Floating Madhouse

by Floating Madhouse

The Baltic Squadron is making slow though sure progress on its journey out to the Far East. On 28th November the division under Admiral Rojhestvensky had arrived off Swakopmund (wrong, by four hundred miles) and on the 25th the other division consisting of the Sissoy Veliky (etc., ships all listed) entered the Suez Canal. Botrovosky’s squadron was reported in the English Channel on the 28th.

  Half a page followed about untrained men and the coaling problem that faced Rojhestvensky: all true, but it doesn’t tell us anything, William. Except that if the British press know that much about us, so do the Japanese. Skipping, therefore, and picking it up again lower down:

  Should Port Arthur fall before the spring, as seems probable, the Japanese fleet will be at once relieved from its blockade duties and with luck may have time before the Baltic fleet reaches eastern waters for some, at any rate, of the Japanese ships to undergo refit, although it is probable that many of them have already been sent home for that purpose and are even now ready to engage the Russians once more, whose ships will most certainly be in want of refitting after so long a voyage under such disadvantageous conditions.

  Damn right, William. Except for that unfortunate ‘with luck’. Stand in the corner for half an hour, boy, for that… But now the last item: a Telegraph cutting with no date on it:

  The officers of a French steamer report having sighted the Mikasa near Sasebo and the Asahi forty miles south of the Shan Tung promontory, both battleships looking as if they had been refitted. Reuter reports in connection with this that the refitting and repair of the Japanese fleet has been progressing secretly since August last.

  None of it was exactly reassuring: certainly not stuff that the collapsed and – according to Baranov (who’d got it from Nyedozorov) – mentally as well as physically overwrought Rojhestvensky would want to hear. Michael, re-assembling the package, saw Radzianko looking flummoxed or at any rate less suave than usual, having had no mail himself in this delivery. Arkoleyev was ribbing him about it but most of them were poring over their own letters. Michael went up on deck and found peace and solitude in the after control position in which to read Tasha’s letter, but paused to fill and light a pipe first, to keep the mosquitoes off. Zakharov was probably right, one could imagine malarial infection being rife here – whole clouds of the damn things, not quite as big as sparrows but a lot more dangerous.

  Ridiculous, really. Humid air – humidity not far short of say ninety per cent – and tobacco so dry it crackled.

  Michael, my precious darling, it’s only a few days since I wrote, but here I go again. I’m frightened for you – because of all we’re hearing and reading – and what’s tormenting me especially is that you’re where you are, obviously facing great danger very soon if not already, only because of me. Well – my father – but that is because of me. I want to ask you – beg you – when you’re stopping at some place to embark coal, couldn’t you find some ship that’s leaving for Europe and come home on it? You’re not in the Russian navy, Michael, you’ve really no business to be there at all! Some are saying the squadron will have to turn back – and that would be all right – but others who are in the know say Admiral Rojhestvensky is the sort of man who’d never turn back – even if he knows full well that he and his ships and all those thousands of men are heading for certain destruction he’d still press on regardless! But Michael darling – if a disastrous outcome is certain or so probable that people are talking and writing in newspapers the way they are – darling, even if Rojhestvensky and others see glory in it there’s none at all for you, it’s not your war or business, there’s no reason you should link your fate with theirs – with Z’s for instance. Especially with Z’s! Do you understand what I’m telling you, my love? Do I deserve to lose you? Can that be the judgement of Fate? You who are not only my lover but my life. Even if your own life is of so little value to yourself, save it for me – leave them, get back here to me somehow. To England, or Paris – as you said before, isn’t it the answer not only to this present danger but to all our recent prayers?

  The dry tobacco was burning his tongue. Might dampen it with a sprinkling of brandy this evening, he thought. In the real navy one would have used rum. It was quite plain what Tasha was getting at: let Zakharov drown, if that was what was in store for him, but why on earth drown with him?

  Or taking it one stage of the concept further: with luck he’ll drown, so leave him to it.

  So much for Pavel Derevyenko, anyway. Or any others, for that matter. Shaming what separation, isolation, could do to you. On the other hand, if it didn’t how cold-blooded – or arrogant – would that make you? What would the passionate love amount to?

