The sea rocks the captain awake, as it rocked him to sleep a few hours before, and will again tomorrow, and the next day and all the mornings stretching out into the weary months of blockade ahead.

For the first few moments he watches the spangles of grey pre-dawn light filtered through the sailcloth that separates his cot from his hutch like cabin.  Then he turns to the tell-tale compass on the deck beams above his head, and automatically makes calculations from the heading, the cant of deck, the shuddering of the tiny sloop.  Heading north-nor-west., tacking against a north easterly, of perhaps 13 knots.  A rough wakening.  In the Atlantic, somewhere south of Brest.

It is bitterly, searchingly cold.  His breath smokes on the pillow.  The sheets, washed only in salt water for the last five months, can never be fully dried; they suck up the damp air of the cabin. 

He has not slept ashore in 315 days, and may not again as long as the war and this blockade last.  He misses the companionable, yeasty warmth of the crowded gunroom, where in childhood he slung his hammock.

In a surrender to sleepy weakness he wishes he could curl back against another sleeping body, be held against the heat of another's chest, feel sweet-sleeping breath on his neck.  As he did, for scant moments only, last night, tangled on the deck.

He curls a little deeper into his cot, the only man among a hundred on this scrapy world of oak who can indulge a desire for a few minutes sleep beyond his ration.  He smells coffee, faintly.  Idiotically, as there is not a single bean aboard, has not been for several weeks, and will not be for months to come, now that he has to bear the expense of a wife, and a 4 week old son he has yet to meet.  His pay will not stretch so far, and so he drinks the same dark hot concoction of burnt biscuit as the hands, made sweeter with molasses.  Longing for coffe produces the memory of the scent, and it is almost satisfying.

His prick is piss-proud.  Discomfort and a full bladder will soon drive him from the humid nest, but might be postponed a little longer, by wrapping his hand around the shaft, secure and familiar as his 27 years. 

Catching trout. 

Who once called it catching trout? 

Perhaps Adam Larkin, lying face down next to him on the river bank, showing him the fish lurking in the cool shadowed waters and weeds  Adam tickling trout, his dark furred arms stretched out gentle into the green and gold, stroking - gently, gently - under the belly of the drowsing fish... 

His own hand starts to move, gently, gently ...  Ten years at sea, and his hands have never callused, still smooth and too soft, still blistering when he hauls in, or takes his turn at the pumps in hard weather.

Hard weather, which even now shakes Hotspur, wind freshening, rain splattering the deck a few feet above his head.  A sudden squall in  the dawn light.  He is instantly propelled from his cot, and on deck, feet thrust naked into his sea boots, oil skins over night-shirt.

Bush is at the wheel, muffled in greatcoat and comforter, the wind tugging his pigtail this way and that, his broad hands steady to the sloop as she jibs and veers in sudden contrary winds. 

The Captain considers the arrangement of sail, the fine balance of forces and planes acting within them, loath to make any adjustment to his first officer's orders, but aching with sympathy for every inch of sheet and canvas.  With his hand on the backstay he can feel Hotspur's pulse, thrumming beneath his fingers.  The horizon is lost.  They are tossed in a small universe of grey water, above and below, salt spray and rain thrown into their faces in equal measure.

Bush is too experienced, too instinctual a sailor not to have smelt the squall in the darkness, and prepared her for the blow.  Even now, as the captain hesitates to intervene, the larboard watch is swarming aloft, to shorten sail at Bush's single roar of command.

As suddenly as the squall took them it is gone, scudding away across the Bay of Biscay, to play havoc with the rest of the Channel Fleet.  Hotspur is left plunging and yawing on the choppy Atlantic swell.

Now they must start a long beat windward, back to their station at the mouth of the Goulet, to make the dawn observation of Napoleon's fleet at anchor in Brest, as they have every morning for ten months.  Difficult enough in good weather, but in these high seas negotiating the Black Stones and the treacherous Petite Fillettes, takes every ounce of attention and skill that the ship and her crew can muster.

Just long enough to dress and take breakfast, even if that breakfast must be cold, as the galley fires were put out before the squall was upon them. His steward, Doughty, is in the pantry, coaxing a little spirit lamp into life, so there will be at least warm water for his tea, and then to shave.

But, as it happens, not tea.  Not even burnt biscuit.  Salop.  He slides into the tiny space behind the table that serves for desk and dining in one and stares remotely into the disgusting murk in his mug.

The last sack of mail to come aboard, a week before, contained  many packages for the crew, and only one for him.  His letters from home are folded still under his ink well, from Maria, from her mother, long on description of the new-born child...

