Although he had been waiting for it, the knock at his cabin door made him start. An unnaturally expectant silence had fallen upon the ship following the noisy tumult of reaction to the pipes and calls for 'all hands'. Beyond the cabin windows the spring ebbtide and the westerly gale churned the yeasty water of the Great Nore and tore its surface into long streaks of dirty spume. Patrician snubbed her cable in the tideway, her fabric creaking and groaning to the interplay of the elements.
Somehow these noises, the working of the rudder stock in its trunking below him, the rattle of the window sashes, the whine of the wind seeking gaps in the closed gun-ports and the thrum of it aloft acting upon the great sounding box of the stilled hull, exploited the strange silence of her company and permeated the very air he breathed with a sinister foreboding.
Beyond the vibrating windows the shapes of the ships in company faded and reappeared in his field of view as squalls swept dismal curtains of rain across the anchorage. At least the weather prevented a close mustering of the squadron's boats about Patrician; she could do her dirty work in a measure of privacy.
The knock, simultaneously nervous and stridently impatient, came again.
Captain Drinkwater stood and picked up the paper at which he had been staring. He felt the hilt of his sword tap his hip as he reached with his other hand for the cockaded hat. His chair scraped on the decking with a jarring squeal.
'Come in!'
Midshipman Frey appeared in the opened doorway. He too was in full dress, the white collar patches bright on the dark blue cloth of a new uniform to fit his suddenly grown frame. Above the collar his face was pale with apprehension.
'First lieutenant's compliments, sir, and the ship's company's mustered to witness… punishment.' Frey choked on the last word, registering its inadequacy.
Drinkwater sighed. He could delay the matter no longer.
'Very well, Mr Frey. Thank you.'
The boy bobbed out and Drinkwater followed, ducking under the deck beams. Out on the gun deck he raised two fingers to the forecock of his firmly seated hat as the marine sentry saluted, and emerged a few seconds later onto the quarterdeck. The wind tore at him from a lowering sky that seemed scarcely a fathom above the mastheads. In his right hand the piece of paper suddenly fluttered, drawing attention to itself.
'Ship's company mustered to witness punishment, sir.' Lieutenant Fraser, his Scots burr muted by the solemnity of the occasion, made his formal report as first lieutenant. Looking round the deck Drinkwater sensed the awe with which this moment was touched. It was one thing to kill a man in the equal heat of battle, but quite another to cut short his life with this cold and ruthless act that ended the judicial process. Like Fraser, Drinkwater sought refuge in the euphemistic naval formulae under which personal feelings could be hidden, and hated himself for his cowardice.
He met Fraser's eyes. 'Very well.'
He walked forward to stand beside the binnacle and looked steadily around the ship. She was much larger than his last command, but the same faces stared back at him, an old company that was growing tired of war, augmented by a draft from the Nore guardship to bring his crew up to complement. Well, almost…
They spilled across the upper deck, perched up on the larboard hammock nettings and across the launch and longboat hoisted on the booms to accommodate them. Only the starboard gangway was uncluttered, occupied by a detail of a dozen men, the ship's most persistent petty offenders against cleanliness and propriety. They stood with downcast eyes in contemplation of their melancholy duty, for the rope they held ran up to the starboard fore-yardarm and back on deck to terminate in a noose.
Beyond the people massed amidships, Drinkwater could see the anxious face of Midshipman Wickham supervising the men closed up round the heavy carronade on the fo'c's'le. He stared alertly aft, awaiting the signal. Behind Drinkwater, dominating the men in the waist with their muskets and fixed bayonets, the scarlet ranks of the Patrician's forty marines stood rigid, bright against the monotone of the morning. In front of them, still wearing the bandages of his recent wound and with his hanger drawn, Lieutenant Mount stood at his post. His gorget was the only glint of brilliance on the quarterdeck. Alongside Mount, tense with expectancy, his drum a-cock and twin sticks held down the seams of his breeches, was the diminutive figure of the marine drummer.
Close about the captain in a ragged semi-circle were the commissioned and warrant officers, wearing their swords and the full-dress uniform prescribed for their ranks. Above them all the white ensign snapped out, jerking the slender larch staff as the gale moaned through the recently tautened rigging.
'Bring up the prisoner!'
A ripple of expectancy ran through the assembly amidships. Led by the new and lugubrious figure of the chaplain and escorted by Sergeant Blixoe of the marines, the wretched man was brought on deck. As he emerged, Midshipman Frey hoisted the yellow flag to the masthead, Drinkwater nodded, and Wickham fired the fo'c's'le carronade. The short, shocking bark of the 42-pounder thudded out. A brief, acrid stench of powdersmoke whipped aft and Drinkwater saw the prisoner blench at the gun's report. Despite the liberal dose of rum he had been given, the poor fellow was shaking, though his tied hands drew back his shoulders and conferred upon him a spurious dignity.
Clearing his throat, Drinkwater raised the crackling paper and began to read.
'To Nathaniel Drinkwater, Esquire, Captain in the Royal Navy, commanding His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician at the Great Nore…
Whereas, Thomas Stanham, Able Seaman, late of His Majesty's Ship Antigone, hath been examined by a Court-Martial on charges of desertion…'
Stanham had drawn himself up, perhaps, in his extremity, feeling some cold comfort from the tacit sympathies of his old messmates around him. Drinkwater knew enough of the man's history not to feel grave misgivings as to the natural justice of the present proceedings together with a profound sense of regret that Stanham had been tried and sentenced with no one to plead for him. His crime was that of having deserted Drinkwater's last command, HMS Antigone, just prior to her departure to the Baltic in the spring. A topman of no more than twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, Stanham had been driven to this desperate course of action by lack of shore-leave and a well-meant letter from a neighbour living near his home in Norwich. According to this informant, Stanham's wife had been 'carrying-on' in her husband's prolonged absence. In company with another Norfolk man Stanham had deserted, slipping ashore from a bum-boat when a marine sentry was distracted. Had he shortly thereafter returned to his duty, Drinkwater would have taken a lenient view of the matter and treated Stanham as a mere 'straggler'. Such things were best dealt with within the ship and the cat-o'-nine tails was a swift justiciar and powerful deterrent. But the enforced and hurried transfer of his entire company from the shattered Antigone to the Patrician had necessitated the submission of all her books to the Admiralty and the Navy Office.
Drinkwater was sick at heart at the circumstances that had conspired to set Stanham before his shipmates in these last few moments of his life. Antigone had returned from the Baltic with the most momentous secret of the entire war. In order to preserve the source of this news, no one connected with the ship was allowed leave, a proscription that included Drinkwater himself. But the Antigone had suffered mortal damage to her hull when the Dutch cruiser Zaandam had exploded alongside her. As a result she had been condemned and her remaining company transferred to the razee Patrician, just then commissioning as a heavy frigate at Sheerness. The tedious and often protracted business of closing a ship's books had been specially expedited on the express instructions of John Barrow, the all-powerful Second Secretary of the Admiralty. Behind this obfuscation, Drinkwater knew, loomed the figures of George Canning, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary for War. Even Lord Dungarth, the Director of the Admiralty's Secret Department, had apparently condoned Barrow's severity and expedition. It only added to Drinkwater's present mortification to consider his own personal interest in this cloak of secrecy.* (* See Baltic Mission.)
But there were other agencies at work conniving against the unfortunate Stanham. Even as the Admiralty clerks examined Antigone's books and discovered the rubric R against the name of Thomas Stanham, a letter arrived at Whitehall appraising Their Lordships that acting upon information laid before them, the Norwich magistrates had apprehended Thomas Stanham, a deserter from His Majesty's Service. There was not the slightest doubt to contest the information, affidavits had been sworn accordingly by reliable persons and, to compound the matter, the said Stanham had caused an affray in resisting arrest in which he had maliciously caused one of the constables to be gravely wounded. The magistrates desired to know Their Lordships' pleasure.
Drinkwater knew the scuttlebutt well enough: Stanham had been betrayed by the man who had made him a cuckold. He read on, pitching his voice against the gale.
'Whereas it has been enacted under the several laws relating to the sea-service…'
Quite apart from the necessity to get the former Antigones to sea, the Admiralty were increasingly worried about desertions from the ships of the Royal Navy. The long war with the French Empire was dragging on. Russia was no longer an ally, the Prussian military machine perfected by Frederick the Great had been smashed in a single day by Napoleon at Jena and Davout at Auerstadt, while Austrian defiance seemed likely to be the next object of Napoleon's indefatigable attention. It suited Their Lordships to visit the utmost extremity of the Articles of War upon the wronged Stanham, and no plea in mitigation had been allowed.
'… Every person in or belonging to the Fleet, who shall desert, or entice others to desert, shall suffer Death…'
Drinkwater paused to look up again. That phrase 'in or belonging to the Fleet' bound Stanham like an iron shackle. It ran contrary to the common, canting notions of liberty so cherished by rubicund Englishmen up and down the shires. His eyes met those of the prisoner. Stanham stopped shaking at that terrible final word and his gaze held something else, something unnerving. Drinkwater hurried on.
'And the court hath adjudged the said Thomas Stanham to suffer death by being hanged by the neck at the yardarm. You are hereby required and directed to see the said sentence of death carried into execution upon the body of the said Thomas Stanham.'
There followed the languid flourish of the presiding admiral's signature. Drinkwater lowered the paper and crushed it in his fist.
'Do you wish to say anything, Stanham?'
Again their eyes met, the gulf between them immense. Stanham nodded and coughed to clear his throat.
'Good luck to me shipmates, sir, and God save the King!'
The sudden upward modulation of Stanham's homely Norfolk voice struck Drinkwater as having been the accent of the late, lamented Lord Nelson. He nodded at Stanham as a low rumbling came from the hands.
'Silence there!' Fraser's voice cut nervously through the wind.
'Master-at-Arms! Do your duty!'
Behind Drinkwater there was a snicker of accoutrements at a low order from Mount. The marines' muskets came to the port, forty thumbs resting upon forty firelock hammers. The drummer hitched his snare-drum, brought his sticks up to the chin and then down, to beat the long roll as the master-at-arms led Stanham to the starboard gangway. With a lugubrious expression that Drinkwater found revolting the chaplain brought up the rear. The shamefaced hanging party moved aside to let the grim procession pass.
A short ladder had been set against the rail and the hammock nettings removed just abaft the forechains. Stanham was halted at the foot of the ladder and the chaplain moved closer. While the master-at-arms drew the noose down over Stanham's head and settled the knot beneath his left ear, Drinkwater watched the chaplain bend forward, his lips moving above the open prayer-book, a thin strand of hair streaming out from his almost bald head. Even at a distance Drinkwater felt the inappropriateness of another stilted formula being deployed. He saw Stanham shake his head vigorously. The chaplain stepped back and nodded, an expression of exasperation on his gaunt face. Drinkwater found his revulsion increase at this untimely meanness.
A dark cotton bag was pulled down over the prisoner's head. Stanham's face was extinguished like a candle and a gasp ran through the ship. There was a muffled thump as a small midshipman fainted. No one moved to his assistance; it was Mr Belchambers's third day in the Royal Navy.
Stanham was guided up onto the rail. Beyond the lonely figure Drinkwater could see the rigging of the neighbouring ships dark with their men, piped to witness the example of Their Lordships' remorseless justice being carried out on board Patrician.
Drinkwater nodded his head and Wickham saw the signal. The report of the carronade rolled across the water, the brief white puff of smoke alerting the other ships of the solemnity of the moment. Again the sharp stench of powder-smoke stung their nostrils and Drinkwater caught a glimpse of the flaming wadding as it disintegrated in the wind. Beside him the marine drummer stopped his ruffle.
'Prisoner made ready, sir.'
With the gale blowing aft the master-at-arms's voice carried with unnatural loudness. He had done his duty; it extended thus far. To launch Stanham into eternity waited for Drinkwater's own command.
'Mr Comley!' Drinkwater's voice rasped with a sudden, unbidden harshness.
'Sir?' The boatswain stood with his rattan beside the hanging party.
Drinkwater could no longer take refuge in formulae, his honest nature revolted against it. To instruct Comley's party to 'carry out the sentence' would have smacked of cowardice to his puritan soul. The awful implications of power were for his shoulders alone, it was to him that the death warrant had been addressed. In this was some small atonement for his own part in this grisly necessity.
'Hang the prisoner!'
The hanging party moved as though spurred by the vehemence in Drinkwater's voice There was no time for thought, no cause for apprehension to the watching Mount, ready to coerce the party with his muskets.
Comley's men leaned to Stanham's sudden weight as his body rose jerking to the starboard fore-yardarm.
Amidships another man fainted as all watched in terrible fascination.
Stanham kicked with his legs, tightening the noose with every desperate movement in his muscles, arching his back as he fought vainly for air. He was a strong man with a powerful neck that resisted the snapping of the spinal cord and the separation of the vertebrae that would bring a quick, merciful end.
Drinkwater found himself willing the man to stop, to submit to the Admiralty's omnipotent will and die quietly as an example to others, but Stanham was not going to oblige. The dark tangle of his blood-choked brain was roaring with the anger of betrayal, of treachery and injustice. The dark shape of his body set against the rolling scud seemed possessed of a protest from beyond the grave. Drinkwater cursed the Norwich informer, cursed John Barrow and his lack of compassion and cursed himself for bringing back such a secret from Russia that men still died for it.
Gradually asphyxia subdued the spasms. Stanham had given up the ghost. It seemed that a collective sigh, audible above the wind and the responding hiss of the sea, came from the Patrician's assembled company.
'Eight bells, sir.'
'Make it so and pipe the hands to dinner.'
The yellow flag fluttered down from the masthead as the four double rings of the bell tolled the hour of noon. Pipes twittered amidships and the men began to move below. Faintly similar noises could be heard from other ships. The rumble of voices grew as the men glanced upwards in passing forward.
'Another good man bin stabbed by the Bridport dagger, 'en…'
'No good'll come of it… 'tis bad luck…'
The mutter was drowned by the crash of the marines' boots as Mount dismissed his guard and reposted his sentries. Frey was bending over the swooning midshipman. Mr Belchambers was not yet thirteen years of age and his name was sonorously inappropriate for so small and insubstantial a figure. It was odd, Drinkwater thought, that men like Stanham had to be hanged while there seemed no lack of foolish boys to come and play at being men.
'We shall get under weigh the instant the wind eases, Mr Fraser,' Drinkwater growled as he turned below. 'I received my orders by the same despatch-boat as brought this…'
He held up the crumpled piece of paper.
'Very well, sir… and him, sir?' Fraser's eyes jerked aloft.
'Leave him for an hour… but no more, Mr Fraser, no more, I pray you.'
Above their heads Stanham's body turned slowly in the wind. Dark stains spread across his clothing and it was subject to the most humiliating ignominy of all; his cuckolded member was engorged with his stilled blood.
Drinkwater lay soaked in sweat, aware that it was neither the jerking of his cot, nor the violent motion of Patrician that had woken him, but something fading beyond his recall, the substance of his nightmare. Wiping his forehead and at the same time shivering in the pre-dawn chill, he lay back and tugged the shed blankets back over his aching body. The quinsy that had presaged his fever was worse this morning, but the terrors of the nightmare far exceeded the disturbances of illness. He stared into the darkness, trying to remember what had so upset him, driven by some instinct to revive the images of the nightmare.
And then with the unpredictability of imagination, they flooded back. It was an old dream, a haunting from bad times when, as a frightened midshipman, he had learned the real meaning of fear and loneliness. The figure of the white lady had loomed over him as he sunk helplessly beneath her, her power to overwhelm him sharpened by the crescendo of clanking chains that always accompanied her manifestation. As he recollected the dream he strove to hear the reassuring grind of Patrician's own pumps; but he could hear nothing beyond the thrum of wind in the rigging transmitted down to the timbers of her labouring hull. The big frigate creaked and groaned in response to the mighty forces acting upon her as she fought her way to windward of Cape Horn.
Then Drinkwater recognised the face. The white lady had had many forms in her various visitations. Though he thought of her as female, she possessed the trans-sexual ability of phantoms to appear in any guise. This morning she had worn a most horrible mask: that of the hanged man, Stanham. Drinkwater recognised it at once, for after the dead man had been cut down he and Lallo, the surgeon, had inspected the cadaver. It had been no mere idly morbid curiosity that had spurred him to do so, that day at the Nore ten weeks earlier. He had felt himself driven to see what he had done, as if to do so might avert some haunting of the ship by the man's spirit.
Drinkwater had seen again in his nightmare the savage furrow the noose had cut in Stanham's neck. The face above was darkly cyanotic with wild, protuberant eyes. In the flesh Stanham's body had been pale below the furrowed neck, gradually darkening with blotchy suggillations where the blood had settled into its dependent parts. This morning, beneath the horrors of the face, Stanham's ghost had worn the white veils which marked his apparition as a disguise of the white lady.
Full recollection brought Drinkwater out of himself. Unpleasant though the memory was, he was no stranger to death, or the 'blue-devils', that misanthropic preoccupation of naval officers forced to the lonely exile of distant commands. With an oath he swung his legs over the edge of the swaying cot and deftly hoisted himself to his feet as Patrician hesitated on a wave crest, before driving down into a huge trough. He half ran, half skidded across the cabin, fetching up against the forward bulkhead as the ship smashed her bluffbows into the advancing wall of the next sea and reared her bowsprit skywards. Drinkwater swore again, barking his shins on the leg of an overturned chair, and bellowed through the thin bulkhead at the marine sentry.
'Pass word for my coxswain!'
As he rubbed his bruised knee and swallowed with difficulty he finally remembered the true disturbance of the nightmare. It was not its recurrence, nor the ghastly transmogrification of poor Stanham, but the fact that the dream was always presentient.
He fought his way aft, across the dark cabin, and slumped in a chair until Tregembo arrived with a light and hot water and he could shave, passing the moments in reaction to the knowledge that came with this realisation. God knew that a great deal could go wrong in this forsaken corner of the world where there seemed no possible justification for sending him, even given the anxieties of the most pusillanimous jack-in-office. In the extremity of his sickness and depression he felt acutely the apparent abandonment of the only man in power with whom he felt he had both earned and enjoyed an intimacy. Lord Dungarth, once first lieutenant of Midshipman Drinkwater's original ship, had treated him with uncharacteristic coolness since he had brought the momentous news of the secret accord between Tsar Alexander and Napoleon out of Russia. It was not the only service Drinkwater had rendered his Lordship's Secret Department and Dungarth's inexplicable change of attitude had greatly pained him, combined as it was with the proscription against shore-leave and the enforced estrangement from his wife and family.
But these were self-pitying considerations. As the Patrician fought her way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, he had gloomier thoughts pressing him. Presentiments of disaster were to be expected and, as he shuddered from his ague, he felt inadequate to the task the Admiralty had set him, not for its complexity, but for its apparent simplicity. It seemed, in essence, to be a mere exercise upon which almost any interpretation might be put by persons anxious to discredit him. So hazy were his orders, so vague in their intent, that he was at a loss as to how to pursue them.
To carry His Majesty's flag upon the Pacific coast of North America on a Particular Service, was all very high faluting; to make war upon Spanish Trade upon the said coast, was all very encouraging if one took as one's example the exploits of Anson fifty years earlier. But this was the modern world, and he was not allowed a free hand, being ordered to concentrate his efforts upon the North American coast, far from the rich Spanish trade routed to the Vice-royalties of Peru and the entrepot of Panama. Besides, to any British commander, the Pacific was haunted by the ghosts of a murdered Cook and the piratically seized Bounty.
As for what he took to be the core of his orders, the instruction to discourage Russian incursions into that sea and upon the coasts of New Albion, they seemed to Drinkwater to be the most nonsensical of them all, harking back to the dubious claims of Francis Drake and serving to remind him that his Russian connections had landed him in this desperate plight, thousands of miles from home or support. Mulling such thoughts as he fought his quinsy and waited for Tregembo, shaking with the mild fever of an infection, he was in a foul and savage mood. His coxwain's unannounced appearance stung him to an uncharacteristic rebuke. 'Knock before you enter, damn you!'
Sourly he watched Tregembo fuss over the hot water and the glim, whose light was transferred to a lantern and the lashed candelabra, illuminating the cabin with a cheerlessness that revealed the tumbled state of its contents.
'You'll catch your death, zur, sitting like that…' 'Don't fuss, Tregembo,' replied Drinkwater, mellowing and seeing in the seams and scars of the old man's highlit face the harrowing of age and service. He opened his mouth to apologise but Tregembo forestalled him.
'The fever's no better, zur, if I'm a judge o' temper.' Drinkwater stood with the sweat dry on him and drew his nightshirt over his head. He grunted and took the soap from Tregembo's outstretched hand.
'I'll get Mr Lallo to make up some James's Powders, zur…' 'You'll do no such damned thing, Tregembo…' 'Dover's Powders then, zur, they be a powerful sudorific…' 'Damn James and Dover… fresh air will cure me, fresh air and hot coffee, be off and find me some hot coffee instead of standing over me like a poxed nursemaid…'
'There be fresh air a-plenty this morning, zur,' muttered Tregembo as he left the cabin and the remark brought the ghost of a smile to Drinkwater's haggard face, even as it reminded him of his greatest problem, his crew.
Over four years earlier, in the spring of 1803 and the brief period of peace, he had taken command of the sloop Melusine. She had been manned by picked volunteers, men who chose to stay at sea in the Royal Navy, rather than chance their luck in the uncertain world ashore. Many of them had been aboard ship for long before that. The resumption of war had carried them to the Arctic aboard Melusine, and to the Atlantic and Baltic in the frigate Antigone, into which ship they had been turned over when Drinkwater reached post-rank. Now the process of transfer had been repeated and that core of volunteers still lingered at the heart of Patrician's company. But men volunteer for perceived goals and these resented being taken advantage of even more than the pressed men. The latter were made up of the victims of the Impress Service, the Quota-men and the Lord Mayor's men, the dregs of debtors' prisons and the hedge-sleeping vagrants that armed parties of officers and seamen had discovered in sweeps made along the ague-plagued coast of Essex, whence Drinkwater had sent his boats. In successive waves these men had made up the deficiencies in number that death and an increase in tonnage had made necessary to man the enlarged complements of Drinkwater's successive ships. What to those eager volunteers had been thought of as a single commission, an Arctic voyage with a bounty at its conclusion, had not yet ended.
The people were divided, the one-time volunteers forming a slowly contracting minority, apt to regard itself as an elite, and suffering from the poor conditions of a Royal Navy on a wartime footing. Earlier that year in the Baltic their mood had become ugly. Lieutenant Quilhampton had suppressed an incipient mutiny by the force of his personality alone, but the news of it had made all the officers wary, heightening the tensions in the ship and drawing again those sharp social distinctions that blurred easily in a happy ship. Inconsequential things assumed new importance. The rivalry between seamen and marines coalesced into something less friendly, more suspicious; and the twinkle of the marines' bayonets lost its ceremonial glitter, fencing the vulnerable minority of the officers from the murmurs of the berth-deck.
For his own part Drinkwater had, that summer, been driven to supplementing the men's pay by a bounty of his own, a circumstance which had imperilled his domestic finances, leaving his wife and dependants at a disadvantage and a prey to the fiscal inroads of inflation and income tax.
Drinkwater scraped his face, nicking his cheek as Patrician staggered into another heavy sea. He swore, rinsed his razor and bent unsteadily to his task. The face that stared back at him was drawn with anxiety. The receding hair exposed his high forehead and the streaks of grey at his temples were prominent, even in the half-light of the candle-lit cabin. He still wore a queue, an unfashionable defiance behind, for what nature deprived him of in front. But though his eyes were tired and their lids dotted with powder burns like random ink-spots, though the scar that puckered down one side of his face joined the distortion of his features necessary to the task of shaving, and though he was gaunt from the effects of ague and quinsy, there was about the line of the mouth a determination that marked him for one of the most experienced frigate commanders in the Royal Navy.
Ungraced by much political interest, only his long-standing friendship with Lord Dungarth could be said to have aided his career; but even that had not been without effort on his own part. Dungarth had ensured that all Drinkwater's skills had been fully exploited by his Secret Department, that great coup from beneath the raft at Tilsit, when the two Emperors' conversation had been overheard verbatim, had repaid any debt of advancement his lordship might conceive to be owing.
Drinkwater wiped his chin and called for Tregembo, indicating he had finished with bowl and razor. He tied his stock and drew on soft leather hessian boots. Winding a muffler around his neck he put on his undress uniform coat and a heavy boat-cloak. Tregembo fussed about the cabin, moving quietly in respect of the captain's ominous silence. Picking up his hat Drinkwater jammed it on his head and went on deck.
In the high southern latitude dawn was early. The eastern horizon was suffused with a light still too weak to penetrate the cloud rolling to leeward from the west. On the starboard bow an inky darkness blurred the meeting of sea and sky, and the perceptible horizon was reduced to the crest of the great waves that loomed out of the gloom and roared down upon them, driven by the interminable winds of the Southern Ocean.
As Patrician dipped her reefed jib-boom, one such wall of water rose on her bow, its vast face gaining in brightness as it approached the vertical and reflected the growing light from the east. Patrician rolled away from it, her topsails, hard reefed though they were, suddenly flapping from want of wind and a hush falling eerily upon her decks. Her hull seemed suddenly inert as the advancing sea sped towards them, its slope streaked with spindrift, debris of a million million successive disintegrations of its toppling crest.
'Hold on there!'
Drinkwater grabbed the nearest hammock stanchion and braced himself as Lieutenant Quilhampton called the warning to his watch. It seemed as if they all held their breath.
And then the frigate began to lift her bow as the trough that preceded the wave passed beneath her and she felt the breasting rise of that mountainous wave. From a sluggish tremor the angle rapidly increased and then she canted and the bow reared skywards. Aft, the waterlevel rose almost to the rail, so that the sea squirted in round the gun-ports and from below came the crash and curse of men and loose gear tumbling about. Drinkwater prayed that the double-lashed breechings of the guns had not worked slack during the night and the dual crash that ended this strange hiatus momentarily persuaded him that he was mistaken. But instinct made him look upwards to where the wind had reached the topsails. The maintopsail was already in shreds, pulling at its bolt ropes like wool caught on a fence, and the foretopsail was bending its yard like a bow. An explosion of white reared up all along the starboard rail as they reached the breaking crest and it flung all its fury at the ship. She rolled to leeward and lay down under the violent onslaught of the wind. The air, a moment earlier almost motionless before the advancing mass of water, was now suddenly filled with the terrible noise of the gale, solid with the particles of water it had ripped from the surface of the ocean and drove downwind with the velocity of buckshot.
But the leeward roll saved Patrician's deck from the worst of the breaking sea, though there was not a man upon it who was not instantly soaked to the skin. The ship toppled as the wave passed beyond her tipping-centre and she plunged downwards, into the welter of lesser waves that scarred the back of the great sea.
'Foretopmast's sprung above the lower cap, Mr Q… up helm! Get the ship before the wind and we'll take that tops'l off her!'
'Aye, aye, sir!' Quilhampton dashed the water from his face with his one good hand, and swung round, staggering as Patrician lurched; but the huge sea had been the culmination of many, an ocean-bred monster in whose trail, for a while at least, midgets would follow. 'Up helm, there!'
The ship's bow paid off to the southward and then to the east of south. Drinkwater anxiously stared aloft, trying to gauge the extent of the damage in the growing daylight and irritated at losing distance to windward. He had brought the frigate well south of Cape Horn, in a great tack to the south and west in order to double the tip of America as speedily as possible in an area where days of low scud made obtaining meridian altitudes difficult and only a fool would feel confident of his latitude.
'Stand by to take in the foretopsail!'
Quilhampton was bawling at his watch. Their response was slow, they seemed dazed, as if the great wave had some strange effect on them. But that was impossible, a figment of Drinkwater's fevered imagination. He held his peace for a moment longer.
'Man the clewlines and buntlines!'
The men were mustered about the pinrails and Drinkwater was reminded of something he had tried hard to forget; the dilatory action they had fought with a Danish privateer, caught off Duncansby Head, and which had escaped by superior sailing through the rocks off the Orkneys. By superior sailing… how that phrase haunted him, that sudden failure in performance that had endangered the ship now as it had done before. His patience snapped.
'Call all hands, damn it! All hands, d'you hear there!'
The squealing pipes made little impact on the gale, but the thin noise roused the ship as Quilhampton continued to shout at his men.
'Clewlines and buntlines! Haul taut!'
Drinkwater caught sight of the rise and fall of starters, of a scuffle forward of the boats and a man thrust out of the huddle round the mast.
'Leggo top bowline, there! Lively there! Leggo halliards! Clew down! Clew down, God damn you, clew down!'
'I think we have trouble forrard, Mr Q…'
'Aye, sir… no, there goes the yard… lay aloft and furl… aloft and furl!'
Men from the watches below were coming on deck and filling the waist with a worse confusion as another crack from aloft met the violence of a heavy leeward roll. Above the shouting and the orders, the wind screamed with renewed venom and the heeling deck bucked and canted beneath their slithering feet. Green water poured aboard and sluiced aft, streaming over the men at the pin-rails and knocking several off their feet.
'Aloft and furl! Mr Comley, damn you, forrard, sir, and hustle the men!'
Perhaps it was the disgruntled look which the boatswain Comley threw at Quilhampton, perhaps the passing of an ague-fit which stimulated Drinkwater to intervene, but he could stand chaos no better than inefficiency and such chaos and inefficiency threatened them all in that wild sea. He began to move forward, along the starboard gangway towards the forechains.
What he found forward of the boats appalled him. The sharp perceptions of a feverish brain, the madness of the morning and the lingering suspicions and doubts about his crew coalesced into an instant comprehension. The few men who had begun to climb into the weather shrouds were half-hearted in their efforts and though no one actively prevented them, there were shouted discouragements thick in the howling air.
'Don't risk yer life for the bastards, Jimmy…'
'Let the fucking mast go by the board… we'll be home the sooner…'
'Oi'll fockin' kill you if you so much as lay that rope on me again, so I will…'
A man rolled against Drinkwater, one of the boatswain's mates, his face pale in the cruel, horizontal light of dawn, his eye already dark with bruising.
'Aloft and furl, damn you all!' Drinkwater roared and hoisted himself up into the starboard foremast shrouds. He caught sight of the small, white face of Midshipman Belchambers. 'Take my hat and cloak…' The wind tore the heavy cloak from his grasp and thrust it at the boy, who escaped thankfully aft.
