Deverel! Deverel my one-time friend whom sickness and love to say nothing of circumspection and dislike had driven from my mind! Deverel in irons! I would descend looking for him and come across Mr Benét and Charles Summers as it were accidently. I would open in that privacy not just the committee’s request but my opinion of it. I rebuked myself for my lack of consideration, my forgetfulness of a friend in need. Only my injuries and my “delayed concussion” could excuse it. Later, I would detach Benét from Charles and lead the conversation gently round to Alcyone and her ladies!
I made a lurching, zigzag progress down the ladders, rehearsing my various speeches as I went. The last time I had come that way I had been impelled, not to put too fine a point on it, by lust. Now that I was descending again through those shadowy, those heaving and creaking and dripping and trickling levels, I understood only too well the difference between that descent and this one. I felt the depth of my engagement! The penalty of a “level head”, of a politic and cautious habit of mind, is that the day of our first and last passion is delayed and all the stronger for being unexpected!
Picture me then descending to the low level of the gun-room which was yet the lightest of all. Those who make themselves the snuggest in a ship are the warrant officers and here they were using more light than all the becandled passengers together. No less than three lanterns swung from the deckhead. These three—not the cut bottles which the seamen fill with tallow but heavy objects of brass—exhibited a movement which you can find nowhere but in a ship unless it might be, of all places, the ballet. They swung exactly in time and to the same angle. Or rather—this is difficult to describe, I need Colley’s pen—they appeared to swing. It was the ship that moved, of course, while the lanterns by virtue of their loaded bases hung steady. It was unnatural and sickening. I looked away and found that by contrast with this brilliant illumination the corners of the gun-room were densely dark. Patches of shadow moved and changed as the lanterns performed their strange dance. As I came through the door the three presented me with their brass bottoms, then flipped back with a revealed glare of light, hovered for a moment or two, then swung back towards me again. It was enough to drive a man out of his wits, these lights dancing in a row. I had difficulty in keeping my head clear and the foul taste out of my mouth.
Mr Gibbs was nowhere to be seen. But opposite me on the other side of a fixed table sat Mr Askew, our gunner, with the ancient midshipman, Mr Davies, beside him. Mr Davies rested his wrinkled and veined hands on the table. His mouth was slightly open and he was staring at nothing. It was as if the constant inconstant lanterns with their flash then dark (huge shadows performing a similar movement over further parts of the great room) had kept him silent, and spellbound as one of M. Mesmer’s subjects—kept him with an empty head, waiting for some order which might never come.
Mr Askew looked at me bleakly. He had a glass before him. He did not seem glad to see me.
“And what might you want down here, sir? He’s turned in.”
He jerked his head towards a particularly dark corner. A sluglike object was suspended there from the deckhead by both ends.
“Mr Deverel—”
“That there, Mr Talbot, is George Gibbs. He come down here all of a twist saying you’d made him drink brandy to which his constitution is unused. He fairly tossed down his rum and was that far gone I had to sling his hammock and heave him into it. If we see him again any time between now and the middle you can call me Lady Jane.”
“I wish to visit Lieutenant Deverel.”
Mr Askew eyed me closely. Then he put down his glass and took out a short clay pipe. He fumbled about under the table.
“Martin! What have you done with my prick?”
He nudged Mr Davies who rocked a little but did nothing otherwise. Mr Askew thrust his right hand into the midshipman’s left pocket.
“You thieving bastard, Martin!”
He drew out a long object wrapped in canvas and proceeded to cut a slice from the end of it. He crammed the slice into the bowl of the pipe, took a piece of “slow match” from a “half-bottle” and laid the glowing end on the tobacco. He puffed out a quantity of stinking smoke so that I gagged. I became aware that I was swaying between the doorposts, one hand on each in a way which must appear positively silly.
“Kindly tell me where Lieutenant Deverel is, Mr Askew, and I will withdraw from these premises since I do not seem to be welcome in them.”
