In Distant Waters

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘It’s those Spanish brigs!’

  ‘Jesus!’

  The two brigs had broken through the vaporous tendrils of the mist and were suddenly recognised as the vessels they had seen last anchored under the shadow of Point Lobos, beneath the Commandante’s Residence. They were standing into Drake’s Bay, their yards braced and on slightly diverging courses. End-on, Drinkwater did not need glasses to see the bristling lines of cannon piercing their sides.

  ‘Beat to quarters! Man the capstan!’

  They had a spring upon their anchor cable; it lay slack in the water and, if they were quick, might give them a moment’s advantage.

  ‘Where’s my coxswain?’

  ‘Here, zur . . .’

  ‘Sword and pistols, upon the instant! Gentlemen, arm yourselves . . . they will rush us!’

  The deck of the Patrician presented a spectacle of disorder. Topmen descended from the foremast by the backstays, sliding down hand-over-hand. Officers and men ran, bumping into one another, as they scurried to their posts.

  ‘Man the larboard broadside!’

  Drinkwater saw Fraser, his sword drawn, his shirt-tail un-tucked from some strenuous endeavour at the base of the foremast, run below to command the battery in Quilhampton’s absence. Amidships, Hill stood ready by the capstan, pushing spare waisters into place about the splayed bars and then Tregembo was awkwardly hitching his sword-belt about his waist and Derrick was silently offering him his pistols.

  He stuck one in his waistband and fisted the other. A thought struck him and he held it out to the solemn Quaker. ‘Here, defend thyself, if no one else . . .’

  Derrick shook his head and Drinkwater, his mind pressed, dismissed the man for a high-minded fool.

  ‘Guns are bearing, sir,’ squeaked Belchambers alongside him, sent by Fraser.

  ‘Are they loaded, damn it?’

  ‘Mr Fraser says to tell you they’re loaded, sir as best they can be . . . mixed shot and langridge . . .’

  ‘Then run ’em out!’

  The boy skittered off and Drinkwater took one last look about the deck. It was a chaos of flung-down hand-spikes, of uncoiled ropes and stoppered sails rolled in grey sausages of resistant canvas. Spars, half-secured and almost ready for hoisting, lay at drunken angles, like pitch-forks left against a hay-cart. But the men at the quarterdeck guns were kneeling ready, though their breasts heaved from their late exertions, and the dishevelled marines, in unprofessional oddities of dress, leaned upon the hammock nettings, their bayonets gleaming and their muskets levelled. They had not been utterly surprised and, as yet, the Spanish had not a single gun that could bear. Below his feet he felt the 24-pounders rumble out through their ports.

  The brigs were close now, perhaps two cables away and he could hear an angry buzz that came from a dense cluster of men about their twin fo’c’s’les. They were dark with boarders, heaped like swarming bees.

  ‘You lads there,’ Drinkwater called to the quarterdeck gun-captains, ‘mark their boarders,’ he raised his voice, ‘mark their boarders, fo’c’s’le!’ a wave of comprehension came from Midshipman Wickham forward. If those three carronades did their business, their spreading langridge would tear a bloody and ragged hole through that cluster of men.

  As the noise from the brigs grew louder it seemed a grimmer silence settled upon the Patrician. Drinkwater pierced it. He would have to loose his cannon soon, or risk his enemies stretching ahead and astern of him, out of the lines of bearing of his guns.

  ‘Stand by for boarders! Fire!’

  The thunder of the cannon erupted in orange flames and the white obscurity of reeking powder smoke. The deck vibrated with the recoil of the heavy trucks and, as the smoke cleared, he could see the gun-crews leaping about their pieces as they reloaded. But, it was already too late. So close were the brigs that the most elevated gun had sent its shot no higher than man-height above their rails. Their masts and topsails, shivering now as they checked way to drive alongside, loomed above the shredding smoke and Drinkwater could see the white circles and interlacing and expanding ripples that showed more than half his shot had plunged harmlessly between, and far beyond, the Spaniards.

  But there were bloody gaps in the clusters of men about the beakheads of the enemy, and there were dots in the water, some inert and some waving, where men died and shrove their souls in agony. He could hear the screams and a weird ululating cry as some unfortunate man spewed shock and horror and the dreadful pain of a mortal wound into the air.