'God's bones, d'you want to rot in hell, you damned lubbers? Aloft and furl!' He was aware of sullen faces, the spray stinging them as they looked up at him. The wind tore at his own body and already the cold had found his hands. There was no time to delay. Above them the foretopsail flogged and the mast shook and groaned while something was working loose, its destructive oscillations increasing with every roll of the ship.
He began to climb.
The force of the wind tore at him. Patrician was running before it now, throwing away the hard-won windward yards, rolling with an unrestrained ferocity that threatened to tear loose the sprung topmast and send the resulting wrack down on deck. For the preservation of the ship, speed was essential. He did not look down, but the vibration of the thick hemp shrouds told him that men were following him aloft. He fought his way upwards, the thin ratlines twisting beneath his feet and the wind tearing at the bulk of his body, so that his clothing bellied and pulled him forward to where the sea hissed and roared alongside the running frigate. Some active topman drew alongside him.
'That's it, my lad, up you go, up you go!'
He caught a glimpse of a sheepish grin that was instantly lost as more men caught him up, swinging outwards into the futtock shrouds with the agility of monkeys. Captains aloft were such a rare event that even the most discontented topman would be put on his mettle to outdo the intrusion.
Midshipman Frey struggled up.
'Good morning, Mr Frey' Frey's eyes widened and Drinkwater nodded upwards. 'Have the goodness to pass ahead of me.'
The boy gulped and swung himself outboard, his back hanging downwards as Patrician's hull rolled them out over the sea, then his kicking heels disappeared and Drinkwater took advantage of the return roll and followed him into the top.
Pausing for breath, Drinkwater took stock of the situation. The foretopsail yard, loosed by its halliards, lay roughly over the top of the foreyard, the huge flapping bunt of sail thundered in wild billows only partially restrained by the weight of the yard and the buntlines and clewlines. Drinkwater waved the topmen aloft and out along the yard. He could see Frey already at the extremity of the windward yardarm, his pea-jacket blown over his back and his sparse shirt-tail flapping madly.
'Come on, lads, lay out and furl that tops'l!'
He clung to the topgallantmast heel-rope downhaul and looked aloft. The fore-topgallantmast had been struck, sent down and lashed parallel to its corresponding topmast to reduce the windage of unneeded tophamper. Now, as he stared upwards, his eyes watering and the wind tugging at him, he saw that the housed topgallantmast was acting like a splint to the fractured mast. The latter had sprung badly, the split starting from a shake in the timber. Drinkwater cursed and wondered how long that spar had been pickling in the mast-pond at Chatham. The topmast was almost split in two; whatever he decided to do, it would have to be quick, before both spars were lost. He peered on deck. Morning had broken now, though the sun had risen into a cloud bank and daylight was dimmed. Its arrival somehow surprised him, such had been his preoccupation.
Quilhampton looked upwards anxiously, clearly considering that Drinkwater's action in going aloft was unseemly. Beside him Fraser stood staring up, one hand clapped over his tricorne hat.
The men were laying in from the yard, having passed the reef-points, and Drinkwater called to them to begin to clear the gear away ready to send the topmast down on deck. It would be a long, complex and difficult job in the sea that was running, but he sensed in their changed expressions that the surly disinterest had been replaced by a sudden realisation of the danger they were in. Besides, he had no intention of making life too easy for them; those lost miles to leeward nagged him as he made his way down on deck.
After the clamour of the foretop, the quarterdeck seemed a sanctuary. Fraser began to remonstrate.
'Sir, you shouldn't ha'…'
'Be damned to you, Fraser, the men are disaffected… in your absence it was necessary I set 'em an example… now have the kindness to order the spanker and foretopmast stays'l set… just the clew of the spanker, mind you, I want this ship on the wind and then we'll sort out the mess of the foremast…'
Fraser nodded his understanding and Drinkwater regretted the jibe at the first lieutenant. It was mean, but he was in a damnably mean mood and meant to ride down this discontent, even if it first meant riding his officers.
'We'll set a goose-winged maintops'l when we've finished, and see if we can't claw back some of the leeway we've made…'
Hill, the elderly sailing master summoned on deck at the cry for all hands, nodded his agreement and put the traverse board back by the binnacle.
'It's a damn…'
'Deck! Deck there!'
The scream was high-pitched and uttered with such urgency that it carried above the gale. The officers looked up at Midshipman Frey. He was leaning against the barricade of the fore-top, pointing ahead.
'Sir! There's a ship, sir… a ship! Right ahead!'
'Impossible!'
That first reaction was gone in an instant. As he scrambled into the mizen rigging Drinkwater's active mind considered the odds of another ship being under their feet in this remote spot. And then he saw her, an irregular, spiky outline flung up against the eastern sky as she breasted a crest. His practised eye saw her hull and her straining sails and then she was gone, separated from them by a wave. She was perhaps three quarters of a mile away.
When she reappeared she was fine to starboard, under close-reefed topsails and beating to windward as Patrician had been doing an hour earlier. A curious idleness had filled the hands as they waited for the officers to get over their astonishment. Drinkwater rounded on the latter.
'Gentlemen! You have your orders, kindly attend to them!' They scattered, like chastened schoolboys. Only Hill, his white hair streaming in the wind, stood close to Drinkwater, trying to catch the stranger in the watch-glass.
Fishing in his pocket Drinkwater pulled out his Dollond glass and raised it to his eye, swearing with the difficulty of focusing it on the other ship.
'She's a ship of force, sir,' Hill muttered beside him.
Drinkwater grunted agreement. Her dark hull seemed pierced by two rows of gun-ports and, like themselves, she wore no colours. She beat to windward bravely, passing his own lamed ship as she licked her wound and escaped the worst fury of the storm by running before it. Once again that phrase by superior sailing was recalled to his mind.
Although not superstitious, Drinkwater was, like most philosophical sailors, aware of the influence of providence and the caprice of fortune. Nothing had yet happened aboard Patrician that persuaded him he was in command of anything but an unlucky ship. Among his ill-educated crew he knew that feeling had developed to a conviction since the execution.
'What d'you make of her, Mr Hill?'
With that black hull and making for the Pacific, I'd stake my hat and wig on her being a Don, sir…'
'Your shore-going wig, Mr Hill?' Drinkwater joked grimly and neither man took his glass from his eye.
'For a certainty, sir…'
Drinkwater grunted. He had seen the Spaniards' lugubriously popish fancy for black ships in Cadiz shortly before Trafalgar, but he was recalling the nightmare and its ominous warning. He stared at the ship for other clues, but found none. A minute later she was gone, lost in the bleak and heaving wastes of the Southern Ocean. Captain and master lowered their glasses at the same moment.
'A Don you say, Mr Hill?'
'My life upon it, sir.'
Drinkwater shook his head. 'Rash, Mr Hill, rash…'
'You don't agree, sir?' Drinkwater managed a grin at the obviously discomfited Hill.
'I've a hunch, Mr Hill, a hunch… nothing more and not worth the trouble of a wager… come now, let's get a new foretopmast off the booms…'
Drinkwater swallowed painfully and stared balefully at the first lieutenant. There were moments, and this was one of them, when he would have wished for the return of Samuel Rogers, for all his drunkenness and bullying temperament. Rogers would have understood what was to be done, but Rogers had been blown to the devil with six score others when the Zaandam exploded alongside the Antigone off Orfordness, and poor Fraser had inherited the first luff's uneasy berth. A quiet, competent Scot, Fraser was an obsessively worrying type, a man who let anxiety get the better of his spirit which was thereby damped and warped. Drinkwater had once overheard Mount referring to him in conversation with James Quilhampton.
'If yon Scot,' Mount mimicked in false North British dialect, 'ever occasioned to fall in the sea, he'd drown.' Then, seeing Quilhampton's puzzled look, he added plainly, 'He possesses no buoyancy.'
Drinkwater regarded Fraser, his expression softening. He was a prey to anxiety himself; he was being unjustly hard on a conscientious officer.
'It's high summer hereabouts, Mr Fraser, though it has a damned uncivil way of showing it, but I want the men worked… d'ye hear? Worked, sir, and damned hard. Not a single task that ain't necessary… I'll have no gratuitous hazing, but I want every manjack of 'em to know that they don't refuse to go aloft on my ship!'
Drinkwater drew breath, his anger at his predicament concentrated on the helpless Fraser.
'Aye, aye, sir.' But the first lieutenant hesitated.
'Well, Mr Fraser? What's the trouble?'
'Well, sir… such tasks… we've sent down the foretopmast…'
'Tasks? Are you suggesting your imagination cannot supply tasks? Good God, man, was there ever a want of tasks on a man-o'-war?'
It was clear that Fraser's imagination fell somewhat short of Drinkwater's expectation. The captain sighed resignedly as the frigate lurched and trembled. A sea smashed against her weather bow and the spray whipped aft, stinging their faces.
'Turn up all watches, Mr Fraser. I want the people worked until they drop. I don't care that it blows a gale, nor that the ship's doing a dido, or that every manjack of 'em hates my lights by sunset, but we had one brush with an enemy off the Orkneys that I don't want repeated… and that ship we sighted this morning, be he Don or Devil, bore two decks of guns. If we have to fight her in our present condition, Mr Fraser, I'll not answer for the consequences… d'you comprehend my meaning? And I mean the officers to turn-out too…'
'The officers, sir?' Fraser's jaw dropped a little further. Anxiety about the unstable state of the crew and the captain's reaction to their behaviour this morning was worming his belly. Drinkwater pressed relentlessly on.
'Now, as to tasks, Mr Fraser, you may rattle down the lower shrouds, slush the new topmast and reeve a new heel-rope. I don't doubt an inspection of the gun-deck will reveal a few of the gun-lashings working and the same goes for the boat gripes. Let's have the well sounded hourly and kept dry as a parson's throat. Have the gunner detail a party to make up more cartridges, the quarter-gunners to reknap the flints in the upper deck gun-locks and overhaul the shot lockers. Turn a party to on scaling the worst-corroded balls and send some men to change all the shot in the garlands. Get an officer aloft with a midshipman and a pencil to carry out an examination of all the spars for further shakes and let me have their findings in writing…'
Fraser caught the reproach in Drinkwater's eyes and coloured at his own negligence. He had taken so much of Patrician's gear from the dockyard on trust, since she had been so recently refitted after being cut down to a razee.
'Yes, sir.'
'Very well. You can carry out an inventory of the tradesmen's stores and have a party assist the cooper to stum some casks ready for watering and if that ain't enough, Mr Fraser, do not neglect the fact that we lost two good topsails this morning… in short, sir, I want you to radoub the ship!'
'Aye, sir…'
'And the officers are to take an active part, Mr Fraser… no driving the men, I want 'em led, sir, led by officers so that, when the time comes, they'll follow without hesitation…'
'The time, sir… ?' Fraser essayed curiously catching a moment of mellowing by the captain.
'Aye, Mr Fraser… the time… which may catch a ship at a disadvantage and deliver her to the devil in an instant.'
'Or a Don, sir?'
'You comprehend my meaning… very well, see to it at once. Pipe all hands… Mr Hill and I will tend the deck.'
Drinkwater remained on deck the whole of that day. They set more sail and began to claw back the lost miles to windward. At apparent noon both he and Hill were gratified by twenty minutes of sunshine during which they obtained a perfect meridian altitude and fixed their latitude.
'Fifty-six degrees, fifty-seven minutes south, Mr Hill?'
'Fifty-five minutes, sir…'
'Close enough then… let us split the difference and lay that off on the chart…'
Both men reboxed their instruments, Hill's old quadrant in its triangular box, Drinkwater's Hadley sextant in a rectangular case fitted out with green baize and a selection of telescopes, shades and adjusting tools which gave it the appearance of a surgeon's knife-box. Drinkwater caught the look of satisfaction in Hill's eyes as he handed over the closed case to Midshipman Belchambers.
'I never claimed Hadley's sextant a better instrument than my old quadrant, Mr Hill…'
Hill smiled back. 'No, sir, but they say the best tunes are played on old fiddles.'
They made their way below, pocketing their tablets and pencils to allow them to grasp the ropes of the companion ways. They leaned over the chart and Hill manipulated the parallel rules, striking the pencil line from west to east on the parallel of fifty-six degrees, fifty-six minutes southerly latitude.
'Well clear of the Horn and the Diego Ramirez Islands.' Drinkwater indicated a group of islands some sixty miles southwest of Cape Horn. They fell silent, both pondering the unspoken question: their longitude?
Were they yet west of the Horn, able to lay the ship's head to the north of west and pass up into the Pacific? Or were they still east of the meridian of the Cape, or Diego Ramirez? That longitude of sixty-eight thirty-seven west?
'Perhaps we will be able to obtain a lunar observation later,' observed Hill. 'The sky shows signs of clearing.'
'Yes,' agreed Drinkwater, 'we might also obtain our longitude by chronometer, though I know your general prejudice against the contrivance.'
Hill looked sidelong at the gimballed clock-face in its lashed box. Cook had proved its usefulness thirty years ago, but Hill preferred the complex computations of a lunar observation to the simpler solution of the hour-angle problem which, he thought, smacked too much of necromancy. Drinkwater smiled wryly and changed the subject as he rolled up the chart.
'I hope to water at Juan Fernandez by mid-January, Mr Hill.'
'Aye, aye, sir… we'll have enough casks by then.' Hill referred to the stumming then in progress in the orlop deck where sulphurous smoke emanated from the primitive cleaning process. 'And the labour'll do the men no harm.'
'Quite so.' Drinkwater put the chart and rules away, preparing to return to the deck but Hill stopped him, taking advantage of the intimacy permitted a sailing master and the long familiarity the two men had known.
'Sir… that ship, the one we sighted this morning… it has been worrying me that you thought my opinion in error…'
I have the advantage of you, Mr Hill.' Drinkwater smiled again, so that Hill was reminded of the eager young acting lieutenant he had long ago known on the cutter Kestrel.
'I'm sorry, sir, I didn't intend to pry…'
'Oh, the contents of my orders are such that their secrecy applies principally to their comprehension. The truth is that I don't believe that ship was a Don.' He looked up at the old master. Hill was massaging his arm, a wound acquired at Camperdown; his expression was rueful.
'The truth is, I think she was Russian.'
Captain Drinkwater stood at the weather hance regarding the long deck of the Patrician. Wrapped in his boat-cloak he ignored the frequent patterings of spray. There was some abatement in the gale and the wind backed a touch, enabling them to claw more westing against wind and the Cape Horn current that set against them at a couple of knots. Midshipman Belchambers hovered near, ready to dash below for sextant and chronometer should the sun appear again. To windward, patches of blue sky punctuated the low, rolling cumulus and it was hard to comprehend the fact that this was the season of high-summer in the southern hemisphere. There was little in the leaden aspect of the clouds, nor the grey streaked and heaving mass of the ocean to suggest it.
Along the deck and aloft men worked in groups and singly. Lieutenant Quilhampton swung about the mainmast with Midshipman Frey and Comley, the boatswain, was overhauling gear on the fo'c's'le and keeping a lively eye on a party of men in each set of weather shrouds who were rattling down. The grim, motionless presence of Captain Drinkwater intimidated them all, for it had slowly permeated the collective consciousness of the hands that their peevish unwillingness to obey orders had not only been let off lightly, but had endangered the ship. To a degree Drinkwater sensed this contrition, partly because he also shared much of the men's embittered feelings. For, notwithstanding their task and the problems which beset it, the voyage had not been a happy one.
From the moment they had run Stanham to the fore-yardarm, it seemed, providence had ceased to smile on them. Ordered north with a convoy to Leith Roads from the London River, Patrician had dragged her anchor in an easterly gale in the Firth of Forth. Drinkwater had been dining aboard another ship at the time, in the company of an old friend and messmate from his days as a midshipman.
Sir Richard White had got into Leith Roads three days earlier after his seventy-four-gun Titan had been badly mauled in a gale off the Naze of Norway where Sir Richard had been engaged in a successful operation extirpating nests of Danish privateers hiding in the fiords. He had also enjoyed a considerable profit from the destruction of Danish and Norwegian trade, having a broad pendant hoisted as commodore and two sloops and a cutter under his direction for prosecuting this lucrative little campaign.
Sitting in his comfortably furnished cabin, Drinkwater was reminded that there was another Royal Navy to that which he himself belonged, a service dedicated to the self-advancement of its privileged members. He did not blame Sir Richard for taking advantage of his position, any more than he blamed him for inheriting a baronetcy. It was now that the recollection of his old friend's circumstances rankled, as he wrestled with a disaffected crew, a contrary gale and the remotest ocean in the world. But he had enjoyed the conviviality of the distant evening. Sir Richard's officers were pleasant and made much of Drinkwater. He could imagine White's briefing prior to his arrival; his guest was a friend, a seaman of the old school, a tarpaulin of considerable experience, and so on and so forth, all designed to provoke good-natured but superior attitudes. Drinkwater was too old to worry much, though when he thought about such things, they still angered him. At the time he had enjoyed White's company. They had grumbled over the income tax, and agreed on the excellence of the port. They had deplored the standard of young officers and disagreed over the propriety of the new regulation that made masters and pursers equal in status to the commissioned officers. And then the news had come that Patrician was making signals of distress and Drinkwater had had a rough and wet return to his ship in his gig, to find chaos in place of an ordered anchor watch and the ship dragging from sheer neglect of the cable at the turn of the tide. The contrast with the well-ordered state of affairs aboard Titan was inescapable.
In a fury he had ordered the ship under weigh, only to recall that he had given Lieutenant Quilhampton shore-leave, and been compelled to fetch a second anchor. Poor Quilhampton. Drinkwater looked up at him in the maintop dictating some memorandum to Frey. They were as close to friendship as a commander and his second lieutenant could be, for Drinkwater's wife and Quilhampton's mother enjoyed an intimacy and Quilhampton had been Drinkwater's earliest protege. He felt a surge of anger against the Admiralty, the war and the whole bloody predicament of his ship at the thought of poor Quilhampton. The young man was wasting the best years of his life, crossed in love by the implacable exigencies of the naval service. Drinkwater wished it was he, and not Fraser, who was first lieutenant.
'Your steward enquires if you wish for some coffee, Captain?'
'Eh? Oh, thank you, Derrick…'
Drinkwater roused himself from his reverie and nodded to his clerk. Derrick's face had lost neither its sadness nor its pallor in the months since his impressment by Mr Mylchrist and the cutter's crew. Taken from the banks of the River Colne as he walked from Colchester to Wivenhoe, Derrick had protested his refusal to take part in belligerent operations with such force and eloquence that the matter had eventually been brought to Drinkwater's attention. So too had the strange offender. Drinkwater remembered the man's first appearance in his cabin on that last forenoon at anchor at the Nore, some five days after they had hanged Stanham.
'Take off your hat!' an outraged Lieutenant Mylchrist had ordered, but the man had merely shaken his head and addressed Drinkwater in a manner that brought further fury to the third lieutenant's suffused face.
'Friend, I cannot serve on thy ship, for I abhor all war…'
'Be silent, damn you! And call the captain "sir" when you address him…'
'Thank you, Mr Mylchrist, that will do… I think I know the temper of this man.' Drinkwater turned to the solemn yet somehow dignified figure. 'You are of the Quaker persuasion, are you not?'
'I am…'
'Very well… I cannot return you to the shore, you are part of the ship's company…'
'But I…'
'But I shall respect your convictions. Can you read and write? Good, then you may be entered as my clerk… attend to the matter, Mr Mylchrist…'
And so Drinkwater had increased his personal staff by a clerk, adding Derrick to Mullender, his steward, and Tregembo, his coxswain, and finding the quiet, resigned Quaker an asset to the day-to-day running of the ship. If he had entertained any doubts as to the man infecting the ship's company with his peculiar brand of dissenting cant, he need not have worried. The hands regarded Derrick with a good-natured contempt, the kind of attitude they reserved for the moon-struck and the shambling, half-idiotic luetic that kept the heads clean.
'Thank you, Derrick. Tell Mullender I shall come below…'
'Very well, Captain, and I have the purser's accounts fair-copied and ready for your signature.'
Drinkwater took another look round the deck and, as Derrick stood aside, he went below for a warming mug of coffee.
'Deuced if I understand the man.' Lieutenant Mylchrist tossed off the pot of shrub and stared with distaste at the suet pudding the wardroom steward laid before him. His eyes met those of his messmates, staring from faces that were tired from unaccustomed exertion. 'He's a damned slave-driver, though why he had to drive us . . .'
'Stuff your gape with that pudding, Johnnie, there's a good fellow,' said Mount, with a note of asperity in his voice. 'Ah, Fraser, here, sit down… Steward! Bring the first lieutenant a bottle!'
'Thank you, Mount.'
'Well, there's one consolation…'
'And what might that be?' enquired the chastened Mylchrist.
'We'll all sleep like logs tonight.'
'Except those of us with a watch to keep,' muttered Mylchrist.
'You make sure you keep it, cully, not like that episode in Leith Road where you neglected the basic…'
'All right, all right, there's no need to go over that again…'
'Maybe not, you see yourself as a victim today, but the plain facts are that you'll be a worse victim if you don't take the captain's point.'
Mount stared round the table. He was, with the exception of Hill, the oldest officer in Patrician's wardroom, something of a Dutch-uncle to the lieutenants.
'Well, what exactly is the captain's point?' asked Mylchrist sourly.
'That this ship is a bloody shambles and has no right to be.'
'She's no different from the other ships I've served aboard…'
'Bloody Channel Fleet two days from home and a couple of cruises in the Med. For God's sake, Johnnie, don't show how wet you are. Goddamn it, man, Midshipman Wickham was in the Arctic freezing his balls off before you'd heard a shot in anger…'
'Now look here, Mount, don't you dare patronise me…'
'Gentlemen, gentlemen, be silent!' Fraser snapped, and an uneasy truce settled on the table. 'Mount's right… so is the captain… it's no your place to strut so branky, Johnnie… the men say she's a donsie ship…'
'Poppycock, Fraser… the ship's not unlucky, for that I take to be your meaning. The trouble is we're out of sorts, frayed like worn ropes…' Mount smiled reassuringly at Fraser, 'and that business off the Orkney upset us all.'
'Captain Drinkwater most of all,' said Quilhampton, speaking for the first time. 'I think he feels the shame of that more keenly than the rest of us.'
Quilhampton rose and reached for his hat and greygoe. 'I must relieve Hill…' He left the wardroom and a contemplative silence in which they each relived the shame of the action with the Danish privateer. They had chased her for four hours, sighting her at dawn, hull down to leeward ten miles to the east of the Pentland Skerries. The Dane had run, but once it was clear the heavy frigate could outsail her in the strong westerly wind, she had tacked and stood boldly towards the Patrician. Unbeknown to the captain on the quarterdeck above, the two lieutenants on the gun-deck had relaxed, assuming the capture to be a mere formality once the intelligence of the privateer's turn had been passed to them. Despite the shot from a bow-chaser the Dane had not slackened her pace, but run to leeward of the Patrician, and the sudden broadside that Lieutenant Mylchrist's battery had been ordered to fire had been ragged and ineffectual, only succeeding in puncturing the privateer's sails.
Once to windward the Danish commander sailed his nimble vessel like a wizard. Though Drinkwater turned in his wake, the Dane beat upwind with an impressive agility. Whenever the Patrician closed the range to cannon shot, the Dane tacked, keeping a press of canvas aloft so that the momentary disadvantage he suffered while he gathered way on the new tack was compensated for by the attention the Patrician had to pay to going about.
With two hours to sunset the privateer had slipped into Sanday Sound, taking advantage of the weather tide that sluiced through the rocks, islets and Orcadian islands with which her commander was more familiar than either Drinkwater or Hill. In the end, as darkness closed over the Patrician and caution forced her to haul off the land, the Danish privateer had escaped.
It was not Hill, but Drinkwater himself who turned the deck over to Quilhampton.
'Well, James, you have the ship.' Isolated by the howl of the wind, Drinkwater unwound with uncharacteristic informality. He fixed the younger man with a perceptive stare.
'Sir?' said Quilhampton, puzzled.
'You have not spoken of it, James… the matter upon which you solicited my advice in Leith Road…' Drinkwater prompted, 'the matter of matrimony, damn it.'
'Oh… no, sir… no. But as you said, 'tis likely to be a damnably long voyage.' Quilhampton's answer was evasive and he avoided the captain's eyes, searching the horizon with an expression of despair.
He wondered if it were an accident caused by the violent motion of the ship as Drinkwater went below, or whether the slight pressure against his shoulder had been a gesture of commiseration.
The islands of Juan Fernandez bear no resemblance to my impression of Crusoe's refuge…
Drinkwater wrote in his journal, then laid down his pen, leaned back in his chair and stared rapturously out of the stern windows. The sashes were lifted and the gentle breeze that wafted into the cabin bore the sweet scent of a lush vegetation dominated by the sandalwood trees. He closed his eyes and drew the air in through his nostrils, a calm contentment filling him. For the first time in weeks his cabin bore a civilised air, being upon an even keel. Drinkwater turned back to his journal, rejected the idea of an attempt to rival Defoe and continued writing.
We sighted the peak of El Yunque on the 3rd instant, a fair landfall but occupied by the Spaniards, and, unwilling to advertise our presence upon the Pacific coasts of America, took departure for Farther-out Island, thirty leagues to the westward where we found anchorage in nine fathoms with a sandy bottom, wood and water in plenty, an abundance of pig and goats. There are seals and sea-elephants and several species of humming-bird. The men have been exercised at their leisure, a circumstance which gives me great heart after our recent difficulties…
He laid his pen down again and rose, stretching. They lay at anchor within half a mile of the beach and he could see the launch drawn up on the sand, the two boat-keepers paddling like children in the shallows. The warmth of a sun almost overhead lay over the anchorage like a benediction, filling the ship with a languorous air.
'Lotus-eating…' he murmured. Leaning his hands on the sill of the window he looked up at the rugged volcanic summit of the island rising precipitously from foothills that were covered in rich vegetation. Unlike the main island of the archipelago, Mas-a-Fuera, Farther-out Island, did not possess the anvilpeak of El Yunque, but it was impressively beautiful to men whose eyes had been starved of the sight of green leaves.
An occasional shot echoed up the ravines, evidence of Mount's hunting party flushing the wild pig from the undergrowth. The thought of dining that evening on roast pork brought the juices to Drinkwater's mouth in anticipation and further enhanced his feeling of contentment. They could take a short break here, give the men a run ashore, replenish their wood and water, dine all hands in the very lap of luxury and even, perhaps, if they could find someone among the crew conversant with the process, make some goat's milk cheese.
He returned to his table, picked up a pen and began to write again. The breeze ruffled his shirt and through the skylight the sunshine beat down, warming the old ache in his mangled shoulder.
The mood of the people is much improved since our arrival. Their faces wear smiles this day and I am sanguine that the outbreaks of sporadic drunkenness, of petty-theft and brawling that accompanied our passage of the Atlantic, will cease now that we are brought into better climes and the men become resigned to their task…
He looked up and saw the launch coming off, its waist full of filled barricoes of sweet water. Through the skylight he heard orders being given to the watch on deck in preparation for hoisting the casks into the hold. If they worked well today and tomorrow he would give each watch a day's leave of absence and they could scramble about the island like children on holiday.
By noon they had reached the tree-line. Quilhampton in the lead gave a great whoop, like a Red Indian, for it was to be the halting point of the expedition. Drinkwater was panting with the unaccustomed exertion, watching Frey and Belchambers scamper about the increasing number of rocky outcrops that made their appearance as the valley had narrowed and risen.
As behoved the intelligence of naval officers it had been considered necessary to make some purpose of the day. Not for them the wild and aimless wandering of the men, whose liberty infected them like quarts of unwatered rum. Far below they could hear the shouts and laughter of their unconfined spirits as they chased about the ferny undergrowth. Besides, if the men were to give vent to their pent-up emotions, it was incumbent upon the officers to make way for them. So it had been Quilhampton who had decided the walk ashore should become an expedition, and Drinkwater who had suggested they traced one of the streams upwards to its source.
Accompanied by the second lieutenant, the two midshipmen, Mr Lallo the surgeon and Derrick the Quaker clerk, they had set off after breaking their fasts and parading divisions. Those left aboard had worn glum expressions, despite promises of their turn tomorrow, such was the liberating infection of the island upon those destined to run amok today.
The officers began their expedition at the watering place where the stream ran sluggishly out over a bed of pebbles and sand, spreading itself into a tiny delta and carving miniature cliffs and escarpments through the foreshore. But it soon narrowed, its bed deeper and its current swifter, passing beneath a cover of sandal-wood trees which already showed evidence of the axe marks of man.
'The oleaginous qualities of this species,' pronounced Lallo, patting one of the dark red tree-boles with a proprietorial hand, 'produce an oil which may, I believe, be substituted for copaiba oil as well as forming an admixture for Indian attars…'
'What the deuce is an attar, Lallo?' enquired Quilhampton.
'Perfume, perfume, that fragrance so often necessary to the fair sex in warm weather to render them desirable to men. I should have thought you would have known that, Mr Q, given your strong desire to become a benedick.'
Quilhampton flushed scarlet and Lallo cast a mischievous glance at Drinkwater. 'Is that not so, sir?'
'I fear you embarrass Mr Q, Mr Lallo, but perhaps you would tell me to what use you would put such an oil.'
'Well, as for copaiba, it is a specific in certain complaints of the urinary tract… it occurs to me that the sandal wood tree might provide us with oleaginous matter with similar properties.'
'Very well. We can gather some chips on our return, but our young friends here are anxious to continue, I suspect. They are too young for complaints of the urinary tract.'
'Very well, sir. Adelante!'
Laughing, they pressed on, ever upwards. The trees thinned to scrub, the ferns that grew prolifically alongside the stream now sprouted from rocks and mosses and the water, no longer dark under the trees, sparkled and ran white, leaping and boiling over rocks and into deep, mysterious pools.
After an hour they came to a waterfall, where the stream dropped almost thirty feet over a sheer lip of grey rock. The silver trail roared downwards, sending up a cloud of spray through which a rainbow curved. On either side dense foliage grew, pierced by the heavy heads of several exotic blooms.
'Sir! Look!'
Drinkwater turned to where Mr Midshipman Belchambers, a bright-eyed and excited child, pointed. Frey was beside him, his pencil already racing over the sketch-block he was rarely without.
