Floating Madhouse

by Floating Madhouse

  ‘Rather less under mother’s wing this time. Oh, thanks…’ Lighting cigarettes: and glancing at the cruisers anchored on their other – starboard – side. The Donskoi at the line’s tail end was really not far at all from the Orel, and more or less abeam of her. ‘But from us here, Mikhail Ivan’ich –’ nodding towards her, perhaps restraining himself from putting his glasses on her – ‘it’s again quite easy swimming distance.’

  ‘If you were crazy enough to try it. Probably teeming with sharks.’

  ‘Perhaps worth risking, though? Especially if they only caught me on the way back?’

  That amused him a lot. Chuckling – and putting his glasses up now. ‘On the way back, Mikhail Ivan’ich – after a really successful visit? Which I would have – Nadia’d welcome me, I’m sure of it!’

  ‘She would, eh?’

  ‘With open arms!’

  ‘Discuss it with her, did you?’

  ‘Oh, not – you know, in so many words, but—’

  ‘Excuse me, your honours.’ Travkov, the chief yeoman of signals. Pointing shoreward, northeastward: ‘Launch coming off…’

  As it turned out, it was the governor, calling on the admiral in a barge full of flowers, baskets of fruit and a crate of champagne. Michael heard this from Sollogub and Narumov when he met them ashore next day – Sunday – permission having been given by Rojhestvensky for officers and men to land, at their captains’ discretion. The colliers would be arriving on Monday and coaling would start then: wouldn’t be much fun either, the Gabon river’s latitude being zero degrees ten minutes north.

  Michael attended Myakishev’s morning service before going ashore. Radzianko landed with him, and michmen Egorov, Rimsky and Count Provatorov tagged along. They looked around Gabon itself, of which there was practically nothing, and walked for a few miles along the beach, once or twice venturing inland along jungle tracks where monkeys gibbered at them from the trees. But it was too hot and humid to walk for more than an hour or so, after which they turned back and in the settlement met Sollogub and Narumov and a whole crowd of others in what called itself a restaurant – they’d seen it earlier – but had nothing to offer except fish, fruit and lemonade. Sollogub asked Michael, when they’d got over their surprise, made introductions, shaken hands all round and gulped down some lemonade, ‘You haven’t yet made your number with the king, then?’

  ‘King?’

  ‘We paid him a visit!’

  Narumov nodded, looking up from a wad of the paper on which he’d just finished off the sentence or paragraph he’d been busy on when their arrival had interrupted him. ‘I’m telling my wife about him. The king, that is. First one I’ve ever met, tell you the truth. We were there this morning – quite a few of us. But you see, there’s a steamer leaving for England tomorrow and they’ve agreed to take our mail, so I thought I’d –’ tapping his letter – ‘bring this with me and add a last page or two while I have the chance.’

  ‘You’ve been ashore some while, then?’

  ‘Landed at eight. You’d have still been snoring.’ Nodding to Radzianko: ‘My God, he snores. I shared a cabin with him, I should know… Yes, the fish is quite good, you could do a lot worse. And the fruit. Mind you, we’ve pineapples on board now – and bananas and mangoes – the governor brought them last evening. I was saying – landed at eight from the Rus – took us right into the river-mouth. A lot of our sailors landed too: their main interest seems to be the purchase of parrots and baby monkeys. The ships’ll be fairly crawling with them. Wait now, Mikhail Ivan’ich, I’ll read you what I’ve written. Don’t worry, nothing about the damned English in this one. Listen:

  “Three nights ago a rat bit the first lieutenant on his foot, and last night gnawed off one of his corns. Must have liked the taste and come back for more! What do you think of that?”

