Girl on the Orlop Deck (16 page)

They were putting on more sail, the ship bucking like a horse as she took the wind. The chase was on, whatever it might lead to. Death or glory, Jem thought, and shivered.

As soon as the sloop had dropped anchor, the captain put on his best jacket and announced that he was going across to the
Victory
to deliver his report. He was so full of importance that Marianne wanted to laugh at him. He en’t got a thing to report, she thought, for there’d been nothing happening on the island an’ he’d soon have found that out. But there he was making an occasion of his mission. How these men do love to be important, she thought, remembering the saucy midshipmen throwing their weight about aboard the
Amphion
, and the lieutenant barking orders and expecting everybody to jump to and obey him. How they do carry on about how powerful they are! I never seen no woman carry on like that, never in my life. But then, now she came to think about it, a woman had no power to speak of and never laid claim to any, so she wouldn’t. She remembered her mother for ever toiling over the washtub or bending over the ironing, rubbing her back against the ache, and she yearned to see her again. I wonder how she is, she thought. I must write her a letter. I en’t writ to her for ages. ’Twill be the first thing I do when I can come by pen and paper.

She came by it sooner than she could have imagined and in the most satisfactory way. The captain returned two bells later, looking pleased with himself. He’d got her a job as a loblolly on the
Victory
, no less. ‘I spoke to Mr Beattie, the surgeon, and he has need of every loblolly he can command.’ A bum boat would take her across at six bells. She was so excited by the news she could barely contain her feelings. The
Victory
, she thought, Nelson’s flag ship. Now that’s something to tell Ma an’ no mistake. But she stayed calm and thanked the captain for his kind offices and got on with her work as well as she could until the time came for her to leave.

It was an undeniable thrill to climb the high wooden sides of Nelson’s great ship and to step aboard as the latest member of his crew, and an even bigger one to see the great man himself standing on the
quarter-deck
. Now he
is
powerful, she thought, glancing at him. He can send us all in to battle with just one word. Yet he looked the meekest of men, with his empty sleeve and his pale thoughtful face, standing there talking to Captain Hardy and another officer as quietly as if they were in an inn at Portsmouth. Then she realized that someone was looking at
her
and she glanced round and saw that it was a formidable-looking bosun and that brought her back to her own world with a jolt. There was a lanky looking boy standing beside him shuffling his feet and grinning at her.

‘This here is Josh,’ the bosun said, ‘what’ll show ’ee the ropes an’ so forth. You’re to go along a’ him an’ do as he says an’ no larking about, mind.’

As if I would, Marianne thought. I en’t a child. But of course she
was
a child now she was a boy again so she would have to put up with it. The lanky boy ambled off towards the companionway so she followed.

‘You been a loblolly afore?’ he asked, looking back at her over his shoulder.

She wasn’t going to confess her ignorance. ‘’Course,’ she said. ‘Many’s the time.’

‘He’s a good ol’ feller,’ he said looking back at the quarter-deck. ‘Thass him along a’ Lord Nelson. You has to do everythink he tells you, mind. He don’t stand no nonsense. But he’s a good ol’ feller. Never saw a man so quick at hacking off a leg. Don’t matter how much blood there is. He has ’em held down and he’s on ’em like a hawk. Three hacks an’ ’tis done. You wait, you’ll see it.’

Marianne wasn’t at all sure she wanted to see anything so brutal but she couldn’t say so now she was a boy again. ‘I ’spects I shall,’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Where’s my station?’

He’d led her to the lower gun deck. ‘We’m here,’ he said, stopping between the last two guns. ‘Near the companionway, see. Best place. On account a’ we has to be quick a-gettin’ down to the orlop when we’m wanted. That’s your bunk an’ that’s where you stows your ditty bag. We scrubs the orlop through first thing first dog watch. An’ mind you does everything Mr Beatie says, or he’ll have yer guts fer garters. I seen him one time—’

But his tale was cut short by the sound of the anchor chain. They were
under way. ‘Hey up!’ he said, instantly losing his stern expression and becoming a child again. ‘We’m sailin’. Let’s go up an’ see.’

I got here just in time, Marianne thought, as she followed him back on deck. And she felt mighty pleased with herself.

T
HAT SECOND
A
TLANTIC
crossing was as uneventful as the first one had been and every bit as fast. They were on short commons because supplies were low, but Marianne didn’t mind a diet of salt beef, plum duff and figgy-dowdy, not now they were on their way back home – and they must be on their way back home soon, surely to goodness. They’d been at sea for more than two years.

Josh would keep talking about the battle, in his horrible ghoulish way, gloating about what a lot of blood they’d see come the fighting and how many limbs would be hacked off, but the weather was fair, the going was good and apart from scrubbing the decks down in that stinking hold, there was little to do below, which was just as well for it was a hideous place and as dark as a dungeon. Having been out in clear air and strong sunshine for so long, she’d forgotten how vile the smell of the bilge could be. If there was a battle it would be a nightmare place to have to work. But she’d made her choice and now she must stick with it.

Apart from the ghoulish Josh, the other four loblollies were a friendly lot and usually cheerful. When they were four days out, they spotted timbers floating on the water and they were all instantly sure that they must have come from a French ship.