'God's bones, a humming bird!' Drinkwater recognised the tiny bird from a print he had once seen in Ackermann's, the extravagant result of the print-maker capitalising on the public interest in such exotic subjects roused by Captain Cook. The blurred whirring of the bird's wings as it held its head motionless at the bell of a flower, was a jewel of pure cinnamon.
For several minutes they stared in wonder at the creature, until the lust for achievement drew them further upwards. When they cleared the undergrowth and the scrub, they emerged onto a steep, rocky scree. Here the grass was sparse, hanging in tussocks, rooted in shallow hollows where rain and humus had collected to produce a soil from the volcanic core of the island. They flung themselves down, sprawling in the sunshine, and broke open the sparse stock of provisions they had brought from the ship.
The view was stupendous. Below them the vegetation spread, giving way to the water of the anchorage, blue-green from the sand and coral reflecting light upwards through it. Upon the limpid water, the frigate sat like a toy, her dark brown sides with the cream strake pierced by the open gun-ports through which fresh air dried out the mildew, damp and rot of the Horn. Her spread sails hung drying in loose festoons. At the stern the white ensign lifted languidly, reflecting the luxurious lethargy of the ship. Beyond the anchorage the ocean spread to the horizon, utterly empty, the pale blue of the sky dotted with an occasional cloud, except to the north-west where a greater massing of cumulus marked the distant peak of El Yunque, dominating Mas-a-Tierra (the Nearer Island), mainland of the group.
'D'you intend an attack on the Spanish settlement, sir?' asked Quilhampton, nodding at the distant indication of the island and munching on a slab of purser's cheese that was almost inedible.
'No… Ah, Derrick, come sit here with us, man, unless you wish to eschew the company of the ungodly…'
They watched the quiet Quaker, awkward in the presence of the officers, squat stiffly with them.
'I knew one of your persuasion, Derrick, when I was in the Arctic. D'you recall Captain Sawyers, Mr Q?'
'The master of the Faithful, sir?'
'Yes. A fine seaman and one of nature's gentlemen.'
I am glad to hear you say so, Captain, the Quaker replied solemnly.
'Is it to be Panama then, sir?' persisted Quilhampton.
'Ah. The wardroom have sent you to find out my intentions, eh, Mr Q? And I was giving you the credit for wishing to discover the source of this river.'
'Well, sir, I have to admit that curiosity is getting a trifle out of hand…' Quilhampton's voice rose at the end of the sentence, so that he left it hanging, like a question. Drinkwater looked round the circle of faces. They were all looking at him expectantly. The mood of the day was too good to spoil.
'Very well, you shall take tablets down from the mountain, gentlemen, beggin' your pardon, Derrick, but you see what curious fellows I am set about with.'
'Your lese-majestie will be overlooked, Mr Lallo,' he grinned. 'Very well, gentlemen, I will confide in you and parade the hands at sunset, so that your period of privilege is brief.'
'It's a galleon, sir… the Acapulco galleon… like Lord Anson!'
Lallo's lese-majestie was infectious. Midshipman Belchambers was bolt-upright with excitement. The party laughed indulgently.
'As a matter of fact it ain't, Mr Belchambers. Matter of fact it ain't Panama either… at least not directly. Initially we shall strike…'
'What the devil's that?' Lieutenant Quilhampton was the first on his feet. They stared down at the ship where the wind carried the disintegrating puff of white smoke gently to leeward. They stood stock-still for an instant and then the second gun came, reverberating up the ravine like the first and prompting them to sudden action. Instinctively, Drinkwater cast a glance round the horizon. The sea was as empty as before; the signal of recall was concerned with some internal matter. They gathered up their odds and ends and began to make their way down the mountain.
'Fine bloody banyan day this turned out to be!' Lieutenant Mylchrist muttered between clenched teeth as Lallo bent over his shoulder. The light from the lamp, held aloft by the elderly loblolly 'boy' Skeete, caught the edge of the catling and Skeete grinned, revealing carious teeth and malodorous breath.
'Now, Mr Mylchrist, d'you care for my rum, or the wardroom's brandy?'
'Get on with it, you damned windbag,' panted Mylchrist, waves of pain spreading from his shoulder where the bruised and rough-edged wound showed the entry point of the musket ball.
'You know, it doesn't do to insult one's physician in such a dependent state, Mr Mylchrist, does it, Skeete?'
'Damn the pair of you…'
'Hold your tongue, Johnnie, and let the surgeon get on with his work.' Mount patted the young officer's shoulder and he lay face down, for the ball had entered his shoulder from the rear.
'You're not the first gentleman to be the victim of a hunting accident,' remarked Lallo, 'now hold still.'
Mount bent, to assist in holding Mylchrist down. Anxiety and responsibility played on his face. 'Trouble is, Bones, I don't think it was an accident.'
Mylchrist grunted and Skeete drew the leather pad into his mouth as the catling began to probe the wound. 'You don't?' asked Lallo without pausing in his task.
'No… one of my marines reported his musket missing when we halted and not half an hour later Mylchrist here was shot. As far as I know there was no one near him that belonged to the hunting party.'
'Does the captain know all this?'
'No, not yet.'
'Then I suggest you tell him.'
'Your men to spread out, Mr Mount. They know the two men missing, Hogan and Witherspoon.'
'Sir.'
'Very well. Let's get on with it.'
Drinkwater checked the priming in the pans of his two pistols, loosened his sword and nodded to Quilhampton. The second lieutenant waved the cordon of picked seamen forward. At intervals along their front petty officers and midshipmen were posted to avoid the searchers colluding with the deserters. Thanks to Hogan and Witherspoon this was likely to be the only walk ashore the remainder of the crew were going to have. Captain Drinkwater was in a dark and vengeful mood.
They moved forward, trampling the undergrowth and flushing out birds and small scampering things as they moved inland. Drinkwater looked back to where a party of the gunner's mates carried some sulphur bombs, enlargements of the alchemical concoctions Old Blue Lights made up for stumming the casks; Drinkwater was fairly certain of where his quarry had gone to earth, for he had seen movement on the open scree, spied from his cabin through his glass. He was confident it had been one of the deserters watching the ship for signs of retributive landing parties leaving her. To the right of the spot, overhanging crags opened fissures in the vertical faces of sections of the mountainside and some of these looked large enough to be caves.
It was Drinkwater's party that reached this area and he called up the gunners.
'Let's have a portfire to those sulphur bombs, lively now.'
There was a sputtering of fuse and then an ochreous discharge of acrid smoke.
'Hoy it then, laddie,' coughed one of the gunner's mates, and a pungent missile was hurled into the first cave that seemed to offer sanctuary. Drinkwater moved to the next and bawled his ultimatum into the impenetrable darkness.
'Give yourselves up at once… come now, Hogan and Witherspoon, you'll be left otherwise.'
No sound came out of the cave, beyond a disturbed flapping and the emergence of a pair of fluttering bats. Drinkwater nodded to the gunners and a second sulphur bomb was pitched.
'Sir…'
They turned and saw Lieutenant Quilhampton pointing. 'There's yellow smoke coming from the hillside above… must be a rock fall inside.'
The party began scrambling up beside the cave. On the bleak hillside a hole in its roof had formed a natural chimney, funnelling the sulphur fumes clear. It was an unwitting distraction, for no fugitives ran from the smoke-filled cave.
'Hey! Look!'
Again they turned, this time to the right, looking back downwards to where, some twenty yards away, two men were scrambling down into the cover of the scrub and trees. Drinkwater had guessed correctly. The fugitives had holed up in a cave, but one further along the ledge.
'After them!'
There was a general chase of excited men slithering, scrambling and cursing as they went in pursuit. Drinkwater fired his pistol as a signal to Mount and then forsook his dignity and joined the manhunt. After ten minutes he recognised the steep valley of the stream they had followed that morning; he could hear the roar of the waterfall somewhere not far below but, apart from broken branches, the fugitives had vanished.
The roar of the waterfall seemed to act as a magnet to the men. They were already thirsty after their climb and there were now sprained ankles and torn skin to add to their moaning. Drinkwater was well aware their hearts were not in the chase, but he could not afford to let Hogan and Witherspoon escape.
'Halt there! Stand easy… you may drink. Mr Frey?'
'Yes, sir?'
'Take Belchambers… get word to Mr Mount to leave Sergeant Blixoe and his marines at the watering place. He himself is to come up here.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Drinkwater watched the two midshipmen scramble down the steep ravine, slashing at the ferns with their dirks. He entertained a moment's apprehension for their safety, they could be hit like Mylchrist… then he dismissed the thought. He was almost certain the missing men were now behind him. He looked across the pool. The men were bent over, scooping the water up into their faces. There was about them an air of levity, borne out by suppressed laughter and sly glances cast in his direction. He watched two in particular…
Drinkwater turned to Quilhampton.
'Mr Q, I want you to spread the men out and continue down to the beach. Comb this valley and remuster by the boats. We've wasted enough time as it is and it will be sunset in an hour.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' Quilhampton turned and began to shepherd the men down the mountain. 'Come on then, lads…'
Drinkwater bent himself to drink from the stream. The two men were watching him, a covert look in their eyes. He stared at them pointedly and, with an obvious and eloquent reluctance, they moved away after the others. With a beating heart Drinkwater remained behind.
Mount found him sitting on a rock, checking the locks of his pistols.
'Sir?' The marine lieutenant was gasping with the effort of his climb.
'Sit down, Mr Mount, take a drink slowly and listen to what I have to say…'
Mount sat and drank and listened, looking sharply at Drinkwater as the Captain explained his suspicions, his voice lost in the roar of the waterfall. 'You understand, Mr Mount?'
'Perfectly, sir… if you'll give me a moment…'
Mount checked his own flintlock, a heavy horse-pistol.
'Why Mylchrist, Mr Mount? D'you know?'
'He's the youngest and most vulnerable officer, sir.' Mount's voice lacked its usual conviction.
'Does he ride the men… when I am not there, I mean?'
'I have not noticed so, sir.'
'No… and why Hogan and Witherspoon?'
Drinkwater recalled Hogan, a handsome Irish giant whom he remembered now, hearing utter mutinous remarks the night they sprang the foretopmast off Cape Horn; and Witherspoon, by contrast a dark young man, agile as a monkey and one of the Patrician's prime topmen, noted for his daring aloft. Another suspicion came to Drinkwater as he waited for Mount's signal of readiness. It was darker than the first and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner, aware that it had been hovering just beyond his consciousness for some time.
'Ready.'
Stooping and moving from rock to rock Mount crossed the stream. On the further bank he looked back at Drinkwater and nodded. Lifting their pistols both men advanced cautiously on opposite sides of the pool. Between them the silver cascade of water fell from above, sluicing over the polished rock lip of the escarpment to fall into the hollow with a roar, the smoking spray of its motion cut by the advancing shadow of the high western bank which terminated the glittering rainbow like a knife.
Ten yards from the foot of the fall, where the rocks were broken, cemented by moss and tiny fern-fronds, and the cliff rose sheer above, both men stopped.
'I command you to come out!' Drinkwater roared above the noise of the fall. The spray was already soaking the two officers whose hands covered the pans of their cocked pistols. Drinkwater's demand produced no response.
'In the King's name…'
'Bollocks to your focking King!'
Mount and Drinkwater exchanged glances.
'Come out, Hogan, damn you, otherwise you're a dead man!' Drinkwater's eyes studied the overhang. He could just see the opening in the rock which gave access to the hollow space behind the fall.
'And have ye hang me, Cap'n Drinkwater? I'll not die for your mad raddled King, nor for your damned causes. God damn you, Cap'n Drinkwater, God damn you to hell!'
'Hold your tongue, you Fenian bastard!' Mount roared from the far side of the fall, moving precipitously forward so that Drinkwater was forced to wave him back.
'What about you, Witherspoon? D'you wish to hang? Come, lad, show some sense!'
'D'you wish Hogan to answer for you, Witherspoon?'
'Aye, sir… I do…' Witherspoon's voice cracked into a squeak. There was nothing more to be done. Drinkwater nodded and began to edge forward, wondering how much Hogan could see and knowing that, at least, looking from the darkness into the light, the Irishman had the undisputed advantage. He also had a loaded musket.
The base of the waterfall streamed over a rock lip, a great slab of cooled lava that had slipped sideways to form an architrave in the heap of rocks which formed the lower slope of the escarpment. At either end it seemed supported, and softer deposits had been washed out by the water so that, beneath and behind it, a great void opened up, floored by more rock underfoot. Alongside lay the deep pool into which the fall tumbled ceaselessly, its roaring noise buffeting the senses to make thinking difficult. Light entered the cave through the wide silver curtain of the waterfall. Cautiously, Drinkwater moved forward.
As he saw the cave opening up he realised access was obtainable only from his side. Mount could do nothing beyond cover Drinkwater as long as the captain remained outside the fall. But it was too late for such considerations. The deserters knew of their presence; Drinkwater hoped they also thought the area was surrounded by Mount's marines, but, if that were the case, Drinkwater himself was unlikely to be the person sent in to winkle them out.
His eyes were accustoming themselves to the shifting light. The westering sun helped; the rapid tropic sunset was upon them.
Deep within the cave he saw a movement. Instinctively he brought the pistol up and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked in his hand and he saw a scuffle of reaction deep within. Quickly he moved forward, drawing the second pistol from his waistband and finding firmer footing within the cave.
Suddenly he was confronted by Hogan; the man held a levelled musket, its bayonet glittering wickedly in the strange, unreal light.
Drinkwater fired the second gun, but despite having its frizzen on, moisture had seeped from his shirt and been drawn into the powder by its hygroscopic qualities. The hammer clicked impotently and Hogan lunged.
His own gun-lock must have been rendered equally useless for he was relying on cold steel. Drinkwater stepped backwards and reached for his sword. The footing was slippery with slime; both men recovered. Hogan was an immensely strong and powerful man and he had Witherspoon somewhere in the darkness to aid him. Outside Mount was shouting something but Drinkwater paid him no attention, his eyes were fixed on the Irish giant. Somewhere behind Hogan, Witherspoon was suspiciously silent. Drinkwater flicked his eyes into the darkness but could see nothing. Hogan shifted his feet and Drinkwater's attention returned to the Irishman.
'Don't be a fool, Hogan… you can't get away with this…'
'You're alone, Cap'n… that's enough for me. Sure, Oi'll fix me own way to die.'
'What about Witherspoon?' Hogan grinned. It was clear he knew of Drinkwater's fear of the other man.
'Or Oi'll fix yours for you, Cap'n!' Hogan lunged again. His reach was long and Drinkwater fell back, slipped and swiped wildly with his sword. He felt the blade crash against the bayonet and the strength of his opponent as Hogan met the pressure. Drinkwater's mangled right arm was unequal to the contest. He saw victory light Hogan's eyes and felt the resistance of rock against his back.
'Now, you English bastard!'
Hogan drew back the bayonet to lunge, his teeth bared in a snarl that bore all the hatred inherent in his heart. Desperately Drinkwater flung himself sideways, falling at his adversary's feet, the wet slime of the rocky ledge fouling him. He rolled madly, aware that he was somehow in contact with Hogan's feet. He kicked, and suddenly found the edge of the cave. A second later he felt the icy cold of water close over his head. The sudden shock electrified him. An instant later a great, irresistible pressure bore down upon him, punching and bruising him so that for a moment he thought he was being beaten by Hogan until the roaring in his ears proclaimed the source of the pain was the waterfall itself. Then he was subject to an immense rolling motion and vast pressure. Darkness engulfed him as the force of the water thrust him down, rolling him over yet again, but this time in an involuntary way, shoving his aching body so that his lungs began to scream at his brain to let them have air.
He was drowning!
Such were the powerful reflexes tearing at the muscles of his chest that opposition to them was impossible. Blinding lights filled his head, the roaring of the water became intolerable. He could resist no longer. He opened his mouth and dragged water into his lungs.
Mount saw a figure suddenly rise, bursting from the surface of the dark pool some five yards below the fall itself. He levelled his gun, but his finger froze. So far out of the water was the man flung, welled up as strongly as he had just been thrust down, that Mount saw instantly that it was the captain.
A few minutes later Mount had dragged his gasping commander to the side of the pool. Drinkwater lay over a rock, his body racked by helpless eructations as he spewed the water from himself. After a few minutes, as Mount alternately stared from Drinkwater to the ledge beside the waterfall on the far side of the pool, Drinkwater's body ceased its painful heaving. He looked up, pale and shivering, a mucous trickle running down his chin. His shirt was torn and Mount saw the scars and twisted muscles that knotted his wounded shoulder. Instinctively he saw the captain incline his head to the right, indicating the shock of the chill in those mangled muscles.
'Hogan's got your musket… his powder's spoiled…'
'What about Witherspoon?'
'Didn't see him… think I may have winged him with my first shot…'
'I'll get support, it's getting dark…'
'No! We must…'
But he got no further. A loud bellow, a bull-roar of defiance, it seemed, came from the waterfall. Both men looked round and Mount scrambled to his feet.
From behind the silver cascade, glowing now with a luminosity that it seemed to carry down from higher up the mountain where the last of the setting sunlight still caught the stream, Hogan emerged. He bore the musket in one hand and in the other the limp figure of Witherspoon.
It seemed to the still gasping Drinkwater that the darkest of his suspicions had been correct. The bull-roar had not been of defiance, but something infinitely more elemental. It had been a howl of grief, animal in its intensity. The drooping body of Witherspoon was undoubtedly that of a dead lover.
Such was instantly obvious to Mount too. Without hesitation the marine officer raised his big pistol.
'Sodomite!' he snarled, and took aim.
In the almost complete gloom the two officers were quite hidden from Hogan. The Irish giant had no thoughts now, beyond the overwhelming sense of loss. The desperate venture on which he and his lover had set out that morning had seemed worth the hazard. Patrician would not stay. Hogan read his commander for a man of resolution, and nothing waited for Hogan over the Pacific horizon beyond the chance of death by wounding, death by disease or death from one or another of the multiple foulnesses that haunted His Britannic Majesty's fleet. The island, though, offered a bold man everything. He could have outwitted fate and lived, like Crusoe, upon such a spot until he met death in God's time, not King George's. It would have worked but for Lieutenant Mylchrist.
His frame was racked by monstrous sobs as he dragged the dead body of his lover out of the cave. It only seemed another paroxysm of grief when Mount's ball shattered his skull, and smashed his brains against the cliff behind him.
Shaking from cold and shock Drinkwater followed Mount gingerly back across the stream. Once again he approached the entrance to the cave. In the last of the daylight the two officers stood staring down at their victims.
'God's bones,' muttered Drinkwater, crouching down before his legs gave under him. His first shot had indeed hit Witherspoon, hit the breast and heart. Witherspoon must have died instantly, so silently that even Hogan himself had not realised until after Drinkwater's escape the damage that single shot had done. For Witherspoon's breast was exposed as Hogan had desperately sought to stem the bleeding wound. The shirt was torn back and the two officers stared down at the shapely breasts of a young woman.
'I'm damned if I understand why we're not cruising off the Isthmus,' complained Mount as he lounged back in his chair and awaited the roast pig whose tantalising aroma had been permeating the ship for much of the forenoon. 'It is common knowledge, even to Their Lordships, that Panama is the focus of Spanish power.'
'I think you jump to conclusions, Mount,' replied Fraser, cooling himself with an improvised fan fashioned from a sheet of discarded cartridge paper. The wardroom was insufferably hot, even with a windsail ducting air from the deck, and its occupants were as frayed as the end of the canvas pipe itself. 'Besides, preoccupations with opportunities for prize-money are an obstruction to duty.'
'Don't preach to me, Fraser…'
'Gentlemen, gentlemen… such querulous behaviour… it's too exhausting by far… be so kind as to leave the preaching to me.'
'God save us from that fate,' said Mount accepting the glass from King, the negro messman, and rolling his eyes in a deprecating fashion at Fraser. Both officers looked at the temporiser in their midst.
The Reverend Jonathan Henderson, chaplain to His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician, laid a thin, knotted finger alongside his nose in a characteristic gesture much loved by the midshipmen for its imitable property. It invariably presaged an aphorism which its originator considered of importance in his ministry. 'I am sure they know what they are about and it will avail us nothing if we quarrel.'
'What else are we to do, God damn it?' said Mount sharply.
'Come, Mr Mount, no blasphemy if you please.'
'I'm a military man, Mr Henderson, and accustomed to speak my mind within the mess, and I've been too long at sea to have much faith in the wisdom of Their Lordships.'
'If you're referring to my relatively short career…'
'Short? Good God, man, you've not been at sea for a dog's watch! What the devil d'you know about it.'
'Come, sir, I was chaplain to the late Admiral Roddam…'
'Admiral Roddam? He spent the American War swinging round his own bloody chicken bones and port bottles until they had to move the Nore light to mark the shoal… Admiral Roddam… hey, King, refill my glass and deafen my ears to sacerdotal nonsense'
Henderson looked furiously at the grinning negro and rounded on Mount.
'Mr Mount, I'm a man of God, but I'll not…'
'Gentlemen, pray silence… you raise your voices too loudly.' Fraser straightened up from the rudder stock cover from which vantage point he had been trying to ignore the petty squabble.
'There has been a deal too much argument since that business at Juan Fernandez…'
'There is usually a deal too much argument when empty vessels are banging about.'
'Very well, Mr Lallo,' snapped Fraser at the surgeon who, until that moment, had occupied a corner of the table with his sick-book, 'belay that.' Lallo shrugged and pocketed his pencil. 'Tell us how Mylchrist is.'
'He'll live, but his shoulder'll be damned stiff for a good while.'
'Like the captain's.'
'Aye, like the captain's.'
'But he's over the worst of the fever?'
Lallo nodded and a silence fell as they considered the events on the island. In the days that had followed their departure from Juan Fernandez the echoes of the affair had petered out except when conversation aimlessly disturbed it. Among the people it had lit another portfire of discontent, for two-thirds of the ship's company had not enjoyed the liberty of that first watch-ashore. Nevertheless, the nature of the incident had had less lasting impact on the men than upon the officers. The hands had preoccupations other than sentimental considerations over a pair of love-lorn deserters. In the collective wisdom of the crew there was an easier acceptance of the vagaries of human nature. Their lives were publicly lived, crude in their exposure, and therefore the revelation of Witherspoon's sex came as less of a shock than the vague realisation that they had, perhaps, been made fools of.
Among the officers the reaction had been different. It was to them truly shocking that a woman, even a woman of the lowest social order which it was manifestly obvious that Witherspoon was not, should be driven to the extremity of resorting to concealment on a man-o'-war. Many and various were the theories advanced to explain her action. None was provable and therefore none was satisfactory. To some extent it was this inexplicable nature of the affair that made it most irritating. Unlike the people, the living conditions of the officers were such that they could function as individuals. The solitude of their tiny cabins enabled them to think in privacy and in privacy thoughts invaded unbidden. Of them all James Quilhampton had been most deeply stirred.
It had been Quilhampton who had climbed back up the dark valley and found Mount and Drinkwater, and the dead bodies. It had been Quilhampton who had organised the burial party and stood beside the chaplain as he performed his first real duty since recovering from the sea-sickness induced by the doubling of Cape Horn. The two lovers had been buried that night and the sky above the lantern-lit burial-party had been studded by stars. This involvement had revived thoughts of his own hopeless love affair, left far behind on the shores of the Firth of Forth and long-since repudiated when the news that Patrician was bound for the distant Pacific had plunged him into extreme and private depression.
Now he rose from his cot, disturbed by the squabble in the adjacent wardroom, and emerged from his cabin into the silence that had followed it.
'You make as much noise as a Dover-court,' he muttered sleepily, slumping down in his chair and staring at the table-cloth before him, his nose wrinkling to the smell of roast pork.
'You shouldn't be sleeping, James, my boy, when you can be drinking,' said Mount, pushing an empty glass towards him and beckoning King.
'Fill Mr Q's glass, King.'
'Yes sah… Missah Q?'
'Oh, very well… have you shrub there, King? Good man…'
'I was just saying, James, that it's damned odd we aren't attacking the Dons on the Isthmus…'
'Oh, for God's sake don't start that again…'
'Hold on, Fraser, it's a perfectly logical military consideration, isn't it, James?'
Quilhampton shrugged.
'He's still dreaming of the lovely Catriona MacEwan,' jibed Fraser grinning.
'Well, he's precious little to complain of since he was the last of us to have a woman in his arms,' agreed Mount.
'Except Hogan,' said Quilhampton.
'Ah, you see, he was thinking of the fair sex… an inadvisable preoccupation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What you should be considering is what the devil we're doing so far north…'
'If I remember correctly, Mr Q,' broke in Lallo, 'the captain was about to confide in us when the recall guns were fired on the desertion of those two…' Lallo hesitated.
'Persons, Mr Lallo?' offered Henderson.
'Exactly, Mr Henderson… now tell us… that confidence was interrupted, but you are in the captain's pocket enough to get furlough in Edinburgh town… What's this about Russians?'
'I've no more influence over the captain than you, Mr Lallo; indeed I've a good deal less, I dare say…'
But their deliberations were cut short, for faintly down the cotton shaft of the windsail came a cry: 'Sail… sail ho! Two points on the larboard bow!'
They forgot the roast pork and the glasses of shrub and sherry. Even the Reverend Mr Henderson joined the rush for the quarterdeck ladder adding to the clatter of over-turned chairs and the noise of cutlery as the dragged table-cloth sent it to the deck. King stood shaking his head and rolling his eyes in a melancholy affectation. Only Quilhampton remained impervious to the hail of the masthead lookout.
His only reaction was to bring his wooden hand down on the table in a savage blow, bruising the pine board and giving vent to the intensity of his feelings. For underneath his personal misery, below the strange disturbance caused by the desertion on Juan Fernandez, lay the knowledge that most oppressed him and of which he had been dreaming fitfully as he had dozed on his cot. More than any other officer, it was James Quilhampton who best understood the smouldering mood of the men. It had been Quilhampton alone who had defused the incipient mutiny aboard the Antigone the previous summer. Very little had happened to placate the men since Drinkwater's bounty, paid out of the captain's own pocket, had eased tension for a while. But the money had been paid to the whores of Sheerness and any good that Drinkwater's largesse had achieved had long since evaporated. Somehow the affair at Juan Fernandez had crystallised a conviction that had come to him as he had held the tawny-haired Catriona in his arms on his departure from Edinburgh, the conviction that Patrician was unlucky and that she would never return home.
Captain Drinkwater had been more relieved than otherwise at the discovery of Witherspoon's sex. No captain, particularly one engaged on a distant cruise in the Pacific, relished the discovery of sodomitical relationships within his crew any more than he relished the problem of desertion. The fact that Witherspoon was a woman made Hogan's action understandable and lent a measure of reason to the twin absenteeism that stemmed from passion, not mutiny. What Drinkwater had dreaded when he learned of the failure of two hands to muster was a sudden, unpredictable revolt among the men. His orders were difficult enough to execute without the ferment that such a disorder would cause, a disorder which might threaten not merely his command, but his very life. He was not untouched by the tragedy that had happened beneath the waterfall, but he perceived again the workings of providence and when he had entered the initials D.D. against the two names in the ship's muster book, his sense of relief had been very real. In the margin provided for remarks, he had added: Killed while resisting arrest, having first Run.
It was a poor epitaph. A poetaster might have conjured up a romantic verse at the tragedy; a venal commander might have kept the two names on the ship's books and drawn the pay himself, or at least until he had repaid himself the cost of the sword he had lost in the pool beneath the waterfall. But Drinkwater felt only a further sadness that Hogan and Witherspoon had gone to join those damned souls who awaited judgement in some private limbo, watched over by the guardian angels of the Admiralty. Such, at least, had been the incongruous core of Mr Henderson's homily on the subject. Drinkwater had begun to doubt the wisdom of Their Lordships in soliciting the aid of the Established Church to subdue the convictions of men forced into His Britannic Majesty's Navy. Drinkwater considered such solecisms foolish; ignorant diversions from the grim realities of the sea-service. He was concluding his private remarks in his journal when he heard the cry from the masthead.
'He has a wind, by God!'
'By your leave, Mr Hill, a rest for my glass on that stanchion.'
'Of course, sir… he has a wind…'
'So you said… a devil's wind, too, what d'you make of him?'
'I reserve my judgement, sir.'
'Eh? Oh, you refer to that fellow we saw off the Horn?' Drinkwater caught the stranger in his image glass. To whatever the sail belonged, it was not a black-hulled two-decker. 'By the spread of her masts and her stuns'ls, I'd wager on her being a frigate… and Spanish?'
'Yes… yes, I'd not dispute that, sir.'
'Spanish frigate, sir.'
Drinkwater looked aloft. In the mizen top Mr Frey looked down, smiling broadly, and Drinkwater was aware that the deck was crammed with officers and men milling about, awaiting news from the privileged few at posts of vantage or with glasses to their eyes. He caught the ripple of eagerness that greeted the news, saw the smiles and sensed, despite everything, the metamorphosis that transformed his ship at the sight of an enemy.
'Very well, Mr Frey, you may come down and hoist Spanish colours! Clear for action and beat to quarters!' Then he raised his glass again and studied the enemy, hull up now, crossing their bow from the west. 'Mr Frey should know a Don when he sees one, Mr Hill, given his time watching 'em at Cadiz… oh, for a breeze!'
'Would to God hers would carry down to us… she's seen us, throwing out a private signal.' Hill looked at the masthead pendant and at the dogvanes. They barely lifted in the light airs that slatted Patrician's canvas.
'Shall I hoist out the boats and tow, sir?' asked Fraser, suddenly impatiently efficient.
'No, Mr Fraser, that'll exhaust the men…'
The marine drummer was beating the tattoo and the hands were scrambling about the ship. Below, the bulkheads were coming down and aloft the chain slings were being passed, while along the deck sand was being sprinkled and the gun-captains were overhauling their train tackles and their gun-locks. Above their heads fluttered a huge and unfamiliar ensign: the yellow and gold of Spain. Then Drinkwater had a happy inspiration.
'Mr Henderson!' The thin face of the chaplain turned towards him. The fellow was showing a very unclerical interest in the enemy. 'Do you pray for a wind, sir.'
Henderson frowned and Drinkwater saw the men pause in their duties and look aft, grinning.
'But, sir, is that not blasphemy?'
'Do you do as I say, sir, pray for a wind, 'tis no more blasphemous than to pray for aid on any other occasion.'
Henderson looked doubtful and then began to mumble uncertainly: 'Oh most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow…'
'D'you think it will work?' asked Hill, grinning like the midshipmen. Somewhere in the waist a man had begun to whistle and there came sounds of laughter.
