“All ships,” read Truscott. “Captains repair on board the flagship.”
“Gig’s crew away!” roared Bush.
It must be important, or at least unusual, news for the admiral to wish to communicate it to the captains immediately and in person. Bush walked the quarterdeck with Buckland while they waited. The French fleet might be out; the Northern Alliance might be growing restive again. The King’s illness might have returned. It might be anything; they could be only certain that it was not nothing. The minutes passed and lengthened into half‑hours; it could hardly be bad news — if it were, Lambert would not be wasting precious time like this, with the whole squadron going off slowly to leeward. Then at last the wind brought to their ears, over the blue water, the high‑pitched sound of the pipes of the bosun’s mates in the flagship. Bush clapped his glass to his eye.
“First one’s coming off,” he said.
Gig after gig left the flagship’s side, and now they could see the Renown’s gig with her captain in the sternsheets. Buckland went to meet him as he came up the side. Cogshill touched his hat; he was looking a little dazed.
“It’s peace,” he said.
The wind brought them the sound of cheering from the flagship — the announcement must have been made to the ship’s company on board, and it was the sound of that cheering that gave any reality at all to the news the captain brought.
“Peace, sir?” asked Buckland.
“Yes, peace. Preliminaries are signed. The ambassadors meet in France next month to settle the terms, but it’s peace. All hostilities are at an end — they are to cease in every part of the world on arrival of this news.”
“Peace!” said Bush.
For nine years the world had been convulsed with war; ships had burned and men had bled from Manila to Panama, west about and east about. It was hard to believe that he was living now in a world where men did not fire cannons at each other on sight. Cogshill’s next remark had a bearing on this last thought.
“National ships of the French, Batavian, and Italian Republics will be saluted with the honours due to foreign ships of war,” he said.
Buckland whistled at that, as well he might. It meant that England had recognised the existence of the red republics against which she had fought for so long. Yesterday it had been almost treason to speak the word ‘republic’. Now a captain could use it casually in an official statement.
“And what happens to us, sir?” asked Buckland.
“That’s what we must wait to hear,” said Cogshill. “But the navy is to be reduced to peacetime establishment. That means that nine ships out of ten will be paid off.”
“Holy Moses!” said Bush.
Now the next ship ahead was cheering, the sound coming shrilly through the air.
“Call the hands,” said Cogshill. “They must be told.”
The ship’s company of the Renown rejoiced to hear the news. They cheered as wildly as did the crews of the other ships. For them it meant the approaching end of savage discipline and incredible hardship. Freedom, liberty, a return to their homes. Bush looked down at the sea of ecstatic faces and wondered what the news implied for him. Freedom and liberty, possibly; but they meant life on a lieutenant’s half pay. That was something he had never experienced; in his earliest youth he had entered the navy as a midshipman — the peacetime navy which he could hardly remember — and during the nine years of the war he had only known two short intervals of leave. He was not too sure that he cared for the novel prospects that the future held out to him.
He glanced up at the flagship and turned to bellow at the signal midshipman.
“Mr Truscott! Don’t you see that signal? Attend to your duties, or it will be the worse for you, peace or no peace.”
The wretched Truscott put his glass to his eye.
“All ships,” he read. “Form line on the larboard tack.”
Bush glanced at the captain for permission to proceed.
“Hands to the braces, there!” yelled Bush. “Fill that main tops’l. Smarter than that, you lubbers! Full and by, quartermaster. Mr Cope, haven’t you eyes in your head? Take another pull at that weather‑brace! God bless my soul! Easy there! Belay!”