A Brig of War nd-3

by Richard Woodman

'Well no, sir. Actually I was listening. I mean I had heard it before, but I didn't like to say so, sir.'

  'Who was telling the tale then?'

  'Oh it was just by way of entertainment, sir. I was listening with Dalziell.'

  'But who was telling it?'

  'Why Mr Rogers, sir.'

  'No wind, Mr Lestock.'

  'None, Mr Drinkwater.'

  'Very well, clew up all sails and square the yards. A tackle at each of the lower yardarms, one on the main topmast stay and a bull rope to the capstan. The watch can rig those then turn up all hands.'

  He fell to pondering the problem. Since the discovery of Catherine Best, Rogers had been very quiet. Whether or not he had had a relationship with the woman Drinkwater did not know. Neither did he care. Appleby told him the woman believed herself barren and there seemed no evidence of other complications. Nevertheless Rogers had been a party to the conspiracy. More, Drinkwater hoped, out of a misplaced, schoolboy prankishness than a calculated act. But Drinkwater was not sure. Rogers might have been evening the score, proving himself smarter than the first lieutenant. But that did not ring quite true. Rogers was an impetuous, fiery officer, spirited if low in moral character, certainly able and probably brave. The service was full of his type; they were indispensible in action. But Rogers was not a dissembler. His weakness lay in his impetuous temper. When Dalziell had brought Tregembo for a flogging Rogers had acted without a second thought. So was Dalziell behind this silly rumour? There was an inescapable logic about it. Not that the yarn was, in itself sinister, but the persistence of its power to unsettle and subvert was real; very real. The sooner they had the guns remounted the better. Now that they were in temperate latitudes once again they could resume their routine of general quarters, suspended since the Cape in the heavy weather of the Roaring Forties. Drinkwater knew it was not sufficient to read the Articles of War once a month to keep the people on their toes. Only the satisfying roar and thunder of their brutish artillery could do that.

  'All ready, Mr Drinkwater. Hands at the tackles, the hatches off and the toms off the guns.'

  'Very well, Mr Lestock, then let us turn to.'

  The first to emerge was the foremost starboard waist gun. The tackles of the starboard fore and main yardarms were overhauled and married to the big stay tackle. The three purchases thus joined were lowered into the hold. There they were hooked on to the gun, ready slung by a strop around its trunnions.

  A bosun's mate commanded the hauling part of each tackle and at the gratings the bosun, Mr Grey, his silver chained whistle suspended about his neck, stood poised.

  'Set tight all!' The slack in the three tackles was taken up.

  'Stay tackle heave! Handsomely there now… yard tackles up slack!'

  The black doubled hemp of the main topmast stay assumed a shallow angle and the mainmast creaked gently. The six pounder weighed eighteen hundredweights. Below in the hold six men tallied on a bull-rope round the gun's cascabel, steadying the black barrel. The next order came as the gun rose level with the deck: 'Yard tackles heave!' The men grunted away in concerted effort. There were no merchant ship's shanties but a rhythmic grunt as fifty men, barefoot and sweating in the sunshine, strained at their work. 'Walk back the stay tackle handsomely!'

  The gun, suspended now from all three tackles, began to move horizontally across the deck. The bull-rope trailed slack and was pulled onto the deck by one of the topmen who ran forward to reeve it through a train tackle block.

  'Vast heaving main yard!' As the stay tackle party lowered slowly back and the mainyard party ceased work, the gun slewed forward under the pull of the foreyard tackle. It began to move across the deck diagonally.

  'Capstan party heave tight!' Twenty men walked round the capstan and tightened the bull-rope. Theirs was a job of adjustment, as was that of the gunner's party that stood by the waiting gun carriage.

  'Walk back the mainyard!' The gun moved forward now, almost over the carriage.

  'Vast all!'

  'Walk back handsomely!' Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the gun began to descend. Trussel made some furious signals while Mr Grey held first the foreyard party, then the main. The gun stopped while Trussel's men shoved the carriage a little. A minute later the gun rested on its trunnions. The cap-squares were shut. The carriage was slewed into position and run up against its port lintel, then the breechings were passed.

  'Overhaul all…' The three tackles were passed down into the hold for the second gun.

  They finished by mid-afternoon and were piped to dinner after which they were piped up again and went to general quarters. The broadsides were ragged and from his cot Griffiths expressed his disappointment.

