Girl on the Orlop Deck (15 page)

‘So,’ Looma said with great satisfaction, ‘I fix good, eh? Dey read dis, dey not flog you. Now you find ship, eh?’

If only I could, Marianne thought. Oh where
is
that ol’ fleet? They must be comin’ back soon, surely to goodness.

T
HE
G
OVERNOR
O
F
Dominica was an astute and persuasive man. There wasn’t much going on in his corner of the Caribbean that he didn’t make it his business to know about it. So naturally as soon as he received Lord Nelson’s letter and knew that the admiral was hungry for news of the French fleet, he set about gathering information from every quarter. By the time the British fleet had anchored in Roseau Bay and he and Captain Hardy and the great admiral were sitting down to dinner in the dining room on board the
Victory
, he was as thoroughly informed as it was possible for him to be. He had heard from the garrisons at Grenada, St Vincent and St Lucia and could report that all three were safe and had seen no sign of the French. Better still he knew that the French fleet had anchored in the neighbouring island of Martinique, exactly as Nelson’s Mediterranean spies had predicted, and that a French fleet of eighteen of the line, six frigates and three brigs had been seen passing Prince Rupert’s Head on 6 June, heading north.

It was demoralizing news for Nelson because it confirmed that his original informants had been correct and that he
had
been sent on a wild goose chase.

‘Had I not been given false information,’ he said, bitterly, ‘I should have been off Port Royal as they were putting to sea and our battle would have been over and done by now and fought, what is more, on the very spot where the brave Rodney beat De Grasse.’

‘Aye, sir,’ the governor sympathized. ‘So it would seem.’

‘They were heading north you say?’

‘Aye, sir, that was my understanding of it.’

Nelson sighed and turned to Hardy. ‘I am rather inclined to believe they are pushing for Europe,’ he said, ‘to get out of our way.’

Hardy sighed, too, for it seemed only too likely and if that
was
the
case, it would mean another long chase across the Atlantic, which would be arduous because provisions in the fleet were now parlously low. However these were matters that could be attended to when their guest had gone. For the moment it was necessary to be courteous.

‘We will sail for Antigua at first light,’ Nelson decided, when he and Hardy were finally alone. It was well past midnight but there were
decisions
to be made. ‘We will make such repairs as are necessary there and transfer Sir William’s artillery men back to the
Northumberland
and take on the provisions we need – or as many of them as the dockyard can provide. Then we must make haste for Europe. I fear we have lost a deal too much time already and I am loath to stay long in that fever ridden place. Our men are well, I believe?’

‘They were well at the last count,’ Hardy told him.

‘Then let us keep them so. I will send out frigates to St Kitts and Jamaica to make sure that they are safe and unmolested. Not the
Sirius
. She must make all speed to rejoin Collingwood. I will write to him tonight. He will need every frigate in his command if he is to watch Cadiz
and
Cap Ferrol. The
Superb
to St Kitts, the
Amphion
to Jamaica because she will make better speed. I tell you, Hardy, I have been in a thousand fears that Jamaica might have been taken. That is a blow that Buonaparte would have been happy to give us and it has been in my mind ever since we arrived. The governor thinks them safe, but I must make assurance doubly sure.’

‘What of Barbados?’ Hardy asked. ‘Should we not make contact there?’

‘I will send a sloop,’ Nelson decided. ‘It will be slow, but it is all I can spare.’

The news that the French were on the run again spread through the fleet at first light to derisive laughter.

‘Bravo, Johnny Frenchman!’ Tom said to Jem, when they passed each other on the gun deck on their way to their stations. ‘What did I tell ’ee? I knew the beggars ’ud turn tail.’

‘I can’t see us ever catching ’em,’ Jem said, stopping in his onward stride.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Tom laughed. ‘We shall catch ’em come the finish, be they never so slippy. You just see if we don’t. Our Nelson’s made his mind up to it an’ when our Nelson’s made up his mind to a thing there en’t a power in the world will stop it.’

‘We’re to join Admiral Collingwood,’ Jem told him. ‘Have ’ee heard?’

‘Aye. Seemingly,’ Tom said and strode on.

