by Wilbur Smith
The surgeon-general spluttered for breath and a ready answer.
‘By God, madam, you do not truly expect me to look for dangerous poisons in each speck of dust, in each drop of water, on my own hands even.’ He held them up for her inspection, shaking them in Robyn’s face. There were dark rinds of dried blood under the nails, for he had operated that morning. He pushed his face close to hers, and she drew back a little as his spittle flew angrily.
‘Yes, sir,’ she told him loudly. ‘Look for them there, and on each breath you exhale, on those filthy clothes.’
The editor scribbled delightedly in his shorthand notebook, as the exchanges became more violent, more loaded with personal insult. He had not bargained for anything so spectacular, but the climax came when Robyn had goaded her adversary until he used an oath as potent as his rage.
‘Your choice of words is as foul as these lowly little white sponges of yours,’ she told him, and let him have the sponge full in the face, hurling it with all her strength so that water flew and dripped from his whiskers on to the front of his frock coat as Robyn marched from the operating room.
‘You hit him?’ Zouga lowered the newspaper, and stared across the table at his sister. ‘Really, Sissy, sometimes you are no lady.’
‘True,’ Robyn agreed unrepentantly. ‘But that is not the first time you have made that observation. Besides I had no idea that he was the surgeon-general.’
Zouga shook his head in mock disapproval and read to her. ‘His considered opinion of you, as expressed to the editor, is that you are a fledgling doctor of dubious qualification very recently obtained from an obscure school of medicine, by even more dubious means.’
‘Oh, rich!’ Robyn clapped her hands. ‘He’s a better orator than a surgeon.’
‘He goes on to say that he is considering going to law to obtain redress.’
‘For assault with a sponge.’ Robyn laughed lightly as she stood up from the breakfast table. ‘A fig for him, but we must hurry if we are to keep our appointment with Captain Codrington.’
Her mood was still gay as she stood beside Zouga in the stern of the water lighter when they came alongside the steel side of the gunboat.
The south-east wind had raked the surface of Table Bay into a cottonfield of white caps, and had spread a thick white table-cloth of cloud upon the flat-topped mountain. The people of the Colony called this wind ‘The Cape Doctor’, for without it the summers would have been oppressive and enervating. However, it provided a constant hazard to shipping and the bottom of the bay was littered with wrecks. Black Joke had two men on her anchor watch as she lunged and fretted against her cable.
As the lighter came alongside, the thick canvas hoses were passed down and a dozen men on the pumps began to transfer the cargo into the gunboat’s boiler room tanks, before any attempt was made to take visitors aboard.
As Robyn came up through the entry port to the main deck she looked immediately to the quarterdeck. Codrington was in shirt sleeves, he was a head taller than the group of warrant officers around him, and his sun-bleached blond hair shone in the sunlight like a beacon.
The group was giving its attention to the coal lighter which was secured against the port side of the ship.
‘Have the hands secure a tarpaulin over the buckets.’ Codrington shouted down to his boatswain in the lighter. ‘Else you’ll have us looking like a party of chimneysweeps.’
The deck was alive with the purposeful pandemonium of revictualling, bunkering and watering, and with Zouga beside her, Robyn picked her way through the litter. Codrington turned away from the rail and saw them.
He seemed younger than Robyn remembered, for his expression was relaxed and his manner easy. He had an almost boyish air when contrasted to the grizzled and weatherbeaten sailors about him, but the illusion was dispelled the moment he recognized his visitors. Suddenly his features were stern and the line of his mouth altered, the eyes chilled to the hardness of pale sapphires.
‘Captain Codrington,’ Zouga greeted him with his most studied charm. ‘I am Major Ballantyne.’
‘We have met before, sir,’ Codrington acknowledged, making no effort to return the smile.
Zouga went on unruffled, ‘May I present my sister, Doctor Ballantyne?’