Mr Askew continued to puff without saying anything. Suddenly the lights and shadows, the insane, balletic dance of the lanterns, which was a counter-image of the ship’s uneasy motion in the sea, took me by the head and throat and stomach and knees.
“If you don’t mind—”
I staggered forward, grabbed the table and fell onto the bench. The evil smoke curled round me and I felt the sweat start out on my brow.
“Not feeling quite the thing are you, Mr Talbot? Not quite so much the ‘lord’ these days?”
This was too much. I swallowed whatever was in my mouth.
“I may not be a peer, Mr Askew, but I am commissioned to serve His Majesty in ways you probably never heard of and would not understand. You will oblige me by paying my position the respect due to it from a warrant officer of the Navy, however senior.”
Mr Askew continued to puff. Under the deckhead the smoke now hung, bellying as if a chimney needed cleaning. His face had turned a dusky red, but not, I think, as Mr Gibbs’s had done from his potations. One puff of smoke rolled insolently near my face. When he spoke his voice was cracked and tremulous.
“It’s ’ardly—hardly lovable, is it?”
“Lovable? Lovable?”
“The carry-on. The swaying about. The hoity-toity. Since we have got so far and there is no one to hear.”
I glanced significantly at Mr Davies, still silent, still bound by the spell. Mr Askew removed his pipe and wiped the stem with a yellow and horny thumb.
“You see I liked the way you took those blows to the head and come up all set to be a hero. To do what you could, I mean. He’ll be a man one day, I said to myself, if someone don’t kill him. Only you don’t know nothing, do you? In the entertainment when Joss read that bit about ‘Lord Talbot’ if you’d stood up and bowed with your hand on your heart and a smile on your face we’d have took our corn from your hand as sweet as a miller’s donkey. Only you puckered up like. Oh, I know it’s hard when you’re young—”
“I am more than—”
“You’re young, you see. There’s officers and warrant officers and petty officers and seamen of this and that— captains of tops and captains of heads and the poor bloody seamen what don’t know sugar from shit as they say in Pompey—”
“I will not allow this to continue in front of a witness! Make a private conversation of it, sir, and I shall know how to answer you!”
“Witness? Who? Martin? Bless you, Martin won’t give trouble. Why—listen!”
He nudged the old man, then leaned sideways and spoke close to his ear.
“Sing, Martin! Good Martin!”
He paused. The lanterns danced, there were water noises and the creak and stretch of timber.
“Sing, Martin.”
With a reedy, quavering voice, the old man sang: “Down to the river in the time of the day—”
It was the beginning and the end of his song. It was the endless end, over and over again.
“He’s the real bottom of the barrel, isn’t he? I suppose he might have rose to be a lieutenant if he’d had luck or a shove up the bum from an admiral. But it don’t matter to him now, does it? Not what he was or might have become. He’s had it all and gone home, sir. He don’t hear us, isn’t here.”
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Brings a man up against it, don’t it? Less trouble to stop a round shot in the guts if you ask me, though now there’s no war to speak of except this Yankee sideshow there’ll be a sight too many people living a sight too long if you ask me—which you have not
done. But he’s no trouble. Hasn’t dirtied himself yet as far as I know. All right, Martin lad. Stow it.”
My jaw must have dropped. I gulped my own spittle.
“Does everybody—”
“Bless you, no, sir. It’s living and dying in ships. He’s gone home like I said. The likes of me, well we’re hard as the ship’s bitts never having known what it is to have parents and all that gear. But Martin, you see, he could remember his parents so he has in a manner of speaking a home to go home to, I don’t really mean go home but when he’s like this it’s the same really.”
To my own astonishment I fell into a spontaneous fit of swearing. When I had done I had my face in my hands and my elbows on the table.
“Well I never, Mr Talbot. And you living among lords even if you wasn’t one of them. I’ve heard of being drunk as a lord but for really strong language—well there!”
“I ought to tell you, Mr Askew, that Mr Gibbs obtained strong liquor from Mr Brocklebank, then more from me without an offer on my part.”
