Midshipman Quinn

— 1 —

HIS MAJESTY'S FRIGATE Althea was pounding southward through the heavy seas of the Bay of Biscay. A westerly gale had blown for two days and she was carrying very little canvas on the three tall masts that leaned over before the wind, their taut rigging making wild shrill music. A hundred and thirty feet above the wet slant of the deck the lookout crouched in the crow's-nest, occasionally bobbing up to peer round the stormy horizon of sea. With Nelson on watch in the Mediterranean there was little likelihood of any French warship being sighted in these waters, and all the lookout could have reported was that the gale was getting worse. He looked up frequently at the foretopmast above his head, where Mr. Pyke, the Althea's First Lieutenant, had seen fit to have a reefed topsail set.

"That rag ole Lobsterface 'as 'ung out won't stand much more o' this," muttered the lookout at intervals. Lobsterface was the nickname the Althea's crew used for her First Lieutenant - never, of course, to that violent-tempered officer's face.

Down below decks, in the smelly, candle-lit section of the gun-room where the midshipmen had their quarters, three young gentlemen were discussing navigation. Or rather, the largest and oldest of the three was giving his opinion on the navigation which they had been taught during the ten days they had been at sea. Fitzroy Cocker was eighteen, tall and redhaired, and had a temper that matched his hair.

"It's a lot of mumbo-jumbo, demme!" he declared. "All this rigmarole about angles and sextants — it don't make sense. If an officer's got a shipmaster to lay him alongside a Frenchman, that's all he wants, and it's good enough for me, demme!"

As he spoke he was balancing himself between the wooden bulkhead and the fixed table, for the whole of the cabin was tilted at a steep angle. He also had to speak at the top of his loud voice because of the continuous noise of creaking, grinding, banging and howling made by the ship as she fought her way through the storm.

Midshipman the Hon. Charles Barry, a slim dark boy two years younger than Cocker, looked up from the tattered book he was trying to study by the flickering light of the candle.

"Well, we've got to learn the stuff, Fitz," he said. "Might as well buckle to and get it over."

"Bah!" spat Cocker impatiently. He swung round to scowl at the third midshipman, an undersized youngster who was peering through steel-rimmed spectacles at some pencilled calculations he had been making. "As for you, young lickspittle, I suppose you're pretending to like it — currying favour with the senior officers, eh?"

"Pray, sir," retorted Septimus Quinn mildly, "do you really think I've curried any favour with our dear First Lieutenant?"

Charles Barry laughed. "That's true enough, Fitz. Mr. Pyke's done nothing but curse our spectacled midshipman and try to catch him out ever since Quinn joined."

This was not strictly true, but there was truth in it. The First Lieutenant of the frigate had had a great many more important things to do than look for chances of venting his wrath on a junior midshipman; but Mr. George Pyke had made a point of being thoroughly unpleasant whenever Septimus Quinn crossed his path. Septimus had not breathed a word about the encounter with the highwayman on the journey to Portsmouth, but the seamen had picked up some of the tale in the Portsmouth taverns and it was whispered about the ship that young Mr. Quinn had foiled a desperate toby-man while "old Lobsterface" sat still and shouted for help — which was rather unfair to Mr. Pyke.

Septimus had taken a week to get used to the new life of serving in a King's ship, and then had settled into it with the ease of a philosopher. He had quickly learned that he was now the humblest unit in a floating community of two hundred men, where Duty was the most important thing. According to Captain Sainsbury, the ruler of this tiny wooden-walled community. Duty meant knowing exactly what an order meant and obeying that order quickly and correctly even though it meant death to do so. Septimus could see that this was a vital necessity in a ship of war, but he reflected that part of his own duty would be to give orders — when he had learned his job —and that meant that he would be using his own initiative instead of blindly obeying the orders of Lieutenant Pyke or Lieutenant Gifford. It was the thought of some day being able to command and plan for himself that encouraged young Mr. Quinn to stick at his studies of Navigation and Seamanship, much to the disgust of the fault-finding Lieutenant Pyke.

The Althea Frigate at Moorings, Gibraltar. A Drawing in Midshipman Quinn's private Log.

After one first interview, Septimus had seen little of Captain Sainsbury, a dark and silent man who very seldom smiled. Mr. Pyke was supposed to oversee the instruction of the three midshipmen, and though they were taught navigation by Mr. Haswell, the elderly Third Lieutenant, and seamanship by Preece the gunner's mate, the red face of the First Lieutenant was always thrusting itself unexpectedly into their lessons and barking difficult questions at them. He fired his hardest questions at Septimus, but so far the junior midshipman had not given one wrong answer-which seemed only to increase Mr. Pyke's dislike of him. Pyke was always particularly nice to Charles Barry, though Barry was far from bright at navigation, and he had little to say to Fitzroy Cocker, who was as tall as himself and related to an important Member of Parliament. It was Septimus Quinn's blood he was after. Cocker was accustomed to say that if Lobsterface didn't catch out young lickspittle soon he'd burst.

