The Bomb Vessel by Richard Woodman

claimed the debt . . . well, in short, my luck held.
    â€˜Then I met Pascale, she was of the minor nobility, but penniless. She became my mistress.’ He paused to drink and Drinkwater watching him thought what a different life from his own. There were common threads, perceptible if you knew how to identify them. Their boyhood had been dominated by their mother’s impecunious gentility, widowed after their drunken father had been flung from a horse. Nathaniel was careful of money, neither unwilling to loot a few gold coins from an American prize when a half-starved midshipman, nor to lean a little on the well-heeled Mr Jex. But where he had inherited his mother’s shrewdness Edward had been bequeathed his father’s improvidence as he now went on to relate.
    â€˜Things went well for a while. I continued to gamble and, with modest lodgings and Pascale to keep me company, managed to cut a dash. Then my luck changed. For no apparent reason. I began to lose. It was uncanny. I lost confidence, friends, everything.
    â€˜Nathaniel, I have twenty pounds between me and penury.Pascale threatens to leave me since she has received an offer to better herself . . .’ He fell silent.
    â€˜As another man’s mistress?’
    Edward’s silence was eloquent.
    â€˜I see.’ Drinkwater felt a low anger building up in him. It was not enough that he should have spent a great deal of money in fitting out His Britannic bloody Majesty’s bomb tender
Virago
. It was not enough that the exigencies of the service demanded his constant presence on board until sailing, but that this good-for-nothing killbuck of a brother must turn up to prey on his better nature.
    â€˜How much do you want?’
    â€˜Five hundred would . . .’
    â€˜Five hundred! God’s bones, Edward, where in the name of Almighty God d’you think I can lay my hands on five hundred pounds?’
    â€˜I heard you did well from prize money . . .’
    â€˜Prize money? God, Ned, but you’ve a damned nerve. D’you know how many scars I’ve got for that damned prize money, how many sleepless nights, hours of worry . . .? No, of course you don’t. You’ve been cutting a dash, gaming and whoring like the rest of this country’s so called gentry while your sea-officers and seamen are rotting in their wooden coffins. God damn it, Ned, but I’ve a wife and family to be looked to first.’ His temper began to ebb. Without looking up Edward muttered:
    â€˜I heard too, that you received a bequest.’
    â€˜Where the hell d’you learn that?’ A low fury came into his voice.
    â€˜Oh, I learned it in Petersfield.’ That would not be difficult. There were enough gossips in any town to know the business of others. It was true that he had received a sizeable bequest from the estate of his former captain, Madoc Griffiths. ‘They say it was three thousand pounds.’
    â€˜They may say what the hell they like. It is no longer mine. Most is in trust for my children, the remainder made over to my wife.’ He paused again and Edward looked up, disappointed yet irritatingly unrepentant.
    It suddenly occurred to Drinkwater that the expenses incurred in the fitting out of a ship, even a minor one like
Virago
, were inconceivable to Edward. He began to repent of his unbrotherly temper; to hold himself mean, still reproved in his conscience forthe trick he had played on Jex, no matter how many barrels of sauerkraut it had bought.
    â€˜Listen, Ned, I am more than two hundred pounds out of pocket in fitting out my ship. That is why we receive prize money, that and for the wounds we endure in an uncaring country’s service. You talk of fencing lessons but you’ve never known what it is to cut a man down before he kills you. You regard my uniform as some talisman opening the salons of the
ton
to me when I am nothing but a dog of a sailor,