“Ah. I did wonder if he was at it again.”
“As you know, Mr Askew, I have been—unwell. Now I am on my feet again I have come down to offer Mr Deverel such comfort and assistance as I may without prejudice to the ‘customs of the sea service’. Where is he?”
There was a long pause while Mr Askew continued to add to the fog lying under the deckhead.
“A good question, sir. I know you’ve been keeping your bunk but I’m surprised you never heard seeing he was such a friend of yours.”
“‘Was’? He cannot be dead!”
“I have to tell you, sir, that Mr Deverel is aboard of Alcyone and like as not by this time he’s the other side of the Cape.”
“But I thought—”
“You thought he’d put his head in a noose? It’s what comes of not knowing the rules where you are, sir. I don’t mean the articles of war. I mean what goes on. Ever since that lieutenant got himself hanged by that captain—I forget the names—in the West Indies it was—captains, to say nothing of their lordships, has been walking on tiptoe. So there’s the rules of the service and there’s what goes on in ships. It was an exchange, you see.”
“Lieutenant Benét!”
“Now you see, don’t you, sir?”
“It cannot be within the competence of mere captains to decide such things!”
“Mere captains? The saying is, once a ship’s out of sight of land a captain can do anything he likes to you but get you in the family way. Sir Henry wouldn’t want to put Mr Benét out of the ship just like that, seeing as he’s a watch-keeping officer. No, sir, he arranged an exchange so nobody would have cause to complain. Very anxious to keep officers happy are their lordships. So Captain Anderson having an unhappy officer to dispose of and Sir Henry having an officer to get rid of as was too bleeding happy, we lost Dashing Jack who was very eager to go and we got Lieutenant Benét who knows far more about everything than a gentleman properly should. They say Captain Anderson can’t do enough for him. It’s Mr Benét’s idea to bring the chronometers up one deck whatever Mr Summers thinks and damn the rating. Very popular Mr Benét is with officers, old ladies, children and midshipmen—let alone powder-burnt old horses in charge of the ship’s artillery.”
“Deverel! Dashing Jack Deverel! Handsome Jack!”
“Just so, sir. If you ask me, Sir Henry is out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
“Ladies! He must have—oh no. Lady Somerset is a fine woman and it is true his inclination does lie that way—”
Mr Askew laughed.
“If you’re thinking of Jack Deverel it’s any port in a storm with him from a lord’s lady to a little girl what still bowls her hoop.”
“A girl! A young girl! Deverel!”
“He’s a rare one is Jack.”
I found I had got to my feet. A lantern was poised perilously near my head.
“So you see, sir, it isn’t any use looking down here for Mr Deverel, or anywhere else unless you can swim faster than she can sail. Come to that, there’s one or two of us aboard would be very glad to get news of Dashing Jack so as they might have some hope one day of being able to ask for their money back.”
“Mr Benét!”
“You’ll find him with Mr Summers forrard there, aft of the mainmast and the after pump. God knows what they’ll do to poor George if they want advice on how much she is moving and send for the chippy. You done him proper, Mr Talbot.”
“As I told you, Mr Askew, he did himself.”
