The Flying Squadron Read Online Free PDF Page B

was his officers with whom he wished to become better acquainted and their present quiescence was vaguely worrying. Did he intimidate them?
    It had come upon him, on recent mornings as he shaved, that he was ageing. He had no idea why this sudden realization of the obvious had struck him so forcibly. Perhaps it was the return to the cares and concerns of command after months of indolence, perhaps no more than the half-light that threw his face into stark relief as he peered at his image in the mirror. Whatever the cause, he had had a glimpse of himself as others saw him. Did that grim visage with its scarred cheek and the powder burns tattooed into one eyelid intimidate?
    In repose he wondered what expression he habitually wore. Elizabeth had told him that his face brightened when he smiled. Did he not smile enough? Did he wear a perpetual scowl upon the quarterdeck?
    He looked down the twin lines of officers, bending over their soup, concentrating on their manners lest it slop into their white-breeched laps. At the far end of the table Metcalfe laid his soup-spoon in his plate and Mullender loomed up at his shoulder. Others followed suit, the chink of silver upon china the only sound in the cabin, if one set aside the wracking groans of the frigate’s fabric, the lowgrind of the rudder and the surge and hiss of the sea beneath the windows.
    The handsome Gordon and the thin-faced chaplain, Simpson, the ruddy Wyatt, the elegant Moncrieff, the purser and the surgeon remained disappointingly unanimated.
    â€˜Well, gentlemen,’ Drinkwater said, laying down his own soup-spoon, ‘what is your judgement of the temper of the men following our exercise at the guns this morning?’
    If he had hoped to bring them from their tongue-tied awkwardness by the question, he was sadly disappointed. He sensed an invisible restraint upon them, a disquieting influence, and looked from one to another for some evidence of its source.
    â€˜Come, surely someone has an opinion? I never knew a wardroom where criticism of one sort or another was not lavished upon someone.’ His false attempt at levity provoked no wry grins. He tried again. ‘Mr Gordon, how did the men at your battery respond?’
    â€˜Well, sir,’ Gordon faltered, shot a glance at the other end of the table and coloured, coughing. The blond lick of his hair fell forward and he threw it back. ‘Well, sir, they were well enough, I believe.’ He was oddly nervous. ‘Their timing improved. According to the first lieutenant . . .’
    â€˜They did well enough, sir, for our first exercise,’ broke in Metcalfe stridently. ‘The starbowlines were faster than those on the port side and loosed both their broadsides in seventy-nine seconds . . .’
    Drinkwater was fascinated. The riddle, if he judged aright, was solved by the presence of Metcalfe. Yet these younger men were not intimidated by the first luff, merely silent in his company, as if to speak invited some response. Belittlement perhaps? A mild but persistent humiliation? Did they simply choose not to speak in Metcalfe’s presence? Was the man a tyrant in the wardroom? He was clearly a fussy and fossicking individual. It was interesting, too, to hear Metcalfe trot out the word ‘port’ instead of larboard. True, its usage was gaining ground in the Service, but something in Metcalfe’s tone endowed the word with fashionable
éclat
, and more than a little bombast.
    â€˜But did you mark any change in their mood, Mr Gordon?’
    â€˜You mean after the exercise as compared with before, sir?’
    â€˜Yes, exactly.’ Drinkwater was aware of a faint air of frustration in his tone.
    â€˜They were . . .’
    â€˜A damned sight smarter at the conclusion.’ Metcalfe finished the sentence and Drinkwater detected the corporate affront passing through the officers like a gust of wind through dry grass. Moncrieff, resplendent