Man Of War

He sat in his ‘Madeira chair’ and shuffled a few papers. None of them detained him (the purser, and his clerk, had done their work well). He laid them aside, and took out Elizabeth’s letter once more. He unwrapped it and gazed at those delighting words again: My dear Captain Peto, and Your ever affectionate Elizabeth Hervey. Such words as he had never seen, or heard! And, oh, how he wished she were here now, in this fine place, his cabin, on the finest of ships. He did not recollect that, before, when he had been at sea, he had ever had a thought of anything but being at sea; he left the shore behind him, and with it all land-bound thoughts. Until now. It was the strangest thing. Neither did he think it unseamanlike, as once undoubtedly he would have done. But, he warned himself, he had better have a care: it would not do to moon – certainly not to be seen to moon. He supposed that married officers somehow attained a sort of . . . equipoise. Perhaps he would, too, a few days out from Gibraltar. It undoubtedly did not serve, sitting unoccupied in his cabin, thus. Better that he be on deck, even though there was no need. And why should there be need? He might enjoy the last of the sun.

The sun, indeed, was fast nearing the horizon, and the words of Milton came to mind. They did so frequently. He had first heard them a dozen years before, aboard his beloved Nisus on her passage east, to India. His new acquaintance, Captain Hervey, ADC to the first soldier of Europe, had several times recited them, since when Peto had read all of Milton’s work, and some of it twice and three times over. And the gilded Car of Day / His glowing Axle doth allay / In the steep Atlantick stream.

What a fortunate encounter his with Hervey had been; though not at all propitious at first. Yet now he was possessed of a fine friend, who would indeed be soon connected to him by marriage. He wondered how his friend fared at the extremity of that dark continent to starboard. And although he was not in the habit of regular prayer (other than the seaman’s need of comfort in the storm) he found himself asking for a blessing for his friend – and for his friend’s family.

The bell sounded the hour. Peto snapped to, and addressed himself to the present – the evening muster. He did not intend going about the ship on this first day at sea (he must leave his lieutenant a little space so soon out and under a new captain), but he would walk the gangboard to the forecastle, casting an eye over as much as he could, animate and otherwise, without too much appearance of inspection.

Marines stood by the carronades, their fighting quarters. It was not unusual, but on the whole he preferred the jollies to be under small arms: they did more service in picking off an enemy’s sharpshooters aloft than raking the decks with grape. He would speak of it to Lambe before tomorrow’s exercise. But what else he saw he approved of – and it was all so different from his own time in a ship of the Line, in Nelson’s day: at evening muster, with the second rum issue not two hours before (and twice the ration it was today) there would be many a man fumbling and stumbling in his stupor, thrashed by the petty officers with a knotted rope end, until some wretched word of insubordination saw him clapped in irons for captain’s punishment – the cat at the grating – next morning. But that had perforce been the way; what other was there with men brought and kept aboard against their will?

He had disliked it, of course; none but a captain predisposed to cruelty could have liked it (there were such men, he would admit). Without the rum few men would have transgressed so; but how could a crew be kept content without grog? Yes, there had been some temperance men – by conviction or through poor constitution – who would drink cocoa or tea instead, trading their tots for coin or credit, but the great majority lived for their rum. It was only the rum ration that had made life bearable. Peto wondered, deep down, if it could be otherwise today were it to come to war with the Turk. He turned and made his way back along the gangboard on the opposite side, passed the guns on the quarterdeck with but a glance, and climbed the companion to the poop.

Two midshipmen stood smartly to attention, and two clerks behind them. Peto looked them up and down in an unofficial sort of way, before fixing on the one: ‘Let me see your telescope, Mr Pelham.’

The signal midshipman handed it to him.

Peto trained it on Archer half a mile ahead and to larboard. ‘You know what is parallax, Mr Pelham?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘Do you consider that your telescope has parallax error?’

Pelham hesitated. ‘I had not, sir.’

‘I very much fear that it does.’ He handed back the instrument.

Pelham put it back under his arm and continued to stand at attention.

‘Have a look, man!’