  * * *

  At four p.m., to the delight of the entire squadron, the Malay came limping into the anchorage and dropped her hook among the other transports. Ships’ crews massed on their upper decks to cheer her, sirens hooted, Rojhestvensky semaphored congratulations, and a pinnace which Michael suspected might have had Narumov in it chuffed over to her from the Suvarov. After so much bad news it was a fine display of high spirits by the ships’ companies – of which there was a further indication that evening by Shikhin, Michael’s sailor-servant. As he was intending to sleep on deck West African style, mosquitoes or no mosquitoes, Shikhin was taking his mattress up, part of the job being to beat the coal-dust out of it in the open air; he paused in the companionway to ask, ‘Permission to ask your honour a question?’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘Does your honour believe we’ll have much chance of beating the Japs when we come up against ’em?’

  ‘I’d say a very good chance. Why shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Hah!’ Nodding with what looked like a calm certainty, and approval. ‘That’s what a lot of ’em’s saying now. Me too, your honour! With our man Admiral Rojhestvensky leading us – that’s what counts with the likes of me!’

  ‘Think well of him, do you?’

  ‘Brought us this far, hasn’t he? And he’ll have a trick or two yet up his sleeve, is my guess. Like they was saying down for’ard this evening – wouldn’t bring us half round the world for nothing, would he?’

  Awake soon after dawn, woken by the whine of mosquitoes in his ears, Michael saw the Rus leave on her mission to Tamatave. December 30th, this. Colliers were supposed to arrive today. Lying back again with the sheet over his head, wondering whether Radzianko would be taking his early-morning swim. In the wardroom last night they’d been encouraging him to do so – Galikovsky, Murayev, Skalinin, Lyalin – the latter insisting straight-facedly that although there certainly were sharks in these waters, they congregated mainly on the other side, in the Mocambique Channel.

  Burmin had growled, ‘What are you trying to do, get him killed?’

  ‘Lord, no, Pyotr Fedor’ich.’ Galikovsky winked at the others. ‘Thinking of his own best interests, really. If he got just a bit of a nip, he might wind up on board the Orel – in all manner of comfort! Eh, Viktor?’

  ‘Depends on what the shark bit off, surely!’ Murayev had mimed it, leaping up, clasping himself and uttering a loud scream. Radzianko had smirked while the others guffawed, and said airily that he’d think about it; Michael wondered whether he might not actually have meant it, whether he wasn’t so concerned to build a reputation as a daredevil – molodyets – that he might be crazy enough to risk it.

  As it turned out, he didn’t: and sharks were sighted on and off throughout the day; through the clear water they were easy to see from the upper deck and even easier from the superstructure. Coaling started during the forenoon. In the Ural – auxiliary cruiser, another former German liner – it was brought to a halt that evening when the traveller of a Temperley carried away and smashed into the two young officers who were operating it: one had his chest crushed and spine snapped, dying instantly, and the other was stunned by a blow on the head; the latest news of him, from the Orel, was that it was hoped he might pull through.

  Ryazan finished her coaling by noon on the 31st, and was washin
g-down when the Rus came chugging into the anchorage, back from Tamatave, bringing the news that Admiral Felkerzam’s division was lying at anchor at Nossi-Bé, a large indentation in the coast in Madagascar’s extreme north-west – near the top of the Mocambique Channel, in fact – and that most of the colliers who were here to serve the squadron were in Diego Suarez. It was a muddled situation which perhaps nobody but Rojhestvensky fully understood – if in fact even he did. Zakharov, who’d talked with the staff, told Michael it looked as if St Petersburg had been sending instructions direct to Felkerzam, Rojhestvensky’s subordinate, instead of through Rojhestvensky himself as commander-in-chief: which would account for the latter’s almost unbridled fury, which he was said to be venting on everyone right, left and centre, not least on poor Clapier de Colongue.

  The Rus was despatched to Tamatave again, and Admiral Enqvist with the Nachimov, Donskoi and Aurora was sent to escort a group of colliers to Nossi-Bée and to transmit to Felkerzam, when in wireless range of him, orders to join Rojhestvensky in this Sainte Marie anchorage forthwith: actually not at Sainte Marie, but in Tan-Tan Bay just three miles further north where they were now moving because there was better shelter there.