Septimus naturally saw a great deal of the other two midshipmen, and had sized them up in his own quiet fashion. Charles Barry was handsome, inclined to be lazy, and had far less spirit (so Septimus thought) than his pretty sister Philippa who had shown fight when the highwaymen stopped the coach. Fitzroy Cocker might be as eager to fight the French as he boasted, but Septimus had formed a poor opinion of his brain. The redhaired senior midshipman never thought before he acted and did not conceal his contempt for the small quiet boy who had joined the Althea without knowing a bowsprit from a mainyard. Cocker had been in the frigate for nearly a year and had sailed to Majorca and back, and having in that time learned to swear and gamble, considered himself a very experienced sea-officer indeed. However, Septimus was not the boy to look at the worst side of his companions for long. He could admire Cocker's strength and keenness for a fight, and he liked Barry's lazy good manners, though neither of them had shown much liking for him. Mr. Septimus Quinn was never much concerned as to whether folk liked him or not.

As he was applying himself once again to the problem of a vessel's course from Ushant to the Balearic Isles, an unusually violent gust heeled the frigate still further over for a few seconds. Charles Barry clutched at the table and looked rather apprehensively at his messmates.

"She's — she's lying over a bit, isn't she?" he remarked, trying to sound calm.

Cocker laughed scornfully. "Bah! This is nothing. Wait till you're in a real South Atlantic snorter, my boy. You'll have to sleep on the bulkhead and use the deck to hang your hat on — that's the sort of angle she'll take then!"

"All the same," observed Septimus, looking up over the rims of his spectacles, "this isn't the South Atlantic. If I were Mr. Pyke, who is in charge of the deck just now, I would take in that reefed fore-topsail. That was what—"

"Oh, you would?" sneered Cocker, turning on him. "And who asked you to speak? 'In charge of the deck,' demme! I suppose you mean Pyke has the watch-on-deck. What the Hades do you know about topsails, hey?"

"I was about to say," ventured Septimus mildly, "that Mr. Preece made that observation a short while ago. I was merely repeating—"

"Well, keep your baby mouth shut!" interrupted the senior midshipman curtly. "Preece is a gunner's mate, not a First Lieutenant. There, she's righted herself. First-rate little warship, Althea is, mark my words."

Mr. Quinn blinked owlishly at him through his spectacles. "It is reassuring to know that she compares so favourably with all the other ships you have sailed in," he said innocently.

Cocker, red in the face, started to gobble a reply and then, finding it difficult to make a proper retort, turned to Barry.

"I'm sick of sitting here like a demmed schoolboy," he snapped.

"What's the hour, Charles?"

"Six bells went a few minutes ago — didn't you hear them? We're supposed to go on studying for another half-hour, you know. That's why we're let off deck watch."

"Let off!" Cocker repeated, mimicking Barry's tone. "Why, no officer of spirit would want to be 'let off' a watch-on-deck. I'd ten times rather be standing a trick at the wheel than cooped up down here with you two swots. It's no occupation for a gentleman, demme! So — belay it, Charles." He leaned forward and twitched Barry's book away from him, to send it spinning into a corner. "We'll spend the rest of our watch-below to better advantage, hey?"

Barry looked annoyed at this high-handed action, but only for a moment.

"Oh, all right, then," he responded half-heartedly, holding on to the table as the Althea gave another lurch. "What's it to be, Fitz?"

"What but the gentleman's game, my boy — dice!" Cocker produced a small ebony dice-box from his coat pocket and slapped it on the table, holding it on the tilted and swaying surface with his palm. "A main with you, messmates!"

"The dice will fly all over the cabin," protested Charles. "And besides—"

"Besides, we're supposed to go on studying," Cocker mimicked him again. "Demme, forget your studies in a little sport, man! We'll shake 'em in the box, set the box on the table, and that's the throw. And you, young lickspittle," he added to Septimus, "you're in this too, so set aside that paper and be sociable."

"My name, Mr. Cocker, is Quinn, if you please," said Septimus gently. "And I am not interested in dice."

Charles Barry patted him on the shoulder. "Oh, come on, Quinn," he said with his engaging smile. "Fitz can't help being rude. I can't see to read by this candle, anyhow."

