. But the surgeon looked up at the quarterdeck as he prised the leather strap from between the man’s teeth and reported, “He’s fainted, sir.” Then he beckoned his assistants to carry the man below to the sick-bay. The blood was swabbed from the deck, the grating removed, and as the drummer and two other young marines with fifes struck up a lively jig the company slowly returned to normal life once again.

  Bolitho glanced quickly at the captain. He was expressionless, his fingers tapping a little tattoo on his sword-hilt as if in time with the jig.

  Dancer exclaimed fiercely, “What a foul way to treat a man!”

  The old sailing master overheard him and rumbled, “Wait till you’ve seen a flogging round th’ fleet, m’lad, then you will have something to puke on!”

  And yet, when the hands went for their mid-meal of salt beef and iron-hard biscuits, washed down with a pint of coarse red wine, Bolitho heard no word of complaint or anger from anyone. It seemed that as in his last ship the rule of the lower deck was that if you got caught you were punished. The fault was being found out.

  This acceptance was even showing itself in the midshipmen’s berth. The first anxiety and awe at not knowing what to do, and when to do it, had given way to a new unity, a toughness which had touched even Eden.

  Food and comfort were paramount, and the uncertainty of the voyage, what they were being ordered to do, took on less importance.

  The small compartment which nestled against the ship’s curved side had become their home, the space between the white screen door and their heavy chests an area where they ate their crude meals, shared their confidences and fears and learned from one another with each succeeding day.

  Apart from the sighting of a few murky islands and two distant ships, Gorgon seemed to have the ocean to herself. Daily the midshipmen gathered aft for instruction in navigation under Turnbull’s watchful eye. The sun and the stars took on new meaning to some of them, while to the older ones the reality of promotion to lieutenant seemed not so distant and improbable.

  After a particularly bad gun drill with the thirty-two-pounders Dancer said angrily, “That man Tregorren has the devil in him!”

  Little Eden surprised all of them by saying, “He has the g-gout, if that is the d-devil, Martyn.”

  They all stared at him as he added in his thin, piping voice,

  “My f-father is an apothecary in B-Bristol. He is often c-called to t-treat such cases.” He nodded firmly. “Mr Trego
rren t-takes too much b-brandy for his own g-good.”

  With this new knowledge at their disposal they were able to watch the fourth lieutenant’s behaviour with more interest. Tregorren would lurch beneath the low deck beams, his shadow crossing the gunports like a massive spectre, while at each great cannon the crew would wait for the order to load and run out, to train or elevate as the lieutenant ordered.

  Each gun weighed three tons and had a crew of fifteen hands to control it and its opposite number on the other side of the deck. Every man had to know exactly what to do, and to keep doing it no matter what. As Tregorren had shouted on many occasions, “I’ll make you bleed a bit, but it’s nothing to what an enemy will do, so move yourselves! ”

  Bolitho was sitting at the slung table in the midshipmen’s berth, a candle flickering in an old oyster shell to add some light to that which filtered from a nearby companion-way, and writing a letter to his mother. He had no idea when, if ever, she would read it, but it gave him comfort to retain a link with his home.

  From what he had gathered from his privileged position of aiding Turnbull with the navigation lessons, and his daily scrutiny of the master’s charts, he knew that the first part of their passage was almost over. Four thousand miles, the captain had said, and as he had studied the wavering lines of the charts, the daily positions fixed by shooting the sun and the usual calculations on speed and course, he knew all the old excitement of an approaching landfall. Six weeks since weighing anchor at Spithead. Changing tack and constantly reducing or making sail. The ship’s track wavered over the charts like an injured beetle. A speedy frigate would have covered the distance and been on her way back to England long since, he thought bitterly.

  He paused, his pen in mid-air, as he heard muffled shouts from two decks above. He doused the glim and carefully placed it in the chest, and laid the unfinished letter under his next clean shirt.