'I don't know, but 'tis a powerful specific against dispirited men by the sound of it…'
'How goes the chase, Mr Fraser?'
'To windward, sir, like a winged bird.'
'I had no notion you had anything of the poet in you.'
'No.'
'It has a Homeric quality… the warm wind, the moon, and a windward chase.'
'Yes.'
They had got their wind, though whether it was attributable to the praying of the chaplain or the whistling that breached the naval regulations was a matter for good-natured conjecture throughout the ship as the men settled down for a night sleeping at the guns. Patrician was a big ship, a heavy frigate, a razee, cut down from a sixty-four-gun line-of-battle-ship, but she spread her canvas widely, extended her yards by studding sail booms and hoisted a skysail above her main royal when the occasion demanded.
'Turn!' Midshipman Belchambers turned the glass and the log-party watched the line reel out, dragged by the log-chip astern.
'Stop!' called the boy, the line was nipped, the peg jerked from the chip and the line hauled in.
'Nine knots, sir.'
'Very well… like a winged bird indeed, Mr Fraser.' Drinkwater smiled in the darkness, sensing the embarrassed flush he had brought to the first lieutenant's cheeks. 'But do we gain on our chase?'
Fraser turned. 'Mr Belchambers… my quadrant, if you please.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' The boy ran off.
'How do you find our youngest addition?' Drinkwater asked.
'Eager and agile as a monkey, sir.'
'Hmm. But he's too young. There seems no shortage of such boys with parents eager enough to send 'em to damnation while they are still children. I doubt they can know what their offspring are condemned to endure.'
'Your own son is not destined for the sea-service, sir?'
'Not if I can find him a fat living in a good country parish!' Both men laughed as Belchambers returned with Fraser's quadrant. The first lieutenant hoisted himself up on the rail, bracing himself against the main shrouds, and took the angle subtended by the white shape ahead of them.
Drinkwater watched. The pale pyramid of canvas would be much more difficult to see within the confinement of the telescope and it would take Fraser a moment or two to obtain a good reading. Drinkwater waited patiently. Patrician lay over to the breeze, close hauled on the larboard tack. Above him the studding sails bellied out, spreading the ship's canvas and bending the booms.
The sky was clear of cloud, studded with stars and the round orb of a full moon which laid a dancing path of silver light upon the water. The breeze was strong enough to curl the sea into small, breaking crests and these, from time to time, were feathered with phosphorescence.
Fraser jumped down from the rail.
'Aye, sir, I can detect a slight enlargement o' the angle subtended by the enemy'
'Good; but it's going to be a long chase and this moonlight will discourage him from trying to make a sharp turn… 'tis a pity he rumbled us so early'
'I expect he knew well enough what ships to expect hereabouts.'
'Yes, the Dons are apt to regard the Pacific Ocean as their own.'
They fell to an easy and companionable pacing of the deck. It was astonishing the difference the chase made to the atmosphere on board. All grumbling had gone. Men moved with a new-found confidence and bore themselves cheerfully even in the dark hours. There was a liveliness in the responses of the helmsman, a perkiness about those of the watch ordered to perform the many small tasks as the officers strove in succession to get the best out of the ship. Fraser sought to gain something from the captain's obvious desire to chat.
'Sir… I was wondering if you would be kind enough to confide in me. As to our orders, sir… if… er…'
'If anything should happen to me in the next few hours you'd like to know how to act… I know, I know… damn it, Mr Fraser, the truth of the matter is that I ain't sure myself. We've to damage the Dons and their trade, to be sure, but our main purpose here is to prevent what Their Lordships are pleased to call "incursion into the Pacific" by the Russians.'
'The Russians, sir?'
'Ah, I see that surprises you. Well, they have settlements in Alaska, though what possible influence that might have upon the course of the war is something of a mystery…'
'And we are making for Alaska now, sir?'
'In a manner of speaking. It seemed the best place to begin exhibiting His Majesty's flag.' Drinkwater felt Fraser's bewilderment. Perhaps he should have confided in the younger man earlier in the voyage, but Fraser had had his own problems and the life of a first lieutenant was, Drinkwater knew, not an easy one.
'You are too young to remember the Spanish Armament in ninety-one, eh?'
'I remember it vaguely, sir. Wasn't war with Spain imminent?'
'Yes, the Channel Fleet were commissioned, a lucky thing as it happened, since, as I recall, we were at war with the French Republic within a year. Let me refresh your mind… when Cook's seamen brought high-quality furs from the polar seas off Alaska and Kamchatka and sold them in Canton they attracted the notice of the Honourable East India Company's factors. A former naval officer named Mears… a lieutenant, I believe he was, together with a merchant master named Tippin took out two ships across the North Pacific on a fur-hunting expedition. Tippin was cast up on Kamchatka, but Mears wintered somewhere in the islands. The following spring, about eighty-eight or eighty-nine, I forget which, he discovered Nootka Sound, a fine fiord on the west coast of what is now known as Vancouver Island, and he opened a fur trade between the Indians indigent upon the coast and the Company's factors at Canton. In ninety the Spanish sent a naval force, seized the four British ships anchored in the sound, but left two belonging to the United States of America. The British ships were plundered and their seamen sent, on Spanish orders, to Canton in the American bottoms. Once the "haughty Don" had disposed of us, he planted his flag and claimed the whole coast across the whole bight to China!'
'Good Lord!'
'At home we armed for war, but eventually the Dons climbed down. The sanculottes obliged us by executing King Louis and depriving His Most Catholic Majesty of the support of His Most Christian ally… Their Lordships sent George Vancouver out to receive the surrender of the Spanish commander, a Don Quadra, or some such, and Vancouver spent the next year or so surveying…'
'And now we go out to prevent some such measures being repeated by the Russkies?'
'That would seem to be about the size of the thing, Mr Fraser.'
There was a brief silence between them, broken only by the low moan of the wind, the hiss of the sea rushing alongside the frigate, the creak of her fabric and some chatter amidships, where the watch congregated, chaffing the dozing gun-crews.
'That ship we saw off the Horn, sir… I believe you expressed the opinion she was a Russian.'
'Ah, Hill's been gossiping again, has he?' Drinkwater chuckled good-naturedly. 'Yes, yes, I believe her to have been bound for the Pacific, like ourselves… if she was ordered out as soon as hostilities were declared between Petersburg and London, she would be expected to reach the extremity of America at the same time as ourselves.'
'She was a two-decker, sir.'
'Yes. And if there's close co-operation between the Dons and the Russians…' Drinkwater let the import of the sentence sink in by implication.
'I begin to see your problem, sir.'
'Well, Mr Fraser,' remarked Drinkwater drily, 'if I'm knocked up when we overhaul that fellow ahead of us, it'll be your problem.'
The wind backed a point towards dawn. Midshipman Wickham came below to where Drinkwater lay on his cot, fully dressed.
'… It's increasing too, sir, Mr Quilhampton says, going large we've the legs of him, sir. She reeled off twelve at the last cast of the log.'
Drinkwater yawned. 'Twelve, eh? Very well, Mr Wickham. I'll be up directly.'
Quilhampton was worried when Drinkwater reached the quarterdeck a few moments later.
'She's carrying too much canvas, sir…'
Drinkwater gauged the strength of the wind and the feel of the ship beneath his boot-soles. Yes, there was a tendency of the ship to lay down, drowning her lee bow and building up a resisting wave there. He looked ahead. They were overhauling the Spanish ship perceptibly; it would be foolish to risk her escaping by carrying away spars aloft when they might delay the action an hour and break their fasts.
'Very well, Mr Q. Rouse all hands and take in the stun's'ls. Pass the word to the cook to fire up the galley range and boil some skillygolee, and the purser to order "up spirits"; we've a brisk forenoon ahead of us!'
Drinkwater watched the ship burst into life. It was damned odd what the appearance of an enemy did to a ship's company.
'Gives 'em a sense of purpose, I presume,' he muttered to himself, breathing in the fresh air of the dawn and watching the red ball of the sun break the eastern horizon ahead of them, dragging its lower limb like some huge jelly-fish, as though reluctant to leave its resting place, and climb up into the lightening sky.
And then he remembered he had left his sword in the pool beneath the waterfall on Mas-a-Fuera.
Drinkwater hesitated in the space his cabin usually occupied. The bulkheads were down, the chairs and table had been removed together with his cot, sea-chest, books and the two lockers that turned the after end of Patrician's gun-deck into a private refuge. Even the chequer-painted canvas that served for a carpet had been rolled away. Only the white paint on the ship's side and the deck-head, gleaming in the reflected light that came in from the gaping stern windows from the ship's wake and sent patterns dancing across it, served to remind its new occupants that it was the hallowed quarters of Patrician's captain. For the purpose of the cabin now became apparent; with the removal of the furniture the obtrusive 24-pounder cannon stood revealed and even the lead sink that served Drinkwater's steward in his pantry was filled with water in readiness to sponge those after guns.
'Where's my cox'n?' he asked of the waiting gun-crews who eyed the unexpected intrusion with some wariness.
'Who lent it to you?'
'Mr Mylchrist, zur…'
'Ah, yes, thank you, Tregembo. And my pistols?'
'Your clerk's taken 'em to the gunner, zur, for new flints. I tried knapping the old uns but they was too far gone… 'ere's your sword-belt…'
Drinkwater grinned. He could imagine the Quaker's distaste for his task. He pulled the sword from its scabbard. Beneath the langets he read the maker's name: Thurkle and Skinner.
'I must thank Mr Mylchrist… have my pistols taken to the quarterdeck as soon as they are ready.'
'Aye, aye, zur.'
Drinkwater passed through the berth deck to the orlop. In the stygian gloom he found Lallo with his loblolly boys laying out the catlings and curettes, the saws and pincers of his grisly trade. A tub waited to collect the refuse of battle, the amputated legs and arms of its victims. Drinkwater suppressed a shudder at the thought of ending up on the rough table Lallo's mates had prepared. For a moment he stood at the foot of the ladder, accustoming himself to the mephitic air and watching the preparations of the surgeon. Lamplight, barely sustained here, in the bowels of the ship, danced in pale yellow intensity upon the bright steel of the instruments and illuminated the white of Lallo's bowls and bandages. The contrast between these inadequate preparations below for rescuing men from death and the bright anticipation of the gun-deck above struck Drinkwater with a sudden sharpness. He threw off the thought and coughed to draw attention to himself.
'Ah, sir… ?' Lallo straightened up under the low beams.
'You are ready, Mr Lallo?'
'Ready, aye, ready, sir,' said Lallo, somewhat facetiously and Drinkwater caught the foul gleam of Skeete's caried grin.
'How is Mr Mylchrist today?'
From the far end of the space Mylchrist lifted a pale face from the solitary hammock that swung just beneath the heavy beams.
'Much better, sir, thank you… I wish I could assist, sir…'
'You stay there, Mr Mylchrist… you've had a long fever and Mr Wickham is doing your duty at the guns, you wouldn't deny him his chance of glory, would you now?'
Mylchrist smiled weakly. 'No, sir.'
'I promise you yours before too long.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And thank you for the loan of your sword.'
'The least I can do…'
Drinkwater smiled down at the wounded officer. Mylchrist had been very ill, avoiding gangrene only by providence and the application of a lead-acetate dressing whose efficacy Drinkwater had learned from the surgeon of the Bucentaure when held prisoner on Villeneuve's flagship.
'The employment of your sword guarantees you a share in the day's profits, Mr Mylchrist.'
Mylchrist smiled his gratitude at the captain's jest. If they received prize- or head-money for their work in the coming hours, the third lieutenant's share for a fine Spanish frigate would better his annual salary.
Drinkwater returned to the quarterdeck to find Derrick awaiting him. The Quaker held the two pistols as though they were infected and it was obvious he had tried to leave them in the charge of someone else. The others were enjoying his discomfiture. Fraser was positively grinning and the first lieutenant's levity had encouraged the midshipmen and the gun-crews waiting at the 18-pounders on the quarterdeck. Even the sober Hill, busy with his quadrant determining the rate they were overhauling the Spanish ship, seemed amused.
'Thank you, Derrick.' Drinkwater took the two pistols, checked the locks were primed and stuck them in his belt.
'Mr Meggs loaded them for you, Captain.'
Drinkwater looked at the Quaker. In the months they had been together he had conceived a respect for the man. Derrick had refused to call him 'sir', tactfully avoiding the familiar 'Friend' of his faith, compromising with 'Captain'. Drinkwater did not object. The man was diligent and efficient in his duties and only took advantage of his position in so much as he asked to borrow the occasional book from Drinkwater's meagre library. When he had borrowed Brodrick's History of the War in the Netherlands, Drinkwater had raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
'Your interest in that subject surprises me, Derrick.'
'A physician studies disease, Captain, in order to defeat it, not because of his liking for it.'
Drinkwater acknowledged his own defeat and smiled wryly.
'Well, sir,' he said in a low voice, 'the moment has come… you had better go below to the orlop. The surgeon has no assistant, only his two loblolly boys, perhaps you might be able to help.'
'I would not have my courage doubted, Captain,' Derrick flicked quick glances at the inhabitants of the quarterdeck, but I thought my post was at your side.'
Drinkwater had never had the luxury of a clerk before and had given the matter little thought, though he recollected Derrick's post in action was 'to assist as directed'.
'Very well, Derrick, but it is glory on the quarterdeck. Courage is a quality you will find at Mr Lallo's side.' He turned and raised his voice, 'Very well, Mr Fraser? Mr Mount?'
'All ready, sir, ship's company fed, fires doused, spirits issued and the men at their battle-stations.'
'My men likewise, sir,' added Mount.
'A little over a mile, sir,' said Hill, looking up from his calculations.
Drinkwater cast an embracing glance along the deck and aloft.
'Very well. Pass the word to make ready. We'll try a ranging shot.'
But there was no need. A puff of smoke shredded to leeward of the Spanish frigate's stern and a plume of water rose close under Patrician's larboard bow. The wind-whipped spray pattered aft and wet them.
'Ole!' remarked Mount, dashing the stuff from his eyes.
'We shall make a running fight of it, then,' said Drinkwater, raising his glass.
For the next hours they endured shot from the Spaniard's stern chasers, trying to gauge the weight of metal of the balls. Drinkwater held his hand; to return fire meant luffing to bring a bow-chaser to bear on their quarry; to luff meant to lose ground. The morning was already well advanced by the time they could read the enemy's name across her stern: Santa Monica.
Drinkwater spent the time pacing up and down, occupying the leeward side of the quarterdeck where he had a direct view of the Spanish ship and felt no discomfort from the down-draught from the maintopsail in such a balmy climate. From time to time he paused, rested his glass against a hammock stanchion and studied the Santa Monica. She was a relatively new ship, built of the Honduran mahogany that made Spanish ships immensely strong and the envy of their worn opponents. Her spars, too, gleamed with the richness of new pine and Drinkwater recalled Vancouver's words about the slopes of the coasts around Nootka Sound 'abounding in pines, spruces and firs of immense height and girth, being entirely suitable for the masting of ships'.
Slowly their view of the enemy altered. As they overhauled her, they began to see the whole length of the Santa Monica's larboard side. Studying the Spaniard, Drinkwater could see her gun barrels foreshortening with a greater rapidity than they overtook. His opponent was preparing a disabling broadside as soon as all his larboard guns bore, while Drinkwater was hampered by his starboard broadside being on the leeward side of the ship. Even with full elevation, the list of the deck was such that his cannon might have trouble hitting their target. In addition there would be the problem of water pouring in through the gun-ports as Patrician lay down under the fiercer gusts of a strong breeze that was fast working itself up into a gale. Yet Drinkwater could not reduce the list by taking in sail without losing his chance.
If the Spanish commander succeeded in his design of disabling Patrician his escape was guaranteed. If he was a man of unusual energy the consequences might be worse, he could conceivably hold off and rake Patrician, for all Drinkwater's superiority in weight of metal. The vision of Lallo's instruments of agony and those empty limb-tubs sprung morbidly into his mind's eye. With an effort of will he dismissed the thought. He would have to think of some counter-stroke and act upon it with a nicety of timing, if he was to disarm the Don's intention. For a moment longer he studied the Santa Monica as her bearing opened upon their bow with an almost hypnotic slowness. Then he shut his telescope with a snap.
'Mr Hill! Mr Fraser! A moment of your time, if you please…'
He was not a moment too soon. So parallel were the courses of the two ships that the angle of bearing for both of them to fire upon the other with any chance of achieving maximum effect was coincident within a degree or two. Drinkwater had noticed an officer bent over an instrument by the Spaniard's larboard dogvane and made his preparations accordingly.
'Run out the guns!'
When he had passed his orders he heard the rumble of Patrician's 24-pounders as their forward-trained muzzles poked from the heeling frigate's side. His heart was beating, hammering in his chest as, beside him, Fraser sighted along the barrel of one of the quarterdeck eighteens.
'About two degrees to go, sir…'
Drinkwater grunted. There had been some movement on the Santa Monica's deck at the appearance of Patrician's guns. Would his opponent react?
For a long moment the question seemed to hang, then he saw the officer by the dogvane bend again. Perhaps they too were waiting in suspense.
Leaning over, the two ships rushed along, Patrician ranging slowly up to windward of the Spanish ship, gradually overlapping her larboard quarter close enough to confuse the sea running between them. Above their decks the yards were braced hard-up upon the leeward catharpings, the sails strained against the strength of the wind, driving the foaming hulls relentlessly through the water. From the high-cocked peaks of their spanker gaffs the opposing ensigns of their contending nations snapped viciously, while beneath them the lines of men at their guns, the groups crouching below the rails ready to haul on bowlines and braces, the red-coated marines aiming their muskets from the barricades of the hammock nettings, and the knots of officers on the quarterdecks and at their posts throughout the ships, waited for the orders from the two captains that commanded the destinies of five hundred souls.
'Infernal machines…' Drinkwater heard someone whisper, half-admiringly, and smiled grimly when he realised it was Derrick, caught up in the stirring excitement of this insanity.
'Bearing coming on, sir,' said Fraser matter-of-factly, still bent over the dispart sight of the 18-pounder.
Drinkwater saw the Spanish officer by the Santa Monica's larboard dogvane straighten up purposively. Without taking his glass from his eye he gave the order: 'Fire!'
Gun-locks snapped like the crackle of grass as a squall strikes, then came the immense roar of artillery, the trembling rise of the deck as the ship reacted to the recoil and the sudden burst of activity throughout Patrician that followed his order. On the gun-deck below, the heavy 24-pounders belched flame and shot, trundling inboard and snapping their tackles together as their crews swarmed round them, sponging and reloading the monstrous things. On quarterdeck and fo'c's'le the 18-pounders and the brutal 42-pounder carronades swept the deck with powder smoke and the enemy with a hail of iron and langridge.
'Up helm!'
Behind Drinkwater, Hill was standing by the wheel, shouting through his speaking trumpet while Fraser, released from his duty bent over the dispart sight, was leaping across the deck whence Drinkwater followed him.
'Smartly there, my lads, stamp and go!'
Patrician's bow swung towards the Santa Monica as the Spaniard's hull disappeared momentarily behind the smoke of her own broadside. The fog of her discharging guns would, for a moment, blind her officers to much of his manoeuvre.
Above his head the braces were easing the yards and then there was a rending crash from forward. Drinkwater felt a slight tremble through the hull, but Patrician's turn was unimpeded and then, leaning from the larboard hance, he could see the stern of the Santa Monica.
There was a rent in her spanker and her ensign was fluttering down, its halliards having parted as Patrician's jib-boom slashed across her deck. Her stern boat was a wreck and hung down from the davits by a single fall.
'Larbowlines…!'
Drinkwater's voice was drowned in the thunder of the larboard guns, fired by their captains as they bore, double shotted and topped with canister they blasted into the starboard quarter of the Spaniard as Patrician sliced obliquely across the Santa Monica's stern.
As the smoke cleared Drinkwater caught a glimpse of Comley, the boatswain, wielding an axe on the knightheads, where he fought to free Patrician of the obstruction of her smashed jib-boom.
'Hard on the wind again, Mr Hill!'
'Aye, aye, sir, full an' bye it is!'
Patrician turned back to larboard again. She had given ground to the enemy and was now in her lee, but her guns still bore and they were being worked like fury by their crews; flame and smoke roared from her larboard ports as the cannon pointed high. A quick glance aloft showed Drinkwater that barely a shot of the enemy's had told, that their most serious damage had been sustained forward, from their own manoeuvre in crossing the Santa Monica's stern to rake her. Drinkwater dismissed that, raising his glass to assess the damage his ruse had effected.
The enemy were hoisting their shot-away ensign into the mizen rigging, and holes were appearing in her sails, but hardly a gun replied to Patrician from Santa Monica's starboard broadside. Then, as he watched he heard a cheer. Shifting his glass from the enemy's starboard quarter where he could see the splintered remains of her gallery, he caught the toppling maintopmast. For almost a minute it stopped falling, leaning at a drunken angle, held by its rigging to the fore and mizen masts, and then it broke free, crashing downwards and bringing the mizen topgallant with it. The Patricians were whooping about their guns and the officers on the quarterdeck wore broad grins. Drinkwater could see they were rapidly shooting ahead of the Spaniard.
'Stand by to tack ship!'
But Drinkwater had no need to range up to windward, subjecting the Santa Monica to a further raking broadside from ahead. As he watched, he saw the red and gold lowered from the mizen rigging in token of submission.
'She strikes, sir!'
The news was reported from a score of mouths and more wild cheering broke out from the exhilarated crew of the Patrician. All the pent-up frustration of the past months, all the ill-feeling and resentment, the hopelessness of pressed men, the self-pity of dispirited lovers and the petty hatreds of men confined together for weeks on end, seemed burst like an abscess by the violent catharsis of action.
His eyes met those of the sailing master. 'I think our sailing was of sufficient superiority on this occasion, Mr Hill,' Drinkwater remarked, repressing his sudden triumphant burst of exuberance.
'For a Spaniard, sir…' replied Hill cautiously and Drinkwater felt the reproach in the older man's tone. He nodded.
'Yes. You are right; for a Spaniard…'
They did not board the prize until the following morning, for the wind threw up too rough a sea for them to launch a boat safely. And when they were successful they discovered their triumph to be short-lived.
Their first broadside had been fired from the starboard guns on a lee-roll. The iron shot had hulled the Santa Monica, and damaged her so badly that by the following noon it was clear that her pumps were unable to stem the inrush of water. She began to founder under the feet of her prize crew. Lieutenant Quilhampton, sent aboard the Spanish frigate as prize-master, sent this news back to the Patrician by Midshipman Frey.
Reluctantly Drinkwater ordered the prize abandoned and by that evening found himself host to two hundred unwilling and darkly threatening prisoners. They consisted of Spaniards, mission-educated Indians and a large proportion of mestizos, a lean and hard-bitten lot led by a tall, gaunt officer who wore the epaulettes of a captain in the Royal Navy of Spain.
'I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, Señor, and I compliment you on the gallantry of your defence. I regret the loss of your ship.' He bowed formally and took his opponent's offered sword.
He met the Spaniard's eyes and found in them more than resignation at the fortunes of war. The deep-set expression of anger and hatred seemed to burn out from the very soul of the man, and Drinkwater recognised in the lined and swarthy face the man who had bent over the Santa Monica's rail and whose order to fire Drinkwater had pre-empted by a split-second.
'Don Jorge Meliton Rubalcava…' The Spanish commander broke off. Drinkwater had no idea whether Rubalcava understood English from this bald announcement.
'Have I your word that you will not raise a revolt, Captain Rubalcava?' Drinkwater asked, turning the sword-hilt and offering it back to its owner. Rubalcava hesitated and swung to an accompanying officer whom Drinkwater assumed to be his second-in-command. But the other seemed only to be awaiting the completion of the formalities of surrender, before declaring himself a greater man than Rubalcava.
'He was throwing papers overboard, sir,' Quilhampton volunteered, 'a fellow of some consequence.'
Drinkwater was watching the two Spaniards. They seemed to be in some disagreement and Rubalcava's anger was suppressed with difficulty. His companion, however, turned to Drinkwater with an unruffled expression, and addressed him in strongly accented and broken English.
'Capitán, Don Jorge he give you his parole and express for him the honour of you give his sword. Gracias.' The sentence was terminated by a low bow which Drinkwater awkwardly returned.
'You speak excellent English, Señor, perhaps you could tell me whom I have the honour of addressing?'
'I… Don Alejo Joaquin Arguello de Salas, aide-de-camp to His Excellence, Don José Henrique Martin Arguello de Salas, Commandante for San Francisco…'
Again there was an exchange of bows.
'Perhaps, gentlemen,' Drinkwater invited, 'you would do me the honour of dining with me and my officers this evening.'
'Gracias… what is it you think to do, Capitán?'
'We can discuss that matter later, gentlemen. And now, if you will excuse me, I have much to attend to in seeing to the comfortable accommodation of your men.'
There was a further mutual acknowledgement and Drinkwater found himself favouring the simple directness of Derrick's mode of address above this extravagant over-worked charade of elaborate bows. He ordered the incredulous Quaker to see the Spanish officers quartered below and turned to Mount to issue orders for the confinement of their seamen.
Mount concealed his grin with difficulty. The bobbing head and sweeping gestures of the quarterdeck had provoked an outburst of merriment along the deck as ill-concealed as the hostility of Captain Rubalcava.
'Your allies… they make for you good wine…' Arguello raised his glass and held it so that the candles shone through the rich, dark Portuguese bual. Drinkwater had a few dozen bottles of the Madeira, his only really decent wine, bought from the commander of an East Indiaman which had been lying at the Nore. Its broaching was the culmination of a satisfying meal the main course of which had consisted of the last pig from Juan Fernandez. The unfortunate animal had lived on scraps in the manger forward of the ship's breakwater and been slaughtered before they went into action.
'Gracias, Don Alejo… you have the same name as the Commandante…' Drinkwater phrased it as a question.
'Si, 'e is my old brother.'
The wine seemed to have relaxed Don Alejo, though Rubalcava's dark features continued to brood on his defeat. Despite its quality it had been a difficult meal and it was obvious that neither Fraser nor Quilhampton had enjoyed it. Out of courtesy they had drunk toasts to their respective sovereigns and to their own mutual gallantry. There had been a stilted enquiry into the Santa Monica's losses that revealed some difference of opinion between the two Spaniards, and Drinkwater was becoming suspicious about the Spanish frigate's task. He was toying with various expedients as to how to pursue his enquiries when Rubalcava spoke with a sudden, low urgency to Arguello. Don Alejo nodded, leaned forward to light a thin cigar from the candles and blew smoke at the deckhead.
'Capitán… please, I ask you question… what you do with Capitán Rubalcava and his men, eh? For you too much prisoner a big…'
'Risk?'
'Si, Capitán, a big risk.'
'Of course, Don Alejo, I do not make war upon unfortunate and gallant opponents. Assure Don Rubalcava that I am at his service. To deprive a brave officer of his ship is enough injury to inflict upon any man of spirit… where does the good captain wish to be landed?'
It took Arguello a few moments to digest this noble speech, moments in which Fraser writhed in his chair and Quilhampton fixed his commander with an odd, penetrating stare, filling the glass in front of him and hurrying the decanter round the table.
Another low exchange took place between the two Spanish officers. It was clear that Rubalcava had a point of view; it was also clear that Arguello disagreed with it. His exchange with Santa Monica's captain again became sharp, though once the naval officer had been suppressed and had relapsed into a tense and bitter silence, Arguello turned to his host with an air of unimpaired and courtly civility.
'Capitán Rubalcava thank you for your much kind express of honour and receive it… it is for me to ask you to take us to San Francisco…'
Rubalcava drew in his breath, in obvious opposition to this proposal, and there was something tense about Arguello now, something eagerly expectant, as though he wished Drinkwater to answer enthusiastically in the affirmative. Drinkwater met his gaze, as though reluctantly considering his request.
'Of course… you will have truce… I will, myself, see that you have water… anything…'
The gesture with the cigar was airily obliging; Drinkwater watched the heavy trail of blue smoke languidly lift in the hot air around the candles. Arguello was begging.
San Francisco; that was where Arguello wished to go. Rubalcava had other ideas. Why? And where had Santa Monica been bound when Patrician intercepted her?
'Where were you from, Don Alejo? The Philippines?'
'Si, Capitán, Manila… excellent for tobacco…' He held up the cigar and smoke dribbled from his mouth.
'And where were you bound, Don Jorge?' Drinkwater flung the question directly at the Spanish captain. It was a phrase which any seaman would comprehend, even in a foreign language, and, while Drinkwater spoke with professional interest, yet he sought to exploit the rift he had detected between the two men.
Rubalcava's dark head came up and his eyes flashed at Drinkwater with a ferocity that reminded Drinkwater of an Arab he had known once in the Red Sea. Rubalcava pronounced his destination with a kind of contempt, as though he had thought no more of it before his capture than he did afterwards: 'San Francisco.'
'And the purpose of your voyage, Señor?' Drinkwater thrust the question quickly; he was entitled to ask it.
'Aviso…' Drinkwater recalled the reported destruction of documents.
'A despatch vessel, with Don Alejo as your courier… ?'
'Que? Don Alejo… ?' Rubalcava's voice tailed off as Arguello broke in.
'Si, Capitán, I was courier… it is my duty… I am for the Commandante of San Francisco, his chief courier.'
A hiss of dissimulation came from the subsiding Rubalcava.
'You speak excellent English, Don Alejo, please accept my compliments,' Drinkwater coaxed.
'I was prisoner some time, taken off Cadiz but I make exchange. I live at Waltham Abbey.'
'How very interesting… perhaps you wish to retire now, gentlemen… ?'
Drinkwater rose and his silent officers sprang obediently to their feet. 'Mr Quilhampton, please be so good as to see our guests to their quarters before returning for your orders.'
Quilhampton hesitated, perceived Drinkwater's meaning and acknowledged the instruction. As the Spaniards withdrew from the cabin bowing, Drinkwater motioned Fraser to stay. They were about to leave the cabin when Arguello halted and indicated the portrait of Elizabeth, replaced lovingly by Tregembo on the reestablished bulkhead.
'Is this beautiful lady your wife, Captain?'
'Yes…' Drinkwater watched Arguello address a remark to Rubalcava and he stiffened, sensing an insult, but it was obvious that it referred to the disagreement that existed between the two men, for Rubalcava's expression bore no trace of that complicity of men sharing a coarse jest at another's expense. Nevertheless Drinkwater bridled at the odd reference to Elizabeth.