  It was a moment of the briefest pause. Below a fast-reloaded gun roared again, followed by another and another and then Drinkwater turned. The first brig crashed into the bowsprit, locking her own in a tangle of splitting wood and torn wreckage. He could see the smoke and stab of small arms and a few bold men beginning to scramble across the interlocked spars as the enemy brig, thus entangled, fell slowly off the wind and alongside the British frigate.

  Aft, the second brig loomed close alongside. There was a sickening crash as her cathead struck the Patrician’s quarter and the impact of the collision sent a second mighty tremble through the ship. A grappling iron struck the rail and its line was belayed, to be cut through by a marine; but another followed, and another, and the marine fell back, clutching his throat, shot through at close range by a pistol ball.

  ‘Get your men on deck, Fraser!’ Drinkwater roared below and swung round, his sword drawn, joining the hedge of bayonets and boarding pikes and cutlasses as the gunners abandoned their now useless pieces and fought to defend themselves.

  The Spaniards poured over the rails, jumping like reckless monkeys from one ship to another, and Drinkwater knew that the Dons had emptied every stew and calaboose, every tavern and every vessel with men who had a mind to cut the bloody British intruders down to size. And, God, there were enough of them. If every waterfront idler, and every drunken mestizo in San Francisco had come, it did not explain the torrent of men that poured, cutting, slashing and stabbing their way across his quarterdeck.

  He recognised the uniform of a provincial Spanish regiment, an officer leading a party of the brig’s seamen, together with a ragged rabble of ‘volunteers’, a mixed rag-bag of races, half-drunk and verminous from the desperate look of them.

  But as he fought for his life, he recognised something else, something that his heightened consciousness had half-expected. There were men from the Santa Monica, men in clear breach of their parole, and at their head, howling with the triumphant bellow of a conquistadore, was Don Jorge Méliton Rubalcava.

  By the time Quilhampton reached the boats, the brigs were alongside Patrician. He splashed through the shallows and fell into the stern of the cutter.

  ‘Leave the barge!’ He ordered, panting with exertion, ‘Oars! Come on, come on,’ he chivvied, ‘give way together!’

  Shoving the tiller across the boat, he swung the cutter’s bow round towards the noise and smoke of desperate battle.

  Drinkwater was slithering in gore. His right forearm was cut and blood trickled from the graze of a pistol ball across his skull. He hacked and stabbed with his sword and the clubbed pistol in his left hand was sticky with gore. He was aware of beating off a savage attack, of flinging back the first impetuous rush of the Spaniards. He was aware too that Midshipman Wickham had reported from the fo’c’s’le that they had succeeded in staving off the inrush of boarders forward. Slewed on their slides the heavy carronades had cut swathes of death through the enemy and dampened the ardour of their attack.

  But Lieutenant Mylchrist had been carried below dangerously wounded, and Wickham feared another rush from the regrouping Spaniards. Drinkwater asked where the first lieutenant was, but lost Wickham’s reply as he parried a pike thrust and cut savagely at a swarthy cheek, seeing the bright start of blood and the pain in the glaring eyes of a man.

  ‘Mount, bayonets here!’ he bawled and threw himself back into the fight as the Spaniards renewed their attack upon the heavily outnumbered Brit
ish.

  Fraser never got out of the gun-deck. From a boat towing alongside, or by sliding down the bumpkins of the after brig, men squeezed through a loose gunport as Fraser obeyed Drinkwater’s order to reinforce the upper deck with his gun-crews. This small intrusion quickly became a torrent as two, then three ports were opened. Dark, lithe men with short stabbing knives clenched in their teeth and wet from a partial ducking alongside, hauled themselves inboard to confront the gunners. The gun-crews were tired after days of exertion and the recent labour of hauling out their weapons and it seemed this influx of men was endless, a wildly diabolical manifestation rising from hell itself. They were small wiry, half-caste fellows, who wriggled between the guns and seemed utterly at home in the shadows of the gun-deck, as happy as the nocturnal pick-pockets, scavengers, footpads, pimps and thieves they were. They slipped easily inside the long guards of defenders with rammers and pikes, hamstringing and hobbling men who fell howling, only to be disembowelled and eviscerated by the gleaming knives that flashed dully in the semi-darkness.

