Greenhurst tucked the paper and the banknote into his pocket. "I am certain that something can be arranged, sir."
And indeed it was. Pendexter continued his stroll down the Long Wharf, his eyes still on the anchored ships. John Smeaton was already aboard whichever of those vessels was the Icarus, making the ship ready for her new captain.
Twenty yards down the wharf Pendexter saw the Preston's gig bobbing at the base off the stairs that led from the wharf down to the water. The men at the oars were in matching shirts and tarpaulin hats, and a midshipman slouched in the stern sheets. Pendexter was considering whether he should make them wait a bit longer when, to his dismay, the bowman shoved off and the gig began to move away from the wharf.
"I say! I say, Preston's gig!" Pendexter shouted. Several people turned to look at him, and he could feel his face turn red. "Preston's gig!
The midshipman held up his hand and the bowman hooked on to the steps once again as Pendexter came running up breathlessly. "Preston's gig? I am Lieutenant Pendexter."
The midshipman looked at him with annoyance. "You were to meet the boat an hour ago, sir. We were just heading back to the flagship."
Now that he was certain that he had not missed the gig, Pendexter's attitude of superiority reasserted itself. "I'll have none of your peevish mouth, do you hear me? What is your name?
"Thornbird. Sir."
"Well, Thornbird, the reasons that I am late are related to interests of the service and are not for the ears of a midshipman. Now get me out to the Icarus before I have you disrated and packed off to the forecastle."
"Humph. Cast off forward there," the midshipman said in a tone that implied that he knew Pendexter had no authority to carry out such a threat.
The oars came down and the gig gathered way. Thornbird held the tiller over and the boat curved away from the dock. "All right, sir, which is the Icarus?" Thornbird asked.
Pendexter felt the panic that attends potential humiliation. He stared at the midshipman, trying to guess if this was insubordination or genuine ignorance. He struggled for a reply. "As a midshipman aboard the flag, you should know what vessels are where, Thornbird," Pendexter said at last, his haughty demeanor masking his uncertainty. "I suggest you find her, and we shall see if you can find her without my help."
Bloody Wilson and Israel Barrett sat side by side in the main top of His Majesty's brig Icarus, legs dangling in space and hands wielding heavers and marlinspikes as they clapped round seizing on the freshly set-up lanyards/ Their dress was almost identicaclass="underline" square-toed leather shoes, wide trousers, woll shirts, and well-worn blue jackets, all products of the man-of-war's slop chest, the closest the British navy came to a uniform for the lower deck. They worked quickly, steadily, and though their height above the deck might make a landsman shudder, they were quite oblivious to it.
Wilson was thirty-two and had already spent more years in the navy than out. His long queue, clubbed and tarred, and his face, which was weathered beyond his years, were testaments to his time at sea. His body was lean and sinewy, the result of surfeit of hard work and the navy's standard ration of food, which was adequate and no more. Barrett was twenty years his senior, and except for the bushy gray and black whiskers that ran down his cheeks and stopped at the level of his mouth, he looked for all the world like an older version of Wilson.
The two men coveted the job that they were doing. It was a clean job, and one that required little physical effort, both rarities aboard a man-of-war. It was a job best accomplished from a sitting position, something rarer still on a vessel where the closest that a foremast hand could get to relaxing while on duty was pushing holystone across the deck on hands and knees. Fifty feet above the deck the loquacious Wilson was able to indulge his love of long, usually one-sided conversations, as long as his voice was low. But none of these was the chief reason for loving their currant occupation.
It was not the weather, either, though the unseasonable warmth made their task even more pleasant. The main top commanded a spectacular view of the harbor and the city beyond. From where they set, Wilson and Barrett could see all of Boston, the dockyards, and those ships on the North American Station that were anchored there. There was the mighty Boyne of seventy guns, her crew of some five hundred men laboring to send up her top-hamper. A half a mile away lay the Asia, and in the intervening stretch of blue water lay the Mercury, Glasgow, and a half dozen of the sloops, brigs, and schooners that constituted a preponderance of the squadron. And beyond the dockyards lay the lovely city itself with its neighborhoods of ruddy brick buildings nestled on the peninsula, and beyond the city loomed Breed's and Bunker Hill.
A crack, like a whip striking flesh, sounded on the deck below them, interrupting the flow of Wilson's story, and was followed by a suppressed cry of pain. The two men glanced over the edge of the top, down to where McDuff stood.
"He's at it again, the bastard, " muttered Wilson.
"Again? He ain't ever stopped," said Barrett, cutting the tail end off his seizing. Mr McDuff, the Icarus's boatswain, was the reason that the two men were thankful to be aloft.
On the deck below, a majority of the crew labored, under McDuff's eye, to perfect the appearance of an already perfect vessel in preparation for the new commander's arrival. McDuff was stout and powerful, the size and shape of a hogshead cask, but lacked even a hogshead's spark of human kindness. He encouraged the men's efforts with blasphemies, kicks, and lashes with his rattan cane, known in the service as a starter.
His solitary boatswain's mate, Edward Longbottom, was thin and hollow chested, a weakling who kept his sadistic streak in check only when McDuff was not around. Longbottom idolized the boatswain and emulated his behavior to the extent that he was able. Enforcing discipline was a large part of the duties of a boatswain and his mate, but McDuff and Longbottom went about these duties with a zeal that was remarkable, even by Royal Navy standards.
A cane cracked again and Longbottom cursed a man working by the bitts.
"Christ, he's enjoying himself. How come that new lieutenant don't put a stop to this? asked Wilson. "And how come they didn't keep Jackson as first lieutenant? He was a bully officer, took no slack, but he was fair. How come we got this Smeaton, all the way from the Asia?"
At the mention of the lieutenant's name the two men glanced down towards the quarterdeck. The Icarus's new first officer sat there, straddling a bench borrowed from the sailmaker, his coat and hat tossed casually over the binnacle box. He had not moved in an hour. Smeaton was working with his head down, and Wilson and Barrett could see only the blond hair that covered his head and not the fine, almost delicate features of his face. Smeaton had a face that would have looked more in place at a fox hunt, or a ball in London at the height of the social season, than on deck of a man-of-war.
Laid out before him were a pair of dueling pistols broken down into their component parts. Carefully, lovingly, as if he were handling religious artifacts, Smeaton polished and oiled and reassembled the guns. With the officer of the watch thus engrossed, McDuff and Longbottom were free to run amuck.
"You know how it goes in the navy, Bloody Wilson, interest and all that. We had a bosun, bad one like McDuff there, aboard the Caesar back in '58."
Wilson wrapped the riding turns around the seizing, waiting for Barrett to cotinue, but the older man did not.