A lesser man would have let bitterness corrode his soul, but Sergeant McCann had nothing left in the world other than his work. He had been born in Massachusetts where his father had been a cobbler. At the age of sixteen his father had been dragged from their house and tarred and feathered by 'patriot' neighbours for the crime of opposing armed rebellion against the British crown. By morning McCann was the head of his family, his mother had lost her reason and his twelve-year-old sister was in a state of shock. Somehow he got his family into Boston and when that city was evacuated they fled to New York along with a host of loyalist refugees. Young McCann volunteered for service in a provincial regiment, fought at the Brandywine and earned a commission at Germantown. In his absence his mother took to drink and his sister became mistress to a British officer. McCann went south and fought with Patrick Ferguson at King's Mountain, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. After a long and humiliating captivity he found his way back to New York, but no sign of his family. After the peace, in company with other loyalists, he crossed the Atlantic in search of compensation from the British government. In this he was disappointed, and found himself driven to all manner of extremities to keep body and soul together. Finally he entered the service of a moderately wealthy family whose country seat was in Kent. He stuck the subservient existence of an under-footman for three years, then joined the marines of the Chatham division. McCann learned to blot out the past by an intense concentration upon the present. Lieutenant Hyde called him 'my meticulous sergeant' and thus he was known as Meticulous McCann.
Owing to severe losses among the marines during the preceding cruise, Lieutenant Hyde, Sergeant McCann and a dozen additional red-coated lobsters had been sent aboard Andromeda at Chatham shortly before the frigate sailed on her escort duties. The combination of the elegantly languid Hyde and the pipeclayed mastery of McCann was thought by the officer commanding the Chatham division to be ideal for such a ceremonial task.
'Is that damned book so entertaining, Hyde?' Lieutenant Ashton now asked.
'It is very amusing,' Hyde replied without looking up from the page, adding, 'Shouldn't you be on deck?'
'Frederic has relieved me. He's under the impression I am acting as his clerk. Anyway, old fellow, I hate to disturb you from your intellectual pursuits, but the Meticulous One awaits your attention.'
'Really ...' Hyde turned a page, chuckled and continued reading.
'Do please come in Sergeant.' Ashton waved the scarlet-clad McCann into the wardroom, then turned to the marine officer. 'Hyde, you infernal layabout, you quite exasperate me! Sergeant McCann is reporting to you.' Ashton rolled his eyes at the deck-head for McCann's benefit.
Skilfully bracing himself against the heel and movement of the ship, McCann crashed his boots and finally attracted the attention of his commanding officer. Hyde affected a startled acknowledgement of his presence.
'What the devil... ? Ah. McCann, men ready for inspection?'
'Sir!'
'Very well.' Hyde put his book, pages downwards, upon the table and got up. He seemed to the watching Ashton not to need to adjust his tight-fitting tunic, but rose immaculate, preened like a sleek bird. He winked at Ashton, picked up his billy-cock hat and preceded McCann from the wardroom. Watching the pair leave, Ashton was shaking his head in wonder at the contrived little scene when a door in the adjacent bulkhead opened and a tousle-haired Frey poked his head out.
'What the deuce is all the noise about?'
'Oh, nothing, Frey, nothing, only Hyde and the Meticulous One.'
'Is that all?' said Frey, preparing to retreat into his hutch of a cabin just as the ship heeled farther over. 'Wind's shifting,' he said, yawning. 'Isn't it your watch?'
'I do wish people wouldn't keep asking me that. The first lieutenant has relieved me.'
'What for?'
'He was feeling generous... Frey' Ashton went on, 'you know Our Father, don't you. What's he like, personally, I mean?'
Frey sighed, scratched his head and came out of his cabin in his stockinged feet. Sitting at the table he stretched. 'I'm not sure I can tell you, beyond saying that I have the deepest admiration for him.'
'They say he's an unlucky man to be around,' Ashton remarked. 'Didn't his last first lieutenant get killed, along with that fellow you were with, what was his name?'
'Quilhampton? Yes, James was killed, so was Lieutenant Huke...'
'Well?'
'Well what?'
'Well 'tis said we're bound out to the westward in chase of two French ships that have escaped from Antwerp,' expostulated Ashton.
'If that is the scuttlebutt, then it must be true,' said Frey drily, taking a biscuit from the barrel.
'I had it from Marlowe who saw the captain this morning and then heard all about our gallant commander from old Birkbeck.'
'Well then, you know more about it than I do.'
'Oh, Frey, don't be such a confounded dullard ...'
Andromeda lay down even further to leeward and ran for some moments with her starboard ports awash. Hyde's novel slid across the table and fell on the painted canvas deck covering. Frey bent down, picked it up and gave it a cursory glance.
'Here, put it on the stern settee,' said Ashton. Frey threw it to Ashton who caught it neatly and glanced at the title on the spine. 'Pride and Prejudice; huh! What a damned apt title for...' He looked up quickly at the watching Frey, flushed slightly and pulled the corners of his mouth down. 'Odd cove, Hyde,' he remarked.
Frey stood up; he was about to retire to his cabin and dress for his watch, but paused and said, 'You seem to think most of us are odd, in one way or another.'
Ashton casually spun Miss Austen's novel into a corner of the buttoned settee that ran across the after end of the gloomy wardroom. He stared back at Frey, seemed to consider a moment, then said, 'Do I? Well I never.'
Frey was galled by the evasion. 'What d'you think of Marlowe?'
'Known him for years.' Ashton's tone was dismissive.
'That's not what I asked,' persisted Frey. There was a hardness in his tone which Ashton had not heard before.
'Oh, he's all right.'
'That is what I told the captain,' Frey remarked, watching Ashton, 'though I am not certain I am right.'
'You told the captain?' Ashton frowned, 'and what gives you the right to give him your opinion, or to presume to doubt Mr Marlowe's good name, eh?'
'Something called friendship, Ashton,' Frey retorted.
'Oh yes, old shipmates,' Ashton said sarcastically, 'as if I could forget.'
There was a knock at the wardroom door and Midshipman Dunn's face appeared. 'One bell, Mr Frey,' he said.
'Thank you, Mr Dunn.' Frey shut his cabin door and reached for his neck-linen. There was something indefinably odious about Josiah Ashton and Frey could not put his finger on it. He was too damned thick with Marlowe, Frey concluded, and Marlowe was something of a fool. But it irritated Frey that he could not quite place the source of a profound unease.
As Frey went on deck he passed Hyde's marines parading on the heeling gun deck. They stood like a wavering fence, the instant before it was blown down by a gale. Lieutenant Hyde had almost completed his inspection prior to changing sentries. He caught Frey's eye and winked. For all his intolerable indolence, Frey could not help liking Hyde. One could like a fellow, Frey thought as he grasped the man-ropes to the upper deck, without either admiring or approving of him.