  'Tell the people,' he muttered crossly, 'that if that is the best they can do I will stop their grog again.'

  It was not an order Drinkwater made haste to obey. The mood of the ship was too delicate and Appleby had told him the fever had aggravated Griffiths's leg and he was likely to be irritable and a semi-invalid for some time.

  'God knows what will become of him,' the surgeon said worridedly, 'but his powers of recovery are greatly diminished since last year's attack.'

  The silence of exhaustion fell upon the brig as the sun set. It was mixed with discontent for, despite reprovisioning at the Cape, some of the salt junk had been found bad and there had been no more that day to replace it. 'It is likely to be a long voyage,' Drinkwater had reluctantly told the purser, 'we must adhere to the rationing.'

  He came below at eight p.m. his shirt sticking to his back, too tired for sleep. Not that sleep was to be had in the airless cabin. In the gunroom Appleby dozed over his madeira. Drinkwater slumped in a chair as the door to Griffiths's cabin opened and Catherine Best emerged. She held a finger to her lips, the very picture of solicitude.

  As she passed Drinkwater she gave a little curtsey. He could scarcely believe his eyes and his mind was just forming a quite unjustified suspicion that she must have ulterior motives when a piercing cry of alarm came from the deck.

  A silence followed, brief but oppressive with the most awful horror. Then, in that stunned hiatus, clearly heard through the open skylights and companionways: 'It's him, boys! It's the Dutchman!'

  So potent had been the cry that the senses seemed devoid of reason. Drinkwater felt his intelligence replaced by fear, then with a curse he rose and rushed on deck. He ran forward to where Kellet, captain of the foretop, his arm outstretched was open mouthed in terror.

  Others arrived and they too pointed, muttering fearfully, a papist or two crossing themselves, a good protestant on his knees confessing his sins direct to his maker. 'Oh God forgive me that I did indeed have carnal knowledge of Mistress Best when that vessel of unclean-ness was a greater whore than all the…' Next to him Drinkwater saw Dalziell. The midshipman was shaking as though palsied.

  Drinkwater stared ahead at the dull, greenish glow. The night had become cloudy and dark, there was just a breath of wind and the glow grew larger. If his theory about Dalziell having initiated the silly rumours was correct the youth was paying for it now in a paroxysm of fear.

  'Whisht, listen boys! Listen!' The hubbub faded and they could hear the screams, the screams of souls in torment. 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, blessed is the fruit of thy womb…'

  'Jesus Christ, what the hell is it?'

  'Tis the Dutchman, boys… the Dutchman…'

  Drinkwater pushed his way aft, unceremoniously grabbing Lestock's glass from the master's paralysed hand. He swung himself into the mainchains.

  It was the hull of a galleon all right, with a high poop. But the vessel had been dismasted. He thought he could see movement, pale shapes flitting about on it. The hair on the nape of his neck crawled. He dismissed the superstition with an effort. But perhaps an old wreck, like those supposedly trapped in the weed of the Sargasso…?

  No, there was something familiar about those screams. 'Mr Lestock!'

  'Eh? What?'

  'Do we have steerage way?'

&
nbsp; 'Steerage way? Eh, oh, er we did, sir, just. Come you lubbers back to the wheel, damn it, what d'ye think this is?'

  'A point to starboard if you please.'

  A gasp of incredulity greeted this order. Cries of supplication and threats floated aft. 'The devil may take you, Mr Drinkwater, but not us, hold your course mates.'

  'Belay that forward! What's the matter my bully boys? Have you lost your stomachs? Come now, I don't believe it. A point to starboard there…'

  'What the deuce is it Drinkwater?' muttered Rogers below him, 'lend me the glass.' Drinkwater handed it down. 'Let me see after you,' said Appleby. 'Damn your eyes, it's my bloody glass.' Lestock snatched it peevishly from Rogers's eye.

  'You can see for yourself, Harry,' said Drinkwater suppressing laughter.

  They were closing the apparition fast now. The supposition that it was a galleon had made a fantasy of distance. In fact it was quite close and as they passed it there was a surge backwards from the rails, cries of revulsion as the stink of the dead whale assailed their noses.

  'Well it stinks like hell for sure!' There was the laughter of relief up and down the deck as they realised what huge fools they had been.