The
Amphion
was the first to leave the harbour that morning and she put on full sail as soon as she was in open water and headed off with as much speed as she could contrive. Behind her the harbour was a froth of activity, as one by one the ships of the fleet manoeuvred into position, ready to leave. The sloop
Marybelle
was the last to sail and was soon left far behind by the onward surge of the mighty ships of the line. Her captain was sanguine about their lowly position for hadn’t they been entrusted with a mission to enquire into the safety of Barbados? And wasn’t that honour enough?

Nelson sailed for Antigua caught between conflicting emotions. He was driven on by the urgency of the chase, partly because there was still a faint chance that he might catch the French before they sailed for Spain, partly because it was imperative to make up lost days if they had sailed already, yet he was reluctant to visit the island at all. He’d been there on several occasions when he was captain of the frigate
Boreas
and knew from bitter experience that it was an extremely unhealthy place, where malaria and yellow fever were rampant and the death rate was terrifyingly high. But, as he said to Hardy, when the two of them were standing on the quarter-deck the next morning, ‘Needs must when the Devil drives’. And Hardy smiled at him for he knew that the devil that drove them both was duty and that neither of them had any option except to obey.

It was early evening when they finally arrived at Antigua after two days at sea and the irregular hills of the island were richly green in the sunlight. To Nelson’s sea-wearied eyes, the landscape looked even wilder than he remembered it, but he noticed that the cannons on Shirley Heights were still manned and ready to protect the harbour, and that the red-brick forts looked as solid and dependable as ever. Whatever else, the place was strongly fortified.

The next morning a sudden rain dropped across the sea like a thick mist from a low blue-grey cloud, but there was so much work to be done the weather was of little consequence. He began to requisition supplies, to enquire into the condition of his ships, to discover what repairs their captains considered necessary and, above all, to gather news. He learned that the French had arrived in Martinique three weeks ahead of him and
that they’d been in such poor shape they hadn’t moved from the harbour for more than ten days. They’d put a thousand men ashore with sickness and, according to his informant, most of them had died. A frigate had arrived from France on the 31 May which had provoked a lot of activity and the fleet had sailed on 6 June the exactly as the Governor of Dominica had told him. There was now little doubt that they were on their way back to Spain and that his guess that they would put in at Ferrol or Cadiz had been right. The sooner they were provisioned and ready to sail the better. They would send the
Sirius
on ahead, wait for the return of the
Amphion
and the
Superb
and then they would set off.

On the island of Barbados, it was a hot morning and Marianne was sauntering down to the harbour, eating a banana and enjoying the warmth of the sun. She’d grown so accustomed to disappointment that she’d given up rushing there. Now she simply made sure her precious letter was safe in her jacket pocket, strolled down, sat on a bollard, watched the empty water for a minute or two, asked the harbour master if he was expecting any ships to arrive and when the answer was no, strolled back. It was such a surprise to turn out of the alley into the quay and actually see a ship anchored in the bay that she blinked with
disbelief
. Then she saw that it was a British sloop and that there was a bum boat tied up at one of the bollards and she strode off at once to the harbour-master’s office to see what was happening.

‘Come to check we’re all safe an’ well, seemingly,’ the harbour master told her, ‘with a letter from Lord Nelson what they’re just delivering. They’ll be back presently.’

As they were. Four oarsmen and a lieutenant, who all looked mighty surprised to see a ship’s boy waiting for them on the quay.

‘My stars!’ the lieutenant said. ‘Where have you sprung from, young feller-me-lad?’

By this time Marianne was so used to her tale that she smoothed into it at once without so much as a blush. ‘I been on the plantation ever since I was took ill,’ she finished. ‘I got a letter here from the owner what’ll prove it.’

‘Hop aboard,’ the lieutenant told her, ‘and you can show it to the captain. My stars but he’ll be surprised.’

It was ridiculously simple. One minute she’d been ambling along the dusty path without any real hope of being rescued and the next she was
sitting in the bum boat on her way back to the fleet. She would have liked to have gone back to Looma and thanked her and said goodbye, but that was out of the question. The pace of her life had quickened. She was travelling now, on her way to rejoin the fleet and get home to Portsmouth. Had it not been for the fact that ship’s boys are quiet in the presence of their officers she could have burst into song.

The captain was on the bridge when they pulled up alongside and he noticed the stranger immediately.

‘What’s this?’ he said to his lieutenant.