Codrington glanced back at Robyn. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’ It was more a nod than a bow. ‘I have read something of your further exploits since our last meeting in this morning’s news-sheet.’ For a moment the stern expression cracked, and there was a mischievous spark in the blue eyes. ‘You have strong views, ma’am, and an even stronger right hand.’
Then he turned back to Zouga. ‘I have orders from Admiral Kemp to convey you and your party to Quelimane. No doubt you will find our company dull, after your previous travelling companions.’ Deliberately Codrington turned and looked across a half mile of wind-creamed green water to where Huron still lay at her anchor, and for the first time Zouga fidgeted uncomfortably as he followed the direction of the Captain’s eyes. Codrington went on. ‘Be that as it may, I would be grateful if you could present yourselves aboard this ship before noon on the day after tomorrow when I expect a fair tide to leave the bay. Now you must excuse me. I must attend to the management of my ship.’ With a nod, not offering to shake hands or make any other civility, Codrington turned away to his waiting warrant officers, and Zouga’s charm deserted him. His face darkened and seemed to swell with anger at the abrupt dismissal.
‘The fellow has a damnable cheek,’ he growled fiercely to Robyn. For a moment he hesitated and then with a curt, ‘Come, let us leave,’ he turned, crossed the deck, and clambered down into the water lighter, but Robyn made no move.
She waited quietly until Codrington had finished the discussion with his boatswain, and looked up again, feigning surprise to see her still there.
‘Captain Codrington, we left Huron on my insistence. That is why we are now seeking other passage.’ She spoke in a low husky voice, but her manner was so intense that his expression wavered.
‘You were correct. That ship is a slaver and St John is a slave-master. I proved it.’
‘How?’ he demanded, his manner altering instantly.
‘I cannot speak now. My brother—’ She glanced back at the entry port, expecting her brother to reappear at any moment. He had given her strict instructions as to how he expected her to act towards Codrington.
‘I will be at the landing place at Rogger Bay this afternoon,’ she went on quickly.
‘What time?’
‘Three o’clock,’ she said, and turned away, lifted her skirts above her ankles and hurried to the ship’s side.
Admiral Kemp sat impatiently in the immense carved abbot’s chair which his junior officers referred to as the ‘throne’. The size of it emphasized the thinness of the old man’s body. It seemed his shoulders were too narrow to support the mass of gold lace which decorated his blue uniform. He clasped the arms of the chair to keep from fidgeting, for this young officer always made him uneasy.
Clinton Codrington leaned forward towards him and spoke quickly, persuasively, using the finely shaped hands to emphasize each point. The Admiral found this much energy and enthusiasm wearying. He preferred men with less mercurial temperament, who could be relied on to carry out orders to the letter without introducing startling improvisations.
Officers with a reputation for brilliance he viewed with deep suspicion. He had never had that reputation as a young man, in fact his nickname had been ‘Slogger’ Kemp, and he believed that the word brilliance was a pseudonym for instability.
The nature of duty on this station made it necessary for young men like Codrington to be detached for months at a time on independent service, instead of being kept with the battle fleet under the strict eye of a senior officer, ready with a signal of rebuke to check any hot-headedness.
Kemp had an uneasy conviction that he was going to be seriously embarrassed by this particular officer before his appointment of Commander to the Cape Squadron termin
ated, and allowed him to collect his knighthood and retire to the peace and beloved seclusion of his Surrey home. That his future plans had not already been prejudiced by young Codrington was only a matter of the utmost good fortune, and Kemp had difficulty keeping his expression neutral when he remembered the Calabash affair.
Codrington had run down on the slave barracoons at Calabash on a clear June morning so that the five Argentinian slave ships had spotted his topsails while he was thirty miles out, and had immediately begun frantically re-landing their cargoes of slaves on the beach.
By the time Black Joke reached them, the five captains were grinning smugly, their holds empty, and nearly two thousand miserable slaves in clear view squatting in long lines on the shore. To add to the slavers’ complacency they were a good twenty nautical miles south of the equator, and therefore at that time beyond the jurisdiction of the Royal Navy. The barracoons had been sited at Calabash to take full advantage of this provision in the international agreements.
