Under False Colours by Richard Woodman Read Free Book Online Page A

though lodging the facts precisely in his astute mind. 'I will tell his lordship what you say.'
    'Obliged sir. Now I must be off.'

    Drinkwater was back in Davey's chandlery by noon. He still wore the borrowed hessian boots and the soiled waistcoat, but clean breeches, shirt and neckcloth combined with a dark blue coat with plain gilt buttons to proclaim him a shipmaster. Davey produced his valise from the room above and shook his head when asked if Fagan had been enquiring after Captain Waters.
    'I saw him leave this morning,' Davey said, nodding in the direction of the pie shop opposite, 'but I ain't seen him since.'
    'It don't surprise me,' said Drinkwater turning his attention lo another matter. 'There is something personal I would be obliged to you for attending to, something entirely unconnected with this affair. There is a woman next door in Mrs Hockley's establishment who hawks herself under the name of Zenobia ...'
    Davey frowned with concern. 'I know her; the black-haired trull.'
    'Just so, but 'tis a wig ...'
    'Did ye make that discovery before or after you ...?'
    'A fool could see it at pistol shot, Mr Davey!'
    'You've saved yourself...'
    'Job's Dock, I know it, but do you persuade her to get herself to a physician. She wants none of your paregoric elixir. Take her boy on as an apprentice and here is twenty pounds to see to the matter. You would oblige me greatly, Mr Davey.'
    'You be careful of a soft heart in your line o' work, Cap'n. She will lose her living ...'
    'She will lose her life else. Just oblige me, sir,' he said curtly.
    Davey took the money reluctantly and Drinkwater had turned for the door when a scruffy boy burst into the shop with a jangle of the bell, thrust a piece of paper on the counter and ran out again, being gathered up by a gang of ne'er-do-wells who promptly ran off. Davey caught the paper from fluttering to the floor, cast an eye over it and handed it to Drinkwater.

    Mr Gorman regrets he is unable to raise the necessary funds for the transaction with Capn. Waters, but begs the Capn. leave his deposit with Mr Davey.

    'I thought as much,' Drinkwater said, adding Fagan's guineas to the money laid out for Zenobia. 'There Mr Davey, you are become a banker and a philanthropist in a single forenoon.'

    Drinkwater had no difficulty hailing a waterman's boat at Wapping Stairs and having himself pulled off to the barque Galliwasp , whose name Solomon had given him. He noted as the waterman's skiff rounded her stern that she was pierced for eighteen guns. He wondered how many she actually mounted. More gratifying, given the frustrating week of delay he had suffered, was the fact that her topsails and courses hung ready in their buntlines, lifting and billowing in the westerly breeze. A young ebb bubbled around her creaking rudder stock and, as he looked upward before seizing the manropes and ascending her rounded side, he sighted a welcoming party that gave every appearance of wishing to be away.
    'Captain Littlewood at your service, sir ...' The master was a small, rubicund man with a mop of white hair tied under his cocked hat in an unruly queue. He had, despite a regal paunch, a restless energy that soon became apparent the moment the formalities of welcome were over. 'I had word from Solomon and Dyer that you would want to leave the moment the ebb was away; my boy will see you below,' and he turned, speaking trumpet to his mouth, bellowing to let the topsails fall and to sheet home. Drinkwater was hardly below before, through the stern windows, he saw the distant prospect of London bridge receding as they slipped downstream. Mr Solomon had arranged things to a most efficient nicety.
    'Built for the West India trade, sir,' Littlewood explained when Drinkwater joined him on the deck. 'Gives her the look of a sloop o' war. Hellum down a point ... 'midships ... meet her ... steady ... steer so ... Mind you she don't mount so many guns ... Lee braces there, look lively now! Only a dozen carronades