It was all so overwhelming, so confusing, that he didn’t think he could ever even begin to discover what each did, much less become competent in the use of such a spider web. His physical unease became lost in his anxiety over how he had been received so far, and his nagging fear that not only was he stuck in the Navy for the duration of the war, but possibly for life. What career could he undertake after this? And if it was to be his career, he had a sneaking suspicion that most likely he would be a total, miserable failure at it!
What a terrible, shitten life this is going to be, he brooded. And I’ve made such a terrible start on my first day.
Suddenly he jerked to a halt in his perambulations about the deck. Had not Kenyon told him to come back right after he was dressed, to see the ship’s first lieutenant? And was that perhaps a whole hour or better ago? Oh, damn me, they’ll beat me crippled.
He turned to dash aft toward the quarterdeck, where he had seen officers, but before he could, shrill whistles began to blow some sort of complicated warbling call, and the ship became alive with running men.
That’s it, they’re going to hang me as soon as they catch me. He felt a tugging on his sleeve and looked down to behold a very young midshipman, a mere babe of about twelve.
“You must be our newly,” the tiny apparition said. “I’m Beckett. Better get in line with us. Captain’s coming off-shore.”
“So then what happens?” Alan asked, wondering for his safety, eager for a place to hide.
“Get in line here with the rest of us, I told you.”
“Down here, you. By height. Between me and Ashburn,” a very old-looking midshipman told him. He had to be twenty if he was a day. Alan shouldered between him and a very elegantly turned out midshipman, if such a thing was possible in their plain uniforms. The other boy was about eighteen, handsome, with grey eyes and a noble face.
“I’m Keith Ashburn,” the youth whispered. “That’s Chapman, our senior.”
“Alan Lewrie,” he said.
Then there was no time for more talk, as all the officers turned up in their blue and gold and white, their swords glistening. There were Marines in red coats and white crossbelts, slapping their muskets about, their sergeants holding half-pikes, and two officers; one very young lieutenant with a baby face, and one very lean and dashing-looking captain of Marines who resembled a sheathed razor. Such members of the crew also appeared, that were not below out of discipline.
“Boat ahoy,” someone called down to the gig, and the answering shout came back “Ariadne,” meaning that the captain was in the boat. After a few moments, the Marines presented their muskets and the officers presented swords while the bosun’s pipes shrilled some complicated lieder that Lewrie found most annoying.
A bulky man in the uniform of a post-captain came slowly through the entry port and briefly doffed his hat to ship’s company.
God, what a face, Alan thought; looks like a pit bull–dog I once lost money on.
The captain of Ariadne was in his late forties, a gotch-bellied man with very thin and short legs. He wore his own hair, clubbed back into a massive grey queue, and his eyebrows seemed to have a life of their own and danced like bat’s wings in the breeze.
“Dismiss the hands, Mister Swift,” the captain said.
“Aye aye, sir. Ship’s company … on hats. Dismiss.”
“You, there, the new midshipman. Come here,” Bales thundered.
“Yes, sir?”
“You are Lewrie?”
“I am, sir. Come aboard to join, sir.”
“Then why have you not reported to me and you’ve already been inboard half the morning?” the first lieutenant, Swift, said. He was a reedy, thoroughly sour-looking man with a permanent scowl on his dark face.
“I shall see you in my cabin directly, Mister Lewrie, after I have conferred with Mister Swift. Following that, you will not tarry about signing on board in a proper fashion.”
“Yes, sir,” Alan replied crisply as he could, but secretly terrified that he was about to catch pluperfect hell.
“And for God’s sake, Lewrie, the proper form is ‘aye aye, sir,’” Captain Bales said petulantly. “Try it, will you? Even the Marines do so!”
“Aye aye, sir,” Alan said, turning red.
The captain turned to go aft, but the first lieutenant took Alan by the arm and shook him like a first-term student. “Salute and show the captain respect, goddamn you.”
Alan doffed his hat and threw in another one of those meaningless “aye aye, sirs,” ready to weep. After they had gone, and the other midshipmen who had witnessed his ignorance had finished laughing and had gone below, Alan turned and staggered to the rail to look out at the shore, which was rising and falling in a regular pace. Alongside the petulant anger of a spoiled young man who had been humiliated before his new peers like the merest toddler, he felt such a rush of self-pity that he could not control his face screwing up in a flushed grimace, or hold back for long the acid-hot tears that threatened to explode his eyes. How could he stand this? he wondered. How could he survive all the hateful abuse, the wicked laughter at his ignorance about a career he would never have chosen in a million years? How tempting that shore looked, where people safely ate and drank and slept snug at night with never a care for this sort of misery. He contemplated finding a way to run away from all this, no matter what the consequences. He thought of killing himself, his death flinging shame on his family forever. Besides, suicide was damned fashionable these days—everybody did it.
But then, who would care if he died? A few of his friends, and a girl or two might sigh over his coffin, but most of London would most likely feel a sense of relief. That was no way to go.
He shoved his hands in his breeches pockets to warm them, and leaned on the solid oak bulwark, growing angry and snuffling away his tears. There was no escape—this was his life now, and he would have to make the best of it he could, until he found a way to get out … and get even.
“I’ll make you pay for this, you filthy old bastard,” he told the harbor waters. “I’ll find a way to break you, and Pilchard, and Belinda, and Gerald, and Morton, and even that damned vicar. I’ll make all you shits pay. You want me to die, let the Navy kill me for you, but I won’t do it. I’ll be back.”
“Lewrie,” Lieutenant Kenyon said behind him, making him leap away from the railing and spin to face him.
“Aye aye, sir,” Alan sniffled, stained with tears but his face hot with anger.
“Young gentlemen do not ever lean on the railings. Nor do they ever put their hands in their pockets.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“You had better go aft to the captain’s cabins and be ready for your interview,” Kenyon said.
“What can I do to avoid making even more of an ass of myself, sir?” Alan asked him. “Though I can’t imagine doing worse than now.”
“Follow me,” Kenyon said. As they walked aft, he told him to be sure to salute, to remove his hat once in the cabin, to speak direct and not prose on, and to remember to salute before he left.
Alan mopped his face with a handkerchief after they had passed the wheel and entered the passage under the poop deck that led to the captain’s quarters. Kenyon pointed out the first lieutenant’s cabin on one side, and the sailing master’s on the other. They stood by the ramrod straight Marine sentry by the captain’s door until the first lieutenant emerged.
“Who be ye, sir?” the Marine asked.
“Midshipman Lewrie, to report to the captain,” Kenyon said.