'Don Alejo!' he called sharply after the departing Spaniard. Arguello turned in the doorway.
'Capitán?'
'It is not permitted to smoke beyond my quarters!'
Arguello shrugged, dropped the stub of his cigar and with an elegantly booted toe, ground the thing into the painted canvas on the deck.
Fraser expelled a pent-up breath as the door closed behind the prisoners.
'Another glass, Mr Fraser, you've earned it by your patience, by God. I've passed word to Tregembo to sling you a hammock in here while Arguello occupies your cabin. Mount has the business in hand?'
'Yes, sir. Mount won't let them move. We've the dagoes battened well under hatches.'
'Good. We should be rid of them in…' Drinkwater dragged a chart onto the table from the drawer beneath and cast a quick look at it, 'three days, if this wind holds.'
There was a knock at the cabin door. 'Come in!'
Quilhampton rejoined them and Drinkwater pushed the decanter towards him and re-seated himself. 'Well, gentlemen, what did you make of that?'
'There's bad blood between them. Rubalcava doesn't want to go to San Francisco, that's clear enough.'
'Good, Mr Q. I agree… but he didn't want to go to San Francisco before they fell in with us, which argues a longer animosity than has been caused by our unexpected appearance in the Pacific'
'Perhaps they just didna get along too well, sir,' said Fraser.
Drinkwater nodded and refilled his glass. 'But from his latitude and course we can suppose their landfall at least was San Francisco, or the coast thereabouts. Now it is one thing to assume that they were not friends, but let us suppose you are a Spanish officer, bearing despatches from the authorities in the Philippine Islands. Where do you suppose you would be taking them?'
To the principal naval base in the Americas?' said Fraser.
'Yes, I think so. And that is not San Francisco. That is Acapulco…'
'For which he had a fair wind.'
'Correct, Mr Q. Now, to continue the hypothesis, suppose a British frigate appears out of the blue. What would you do, Mr Fraser?'
'If I was running?'
'Yes, as he was.'
'Well, I suppose I would see it as paramount to inform my superiors. From what you told me earlier about the "Armament" of ninety-one they seem to resent intruders in the Pacific'
'Exactly. And to do that you would lay a course for Acapulco, or Panama, but not San Francisco.'
A ruminative silence fell on the three officers which Drinkwater broke.
'So, gentlemen, we have Don Alejo Arguello determined, for some reason, to get to San Francisco at all costs, rather than inform his principals at Acapulco that a British frigate is loose in the Pacific'
'But, sir, though I dinna disagree with your argument, his principal is at San Francisco, he said he was aide to the Commandante there…'
'Who is also his "old brother".' They laughed at the Spaniard's awkward phrase. 'Well, perhaps that argues some collusion, who knows?' Drinkwater yawned. 'It's all pure supposition,' he added dismissively. 'I think it's time we turned in. I suggest you both keep loaded pistols handy. I've no mind to lose the ship while I sleep.'
It was an uneasy three days. Every morning and evening the Spaniards were brought on deck in batches, guarded by the marines and allowed to air themselves in the sunshine. The Santa Monica's officers were herded in sullen little groups and quartered in odd spaces. Curiously, the presence of the Spanish prisoners improved the morale of Patrician's people. The sight of others, more unfortunate than themselves, over whom they could enjoy a sense of triumph, seemed a tonic to their spirits. They did not worry over-much about the loss of prize-money asserting, so Drinkwater heard, that since the proportional loss fell most heavily on the officers, it was a greater hardship to them. There might have been a mutinous component in this dog-in-the-manger attitude, but if there was it was accepted as being part of the black humour of Jack, and to be overlooked. Certainly it amused, rather than alarmed Drinkwater who, as he expressed himself to Fraser, 'had been too much knocked about in the sea-service to do more than acknowledge the rough justice of the men's opinion'.
The officers themselves had little time to dwell on their ill-luck, for the presence of two hundred prisoners left them no time for brooding. Fraser and Quilhampton shared Drinkwater's cabin, a circumstance which exasperated them all despite the curtain that Tregembo had hung about the captain's cot-space, for what men most desire aboard ship is real privacy. No one on board was sorry when the masthead lookout raised the cry of land and an hour later the blue trace of tree-clad hills surmounted by a necklace of cloud lay on the eastern horizon.
Drinkwater was pacing the long quarterdeck, reluctant host to Arguello who walked beside him maintaining a difficult conversation.
'Capitán Rubalcava and myself, we were much surprise to see your ship, Capitán Drinkwater.' Arguello had been at obvious pains to improve his fluency in English during his captivity. 'You come to make war upon His Most Catholic Majesty's dominions?'
'You did not expect a British ship in the North Pacific, Don Alejo?'
Arguello shrugged. The gesture, though non-committal, was eloquently negative.
I was five hundred miles from any of His Most Catholic Majesty's dominions, Don Alejo.' Drinkwater stopped pacing and turned to the Spaniard, watching for his response. Again there came the shrug. 'If I wished, I might have devastated the trade of Peru, Panama…' It was Drinkwater's turn to shrug and wave his arm to the south, as though the whole Pacific seaboard of America lay at his mercy.
'So, Capitán, you come to the Pacific, you do not attack our trade ships, you keep from the land so we do not know you have come.
I ask myself why, eh? I think you come to make bigger trouble. I see Capitán Vancouver come. I am with Quadra when we made to leave Nootka… now you come back.'
Arguello's face was a mixture of dislike, frustration and eager inquiry. It seemed a good fiction to encourage. Nothing as positive came with his orders; as usual governmental parsimony prevented the effort of colonising. All he had to do was to prevent others from accomplishing it, yet such a firmly implanted suspicion in Spanish minds might work to his advantage. He smiled, tight-lipped, and read the gratification in Don Alejo's eyes.
'You may find, Capitán, more difficult than you think…'
'Perhaps,' Drinkwater said dismissively, 'but tell me about your voyage, Don Alejo. What was the purpose of your voyage?' He lowered his voice with the air of a conspirator and saw Don Alejo's glance shift to the figure of Rubalcava, leaning disconsolately against the rail, gazing ahead at the approaching shoreline. 'I see that Captain Rubalcava does not wish to come to San Francisco…'
He caught the quick, shifting glance of surprise that Alejo shot him glaze with dissimulation. Then Don Alejo raised his hands in an urbane gesture of helplessness. 'As the French say, Capitán, cherchez la femme.'
'A woman? Ah, I see, between you… I see…'
The high-flown theories of grand strategy propounded in his cabin a few nights earlier dissolved in the face of earthier causes. Don Alejo looked puzzled and then laughed, an unfeigned amusement that made Drinkwater slightly uncomfortable and Rubalcava look up from the rail.
'No, no, Capitán, not between us… Capitán Rubalcava does not want to come to San Francisco because of the hija of Don José, my brother…'
'Hija?'
'Si… er, I do not know how you say in English, er… ?'
A flash of intuition crossed Drinkwater's mind. He recalled the jibe Don Alejo had made at Rubalcava indicating the portrait of Elizabeth on his cabin bulkhead. Arguello had been taunting the Spanish captain. Rubalcava was clearly being put in his place.
'Your brother has a daughter.'
'Si, daughter… Rubalcava wishes to marry the Doña Ana Maria Conchita… it is impossible.'
Impossible? The lady is already promised?' 'Sí, Capitán, and Capitán Rubalcava is not high-born…' Drinkwater looked across the deck at the lounging Spanish officer.
'Rubalcava has much hate in his heart, much hate. And you have destroyed his ship, Capitán … in Acapulco…'
Don Alejo ended his explanation there, the words tailing off into that expressive, Hispanic shrug of immense possibilities and Drinkwater understood. In Acapulco were the means of Rubalcava's revenge.
Under her huge topsails Patrician ghosted inwards between the two great headlands that guarded the entrance of San Francisco bay. Half a league apart the high, tree-clad steeps of Bonita and Lobos Points rose sheer from the sea on either side of the frigate as the onshore breeze wafted her eastwards; the blue water chuckled beneath her round bow and trailed astern. Small seabirds dipped in her wake, screaming and fighting for the minute creatures her passage disturbed, a contrast to the rigidly ordered silence upon her decks.
At her fore-masthead the British ship flew a white flag of truce, but her guns were cleared for action, all but the saluting battery shotted. Slow matches burned in the tubs in case the locks should fail, and every man stood at his post, tense for the slightest sign of hostility from the Spanish ashore.
'They're buggers for red-hot shot, me lads…'
'Look, there's a battery below those trees, see…'
'And there's two man-o'-war brigs at anchor.'
'Lick those bastards wi' one hand up our arses, Jemmy.'
'Shut your fuckin' mouths!'
The whisper of comment, risen like the beginnings of a breeze in dried grass, died away.
Below, under an even stricter watch, the Spanish prisoners were confined until the proposed terms of the truce were ratified by the Spanish authorities and they could be released. Among them the silence was expectant, for no one ashore could know they were mewed up on board and the authorities might suspect the bold approach of the British cruiser was no more than an elaborate ruse to decimate the merchant shipping loading the hides and tallow, hemp and wheat upon which the fortunes of the settlement depended.
Drinkwater stood at the starboard hance, Fraser and Hill close beside him. The three of them listened to the leadsman, waiting to find the bottom and watching the Spanish lieutenant deputed to pilot them into soundings and the sand of an anchorage as the frigate moved ponderously into the vast embrace of the bay. Señor Lecuna, the Spanish lieutenant, was the only one of the prisoners on deck, both Don Alejo and Rubalcava being confined below until the ship had exchanged courtesies with the fort and established the nature of her reception.
'Fog, sir,' said Hill, sniffing the air like a hound.
It descended upon them like conjuror's magic, suddenly blotting out the surrounding landscape and instantly replacing the warm sunshine with a dripping, saturated atmosphere that darkened the decks and chilled the skin.
'Pasarán… Siga el rumbo!' said Lecuna. 'Siga el rumbo… vigile el compás!'
'Compass… rumbo? Ah! Rumb line… hold your course, Mr Hill,' snapped Drinkwater in sudden comprehension.
'Si… sí, hold course!' Lecuna nodded.
'Aye, aye, sir.'
For ten long minutes Patrician held on through the fog, her ropes dripping and the condensation collecting upon the guns.
'Look to your primings,' warned Fraser and prudent gun-captains turned to the match-tubs and whirled or blew on the sputtering saltpetre coils. Above them the sun reappeared, swirling through the nacreous vapour.
'Caiga a estribor… er, starboard, Capitán…'
'Starboard helm, Mr Hill, if you please,' amplified Drinkwater, watching Lecuna's hand. The leadsman called out that he had found the bottom, shoaling fast as Patrician crept into the anchorage.
'Si, bueno… arrie las escandalosas…' he pointed aloft, cut his hands outwards in the universal gesture of completion, and then waved them downwards.
'Tops'l halliards, Mr Fraser! Stand by forrard!'
On the fo'c's'le, the grey shapes of the carpenter's party stood ready to let the anchor go. The sea-bed had levelled out and Drinkwater wondered how close Lecuna would anchor them to the guns of the fort.
And then, with the same magical effect and as suddenly as it had come, the fog lifted, rolling away to shroud the great northern bight of the bay, produced by some local anomaly of temperature variation. Patrician found herself within the entrance to the southern arm of the huge inlet. A group of islands were visible, one a colony to the extraordinary pelican, while the bay forked, reaching deep inland to the north and the south. San Francisco lay on the slopes and hills of the southern headland, Point Lobos. To starboard, less than long-cannon shot away, rose the first of its green bluffs, a spur of that Point Lobos, surmounted by the white walls of the Commandante's residence and the colours of Castile. Beneath the languidly flaunting red and gold, the ramparts of a fort beetled upon her, muzzles of heavy artillery trained on her decks from their embrasures.
Patrician was turning as she emerged from the fog-bank, her topsails bellying aback against their tops, slowing the ship and imparting a sluggish sternway to her. As she gathered way astern, the anchor was let go, the topsails lowered and the hands piped aloft to stow them. With the cable running through the hawse, the saluting battery opened fire.
Patrician brought up to her anchor as the last echoes of the final gun-shot echoed round the bay. Putting off from a small boat jetty beneath the embrasures of the fort was a smart barge, decorated with scarlet and gold fancy-work. At her stern flew a miniature Spanish ensign and at her bow stood an officer with a white flag.
Drinkwater closed his glass with a snap and nodded his thanks to Lieutenant Lecuna. 'Pass word to bring up Don Alejo and Captain Rubalcava.'
The next hour was going to be difficult.
It had long been a contention of Drinkwater's that contact with the shore was the bane of a sea-officer's professional life and today had offered him no reason to change his mind. Now, as he stood on the wide, paved terrace of the Commandante's residence in the company of Midshipman Frey, awaiting the summons to meet the governor, he tried to relax.
Below them, the bluff was already casting its shadow across the southern arm of San Francisco Bay, the last rays of the sun disappearing over the Pacific behind him, beyond the entrance to the harbour. Skeins of brown and white pelicans flew in to roost, brilliantly lit, for the last of the sunshine illuminated the harbour in a wide swathe from the entrance. He watched the ships in the anchorage preparing for the ceremony of sunset, paying particular attention to his own Patrician, and the pair of Spanish brigs-of-war below him. Further away some dozen merchantmen lay off the town, their lower yards cock-billed as they worked cargo out of lighters alongside. Drinkwater could see the stars and stripes of the United States and the diagonal cross of Russian colours. But the big, black Russian line-of-battle-ship he had seen off Cape Horn was not in evidence. He cursed his over-anxiety, aware that he had been too-much worked upon by the cares of the day. And what a day it had been!
A day of constant arguments. First the Spanish officer who had boarded them on arrival had argued with Drinkwater over his blatant disregard for Spanish sovereignty by entering the port with his guns run out, demanding to know, in the name of King Carlos, what the devil he was doing in Spanish waters. Drinkwater had countered these intemperate demands and expostulations by coolly awaiting the arrival of Don Alejo Arguello and Captain Rubalcava.
Captain de Soto, the boarding officer, having made formal apologies for the peremptory mode of his address at the appearance of these gentlemen, then fell to arguing with them, insisting that he was acting on the Commandante's strictest instructions and exploding with rage at the news that the Santa Monica had been destroyed. De Soto's anger released a storm of fury from Rubalcava which was incomprehensible to the watching Britons, but which drained the colour from de Soto's face and sent his right hand flying to his sword-hilt. Don Alejo's temporising interruption calmed things down, but it was clear that Rubalcava was a deeply embittered man and the source of his disaffection stemmed from more than a matrimonial disappointment. There was an air of alienation about Rubalcava that seemed to Drinkwater's perceptive eye to go beyond the odium associated with the loss of a ship. Perhaps it was just the fruit of an active rivalry between officers on a colonial station, perhaps de Soto expected command of the Santa Monica or had always rated himself higher than Rubalcava; perhaps, Drinkwater thought, his mind running wild as the two Spaniards postured before the calming influence of Don Alejo, it was de Soto who had won the affection and hand of the Commandante's daughter. He gave up the vain speculation with the recollection that Don Alejo had indicated Rubalcava was of low birth. How much that meant in the Spanish colonies, Drinkwater could only guess. He had heard that the results of miscegenation were less frowned upon by the passionate Spaniards than the British in India, and that it was possible for able half-castes to rise in government service. Perhaps Rubalcava was one such man, though in his appearance he seemed to fit the Quixotic image of the Hispanic man of action.
When this purely domestic contention had finally died down, Drinkwater had found himself drawn into further argument following repudiation of his terms. The wood and water promised by Don Alejo were not available, said de Soto; upon that the Commandante, Don José Henrique Martin Arguello de Salas, was adamant. The lie of the land persuaded Drinkwater that both were readily available elsewhere, except that the point had become a matter of honour. De Soto's insistence compromised Don Alejo, despite the mandate of the Commandante, and Drinkwater sensed the Spanish hidalgo's loss of face before his juniors. He decided to intervene.
'Don Alejo,' he interrupted, 'I am willing to forgo the wood and water.'
Don Alejo's face brightened. 'Capitán, you are a man of honour…'
The indispensable formula of bow and counter-bow threatened to reassert itself and Drinkwater cut it short. 'All I ask, Don Alejo, is a written undertaking that Captain Rubalcava, his officers and the seamen taken out of His Most Catholic Majesty's ship Santa Monica, will not bear arms against the forces and possessions of His Britannic Majesty for the duration of the present war.'
'Que?' The vehemence of Rubalcava's interjection suggested he understood the gist of Drinkwater's demand. Rubalcava had been watching Drinkwater closely, knowing him for a wily opponent, and now asked what the heretic commander demanded under the very guns of Spain!
'Otherwise,' went on Drinkwater unperturbed, 'we will have to discuss the terms of ransom. You are my prisoners, Don Alejo, I have treated you as men of honour after you struck your country's colours in the face of superior force. You bear your swords and I offer you your freedom. All I ask is your parole not to serve again in the present war. It is nothing.'
He shrugged, aware that the gesture was catching, and feigned to dismiss further argument. Nevertheless it broke out with renewed violence, but in Spanish and detached from Drinkwater. In the end Don Alejo agreed, but it was clear that Rubalcava did not intend to adhere to whatever the others committed him.
De Soto had departed to confer with the Commandante, and the prisoners had resigned themselves to wait. Drinkwater had not agreed to Don Alejo's accompanying de Soto; the muzzles of those Spanish guns were too damned close.
De Soto returned an hour later. He was much changed, an affable, effusive and courtly man who requested the honour of Captain Drinkwater's presence at the Commandante's table that evening. An hour later they had begun to disembark the prisoners. They were still landing them as Drinkwater and Frey looked down into the dark cusp of the bay where, like a giant water-beetle, Patrician's long-boat made its way to the quays of the town.
'You are spared that tedious task, Mr Frey,' he nodded down at the labouring boat.
'Yes, sir.' Spruce in his new coat, its white collar patches bright in the twilight, Frey grinned back from the unaccustomed throttling of his formal stock. He had heard something about meeting a lady tonight. The occupants of the gunroom thought a great deal about meeting ladies.
Drinkwater moved his right shoulder beneath the heavy material of his own full-dress coat, glad of its weight in the evening chill. A touch of mist trailed across the dark foliage of the trees below them and the sudden concussion of the sunset gun made him start. It was echoed smartly by Patrician and the two brigs as their colours fluttered down. Night fell on the great bay, the lights of the ships twinkling across the smooth water. Two more beetles crept out from Patrician's side and began to circle her darkening bulk languidly.
'And that duty too, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater nodded, and both watched the two cutters begin to row the night's guard round and round the frigate.
The wait was beginning to tell on Drinkwater's patience and he sighed impatiently. He was tired, exhausted by three days of vigilance and today's largely irrelevant exertions. He had wanted only to disencumber himself of the damned prisoners, not to fence endless words, to be caught up in the parish-pump politics of a colonial outpost. He detested such futile activities, longed for the fresh air of the open sea. He straightened his back, eased his shoulder and drew in a long breath of the damp, aromatic evening air.
'Ah, Capitán, please forgive… His Excellency will receive you…'
Don Alejo Joaquin Arguello waved his arm for Drinkwater and Frey to follow.
Lieutenant James Quilhampton nodded a curt farewell to Lieutenant Cesar Lecuna of the Santa Monica. Upon these two officers had fallen the duty of co-operation during the landing of the prisoners. He looked briefly at the signed receipt.
'Adios… vaya con Dios…' Lecuna turned to his own men. 'Adelante!'
Quilhampton turned to walk back along the quay to the waiting long-boat, almost bumping into Midshipman Belchambers who ran up at full tilt.
'Sir! Sir! The men are running!'
'What? God damn! Why didn't you stop 'em?' Quilhampton clapped a hand to his hat and began to run. It was the hour of corso, the promenade. The draggle-tailed society of San Francisco was airing its social pretensions. Amid such a crowd, many of whom gathered to hiss and barrack the English sailors, he knew his seamen would melt like snow on a hearthstone.
'We couldn't stop 'em, sir… not without firing into this crowd.'
'No, of course not,' Quilhampton replied sourly to the marine corporal whose three men looked down sheepishly. The Spaniards had not liked the presence of the armed marines on their soil and Quilhampton had been obliged to admit they were appointed to the boats for his own protection and to prevent his men deserting. When that news had been communicated to Captain Rubalcava it had brought the first smile to the Spanish commander's face. Doubtless a few dollars had been spread amongst the boat's crew. Now only four men remained on board, studying the bottom boards under Quilhampton's withering glare.
'Did these lubbers try and run too?' he asked, and the question went unanswered. Behind him he felt a stir of hostility among the crowd of idlers. Some unfriendly shouts followed.
'Get in the boat,' he snapped at the marines, 'and take an oar each.'
It was going to be a damnably long pull back to the ship with so few oarsmen, but soon the night would shroud their humiliation. He followed Belchambers and the marines into the long-boat, took his place aft and tucked the tiller underneath his arm.
'Toss oars, bear off forrard!'
The crowd surged to the edge of the quay, abuse rising like a wave behind them. Someone spat, provoking a burst of expectoration and fist-shaking. A stone plopped alongside. A gobbet of spittle struck Quilhampton's neck.
'Pull, you buggers! Put your bloody backs into it!'
The heavy boat moved with ponderous slowness; Quilhampton endured further humiliation, but dared not turn and face his tormentors.
'Pull!'
As he sat hunched and swearing over the tiller his mind ranged over the wisdom of remaining in the harbour an hour longer. It had seemed to him as they had glided into the bay that the Patrician's presence within the dark embrace of those great headlands touched off some primitive suspicion in his mind. Intuition told him that despite her massed cannon, despite her state of readiness and the precautionary guard-boats pulling round the ship, she lay in mortal danger.
He could not explain this theory. The terms of the truce seemed water-tight, and it was unlikely that the Spanish authorities would break their word. But these new desertions combined with his suspicion of the connivance of Rubalcava, triggered off his nervous conviction that the ship was ill-fated, and he doomed with it. It was a far more serious matter than the desertion of the two lovers at Mas-a-Fuera, and he had yet to explain it to Captain Drinkwater.
Drinkwater exchanged bows with the Commandante, Don José Henrique Martin Arguello de Salas. His Excellency was a tall, heavily handsome man with a thick-set figure that was rapidly running to seed. In contrast to his brother he seemed of a more indolent character. Like Don Alejo he spoke a little English and he had a formally easy manner which, in the circumstances, put Drinkwater on his guard. He disliked being manipulated and Don José seemed an expert in the matter.
'Ah, Capitán, Don Alejo speak of his misfortune to meet you. You are come to make trouble for us, no?'
'I have come to do my duty, Your Excellency.'
'And what is your duty, Capitán?'
A servant appeared bearing a tray of glasses. Drinkwater took one and sipped from it before replying, meeting the Commandante's inquisitorial stare with h'ts own.
'A most excellent sherry, Señor … I command a cruiser, Your Excellency,' he said slowly, feigning a greater interest in the wine. 'It is the duty of a cruiser to wreck the enemy's trade…'
'We 'ave ships of other nations 'ere in San Francisco.'
'You have ships of nations with whom Great Britain is at war, Excellency, nations who until recently were our allies and received payments from our Treasury. You are a man of honour, Your Excellency, and understand such treachery is intolerable.'
'The Russian ships?' Don José asked, frowning, clearly having difficulty with Drinkwater's English.
'That is correct, yes.'
'And the ships of the United States, Capitán? Would you fire on the flag of the United States?'
'Great Britain is not at war with the United States, Excellency,' Drinkwater said, noting the quick glance between Don José and his brother, 'but of course,' he added, 'we should find it necessary to search even neutral vessels for contraband cargoes.' He smiled as courteously as he could in the knowledge that they were contemplating such a ruse. 'I would not like to imagine my reactions if I discovered that, for example, a Spanish ship was sailing under false, American colours. I am sure you take my meaning.'
The cloud hanging over Don José's brow lifted as Don Alejo hissed a few words of explanation at his elder brother. Don José nodded and met Drinkwater's smile with one of equal falsity. Drinkwater looked about him.
'Is Captain Rubalcava to join us this evening, Your Excellency?' Drinkwater asked. 'He was a gallant enemy…'
'No,' put in Don Alejo sharply, 'Don Jorge will not be joining us…'
Further enquiry or explanation was cut short by the major-domo's announcement. The gentlemen turned towards a heavy door and Drinkwater and Frey exchanged glances, then imitated the Spaniards' low bows. They were aware of the rustle of skirts and the subtle waft of perfume filling the candle-lit room. As he straightened up Drinkwater heard the faint rasp of sharply indrawn breath from Midshipman Frey. His face was flushed with a sudden wave of long-suppressed concupiscence and Drinkwater smiled, for the object of his sudden lust was overwhelmingly beautiful.
'May I present the lady Doña Ana Maria Conchita…' Don Alejo recited the young woman's names and titles, but Drinkwater distilled the information that she was his niece and Don José's daughter. Whilst the long absence from the society of women would have made memorable an hour spent in the company of any young woman with good teeth and a bosom, Doña Ana Maria's presence promised an evening of pleasing enchantment.
Tall, like her father, she wore the wide skirt and tight bodice of Spanish fashion. Her carriage was regal and her bare shoulders rose above the swirl of a shawl which was drawn together below her breasts. About her neck a necklace of Chinese jade reflected the candle-light, rising and falling with her breathing.
But there was far more to her beauty than mere sexual allure, for her face was as intelligent as it was lovely. Her eyes were of such an umbral brown that they appeared bronze in the light from the candles. Her flawless cream skin was unpowdered and her lips were soft, wide and red without the artifice of carmine. Above her straight nose and wide forehead, long black hair was oiled like jet, drawn back in the severe mode of her class, and beneath the swept-back waves at the side of her head, jade earrings depended from the lobes of her ears. Suddenly Rubalcava's embitterment made shattering sense. Drinkwater relinquished her hand and turned to his companion.
'Señorita, I have the honour to present Mr Midshipman Frey.'
It was clear that Frey was devastated by the lady, fighting an overwhelming desire fuelled by the gross appetites of the starved, and ready to die for her in the next moment if she had asked it of him. His hand shook as he bent over hers and he straightened up with an idiot look of rapture. She could not fail to be aware of the turmoil she was causing and Drinkwater turned to Don José. Both he and Don Alejo were clearly studying the effect Doña Ana Maria was having on the two British officers. Was there something premeditated about this attention?
'My uncle,' she said in an English that contained an elusively familiar inflection, 'tells me you have come to San Francisco with many cannon, Capitán.'
She had turned those wonderful eyes on him again.
'I have come on an act of humanity, Señorita, to repatriate the gallant Captain Don Jorge Rubalcava and his men, whom the fortune of war made my prisoners.'
There was no trace of reaction to the name of her former suitor, the tiny reactive muscles about the eyes that could reveal the quickening impulses of the brain remained unmoved. Presumably Rubalcava meant nothing to her. 'You speak excellent English, Señorita, please accept my compliments.'
'Thank you, Capitán. I learn it from my duenna, Doña Helena.' She indicated an elderly woman who wore a mantilla, whom Drinkwater had taken for Doña Ana Maria's mother and the Commandante's wife. If his senses had not been so mesmerised he would have recognised the folly of such a supposition. It was inconceivable that he should have entertained it, even for an instant. Doña Helena stared at him from a wizened face with a pair of fiercely blue eyes.
'Your servant, ma'am,' Drinkwater bowed, aware of the ferocity of her scrutiny.
'Aye, honoured ah'm sure, Captain.' There was venom in the reply, a sharp hatred bred in the bone and born of popish origins, and the mystery of Doña Ana's acquired accent was cleared up. In her native Scotland, Doña Helena would have been called Mistress Helen, though it was uncertain when she had last seen her native land.
Only the sombre figure of the priest remained to be introduced. He had come in with the women, an emaciated young Franciscan in a heavy wool habit. His crucifix and rosary chinked gently as he moved and his presence adumbrated the room. There was clearly no Doña José; the Commandante, it seemed, was a widower. The Franciscan's introduction as Fra Alfonso terminated the pre-prandial formalities and Drinkwater found himself leading the beautiful Doña Ana Maria in to dinner.
Drinkwater willingly surrendered to the charms of the young woman during the meal as he knew he was intended to do. His host, Don José, was on his left and seemed content to allow his daughter to practise her near-fluent English upon the British captain. There were a few initial questions about Drinkwater's career which he avoided exploiting, paying his host the compliment of reporting on the gallant conduct of the Spanish fleet in the momentous action off Cap Trafalgar, during which he had been a prisoner aboard the French flagship, Bucentaure.* (* See 1805.)
'You speak with the Marquis de Solana, Capitán, at Cadiz?' 'Yes, Your Excellency, I was received by him several times, concerning the matter of British prize-crews cast up on the coast after the great gale that followed the battle…'
The meal passed delightfully, though Midshipman Frey had a less happy time of it, seated next to the Scottish companion, Doña Helena. Yet he would not have traded his place for all the gold in Eldorado, for he could not take his eyes off the beautiful Doña Ana Maria opposite. Aware of Frey's sheep's eyes, Drinkwater began to feel sorry for the young woman, realising she was a victim of her own extraordinary beauty. It was not difficult to see how Rubalcava's proud spirit had been so enslaved. Something of an even darker alchemy was brewing in the unholy eyes of the silent Franciscan.
'You have children, Capitán?' The timbre of her voice was low and mellifluous.
'Yes, Señorita, I have two; a son and a daughter.'
'Ahhh. That is, they say, the choice of kings.' He watched her face as she added, 'I… I would like children…'
It was an impropriety, an intimacy, a mark of the isolation her beauty caused her, made in a low voice to a complete stranger.
'I understand you are to be married soon, Señorita,' he replied quietly.
'Yes…' She smiled and he sensed her excitement and the strength of her love for Rubalcava's rival which was prompting these confidences, confidences that were earning glances of disapproval from her duenna opposite. 'As soon as Nicolai arrives,' she ran on, her dark eyes glowing, 'he commands a great ship, like yourself, Capitán…'
'Nicolai?' Drinkwater was suddenly alert and cast a quick glance to his left where Don José seemed to be speaking in a low voice to Don Alejo.
'Aye, Cap'n, Nicolai Rezanov will be here soon tae clip your wings…' Doña Helena's blue eyes were chips of ice, chilled by ancient enmities. Her outburst attracted the attention of the Arguellos and turned them from their private conclave. In the sudden silence Drinkwater exploited the hiatus.
