Hoare feared he would have to endure hearing that news of another officer's advancement for another three weeks. Once was quite enough, he told himself. But when he reminded himself that a brig like Niobe rated only a Lieutenant in command, while he carried a Commander's swab-brig or no brig-he felt much better. Niobe, he remembered, was the brig with which Royal Duke had barely escaped collision the other morning.
"Now tell me," the Admiral went on, "what have you done to find those impudent knaves who attacked me and Delancey? D'ye know, I do think the bastards were after our heads?"
He touched the cut in his neck with gingerly fingers.
"Bugger sewed me up," he explained. "Stitches itch like hell."
"I believe you're right, sir," Hoare said. "You know the man set on guard over the two prisoners was beheaded and the prisoners' throats slit?"
"I know. Trelawney told me. What are you doing about it?"
Hoare told Admiral Hardcastle how he had chosen Dabney, one of Royal Duke's sharpest men, to examine the bodies and the mews where they had been found. He did not tell him he had done so on Mr. Clay's recommendation.
"The dead marine, Baker, was taken by surprise, with his back turned to his killer. That probably meant that it was a man he knew, or at least someone he trusted… Whoever it was, he cut Baker's throat with one neat slice and then did the same for the Marine's prisoners.
"To keep their mouths shut, I suppose. He finished by completing his job on Baker and went off, taking the head with him… Dabney was better than I would have been at deducing what happened in the mews. Almost as good, I think, as Thoday would have been."
"Today, yesterday, tomorrow," the Admiral burst out. "If Thoday's the better man, I want you to put him on the job, not some secondhand piece of baggy-wrinkle. Where is Thoday, anyhow?"
"In Dorchester, sir, on the trail of the people who beheaded the Getchell brothers."
"Get him here, you nincompoop."
"With respect, sir, I think…," Hoare began.
"Damn you, you're not paid to think. Do as you're told."
"Again with respect, sir, I am."
"You are what?"
"Paid to think, sir. That's why Admiral Abercrombie chose me to command the Navy's thinking ship."
At this, Sir George did his best to turn purple and roar, but he was still too short of blood to succeed. Instead, he began to laugh. Again he must needs stop and clap his hands to his head.
"You're right, of course, Hoare. But I order you-order you, d'ye hear? — never, never to refer to Royal Duke or any other of His Majesty's ships as a 'thinking ship.' What with your silly voice, people will say you were a lisper as well as a whisper. And it would never do for an officer of the Navy to speak of his command as 'sinking,' eh?"
Hoare gulped and took his courage in both hands.
"Speaking of Royal Duke, sir… I have a request of you, sir, on behalf of her and her crew," Hoare whispered.
"Don't expect me to fall all over you for saving me life, I warn you," the Admiral said. "You didn't. Delancey did, and that fool doctor did, and your damned green lobsters. I don't owe you a bloody thing. Now, what is it you want?"
"Sir, after our recent performance in harbor, you can imagine the reputation Royal Duke has apparently already gotten among the crews of her… sister ships here in Portsmouth. I've already heard men from other ships, calling out remarks like, 'What ho, the Dustbins!' as our men row by. Or 'Shape up, ye whore's delights!' "
Did Hoare hear his Admiral suppress a splutter of laughter? Never mind.
"Understandably, sir," Sir George said, "and deservedly, considering the appalling performance your ship's company made of a simple maneuver like warpin' a brig a cable's length in to a pier. Oh, yes, sir, I was watching. And your command's hideous condition when the Duke of Cumberland himself condescended to inspect you. D'ye come whinin' to me like a schoolboy who comes to his master a-blubberin' that the other lads are callin' him names? You shan't get any coddlin' out of me, I'll have you know. That bedlam brig of yours deserves whatever name the Fleet tacks onto her."
"I must agree, sir," Hoare said. "We have fewer than five experienced men aboard, and one of them's a woman, though how she got the experience I have yet to learn. Most of the rest have not even been aloft…
"… They moved her back to her original mooring this morning, sir, but their performance was still enough to make a man weep… Those eight pretty, shiny little brass guns-the ones His Royal Highness admired so much the other day-have never… even been fired. Never. What I need, sir, is the loan of one or two more seamen-men who can teach my poor landsmen their trade. They're willing enough and smarter than your average landsmen… They should shape up handily.
"I had your men, Bold and Stone, in Uninhabitable, Inconceivable, Alecto now, I mean-in my own little yacht, anyhow-not so long ago. I'd like 'em back, sir."
Bold was a coxswain, competent to be boatswain in any vessel of twenty-eight guns or less, Stone a seasoned gunner. With them, Hoare could leave Thoday to his detection and send poor old Joy to some sinecure ashore.
Hoare had needed to interrupt himself repeatedly during this speech; now he ran out of breath entirely and stopped to cough. It was an awful sound.
Feeble though the Admiral still was, the level look he gave Hoare went through him like a knife through butter.
"I twig your game, sir. You want to take your command to sea," he said when Hoare had got his coughing under hatches and could hear him. "Well, you shall not. You're under standing orders from Admiral Abercrombie in London to stay inshore, and you know why. You have your copy of those orders, and I have mine."
"Inshore can mean more than lying tied up at a pier, sir," Hoare dared say, "or swinging round a mooring till we ground on our own beef bones. It can mean simply staying within sight of land."
"When I use a word," the Admiral said, "it bloody well means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less. I am in charge of my own bloody words."
That was a rather good line, Hoare thought. Perhaps I should add it to my little commonplace book. Then, after I die, brother John or some other lucky being can use it himself or hand it on to someone who will.
"Yes, sir," he said, "but…"
The Admiral must not yet be himself, because after prolonged haggling, he conceded that Hoare, or rather Clay under Hoare's direction, might take Royal Duke on brief training excursions that did not take her out of sight of the shoreline.
"And I don't mean 'sight of land,' either, sir, d'ye understand? I mean that you must be able to see the shoreline. From on deck. Tidewater, sir; not a fathom farther offshore," he added as he read Hoare's thoughts.
And, yes, he could have the loan of Bold and Stone, at least until Admiral Hardcastle was strong enough to go about in his barge, of whose crew the two seamen were essential members.
"Er, Hoare," the Admiral said as Hoare turned to leave the sickroom, "I've given in to your request, not because it is insolent and presumptuous-which it is-but because I owe you amends for having failed you."
"Failed me, sir?"
"Yes. In the Navy, loyalty should work both ways. I failed to protect you from bein' bullied by that Hanoverian poltroon. Go on, now; put your vessel into order. But only at your peril do you take your Dustbin beyond the bounds I've given you."
"Aye aye, sir."
As Hoare was on the point of leaving Admiralty House, Delancey-as if to rub salt in his wounds-condescendingly invited him to be present when he read himself in as Niobe's Lieutenant in command. Delancey was to go to sea, while Hoare was still all but shorebound.
"'Mother, may I go to swim?'
'Yes, my darling daughter;
Hang your clothes on a hickory limb,