..I'm a father...  I have a son...

... but short of the little purchases that make life on blockade bearable.  His entire quarter pay, drawn on the 26th last, has been laid out in the necessary expenses of confinement and lying in.  Gin the many mysterious pieces of linen and wool that a baby seems to need.  Except, as an afterthought , from his mother-in-law, a tin of salop.  If he could just learn to like salop.  It's white and slippery.  Infant food.  But warm.  He hates himself for the thought, but he might be tempted, like the poor boy in the story, to trade his unknown child for ten coffee beans.  What kind of monster does that make him?

... I do love thee as the lambs, are beloved of their dams...

Last night he lay curled and warm and sated in the space beneath this table, so warm that for a few stolen moments he had feigned sleep, to linger under the weight pressing him the deck.  Weak moments, when he could enjoy the breath of another on his neck, allow gentle callused fingers to brush his hair, could imagine, for the space of a few breaths, that he was loved.  All too soon that weight and warmth was lifted from him, the same hands pulled a blanket over him, and, wordless, left.

He glances down and sees the faint outline of that weakness, still creased into the oilcloth at his feet..  A single stain, a silver snail track marks the deck. He scuffs it with his foot, dashes the mug to the deck, obliterating the marks with the vile salop, and calls sharply for Doughty to clean it. 

As he dresses in the brushed and sponged clothes laid over his cot, he can hear Doughty, through the canvas, swabbing the oilcloth clean.  He knows the action was mean and full of spite, and yet has no way to make amends.  Even now he is haunted by the wretched scent of coffee, the most awful jest his mind could play. To be so childishly distracted by the want of groceries, when the slightest miscalculation, the merest shift in wind or tide could fetch them all against the rocks within the hour.

Perhaps he can drop a hint to the wardroom, and trade for a little cocoa.  At least  cocoa, is drinkable, hot, brown and drinkable - they would be unable to refuse a request, however diffident, made by  the Captain.   A taxation on men only slightly richer than himself, exposing his own poverty to ridicule, or, worse, pity.

It is only as he reaches for the still streaming oilskins that he sees the little package wedged between the pillow and mattress.

Wrapped in lime-washed sailcloth against the damp, tied with a single reef knot.

He handles it with the same caution he would an unspent shell, carrying it to the table, and the skylight for closer scrutiny.  Somehow, even as his knife slices through the canvas, cord and paper he knows what he will find.

A pound of green coffee beans. They are spilling out, over his hands, over his fingers, over the table. He is laughing, Doughty is grinning, catching them and sweeping them back into the brown paper bag, with the label of a Plymouth chandler still pasted to it.

A thin scattering of snow coats Hotspur's deck and shrouds.  The hands work muffled against the cold, in coats, tarpaulins, blankets.
The Captain is in the crosstrees, for the morning observation of the Goulet and Brest port.  He counts six masts, yards un-crossed, the French fleet at rest, in retreat after the action which drove four ships onto the rocks a month before.  That wreckage still litters the Black Stones. 

The arms of the rebuilt semaphore whirl, the dark smudges of the shore batteries glower down at them, just out of range.  Some mornings the gunners try a shot, but today they must be too cold to care, crouched in their bunkers with wine and bread.

Now Hotspur must weather Ushant, and make the long beat back, to peep again at the enemy, so near and so far way, again and again, day after day, week after week, perhaps for years to come. Already, as the Captain climbs back to the deck Bush is calling to shorten sail, preparing to tack. His hands are still on the wheel, reddened by the wind.

William Bush, who hates coffee.
Whose broad dark hands steer Hotspur, safe and true.
Whose one strong arm could hold him suspended between sky and earth.
Whose fingers are hot and searching on his skin.
Who can tie a reef knot as easily in two inch cable as in the cord around a small canvas wrapped package of coffee.
 Who silently makes a gift of himself in the darkness.    

Hotspur pauses for a long moment as she comes about, as if debating whether to hang in stays and wreck them all, then leaps forward on her new tack.

To the east a dull glory breaks through the low cloud, slanting rays of watery sunlight, picking out the headland, transforming dark rock to gold and green.  The smell of damp earth drifts across the sea. 

At the same instant Hornblower sees his steward make his way forward, crab-wise across the steeply canted deck, triumphant, a battered tin coffee pot nested within his coat, against his chest, two mugs in his hands.

And happiness, unexpected, unlooked for, sends a tap-root out towards his heart.

isiscolo