'Rezanov… an unusual name for a Spanish officer.'
Don José's face was a mask; Don Alejo made a small gesture to a waiting footman. The door was flung open and de Soto marched into the room and bent to Don José's ear. The Commandante looked sharply at Drinkwater.
'Diablo!' he muttered, then nodded and, as de Soto straightened up, the Commandante said, 'Capitán, there has been much trouble in the town. Some men from your ship… they run away… there is a mêlée and a woman is killed.'
'How many?'
In the light from the candle that stood on the cabin table Captain Drinkwater's face was thrown into dramatic relief. His head was cocked slightly, revealing the damaged muscles of his wrecked shoulder, and the single flame emphasised the intensity of his eyes. He was pale with fury.
'Eight, sir.' Quilhampton had never seen Drinkwater so angry and felt like a chastened midshipman. Beside him Fraser fidgeted nervously.
'Eight? Eight! God's bones, man, you had marines in that damned boat! Marines with bayonets, for God's sake, and you let eight men run!'
'Yes, sir,' Quilhampton mumbled unhappily.
'And do you know what they have done? Do you know what your eight precious liberty-loving English jacks have done, sir?'
'No, sir.'
'They swilled aguardiente and ran wild in a whore-house! The upshot of their desertion is that they have been accused of causing the death of a woman and… and…'
Drinkwater brought his clenched fist down on the table-top so that the candle flame guttered. 'They have entirely compromised me, tied me hand and fist, God damn them!'
'Sir?' Quilhampton frowned, not understanding.
Drinkwater let out a long breath. 'Good God, James, can you offer me nothing in extenuation?'
'Only that there were many people on the quay and to shoot would have endangered the local people.'
'Mr Quilhampton was much abused by the crowds, sir,' put in Fraser, 'much spat upon and the like.'
Drinkwater fell silent and then he asked: 'What became of Rubalcava?'
'He left in the first boat after you and Frey had gone ashore, sir.'
Drinkwater shook his head, then moved round the table and lifted three glasses from the fiddles atop the locker. 'Pass that decanter, Mr Fraser… thank you.'
He poured the bual into the glasses and handed each of the two officers a glass. 'What's it like on deck?'
'Still foggy, sir, and dead calm. You can hear the guard-boats… no fear of a surprise. Mylchrist's up there now, reckons his fever's sharpened all his instincts,' replied Fraser who had not long come below.
Drinkwater grunted. 'We've an hour or two, no more… well, your health.'
There was a pause and then Drinkwater looked at Quilhampton. 'Ease your mind, James, 'tis I who am the greater fool.'
'You, sir?'
'Yes… I have played right into their damned hands. I suspected something, but could not lay it by the tail… damned if I can now, but I'll wager the whore's death was contrived.'
'Contrived? I'm sorry… I don't follow…'
It had come to him in his enforced idleness, sitting in his barge as the oarsmen brought him back to the ship from the Commandante's boat jetty below the battery. There had been that vague feeling of something passing between the Arguello brothers, that sensation of their using Doña Ana to distract him. Whether she was a party to this he did not know, but it seemed obvious that the news of the brawl had been engineered and it came to him in the boat that those eight seamen had been lured away on promises of safety, promiscuous sex and money.
'Was there much contact between the people and the Spaniards while they were here?' he asked flatly.
'No, sir,' said Fraser, 'no more than one would expect with them cooped up on board.'
'Mount mentioned he caught two seamen and a marine bartering for tobacco,' Quilhampton added.
'Did he indeed?'
'But there is nothing particularly significant in that, sir,' said Fraser.
'Except that ample opportunity existed for a sum of money to pass to disaffected men,' Drinkwater said, 'and God knows it takes little enough to turn the heads of these poor devils. A gold dollar, the promise of a whore and a drink and a pass through the town…' Conviction was forming in his mind.
'And they're in an ugly mood, sir… simmering below the surface. They fought well enough, sir, but the smell of land…'
'Aye, and women,' growled Fraser, and Drinkwater felt guilt fuelling his anger.
'And Don Alejo had gold, sir, a lot of gold.'
'Why d'you say that, Mr Q?'
'He was concealing something on himself when he was compelled to abandon the Santa Monica. I thought it was a purse at the time. Then later, when he was quartered in my cabin, I went there by mistake, came below and without thinking, proceeded directly to my cabin. I opened the door before I realised my stupidity. Don Alejo was sitting smoking one of those damned cigars. He was half-undressed, lounging in my chair and on the cot lay his sword, some papers and a leather purse, the same one I had seen aboard the Santa Monica. It was bulging, sir, to the extent of revealing its contents… gold, sir.'
'Dollars, or pistoles or something very like…'
'No, sir, gold nuggets…'
'The treasures of the Manila galleon, eh?'
'I think perhaps only a little… a private speculation like the nabobs of the East India Company.'
'H'm. How did he take the intrusion?' Drinkwater asked.
'He was not pleased. I told him the stink of his cigar had attracted my attention and that smoking was forbidden below decks.'
'You should day-dream more often of Mistress MacEwan if it leads you into such adventures, Mr Q. Very well, then, it only serves to confirm my suspicions that some of the men were suborned. More may be preparing to desert at the first opportunity, we shall have to proceed warily…'
'Sir, Ah'd be obliged…' Fraser frowned.
'Yes, Mr Fraser, I'll explain,' Drinkwater motioned them to sit. He was past mere tiredness, the events of the last hours had stimulated him and his active brain was whirling with the problems that suddenly beset him. He passed his hands over his face, seeking a place to begin his explanation.
'Well, gentlemen, the main purpose of our cruise is to dislodge any attempt by the Russians to establish territorial claims northward of the Spanish domain of Nueva Espana. Since the Tsar repudiated his alliance with us last summer, it is believed that it is the intention of the Russian court to settle southwards from Alaska. Some reports, brought into Canada by voyageurs, indicated Russian incursions up the Colombia River, further north from here… it's all very vague, but as welcome to us as the Spanish claim to Nootka Sound was. Although they have a fur-trading depot at Sitka, in Alaska, the tenuous claims of Captain Vancouver lie between Sitka and here, from whence, if the evidence in the bay is anything to go by, the Russians obtain many necessary supplies.'
'I counted seven Russian vessels in the anchorage, sir, a schooner, three brigs, a barque and a ship, sir.'
'Yes. I saw them last night. They will be expected on the Alaskan coast soon, and now we have arrived, just at the wrong moment for them. Not only have we advertised our presence, but we have destroyed one unit of the Spanish squadron that might have protected their trade.'
'But it's Russian trade, sir. I mean, are the Dons that interested in protecting it?' asked Fraser, to whom the matter was still confused.
'I presume they would not want it destroyed,' Drinkwater replied.
'But the Russians, sir, if they are seeking territory, will become a direct threat to the Spaniards, competing for the same length of coast.' Fraser frowned.
'Yes. Eventually they might, once our claims of land and our failure to maintain them are dealt with. But, for the meantime, they are allies of expedience. Besides, this could become a matter of national prestige. I imagine the Dons would like their revenge for the loss of Nootka Sound. They only capitulated before because they lost the French monarchy as a support. Now they have Tsar Alexander. I believe they are about to settle the coast between them.'
'With what force?'
'The destruction of the Santa Monica does not draw all their teeth, Mr Fraser. Their main Pacific base is at Acapulco, they will have ships at Panama and, from what I heard tonight, there is a garrison at Monterey. I learnt something else tonight, gentlemen, and this is the reason why we have been compromised. The murder, if indeed there has been a murder, is a prevarication, a means to delay us. The Commandatore has agreed to meet me to discuss the return of our men after the murderer has been tried. He has made protestations of not wishing to impugn the honour of our flag after our courtesy to our prisoners. In the same breath he is talking of our breaking the terms of the truce, of referring to Monterey for instructions… in short, any damned obstruction that will delay us while we are enmeshed in some specious diplomatic tangle.'
'But sir, they have no force to keep us here!' expostulated Fraser. 'We can tow out from their guns in a couple of hours and those toy brigs wouldn't knock the marines' shakoes off.'
'You are correct in your specific, but not your diagnosis. We can tow out, Mr Fraser, but we may well meet a line-of-battle-ship coming in.'
'We can outmanoeuvre a Spanish battle-ship, sir,' said Fraser almost flippantly.
'She will be Russian, Mr Fraser, we saw her off Cape Horn and by the certainty with which our friends ashore are behaving, I believe her arrival imminent.'
'Do we tow out, sir?' Quilhampton asked, that inchoate sense of foreboding closing round him again. He had found its first physical manifestation at Mas-a-Fuera and the second had dotted him with the spittle of hostile Spaniards, half-castes and Indians. Now every moment of delay increased its intensity.
'Yes, make your preparations. Let us slip our cable and use the fog to make a virtue of necessity. In an hour then…'
They left him, scuttling out to pass word to the watch and turn out those sleeping below and at the guns. They would all be ragged-nerved and foul-tempered by the time they had laboured at the oars of the boats and dragged Patrician's inert mass clear of the bay. He would have to be patient with them and watch for outbursts of disaffection. In the meantime he would have to wait. He could not sleep, although he was haggard with exhaustion. An hour's sleep would make him feel worse than none at all. He poured the last of the bual into his glass and went on an impulse to his sea-chest. Rummaging in the bottom he drew out a frayed roll of canvas. Spreading it on the table he looked down at it. It was the portrait of a woman painted long ago by the French Republican artist Jacques Louis David. In addition to the frayed edges and cracked paintwork, little circles of mould were forming on the canvas, perverting the purity of the colours, and there were three holes, where the tines of a fork had once pierced it.
Hortense Santhonax stared back at him from cool grey eyes. Beneath the studied negligence of her pearl-wound and piled auburn hair, her lovely face held a hint of a smile. He remembered her, years ago, almost as long ago as the Spanish outrage at Nootka Sound, before she married Edouard Santhonax and espoused the Bonapartist cause. She had been a frightened emigree then, Hortense de Montholon, running from the vengeful howl of the pursuing mob, to be rescued by an impoverished master's mate named Nathaniel Drinkwater.* (* See A King's Cutter.)
He had been half in love with her then, before she turned her coat and married his enemy.
He had killed Edouard Santhonax less than a year previously, killed him to preserve the secret he had brought out of Russia. He had widowed her in the line of duty. Or had he and why did he stare at her portrait now? The bare shoulders and the soft breasts were barely concealed by the wisp of gauze artfully placed by the skilled hand of a seductress. She was already rumoured to be the mistress of Talleyrand, a fading beauty he supposed. It made no sense to be subject to so compelling an urge as had driven him to remove her portrait from the obscurity of his sea-chest.
Except that she was providence, an ikon, presentient as his dream and an impulse to be obeyed in those rare moments of hiatus when his tired mind was in revolt. An ikon: an apt simile. He was unable to shake off that old superstition of his destiny. She had become the embodiment of the spirit of France, inhabiting the subconscious recesses of his imagination and marrying the man whose fate had become inextricably bound up with his own. The dice had fallen his way last, it had not always been thus as his wrecked shoulder testified; but he was not yet free of Santhonax's ghost. The secret from Russia still haunted him, even here in the Pacific.
'Witchcraft,' he muttered and let the margin of the canvas go. It coiled itself like a spring and he looked up to see the faithful, pale oval of Elizabeth's portrait staring at him from its frame. 'Witchcraft,' he repeated and, hiding the canvas again, he drew on his cloak and went on deck.
In some strange way he felt relieved by the power the portrait of Hortense possessed. There was a reassuring quality of normality about it: a familiar neurosis. He had not been too much overcome by the beauty of Ana Maria.
'If you wish to say something, Tregembo, for God's sake say it and stop fiddling with those damned pistols!' Drinkwater snapped irritably. Mullender's duster and Tregembo's fidgeting had driven him on deck where a sleeting rain had turned him below again. Patrician bucked to the onset of the rain-bearing squall and gusts of cold, damp air rattled in through the sashes of the stern windows.
'You'll be needing 'em 'fore long zur, if I ain't mistaken,' Tregembo growled.
'The pistols? Would to God I needed 'em instanter! That damned convoy should have appeared by now…'
'I didn't mean for that, zur…'
'Eh?' Drinkwater frowned, looking at his coxswain with sudden attention. 'What the devil did you mean then?'
Tregembo laid the pistol down in its box and waited until Mullender had gone into the pantry. His old face, lined and scarred as it was, bore every indication of concern. 'Zur…' The door to the tiny pantry stood open behind him. Drinkwater crossed the cabin and closed it. 'Well?'
'The people, zur… you know they're disaffected… 'tis common enough upon a long commission an' they mean no harm to you, zur… but…'
'Spit it out, Tregembo, I'm in no mood for puzzlements.'
'For God's sake, Tregembo, those men deserted…' Drinkwater sat and stared gloomily at the old Cornishman.
'There are stories of women, zur… the boats' crews saw women ashore, an' there are grog shops a-plenty… those merchant-seamen were three sheets to the wind, they'm saying… they be powerful reasons for making a man run, zur.'
Drinkwater nodded. 'I know all this, Tregembo… why tell me now?'
'Because it won't be single men, zur. Next time it'll be a boat's crew, zur, an' the word, as I hear it, is to hell with the officers…'
There was a peremptory knock at the cabin door. Instantly Tregembo turned away, picked up the pistol case, shut it and slid it into its stowage in the locker.
'Come!'
It was Fraser. He was followed by the elderly Mr Marsden, a wizened and wrinkled man skirted with a leather apron which hid bandy legs but revealed a powerful torso, muscular arms and hands of immense size. The sudden irruption of the first lieutenant and the carpenter into Drinkwater's cabin indicated something serious had happened.
'Begging your pardon, sir, but Mr Marsden has just made an urgent report to me concerning water in the wells.'
Drinkwater looked sharply at the carpenter. 'Well, Mr Marsden?'
'Three feet, sir, in two hours, and making fast.'
'When were the wells last pumped? At the change of the watch?'
'Yes, sir, an' nothink much in 'em bar what you'd expect.'
'Something adrift below, then?'
Marsden nodded. 'Seems likely, sir.'
'Any idea what?'
'No, sir…'.
'No shot holes…'
'Not that I can see, sir… 'sides we engaged that Spaniard wi' the larboard broadside…'
'Aye, and now we're on the larboard tack! Mr Fraser, put the ship about on the instant! Mr Marsden, pump the wells dry, let's see if the other tack makes any difference.' He rose, perversely relieved in the need for action, potentially disastrous though the news was. For the ship suddenly to make so much water could be due to any one of a hundred reasons, none of them easy to determine, let alone overcome. 'Come, gentlemen, let us be about our business!'
Grabbing hat and cloak Drinkwater hustled Fraser and the carpenter out of his cabin and followed them on deck. Alone in the cabin Tregembo watched the surge of the smooth wake as it rose, bubbling green from Patrician's transom. A long-tailed Bosun-bird slid across his field of view, quartering the wake for prey. 'Don't you forget what I told 'ee,' he muttered after Drinkwater.
On deck the watch were running to their stations to tack ship. Drinkwater took no part in the manoeuvre, instead he fished in the tail-pocket of his coat for his glass then levelled it to the eastward.
Banks of slate-coloured clouds rolled to leeward dragging dull curtains of rain behind them, blotting out sections of the faint blue line of the coastal mountains of California. From one such shroud the low line of Punta de los Reyes was emerging. Patrician had spent nine days keeping station off the point round which any convoy from San Francisco must pass on its way to the Alaskan settlements of the Tsar. They had kept well to seaward of the long, low arm of sand-dunes and marram grass, lurking out of sight to avoid either of those two man-of-war brigs that might be sent to see if the coast was clear. Even allowing a week for the tardiest merchant ship to complete her lading, it would be reasonable, Drinkwater argued to himself, for them to have intercepted some trading vessels moving north by now.
Patrician jibbed up into the wind and the foreyards were swung on the word of command.
Unless, Drinkwater mused, those merchantmen were waiting for something more puissant than a pair of brigs; something like a Russian line-of-battle-ship! Not for the first time Drinkwater cursed the brevity of his aptly-styled briefing from the Admiralty. Again he felt that sense of abandonment by Lord Dungarth, the very man from whom he would have expected the most comprehensive elucidation of the state of affairs in the Pacific. He knew his orders originated from British spies in the Russian service, agents whose access to the most secret intentions of the Tsar had been preserved at a prodigious cost, as Drinkwater had good reason to know.
Supposing, he reasoned, he had been utterly mistaken in that glimpse of another man-of-war off Cape Horn. Suppose that brief spectral image had magnified itself in his imagination and the vessel had been, at worst, a Spaniard. He knew that the Russian-American Company, under whose auspices Russian ships traded down the coast from Alaska, had armed vessels at their disposal. He knew, too, that at least one frigate had been built on the Pacific coast of North America for the purpose of reinforcing Russian claims upon the shores of what Drake, Cook, and now the Admiralty, were pleased to call 'New Albion'.
Patrician forged ahead, gathering increasing way on the new tack. The hands were busy coiling the braces on the pins and on the fo'c's'le the weather fore-tack was hauled down to the bowing bumpkin. Shafts of sunlight fanned down through the clouds, dappling the surface of the sea with brilliant patches of dancing water. Off on the quarter a school of dolphins abandoned the chase of a shoal of bonito and gambolled in their tumbling wake. Neither the brightening weather nor the appearance of the cetaceans lightened Drinkwater's gloom. All his ponderous considerations were of little consequence now. Marsden's report postponed them indefinitely. The leak and its cause superseded all other matters and it did not help his temper to realise that the trap he had baited by towing out of San Francisco Bay would now be useless. His nearest dockyard was in the West Indies with the Horn to double to get there. He had only one course of action open to him: Hobson's choice of a careenage.
'Well?'
As Marsden came aft Drinkwater stopped at the after end of the starboard gangway, his cloak flapping round him in the wind, his hands clasped behind his back. The carpenter's face was still clouded by concern.
'She's still makin' water, sir… perhaps a little less, but 'tis bad enough, sir.'
'Damn! Very well, Mr Marsden, very well. I'll be below myself shortly. Mr Fraser!'
'Aye, sir?'
'Steer east-nor'-east and fetch me the coast directly.'
Below the waterline the hull was a vast stygian cavern of noise. He followed Marsden and his two mates with their lanterns guttering in the stale, mephitic air, trying to shut out the natural noises of the creaking and groaning space to hear those unnatural sounds the better. It was a hopeless task, one that he was less qualified than Marsden to execute, yet one which demanded his attention. How far below the waterline was this leak? Any remedial action he took depended upon some rough location. To careen Patrician properly would render her utterly defenceless should she be taken by surprise, for all her guns and stores would have to come out of her and be safely landed. Drinkwater had himself led an attack on a French frigate in such a supine state, and carried her safely out to sea from her bolt-hole on the Red Sea coast of Arabia. To be served himself in similar fashion, dished-up to an enemy without the chance of defending himself sent worms of apprehension crawling about his belly. But he had to know the worst and he stumbled along the carpenter's walk, a narrow space maintained free of stores just inside the ship's skin, by which access was provided to plug shot-holes and maintain the water-tight integrity of the ship.
'Mind, sir, this grating be a bit loose…'
'Yes, thank you…'
In the yellow pools of lamp-light he could see the ship's inner skin, discoloured with the traces of mould. The thick air was heavy with the multiple smells of this great warehouse of the cruiser's wants. Here powder and shot were stored in magazines and lockers; locked store-rooms housed spirits and flour, fish and dried peas. Tier upon tier of barrels, stowed bung up and bilge-free, held the potable sweet-water; casks of dubious age contained the salt-pork and cheese provided by a munificent Victualling Board; the oats and dried fruit, the wood-store and oil-room, all fitted below the waterline, above, abaft or forward of the hold proper. The platformed section of the orlop along which they worked their way showed no ingress of water. Amid the creaks and groans of the ship's timbers, the slosh of bilge-water and the hiss of the sea beyond the inner and outer wales and the massive futtocks, they strained their ears for sound of a roar, a spurt, even a trickle of incoming water. But all they could make out above the working of the ship was the squeal of disturbed rats.
Drinkwater escaped to the upper deck, scanning the horizon and again finding the sea bereft of any sign of a ship. A mile to leeward a whale fluked, slapping the water with its gigantic tail before sliding into the depths of the ocean. Somehow that brief appearance of leviathan only served to emphasise the emptiness of the scene.
Slowly Patrician approached the coast; the yellow line of Punta de los Reyes spread across the horizon ahead, the clouds hanging over the coastal mountains fused into mist and falling rain. Drinkwater crossed the deck to where Fraser, his odd, sandy features wearing a comic expression that bespoke his anxiety, waited to hear what Drinkwater had to say with as much patience as he could muster.
'Hae ye any luck, sir?'
'Little enough, Mr Fraser.'
'No, I couldna find anything either. I thought it might be the hood-ends…'
Drinkwater considered the suggestion. The hood-ends were where the butt ends of the strakes, or planks, met the timbering of the stem. Here, the constant working of the sea round the bow could disturb the fastenings and loosen the planks. Leaking about the stem was very difficult to determine at sea and was increased by the ship continuing to make headway.
'That's an informed guess, Mr Fraser. Whatever the cause we cannot ignore the matter. I intend to get the ship into sheltered water and lighten her. We may have to careen, which will mean the devil of a lot of labour. Whatever expedient we are driven to we'll require a boat guard. If there is a Russian battle-ship in the offing we had better lie low. God help us if we are caught.'
'Amen to that, sir.'
'For heaven's sake it'll be like being caught in a whore-house on Judgement Day… begging your pardon, Mr Henderson.'
'I appreciate the strength of your metaphor, Mr Mylchrist, and deduce therefrom that we can expect an exceedingly great wrath to descend upon us should the event come to pass.'
'Well, we can't ignore the matter. Three feet in the well ain't a lot, but it came in damned quick and I think something fell out, a trenail, perhaps,' said Quilhampton, leaning on the wardroom table, his head in his hands, 'that's the only logical explanation.'
'D'you think we're up against logic, James?'
'What the hell else d'you think we're up against?' Quilhampton jerked up.
Mylchrist shrugged. 'I didn't get my wound from an enemy…'
'No… no more you did…'
Mylchrist's gloomy implication chimed in uncannily with Quilhampton's superstitious foreboding.
'A nail from the hull — another in our bloody coffins…'
'Oh, for God's sake, Johnnie…'
'Gentlemen, perhaps a prayer is apt while we wait for the first lieutenant.'
'What are you going to pray for, Mr Henderson?' asked Mylchrist sourly. 'Three hundred pairs of feet enabled to walk upon the water?'
'Mr Mylchrist, I am outraged! If God abandons us in our extremity, your blasphemy will give him cause enough… happily His mercy is infinite and able to accommodate a miscreant as wretched as you.'
'Ah, I forgot the quality of mercy,' remarked Mylchrist sarcastically, 'the recollection comes as a great relief to me.'
Henderson drew from his nose the spectacles he kept in almost permanent residence there, a habit which intimated he was never far removed from the devout perusal of Holy Scriptures. Such a deliberate and portentous gesture augured ill for the bantering inhabitants of the wardroom as they lounged about, waiting for their orders from the first lieutenant.
'Johnnie, what exactly did you mean just now?' Quilhampton interjected, a preoccupied look on his lean face.
'About what?'
'About the leak. Did you mean to imply someone may have had a hand in the matter?'
'Well, yes, of course…'
'Gentlemen, I have your orders… pray pay attention. You may require to make notes… we're in for the devil of a hard time.' Fraser's burr ended the conversation as the worried Scotsman hurried into the wardroom and waved aside the negro messman and his coffee pot. 'Nae time for that, King, nae time at all…'
It was not ground of his own choosing. A light mist trailing in the wake of a rain shower was clearing as they closed the coast. Patrician stood shore wards under a single jib and her three topsails, a cable bent to her sheet anchor and a leadsman chanting from the forechains. Balanced on the rail, braced against the mizen shrouds, Drinkwater scanned the littoral ahead. He sought an anchorage beyond the flats that extended northwards from Punta de los Reyes. A long, comparatively low-lying spit of land extended for fifteen miles northward of the headland, behind which, his charts suggested, lay an inlet running deep into the countryside. He had little real knowledge of its suitability, but the preoccupation of a worried mind convinced him that to delay, to seek a more ideal spot, would be foolish.
Ahead of him the mist had resolved itself into a low cloud of spray that hung over the pounding white of breakers where the long Pacific swells toppled and thundered on the sands of the Californian foreshore. Behind the beach low sand-dunes ran to the southward and, somewhere beyond the horizon, terminated at Punta de los Reyes. At intervals along this sand-pit higher eminences rose and, at the distal point, a low but prominent hill marked the termination of the land. The white of breakers pounded on the low bar around which Drinkwater hoped to work Patrician and seek an anchorage beyond the spit, in the safety of the long lagoon of Tomales Bay.
The wind had fallen light, a gentle onshore breeze that ruffled the sea. The promise of sunshine earlier in the day had failed and cloud had closed off the heavens and given the sea's surface a leaden colour, as it lifted itself to the easy motion of the incoming swells.
'Noooo bottom!' The leadsman's chant had become monotonous, though they were within a league of the shore and then, sharply insistent: 'By the mark twenty!'
The breakers were suddenly nearer, drawing out on the starboard bow. The gentle pitch of the ship was steepening as she reacted to the shortening of the heaving wave-length compounded of the rise of the sea-bed and the back-swell, beating seawards from the rampart of the land.
'By the mark thirteen!'
Worms of anxiety were crawling in Drinkwater's belly. Hill came across the deck and stood below him. Without words they shared their apprehension. Tomales Point was opening all the time. A guano-stained rock had detached itself from the land as it changed its appearance with their close approach.
'Bird Rock, sir,' Hill remarked, though Drinkwater knew the comment was an expression of caution, not topographical interest. He felt a swell gather itself under Patrician's stern, lifting it and thrusting the ship forward so that her bow dipped sharply. The sudden elevation and clearer view ahead alarmed both captain and sailing master. They were in shoal soundings now, the leadsman chanting the deeps of nine and eight fathoms. Behind the smoking barrier of the long sand-pit, the narrow placid opening of the lagoon stretched away to the southwards. On its far shore the low-lying land rose gradually, hazing into the distance and the rain-covered mountains. But across the entrance to Tomales Bay lay the whitened fury of the thwarted Pacific, roaring and thundering upon the sand-bar that blocked their intended refuge.
Then the swell rolled under them, the stern dropped and the bow reared up, the long bowsprit stabbing almost vertically. Drinkwater felt himself jerked by the mast-whip shaking the mizen shrouds. Ahead of them the smooth back of the swell culminated in a great arch of water, soon to disintegrate in hundreds of tons of roiling water as one more breaker on the coast. It entirely blotted out their view, but both Drinkwater and Hill had seen enough.
'Stand by the braces!' Drinkwater roared, leaping from the rail. 'Down helm! Larboard tack! Hands aloft, let fall the courses and't'garns'ls! Lively there! Afterguard, leggo spanker brails! Haul aft the spanker! Come, Mr Mylchrist, move those lubbers smartly there… Fo'c's'le…'
'Sir?' Comley stood, four-square, facing aft-expectantly.
'Hoist your jibs, sir!'
Hill had moved across the deck to stand by the binnacle. He shot glances at the compass, then aloft at the masthead pendant and at the larboard dogvane.
'Full and bye, Mr Hill…'
Patrician began to swing with an infuriating slowness, bringing the swell onto her beam and rolling to leeward. As her bowsprit pointed round to the north it seemed to trace the curved shore of Bodega Bay. Drinkwater anxiously watched the thundering breakers get closer; the air was full of the roar of them, the air damp with the spray of their destruction upon the sand-bar. Beam-on, Patrician lifted on a mighty crest; the huge, oily swell passed beneath her and she rolled violently into the following trough. The sails slatted impotently, slapping back against the masts with a rattle of blocks and slap of buntlines. The wind dropped and, for several minutes, Drinkwater considered the necessity of anchoring, to avoid grounding in such an inhospitable spot. But the ship carried her way and the wind filled her sails sufficiently for her to maintain steerage. Crabbing awkwardly to leeward Patrician clawed slowly to the north and westwards, rounding Bodega Head, the far end of the bay, with a cable's length of deep water to leeward.
As the headland dropped astern, relief was plain on everyone's face.
'A damned close thing, sir,' said Hill, shaking his head.
'Yes,' replied Drinkwater curtly. 'Stand the leadsman down now. We'll tack ship and haul to the's'uthard in an hour.'
Drinkwater saw Marsden approaching him, his hat in his hand.
'Yes, Mr Marsden, I presume you have bad news? Troubles never come singly?'
'Yes, sir…'
'Well?' Drinkwater could hear the slow, solemn clank of the pumps, sluicing water from below and out through the gun-deck ports. 'How much water is she making?'
'The devil it is!'
'It's an auger, sir… there's an auger missin' from my shop!'
'Are you sure?'
'Aye, sir, an' both my mates agree, sir… gone missin' recent, like.'
'Anyone else know about this?'
'Well… my mates, sir… that's all at present but…' he looked round helplessly. News such as the theft of a drill-bit from the carpenter's shop following so hard on the discovery of a leak could lead to only one conclusion: the leak was a deliberate act of sabotage.
'Very well, Mr Marsden. Tell your men to hold their tongues.' Drinkwater was pale with anger and Marsden happy to quit the quarterdeck under the captain's baleful glare.
'Drake's Bay, gentlemen.'
Drinkwater laid the point of the brass dividers on the chart, a facsimile of George Vancouver's survey supplied by an unusually obliging Admiralty whose largesse had been prompted by the desire to see him and his frigate gone from home waters. Captain Drinkwater was, under no circumstances, to have been permitted to plead any of the customary excuses for delay. The folio of copies of Vancouver's and Cook's charts had arrived by special messenger with a smooth but pointed letter from Mr Barrow: Every consideration is being extended to facilitate the speedy departure of H.M. Frigate under your command…
Drinkwater shook off the obsessive recollection to concentrate upon the task in hand as his officers clustered round. The spur of Punta de los Reyes jutted into the Pacific, doubling back to the eastward in a distal point behind which re-entrant lagoons, sand-dunes and an occasional hill formed the border of a bay within which shelter from the prevailing winds and the Pacific groundswell might be sought. Here, more than two centuries before, driven as Drinkwater now was by necessity, Francis Drake had refitted his storm-battered ship. Drinkwater had rejected the place earlier because there was a danger of its being exposed to view from the south-east, a mere thirty miles from the hostile Spaniards at San Francisco. Now, it offered them their only accessible refuge.
