Touch and Go (4 page)

“Not yet, Mr Waring. We'll pipe hands to dinner first; a little early if the cook can manage it. And please signal the convoy to close up on the leading ship.”

Delancey stared through his telescope again. Yes, a brig corvette of about fourteen guns, a smaller vessel than the
Merlin
with, obviously, a smaller crew. But what was her captain planning to do? He must have identified the
Merlin
as an 18-gun, ship-rigged sloop, too big an opponent for his corvette. Did he really mean to give battle? And if so, why? Even as Delancey watched, the corvette struck her red ensign and hoisted the tricolour. It would have made more sense if the Frenchman were steering so as to cut off the last straggler in the convoy but here, apparently, was a Frenchman spoiling for a fight. She would be within range in less than an hour, giving the
Merlin
's crew time to finish their dinner, to which they now had been piped. Still mystified, Delancey paced the deck and stared at his opponent. What was the trick to be?

When dinner was finished, Delancey at last gave the order to clear for action and beat to quarters. The drum beat the rhythm of
Hearts of Oak
and the ship was instantly alive with ordered activity, every man having a task to be done at breakneck speed. Partitions were demolished and furniture tossed into the hold. Guns were loaded and run out with ammunition to hand and weapons for boarding. The decks were sanded and buckets of water placed between the cannon. Small-arms men raced up to the fighting tops with muskets and bandoleers. The midshipman's berth was turned into an improvised hospital although the ship carried no surgeon. The sails were wetted with the fire engine to prevent them burning. The carpenter stood ready with plugs and stoppers, the gunner went to the magazine. There was no hint of confusion but only the scampering of feet and the continued throb of the drum which ended only when every man was at his battle station.

The French brig was just out of range, a sinister-looking craft as seen through the spray, evidently in very good order. Meanwhile, the wind was veering south-westerly, even westerly at times. The leading merchantman in the convoy had shortened sail and the laggards were crowding canvas to catch up. Moved by some instinct which he would have found it difficult to explain, Delancey came to a sudden decision. He decided not to accept the French challenge. His first lieutenant reached the opposite conclusion at the same instant.

“The wind is coming westerly, sir,” said Waring, “the enemy is no longer to windward of us.”

“Thank you, Mr Waring.”

“We could close the range, sir.”

“So indeed we could.”

“That corvette could be our pup-pup-prize within the hour!”

Delancey knew exactly what Waring wanted. The first lieutenant was stuttering and red in the face, his fingers drumming on the quarterdeck rail. Delancey remembered that Waring had a wife and a large family in Sunderland, more than he could well maintain on lieutenant's pay. And now the man had seen his chance to better himself. After a successful action, the enemy brig captured, Delancey would be posted into a frigate and Waring would become captain of the
Merlin.
There would be a useful sum in prize-money and a useful paragraph in the
Gazette:
“The corvette was taken by a boarding party led most gallantly by the first lieutenant, her colours being hauled down fifty minutes after the action began. I am more particularly indebted to . . . etc. etc.” Delancey was himself tempted, heaven knows, but his decision had been made.

“Heave to, please.” The order was quietly given and it seemed for a long moment that the first lieutenant had failed to understand it.

“Heave to, sir?” he asked stupidly.

“If you please, Mr Waring.”

To heave to meant to back the foretopsail, making the sails act against each other and so bring the ship to a standstill. In this instance it meant increasing the range and refusing battle, the correct movement for protecting the rear of the convoy.

“Heave to,
sir?” Waring had now taken in the full extent of the disaster. He looked to heaven for inspiration, looked at the helmsman, looked at young Stock, Delancey's A.D.C., and finally, aghast, at his captain. His lips moved but he was lost for words.

“You heard me, Mr Waring, HEAVE TO!” The first words were uttered quietly, the last two fairly barked. Stung into action, Waring bawled the necessary orders. There was a flurry of activity as the foreyard was backed. There was a similar flurry on board the Frenchman, her crew just visible and her captain probably surprised. Both the French corvette and the convoy were still going ahead, the
Merlin
relatively losing ground.