  ‘But that’s just the end of what I’d already written. What trivia one comes down to, writing as I do nearly every day! Anyway—’

  ‘You said some steamer’s taking mail for England tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. Convenient for you, I suppose. And ours will be trans-shipped in England – if they don’t steal it. But – yes, Mikhail Ivan’ich, there’ll be a boat collecting it from all round the squadron, I’m sure – a boat from whichever’s the duty battleship. I got this from Selyeznov, incidentally. So if you finish off your own tonight, you’ll be all right. I came prepared to finish mine here on shore because once I’m back on board they’ll all start screaming for me – this ship, that ship, one after the other, ever since we dropped our hook I’ve been on the go like a water-beetle. With the major problem that we can’t survey leaky hulls because we can’t send divers down, on account of the sharks. Anyway – listen to this:

  ‘“There are only a few hundred Europeans here. The rest are negroes, and amongst them are cannibals who in recent months have eaten two Europeans. On board the Alexander III they accidentally carried off a negro from Dakar, whom they have now landed, much against his will; he swears that the local people eat their dead, since other meat is so dear. Before they eat them they cut off the hands and feet and put them in a bog to swell, so that they become more palatable.”’

  Radzianko broke in: ‘You’re writing this to your wife?’

  ‘Why, yes. It’ll amuse her. So should this next bit. Listen:

  ‘“I and the party of officers who came ashore with me in the tug this morning called on the king of this place. He received us in an English naval uniform complete with cocked hat. Some of my companions were photographed with him and his wives – one of them arm-in-arm with the queen-dowager, who never ceased to shout for money. She and other court ladies were drunk. It is two days since the king, who is seventy-two, and certainly looks no younger, succeeded his brother on the throne. Margarita, the eldest lady-in-waiting, staggers about stark naked; but as for that, the inhabitants in general do not trouble about completeness of costume. It is supposed to be a monarchy, under the protection of France, but in reality of course is a colony. Tomorrow there is to be some kind of coronation ceremony. The dead king is at present in a box under lock and key. One of our officers unwittingly sat on it, to the consternation of the new king and his prime minister – the latter also wearing cocked hat, with a necktie round his bare neck, and a sword belted on over a frock-coat, but without linen or trousers…”’

  Glancing up again: ‘Look, this is the truth, I swear to you!’

  * * *

  Michael finished his letter to Tasha after supper in the wardroom, and wrote one to Jane with all he could remember of Narumov’s local-colour stuff in it. Jane would love it: he really wished it wasn’t so late and he had time to spin it out a bit. His longer effort to Tasha was somewhat stilted, he thought, but it was too late to make a fresh start; the shore excursion plus the stifling heat had him drooping with exhaustion. He stripped, dragged his mattress and a sheet up on deck, found a space on the port side of the after control position, and slept heavily enough to miss the excitement which enlivened Michman Dukhonin’s watch at some time around three a.m.

  To start with a searchlight from the Suvarov, sweeping the anchorage in the course of some practice alarm which Rojhestvensky had ordered – as like as not warding off an attack by Japanese torpedo-boats – had picked up a skiff that was being rowed towards the Orel from the direction of the Dmitry Donskoi. Contact by boat between any of the ships during the dark hours was forbidden except with the express permission of the admiral, so the guard-boat, a steam-pinnace from the Borodino, was sent speeding to intercept the skiff, in which – Dukhonin told them at breakfast – there’d been two oarsmen, one person at the tiller and another in the bow; held in the searchlight beam they’d been only silhouettes, even with his telescope he hadn’t been able to make out any detail beyond the fact that having been illuminated they’d begun rowing frantically – the great silver beam still holding them, but obviously desperate to reach the hospital-ship before the pinnace got to them. In which, of course, they failed, the pi
nnace running in alongside and a sailor springing over with a line, the officer of the guard then arresting them and taking the skiff in tow back to the battleship anchorage. It had since emerged that the boat’s occupants had been Lieutenant Vaselago and michmen Varzar and Selitrenikov from the Donskoi, with a young volunteer-nurse whom they’d been smuggling back to the Orel.

  Galikovsky had murmured, ‘Poor devils. What frightfully bad luck.’ Burmin fortunately didn’t hear him: he’d been listening with his eyes fairly bulging at Dukhonin: growling then, ‘My God! My God! What next!’ Radzianko and Michael glancing at each other, both probably speculating as to whether the girl might have been Nadyejhda Prostnyekova. No reason it should have been, of course; although she’d have been a likely starter, amongst a hundred of them, cooped up like hens in a superheated barn, there’d surely be a few others of ‘similar disposition’ (Radzianko’s way of putting it, later on). There were other areas of speculation too, around the breakfast table: how might those three have got her to the Donskoi in the first place, was one. In disguise? In the bottom of a boat with a tarpaulin over her? What about the Orel’s own gangway watch? Bribed, perhaps? For how long might they have had her on board? Might the whole wardroom have been in on it, or only those three? Or Lieutenant Vaselago alone, persuading the two michmen to act as his boat’s crew? Had anyone ever met this Vaselago?

