In Distant Waters

by Richard Woodman

  ‘A ship, sir . . . that’s all I am able to say, except that Mr Quilhampton is passing word to call the men, sir, quietly . . .’

  ‘Very well, I’ll be up directly, pass the word for my coxswain.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  The midshipman scuttled away as Drinkwater reached for his trousers. Beyond the curtain he could hear the sounds of the ship stirring, the muted groans of tired men dragged early from their hammocks. Where in God’s name were his sword and pistols?

  ‘Where away?’ Drinkwater hissed, staring into the grey dawn light. Mist trailed away over the water, luminous from an imminent dawn which already lightened the eastern sky.

  ‘Right astern, sir. See where the masts are outlined against the sky?’

  ‘Yes . . . I have her now.’ The final fog of sleep dispersed. He could see the upper masts of a ship. How far was she distant from them? How diminished by perspective?

  Others were creeping aft. Fraser and Hill joined them.

  ‘I’ve ordered a spring passed forrard, sir,’ said Fraser, ‘we can get the starboard broadside to bear . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Drinkwater acknowledged flatly, simultaneously pleased that Fraser had demonstrated his initiative, and irritated that he had not thought of the thing himself.

  ‘What d’you make of her?’ he asked Hill, who peered intently through his glass. Daylight grew by the minute and, Drinkwater thought, they were hidden as yet against the land and the retreating night. If the intruder was meditating surprise she had better loose it upon them quickly. ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t think it is the Russian, sir . . . at least not that two-decker we sighted off the Horn.’

  ‘Then what the devil is it?’ Drinkwater snapped testily, abusing his rank and giving vent to his high-keyed state.

  ‘Want me to take a boat and see, sir?’

  ‘Too big a risk . . . but thank you. No, let us wait for daylight and spend the time getting her under our guns.’

  A few minutes later Fraser reported the capstans manned. The cable from one of the two stern anchors had been led forward and a spring taken to the midships’ capstan so that by heaving and slacking on the trio of anchors, Patrician was turned through almost a right-angle, set within a web of heavy hemp hawsers, her starboard broadside run out and her men at their quarters. In utter silence they waited for daylight to disclose their target.

  Details emerged slowly, remarked upon as they were noticed her ship-rig, her tall masts and the opinion that she was a Spaniard were followed by other intelligence as to the paintwork and the run of her hull, until the disclosure of a mere six gun-ports confirmed she was only a merchant ship.

  The mood changed instantly. Instead of apprehension there was cursing that only a single boat remained to seize her, though they might knock her clean out of the water with a single broadside from the eager guns.

  ‘They must have seen us by now,’ said Drinkwater, puzzled at the lack of reaction from the strange vessel. As though this thought had taken wing it was followed by a hail.

  ‘Ahoy there! What ship is that?’ The question was repeated in bastard Spanish, but the accent was unmistakable. The newcomer was a citizen of the United States of America, a fact confirmed by the hoisting of her bespangled, grid-iron ensign.

  ‘A Yankee, by God!’ remarked Hill, grinning. Drinkwater, seeing them hoisting out a boat and unwilling to reveal the chaotic state of his ship, snapped, ‘Get the cutter alongside, I’ll pay him a visit.’

  ‘Well now, Captain . . . sit you down and take a glass. I’m damned if I expected to find the British Navy hereabouts . . . you wouldn’t be thinking of pressing my men . . . I might not take kindly to that.’

  Captain Jackson Grant replaced the short clay pipe between his teeth and fixed Drinkwater with a grim stare.

  ‘I would not drink with you and then steal your men, Captain.’

  ‘There are those of your party that would, Captain.’

  ‘You have my word upon the matter.’

  Grant laughed. ‘You think that settles the thing, eh?’ He removed his pipe and Drinkwater saw that the man possessed eyes of different colours. The left was dark, the iris brown, while the right was a paler blue. The oddity gave his features, which were otherwise heavily handsome, a curious disbelieving appearance.

  ‘You can rest assured, Captain Grant, that your men are quite safe . . .’ Drinkwater recalled the hostile looks that had been thrown in his direction as he had come aboard.

  ‘Here . . .’ Grant passed a glass, ‘aguardiente, Captain,’ Grant drawled, ‘ “burning water”, made by the Spanish from local grapes. Not to be compared with the cognacs of France, but tolerably agreeable to rough provincial palates.’