The first lieutenant was plainly furious, muttering under his breath to the master's mate, Langford, who was commanding the quarterdeck guns and who made no response of any kind. Delancey took no notice, watching the corvette to see what her reaction would be. He half expected her to follow suit but she held her course. Three minutes later the look-out hailed the deck. Another sail had been sighted, almost in the same direction as the corvette but some miles further away.

“Mr Langford,” called Delancey, “take a spyglass and tell me what more you can see from the main topmasthead.” Stolid as he might be, the young man was up the rigging in a flash, quick as a cat. He reached the deck again in five minutes.

“Another Frenchman, sir—a ship-rigged corvette—bigger than the one near to us. I glimpsed her for a moment and then she was lost again.”

“Thank you, Mr Langford. Make sail, Mr Waring!”

The foretopsail filled again and the sloop was once more under way.

His face like a thundercloud, Waring went forward to the forecastle, his proper station in battle, ostensibly to check the gun crews, actually so as to splutter in disgust to anyone who would listen—in this case, the boatswain and young Topley. Mather, who had been in the waist of the ship, came aft at this moment and touched his hat.

“Well, Mr Mather?” Delancey asked.

“Beg pardon, sir, a man in my watch believes that the nearer corvette is the
Malouine,
the other the
Mouche.
He says that they work together.”

“That I can well believe.”

“I should guess, sir, that the
Malouine's
guns are loaded with chain-shot, bar-shot and canister.”

A ship normally engaged an opponent with round shot at close range, attempting to damage her hull, cause casualties and silence her guns. But when her captain had a different object, wanting to cripple his opponent and then break off the engagement, he would choose a longer range and would load with special ammunition designed to damage sails and rigging.

“No doubt of it,” replied Delancey, thinking that Mather was a man after his own heart—a man quick to understand the situation and draw the right conclusion. How he would shape in battle remained to be seen. It was clear, in the meanwhile, that he could use his brains.

Within the next hour or two the French corvettes forereached on the convoy and made off northwards while the crew of the
Merlin
stood down from their guns, put the ship to rights and resumed their ordinary routine. Delancey went below to write his report and Waring was free at last to express his disgust.

It was Mather's watch but Waring remained on deck, looking longingly towards the French corvettes, each no more than a blur on the horizon. He swore to himself and hit the gunwale with the palm of his hand.

“I thought at one time, Mr Mather, that the corvette was as good as taken. We've lost our chance now!”

Mather was pacing the quarterdeck, looking now at the binnacle, now at the sails and now at the men who were replacing a broken ratline on the main shrouds. He paused near Waring and replied in a tone of hardly veiled contempt (didn't the man understand even now?).

“There never was a chance. There was a trap, sir, and our captain refused to fall into it.”

“A trap? What d'you mean?”

“The
Mouche
followed the
Malouine
but so kept behind her that she was always hidden. If we had engaged the
Malouine
she would have fired at our rigging until we were crippled. After she had broken off the engagement, the
Mouche
would have sailed into the convoy, taking half of them before nightfall.”

All this was so obvious to Mather that he wondered still that any explanation should have been necessary. It was like talking to a disappointed child. Waring had taken his hat off and was twisting it in his hand as if it had been an opponent's neck. When he spoke it was with a splutter of indignation.

“All very clever! The fact remains that we let the enemy escape. The crew must feel disgraced and those two corvettes will go on to play havoc somewhere else.”

“But our task is to protect this convoy.”

“Even if more valuable ships are afterwards taken in the Straits of Messina?”

“We are not responsible for what happens in the Straits of Messina. We have been ordered to bring these ships safely into Leghorn and that is what we are doing.”

“Obeying orders is all very well. There have been great admirals who could do better than that.”

“When we are admirals, sir, we may do the same.”

