Gentleman Captain by J. D. Davies Page A

one side and the other. It was one of many topics of conversation that was now greeted at London dinner tables with the disgust once accorded to someone who had broken wind. But Nathan Warrender was plainly a man who cared not one jot for such niceties. Years later, I read that Noll Cromwell once claimed his ideal officer was 'a plain, russet-coated captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows'. Nathan Warrender was the model of that plain man, and he spoke with plain honesty. Of course, Judge was horrified in case his lieutenant's criticism of Prince Rupert made its way back to Whitehall through me. Little did he comprehend that I was the last man living who would betray any man to that duplicitous prince–even had Warrender not paid my father one of the noblest compliments I ever heard.
    Much later, as I leaned on the ship's rail to stop myself falling into
Royal Martyrs
boat, Judge said softly in my ear, 'Good night, then, my dear Captain Quinton. God speed back to your
Jupiter.'
Then, even more quietly, for Warrender was on the quarterdeck, 'I do hope my lieutenant's, ah,
indiscretion
did not spoil the evening for you?'
    I replied as soberly as I could. 'Very far from it, Captain Judge. In fact, I valued Captain Warrender's honesty, and the honour that he paid to my father's memory. I would not wish to hear that he suffered for it in any way.'
    Godsgift Judge looked at me curiously, as though some mental struggle was taking place behind the ghastly white face-paint. Finally, he bowed. 'You have my word on it, sir. As one king's captain to another.'

Chapter Six

    I woke late the next morning, not even the noisy swabbing of the decks or the ship's bell tolling for the change of watch stirring me from the insensibility brought on by Judge's liberality with his excellent wine. I reached out sleepily for Cornelia's welcoming flesh, thinking myself back in our comfortable great bed at Ravensden, but when my hand caressed instead rough wooden planks, I sat up with a start. The smell struck me at once, that unmistakeable stench of a ship of war below decks: old wood, new wood where the old could no longer serve, the oakum that stopped water pouring between the wood, the white-stuff that stopped the sea worms getting at the oakum, the gun smoke ingested from many broadsides, tobacco smoke, bilge water in all its infinite variations of stink, and most potent of all, the odour of over one hundred and thirty men, even allowing for all the dire royal injunctions against relieving oneself between the decks. A frigate of the Fifth Rate is no leviathan but a mere eighty feet long and twenty-five broad, and packing so many men within such a little frame means but little privacy or quiet for any, even her captain. I could hear snatches of talk from the decks above and below, and as I lay in the warmth and comfort of my sea-bed, I listened with amusement to the aimless gossip of the men around me.
    'And your wife was on her back for old Harker, too, like half the women of Cornwall and Portsmouth town...'
    'Why no, that were your sister and your mother, so as I heard...'
    Then I caught some whispered words that pierced right through me and made me sweat. 'Aye, the
Happy Restoration.
All hands, so they say. Gentleman captains, boys. Knows nothing of the sea, and proud of it they are, too. God curse them for their arrogance, and they'll whip the skin off your back if you so much as spit—'
    'They say he shat himself with fear right there on the
Restorations
deck, aye, right before he gave the order that sent her the wrong way and drove her onto the rocks, just because he didn't know his starboard from his larboard—'
    'Harker murdered? Never, I say. The creeping pox, he had–seen that, once, down in Alicante. Big among the Spanish it is, the creeping pox. Some old Portsmouth whore will have given it to him, mark my words–'
    'Matthew Quinton, eh? Well, boys, we'll soon see if he's a hundredth part of the