  The decomposing whale had swelled up and glowed from the millions of tiny organisms that fed upon it. Shrieking and screaming above it a thousand seabirds enjoyed the funeral feast of the enormous mammal while the water about it was thrashed to a frenzy by a score of sharks.

  They watched it fade astern. Laughing at themselves the men drifted below. It seemed the atmosphere about the ship had been washed clean by that appalling smell. Drinkwater wished his companions good night when a party was seen coming from forward. Four men were carrying the inert white-shirted and breeched body of a midshipman. 'Is that Mr Q?'

  'Lord no, sir. I'm here.'

  'It's Mr Dalziell, zur,' said Tregembo, lowering the midshipman. 'Fainted he did, zur, in a swoon.'

  'Well, well, well,' said Drinkwater ironically, 'it seems that vengeance is still the Lord's.'

  Chapter Eight

  A John Company Man

  November-December 1798

  Drinkwater was bent over his books, alarmed at the high expenditure of cordage due to the loss of the foreyard, when he heard the cry from the masthead.

  'Deck there! Sail ho! A point of starboard!' He gratefully accepted the excuse to rush on deck, feeling the welcome breeze ruffling his open shirt. They had sighted the high land of Ras Hafun three days earlier and doubled Cape Guardafui under the strong katabatic winds that blew down from the Somali plateau. Now they romped westward into the Gulf of Aden carrying sail to the mastheads. It was the forenoon and the watches below were preparing for dinner so that at the cry most of her hands crowded Hellebore's waist. They were eagerly awaiting a sight of the stranger from the deck. Drinkwater saw Quilhampton at the rail.

  'Up you go, Mr Q, and see what you make of her.' The boy grabbed a glass and leapt into the rigging. The sight of anything would be welcome. They had seen several dhows inshore of them as they closed the coast but the stranger might be a square-rigged ship, a friend or, just possibly, an enemy.

  Hellebore had had her fill of the wonders of the Indian Ocean. Flying fish, whales and dolphins had been seen in abundance, turtles and birds of many descriptions, petrels, long-tailed tropic birds and the brown boobies that reminded them of the immature gannets of Europe. Little sketches filled the margins of Drinkwater's journal together with a description of a milk sea, an eruption of foaming phosphorescence of ethereal beauty. This phenomenon had prompted Quilhampton to essay his hand at poetry. The scorn of Mr Dalziell ended the endeavour, though Mr Quilhampton was quick to refute the assertion that poets were milksops by pointing out they were not the only persons to be sent into a swoon at the sight of the world's natural wonders. But none of these observations thrilled them as much as the two white topgallants that were soon visible from the deck.

  'She's a brig sir, like us… or she might be a snow, sir,' reported Quilhampton with uncertain precision.

  'Colours?'

  'Not showing 'em, sir,' he answered, unconsciously aping Mr Drinkwater's abbreviated style.

  'No colours, eh?' said Griffiths hobbling up on his swollen foot.

  'No, sir.'

  'Waiting for us to declare ourselves, eh? Clear for action Mr Drinkwater, Mr Lestock! Take the't'gallants off her, square away to intercept this fellow.'

  The pipes squealed at the hatchways and the men lost their dinner as the cook doused his stove. All was hurrying urgency. They had improved their gunnery coming up from the south, shot at casks with the 'great guns' and shattered bottles at the yardarms from the tops. Their grog had long ago been reinstated and Catherine Best had assumed the demeanour of a nun. Never was a meal more cheerfully forgotten. This was no lurking French cruiser of overwhelming force. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing and the shadows of the sails and rigging were sharp across the deck as it was sprinkled with sand.

  'Cleared for action, sir.'

  The two ships were three miles apart when the chase freed off, altering to the north so that she presented her broadside to them. 'She's a snow,' muttered Quilhampton pacing up and down the starboard battery in the wake of Lieutenant Rogers.

  'She's an odd looking craft,' said Drinkwater. She was like a small sloop but with a long poop, painted green with enormous gun ports in it.

  'Hoist the colours!'

  'Or the god-damned topgallants, you bloody old goat,' muttered Rogers who thought the chase would escape his eager gunners.

  Hellebore's ensign snapped out and jerked to the spanker peak, streaming out on the starboard beam. Griffiths watched the snow respond, heaving to with her main topsail against the mast. At her peak flew the horizontally striped ensign of the Honourable East India Company.