  His hanger flickering desperately, Lieutenant Fraser was fighting for his very life.

  Mr Lallo motioned to Skeete and the loblolly boy dragged the twitching body of Lieutenant Mylchrist to one side. Already the pledget they had just secured was darkening with blood.

  ‘Next!’ Lallo wiped a reeking hand across his brow and took a pull at the rum bottle he kept propped against a futtock.

  Derrick, the captain’s Quaker clerk, heaved the next victim onto the canvas spread on the sea-chests. It was one of the topmen, a big, burly man whose legs were curiously drawn up in the foetal position. His eyes were staring wildly and his lips were rimed with dried spittle. The swaying lantern hooked above the operating ‘table’ threw dreadful shadows across his features, so that his face seemed to be working in convulsive spasms.

  Skeete forced fingers into the man’s mouth, prised open his jaw and, with the vicious ease of practice, thrust a damp pad of leather into the topman’s gape. The jaws snapped like those of a predator.

  ‘Legs down!’ Lallo ordered and Skeete jerked his head at Derrick. The Quaker swallowed hard and took the leg opposite to Skeete, while Lallo forced down the man’s shoulders.

  ‘Ahhhh . . .’

  Lallo slopped rum into the open mouth and deftly replaced the leather pad as the man went slack.

  ‘Not on the wound, for Christ’s sake!’ Lallo shouted as Derrick, beholding the complete horror of the injury, gagged uncontrollably.

  Lallo slopped rum on his hands, wiped them on his apron, and bent over the ghastly ruin of the man’s abdomen. The fetid air of the orlop was filled with the stench of blood, urine, rum and vomit and resonated with the groans and whimpers of the wounded.

  ‘He’s lucky,’ remarked Lallo to the professionally interested Skeete, ‘no rupture of the guts . . .’ His finger traced the blue outline of a section of intestine, almost caressed the crinkled mass of a protruding curve of bowel and pointed to the smooth darkness of an excrescent organ.

  ‘Aye.’ Skeete agreed with his superior.

  ‘Needle and sutures, Skeete . . .’ Lallo began tucking the misplaced viscera back into the hollow of the body. He might have been stuffing a cushion. ‘You’ll have to help,’ he remarked, looking up at Derrick, who had come forward again, his forehead pale as wax in the yellow guttering of the lamp-light. ‘You should be used to quaking,’ he jested, provoking a snigger from Skeete as he produced the prepared needle.

  They drew the two sides of the topman’s belly together and, with a swift and deft precision, the surgeon looped a line of sutures down the white flesh.

  ‘Missed his wedding-tackle eh, Skeete?’ he remarked, finishing the stitches with a flourish.

  ‘By a mile, sir,’ grinned Skeete.

  ‘Next,’ said Lallo . . .

  Midshipman Frey was on the quarterdeck. He was already wounded in the shoulder and feeling light-headed. He felt a terrible blow in his guts, a blow that drove the wind from his body and he felt himself flung back, crashing against a gun carriage and slumping down, hitting his head on the bulwark. For a long time he lay inert, the noise of battle seemingly miles above him while he fought for his breath in an interminable indrawn gasp that seemed like an enormous and unsuccessful paroxysm that would go on until he lost consciousness.

  But he did not lose consciousness entirely. He seemed dimly aware of many things; if he did not succeed in inflating his lungs he would die, but the light was bright in his eyes and he remembered the sunshine, diffused by the golden mist. The upper spars that he had been engaged in hoisting, seemed drawn with a perfect precision against the sky. He had thought of attempting to paint that effect of the light later, and he thought of the resolution again now, only filled with a sadness that he might never be able to try it. If he did not draw his breath soon, his hand would have lost its cunning for ever.

  And then the reflex triumphed and air was drawn painfully into his lungs. Agony radiated outwards like a bomb-burst from his chest, stabbing him with fires of red-hot iron and it seemed easier to die than to endure.

  There were other things troubling him now. The sunlight flickered before his eyes as the dark and sinister shadows of men interposed themselves. He found he resented this and began to try and call them, to tell them to stop standing in the light, that he wanted the warmth of the sun to die by. He could see clearly now, shoes, and bare feet, and a marine’s boots, all dancing in a mad figure. He would have to shout louder to make them hear and then they would stop . . .