  Radzianko muttered afterwards, ‘Some actually do it, you see, put their ideas into action. While I just think about it. I’ll tell you, Mikhail Ivan’ich – when I started my morning bathes in Dakar, it was in the hope that an opportunity might crop up for a somewhat longer swim – I thought it might seem I’d only been having my customary dip. If I’d got over there the evening before, you see. In fact if that collier had only stayed alongside one more day—’

  ‘The odds are that a shark would have had you, over that distance.’

  ‘Well – as I believe I said—’

  ‘Worth it, you said, as long as it was on your way back. But it might not have been – uh?’

  ‘Well.’ A hand on Michael’s elbow, and lowering his voice. ‘We’re going to our deaths in any case. Jokes apart. So what the deuce – a shark, a ten-inch shell?’

  Later in the forenoon, by which time all the ironclads were coaling, Rojhestvensky issued Order of the Day number 158, referring to ‘three dissolute officers’ and ‘an act of extreme depravity’. The three were in the flagship’s punishment cells – which were well below the waterline, airless and cramped to a degree describable as torture – and were to be returned to Russia for court-martial. Nothing was said about the girl. A sequel to this, though, was that a day or two later Michael found Radzianko at the rail outside the chartroom with his glasses yet again on the Orel. Glancing round, and pointing: ‘She’s rigged a boom. Two boats at it – see? Fact is, these merchantmen don’t usually, do they? They let boats cluster at the gangways in a way we wouldn’t tolerate. But that’d be how they did it – uh?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Those three with the girl. We were wondering how they’d have got her past the gangway watch. Well, watches, plural – at the Orel and like as not the Donskoi too. She’d have only to nip out along a boom and drop down a ladder: anyone could’ve shown her how. Cast off then, drift away a bit before you touched an oar. Dark night that was, too. Moonless period. Eh?’

  ‘You’ve a one-track mind, Viktor.’

  ‘On the contrary – enquiring mind, dear fellow!’

  16

  The squadron weighed anchor and set off southwards for Great Fish Bay – which the Portuguese were calling Lobito Bay, and was close to the town and port of Benguela – in the late afternoon of December 1st. Calm weather had continued throughout the coaling, but within twenty-four hours of departure was beginning to go to pot: overcast sky at dawn on the 2nd, and by evening – after all the ships had enjoyed their Line-crossing ceremonies – a swell was mounting, rolling up-coast with a southeaster behind it. Wind and swell were thus luckily on the squadron’s bow – the course after rounding the Gabon bulge being south ten degrees east – so that the grossly overloaded ships were pitching hard but not rolling all that much. They had more coal in them than they’d had on departure from Dakar; if Great Fish should happen to be barred to them they’d be able, at a pinch, to reach Angra Pequena – same distance, roughly, as the Dakar-Gabon stretch. Whether the Portuguese would try to prevent the squadron coaling – Zakharov’s opinion, – this would depend on whether they had the backing of their British allies; chances were that if they knew or guessed Rojhestvensky was coming they’d have called for help from the Royal Navy’s base at Simonstown, at the Cape.

  Though why anyone should object…

  ‘We’re pariahs, is what it comes to. Thanks to –’ Burmin glancing at Michael – ‘the monkeys’ allies, shall I say?’

  Michael in fact agreed. He was thinking to some extent in Russian by this time. The fact that he was in a well-commanded and reasonably well-officered ship, with a ship’s company who quite surprisingly – since these were Russians – weren’t noticeably abused or ill-treated and either knew their jobs or were doing their best to learn them, did make it seem almost like home. Not that he had any criticism of his own service; the Royal Navy only did what it was told, served its political masters of the day, would also, of course, be justifiably indignant over the Dogger Bank affair – but taking a broader view he felt that while the Anglo-Japanese alliance was probably good politics in terms of the Far East – Manchuria, China, Korea etc. – its extension to home waters mightn’t be in Britain’s own best interests. The real enemy, ultimately, was Germany and the fleet the Kaiser was building, beyond any doubt aimed at challenging the Royal Navy: so in European waters it would surely make sense not to estrange potential allies.