The slavers’ complacency turned to indignation when the Black Joke ran out her guns, and under their menace sent boats with armed seamen on board them.
The Spanish masters, under their Argentinian flags of convenience, protested vigorously and volubly the presence of armed boarding parties.
‘We are not a boarding party,’ Codrington explained reasonably to the senior captain. ‘We are armed advisers, and our advice is that you begin taking aboard your cargo again – and swiftly.’
The Spaniard continued his protests until the crack of a gun from the Black Joke drew his attention to the five nooses already dangling from the gunboat’s yardarm. The Spaniard was certain that the nooses could not be put to the use for which they were very obviously intended – then he looked once more into the chilled sapphire eyes of the very young silver-haired English officer and decided not to make any bets on it.
Once the slaves were re-embarked, the Englishman, their self-appointed armed adviser, gave them his next piece of unsolicited advice. That was that the slave fleet up-anchor and set a course which five hours later intercepted the equatorial line.
Here Captain Codrington made a very precise observation of the sun’s altitude, consulted his almanac and invited the Spanish captain to check his workings and confirm his finding that they were now in 0￮05" North latitude. Then the Englishman immediately arrested him and seized the five vessels; the armed advisers changing their status, without visible pain or discomfort, to that of prize crews.
When Codrington sailed his five prizes into Table Bay, Admiral Kemp listened aghast to the Spaniard’s account of his capture, and then immediately retired to his bed with bowel spasms and migraine headache. From his darkened bedroom he dictated first the order confining Codrington to his ship and the ship to its anchorage, and then his horrified report to the First Lord of the Admiralty.
This episode, which might so easily have ended with Codrington court-martialled and beached for life and with the abrupt termination of Admiral Kemp’s dogged advance towards his knighthood and retirement, had in fact brought both men riches and advancement.
The sloop carrying Kemp’s despatch to the First Lord passed another southbound in mid-ocean, which in its turn bore despatches for the Admiral Commanding the Cape Squadron from not only the First Lord but the Foreign Secretary as well.
Kemp was requested and required in the future to apply the ‘equipment clause’ to the ships of all Christian nations
– with the glaring exception of the United States of America
– in all latitudes, both north and south of the equatorial line.
The despatches were dated four days previous to Codrington’s raid upon the Calabash barracoons, making his actions not only legal but highly meritorious.
From the very brink of professional disaster, Admiral Kemp had been snatched back, with his knighthood assured and a large sum of prize money paid into his account at Messrs Coutts of the Strand. The five Spaniards were condemned at the next session of the Court of Mixed Commission at Cape Town. Kemp’s own share of the prize money had amounted to several thousand pounds, that of his junior captain to nearly twice that amount, and both officers had received personal letters of commendation from the First Lord.
None of this had done anything to increase Kemp’s trust or liking for his junior, and now he listened with mounting horror to the suggestion that he sanction the boarding and search of the American trading clipper, which was at present enjoying the hospitality of the port.
For some sickening moments Kemp contemplated his place in history as the officer who had precipitated the second war with the former American colonies. There was nothing equivocal about the view of the American Government as to the sanctity of their shipping, and there were specific sections of Kemp’s Admiralty orders covering the subject.
‘Admiral Kemp,’ Codrington was clearly burning with enthusiasm for the enterprise, ‘it is absolutely beyond question that the Huron is a slaver, and is equipped for the trade in terms of the act. She is no longer upon the high seas, but lying at anchor within British territorial waters. I can be aboard her within two hours, with impartial witnesses, a Supreme Court judge even.’
Kemp cleared his throat noisily. He had in fact tried to speak, but so appalled was he that the words had not reached his lips. Codrington seemed to take the sound as encouragement.