  Drinkwater saw Frey fall and cut his way through between a Spanish officer and a marine, swinging the sword across the neck of the seaman whose pike butt had been driven into the midshipman’s guts. The exposure of himself was foolish for, in his concern, he half-turned to see if the lad was alive and received another nick on the forearm for his trouble. But it was the merest pin-prick, the point of a weapon, a long lunge and he saw the triangular blade withdrawn, following it with his eyes until he found its owner, Rubalcava . . .

  ‘You treacherous bastard!’ Drinkwater attempted to bind the grinning Spaniard’s blade, but a man fell across in front of him stone dead, and he saw it was a marine, and suddenly he was ringed with steel, standing astride the howling, heaving body of Midshipman Frey with a dozen enemies surrounding him. He gasped for breath and read triumph in Rubalcava’s eyes.

  He saw the Spaniard lower his sword point and stride across the deck. He brandished the long blade in a single side-swipe, severing the halliards of the ensign.

  The wind tugged the huge, St George’s cross and the bright Union in its upper canton. Slowly it fluttered downwards to lie across Patrician’s shattered rail. The noise of fighting ebbed away, to be replaced by the silence of defeat.

  Quilhampton, willing the oarsmen to reach the ship as soon as possible, was watching events ahead of him in a lather of impatience. He did not recall until they were half-way back to the Patrician, that he had come ashore unarmed, relying upon Sergeant Blixoe’s party to maintain discipline. His chief concern had been to recover the damaged barge. Now he was running full-tilt into action with nothing more than a tiller in his hand.

  It was at the moment that this dawned on him that he saw the ensign lowered to the rail in token of submission. Aghast he stood in the boat, staring dumbfoundedly ahead. Seeing him thus, the oarsmen faltered, trailing their oars and looking round.

  They were in the shadow of the ship and everywhere swarmed the alien figures of the enemy.

  ‘Fuckin’ ’ell, they’ve taken the fuckin’ ship . . .’

  ‘Oh shit . . .’

  ‘Put the helm over, sir . . . let’s get the ’ell out of ’ere, for Chrissakes, before those bastards see us . . . come on you lot, backwater starboard and pull like fuck on those larboard oars.’

  Quilhampton came to his senses as the boat turned, the jerk of the fleeing oarsmen set him heavily in the stern sheets. He did not interfere with their retreat.

  His premoniti
on had been right. They had lost the ship to the enemy.

  PART TWO

  FLOOD TIDE

  ‘Le trident de Neptune est le sceptre du monde.’

  Lemierre

  CHAPTER 14

  May 1808

  Débâcle

  Drinkwater woke in the dawn, disturbed by the throbbing of his wounds and the spiritual nadir of defeat. His cell was a bare room with a small, barred window, a crude table, chair and palliasse, the details of which were just visible in the gloom. The hopelessness that had dominated his thoughts in the night was displaced by the physical discomfort of his body, and this demanded his attention. He was still tired from lack of sleep, but the edge had gone from his exhaustion, and his brain began to seek priorities in the instinctive business of survival.

  They had brought him stumbling up what had seemed like thousands of steps before throwing him into this small room. He had no inkling of where he was beyond a vague realisation that Rubalcava had brought his prize into San Francisco Bay. Fatigue, despair and loss of blood had deprived him of rational thought in the aftermath of surrender and it was only just returning to him in the chill of this desolate dawn.

  Slowly he dragged himself to his feet and stumbled to the chair, peeling off his coat and laying bare the bloody mess of his forearm. His head ached and he had another wound on his thigh, as well as numerous bruises and a shivering reaction to his plight.

  They had left him a plate of bread and a jug of wine. After a mouthful he began to feel a little better. On the table lay the ship’s log-book and his journal. He remembered taking them from his rifled cabin. They had also left him tinder and a candle end. He fished in his pocket. His Dollond glass was still there together with a small pen-knife.

  He drew out the latter and prised out its tiny blade. Elizabeth had given it to him. For a moment he sat regarding it mistily, fighting off an impulse to weep. He had a second draught of the raw wine and, while the shaking of his hands subsided, he fought to strike flint on steel and catch a light to the candle. It took him several minutes, but he felt much better as he made himself work.