  On the subject of personnel and training, and the abysmal performance of the rest of the squadron, Zakharov had admitted that having a leavening of Black Sea Fleet petty officers and other senior ratings in his crew had given him a considerable advantage. ‘My good luck, of course, that I was in a position to get them. It’s not only that they’re experienced men whom I know and who know what I expect of them – and bear in mind it only takes a few in key positions to influence the rest – the fact is our Black Sea training’s always been streets ahead of the Baltic fleet’s. Simple reason – down there we’re sea-going all year round, training’s thus continuous, whereas with the Baltic frozen solid for months on end they’re just twiddling their thumbs and talking revolution!’

  No thumb-twiddling here. There were internal exercises and practices every day, often lasting six hours at a stretch. Not only in the Ryazan apparently: Rojhestvensky’s Orders of the Day were largely concerned with battle exercises, at this stage. Battle damage and emergencies, primarily: coping with casualties among key personnel, weaponry and communications failure, shifting to emergency controls, improvising. Schemes were to be laid out on paper in every detail, and the objects of the exercises understood ‘not only by the officers but also by all lower ranks’. Michael thought it should hardly have been necessary to mention this. While major disadvantages were that in their unstable condition, the ships couldn’t safely indulge in mock attacks or other such manoeuvres, and that needing to safeguard ammunition there was none to waste on practice firings. Not that ships’ gunnery officers would have called it ‘waste’. As Murayev complained, ‘What’s the use of having even unlimited amounts if you can’t land any of it on the enemy?’

  Bad weather continued throughout the 4th, 5th and 6th. Chaplain Myakishev had no doubt at all that the splendidly calm weather they had been blessed with was due entirely to the intercession of Nicholas the Just, patron saint of sailors, to whom he’d made frequent approaches. ‘Bear this in mind, my sons – that when we were sorely in need of it, couldn’t have done without it—’

  ‘Seems to have shot his bolt now though, doesn’t he.’ Galikovsky, the cynic with hooded eyes. ‘Why not put old Seraphim
back on the job?’

  It was cooler now. South of the equator, one had the southeast trades coming up all the way from the Antarctic. Michael had written in his Narumov-style long-running letter,

  They’re grumbling now at the fact it’s cold enough at night to need a blanket. Having of course been roasted for the past three weeks or so. Tasha, darling, I’m praying that I’ll have at any rate one letter from you at this next coaling stop – and that it’ll tell me you’re safe and well and – please God – of the same mind as when I last held you in my arms…

  On the 6th the squadron made its landfall twelve and a half degrees south of the equator and steamed in to anchor in the wide entrance to Great Fish Bay. It wasn’t much of a place to look at: one shore high with jagged, sand-coloured cliffs, the other low and also sandy; and a few small houses visible on that low-lying part. To all intents and purposes, desolation – miles and miles of sand surrounding a vast stretch of water. Only a few colliers were lying at anchor waiting for them, but there was also a diminutive Portuguese gunboat, which it transpired had been harassing the colliers and had driven some of them away by threatening to open fire. It was a ship of only about three hundred tons, with a single 9-pounder on its foc’sl. In fact the colliers were very soon re-assembling, from wherever they’d been marking time and no doubt watching the Russian smoke-cloud’s slow approach; on entering the bay the first ones ran directly alongside the battleships. The gunboat, bustling out towards the flagship, threading its way through the crowded anchorage and colliers still on the move, passed close enough to the Ryazan for its name to be made out as Limpopo. Nick Sollogub described later how the resplendently attired Portuguese C.O., who was received at the flagship’s gangway with all due formality, requested the admiral to leave at once. Rojhestvensky, towering over him, pointed out to him amiably enough – in fact his manner had suggested that he might be about to pat him on the head – that his ships were more than three miles from any Portuguese-owned coastline, were thus outside territorial waters. The Portuguese snapped back, ‘But you’re anchored in the bay! That’s the point!’