  'A John Company ship,' said Griffiths relaxing. Hellebore foamed up to the stranger and came to the wind as the snow lowered a boat.

  'He's all for co-operation,' said Griffiths to Drinkwater.

  'Well, I'm damned… those ain't gunports, they're slatted blinds.'

  'Jalousies, Mr Drinkwater, she's a dispatch vessel for the Company, a country ship they use for conveying their officials about and carrying dispatches. I'll wager it's that he wishes to see us about.'

  Griffiths proved right. While the Hellebores, relaxing from action stations and eagerly salving what remained of their lukewarm dinner, chaffed incomprehensibly with the grinning lascars in the boat, a handsome sun-bronzed officer in the crisp well-laundered uniform of the Company's Bombay Marine told them the news.

  'Lieutenant Lawrence, gentlemen, at your service.' They exchanged formal greetings and withdrew to Griffiths's cabin.

  'Lieutenant Thomas Duval of His Majesty's ship Zealous arrived at Bombay on 21st October, sir, with the news from Admiral Nelson.' Griffiths and Drinkwater exchanged glances. Hellebore had been at the Cape then. 'Please go on, Lieutenant.'

  'It seems that on 1st August last the British fleet under Rear-Admiral Nelson annihilated the French at Aboukir Bay. The attack was made at sunset while the French fleet lay at anchor. I understand that, despite the shoaling of the bay and the grounding of Culloden, the British engaged the French on both sides and the victory was a most complete one. The flagship, L'Orient, blew up.' He finished with a smile as though the disintegration of a thousand humans was a matter for personal satisfaction.

  'Do you have sercial in Bombay, Lieutenant?' asked Griffiths ironically, motioning Drinkwater to open a bottle. He called through into the pantry for Merrick to bring in some glasses.

  'We do not want for much in Bombay,' said Lawrence, 'but I have not tasted such excellent Madeira for a good while.' From his appearance Lawrence wanted for absolutely nothing. They toasted the victory.

  'And where are you from now, Lieutenant, what is your purpose?'

  'I am from Mocha, sir, where we left dispatches for Commodore Blankett. Captain Ball of Daedalus was daily expected. The Red Sea Squadron uses Mocha as
a watering place, sir. Mr Wrinch is the agent there,' he paused, then added, 'a man of considerable parts, sir, you would find calling upon him most profitable.' Lawrence's eyes fell to Griffiths's gouty foot, then he rattled on, 'unfortunately we could not delay as the north-east monsoon in the Arabian Sea makes a lengthy passage for us back to Bombay.'

  'And your dispatches conveyed the news of the victory at Aboukir to Blankett I assume?'

  Lawrence nodded over the rim of his glass.

  'And was there mention of a French army in those dispatches? Of a force landed in Egypt?'

  'Oh that! Yes sir, there are indications of such a thing. Duval suggested that they might attempt a descent on India but the idea is quite preposterous: their force in the Red Sea is totally inadequate. It gave us a nasty shock, though,' he laughed faily, 'quite unexpected!'

  'What?' snapped Griffiths, 'd'you mean there are already French ships in the Red Sea?'

  'Oh yes, one of them, a smart little sloop, call 'em corvettes I recollect, attempted to chase us off Perim two days ago. We led him a merry dance through the reefs and soon shook him off.'

  'Myndiawl,' growled Griffiths while Drinkwater asked, 'How many ships have the French got out there, sir?'

  'I've really no idea, sir, two or three. The Arabs don't view their arrival with much enthusiasm since they seem to be taking dhows. God knows what for. It might be the will of Allah but the faithful don't take too kindly to it.'

  'A true corsair by the sound of him,' said Griffiths pondering. 'Tell me sir, could you oblige us with a modern chart of the Red Sea? Ours is most fearfully wanting in detail,' Drinkwater pulled the appropriate chart from the drawer beneath the settee. He showed Lawrence. The lieutenant laughed. 'Good God, gentlemen, I believe Noah had a better. Yes, I am sure I can furnish your wants there, send a midshipman back with me.'

  'There's a further thing,' said Griffiths, 'we've a woman on board and I want her given passage to Bombay.'

  Lawrence's face clouded. 'Who is she?'

  'Oh, some convict scum we found floating in a ship's boat in the South Atlantic. She got amongst the men with her damned fornicating.'