Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

of Munro's influence with some members of the Board your friend had an early opportunity to shew his talents, travelling from Portsmouth to London in the company of his mentor and going before the Board the following day. I do not remember the precise result of the examination and yet it was sufficient for him to obtain a Warrant and I hazard he was one of the youngest ever to have obtained such a post, though let it be said that in the Navy a man - or boy - whose star is bright may rise more quickly than in almost any other profession you may think of, some having been made Captains before they are twenty, Admirals before they are thirty.

Now, Sir, I must come to that event which will I think be of most interest to you. It is an event that shall remain at an instant's recall to my dying day. Indeed it figures largely still in the collective memory of the nation. Yet there is one matter, a curious business, I should like to relate beforehand and which I should have mentioned earlier except that other relations forced it fiom my mind. It concerns James Dyer's putative servant -Gunner — and occurred some two months after they came aboard at Portsmouth. The body of a woman was discovered in the bread-room, sewn into a hammock, a large woman, somewhat gone and very necessary to be buried before she rendered the bread unfit for consumption. An investigation revealed her to be Gunner's 'wife' — it was not so uncommon for men secretly

to carry their women to sea — though her own name at such a distance I cannot remember. I was called upon to read the burial service, and the body, with a 32 lb shot at her feet, was consigned to the deep by Gunner himself and two other men while we were some degrees south of the Azores. Gunner was very struck by it, calling the deceased his 'Lamb', which was remarkable when you consider we could but barely pass the woman's corpse through the gun-port and that her form, wrapped in the canvas, plunged beneath the suface of the sea like a White Shark I saw by Botany Bay. There is truly no accounting for the way in which men place their affections. I dare say not every man finds Mrs Fisher quite the form of female perfection I do.

You will not need reminding. Sir, of those events in the spring of 1756 when the French, under the Marquis de la Galissoniere and the Due de Richelieu, landed at Minorca and drove our garrison back into Fort St Phillip, blockading the island and laying siege to the fort. Aquilon was one of the ships dispatched with Sir John Byng to the Mediterranean, arriving off Minorca on the nineteenth day of May. We were subsequently ordered forward to attempt a communication with the fort, but were frustrated by the appearance of the main French fleet to the south-east of us. Though I had been at sea some years and had been present at numerous chases and small engagements, I had never seen so many enemy ships together and the sight of them set up a clamour in my heart such as I have never experienced either before or since. Our own fleet of thirteen doughty Men of War formed up on a line to intercept the enemy, but the wind dropped off and darkness came before we could engage, and we were forced to spend a sleepless night full of the most tense anticipation. Some of the people asked me to write letters to their loved ones, fare-ye-wells, which I did, sat in the waist, writing by starlight from the sailors' dictation, and several of these fond missives it was my melancholy duty to

send home from Gibraltar after the battle. About four of the clock I went down to my quarters to eat a little salt pork from my private store and was distressed to see Mr Munro slumped against the door of his dispensary with a bottle of liquor in his lap. I attempted to rouse him, failed, and called James Dyer to help me shift the surgeon to his cot. Your friend was in his hammock and not at all pleased to be roused — I do honestly believe he was the only man on the ship to be sleeping then - and told me very plainly to go to the D —. In the end I moved the surgeon with the help of Mr Hodges the purser, and then went back on deck, for I could not abide to be below at such a time.

The morning found us wrapped in mist and I could but very faintly discern the masts o/"Intrepid ahead of us, but the sun ate up the mist, and the French fleet were spied twelve miles to the south and east of us. The signal gun sounded, and our ships, which had become somewhat scattered during the night, came back into the line and we tacked towards the enemy in two divisions, one led by Admiral Byng and the other, which included Aquilon, under the command of Rear Admiral West.

I was ordered below more than once but could not for an hour tear myself away from the spectacle of the enemy, now very clear to us, almost abreast on a port tack, their cannon run out, and small figures quite visible upon the decks.

At length I was prevailed upon by Mr Drake, and travelled down through the decks where the gun-crews crouched by their pieces. I recall Lt Whitney bowling into me and knocking me quite off my feet and then using the most shocking language before he realised who I was, after which he begged my pardon and had me escorted by a vast Chinee sailor down on to the orlop deck.

You may imagine my dismay when Mr Hodges informed me that the surgeon was still in his