  Enqvist sailed on January 5th at five a.m., but at noon a collier from Diego Suarez arrived bringing a report from Felkerzam to the effect that (1) he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the cruisers Oleg and Izumrud and two destroyers who’d been with them – under the command, Michael guessed, remembering young William’s despatches, of the mysterious Admiral Botrovsky – and (2) he, Felkerzam, had indeed been ordered by the General Staff in Petersburg to lie-up at Nossi-Bée and put in hand as complete a refit of all his ships as could be managed or improvised with the limited facilities at his disposal. All his ships had therefore been ‘opened up’ and would be incapable of moving for at least a fortnight. It was almost unbelievable that St Petersburg could have acted in this way, and apparently Rojhestvensky, still in poor health, was literally shaking and screaming with rage.

  Anyway on the evening of the 5th – Rojhestvensky on the principle of Mahommed going to the mountain having given orders for the squadron to sail next day, the Russian Christmas Eve, for Nossi-Bé – Zakharov invited Michael to join him for a drink in his sea-cabin – his day-cabin down aft being full of coal again – to tell him about these and certain other developments which he didn’t, at this stage, want to discuss in front of others. He could talk to Michael, he’d explained, who was at one and the same time an outsider and ‘almost family’, as he couldn’t to anyone else; and Michael being his guest on board it was only right and proper for them to have a vodka or two together, from time to time.

  The situation by and large was verging on the impossible, he admitted, after the first four-fingers shot of vodka had been poured, tumblers clinked, a toast proposed to the health of the Tsar and the liquor tossed back in a single gulp – do dnya, ‘to the bottom’. Certainly unprecedented – the conduct of the General Staff and of Felkerzam, the appalling condition of the ships and incompetence of their officers and crews, and the desperate situation of Port Arthur – as well as a number of lesser factors, or symptoms, maybe. There’d been mutinous outbreaks for instance amongst the civilian crews of some of the transports – several, all the way from Gabon southward. Better not to talk about this elsewhere – one had to guard against such infections spreading, especially in view of the poor quality of the ironclads’ crews and the revolutionary element among them. ‘This is the point – I can talk to you, Mikhail Ivan’ich, in the certainty my confidence will be respected. We know each other well enough by now, and you’re a good man, you’ve been pulling your weight as I hoped you would – and on top of that you’re a free agent, you can speak your mind to me – in private – on any subject you choose…’ Those mutinies had been quelled, he added, by Rojhestvensky signalling to the ships’ captains that men who refused to obey orders were to be put into ships’ boats and set adrift. Preferably at night, so that no one would see it happening. A chuckle, a shake of the head: ‘They caved in, all right. It’s well known that Zenovy Petrovich doesn’t issue threats unless he’s ready to carry them out. Although as I was saying, when I saw him yesterday I was horrified. In a month he’s aged twenty years. Keeps it all to himself, you see, doesn’t share any of the strain. And there’s worse to come now. Look, you’re closer to that bottle, Mikhail – put a fair wind behind it, will you?’

  The vodka bottle was on the writing table. Michael was sitting on the only chair, Zakharov perched on the foot end of his bunk. Reaching for the bottle, Michael had a close-up of a framed portrait which he’d seen before but which had previously lain flat, was now propped upright. Portrait of a female – not bad looking, but no raving beauty, thirty or thirty-five perhaps. Rather dressy.

  An actress, possibly.

  ‘Help yourself, then pass it over.’

  ‘You’re an excellent host, Nikolai Timofey’ich.’ He’d half- filled his tumbler, passed the bottle up uncorked. ‘I mean it, you’ve been extremely hospitable right from the start. Considering that I was wished on you by Prince Igor – very decent, much appreciated. But you said a minute ago – worse to come?’

  ‘D’you know who I mean by Klado?’

  ‘Klado.’ He remembered. On Suvarov’s bridge during the action against the fishing boats: that tall, rather stupid-looking captain of the second rank, who’d been swearing that the Aurora, at whom they’d been shooting at the time, was Japanese; and what Sollogub had said about him afterwards. The man who’d wanted to encumber Rojhestvensky with even more ancient ships than they’d lumbered him with already, and who’d been landed at Vigo to attend the Dogger Bank inquiry, Rojhestvensky grabbing at the chance to get rid of him. Michael nodded. ‘Writes articles on naval matters, doesn’t he? I was told he commands the respect of the General Staff, even of the Tsar.’

