What the Ship Remembers - 20. Chapter 20

Current and Countercurrent

Chart Class – Quarterdeck

The awning stretched over the quarterdeck cast a thin, gauzy shade, but the heat still pressed like a smith's grip. Trying to concentrate past the reek of softening tar and the strident cries of gulls, Midshipman Blake sat cross-legged on the deck, his face calm but pale, the edges of his collar just on the looser side of regulation to spare the healing stripes across his back. Lieutenant Morris stood at a small table improvised from a cask and a chartboard, pointing with a dividers’ leg to a faint coastal outline on a well-used sheet of parchment.

“And this,” he was saying, tapping the bay’s mouth, “is why even a well-sheltered anchorage can become a trap, if the wind shifts and you haven’t calculated your leeway.” His tone was easy, didactic but not unkind. The midshipmen sweated and squinted and nodded along, taking notes, some more diligently than others.

A faint breeze passed under the awning, stirring papers and shirts alike. Blake let his eyes close for just a heartbeat, grateful for the breath of air and the small mercy of quiet instruction.

Then boots rang out on the deck.

Lieutenant Vane emerged from the companionway with the measured poise of a man stepping into a duel. His coat was immaculate, gloved hands behind his back, and his mouth already curling with purpose.

“Mr Morris,” he interrupted with feigned politeness. “Your class may continue, after inspection.”

Morris turned, mouth thinning. “Sir, we’ve only just begun... ”

“Then you’ve no excuse for their appearance.” Vane stepped forward before Morris could argue, voice like a whip. “Midshipmen! On your feet. Form your line!. Now!”

They scrambled up. O’Brien gave Blake a fleeting glance, uncertain, protective. Blake moved as if nothing hurt, though a single bead of sweat traced a slow line down his spine.

Vane paced before them, eyes roving like a wolf through a sheepfold.

“Mr Gordon. Your buttons are mismatched. Sloppy. And your boots look like they’ve been scrubbed with mud.”

Gordon stiffened. “Sir, I... ”

“Spare me. A blind man could spot the dust.”

He moved on.

“Mr O’Brien. Posture of a landsman and the wit to match, I see. Did you tie that neckcloth in the dark?”

A few of the boys tensed, but Vane’s smirk only deepened.

He paused before Blake.

Their eyes met, briefly. Blake stood straight, expression masked. His coat was regulation, his boots polished. There was not a single thing out of place.

“Well,” Vane drawled. “Mr Blake. Perhaps you’ve finally grasped the basics of presentation. Or perhaps it’s fear that straightened you out.”

The insult hung in the air, poised like a hook without bait. Blake did not move.

“Say nothing?” Vane mused. “Ah... learning restraint, too. Progress indeed.”

He stepped past, but not without a final parting shot: “A little blood and suddenly you’re a model officer. One wonders how long it’ll last.”

Jamie’s face didn’t flicker. But his hands, loose at his sides, curled faintly into fists.

Pitt, watching from the quarterdeck rail, muttered a wordless curse and took one step forward before checking himself. Morris, beside him, muttered under his breath, “Bastard.”

Then, louder, with studied calm: “He does it because he can’t unseat him.”

Pitt didn’t take his eyes off Jamie. “He's probing for a weakness in the boy’s pride. He’s not going to find one.”

Morris nodded. “He’s grown. You can see it. Used to jump at his own shadow. Now he just... absorbs it. And goes on.”

“Too much,” Pitt said quietly.

Morris turned to glance at him. “You still think you failed him.”

“I know I did,” Pitt replied.

They watched as the midshipmen returned to their places under Morris’s direction. Blake moved like a man older than his years, every gesture exact. Not mechanical, just careful. He moved like one handling something breakable.

Morris was quiet for a moment.

“He’s no longer a green boy, that’s certain. He’s shaping into something fine. If he doesn’t learn to wear stone like a second skin.”

Pitt’s jaw tightened. “That’s the part I’m afraid of.”

---

The moment Vane’s back turned, a silent current of mischief swept through the line. O’Brien raised two fingers in an exaggerated salute, then twisted it into a rude gesture behind his back. Gordon, not to be outdone, mimed an absurdly proper bow, eyes wide with mock deference. Jamie caught both their antics out of the corner of his eye and let out a soft huff of amusement, his expression cool and composed as ever, until he lifted one brow and, with supreme solemn dignity, extended his middle finger just low enough for them to see and no one else.

O’Brien choked on a laugh and elbowed Gordon, who grinned back. The line shifted with barely-contained energy.

As Morris resumed the lesson, the pressure broke like a drawn breath released. The midshipmen relaxed, just slightly, just enough. Blake had barely lowered himself cross-legged onto the deck when Gordon leaned in and tousled his hair with a swipe of his hand.

"Careful," Jamie said, batting him away. "I’ll see you lashed to the mainmast for insubordination."