‘This man, St John, is one of the most infamous slavers of modern times. His name is a legend on the coast. They say he carried over 3,000 slaves one year across the middle passage. It’s a golden opportunity for us.’
Kemp found his voice at last. ‘I dined at Government House on Wednesday. Mr St John was in the company as his Excellency’s personal guest. I considered Mr St John to be a gentleman, and I know he is a man of considerable substance and influence in his own country,’ he said flatly, no trace of emotion in his voice. His self-control surprised even himself.
‘He is a slaver.’ Robyn Ballantyne spoke for the first time since she had seated herself at the window of the Admiral’s study. The two men had forgotten her existence, but now they both turned to her.
‘I have been inside the Huron’s main hold and she is fully equipped for the trade,’ she said, her voice low but clear, and Kemp felt a sour feeling rising within him. He wondered that he had thought this young woman enchanting at their first meeting. Kemp liked young females and he had personally instructed his Secretary to send the invitations to the Ballantynes, brother and sister, but now he regretted it. He could see, of course, that what he had mistaken for spirit was in fact the mischievousness of the born troublemaker, and that far from being pretty she was in fact downright plain, with a large nose and heavy jaw. He had found her a refreshing change from the simpering and giggling young ladies of the Colony – and realized now that the preference had been unwise. He wondered if he could have his Secretary withdraw the invitation.
‘I would think, Admiral Kemp, that it was your duty to send a search party aboard the Huron,’ Robyn told him – and Kemp leaned back in the big chair and breathed heavily through his mouth. As an Admiral of the Blue it had been some years since anybody had dared point out his duty for him. His grip on his self-control slackened.
He stared at the young person. Did he detect a peculiar venom in her voice? He wondered. She had been a passenger on Huron. She had left the ship the instant it reached Table Bay. There was no doubt the woman was ‘fast’ and that Captain St John was a handsome man.
There was a fine story here, Kemp concluded, as he asked drily, ‘Is it true, Miss Ballantyne, that you assaulted the surgeon-general in a fit of ungovernable rage?’
Robyn gaped at him for a moment, the change of direction taking her completely off-balance, and before she could reply he went on,
‘You are clearly a highly emotional young lady. I would have to consider very carefully before committing a hostile act against an important citizen of a friendly nation on your unsupported testimony.’
He pulled the gold watc
h from his fob pocket, and consulted it with his full attention.
‘Thank you for calling on me, Miss Ballantyne.’ Once again he did not use her professional title. ‘We look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening. Perhaps you would allow me a private word with Captain Codrington.’
Robyn felt her cheeks burning as she rose from the window seat.
‘Thank you, Admiral, you have been very kind and patient,’ she said tightly, and swept from the room.
Kemp was not so mild with Codrington. While the young Captain stood to attention before him, he leaned forward in the throne and the veins stood out like twisted blue ropes in the back of his hands as he gripped the arms of the chair.
‘You were misguided in bringing that young person here to discuss navy business,’ he snapped.
‘Sir, I needed to convince you.’
‘That’s enough, Codrington. I have heard all you have to say. Now you listen to me.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘You are naive not to take into account the changed circumstances in the American administration. Are you not aware that Mr Lincoln is likely to be elected to the presidency?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘Then even you may be dimly aware that very delicate considerations are in the balance. The Foreign Office is confident that the new administration will have a markedly changed attitude to the trade.’
‘Sir!’ Codrington agreed stiffly.
‘Can you imagine what it will mean to us to have full right of search of American shipping on the high seas?’
‘Sir.’
‘We will have that – once Mr Lincoln takes the oath, and if no junior officers of this service take independent action to prejudice the attitude of the Americans.’
‘Sir.’ Codrington stood rigid, staring over the Admiral’s head at a painting of a lightly veiled Venus on the panelled wall behind him.
‘Codrington,’ Kemp spoke now with cold menace, ‘you have had one very close shave at Calabash. I swear to you, if you let your wild nature get the better of you once more, I will have you hounded from the service.’