you care to join me on deck, my dear?’
‘Is there anything to see, husband?’
‘I doubt it. Land will have been spotted from the masthead, and even in an hour, given the heat of the day, it will be no more than a smudge on the horizon.’
‘Then if you do not mind, husband, I will visit the men who suffered injury in yesterday’s storm.’
‘Of course,’ he replied, before calling to his steward. ‘Shenton, my hat.’
As he closed the muster book, Ralph Barclay promised himself that, at the first opportunity, he would employ a clerk to do the work that he had just completed. It would have to be someone who understood the meaning of discretion, as well as the need for certain reservations with the absolute facts; no captain could afford to tell the Admiralty and Navy Board everything, and a certain security lay in the fact that, though they claimed to be zealous, those clerks were, in fact, only too human. He had had to decline his wife’s offer to undertake the work, for he knew she, of all people, being so delightfully ingenuous, would not comprehend that particular requirement.
His officers removed their hats as he stepped onto the quarterdeck, each acknowledged by no more than a nod. First he looked at the slate, and the course that had been chalked on, knowing that the ship’s master, Mr Collins, a man of an extremely insecure temperament, would be made nervous by his action. His frigate, HMS Brilliant , with the sloop HMS Firefly in her wake, was making some four knotson a steady south-west breeze that was coming in nicely over her larboard quarter. He cast his glance upwards, to where, amongst the taut sails, the topmen were working, splicing ropes that had parted in the squall and re-roving blocks that had come apart from the falls. Forward, over the waist, the sailmaker and his assistants were sitting in a line repairing a damaged topsail, their long needles flying through the thick canvas, the whole of the work on deck and aloft overseen by Mr Sykes, the bosun. Here was another cause for satisfaction, a crew that, due to his constant training and stern attitude, had become efficient at their work, and warrant officers like Sykes, who had seemed uncertain at first, now relaxed and competent. They were not at the peak of perfection – that took years at sea to achieve – but they were nothing like the rabble with which he had put to sea.
Likewise, in his First Lieutenant, he had an officer who understood what was required of him; that the deck be spotless, the cannonballs in the rope garlands black and chipped free of rust, the cannon tight to the ship’s side, idle ropes perfectly coiled and the crew quiet and industrious, yet ready at a moment’s notice to go from peaceful sailing to fighting readiness. That had not been so when he had set off from Sheerness, but good fortune had attended the cruise of HMS Brilliant in that respect too, ridding him of subordinates inclined to be contentious, and replacing them with men who understood the need to obey.
‘Mr Glaister?’
The lanky Scotsman, with his thin, near skeletal face and startlingly blue eyes, replied to the implied question in a lilting, Highland tone. ‘Masthead reports that our landfall is mountainous, sir, which leads me to suspect that if we are not dead set for the Roads of Toulon, then we are not a hair’s-breadth off it.’
‘Then, Mr Collins, you need to be congratulated.’
The master took the compliment, even though he knew how much of a hand his captain had had in the plotting of the course. So did every officer aboard, but praise from Ralph Barclay was rare enough to be prized, even when it was not truly warranted.
‘Mr Glaister, I take it the work of repair will be completed before we can see the shore from the deck.’
‘I will make sure of it, sir.’
Ralph Barclay picked up a telescope and trained it on the distant shore, though it hardly made it any more clear. ‘Good, for if it is Toulon they will have