  ‘Your health, Captain.’ Drinkwater suppressed the shudder that travelled upwards from his stomach in reaction to the fiery spirit. Grant’s tone was bantering, hinting at hostility, a hostility that was, for the moment, overlaid with curiosity. They were of an age; Drinkwater put the next question.

  ‘You fought for your independence, Captain?’

  Grant grinned, showing yellow teeth. ‘Sure. I served under Commodore Whipple and in privateers. Made a deal of money from my service too. British money. And you?’

  ‘Yes. Under Rodney and ashore in the Carolinas. And against privateers. My first command was as prize-master . . . little schooner called the Algonquin of Rhode Island.* We caught her slipping into the Irish Sea to stop the Liverpool merchants resting at night . . .’

  ‘God damn! Josiah King’s ship?’

  ‘I do not recall the name of her commander . . .’

  Grant’s curious eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You can have been no more than a boy . . .’

  ‘Nor you, Captain . . .’

  Grant’s hostility began to melt and he grinned, his face relaxing. ‘Goddam it no, we were both just boys!’ He leaned forward and refilled Drinkwater’s glass. The shared memories and the raw brandy loosened their mutual suspicions; both men relaxed, exchanging stories of that now distant war.

  ‘So what do you do in Drake’s Bay, Captain, with your masts struck and the look of a surprised wench about your ship?’

  ‘Refitting, Captain, a spot of trouble with a leak. And you?’

  ‘A spot of trade,’ he held up the glass, closed his brown eye and focused the blue one on the pale amber fluid. ‘ “Fire-water” sells well, hereabouts. I can’t sell it in San Francisco, but mestizos and Indians’ll be here once they hear Cap’n Jack’s anchored.’

  ‘I see,’ said Drinkwater wryly, raising one eyebrow. ‘And for what do you sell the aguardiente?’

  Grant grinned again, showing his wolfish teeth. ‘California bank-notes, Captain, dried hides, can’t you smell ’em?’

  Drinkwater sniffed the air. The faint taint of putrefaction came to him.

  ‘Yes . . . and you get the aguardiente from where?’

  Grant shrugged. ‘Monterey, San Francisco, San Diego . . . the damned Franciscans proscribe the trade there, but I find,’ he laughed, ‘the customers come to me.’

  ‘From whom do you buy the stuff, then, if the Franciscans have a hold on the country?’

  ‘Oh, there are plenty of suppliers, Captain. Don’t forget I come from civilisation. I can supply bows, buttons, lace and furbelows from Paris faster than the Dons can ship their dull and dolorous fashions from Madrid.’ Grant’s smile was knowing.

  ‘Does Don José Arguello trade with you?’

  Grant shot Drinkwater a shrewd look and his tone was suddenly guarded. ‘Oh, no, Captain. Don José is an hidalgo, Commandante of this vast and idle province. Spanish governors are forbidden to trade on their own, or their province’s accounts.’ Grant tossed off his glass and refilled it. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Curiosity.’ Drinkwater paused. It came back to him that there had been that atmosphere of hidden secrets about the Commandante and his entourage. ‘His brother then, Don Alejo?’

  ‘You’re very shrewd, Captain Drinkwater, as well as bein
g improperly named . . .’ Grant refilled Drinkwater’s glass. ‘You have heard of the lovely Doña Ana Maria Arguello de la Salas, eh?’

  ‘I have heard something of her . . . and also of a Russian . . .’ He let the sentence trail off and sipped the glass. A feeling of contented well-being permeated him. His limbs felt weightless, his energies concentrating on thinking, of gauging this American and divining how much truth he was speaking.

  ‘Oh, yeah . . . I heard the damned Russkies had fallen out with good old King George. Well, he couldn’t look after his own could he? Eh?’

  Drinkwater sat quietly, refusing to be drawn, raising his good shoulder in a careless shrug.

  ‘Sure. Now I know why you’re here. An’ the damned Russkies. Don Alejo encourages them . . . and he trades . . . who wouldn’t? A man must take something back to Castile better than button scurvy or mange from this desert of Nueva España. You’ve heard of Rezanov, Captain, eh?’

  ‘A little, perhaps. I understand he stands high in the favour of the lady you mentioned.’