‘Which just goes for to show they ain’t in good order, not doin’ repairs in mid ocean,’ one of them said. ‘We shall blow ’em out the water when we catches ’em, you see if I ain’t right.’

Marianne looked at him pityingly. You won’t blow anyone out the water, she thought, you silly little boy. All you’m goin’ to do is see our men what’ve been blowed to bits brought down to Mr Beattie to have their arms an’ legs hacked off. And she sent up a private prayer to God not to let it happen. Just send us all home, she begged, if ’Ee don’t mind. I’ve took my punishment now. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.

Then, since there was nothing else she could do about it, she pushed it out of her mind and concentrated on settling into the routine of the ship. Even when she had to get up at five bells at the start of the last dog watch, she did it willingly, especially if it was another warm day. She scrubbed the weather decks until they were white and clean, rolled up her hammock as soon as they piped ‘up hammocks’, was first down to the mess deck when they piped ‘Nancy Dawson’, and whenever she was at leisure, she stood by the ship’s rail and watched the sea and the sky. It was a good life and she wasn’t going to waste a minute of it by being scolded for being slow about her work.

When they’d been sailing for seven days and she had a week’s wage to her credit, she went to see the purser and bought two sheets of paper, a pen and a small quantity of ink in a rather battered horn, so that she could write to her mother. It was the oddest sensation to be writing home after all the things that had happened to her, especially as the most important ones couldn’t be talked about. But she wrote what she could and chose subjects that she thought would be entertaining. 

After a while her stories began to flow more easily and she wrote an edited version of her sojourn on Barbados, explaining that she’d been left behind by the bum boat and had had to live there –
in a mud hut sleeping on the bare earth with the slaves imagine that Ma
– until the next boat came along. She wrote about the brightly coloured birds and what a dreadful screeching noise they made, about the sugar cane –
what’s like great trees you can hardly see the tops of you would never think tis sugar
– and how the slaves worked from dawn to sunset cutting it down with great curved knives –
what could cut you in half with one swipe you’d be afeard to see them
– about the huge snake she’d seen –
what could swallow you alive in one gulp
. As the stories got more colourful and she read them
through, she realized she was embroidering things and telling tall tales the way all sailors do but she was enjoying it too much to alter it and besides ’twould be a wicked waste of paper if she were to discard it and she couldn’t abide waste. So the days passed and the correspondence grew until she’d covered both sheets of paper and there was only a corner left. I’ll keep that, she decided, in case they tell us we’re a-goin’ home.

Despite her sea-going tendency to exaggeration, she was absolutely right about one thing and that was Nelson’s impatience. Being becalmed was a torture to him. It had been agony enough to chase the French to the West Indies, but chasing them home again was ten times worse because he was beginning to be afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find them once they were in Spanish waters and that the battle he was so determined to fight would elude him once again. But what could he do about it, beyond what was already being done?

On the last day of June, when he was just off the Azores, he sent the
Curieux
home to Portsmouth with his personal mail and dispatched Captain Sutton in the
Amphion
to Tangier Bay, firstly to find out whether the French had entered the Mediterranean, and when that was done to deliver letters to the British Consul at Tangier asking for supplies of bullocks, oranges and lemons to be made ready for the fleet, and when every errand had been completed to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet at Cape Spartel. Then he made plans for as many eventualities as he could imagine.

As soon as they knew they were sailing for Tangier, Peg and Moll made plans of their own. Neither of them had any doubt that the battle was only weeks away and the sooner they got out of the way of it the better. As soon as their watch was over, they found a quiet corner on the gun deck and talked the matter over. They still had the money they hadn’t spent the last time they went ashore back in the Indies and good strong purses to carry it in. It wasn’t much but it would suffice.

‘We
must
jump now,’ Moll said, ‘or we’ll be caught still aboard when the battle starts an’ I ain’t having’ that.’

‘Not in Tangier though,’ Peg decided. ‘’Tis a fearsome place for the fever is Tangier, an’ we don’t want that neither. Not if we can help it. Asides which, there ain’t the ships to take us home and I doubt there’ll be anywhere for us to hide. ’Tis all Musclemen thereabouts. No, we’ll wait till we gets to Rosia Bay. That’s the place for us. If he means to take
on supplies he’s bound to go there. Pray for a fair wind and no sign a’ the French.’

Tom and Jem were discussing their future too, out on the deck of the
Sirius
. They’d met up with Admiral Collingwood’s fleet, according to their instructions, and delivered their letters and now they were off Cadiz, watching the seas for the French, like every British ship in the area, and seeing nothing but fishing boats.

The endless watching and waiting was beginning to get on their nerves.

‘There are times,’ Jem confessed to his old mate, ‘when I just wants this battle to start and be over an’ done with. ’Tis no sort a’ life just waitin’ for it.’

‘Met a feller at Copenhagen said the self-same thing,’ Tom told him, adding gloomily, ‘blow’d to bits he was.’

‘Aye,’ Jem said, ‘that’s the trouble. We waits an’ waits an’ complains a’ waitin’ an’ then we gets blow’d to Kingdom Come.’

