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 re-established 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.
‘Capitan 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?’
‘Sí . . . 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.’
‘Sí, 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.
CHAPTER 7
March 1808
San Francisco
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.
‘Sí . . . 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 seabed 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 pe
licans 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.
In Distant Waters Page 9