  ‘Arguello’s daughter?’ Sure, she dotes on him and the match is encouraged by those Spanish apes.’ Grant was suddenly serious. ‘She’s a beautiful woman, Captain, perhaps the most beautiful woman. Certainly she’s the most beautiful woman Jackson Grant has ever seen. Yes, sir. You haven’t seen her . . . by God, she got eyes like sloes, shoulders like marble and a breast a man could do murder for . . .’

  Drinkwater stirred uncomfortably, but Grant was oblivious in the fury of his passion. His weird eyes gleamed with an intensity that spoke of the coastal rivalries fired by the unfortunate beauty of Donã Ana Maria.

  ‘Why a man would pass over a score of these damned flat-nosed Indians, even a brace of the best-looking Ladinos from Panama with wanton arses and coconuts for tops’l yards, for an hour in that lady’s company for all that she only strummed a guitar and wore the habit of a nun . . .’ He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, poured another peg of brandy into his glass, tossed it back and refilled it again.

  ‘And Rezanov?’ Drinkwater prompted.

  ‘Ah, Rezanov . . . Nicolai Petrovich Comte de Rezanov,’ Grant lisped the name with an aping of a French accent, his eyes glaring with dislike. Then his faced cleared and he laughed, a cruel laugh. ‘You have not been in the Pacific long Captain . . . I consider you should not have come at all . . . you damned British have no right here . . . but neither have the damned Russkies . . .’ Grant’s voice was slurred, his mind shifted briefly to his Anglophobia and then slid back to a more personal hatred. He waved his hand towards the stern windows. The pale streak of the beach rising to dunes and dun coloured hills could be seen beyond the anchorage. ‘Nueva España . . . New Albion . . . New Muscovy . . . come Captain, it’s not yours, nor Spain’s, nor the fucking Tsar’s. One day it’ll be ours . . . a state of the Union, Californio . . . mark my words Captain, and Jackson Grant’ll be a founding fucking father . . .’ Again he held up the glass of aguardiente and glared through it with one bright blue eye.

  ‘Oh, Rezanov had his ideas . . . big ideas . . . he came out with an expedition under Captain Kruzenstern, accredited ambassador to the Mikado at Yedo, but the little yellow men kept him kicking his heels at Nagasaki before kicking his arse out of their waters.’ Grant chuckled. ‘Kruzenstern went on his way and left Rezanov in the Juno to inspect the factories, forts and posts of the Russian-American Company . . . now what d’you think the Russian-American Company was, eh? Nothing but a damned front for the bloody Tsar to get his claws on this part of the world. They trap the sea-otter and shoot the grizzly bear, but they can’t get the bloody furs to Canton faster than Jackson Grant, and the poor bastards live in squalor in Alasky and the Kuriles. You should see them at Sitka, why it’d make your lower deck scum look like lords . . .

  ‘Rezanov thought he could kill all these ills . . . damned odd lot these Russians. Rezanov thought he was a prophet . . . guess that’s why the Doña Ana fell for his line of speaking, her being influenced by the papist church . . . Well . . . he came prospecting down the coast . . . Sitka, Nootka, the Colombia River, Bodega Bay and San Francisco . . . and Doña Ana Maria and her father, El Commandante . . .’

  ‘And he secured an alliance to trade?’

  Grant shrugged. ‘Sure, something of the sort, I guess. They say he bettered that Franciscan corpse that passes for a confessor . . . Don Alejo at least had gold from him . . . Tartar gold, and that’s fact . . .’

  ‘And from Doña Ana Maria?’

  ‘A promise of marriage . . .’ Grant stared gloomily into his glass, the brown eye lugubrious.

  ‘And Rezanov returned to the north?’

  ‘Yeah. I last saw him at Sitka. I heard later he’d set off for Russia to confirm a treaty with the Tsar . . . get it ratified, or whatever the hell they do with these things. He got his own back on the yellow men, too,’ Grant laughed, ‘sent men and ships and took the island of Sakhalin from them to please his master, I guess. Reckon a Tsar’s signature must be worth an island or two, eh, Captain?’

  ‘And when is he expected to return, this Rezanov?’