Septimus hesitated. Games of chance struck him as being unscientific and therefore uninteresting, and though he had an ample money allowance to supplement his pay he had no mind to risk it on the throw of a pair of dice. All the same, he didn't want to put on the airs of a self-righteous prig. For months, perhaps years, he would be living at very close quarters with these two, and already his application to his studies had made an enemy of the arrogant Fitzroy Cocker. It was all very well to be self-sufficient at Linton Abbott, where he could escape to the woods and fields of the countryside when he felt inclined for solitude, but here things were very different. There was no room for an independent spirit in a small fighting-ship where every man was dependent on his shipmates and the Captain alone had any privacy. So Septimus decided it was time he showed a comradely spirit.

"Very well," he agreed, slipping paper and pencil into his pocket. "Pray allow me to join you. How are we to play?"

"It had better be made easy for our mathematical genius," sneered Cocker, rattling the dice. "Stake what you like, winner take all. No limits. Money on the table — it won't slide off, quite. Here's mine."

He slammed a golden half-guinea on the table with a glance at Septimus.

"Here, I say, Fitz!" Barry protested. "We're midshipmen, not Nabobs worth fifty thousand apiece!"

"It's my custom to play high on the first throw," explained Cocker loftily. "No need for you youngsters to imitate me. Stake up, now!"

Barry fished in his pockets and put a silver crown-piece on the table. Septimus laid a sixpence carefully in front of him, and looked inquiringly at Cocker. That young gentleman's lip curled, but he refrained from comment.

"We'll throw in alphabetical order," he announced. "You first, then me, then Quinn. Here you are."

He tossed the dice-box to Barry, who put his palm over the open top and shook the dice heartily before setting the box down on the slanting table-top. Cocker leaned across to peer at the little ivory cubes as they came to rest.

"Nine!" he shouted. "A stout try, Charles — but there's room for me."

He shook the box and thumped it down.

"Pipped me by one," Barry said cheerfully, passing the dicebox to Septimus. "You'll need luck to beat ten, Quinn."

Septimus nodded. He was not interested in luck. He gave the box a quick twirl and set it down. Cocker and Barry craned their heads to look into it, and Cocker swore loudly.

"There's the devil's own luck for you!" he growled. "Double six! Well, pay up and stake again."

He and Barry pushed their stakes towards the winner, and Septimus, displaying no satisfaction at winning fifteen shillings and sixpence, was just gathering up the coins when the wrathful red face of the First Lieutenant appeared without warning from the shadows.

The three midshipmen all scrambled to their feet (Cocker, in spite of his boasted sea experience, banging his head on the low deck-beams) and stood as stiffly as the lurching of the ship would allow.

"Hah!" barked Mr. Pyke with satisfaction. "Caught red-handed, I think. Until eight bells of the afternoon watch you were to study. How, may I ask, does it come about that I find you gaming?"

"Because the ship-noises prevented us from hearing you coming, sir," answered Cocker brazenly.

From anyone else such impertinence would have met with the First Lieutenant's heavy-handed retribution. As it was Fitzroy Cocker, Pyke merely snorted.

"Hah! And whose idea was this piece of disobedience?" he demanded.

No one answered this time. Pyke's bulging blue eyes turned to Septimus Quinn, whose fingers were still on the coins.

"There's no need to tell me," he barked accusingly. "Mr. Midshipman Quinn has been winning, I see. I'll wager a guinea he knows how to turn the dice, and I'll wager another one that he started the game. Pipe down, you, sir!" he added fiercely as Charles Barry tried to protest. "I shall ask Mr. Quinn some questions, and we will see if he can answer them. Now, Mr. Quinn!"

"Now, sir," said Septimus politely. Pyke's red face went a shade redder.

"Attend to me!" he rasped. "And answer correctly or it'll be the worse for you. A vessel in latitude 44 degrees and 30 minutes north, longitude 9 degrees 36 minutes west — course south by west — where is she and where's she heading? Quick, now!"

Now it so happened that Septimus had taken the trouble to find out certain facts from Mr. Preece the gunner's mate, and these facts were the very ones mentioned by Pyke. He answered like lightning.

"Position, forty miles nor'west of Cape Ortegal, sir. Heading to round Cape Finisterre on the Galician coast."

"Hah!" The First Lieutenant tried to conceal his disappointment by barking another question. "Then what else d'ye know about this vessel?"

"She is the frigate Althea," replied the midshipman. "Thirty-eight guns, Captain Sainsbury." And now it was that he made the mistake of being too clever. "Carrying a reefed topsail on the fore," he added deliberately, "which, in this gale, is bad seamanship."

Fitzroy Cocker said afterwards that he thought Lieutenant Pyke would have an apoplexy. Certainly that officer's face went a deep purple, and for a second or two he was unable to speak.

"You — you confounded impertinent pup!" he burst out at last. "I'll — by heaven, I'll teach you! Bad seamanship! What do you know about it?" He stopped suddenly and his glaring eyes narrowed. "I'll send you somewhere where you can learn a little more seamanship, Mr. Septimus Quinn. To the mainmast-head!"