'Ideal, gentlemen,' he said with more confidence than he felt, let us hope the ghosts of Drake and his people look kindly upon us, for we have much to do.'
'Why didn't he go into San Francisco, sir?' asked Quilhampton, pointing at the great arrns of the harbour as it wound inland amid sheltering hills.
'Because, Mr Q, he sailed right past it, without discovering the entrance. Now, this is what I intend we should do…' He paused to get their attention. They straightened up from the chart, coughing and shuffling. Fraser and Quilhampton had notebooks ready.
'Immediately upon coming to an anchor we will hoist out all the boats and lower the cutters. I want Mr Q to land Mount and a detachment of marines with seven days' rations to occupy this hill…' Drinkwater pointed to a neatly hachured cone depicting a summit some two miles inland from the eastern side of the bay. 'You will establish a signal station, Mr Mount. We will give you a boat-mast and a few flags and Mr Belchambers with a couple of seamen. I want a daily runner to meet a boat with your report. Understood?'
'Perfectly, sir,' nodded Mount.
'Good. Usual signals for enemy in sight… any approaching ship is an enemy.'
'I understand, sir.'
'Very well. When you have landed the marines, Mr Q, I want you ashore here, on the point, with an hour-glass and a tidepole. We know the moon is waxing and the tides with it, but I want to know the maximum rise and fall as soon as possible.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
'Good. Now Mr Fraser and you, Mr Hill, the greatest burden of the task falls on you. We will send down our topmasts and bridge the boats. I want the spare spars used for that… then I want two anchors laid out astern. We will shoe these, for I want no risk of them coming home…'
'Your pipe, Mr Comley!'
The boatswain straightened up from the rail and a piercing whistle rolled over the smooth waters of the anchorage. Above the heads of the men in the cutter, all activity aboard Patrician ceased. The deck parties getting the topmasts down and the spare spars over the side into the long-boat, launch and barge, the details beginning to shift stores in the hold, the running messengers, the labouring landsmen and toiling cooks all stood stock-still, pending the pipe to carry on.
Under the larboard bow the cutter bobbed, bowsed in to the ship's side by a boat-rope. In shirtsleeves Captain Drinkwater and Mr Marsden leaned inelegantly over the side, each with a musket ramrod placed against the ship's side; they put the other ends to their ears. The operation had been repeated several times and the men, having been exhorted to work as they had never done before, were heartily fed up with the periodic whistled injunctions to stop and keep silent.
The cutter's crew strove to hold the boat as motionless as possible, the bowman bracing his boat-hook against the downward thrust of the larboard bumpkin, an oarsman stilling the rumble of a rolling loom.
'Got it, sir!' Marsden's eyes gleamed with triumph and Drinkwater withdrew his ramrod, shuffled further forward while the boat lurched dangerously and crouched next to Marsden, his ramrod replaced against Patrician's spirketting alongside that of the carpenter's.
Drinkwater put his ear to the small, expanded bell that was designed to tamp the charge and ball in the breech of a Brown Bess. The dull, formless sound that was part the resonating of the ship, part the blood in his ear was dramatically displaced. It was low and indistinct, but instantly recognisable as the sound of water running through a constriction. His eyes met those of Marsden and he nodded.
'Very well, Mr Marsden, mark it…'
Marsden looked at the hull, reached out and scored a mark with a lump of chalk. The problem still remained to discover how far below the waterline the sea was gaining ingress. Not far by the clarity of the noise. Less than a fathom? Drinkwater fervently hoped so. He nodded at Marsden again.
'Well?'
Marsden was looking up at the hull. Above them the curved head-rails swept from the fo'c's'le to the massive stem timbers and Patrician's gilded and painted figurehead. Bright splashes of colour and limned streaks of gilt were encrusted with salt and the chips and chafing of ropes, while overhead stretched the gratings that formed the shitting place for the crew. Suddenly the carpenter turned to Drinkwater, comprehension widening his eyes.
'The shot-locker, sir… the forrard shot-locker!'
'By God, Marsden, you're right!' Drinkwater turned and the boat lurched again. 'Haul her back to the ladder there, and be quick about it!'
Neither Drinkwater nor Marsden could contain their impatience as the boat was hauled aft along the ship's side. Noting the sudden flurry of activity below him, Comley leaned over the side.
'Permission to carry on, sir?'
'Yes, Mr Comley, carry on… and get two lanterns ready!'
Again the pipe whistled over the placid water of the bay, but now it was not the imperious single note of the 'still'. Now the note hopped down a tone and men swung to work again, cursing and bantering according to temperament and the liberty that the leading hand, or petty officer, midshipman, mate or lieutenant allowed them.
The cutter ground alongside the long-boat and launch which were being lashed into one huge raft, purlined with the spare spars to form a platform for heavy gear and guns. Drinkwater and Marsden scrambled out of the cutter.
'Thank you, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater called to the midshipman in command, 'you had better return to assist the first lieutenant to get that second anchor laid out astern.'
Without waiting for a reply and waving aside a pretended and half-cocked formal welcome, Drinkwater ran below with Marsden waddling in hot pursuit. It had been his strict instruction to his officers, and one which he himself saw no reason to disobey, that the urgency of the work over-rode everything else and that they would borrow the phrase of the English navigator who had first charted the careenage, for the gentlemen should labour with the mariners.
With the activity and eagerness of a man half his age, Drinkwater sped below. Every moment that his ship lay defenceless in the bay cost him agonies of worry; now, with almost certain knowledge of the location of the leak, he was at once nervously eager and apprehensive to see it for himself. If Marsden was right, the leak might not be so very difficult to get at. If it was an act of deliberate sabotage, some ease of access could be assumed; on the other hand anyone contemplating such a deed would run in fear of a discovery that could hang the perpetrator.
'Here, you men,' he hailed a working party hauling cable aft for bending on the spare anchors, 'belay that and come below.'
The shot-locker Marsden referred to was right forward, a deep, narrow, inward funnelling space immediately abaft the massive timbers of the stem. This otherwise useless space was one of several voids about the ship in which iron shot was stowed. In the case of the two shot-lockers at the very extremities of the ship, they served a double purpose and indeed, so wet and corroded did the shot in them become, that it required extensive scaling and was rarely used for action. Instead, while it formed a reserve, its chief purpose was to provide manageable concentrations of weight at the ship's ends by which, with facility, her trim might be altered.
Two or three men might, in such a remote corner of the frigate, shift the contents of the locker and get at the skin of the ship undetected. Drinkwater conceded the lead of the impromptu procession to Marsden who had grabbed a lantern. Dropping from the orlop into the hold they worked their way forward. Now the ship lay tranquilly at anchor, Drinkwater fancied he heard the haunting trickle of water long before they reached the hatch to the forward shot-locker, but there was no doubt half-an-hour later when the seamen he had commandeered sweated below the faint flame of a lantern he held above their labouring heads. The pungent smell of disturbed and powdery rust cut through the thick stench of bilge as the shot was handed up and rolled like reluctant footballs aft, clear of the small square hatch-coaming. Gradually the grunting men worked themselves lower until one swore and suddenly they could see the dark gleam of running water in the lamplight.
'Look!' Marsden hissed. Drinkwater could see for himself. A partially rotten section of the ship's inner skin had been removed, the lighter colour of exposed wood showed clearly. Ten minutes later Marsden and one of his mates had swapped places with the gasping seamen and levered off the broken inner planking. The jet of water that squirted inwards from the outer hit them like a firehose.
They were lucky. Lucky in the mist that lay offshore, shrouding their activities from all but the eyes of a few curious Indians and a drunken mestizo that rode, legs swinging, on the swaying back of a decayed burro. Lucky in the location of the leak, deliberate though it was, for by discharging only eight guns and shifting stores and cannon aft, they raised it above the waterline where it could be properly repaired. And they were lucky that the wind held light, that no disturbing swells rolled around Punta de los Reyes to dislocate their tender situation.
But luck was something realised in retrospect, or perceived solely by degrees. Nothing at the time could mitigate the excoriating anxiety that churned the pit of Drinkwater's stomach and sent him about the deck to direct, encourage and chivvy. Periodically he cast an eye at Mount's distant flagpole. Once the signal for an enemy in sight lifted limply above the post, and marine runner and midshipman met at the appointed rendezvous to learn that the ship was passing to the south and appeared not to have seen the Patrician skulking with lowered masts in the bight of Drake's Bay.
But it was not simply the dread of being caught defenceless with his guard down and the frigate in a state of disorder, as he had once caught Edouard Santhonax in the sharm of Al Mukhra, that worried him.* (* See Brig of War.) Worse was the underlying anxiety of the cause of their predicament, that deliberate act of sabotage about which there was no doubt. He had inspected the hole and it had been drilled with an auger bit and possibly plugged until an apt moment arrived with a coast and refuge to leeward to compel Drinkwater to make for the land.
There was only one explanation for such a calculated act. Whoever planned it, intended to desert. The country about them was empty; a desperate man could lose himself in an hour or two of liberty. In the direction of the distant mountains, the wooded foothills suggested fast-flowing streams, game and freedom. If a few desperate souls succeeded in such a venture it was almost certain that more would follow, that a trickle of stragglers might become a flood. He feared he would be left with a dismantled warship and lack the means of refitting or working her, let alone fighting her.
Such thoughts chased themselves about his weary brain, robbing him of sleep until, when he finally capitulated to exhaustion, they inhabited his dreams, assuming nightmarish qualities in which laughing, drunken seamen taunted him as they caroused with dark-eyed Spanish and Indian beauties, or stalked him through the dense woods, as he had once been stalked through the pine-barrens of South Carolina.* (* See An Eye of the Fleet.) He would wake shuddering and sweating, steadying his nerves with a glass and sitting gloomily in his chair, ticking off the precautions he had taken to prevent desertion. Mount had been instructed to watch for a signal from the ship, so that his marines might cut off any men running from the beach; the officers had been instructed in the matter, and the one boat not needed as a platform or for some purpose concerning the refit such as holding stores, rowed a constant night-guard about them.
There had been one farcical alarm when the marine sentry on the fo'c's'le had fired at an innocent turtle, mistaking it for a swimmer, and there had been an inevitable slackening in vigilance as the days passed uneventfully. But there were Irishmen and papists aboard who were less hostile to the thought of Spanish rule, vestigial as it was; and there was a dissenting faction epitomised by the Quaker Derrick with his innocent and simplistic cant about the evils of war.
Lastly, there was Drinkwater himself, by no means unsympathetic to the aspirations of men driven by the protraction of this interminable war. Such sympathy ran contrary to his duty and his sense of the latter had been powerfully reinforced by the wanton act of sabotage, stripping from his consideration the plight of the unfortunate. In the uncompromising light of day he bore the unaltered burden of command: to bring them safe home again having first executed his orders.
'Another heave, there, bullies… Waay-oh and belay! Fetch another tackle, Mr Comley, and reeve a bull-rope through the chess-tree sheave and take it to the jeer capstan. We'll get a better lead… stand easy a moment there amidships…'
Quilhampton wiped his face, smearing his shirt sleeve and feeling the fabric rasp on his unshaven cheek. This was only the third gun to be heaved back into position, though they had been labouring since four o'clock in the morning. They had eight more to drag forward from the after end of the gun-deck, 24-pounders, each weighing two and a half tons and each with an inert brutishness that provoked cursing from the tired men. Another eight of the damnable things had been hoisted off their carriages and laid on the impromptu decking of the raft.
They had lifted the bulkheads and deprived the captain and officers of their privacy, rolling guns aft and moving every possible weight towards the stern in order to lighten the bow. The after ends of both the gun-deck and the berth-deck were cluttered, and on either side of her waist amidships, Patrician looked like a merchantman loading from lighters.
'Ready there? Very well. Stand-to!' Quilhampton concentrated again, waving up three men with hand-spikes and shouting to set the tackles tight. Slowly the heavy carriage was manoeuvred along the deck, swung through a right angle and its wheels were trundled into the familiar grooves of its station.
Patrician had started life as a small line-of-battle-ship, bearing sixty-four guns according to the establishment of the day. But ten years after her building, when war with France broke out, she was razee-ed, cut down by the removal of her upper gun-deck, and converted into a heavy frigate. Her main armament consisted of two dozen of the 24-pounders Quilhampton was engaged in replacing in their ports. Such cannon could be found on the middle gun-deck of first-rates, monstrously awkward things whose movement, even in the tranquillity of a sheltered anchorage, had constantly to be controlled by ropes and tackles.
'A trice more on that bull-rope, there, handsomely… handsomely… belay! That's well there! Come up!'
Men relaxed, a collective sigh of relief swept the gun-deck and Quilhampton gave them a moment's breather before bawling, 'Next one, lads…'
They had started most of their fresh water casks into the bilge and then pumped out the contents to lighten the ship and lessen her draught. That first day Quilhampton had spent hours watching the tide make sluggishly upwards, marking the pole he had driven into the beach. It had risen little more than a fathom, insufficient to persuade Captain Drinkwater to beach the ship. Besides, thought Quilhampton, looking round him as the tackles were over-hauled and hooked into the carriage ring bolts of number nine gun, the leak had been reasonably accessible and a heavy stern cant had brought it above the waterline. They had been lucky. Damned lucky.
'How do you do, Mr Q?'
The unintended rhyme of Fraser's enquiry provoked a ripple of laughter, laughter that the spent officers left unchecked. It was at least a symptom of good nature.
'Well enough, Mr Fraser… tomorrow should see the guns back and at least we'll have our teeth again.'
'Aye, then we've only to re-rig, ship spars and boats and dig fifty tons o' ballast out o' yon beach, fill wi' fresh water, rattle down and weigh three anchors an' we'll be as fit as fighting-cocks to combat the world again…'
Fraser moved off to inspect the parties in the orlop and the hold, preoccupied and almost as worried a man as his commander.
'Set tight there… pass word to the jeer capstan… right, heave…!'
'Well?' Drinkwater looked up from the charts strewn about the table. Fraser noted they were of Vancouver Island and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. He tried to draw encouragement from Drinkwater's optimism.
'Quilhampton estimates the main batteries back in position tomorrow, sir. He has only the guns overside to hoist inboard now.'
'Good. And the hold?'
'Restowed, but wanting ballast and…'
'Water, yes, I know. If we ration we'll have sufficient for a week or ten days, by then we shall fetch a bay to the northwards. There are a hundred watering places on this coast.'
'What about here, sir?'
'Too brackish, I fancy' Drinkwater tried to encourage Fraser with a smile, aware that he could produce nothing more than a wan grimace. 'And aloft?' he prompted.
'Two days, sir, to be certain.'
'Yes, but I didn't like the temper of tonight's sunset. We may not have too long.'
'No, sir. We've been lucky…' 'Damned lucky…'
Drinkwater woke aware that he was being shaken violently.
'Sir? Sir, wake up…'
'What… what is it, Mr Belchambers? It is you ain't it?'
'Yes, sir… Mr Quilhampton presents his respects, sir…'
'Eh? Oh, what's the time?'
'Just before dawn, sir…'
The cabin was still dark and Drinkwater felt a surge of irritation. The news of the previous evening that the end of their predicament was in sight had somewhat relieved his mind and the sleep he had fallen into had been profound. 'What the devil are you calling me for?'
'It's a ship, sir… a ship coming into the bay!'
'What kind of ship, Mr Belchambers? Large? How rigged?'
He was awake now, his heart pumping painfully, every shred of anxiety turned over in the previous days now fully justified. This was the Russian ship, advised of their whereabouts and now enabled to catch them half-armed and trapped in the bay. Nicolai Rezanov had paid court to the lovely Doña Ana Maria, languished awhile to recruit his people and relax from the cares of his voyage. Then he must have received reports from the local Indians and Spanish spies that could not have failed to spot the strange ship, or the unfamiliar red coats of Mount's marines at Drake's Bay. Even by the slowest burro, news must have reached Don José Arguello of their whereabouts; even, perhaps, their unpreparedness. A sudden violently bilious spasm of hatred towards the anonymous saboteurs jerked him upright from his cot. By God they were going to pay for their treachery now!
'A ship, sir… that's all I am able to say, except that Mr Quilhampton is passing word to call the men, sir, quietly…'
'Very well, I'll be up directly, pass the word for my coxswain.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
The midshipman scuttled away as Drinkwater reached for his trousers. Beyond the curtain he could hear the sounds of the ship stirring, the muted groans of tired men dragged early from their hammocks. Where in God's name were his sword and pistols?
'Where away?' Drinkwater hissed, staring into the grey dawn light. Mist trailed away over the water, luminous from an imminent dawn which already lightened the eastern sky.
'Right astern, sir. See where the masts are outlined against the sky?'
'Yes… I have her now.' The final fog of sleep dispersed. He could see the upper masts of a ship. How far was she distant from them? How diminished by perspective?
Others were creeping aft. Fraser and Hill joined them.
'I've ordered a spring passed forrard, sir,' said Fraser, 'we can get the starboard broadside to bear…'
'Yes,' Drinkwater acknowledged flatly, simultaneously pleased that Fraser had demonstrated his initiative, and irritated that he had not thought of the thing himself.
'What d'you make of her?' he asked Hill, who peered intently through his glass. Daylight grew by the minute and, Drinkwater thought, they were hidden as yet against the land and the retreating night. If the intruder was meditating surprise she had better loose it upon them quickly. 'Well?'
'I don't think it is the Russian, sir… at least not that two-decker we sighted off the Horn.'
'Then what the devil is it?' Drinkwater snapped testily, abusing his rank and giving vent to his high-keyed state.
'Want me to take a boat and see, sir?'
'Too big a risk… but thank you. No, let us wait for daylight and spend the time getting her under our guns.'
A few minutes later Fraser reported the capstans manned. The cable from one of the two stern anchors had been led forward and a spring taken to the midships' capstan so that by heaving and slacking on the trio of anchors, Patrician was turned through almost a right-angle, set within a web of heavy hemp hawsers, her starboard broadside run out and her men at their quarters. In utter silence they waited for daylight to disclose their target.
Details emerged slowly, remarked upon as they were noticed. Her ship-rig, her tall masts and the opinion that she was a Spaniard were followed by other intelligence as to the paintwork and the run of her hull, until the disclosure of a mere six gun-ports confirmed she was only a merchant ship.
The mood changed instantly. Instead of apprehension there was cursing that only a single boat remained to seize her, though they might knock her clean out of the water with a single broadside from the eager guns.
'They must have seen us by now,' said Drinkwater, puzzled at the lack of reaction from the strange vessel. As though this thought had taken wing it was followed by a hail.
'Ahoy there! What ship is that?' The question was repeated in bastard Spanish, but the accent was unmistakable. The newcomer was a citizen of the United States of America, a fact confirmed by the hoisting of her bespangled, grid-iron ensign.
'A Yankee, by God!' remarked Hill, grinning. Drinkwater, seeing them hoisting out a boat and unwilling to reveal the chaotic state of his ship, snapped, 'Get the cutter alongside, I'll pay him a visit.'
'Well now, Captain… sit you down and take a glass. I'm damned if I expected to find the British Navy hereabouts… you wouldn't be thinking of pressing my men… I might not take kindly to that.'
Captain Jackson Grant replaced the short clay pipe between his teeth and fixed Drinkwater with a grim stare.
'I would not drink with you and then steal your men, Captain.'
'There are those of your party that would, Captain.'
'You have my word upon the matter.'
Grant laughed. 'You think that settles the thing, eh?' He removed his pipe and Drinkwater saw that the man possessed eyes of different colours. The left was dark, the iris brown, while the right was a paler blue. The oddity gave his features, which were otherwise heavily handsome, a curious disbelieving appearance.
'You can rest assured, Captain Grant, that your men are quite safe…' Drinkwater recalled the hostile looks that had been thrown in his direction as he had come aboard.
'Here…' Grant passed a glass, 'aguardiente, Captain,' Grant drawled,'"burning water", made by the Spanish from local grapes. Not to be compared with the cognacs of France, but tolerably agreeable to rough provincial palates.'
'Your health, Captain.' Drinkwater suppressed the shudder that travelled upwards from his stomach in reaction to the fiery spirit. Grant's tone was bantering, hinting at hostility, a hostility that was, for the moment, overlaid with curiosity. They were of an age; Drinkwater put the next question.
'You fought for your independence, Captain?'
Grant grinned, showing yellow teeth. 'Sure. I served under Commodore Whipple and in privateers. Made a deal of money from my service too. British money. And you?'
'Yes. Under Rodney and ashore in the Carolinas. And against privateers. My first command was as prize-master ... little schooner called the Algonquin of Rhode Island.* (* See An Eye of the Fleet.) We caught her slipping into the Irish Sea to stop the Liverpool merchants resting at night ...'
'God damn! Josiah King's ship?'
'I do not recall the name of her commander…'
Grant's curious eyes narrowed to slits. 'You can have been no more than a boy…'
'Nor you, Captain…'
Grant's hostility began to melt and he grinned, his face relaxing. 'Goddam it no, we were both just boys!' He leaned forward and refilled Drinkwater's glass. The shared memories and the raw brandy loosened their mutual suspicions; both men relaxed, exchanging stories of that now distant war.
'So what do you do in Drake's Bay, Captain, with your masts struck and the look of a surprised wench about your ship?'
'Refitting, Captain, a spot of trouble with a leak. And you?'
'A spot of trade.' He held up the glass, closed his brown eye and focused the blue one on the pale amber fluid.'"Fire-water" sells well, hereabouts. I can't sell it in San Francisco, but mestizos and Indians'll be here once they hear Cap'n Jack's anchored.'
'I see,' said Drinkwater wryly, raising one eyebrow. 'And for what do you sell the aguardiente?'
Grant grinned again, showing his wolfish teeth. 'California bank-notes, Captain, dried hides, can't you smell 'em?'
Drinkwater sniffed the air. The faint taint of putrefaction came to him.
'Yes… and you get the aguardiente from where?'
Grant shrugged. 'Monterey, San Francisco, San Diego… the damned Franciscans proscribe the trade there, but I find,' he laughed, 'the customers come to me.'
'From whom do you buy the stuff, then, if the Franciscans have a hold on the country?'
'Oh, there are plenty of suppliers, Captain. Don't forget I come from civilisation. I can supply bows, buttons, lace and furbelows from Paris faster than the Dons can ship their dull and dolorous fashions from Madrid.' Grant's smile was knowing.
'Does Don José Arguello trade with you?'
Grant shot Drinkwater a shrewd look and his tone was suddenly guarded. 'Oh, no, Captain. Don José is an hidalgo, Commandante of this vast and idle province. Spanish governors are forbidden to trade on their own or their province's accounts.' Grant tossed off his glass and refilled it. 'Why do you ask?'
'Curiosity.' Drinkwater paused. It came back to him that there had been that atmosphere of hidden secrets about the Commandante and his entourage. 'His brother then, Don Alejo?'
'You're very shrewd, Captain Drinkwater, as well as being improperly named…' Grant refilled Drinkwater's glass. 'You have heard of the lovely Doña Ana Maria Arguello de la Salas, eh?'
'I have heard something of her… and also of a Russian…'He let the sentence trail off and sipped the glass. A feeling of contented well-being permeated him. His limbs felt weightless, his energies concentrating on thinking, of gauging this American and divining how much truth he was speaking.
'Oh, yeah… I heard the damned Russkies had fallen out with good old King George. Well, he couldn't look after his own, could he? Eh?'
Drinkwater sat quietly, refusing to be drawn, raising his good shoulder in a careless shrug.
'Sure. Now I know why you're here. An' the damned Russkies. Don Alejo encourages them… and he trades… who wouldn't? A man must take something back to Castile better than button scurvy or mange from this desert of Nueva Espana. You've heard of Rezanov, Captain, eh?'
'A little, perhaps. I understand he stands high in the favour of the lady you mentioned.'
'Arguello's daughter? Sure, she dotes on him and the match is encouraged by those Spanish apes.' Grant was suddenly serious. 'She's a beautiful woman, Captain, perhaps the most beautiful woman. Certainly she's the most beautiful woman Jackson Grant has ever seen. Yes, sir. You haven't seen her… by God, she got eyes like sloes, shoulders like marble and a breast a man could do murder for…'
Drinkwater stirred uncomfortably, but Grant was oblivious in the fury of his passion. His weird eyes gleamed with an intensity that spoke of the coastal rivalries fired by the unfortunate beauty of Doña Ana Maria.
'Why, a man would pass over a score of these damned flat-nosed Indians, even a brace of the best-looking Ladinos from Panama with wanton arses and coconuts for tops'l yards, for an hour in that lady's company for all that she only strummed a guitar and wore the habit of a nun…' He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, poured another peg of brandy into his glass, tossed it back and refilled it again.
'And Rezanov?' Drinkwater prompted.
'Ah, Rezanov… Nicolai Petrovich Comte de Rezanov,' Grant lisped the name with an aping of a French accent, his eyes glaring with dislike. Then his face cleared and he laughed, a cruel laugh. 'You have not been in the Pacific long, Captain… I consider you should not have come at all… you damned British have no right here… but neither have the damned Russkies…' Grant's voice was slurred, his mind shifted briefly to his Anglophobia and then slid back to a more personal hatred. He waved his hand towards the stern windows. The pale streak of the beach rising to dunes and dun-coloured hills could be seen beyond the anchorage. 'Nueva Espana… New Albion… New Muscovy… come, Captain, it's not yours, nor Spain's, nor the fucking Tsar's. One day it'll be ours… a state of the Union, Californio… mark my words, Captain, and Jackson Grant'll be a founding fucking father…' Again he held up the glass of aguardiente and glared through it with one bright blue eye.
'Oh, Rezanov had his ideas… big ideas… he came out with an expedition under Captain Kruzenstern, accredited ambassador to the Mikado at Yedo, but the little yellow men kept him kicking his heels at Nagasaki before kicking his arse out of their waters.' Grant chuckled. 'Kruzenstern went on his way and left Rezanov in the Juno to inspect the factories, forts and posts of the Russian-American Company… now what d'you think the Russian-American Company was, eh? Nothing but a damned front for the bloody Tsar to get his claws on this part of the world. They trap the sea-otter and shoot the grizzly bear, but they can't get the bloody furs to Canton faster than Jackson Grant, and the poor bastards live in squalor in Alasky and the Kuriles. You should see them at Sitka, why it'd make your lower deck scum look like lords…
'Rezanov thought he could kill all these ills… damned odd lot these Russians. Rezanov thought he was a prophet… guess that's why the Doña Ana fell for his line of speaking, her being influenced by the papist church… Well… he came prospecting down the coast… Sitka, Nootka, the Colombia River, Bodega Bay and San Francisco… and Doña Ana Maria and her father, El Commandante…'
'And he secured an alliance to trade?'
Grant shrugged. 'Sure, something of the sort, I guess. They say he bettered that Franciscan corpse that passes for a confessor… Don Alejo at least had gold from him… Tartar gold, and that's fact…'
'And from Doña Ana Maria?'
'A promise of marriage…' Grant stared gloomily into his glass, the brown eye lugubrious.
'And Rezanov returned to the north?'
'Yeah. I last saw him at Sitka. I heard later he'd set off for Russia to confirm a treaty with the Tsar… get it ratified, or whatever the hell they do with these things. He got his own back on the yellow men, too,' Grant laughed, 'sent men and ships and took the island of Sakhalin from them to please his master, I guess. Reckon a Tsar's signature must be worth an island or two, eh, Captain?'
'And when is he expected to return, this Rezanov?'
Grant frowned, the drink clouding his powers of thought. He seemed to be trying to recall a lost fact. Then, as he remembered, he smiled. 'Never, Captain… you see Rezanov's been dead a year… just heard the news in Sitka… he died like a dog in Krasnoiarsk… left the field plum clear for Jackson Grant…'
Grant chuckled and Drinkwater considered the import of this news. Apart from altering the life of Doña Ana he did not see that it was of much effect to him. There was still that Russian battleship.
'Captain Grant, have you seen anything of a Russian man-o'war on the coast?'
'Sure. The Juno's at Sitka, or was when I left, bound, so word had it, for the Colombia River…'
'But the Juno's been in the Pacific for some time, hasn't she?'
'What about a bigger ship? A two-decked line-of-battle-ship with a black hull? Have you seen such a vessel?'
Grant shook his head. 'No…'
'And where are you bound from here?'
'San Francisco…'
'To tell Doña Ana her lover is dead?'
Grant frowned through his drunkenness. 'They don't know?'
'They were expecting him.'
'What? How the hell do you know that?' Grant attempted to rise, but fell back.
'I was there a fortnight ago.'
'Shit, Captain…' He broke off to think, rubbing his hand across his mouth again and then pouring out more brandy. 'How the hell did you get into there and out again without the bloody Inquisition catching you? You're at war with the Spaniards, ain't ya?'
'Under a flag of truce, Captain. I was a cartel… returning Spanish prisoners. We took the frigate Santa Monica.'
'Dios! And Rubalcava? Did you take him a prisoner, or did you kill the bastard?'
'I took him prisoner. I imagine he's pleading his suit with Doña Ana at this moment.'
Grant looked up, fixing Drinkwater with his odd eyes, the one dark and agonised like a whipped cur's, the other flinty with hatred. Drinkwater was surprised at the depth of the wound he had inflicted. 'All's fair, they say, in love and war…'
Grant's mouth hung open when suddenly the sound of distant shots came through the open stern windows. Drinkwater rose and peered in the direction of the Patrician. Even at this distance he could see the smoke of powder hovering over the deck, and the desperately rowed boat was making for the shore full of men. He grasped the situation in an instant. His men were deserting!
'God's bones!' he hissed through clenched teeth, picking up his hat and making for the door. 'Your servant, Captain Grant, and good luck!'
And the words 'All's fair in love and war' tormented him with their accuracy all the way back to the Patrician in the cutter.
'How many?' he asked, aware that he had asked the question before. Last time the answer had shocked him, now it appalled him.
'Forty-eight, sir.'
He looked down the list that Fraser handed him and then at the remnants of Patrician's company assembled in the waist. With Mount absent the bayonets of Blixoe's marines seemed a thin defence against a rising of the rest. Forty-eight men lost in a single act of mutinous desertion. And the remainder were in a black mood. How many of them would have run given the opportunity, seduced by over-long a proximity to the shore yet deprived of even the feel of warm sand under their feet? And he was half-drunk and the day not far advanced…
'We were heaving her round, sir, as you said, ready to bring her out of the bay and someone cut the after cable. She swung to the wind and the stern's touching the bottom.'