"Not if we string you up first," O’Brien quipped, snatching at Jamie’s cravat and tugging it loose before Jamie swatted his hand as well.

Ragged laughter rippled through the cluster. Even the quieter boys joined in, nudging Blake with their knees or jostling his elbow as if reassuring themselves he was still the same lad beneath the straight back and bruised dignity. Jamie bore it all with mock scowls and theatrical threats, but his grin betrayed him, broad and crooked, the kind that started in the eyes and spilled out without permission.

“Your doom shall be swift and exemplary,” he warned, straightening his cravat with deliberate flair. “You’ll beg for Vane’s inspection before I’m through.”

“We already do,” muttered someone at the back.

Jamie laughed, and this time it was unguarded. The sound of it caught even Morris’s ear, though the lieutenant didn’t turn. He only allowed the ghost of a smile to flicker at the corner of his mouth as he pointed again to the chartboard and resumed his calm, steady teaching. The shadows shifted beneath the awning, the heat eased a fraction, and for the space of a few minutes, the boys were simply that... boys again, untwisted by fear, their friendship a thing that held fast even in the wake of cruelty.

Evening Watch – At the Rail

The sun bled into the sea in slow streaks of gold and rose, softening the harsh lines of HMS Absolute into something gentler. The cries of gulls had faded with the light, and the watch changed with muffled calls, voices respectful in the hush that often came after a sweltering day.

Lieutenant William Pitt stood at the starboard rail, his coat unbuttoned, arms folded, chin lifted slightly as he caught the cooling breeze coming over the water. He looked outward, though his thoughts were turned deeply inward.

He’d come up here for the breeze, he told himself, but his eyes had flicked to the hatch every minute since the sun had dropped low.

The heat below still clung like a fever, thick and airless. Up here, though, the sea breathed again. Pitt exhaled slowly. He didn’t turn when the footsteps approached, light, measured, but he felt them.

Jamie Blake stepped up beside him and placed his hands on the rail, careful not to brush Pitt’s. For a moment, they stood in silence, their shoulders not quite touching, but near enough that Pitt could feel the warmth radiating from the younger man.

“You were right,” Jamie began softly, watching the pink-tinged waves. “About the current bending eastward this time of year. We felt it today on the longboat when we ran sounding practice.”

Pitt turned to him at last, eyes searching. “You remembered?”

Jamie gave a small smile. “You’re not so easily forgotten.”

They let the wind speak for a moment, rustling the rigging above like soft rain.

Pitt gestured out to where the light caught a patch of water turning sharply. “See that ripple? A moment ago it was flat. Now it’s sheared... two directions at once. That’s the air shifting. The heat of the day fades, and cooler air flows in, but the sea resists the change.”

Jamie followed the gesture. “How can you tell which way the wind is truly going?”

Pitt smiled faintly. “The water hesitates before it agrees. It wants to believe what it knew before. You watch for the place where it begins to accept the new direction, to trust the new wind."

Jamie was quiet, then challenged: “And what if it doesn't want to submit? Wants to return to its true self again."

Pitt looked at him sharply. Jamie’s profile was illuminated in the dying light, young still, but tempered with something new. Resilience, yes. But also a wound not yet closed.

“You’ve come through worse than most men your age,” Pitt said, voice low. “But I’ve no right to ask you to come through me as well.”

“You never asked,” Jamie objected. His voice was steady, but softer than before. “You pushed. Then vanished. Or worse, watched from a distance like I might shatter if you touched me.” He looked up at the luffing sails as the Absolute came about in the wind.

Pitt bowed his head. “I didn’t trust myself. I thought if I kept away, you’d steady. Grow.”

“I did.” Jamie turned to face him now, fully. “But not because you turned away. I grew because I had no choice. Because you wouldn’t meet my eyes when I needed you to. Because I had to find my balance alone.”

Pitt closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.” In the distance, a clanging bell marked the watch.

Jamie didn’t move. “I don’t want regret. I want honesty.”

A long silence passed. The sea swelled gently, lapping at the hull like the whisper of breath.

Pitt spoke at last. “I was afraid of how much I wanted to protect you. And what that meant. I told myself it was discipline. That you needed space. Because I was afraid. Of wanting too much. Losing too much.”

“And now?” Jamie asked.

Pitt turned his head, their eyes meeting full-on for the first time in days.

“Now I’m more afraid of what silence does than what speaking might.”

Jamie breathed in. The breeze lifted a lock of his hair that had escaped its binding in the heat, brushing across his cheek. He didn’t break eye contact.

“Then let’s speak. Even if the quarterdeck wind carries it away.”

For the first time in what felt like weeks, Pitt let the tension in his shoulders ease. The ship, the sea, the sky, all of it seemed to pause with them.

“I’ve missed you,” he said simply.

Jamie didn’t smile. But his voice was sure. “I’m still here.”

A breath passed between them. The sea murmured below.