  Grant frowned, the drink clouding his powers of thought. He seemed to be trying to recall a lost fact. Then, as he remembered, he smiled. ‘Never, Captain . . . you see Rezanov’s been dead a year . . . just heard the news in Sitka . . . he died like a dog in Krasnoiarsk . . . left the field plum clear for Jackson Grant . . .’

  Grant chuckled and Drinkwater considered the import of this news. Apart from altering the life of Doña Ana he did not see that it was of much effect to him. There was still that Russian battle-ship.

  ‘Captain Grant, have you seen anything of a Russian man-o’-war on the coast?’

  ‘Sure. The Juno’s at Sitka, or was when I left, bound, so word had it, for the Colombia River . . .’

  ‘But the Juno’s been in the Pacific for some time, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. She was built on the coast, a frigate . . . maybe thirty, forty guns.’ Grant craned unsteadily on one chair leg, staring at the distant Patrician. ‘ ’Bout the same size as yourself . . .’

  ‘What about a bigger ship? A two-decked line-of-battle-ship with a black hull? Have you seen such a vessel?’

  Grant shook his head. ‘No . . .’

  ‘And where are you bound from here?’

  ‘San Francisco . . .’

  ‘To tell Doña Ana her lover is dead?’

  Grant frowned through his drunkenness. ‘They don’t know?’

  ‘They were expecting him.’

  ‘What? How the hell do you know that?’ Grant attempted to rise, but fell back.

  ‘I was there a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Shit, Captain . . .’ He broke off to think, rubbing his hand across his mouth again and then pouring out more brandy. ‘How the hell did you get into there and out again without the bloody Inquisition catching you? You’re at war with the Spaniards, ain’t ya?’

  ‘Under a flag of truce, Captain. I was a cartel . . . returning Spanish prisoners. We took the frigate Santa Monica.’

  ‘Dios! And Rubalcava? Did you take him a prisoner, or did you kill the bastard?’

  ‘I took him prisoner. I imagine he’s pleading his suit with Doña Ana at this moment.’

  Grant looked up, fixing Drinkwater with his odd eyes, the one dark and agonised like a whipped cur’s, the other flinty with hatred. Drinkwater was surprised at the depth of the wound he had inflicted. ‘All’s fair, they say, in love and war . . .’

  Grant’s mouth hung open when suddenly the sound of distant shots came through the open stern windows. Drinkwater rose and peered in the direction of the Patrician. Even at this distance he could see the smoke of powder hovering over the deck, and the desperately rowed boat was making for the shore full of men. He grasped the situation in an instant. His men were deserting!

  ‘God’s bones!’ he hissed through clenched teeth, picking up his hat and making for the door. ‘Your servant, Captain Grant, and good luck!’

&nbs
p; And the words ‘All’s fair in love and war’ tormented him with their accuracy all the way back to the Patrician in the cutter.

  * See An Eye of the Fleet

  CHAPTER 12

  April 1808

  Drake’s Bay

  ‘How many?’ he asked, aware that he had asked the question before. Last time the answer had shocked him, now it appalled him.

  ‘Forty-eight, sir.’

  He looked down the list that Fraser handed him and then at the remnants of Patrician’s company assembled in the waist. With Mount absent the bayonets of Blixoe’s marines seemed a thin defence against a rising of the rest. Forty-eight men lost in a single act of mutinous desertion. And the remainder were in a black mood. How many of them would have run given the opportunity, seduced by over-long a proximity to the shore yet deprived of even the feel of warm sand under their feet? And he was half-drunk and the day not far advanced . . .

  ‘We were heaving her round, sir, as you said, ready to bring her out of the bay and someone cut the after cable. She swung to the wind and the stern’s touching the bottom.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fraser.’ He looked round the deck and coughed to clear his throat. ‘Very well, lads, if there’s another man who wishes to go I’ll not stand in his way. But I warn you I’ll hang anyone . . . anyone I catch. Those of you that remain need fear nothing. We shall haul the ship off and complete rigging her. We are better off without unwilling ship-mates. Now let’s to work . . .’

  Drinkwater turned away, sick with despair, aware of the brandy on his breath and guilt-ridden by his absence at a crucial moment.

  ‘Ah’m sorry, sir, I couldna’ gie chase, we had just cast loose the barge frae the raft, an’ you had the only other boat . . .’

  Fraser’s acccent was exaggerated by stress. Wearily Drinkwater acknowledged his plight.