(12)
It was dark indeed. On my previous visit to these nether regions I had been afforded the services of young Mr Taylor as my conductor. Moreover in those days we had been gliding gently through the waters of the tropics. Now I was in a frantic ship, and feeling my way. Two yards beyond the lights of the gun-room and there might never have been in my world such things as light and direction. By the time I had gone five yards I was more thoroughly lost than I had ever been in a covert! All I knew was sound, much creaking and gritty straining, but there were sounds of water as if I were crouched on a gravel beach! I waited for a while in the hope that my eyes by habituation would adjust to the darkness and was thus only too able to listen to our predicament! Yet my assessment could not be professional and ignorance turned what had been a natural apprehension into something like terror. There were what might be called the subsidiary splashes, drips and trickles of the water in our hold but these were not the worst. There was more beyond and below these local suggestions. I put my hand in a wetness and water poured over my fingers from where I could not discover and fell where I knew not. My one hand laid hold of a wooden edge, the other, some fabric stuff. My walkway was no more than a plank wide, so I crouched and waited until the awful, cold fact that underscored our lumbering progress forced itself into my understanding. There was a rhythm down here which was not to be heard on deck or in my cabin among the wilder sounds of wind and sea. It was a pouring sound which commenced at some distance—somewhere towards the bow, for what that was worth and if I had the right direction. I stopped in my tracks and crouched, using ears instead of eyes. There approached me with increasing speed all the complicated sounds of a breaking wave! It passed by me yet without an increase in the local wetness. It went on, back the way I had come, diminishing in volume so that once more I could hear near me the dripping and trickling of random water. Then, as my right hand tightened instinctively on wood to take my weight, water poured across under me from one side of the ship to the other—and here, returning, was the first wave, surely travelling the ship’s length! I began to claw round, fell over rope and knelt for a moment on what might be sacking. Then there was blessed light above me as if the deck had opened and the sky looked in.
A voice spoke. “Who is it?”
“It is I!”
But then I could see I was looking up at the purser’s contrived office. He was standing in the opening and had pulled the canvas aside to look down.
“You cried out. Once again, who is it?”
“It is I, Mr Jones, Edmund Talbot.”
“Mr Talbot! What are you doing down here? Pray come up.”
I pulled myself over the massive knots which secured the ladder to some even more massive crossbeam.
“You have been poorly, Mr Talbot, since we last met. Pray take a seat. That box will do, I think. Now what can I do for you, sir? You surely have not filled the folio I was able to sell you!”
“No indeed. I was—”
“Lost?”
“Confused.”
Mr Jones shook his head and smiled benignly.
“I could tell you exactly where you are in terms of the ship’s construction but I believe that would not help. You have just felt or fumbled your way past the stalk of the after warping capstan.”
“No, it does not help. I will get my breath back, if you please, then go on my way. I am looking for Mr—”
“Mr—?”
“Mr Summers—or Mr Benét.”
&nb
sp; Mr Jones peered at me over the half-moons of his steel spectacles. Then he took them off and laid them down on his desk.
“You will find both gentlemen through there, on this side of the pump, which is in turn on this side of the mainmast. They are in some sort of conference.”
“Are they debating the question of the ship’s safety?”
“They have not confided in me and I did not enquire.”
“But surely you are as concerned as anyone!”
“I am insured.” He shook his head and smiled, apparently in admiration—“I’m odd like that, you know.”
“But however that may secure the comfort of your dependants—”
“I have no dependants, sir. You mistake my meaning. My personal safety I have put in the hands of those I take to be most useful in a crisis—powerful seamen, skilled in their trade.”
“That applies to us all!”
“No, sir. Why should I concern myself with us all?”
“You cannot be so selfish and you cannot be so secure!”
“Words, Mr Talbot.”
“If your security is more than imaginary we ought all to share in it!”
“That is impossible. How many of the people in this ship could lay their hands on one thousand pounds? You perhaps, sir. No one else.”
“The devil!”
“You see? I have an agreement, properly signed. At least, they have made their marks. Should there be an unhappy end to the ship I am worth one thousand pounds to some of the strongest and most skilful seamen in the world. The Bank of England is no safer.”
Now I did indeed laugh aloud.
“That a man of business, of affairs, should be so simple! Why, sir, in the event of a catastrophe, they—may I say we?—should preserve the lives of women and children before such as you were even considered!”
Mr Jones shook his head with what seemed like pity.
“You cannot suppose that with the ship sinking round us I should count out gold and give each man his portion? You do not understand credit, Mr Talbot. I do not have any dependants, but my seamen have. The money is there for them ashore when they get me there, no sooner. Good heavens, Mr Talbot, the boats we have would not hold a tenth of our people! Without some such arrangement as I am accustomed to make, the whole of our life at sea would be no more than a lottery!”