In the dockyard also there was activity. All over the yard fires were being lighted, and swarms of men were moving round the two ships in construction, their high bare sides not yet faired and capped, but displaying timbers like rows of yellow teeth. Just off the shore were men-of-war in tiers, most with everything struck except their lower masts. On two, men were already working on the deck, while at another a flat barge full of yard hands was roping alongside a low pontoon.
Samuel, then, was by his side. His face was gleaming with drops of water, his short hair damp.
"What say you to a trip ashore? There is a coffee shop behind the yard, if you'll believe me. Damn little chance of anything to eat on here."
I could say much, thought Bentley. I could say, "But where's the captain? What about the dockyard crew? Is there not work to do?" The thought of coffee was a tempter, though. He could use a privy, too. He did not imagine there were private heads on here, not heads you'd want to use in sight of shore and all the traffic.
"Shall we take a boat?" he asked. "Or hail a wherry?" But before he'd said the word, a piercing whistle had come from Holt, and a boatman had altered course for them. Before he arrived, Samuel moved easily to the forward scuttle and dropped down it out of sight. A minute later he returned, grim humour on his lips.
"Drunk, every mother's son," he said. "Taylor will rouse them out, though, he is a good man, Taylor. Hey, Jem! We'll be one hour, not a second more. First man out, get him to light a fire for some breakfast, then rig the pump. Hose down the drunkest, then hose down the deck. Lieutenant Kaye will be here soon, and the shipwrights." Quietly, to Will, he added: "Pigs might dance a hornpipe. Jem Taylor is the boatswain. You can trust him."
Before Will had time to take him in, however, the cabin door was opened and a strange sight was revealed. John Gunning was seen first, and he was like a meaty marionette, or perhaps some cadaver, fleshed and animated. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was pale except for smears of rouge and there was an air of pain about his features. He walked as if his feet were not his own, as if he thought before essaying every step. While behind him, bold as brass, bright-eyed and lively, stepped Sal Marlor, hair awry, face licked completely clean of redness (save a natural tinge around the nostrils), her gaudy clothes as brazen as a bell. Behind her came Mistress Ellen, a picture from a tragedy with eyes down on her sallow cheeks, and Edward Campbell drew up the rear, looking neither here nor there, unscathed by liquor, undefiant.
"Your face," hissed Samuel. "Will, mend your face! You have not seen a ghost, 'tis Gunning. I told you we were better off in our own cots!"
The shore party for so they guessed it was came up to them at the gangway, and Samuel made a tiny bow to the young ladies.
"Sir," he said to Gunning. "Here is a wherry I have bespoke. Pray take it and Mr. Bentley and myself will call another." He winked slyly at his friend: their need is greater, don't deny it!
Gunning did not speak, nor did the women. Campbell acknowledged the kindness, as he handed them down to the boatman, Gunning being apparently beyond giving a hand. Unexpectedly, as the boat pulled away, the pale-cheeked Sal (pale with freckles, Will had noted absent-mindedly) made him a little wave. Which he ignored.
"Now," said Sam, amusedly. "Another boat, before we are too late. Oh God, here come the hordes."
It was an old ship's cutter, paddled out from the dockyard by an unruly gaggle, not one shipped oar between them. To nose it round the stern, one man held a broken bottom board another used a bailing tin. From the middle somewhere, a young carpenter with a bag of saws in hand hurled up a rope without a warning, which Jem Taylor, coming up behind his officers, caught in the air and bent on round a stanchion.
"There lies a bumboat near the other side," he said, in a gentle burr. "Shall I get un for thee, Mr. Holt?"
"Better not," said Sam. "We need someone to oversee this Oh, to hell in clogs! Jem, keep 'em at it for me, won't you? We shall not be long, just coffee and a shave. Will down the other side, man. Let us escape this cesspit. Come."
They did. As the dockyard men swarmed over the larboard bulwark, Sam and Will ran for the starboard, hailed the bum boatman and dropped lightly down the steep side into his craft. Within minutes they had been dropped on some hard-standing, picked their way up through the labouring men, and were seated in a small and smoky shop eating hot bread rolls and blowing aromatic steam from off their coffee. William had even managed a quick visit to the privy, hard beside the kitchen wall reserved for customers, not dockyard toilers, and hence not unrespectable.
"This is the life eh, Will?" asked Samuel, through bread roll. "You'd never know there was a war on, would you?!"
Will was happy, and he could not understand it. His service in the Navy had shown him many sights and many situations, but nothing, none, like this. In twenty-four hours, give or take, his notions all had been turned topsy-turvy. Across the table top, the young man he had scorned smiled at him like his one true friend, and spoke of war as of another jest. There was a war on, and they had left their posts, and it did not matter, because their King's ship was not ready, and she had no commander, no proper company, and only half her rigging. She was not even the King's and the man who owned her had gone ashore after a night of whoring in the captain's cabin.
"Sam," he said. "I think that wine I had last night was drugged. Is Gunning a drunkard, by the way?"
"Of course he is," said Sam. "Did he not look wonderful just now? We will not see him more today, I doubt, depending on which day of his debauchery is reached. Normally it is three days and then, you'll see, he is drier than a prioress's privates till the next time. Do you suppose such parts are dry? I have seen some very pretty nuns myself. Oh! You have your prudey look on, Will!"
William felt a blush arising, but he raised a laugh. In truth, he did find Samuel a little raw on the subject of the sex, although he no longer considered him in all things low and of a vulgar quality; indeed, he was ashamed to remember his earlier opinion.
"No, but you said he is a good man, too, a useful master. Is that true? I can hardly credit it. He is so ... so very lax."
Sam was supping coffee, and snorted into it.
"Oh, lax! Will, the Biter's lax, Lieutenant Kaye is lax, the men are lax. There are hard jobs in the Navy, there are hard men doing them. There are easy jobs to which soft men come flocking, moths to the candle flame. Some men have talent, some men have guts, some men are mad, some men are parasites. In six months before this latest refit, I am informed, the Biter saw action of a sort just thrice. Two boardings and one short chase. Nobody killed, nobody hurt, a very minimal number of good seamen taken. Shore parties since I joined her not much better, although Jem Taylor is a useful man and some of the people can crack heads together when all's said. Good God, Will, our men have liberty near every week -shore liberty, it is unheard of! Why don't they run? Because there is no call to! Their life on board is like a paradise. They would sell their grandmas to be in the Navy! Their sisters' honour! The ship is lax, Will, not just sottish Gunning. The Biter's lax, and all who sail on her."
A woman came out of the kitchen, fat and indifferent. She took their coffee pot away, leaving another, hot one. Sam poured and drank.