The Launching of Roger Brook by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online Page A

this cheerful guzzling continued for the best part of three hours, then the port was put on the table and the ladies withdrew.
    Behind a tall, brocaded screen in one corner of the room was a commode with two chamber pots, in order that the gentlemen might be spared the inconvenience of interrupting their conversation by leaving the room. Most of them now made use of these and, as they settled down again, the Captain told Roger to take his mother’s place at the foot of the table; the decanters were passed round and the jovial talk went on.
    ‘You have told us little yet, Sir, of the state in which you left the Indies,’ remarked Mr. Gibbon to his host, ‘and no small part of our prosperity hangs upon the Sugar Islands.’
    Things are well enough there now, Sir,’ promptly replied his host. The enemy caused some destruction in the towns where our people put up a resistance to him; but in such islands as fell to his assault he burnt few of the plantations, thinking to profit from them himself in years to come.’
    Captain Burrard laughed. ‘After the French recapture of St. Eustatius, and with only Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua left to us, he had some reason to count his chickens. Things there were in a parlous state until my Lord Rodney’s victory off the Saints restored the situation.’
    ‘Were you present at the fight, Chris?’ asked Mr. Sutherland.
    ‘Aye, Jack,’ nodded Captain Brook, ‘and a bloody business it was; the enemy’s ships being crammed to bursting with soldiers for his projected invasion of Jamaica. As you may have heard tell, my Lord Rodney made naval history by deliberately disrupting his own line of battle to break clean through the enemy centre. This new manœuvre enabled us to get to windward of the French and encircle five of their biggest ships, including the
Ville de Paris
, in which Admiral de Grasse was flying his flag. After a monstrous gruelling he hauled down the flag of France with hisown hands and surrendered himself to Hood on the
Barfleur
. Rodney then called off the fight, and although we took four prizes, in Hood’s view had we kept at them we might have taken many more. So, although a fine victory, ‘twas not so conclusive as Quiberon Bay, where I served as gunnery Lieutenant of the middle deck in
Augusta
. I count Lord Hawke’s action there in ‘fifty-nine as our greatest naval victory since the Armada; it gave us undisputed command of the seas for a decade.’
    Those were the days!’ muttered old Sir Harry reminiscently. ‘’Twas in the same year that General Wolfe’s victory at Quebec secured Canada to us, and but two years earlier that Lord Clive had bested the French at Plassey. By ‘sixty-one both the Mogul Empire and the Americas were ours, and we had naught to fear from any man.’
    ‘The cause of our late disaster, Sir, is not far to seek,’ put in Mr. Gibbon. ‘Had not the King’s rebellious subjects in what they are now pleased to term the United States forced a war upon us and engaged our forces overseas, the French and their allies would not have dared once more to challenge our supremacy for another decade at least.’
    ‘Oh, come, Sir,’ cried Mr. Robbins. ‘The American war was a thing apart, and the Colonists had right on their side in their contention that they should not be subject to taxation without representation in our Parliament.’
    ‘That contention, Sir, was both illegal and impractical,’ boomed back Mr. Gibbon. ‘The time and distance separating the two continents would have made representation in our legislature of little value. Moreover, it is ancient practice that the distant Provinces of an Empire should in part bear the financial burden of their own defences. We had but recently preserved the New Englanders from falling under the tyranny of the French who, at that time, were dominant in Canada and a constant menace to them, so I count their refusal to accept that just liability as base ingratitude; an opinion which is shared