"Tomorrow?" he asked Samuel. "Do you imagine that is the surprise?"
"That would be one indeed," Holt replied. "You do not know this dockyard. I should say another two days, then there is water, food, shot and powder. Most like, if we are lucky, we will get liberty tonight. I have told you, Kaye loves the London life, and relishes high society. Hence, we may enjoy the same, although I doubt so high. Unless ..." He paused, his expression strange. "Will, if he invited you, would you care to go with him? That, indeed, might be die excitement. For certain, he was not including me."
William expressed it with a look, and Samuel laughed. Truth was, though, that care to or not, he'd have to go if asked, there was no choice. O desolate possibility... "Then there is Gunning," Sam continued. "He did not ask his whereabouts, which means he does not need a sailing master, does he? Except he finds a shift or garter in his bed from Sal or Ellen, by God, then he'll roar! What's this of Daniel Swift, though? Is he behind your place on here? A strange honour for a favoured nephew, isn't it? A bloody ship like this!"
It was exceedingly direct, but then, it seemed, Sam's method was to do with frankness. William was aware he'd put himself at his mercy with the confidences of earlier, and could not find it in himself to play the icy tight lips in reply.
"Ah, Sam," he said. "Tis hard to talk of, harder to nail down. I own he must be, most like, my .. . benefactor, should I say? But.. ."
"But such a ship," said Sam. "Such a ship and people, such a captain, such a job. Does he hate you, when you see him do you see him, even? Tell me, Will. I do not understand."
Will did not either. He saw Swift infrequently, not least because he was a serving officer, and it was plainly known within the family that he would not accept him as a source of help, he saw him as a tainted source. There had been many bitter altercations over it.
"Fact is," he said, 'he lectured me till he was blue in the face that I should go to sea again, and called me a viper in the family bosom that I so long refused. My family, contrary to some opinion you have formed, is strapped as bad as you are where younger sons come into it. But if he is behind my calling to this ship it is a kind of ... well, where is the money in the Impress Service, where are the prizes, the advancement?" Will stopped. "In any case," he said, "it can't be he, we've heard naught of him for months, he sails in distant waters. If he was near enough to pull those strings we must have known of it; he has a house at Fareham, not so far from us."
"But Kaye spoke of him "
Kaye spoke of him again. As the two midshipmen watched the yardmen paddle their leaky craft away, Black Bob turned up like a silent wraith, and led them to the cabin. Half an hour after that word was brought of a pinnace hailing them, and Coxswain Sankey shot away to muster a receiving party. Lieutenant Kaye, resplendent in silk and blue, the mids in blue and dingy linen, stood stiffly at the gangway while the smart boat, with a smarter crew, laid close enough alongside for the smartest man on board of her to skip briskly up the Biter's ladder. Captain Daniel Swift, short, and hard, and arrogant, raised his face and fixed them with strange eyes, grey and brilliant. His nostrils flared.
It was the first time Bentley had seen him on a ship since men he loved had hanged, and guilt and shame had almost drowned him. Warm day, blue sky, the sound of moving water. The truth had been revealed.
Nine
That night, some men got liberty on the Biter, as predicted. Lieutenant Kaye went seeking high society, accompanied by Captain Daniel Swift. But Samuel Holt, and William, and all but two of her active Navy men, went to the receiving hulk upriver, where they were issued with two-foot clubs, a brace of pistols for the officers, and handcuffs. They got a talk-to, also, from a lieutenant as hard and old as seasoned timber from the mother of all men-of-war, a man called Coppiner.
"Mr. Holt," he greeted Samuel, when they walked through her entry port from the pontoon landing. "This is an unexpected pleasure, unlooked for. Next you'll tell me Mr. Kaye himself has graced us with his presence."
It sounded like a pleasantry, but William had been warned beforehand. Samuel's face was held expressionless, his body stiff. Around him members of the Biter's crew became deaf men, flowing silent into the hole cut in the hulk's old timber. Samuel, indeed, did not reply.
"More like he's at the Lamb, however," continued Coppiner. "He'd rather press a harlot's belly than a topmast man, who can deny that, eh? Well, I give them joy of him. And who is this?"
The eyes, on William's, were dull yet burning. He had the expression of a man consumed with anger, ignited long ago deep down inside, unquenched by years of dousing and control. His face was cragged with years and bitterness, lined and dark, with bushy white hair unwigged and bushy eyebrows.
"If you please, sir," responded William, "Midshipman William Bentley, newly joined with the Biter. Lieutenant Kaye sends his humble compliments."
This was true, and he had been aware receiving the instruction that it was some sort of jest, or at least a coded form of slight, or insult. However, he delivered it directly, with a steady gaze, and the old man sixty, if a day made no comment. He held Bentley's eyes with great steadiness himself; and did not smile.
"Well to hell with him, say I," was his reply. "And you may tell him that yourself, young man. Now" to Samuel "you are well sent tonight, sans doute by accident of that painted popinjay. We need forty men by Tuesday for the Claris, and we are told the Bell, the Cheshire Cheese, the Waggoner and the Old Top Drum are all alive with likely men. Young fellow" to William "if you like cracking heads, tonight's your night. One word there are two ships in from the East, and the service tried to milk them off of the Ness. There was bloodshed, one man crippled, revenge is in the air. I only tell you this, you will observe, to make you keener. For every man you take without a passport, there will be ten men with to try and take him back off you once more. I wish you luck."
He turned abruptly, stamping off along the dim-lit alleyway to 'do his papers'. Within five seconds he had disappeared, the flickering horn lanterns making a hole to swallow him completely, and leaving Will and Samuel quite alone in the 'tween decks. Through the entry port there came a little light, from the sky, but without the glims, the inside of the hulk promised pitchy blackness. For a moment, both stood silent.
"Christ," said Will, at last. "The stink. What is it, Sam?"
The question was rhetorical, in one sense. The smell was sewage, mixed with river mud, mixed with permeating dankness as if the old ship's timbers had been steeped in damp for tens and tens of years. But she was a ship still, just, so how could it be borne, how had it grown so all-enveloping? Sam relaxed.
"Like the Fleet Ditch after a storm in summer, eh? It's shit, old lad, deep-laid and festering in the bilge. It amuses Coppiner sometimes to unshackle the young hopefuls and give 'em exercise on the chain-pumps, which makes it ten times worse. They stir it up, and spread it across the deck to the drain ports, and it runs down like treacle into Old Father Thames. What did you make of Coppiner? He's sixty-two, they say, and still lieutenant. The hatred in that man would swamp a battleship."
"Where is he now? Gone to get drunk?"