Company Of Spears

Peto saw nothing but his ship, his eyes fixed on her from the moment of stepping into his barge. In part it was because he would take the one opportunity to study her as an enemy might see her, before he had her under weigh, for with a freshening westerly and such a sky it would not be long before she could make sail. Those indeed were his orders, to proceed without delay to join Vice-Admiral Codrington’s squadron in the Ionian, there to compel the Ottoman Porte to give up its repression of the valiant Greeks. He might have taken command sooner, but the incapacity of the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, had for some weeks thrown doubt on the enterprise. A year before, the Duke of Wellington, under Mr Canning’s instructions, had signed a protocol in St Petersburg by which Russia, France and Great Britain would mediate in what to all intents and purposes had become war between the Greeks and the Ottoman Turks. The prospect of a new government had brought the future of the protocol into question; until in the middle of April the King had sent for Mr Canning and asked him to assemble a new administration. This had cheered the more active of the occupants of both the Admiralty and the Horse Guards, for although Mr Canning’s manners were to the liking of few of them, his vigorous policies called for strong naval and land forces, welcome counterweight to the mood of retrenchment which had settled on Whitehall since Waterloo. The only problem seemed to be that hardly a man of repute would agree to serve under him: no fewer than seven members of the Cabinet had resigned, including the duke himself, as well as Mr Peel and Lord Bathurst. However, through the accommodation of the Whigs, Canning had been able to form his government, and instructions followed for the protocol to be ratified by formal treaty – on which news the Admiralty restored its plans for the reinforcement of Sir Edward Codrington’s squadron.

And so Captain Sir Laughton Peto R.N., in undress uniform – closed double-breasted coat with fall-down collar, and double epaulettes denoting his post seniority – with his India sword hanging short on his left side in black-leather scabbard, and furnished with his letter of appointment, was now within a cable’s length of another great milestone of his life. He had wondered long when it would come, or if; at their dinner at the United Service Club he had told Hervey he was certain it would not. ‘There will be no more commissions,’ he had predicted. ‘I shan’t get another ship. They’re being laid up as we speak in every creek between Yarmouth and the Isle of Wight. I shan’t even make the “yellow squadron”. Certainly not now that Clarence is Lord High Admiral.’ For yes, he had been commodore of a flotilla that had overpowered Rangoon (he could not – nor ever would – claim it a great victory, but it had served), and he had subsequently helped the wretched armies of Bengal and Madras struggle up the Irrawaddy, eventually to subdue Ava and its bestial king; but it had seemed to bring him not a very great deal of reward. The prize money had been next to nothing (the Burmans had no ships to speak of, and the land-booty had not amounted to much by the time it came to the navy), and K.C.B. did not change his place on the seniority list. The Admiralty not so many months before had told him they doubted they could give him any further active command, and would he not consider having the hospital at Greenwich?

But having been, in words that his old friend Hervey might have used, ‘in the ditch’, he was up again and seeing the road cocked atop a good horse. The milestones would now come in altogether quicker succession.

What a sight was Rupert! Even with all her sail furled she was the picture of admiralty: yellow-sided – ‘Nelson-style’ – gunports open (he much approved of that, letting fresh air circulate below deck), the crew assembling for his coming aboard (he could hear the bosun’s mates quite plainly). What could make a man more content than such a thing? He breathed to himself the noble words: gentlemen in England, now abed, will think themselves accurs’d they were not here.

There was one thing, of course, that could make a man so content: the love, the companionship at least, of a good woman (the love of the other sort of woman was all too easy to be had, and the contentment very transitory). And now he had that too! For in his pocket was Elizabeth Hervey’s letter.

Why had he not asked for her hand years ago? That was his only regret. He felt a sudden – and most unusual – impulse: he wished Elizabeth Hervey were with him now. Yes, this very place, this very moment, to see his ship as he did, to appreciate her beauty and her possibilities – their possibilities! Oh, happy thought! Happy, happy thought!