'Thank you, Mr Fraser.' He looked round the deck and coughed to clear his throat. 'Very well, lads, if there's another man who wishes to go I'll not stand in his way. But I warn you I'll hang anyone… anyone I catch. Those of you that remain need fear nothing. We shall haul the ship off and complete rigging her. We are better off without unwilling ship-mates. Now let's to work…'
Drinkwater turned away, sick with despair, aware of the brandy on his breath and guilt-ridden by his absence at a crucial moment.
'Ah'm sorry, sir, I couldna' gie chase, we had just cast loose the barge frae the raft, an' you had the only other boat…'
Fraser's accent was exaggerated by stress. Wearily Drinkwater acknowledged his plight.
'It's not your fault, Mr Fraser, not entirely. We must worry about Mount. I hope to God he does not run foul of those men. Have they arms?'
'Two or three were marines, sir… aye, they've a gun or two between them.'
'Get a signal of recall up to Mount and then let us haul her into deeper water.'
Suddenly the danger from surprise attack by Russian battleships seemed a foolishly mythological preoccupation. Patrician herself appeared to carry her own ill-luck.
Drinkwater stared down at the rag tied round the hawser. It had definitely crawled aft an inch or two. By a stroke of misfortune the ship had grounded close to high water, and now she was reluctant, twelve hours later, to come off. Above them a full moon hung in the velvet sky and from time to time the ship lifted and then bumped on the bottom as a low swell rolled in from a distant gale somewhere in the vast Pacific.
'Again, my lads.' He could hear the creak of the capstan, the grunts of the straining men and the slither of their bare and sweaty feet on the planking. The rag moved aft another inch. A feeling of hope leapt in Drinkwater's breast. 'Again, lads, again!'
They caught his tone and the grunts came again. He heard Lieutenant Quilhampton's exhortations. Thank heavens they had shoed the anchors, augmented the palms of the flukes with facing pieces of hard-wood, so that they held better and allowed the anchors to bite and not drag home to the ship before they had hauled her into deep water.
The rag jerked again and then began to move steadily. The ship lifted to a swell, the rag surged aft, there was a dipping in the rope and the men cheered, they could feel the tension on the messenger and the nippers ease, someone had fallen over and a ribald laugh came to him. The swell crashed onto the beach and the ship shook with great violence as the entire length of her keel struck the bottom.
'Heave again… heave away!'
She was off now, he could feel it through the deck. The next swell passed under her and, though he waited for it, she did not strike in the low trough that followed. Half-an-hour later they had her safe in deeper water.
'Stand the men down, now, Mr Fraser. Six hours below, then turn 'em out again. I want this ship in fighting trim by this time tomorrow.'
They had not finished by the following night, for the long presaged gale burst upon them in the late afternoon. The lurid sunset of the previous evening, green as verdigris, had held its ill-promise by a deceptively mild morning; but gradually cloud had obscured the sun and a damp, misty wind had rolled in from the Pacific. Urgently they had hoisted in the boats and had recovered all but the damaged barge abandoned by the deserters on the distant beach. Even the masts and spars were ready to go aloft again.
As the wind freshened they watched Grant get his ship underway. There was a flamboyant style to the American commander. He loosened his sail and threw his foreyards aback, making a stern-board, until he brought the wind broad onto his starboard bow. Drinkwater watched in admiration, aware that Grant was cocking-a-snook at the British Navy, demonstrating the supreme ability of both himself and his men, men that Drinkwater would fain have had aboard Patrician at that moment despite his promises to the American. Grant hauled his foreyards with a nicety that would have delighted even that old punctilio, Earl St Vincent, and stood out to sea, heading southeastwards for the better shelter of San Francisco Bay. As Drinkwater watched in his glass the last thing he saw was the American vessel's name, Abigail Starbuck, gold letters fading in the grey mist, above which, conspicuous at the taffrail, stood a single figure. Drinkwater could almost imagine Grant winking that pale and sinister ice-blue eye.
'Do you trust him to hold his tongue, sir?' asked Hill, who had also been watching the departure of the American ship. 'Or will he gossip our predicament through every bagnio in San Francisco?'
'I mind someone telling me the word "Yankee" is Cherokee Indian for one who is untrustworthy. In Captain Jackson Grant's case I would certainly judge him to be opportunistic' Drinkwater wondered if Grant might make use of what he knew to gain access to Don José and, through him, to Doña Ana Maria. 'But that, Mr Hill, is just the opinion of a bigoted Englishman with a deal of things on his mind.'
'Aye… the men…'
'Or lack of 'em. God's bones, Hill, I wish to God I'd not gone gamming with that damned Yankee!' Drinkwater's tone was suddenly ferocious.
'You'll not go chasing after them, sir?'
Drinkwater turned to the old sailing master. He shook his head.
'Damn it, no. We'll lose the whole festering lot of them once they get ashore. Grant spent yesterday selling rot-gut spirits to the Indians, and I daresay our fellows will soon hear about that. These men will go to the devil if they have half a chance. No, I'll not go chasing after them… but damn it, Hill, we've hardly men left to fight. Grant said there was at least a frigate at Sitka…'
'But no two-decker…' Hill's tone was tolerantly reasonable like a parent leading a wilful child to a desired conclusion.
'You still don't think that ship we saw off the Horn was a Russian, do you?'
Hill shrugged, almost non-committally. 'No, sir, I'm more inclined to think it was a Don and is presently sitting off Panama. And even if it was a Russian, what in the world makes you think it's hovering over the horizon, like Nemesis?'
'You think I am obsessive, eh?'
'You've had a deal of doings with Russia, sir,' Hill said circumspectly, 'I know that…' Drinkwater looked at Hill. They shared past clandestine 'doings' on behalf of Lord Dungarth's Secret Department, and Drinkwater saw concern in the older man's eyes. '… But here, in the Pacific, surely it's unlikely…'
'Unlikely? What's unlikely? That the Russians are anxious to dominate the Pacific? Or that I'm off my head about a ship I saw off the Horn? Damn it, Hill, what the deuce d'you think we're out here for but to lick the blasted Russians before they take advantage of the decaying power of Spain? What better time for 'em with Spain a nominal ally, but the whole damned world knowing that the Dons are under the Corsican's tyranny and rotten at the core. D'you think if the Russians land there, that whoremonger Godoy in Madrid is going to lift a finger? Why, he's too busy lifting the skirts of the Queen of Spain!'
Drinkwater's diatribe descended to crudity for lack of better argument. Though he saw Hill could not dismantle it and was reluctantly conceding his viewpoint. He could not explain to the master that he was haunted by fears of a less logical kind.
Hill had not had that prescient dream off Cape Horn, Hill had not been touched by the strangeness of the incident on Mas-a-Fuera, nor by the undercurrents of something sinister between the Arguello brothers, nor the beauty of Doña Ana Maria, nor the jealous lusts she excited, nor the ghost of Nicolai Rezanov. Some intuition, born perhaps of the blue-devils, of the isolation of command, of too introspective a nature, or too vivid an imagination, but some powerful instinct told him with a certainty he could not explain that they were in danger.
Its source was, as yet, conjectural, but its reality was as obvious to him as the smell of distant blood to a famished shark.
The gale lasted two days. Patrician escaped the worst of it behind the low shelter of Punta de los Reyes, though she snubbed at her cable and rolled in the swells that cart-wheeled into Drake's Bay. They got her topmasts hoisted despite it, and set up her rigging to the upper hounds. A lighter mood settled on the ship as they prepared to face the second night of dismal and howling blackness.
'We're better off without them…' said Mylchrist as the wardroom officers relaxed after the day's labours and discussed the matter of the deserters.
'Good God, Johnnie, you ain't going to give us a speech about "we happy few" and "summoning up the blood" are you? For God's sake we're in the Pacific, not on the stage.' Quilhampton slumped in his chair and toyed dejectedly with a biscuit.
'James is right, you know, we're in a damned parlous condition,' observed Mount seriously. He too sat downcast at the table, his fingers fiddling with the stem of a wine glass, rolling it and fitting it over the numerous wine-rings that marked the table-cloth. He had taken the defection of his two marines badly and was angry that his detachment to the observation post had occurred at all. In Mount's opinion, the desertions would not have taken place had he been directly in control of the sentries.
'And now there's a gale…'
'And a delay…'
Hill came into the wardroom, peeling off his tarpaulin and shaking his head. Water flew from his soaked hair as though from a dog. 'A delay that'll ensure the Dagoes know of our whereabouts… give me some shrub, for God's sake, that rain makes a man chilly…'
'Have a biscuit…' Quilhampton pushed the barrel towards the master who occupied a vacant chair. 'Where's the first luff?'
'Wandering about worried sick…'
'Och, an' away,' mocked Mylchrist, but no one paid this puerility any attention.
'And what does the Captain think, Hill? You had his ear all morning?'
Hill looked at Mount, aware that the marine officer held Drinkwater to blame for his absence from the ship at a crucial time.
'You know damned well what the Captain thinks; he's as concerned as the rest of us.'
'And this Russian nonsense? He'd do better thinking the Americans have their greedy eyes on this coast…'
'We ain't at war with the Americans,' drawled Mylchrist, eager to re-establish his credibility after his rebuff.
'Doubtless we soon will be,' said Quilhampton, 'Britannia contra mundum.'
'Now who's bleating about "we happy few"?' Mylchrist crowed.
'I think, gentlemen, it's time for sleep…' Hill tossed off his pot and rose. 'God grant we're out of this pestilential spot tomorrow morning.'
'Amen to that…'
Below his pacing figure the ship slept, exhausted with the seemingly endless exertions of the day. Only the anchor-watch were about, huddled in corners and beneath the boats to avoid the drizzle that hardened from time to time into heavy showers of torrential rain.
The night was black, the wind tugging at the ship and moaning in the lower rigging, rising periodically to a higher cadence as it shifted a point and freshened. But it always fell away again, never sustaining a promise of abandoned violence, though every time it rose, Drinkwater's heart beat faster in anticipation of fresh disaster. In such a state of mind, sleep was impossible.
So he walked his quarterdeck in the time-honoured tradition, between the mainmast and the carved taffrail, for no better reason than it seemed the only way to pass the time of anxiety and to be on hand if the worst of his fears came to pass. He was half-dead with fatigue, his brain had lost the power of coherent thought, yet was too active to permit sleep. In an unending kaleidoscope it reviewed a tumbling series of images, of monstrous black ships in the mighty combers of the Horn, of yawning caverns of water that threatened to suck him down into the bowels of hell, of the laughing mockery of the white-lady of his nightmare who, inexplicably and with a paralysing abruptness, changed into the dark and lovely vision of Doña Ana Maria. And even as he sank fantastically upon her white and ample breasts he found the scimitar smile of Rubalcava and the triumphant eyes of the Arguello brothers. Above these images the imperious shadow of Hortense Santhonax manipulated the wires of a marionette.
In all this waking, walking nightmare he paced the deck, his senses all but dead to anything beyond the fury of his hallucinating brain, his cloak wrapped round him, his eyes stark staring into the windy blackness of the night, until at last he slept, slumped against a quarterdeck carronade.
Lieutenant Quilhampton jumped into the shallows and splashed ashore followed by Sergeant Blixoe, four marines and the bowman of the cutter. As the boat was dragged onto the beach and Blixoe wandered off, following the scuff marks of the deserters' footprints in the sand, Quilhampton strode along the beach to the stove barge. He was joined by Marsden, the carpenter. Both of them stood for a moment looking at the split and holed planks in the side of the boat, the results of a few moments' work with a boarding axe.
'Tomahawk,' opined Marsden, laying the finger of a horny hand upon the splintered wood. 'I can patch it to get her back on board.' He patted the gunwhale of the boat.
'Very well…'
'I'll need a hand…'
Quilhampton called the cutter's crew over to assist and they lifted her gunwhale and braced her at a practical angle with foot-stretchers and bottom boards so that Marsden could plug the hole with a greased canvas patch covered with a lead tingle. While the work progressed, Quilhampton followed Blixoe up the beach.
The marine sergeant had orders not to proceed out of sight of the ship and Quilhampton followed him to the highest sand-dune in their vicinity.
'Bugger-all, sir,' said Blixoe, turning as Quilhampton came up with him.
'Did you really expect 'em to be in sight, Blixoe?' Quilhampton grinned despite himself, for the marine was itching to fire his musket and dispel the obloquy the returned Mount had heaped upon him. 'No scalps for you, Sergeant, I'm afraid.'
'One 'opes, sir, one 'opes,' Blixoe replied grimly, still searching the desolate locality like a hound sniffing the wind. 'What about there?' He pointed. Beyond the dunes stretched the fingers of an inlet, spreading northwards, cut off from the ocean by a long isthmus which culminated behind them in Punta de los Reyes. An Indian village, a miserable collection of adobe dwellings overhung by the wispy smoke of cooking fires, lay some miles to the northwards.
Quilhampton shook his head. 'No… do you ensure none of the fellows that came ashore with us run.'
Blixoe turned and they looked down at the huddle of men round the barge. The rest of Blixoe's men stood about, their stocks loosed in the sunshine that burned warm after the passing of the rain and wind, their loaded muskets at the port, the bayonets gleaming wickedly.
'No bloody fear of that, sir.'
They looked at the ship, silhouetted black against the sun's lambent reflection which danced upon the surface of the sea and was diffused by the watery mist that still lay a league offshore. Already the topgallant masts were aloft and they could see the foretopgallant yard being hoisted, its length slowly squaring against the line of the mast as the lifts were adjusted and its parrel was re-secured.
'Not long now,' Quilhampton remarked, a sense of relief pervading him. Their luck had held so far. A few more hours… nightfall perhaps, tomorrow morning at the latest, they would feel the deeps of the ocean beneath their keel.
'No, sir. We've been lucky.'
'Yes, damned lucky.'
'They say that leak, sir,' ventured Blixoe, taking advantage of Lieutenant Quilhampton's mellow mood, 'well, that it were caused deliberate, like…'
Quilhampton looked sharply at the sergeant, but the man was in profile, his bucket hat pulled down over his eyes as he stared at the Patrician anchored in her pool of sunshine.
'And what do you say, Mr Blixoe?'
Unperturbed, the marine shrugged his white woollen epaulettes. 'How should I know, sir?'
'I'll lay a guinea you've a theory of your own, though.'
Blixoe pulled the corners of his mouth down. 'I reckon we've all got theories, sir. Trouble is, the truth ain't much to do with theories, is it?' Blixoe turned and faced Quilhampton. 'Truth is, sir, that the men are at the end of their tethers. We lost a good prize and we know there's rich pickin's off the bloody Dagoes; there's men as knows the papist's ways, stuffin' their churches with gold and word has it that there is a church somewhere about this coast where they've the bones of some saint all laid out in a casket of jewelled gold… and what they're wondering is why, begging your pardon, sir, the Captain ain't batterin' down these bloody Spanish churches, sir… by way of an act of war, like? That's the truth of it, sir.' Blixoe paused, then added, 'If you'll pardon me for speaking freely…'
'Yes, of course, come, they seem to have finished down there…'
They could see the barge being dragged into the water. Men were scrambling into her, ready to pass her painter to the cutter. Quilhampton looked again at the ship. The foretopgallant yard was across.
And then he froze. The heat went out of the sun and his heart suddenly thudded in his chest. 'Look!'
Pointing with one hand he restrained Blixoe with the other. The marine paused and shaded his eyes against the glare. They were insubstantial at first, mere phantoms in the haze, but then their outlines hardened, the sharp, squared edges of topsails, the low hulls of men-of-war standing into the bay. There could be no doubt as to the purpose of their approach.
'Come on!' Slithering in the sand, Quilhampton began an awkward descent.
'Fire those bloody muskets, lads,' Blixoe called to his platoon and a ragged volley of alarm sounded flatly across Drake's Bay.
'God's bones!'
Drinkwater swung round and stared at the beach as the sound of the volley echoed across the bay. He expected to see men running but on the contrary, they stood stock-still around the boats, every attitude suggesting they were as surprised as himself at the shots. Then he saw the tiny white figure of Quilhampton in his shirt-sleeves, running ungainly through the soft sand, his arms waving wildly and with the four marines stumbling after him.
'What the devil… ?'
'Deck there!'
They swung to the hail from the foremast where topmen sat astride the newly sent up topgallant yard.
'To seaward, sir!'
Drinkwater and the officers idle on the quarterdeck spun round, following the man's urgently outstretched arm.
'Bloody hell!'
'It's those Spanish brigs!'
'Jesus!'
The two brigs had broken through the vaporous tendrils of the mist and were suddenly recognised as the vessels they had seen last anchored under the shadow of Point Lobos, beneath the Commandante's Residence. They were standing into Drake's Bay, their yards braced and on slightly diverging courses. End-on, Drinkwater did not need glasses to see the bristling lines of cannon piercing their sides.
'Beat to quarters! Man the capstan!'
They had a spring upon their anchor cable; it lay slack in the water and, if they were quick, might give them a moment's advantage.
'Where's my coxswain?'
'Here, zur…'
'Sword and pistols, upon the instant! Gentlemen, arm yourselves… they will rush us!'
The deck of the Patrician presented a spectacle of disorder. Topmen descended from the foremast by the backstays, sliding down hand-over-hand. Officers and men ran, bumping into one another, as they scurried to their posts.
'Man the larboard broadside!'
Drinkwater saw Fraser, his sword drawn, his shirt-tail untucked from some strenuous endeavour at the base of the foremast, run below to command the battery in Quilhampton's absence. Amidships, Hill stood ready by the capstan, pushing spare waisters into place about the splayed bars, and then Tregembo was awkwardly hitching his sword-belt about his waist and Derrick was silently offering him his pistols.
He stuck one in his waistband and fisted the other. A thought struck him and he held it out to the solemn Quaker. 'Here, defend thyself, if no one else…'
Derrick shook his head and Drinkwater, his mind pressed, dismissed the man for a high-minded fool.
'Guns are bearing, sir,' squeaked Belchambers alongside him, sent by Fraser.
'Are they loaded, damn it?'
'Mr Fraser says to tell you they're loaded, sir, as best they can be… mixed shot and langridge…'
'Then run 'em out!'
The boy skittered off and Drinkwater took one last look about the deck. It was a chaos of flung-down hand-spikes, of uncoiled ropes and stoppered sails rolled in grey sausages of resistant canvas. Spars, half-secured and almost ready for hoisting, lay at drunken angles, like pitch-forks left against a hay-cart. But the men at the quarterdeck guns were kneeling ready, though their breasts heaved from their late exertions, and the dishevelled marines, in unprofessional oddities of dress, leaned upon the hammock nettings, their bayonets gleaming and their muskets levelled. They had not been utterly surprised and, as yet, the Spanish had not a single gun that could bear. Below his feet he felt the 24-pounders nimble out through their ports.
The brigs were close now, perhaps two cables away, and he could hear an angry buzz that came from a dense cluster of men about their twin fo'c's'les. They were dark with boarders, heaped like swarming bees.
'You lads there,' Drinkwater called to the quarterdeck guncaptains, 'mark their boarders,' he raised his voice, 'mark their boarders, fo'c's'le!' A wave of comprehension came from Midshipman Wickham forward. If those three carronades did their business, their spreading langridge would tear a bloody and ragged hole through that cluster of men.
As the noise from the brigs grew louder it seemed a grimmer silence settled upon the Patrician. Drinkwater pierced it. He would have to loose his cannon soon, or risk his enemies stretching ahead and astern of him, out of the lines of bearing of his guns.
'Stand by for boarders! Fire!'
The thunder of the cannon erupted in orange flames and the white obscurity of reeking powder smoke. The deck vibrated with the recoil of the heavy trucks and, as the smoke cleared, he could see the gun-crews leaping about their pieces as they reloaded. But, it was already too late. So close were the brigs that the most elevated gun had sent its shot no higher than man-height above their rails. Their masts and topsails, shivering now as they checked way to drive alongside, loomed above the shredding smoke and Drinkwater could see the white circles and interlacing and expanding ripples that showed more than half his shot had plunged harmlessly between, and far beyond, the Spaniards.
But there were bloody gaps in the clusters of men about the beakheads of the enemy, and there were dots in the water, some inert and some waving, where men died and shrove their souls in agony. He could hear the screams and a weird ululating cry as some unfortunate man spewed shock and horror and the dreadful pain of a mortal wound into the air.
It was a moment of the briefest pause. Below a fast-reloaded gun roared again, followed by another and another and then Drinkwater turned. The first brig crashed into the bowsprit, locking her own in a tangle of splitting wood and torn wreckage. He could see the smoke and stab of small arms and a few bold men beginning to scramble across the interlocked spars as the enemy brig, thus entangled, fell slowly off the wind and alongside the British frigate.
Aft, the second brig loomed close alongside. There was a sickening crash as her cathead struck the Patrician's quarter and the impact of the collision sent a second mighty tremble through the ship. A grappling iron struck the rail and its line was belayed, to be cut through by a marine; but another followed, and another, and the marine fell back, clutching his throat, shot through at close range by a pistol ball.
'Get your men on deck, Fraser!' Drinkwater roared below and swung round, his sword drawn, joining the hedge of bayonets and boarding pikes and cutlasses as the gunners abandoned their now useless pieces and fought to defend themselves.
The Spaniards poured over the rails, jumping like reckless monkeys from one ship to another, and Drinkwater knew that the Dons had emptied every stew and calaboose, every tavern and every vessel with men who had a mind to cut the bloody British intruders down to size. And, God, there were enough of them. If every waterfront idler, and every drunken mestizo in San Francisco had come, it did not explain the torrent of men that poured, cutting, slashing and stabbing their way across his quarterdeck.
He recognised the uniform of a provincial Spanish regiment, an officer leading a party of the brig's seamen, together with a ragged rabble of 'volunteers', a mixed rag-bag of races, half-drunk and verminous from the desperate look of them.
But as he fought for his life, he recognised something else, something that his heightened consciousness had half-expected. There were men from the Santa Monica, men in clear breach of their parole, and at their head, howling with the triumphant bellow of a conquistadore, was Don Jorge Meliton Rubalcava.
By the time Quilhampton reached the boats, the brigs were alongside Patrician. He splashed through the shallows and fell into the stern of the cutter.
'Leave the barge!' He ordered, panting with exertion, 'Oars! Come on, come on,' he chivvied, 'give way together!'
Shoving the tiller across the boat, he swung the cutter's bow round towards the noise and smoke of desperate battle.
Drinkwater was slithering in gore. His right forearm was cut and blood trickled from the graze of a pistol ball across his skull. He hacked and stabbed with his sword and the clubbed pistol in his left hand was sticky with gore. He was aware of beating off a savage attack, of flinging back the first impetuous rush of the Spaniards. He was aware too that Midshipman Wickham had reported from the fo'c's'le that they had succeeded in staving off the inrush of boarders forward. Slewed on their slides the heavy carronades had cut swathes of death through the enemy and dampened the ardour of their attack.
But Lieutenant Mylchrist had been carried below dangerously wounded, and Wickham feared another rush from the regrouping Spaniards. Drinkwater asked where the first lieutenant was, but lost Wickham's reply as he parried a pike thrust and cut savagely at a swarthy cheek, seeing the bright start of blood and the pain in the glaring eyes of a man.
'Mount, bayonets here!' he bawled and threw himself back into the fight as the Spaniards renewed their attack upon the heavily outnumbered British.
Fraser never got out of the gun-deck. From a boat towing alongside, or by sliding down the bumpkins of the after brig, men squeezed through a loose gun-port as Fraser obeyed Drinkwater's order to reinforce the upper deck with his gun-crews. This small intrusion quickly became a torrent as two, then three ports were opened. Dark, lithe men with short stabbing knives clenched in their teeth and wet from a partial ducking alongside, hauled themselves inboard to confront the gunners. The gun-crews were tired after days of exertion and the recent labour of hauling out their weapons and it seemed this influx of men was endless, a wildly diabolical manifestation rising from hell itself. They were small wiry, half-caste fellows, who wriggled between the guns and seemed utterly at home in the shadows of the gun-deck, as happy as the nocturnal pick-pockets, scavengers, footpads, pimps and thieves they were. They slipped easily inside the long guards of defenders with rammers and pikes, hamstringing and hobbling men who fell howling, only to be disembowelled and eviscerated by the gleaming knives that flashed dully in the semi-darkness.
His hanger flickering desperately, Lieutenant Fraser was fighting for his very life.
Mr Lallo motioned to Skeete and the loblolly boy dragged the twitching body of Lieutenant Mylchrist to one side. Already the pledget they had just secured was darkening with blood.
'Next!' Lallo wiped a reeking hand across his brow and took a pull at the rum bottle he kept propped against a futtock.
Derrick, the captain's Quaker clerk, heaved the next victim onto the canvas spread on the sea-chests. It was one of the topmen, a big, burly man whose legs were curiously drawn up in the foetal position. His eyes were staring wildly and his lips were rimed with dried spittle. The swaying lantern hooked above the operating 'table' threw dreadful shadows across his features, so that his face seemed to be working in convulsive spasms.
Skeete forced fingers into the man's mouth, prised open his jaw and, with the vicious ease of practice, thrust a damp pad of leather into the topman's gape. The jaws snapped like those of a predator.
'Legs down!' Lallo ordered and Skeete jerked his head at Derrick. The Quaker swallowed hard and took the leg opposite to Skeete, while Lallo forced down the man's shoulders.
'Ahhhh…'
Lallo slopped rum into the open mouth and deftly replaced the leather pad as the man went slack.
'Not on the wound, for Christ's sake!' Lallo shouted as Derrick, beholding the complete horror of the injury, gagged uncontrollably.
Lallo slopped rum on his hands, wiped them on his apron, and bent over the ghastly ruin of the man's abdomen. The fetid air of the orlop was filled with the stench of blood, urine, rum and vomit and resonated with the groans and whimpers of the wounded.
'He's lucky,' remarked Lallo to the professionally interested Skeete, 'no rupture of the guts…' His finger traced the blue outline of a section of intestine, almost caressed the crinkled mass of a protruding curve of bowel and pointed to the smooth darkness of an excrescent organ.
'Aye,' Skeete agreed with his superior.
'Needle and sutures, Skeete…' Lallo began tucking the misplaced viscera back into the hollow of the body. He might have been stuffing a cushion. 'You'll have to help,' he remarked, looking up at Derrick, who had come forward again, his forehead pale as wax in the yellow guttering of the lamp-light. 'You should be used to quaking,' he jested, provoking a snigger from Skeete as he produced the prepared needle.
They drew the two sides of the topman's belly together and, with a swift and deft precision, the surgeon looped a line of sutures down the white flesh.
'Missed his wedding-tackle eh, Skeete?' he remarked, finishing the stitches with a flourish.
'By a mile, sir,' grinned Skeete.
'Next,' said Lallo…
Midshipman Frey was on the quarterdeck. He was already wounded in the shoulder and feeling light-headed. He felt a terrible blow in his guts, a blow that drove the wind from his body and he felt himself flung back, crashing against a gun carriage and slumping down, hitting his head on the bulwark. For a long time he lay inert, the noise of battle seemingly miles above him while he fought for his breath in an interminable indrawn gasp that seemed like an enormous and unsuccessful paroxysm that would go on until he lost consciousness.
But he did not lose consciousness entirely. He seemed dimly aware of many things; if he did not succeed in inflating his lungs he would die, but the light was bright in his eyes and he remembered the sunshine, diffused by the golden mist. The upper spars that he had been engaged in hoisting seemed drawn with a perfect precision against the sky. He had thought of attempting to paint that effect of the light later, and he thought of the resolution again now, only filled with a sadness that he might never be able to try it. If he did not draw his breath soon, his hand would have lost its cunning for ever.
And then the reflex triumphed and air was drawn painfully into his lungs. Agony radiated outwards like a bomb-burst from his chest, stabbing him with fires of red-hot iron, and it seemed easier to die than to endure.
There were other things troubling him now. The sunlight flickered before his eyes as the dark and sinister shadows of men interposed themselves. He found he resented this and began to try and call them, to tell them to stop standing in the light, that he wanted the warmth of the sun to die by. He could see clearly now, shoes, and bare feet, and a marine's boots, all dancing in a mad figure. He would have to shout louder to make them hear and then they would stop…
Drinkwater saw Frey fall and cut his way through between a Spanish officer and a marine, swinging the sword across the neck of the seaman whose pike butt had been driven into the midshipman's guts. The exposure of himself was foolish for, in his concern, he half-turned to see if the lad was alive and received another nick on the forearm for his trouble. But it was the merest pin-prick, the point of a weapon, a long lunge and he saw the triangular blade withdrawn, following it with his eyes until he found its owner, Rubalcava…
'You treacherous bastard!' Drinkwater attempted to bind the grinning Spaniard's blade, but a man fell across in front of him stone dead, and he saw it was a marine, and suddenly he was ringed with steel, standing astride the howling, heaving body of Midshipman Frey with a dozen enemies surrounding him. He gasped for breath and read triumph in Rubalcava's eyes.
He saw the Spaniard lower his sword point and stride across the deck. He brandished the long blade in a single side-swipe, severing the halliards of the ensign.
The wind tugged the huge St George's cross and the bright Union in its upper canton. Slowly it fluttered downwards to lie across Patrician's shattered rail. The noise of fighting ebbed away, to be replaced by the silence of defeat.
Quilhampton, willing the oarsmen to reach the ship as soon as possible, was watching events ahead of him in a lather of impatience. He did not recall until they were half-way back to the Patrician that he had come ashore unarmed, relying upon Sergeant Blixoe's party to maintain discipline. His chief concern had been to recover the damaged barge. Now he was running full-tilt into action with nothing more than a tiller in his hand.
It was at the moment that this dawned on him that he saw the ensign lowered to the rail in token of submission. Aghast he stood in the boat, staring dumbfoundedly ahead. Seeing him thus, the oarsmen faltered, trailing their oars and looking round.
They were in the shadow of the ship and every where swarmed the alien figures of the enemy.
'Fuckin' 'ell, they've taken the fuckin' ship…'
'Oh shit…'
'Put the helm over, sir… let's get the 'ell out of 'ere, for Chrissakes, before those bastards see us… come on you lot, backwater starboard and pull like fuck on those larboard oars.'
Quilhampton came to his senses as the boat turned, the jerk of the fleeing oarsmen set him heavily in the stern sheets. He did not interfere with their retreat.
His premonition had been right. They had lost the ship to the enemy.