'Well, sir? State your business.'
'I bear a letter from the dockyard for His Excellency. I believe it was not ready when Lieutenant Durham left.' Without a word, the secretary held out his hand. Anxious to secure at least a glimpse of Kempenfelt, Drinkwater added conversationally, 'I understand the admiral is most anxiously awaiting it...'
'Then give it here, sir, and remove the anxiety from your mind,' the clerk retorted, his outstretched fingers making an impatient little flutter. At that moment the door to the great cabin opened and the light from the stern windows shone through, silhouetting a tall figure.
'Is Durham back with that order to dock yet, Scratch?'
'No, Sir Richard, but this young man has it.' Drinkwater relinquished the letter and the secretary applied his paper-knife while Kempenfelt regarded the stranger.
'Have I seen you before?' he asked, stepping out of the doorway so that Drinkwater could see his face properly.
'I think not, Sir Richard,' Drinkwater bowed, 'Drinkwater, acting fourth of the Cyclops.''
'Ah yes, Hope's hopeful' Kempenfelt smiled. 'You've been wounded.'
'In the taking of La Criole, sir, in the Carolinas.'
'The Carolinas?' Kempenfelt's brow furrowed in recollection. 'Ah yes, I recall the business. A privateer, eh? A murderous skirmish, no doubt. Now Scratch,' went on the admiral, turning to his secretary who had read the note, 'what d'ye have there? Good news, I hope.' Kempenfelt held out his hand. 'Good day to you, Mr Drinkwater.'
Drinkwater retired crest-fallen, once again disappointed in the high aspirations of impatient youth.
'Our number, sir,' Midshipman White reported formally to Drinkwater, 'send a boat.'
Drinkwater raised the long watch glass and studied the Royal George and the flutter of bunting at her mizen yardarm. It was three days since he had taken aboard the order to dock and the great ship had remained stationary in her anchorage.
'Very well, Chalky, do you take the starboard cutter and see what they want, and while you're over there, try and find out why she hasn't been taken to dock. I took aboard an order for it and they seemed anxious to get her in.'
White obeyed the order with evident reluctance. The seductive smell of coffee and something elusive wafting up from below reminded them both that they had been on deck for some hours and were eager to break their fasts. A trip to the Royal George might delay White's breakfast indefinitely. Drinkwater watched amused as his young friend slouched off and called the duty boat's crew away. It was a fine, sunny morning and, were it not the latest of a now numberless succession of such days, Drinkwater might have taken more pleasure in it. He could not understand why the relief of the fortress of Gibraltar had lost its urgency and supposed Admiral Cordoba had himself retired to Cadiz. Such matters had been much discussed in the gunroom of late and all concluded depressingly that the war was as good as over and that they sat at Spithead as mere bargaining counters for the diplomats.
Drinkwater fell to pacing the deck. Along the starboard gangway the sergeant of marines was parading his men for Lieutenant Wheeler's routine morning inspection prior to changing the sentries. Below, in the waist, the sail-maker had half the watch with needles and palms stitching a new main topsail. Hanks of sail-twine and lumps of beeswax were in evidence as the heavy canvas was stretched by means of hooks and lanyards to facilitate the difficult job of creating the sail. Old 'Sails' wandered round, looking over the shoulders of the seamen as they laboured, chatting quietly among themselves. Woe betide any man who drew less than ten stitches per needle-length, for he would receive a mouthful of abuse from the sail-maker. 'Such neat work would put a seamstress to envy,' Drinkwater recollected being told by Mr Blackmore, the sailing master, 'and so it should, for what seamstress has to build a dress capable of withstanding the forces aloft in a gale?' This seemed to clinch the superiority of a man-o'-war's sails over a duchess's gown, for though much reputation might ride on the latter, far more might rely on the even strength of those seams when worn aloft in a man-of-war.
Drinkwater smiled and looked forward. On the forecastle a party of men squatted on the deck, plying dark fids of lignum vitae as they spliced a large rope. Drinkwater had no idea where it was intended that the heavy hemp should go, for the work was endless, presided over by Blackmore and Devaux, whose men laboured away at the ceaseless task of maintaining the frigate's fabric. More men were scattered in the rigging, worming and parcelling, tarring and slushing.
Idly Drinkwater wondered at the cost of it all in terms of material. If such activity was going on in every one of the ships gathered together in that crowded roadstead, the financial resources behind them must be unimaginable: five, seven, perhaps ten or a dozen millions of sterling!
'Cutter's returning, sir,' the duty quartermaster reported, rescuing Drinkwater from his abstraction. White scrambled up the side and touched his hat-brim to the quarterdeck. 'Message for the captain,' he said, waving a letter, 'be back in a moment.'
White reappeared a few minutes later. 'The Commander-in-Chief wants a status report. Defects, powder, shot, victuals and water. Looks like we at least might be under sailing orders very soon. We've an hour to get it ready. The captain's to wait on Admiral Kempenfelt at nine.'
'I see.' Drinkwater greeted the news with mixed emotions. If they really were going to sea again, he resolved to write to Elizabeth immediately. It was pointless to prevaricate further. If she dismissed his suit he would no longer toss so aimlessly from horn to horn of this confoundedly disturbing dilemma!
As for the other matter,' White rattled on, 'I had a long chat with a young shaver in her launch.' Drinkwater smiled inwardly. The 'young shaver' was probably a year or so younger than White himself who had matured marvellously since the mess bully Morris had been turned out of the ship. Perhaps it was the eleven-year-old that Drinkwater himself had met the other day. Apparently she was to dock and then a couple of dockyard officers came aboard and located a leak in the larboard side of the hold. They put the work in hand to caulk the seam from the inside and afterwards declared her fit for sea.'
'Did your young shaver venture an opinion as to how the ship's people felt about that?'
White frowned at the question. 'Well, he said that in his opinion the dockyard officers were a laggardly pair of old hens, but the ship was the finest in the Service. I considered challenging him on that, but declined on grounds of his youthful inexperience!'
'Very wise of you, Mr White,' Drinkwater observed drily. 'Besides, to maintain the honour of our thirty-six guns against his hundred-and-something would be to push matters to extreme measures.' Drinkwater stared across the water at the distant flagship which he could see in the interval between two third-rates. 'Your informant's opinion of the dockyard officers sounds like the repetition of someone else's, though. I've heard the ship is decayed, though what proportion is rumour and what is rot, is rather hard to judge.'
'Ah, but that's not all, sir,' said White, enjoying being the bearer of scuttlebutt. 'Yesterday evening the Royal George's carpenter reported another leak, this time on the starboard side where the inlet valve draws water for the washdeck pumps!'