‘Found him on the island, sir,’ the lieutenant reported. ‘Name of Matt. Off the
Amphion
.’

‘Jumped ship did ’ee, boy?’ the captain said sternly. ‘That’s a floggin’ offence I hopes you knows. Seems to me you’d best explain yourself.’

By now it was an entirely plausible explanation, especially with Mr MacKenzie’s letter to support it. It was a most satisfactory moment when Marianne took it out of her pocket and handed it deferentially across to the captain. And an even better one when he squinted at it and turned it sideways and obviously couldn’t read it.

‘Um,’ he said, assuming a serious expression. ‘If this is the case we’ll take you aboard. We shall work you, mind, and you’ll have to muck in where you can. Dismiss.’

Marianne went off to obey her first orders feeling light-hearted with happiness. The off-shore breeze fluttered against her check, cooling and restoring; she could smell English cooking, what was salt beef if she was any judge of it; she was a boy again and on her way back to the fleet.

During the next two days she worked hard and obeyed orders so promptly that by the end of the first watch she’d settled into the ship’s routine as if she’d been sailing in her all her life. Even her shipmates were impressed, especially when she told them she’d served on the
Amphion
.

‘’Tis a good ship, so they say,’ one of the old hands observed, as they ate their salt beef. ‘Good captin.’

‘Aye,’ she agreed. ‘So he is.’

‘You’ll be going back there I daresay, once we’m in Antigua.’

Marianne had been giving the matter thought since she’d come aboard and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be back with the people who’d known her when she was carrying. They’d be bound to wonder at the state of her, seein’ how skinny she was, an’ then there’d be a deal too much explaining to do. Besides which she wanted to keep out of Johnny
Galley’s way. Besides which as well, if there was a battle comin’ she wanted to be below the water-line where it was safer an’ she wasn’t so like to be blowed to Kingdom Come.

‘Well now,’ she said. ‘I en’t so sure ’a that. I’d like for to be a loblolly an’ our surgeon had loblollies enough.’

‘We’ll get Jacko to speak to Cap’n,’ the old man said. ‘If that’s what ’ee wants, good luck to ’ee. Loblollies are worth their weight in gold come the fighting.’

They made surprisingly good speed through the islands, giving Martinique a wide berth ‘in case old Johnny Frenchman was to come out’ but there was no sign of any other ship of any kind except for fishing boats and they had a clear run. The wind was fair, the going easy, the food filling. It seemed no time at all before Antigua appeared on the horizon. Then the pace of their lives changed again for they were back with the fleet and the fleet was hard at work.

Marianne had never seen so many ships gathered together in one place, not even in Barbados and there’d been ships a-plenty there. The bay was full of them, ships of the line, frigates and sloops riding at anchor, bum boats skimming like water beetles between their great wooden hulls as they carried goods and messages from shore to ship; longboats transferring soldiers to a ship called the
Newfoundland
; ships running up signals, and so much coming and going after the calm of an empty sea, it made her dizzy to look at it.

As they sailed gently into the harbour another ship passed them on her way out.

‘The
Sirius
is that,’ her new shipmates told her. But she could read the name for herself.

‘I know her,’ she said. ‘I seen her afore. Comin’ out the straits ’a Messina.’ And, as she watched the great ship dipping away from them towards the open sea, she remembered the moment in sudden and disturbing detail. They’d been a-huntin’ for one of Collingwoods’ ships – they’d had a message for her or some such – and she’d been as sick as a dog, retchin’ an’ heavin’. How long ago it all seemed.

‘Now for Cadiz,’ Jem said to Tom, as they passed the sloop.

‘My money’s on Ferrol,’ Tom said. ‘He’s sailin’ north, don’ ’ee forget, and that’s the nearest port a’ call.’

‘Mine’s on Cadiz,’ Jem said. ‘’Tis a bigger harbour by all accounts an’
he’s known there. He’s been lurkin’ in that quarter these many months. It’ll be Cadiz. You see if I en’t right.’

‘You don’t think we might catch up with him then?’ Tom said and grinned. ‘I thought you was all for closing with the beggar.’

‘Can’t see it likely,’ Jem told him. ‘If he left Martinique on the 6th, he’s got too good a head start. Howsomever, if we do we do, but as to closing with him, that’s another story. We shall have to tail him ’til the rest catch up with us.’