  ‘Incredibly enough, that is the case. Respects himself even more, though – regards himself as an equivalent of the Americans’ Captain Mahan. Which he certainly is not – he’s a fool and a poseur. Compared to Mahan – well, he does not compare. But now it seems he’s won. They’re putting together something they’re calling the Third Squadron – old coastal defence vessels, anything they can find that floats – and sending it out to us under the command of a rear-admiral by name of Nyebogatov. I don’t know him but Selyeznov tells me he’s a short, tubby man, very easy-going so he’s quite well liked. But you see, it’s lunacy…’

  ‘Will we wait for them here?’

  ‘At Nossi-Bé, you mean. Not if our admiral can help it. He’s planning to sail east on January fourteenth. That’s giving Felkerzam the fortnight he says he needs, d’you see. If Zenovy Petrovich can get away then, leaving Nyebogatov and lame ducks behind, he will.’

  ‘But with Port Arthur likely to have gone by then, and Vladivostok iced-up—’

  ‘Hole-up somewhere on the Indo-China coast maybe, then make a dash for it when Togo isn’t looking. Or fight him. God knows – I’m only repeating what the staff are guessing. Let’s have another?’

  ‘No – thank you, but—’

  ‘Drink to Zenovy Petrovich outwitting those fat swine in Petersburg and the monkeys?’

  ‘Oh. Well…’

  ‘You’re impressed by Irina, I notice.’

  ‘Irina?’

  ‘A very old friend.’ Nodding towards the photograph in its silver frame. ‘Don’t worry – I told you I wouldn’t let Natasha Igorovna down, and I won’t. They won’t cross each other’s paths, I’ll see to it they don’t.’

  In the small hours of the morning the Rus got back from her second visit to Tamatave, bringing the news that General Stossel had surrendered Port Arthur to the Japanese.

  18

  The reunited Second Squadron sailed from Nossi-Bé not on January 14th as Rojhestvensky had planned, but on March 16th. After the seemingly interminable delay, he’d made up his mind only the night before – and was not informing St Petersburg of his decision. He’d
received intelligence from the local French naval commander that day – the 15th – that Nyebogatov had coaled his Third Squadron in Crete and by this time would be either approaching the Canal or on his way through it, which meant that the ‘self-sinkers’ – Rojhestvensky’s term for the reinforcements – might be arriving here in as little as two weeks; it was time therefore to disappear, and quickly. He’d spent an hour or two in his cabin chewing it over, then summoned Clapier de Colongue, shouted at him, ‘General signal immediately! Squadron to raise steam and weigh anchors at noon!’

  ‘Destination, sir?’

  ‘Where d’you think, you damn fool?’

  It wasn’t as obvious as it might have been. Since his own recovery, and then his furious incredulity at what he’d found had been going on ashore while he’d been laid up – his men blind drunk a lot of the time, some of them actually moving between bars, brothels and gambling hells on all fours, finding that this could sometimes be easier than attempting it on their feet – having stopped all shore leave except for approved personnel only on Sundays and Saints’ Days, he’d been driving the squadron hard, sending groups and divisions of ships to sea almost daily on manoeuvres, battle exercises and gunnery and torpedo practice. This could have been another outing of that kind; but de Colongue took a chance, gave the admiral his invariably courteous smile and enquired, ‘Sea of Japan, sir?’

  He – de Colongue – in passing that order to prepare for sea, had been shocked to the core of his being, according to Selyeznov, with whom Zakharov had conferred on board the flagship at breakfast-time this morning. There’d been no sleep for anyone from the time of that signal being made: ships raising steam and otherwise preparing for sea, boats between ironclads and transports embarking top-ups of essential stores, and so forth. (A last mail had been landed, with brief notes to Tasha and Jane in it.) But for Rojhestvensky to be openly defying the Naval General Staff, who’d given him direct and explicit orders to wait in Nossi-Bé for Nyebogatov to join him, was mind-boggling. Admittedly on receiving that order to wait for the Third Squadron he’d been so enraged that he’d seized an armchair in his cabin and smashed it up, but that didn’t alter the fact it was an order, and still in force – from the highest in the land, those closest to and most trusted by His Imperial Majesty.