Alone in his cabin and alone with his thoughts, Delancey finished his report and signed it. There is a time to fight, he reflected, and a time to avoid fighting. He felt that he, personally, had passed a new test. Courage, he knew, is not enough. But what of his officers? So far from finding the answer, Waring had not even seen the problem. There still was this to be said for the man, that he had courage. He would have led the boarding party without thought of danger—all that was true. He had learnt his seamanship in a tough school, on board a collier out of the Tyne. He was a good man in some ways, but completely brainless.

Mather, by contrast, had instantly grasped the situation. He might not be a first-rate leader—Delancey rather doubted whether he was—but he certainly had brains. The pity was that Waring was the senior. Langford was a useful man, he thought, and Northmore a promising boy. He was uncertain as yet about Topley but gave him the benefit of the doubt. As for the crew as a whole, they were shaping very well. He asked Teesdale, very casually, what the crew thought of the recent encounter.

“Well, sir, there's no gainsaying that they were disappointed at first, clearing for action, seeing the enemy and no action after all. Some of the younger men talked of running away and that. But the older men—seamen like Mike Garley and Nathaniel Taylor—properly put them in their place. They knew what the French game was and the rest came to see it in the end.” So it was as it should be—the veterans were teaching the rest. Apart from that, hard work was showing results. There could be no doubt about it, the
Merlin
was becoming a smart ship.

When he took her into Gibraltar the following week, once more under the eyes of so many critics, he thought that there was nothing to be ashamed of. If the Rear-Admiral should be watching, so much the better. In point of fact he
had
been watching, as became apparent when Delancey reported to him.

It was to the same office he came, where the quills were still scratching and where the clerks, to all appearance, might not have moved from their desks since he saw them last. The same flag-lieutenant ushered him into the inner office from the window of which he could glimpse the
Merlin
at anchor.

“I observe, captain, from the way you entered harbour, that you have a sense of style. Any adventures?” Delancey told him about the French corvettes.

“Malouine
and
Mouche?
Yes, I've heard of them. You did well to let them alone. The question is—where are they now?”

“I'm told, sir, that they often cruise between Palermo and Tunis.”

“That is probably correct and that is where you may well see them again. For the next eastward-bound convoy will be carrying supplies and stores to our squadron on the coast of Egypt, with some other vessels bound for Malta and Cyprus. The convoy will be under the command of Captain Doyle of the
Lapwing
and he will be glad to have the
Merlin
as whipper-in. I should send another sloop if I had another but I don't.”

“When do we sail, sir?”

“As soon as the last three storeships arrive from England; in two or three weeks' time.”

Delancey made haste to call on Captain Doyle. The
Lapwing
he knew by sight, an old 28-gun 6th Rate, the smallest class of ship to justify a commander of post-rank. He found, however, that Doyle was in lodgings ashore, an elderly man who looked far from well. He was bedridden in a room above an apothecary's shop, wearing a flannel nightgown and a nightcap, with a cup of tea at his elbow and an array of medicine bottles. Delancey repeated the instructions he had received.

“Glad to have your help, captain. I'll be happy, however, when this voyage is over. I think it will be my last. I began on the lower deck and it took me a lifetime to reach post-rank. I haven't been very active of late and the chief physician here thinks that I should retire soon—or should indeed have retired already. These pains in my back give me trouble and I have headaches as well when at sea, with an occasional touch of fever. I'm like the
Lapwing
herself, almost worn out.”

Delancey expressed his sympathy and went on to tell Doyle about the two French corvettes. Captain Doyle had a fit of coughing and managed to upset his teacup. When set to rights he resumed the conversation.

“Yes, I sighted them once. But they would never come near a frigate. Let me once reach Gibraltar again, the convoy safe, and I'll take the next passage home. Can you guess where I mean to retire?

“In Ireland, sir?”

“Well, I come from there, true enough. But my plan is to settle down near Bristol. I never married, you know, but my sister lives there. I want no more than a cottage, you understand, with a woman to do the housework and another to cook. I first went to sea fifty-five years ago. I feel that I've done enough and maybe too much.”