The current had turned.

letter from Lieutenant Morris to his brother serving with the Royal Bengal Fusiliers in India

---HMS Absolute
Off Antigua
20 December 1809

My dear Andrew,

Your last reached me by way of Portsmouth and brought much-needed cheer to a sun-bleached and wind-blown life. That you are still upright, and that the Bengal sun has not melted your sense of humour nor entirely withered your pen, is relief enough. You ask what I’ve seen, and what I think of men. I will answer as best I can, though the latter may run longer than the former.

The sea is a crucible, Andrew. As, I suspect, is the red dust of the plains you now haunt. Something in military service, not merely the proximity to death, but the constant subordination of self, acts upon a man like fire to metal. It does not create character, but rather strips it to its core. The better natures here seem to grow sharper, more constant. The worse grow harder, crueler.

We have aboard this vessel a young midshipman who reminds me daily that goodness is not weakness. I’ve watched him bear more than most men ought, and still return kindness for indifference, steadiness for scorn. He is not soft. Indeed, he is all the harder because he does not become brittle. His manner is light, but his temper is forged. I wonder if he knows how rare that balance is.

By contrast, we serve with a certain lieutenant who is relentless in ambition but utterly hollow in moral centre. I do not name him for the sake of discretion, but I have seen how power, untempered by self-knowledge, becomes not command but corrosion. He flatters where it serves, wounds where he pleases, and regards virtue as a kind of naïve luxury. I find him a cautionary tale more than a companion.

And yet, I am not without sympathy even for him. I sometimes wonder if we all begin in more or less the same state, and it is the long grind of duty, fear, and the ever-present need to seem unshaken that drives a wedge into a man’s soul. That which is most deeply buried, shame, weakness, longing, becomes a kind of poison when it cannot be acknowledged. And here, where there is no privacy, no reprieve, and no honest softness allowed, the poison festers. In some, it turns to cruelty. In others, silence.

I often think: there is not so much a line between good and evil as there is a tide. It moves subtly. A man must know where he stands at all times, lest he find himself drifting. And the sea is full of drifters, Thomas. You would recognise them, I’m sure, in your own company, those officers who joke too quickly, or grow angry without cause, or look too long into their cups. They are not weak, but they are lost.

I do not mean to sound so bleak. There are friendships here, true ones. Jests and laughter. A certain satisfaction in work well done, in sails trimmed just so, and in a ship that answers the helm like thought to hand. And there is courage too, more than you’d believe. But none of these come free. They are bought daily, against exhaustion, injustice, and the long, slow ache of becoming someone you had not intended to be.

Write to me, if you have the time. Tell me what India has taught you. I often wonder what kind of men we shall be when all this is over, if it ends.

Your devoted brother,
Samuel

---

Camp near Cawnpore
19 January 1810

My dear Samuel,

Your letter reached me by way of Madras, folded in a stained outer marked “Off Antigua,” and I confess I opened it with something like reverence, letters from home carry the scent of a former self, and yours, in particular, read like the voice of the man I knew best before the world began carving us into soldiers.

Your reflections struck deep. I too have watched men harden or falter in ways they never imagined for themselves. You wrote of character as fire acting upon metal, and yes, I see that. But I wonder whether here, in this blasted country, the heat does more than reveal a man’s substance. It reshapes him.

The sun here is not your sea-breeze kind, but a brute force, steady and impersonal. It beats down on skin, on nerves, on judgement. Tempers fray not in anger but in dull erosion. The officers who arrived with bright chatter and boots polished to a mirror soon find themselves disheveled, bleary-eyed, watching the horizon for dust clouds that might mean insurgents or nothing at all. In such places, I find that good men grow tired before evil ones do. Cruelty, after all, is energizing to those who wield it.

You write of a midshipman who has retained his decency, even under trial. I am glad to hear it. Such men are rare, and rarer still are the men who recognize their worth. Guard him, if you can. Not from others, perhaps, but from despair, the slow belief that what he is will not hold in a world like yours.

As for your lieutenant: we too are burdened with the type. One of my captains, a man of breeding and medals, once ordered a village razed because a single musket was fired from it. He dines well, sleeps soundly, and lectures younger officers on the virtue of decisive action. I tried to hate him. But I think now he is what happens when the soul’s brakes give out.

You say the tide of good and evil moves subtly, and I agree, but I’d go further. I think the current often runs through the same man at different hours. I have seen a surgeon save a child’s life in the morning, and whip a sepoy half to death before sunset. Sometimes I think we are not meant to judge each other as fixed points at all, but as vessels in a storm, tilting, correcting, drifting again.

What holds me to centre, on the worst days, is not honour or doctrine but memory: of our mother’s voice in winter, of your laugh after some absurd schoolroom quarrel, of what it felt like to believe the world might be shaped by kindness rather than force. You, Sam, are part of that ballast for me. I hope I am the same for you.

I miss England, but I miss you more.

Hold fast. And write when you can.

Your brother,
Andrew