‘What will ’ee do when ’tis over?’ Tom asked, shifting direction. ‘If we comes through, what I hopes an’ prays we will, we shall get a handsome bonus, all this time at sea an’ then a battle.’

Jem considered. ‘If I still had a wife,’ he said, ‘which I doubts, on account a’ she’ll have forget about me long since, but if I still
had
one I’d rent us a house an’ furnish it all fine an’ dandy an’ settle down to a peaceful life as a master carpenter, in my home town, what I should ha’ done all along if I’d had a happorth a’ sense. What about you?’

‘I could get
me
a wife, I s’ppose,’ Tom said stroking his beard, ‘if I could find a woman what’ud have me. Don’t much reckon to settlin’ down though. That’s a deal too tame. I got itchy feet an’ that’s the truth of it. I likes to be off a-seein’ the world. But a wife to come home to now an’ then would be dandy.’

‘Where the devil are they?’ Jem said, scowling at the empty sea. ‘All this way an’ all this time an’ not a sign a’ the beggars. ’Tis enough to try the patience of a saint.’

‘We shall find ’em once our Nelson gets here,’ Tom told him. ‘You mark my words. If anyone can find ’em Nelson can. He’s made his mind up to it.’ 

In fact the great Admiral was in sight of Cape Spartel and in a state of miserable depression. There was still no sign of the French fleet and, as his gloom deepened, he grew more and more convinced that he was never going to run his enemy to ground. He might as well give up hope, take his long deferred leave, pass the command to his old friend Collingwood and go home to Emma. In the quiet of his empty stateroom he was writing a letter to her, with his painstaking left hand, telling her how dearly he loved her and how much he wanted to be at home with her and Horatia at –
our beloved Merton
. But there were other letters to compose too. The first was to Collingwood telling him how miserable he was –
at not having fallen in with the Enemy’s Fleet
– and warning him that the time was fast approaching when he would pass the command of the fleet to him and return to England –
there being little of any consequence I can do here
. The third and last was to the Admiralty in answer to their last instructions. It was hard to know what to tell them when the news was so bad and his view was so negative. But he began valiantly, describing their long voyage back to Europe.

It was excellent seamanship but it didn’t detract from the fact that he also had to report that he’d had no sight of the enemy in all that time and that consequently no action had been fought. Disappointment and weariness weighed him down. He had come so far and striven so long and all he had to report was failure. What was the point of struggling on? Or of vowing not to set foot ashore until the battle was fought and won? It seemed to him now, sitting there alone in the depths of his misery that it had been vainglorious to have taken such a vow, the worst kind of presumption and foolishness even to have considered it. No matter what he did or where he went, the French eluded him. When he finally put down his pen to seal his letters, he was so miserable that even the thought of being back at Merton couldn’t lift his gloom. Nevertheless, and no matter what he might be feeling, there were still matters to be attended to, and he must bestir himself and get on with his duties. The
fleet had to be fed and watered. The
Amphion
was waiting for him at Cape Spartel and there was just a faint chance that Captain Scott would have better news for him.

Negatives again. There had been no sign of the French fleet at all, although they’d scoured the seas for them. They could report that they were not in the Mediterranean, which was some comfort because it meant that a watch could be set at the Straits of Gibraltar and there would be no more wild goose chases to Alexandria, but it was
demoralizing
news no matter how much their demoralized Admiral tried to make the best of it.

‘I will provision the fleet for four months at sea,’ he said to Hardy, ‘and then we will sail north. I will meet with Collingwood and Bickerton and take reports from them and unless there are indications to the contrary we will join the squadrons off Ferrol or Ushant. If there is no action there, I will hand over command to Collingwood and head for Portsmouth. It is a hard decision to have to make but I can see no other course.’

So, having taken delivery of all the meat and fruit that Tangier could provide, which was little enough in all conscience, he set sail for Gibraltar and Rosia Bay, to be sure his ships were fully provisioned, just as Peg had predicted.

To be sent ashore to take on supplies was exactly what the two girls wanted. It would mean landing on a quayside crowded with carts and traders and that would give them plenty of cover when the time came to run. In fact they got even better cover than they could possibly have expected and it was provided by none other than Admiral Lord Nelson.

His gloom was now so dark and all-enveloping that he had decided to break his impossible vow and go ashore. Earlier in the day he had written another letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty informing him of his intention to relinquish his command. Then he put on his best uniform and took the long boat to shore. He would find his land legs, dine with the governor and discover what news he could. Then he would go home.

The sight of him caused a commotion on the quayside. Within seconds people were rushing in from all sides to greet him and cheer him. All eyes were focused on their hero and the crush around him was so great it was almost ridiculously easy for Peg and Moll to slip away unnoticed. By the time the bum boat was finally loaded and the
lieutenant
was looking for the rest of his crew, they were long gone.

‘Damned boys!’ he said. ‘What are they playing at? They should’ve been here helping to load up and man the oars, not gone running off. I shan’t wait for them. They’ll have to come back on the next boat, that’s all. I have enough to do without wasting time on stupid boys.’