Drinkwater watched as life ebbed from the tumbled goliath, shot so ignominiously by a debauched ne’er-do-well, and felt that sharp pang of regret, that sense of universal loss that accompanied certain of the deaths he had witnessed. He was about to stand when his eye fell upon something bright.
Half a dozen huge nuggets of the purest gold had rolled out of the mountain-man’s leather pouch.
‘Bury ’em both,’ he called to the marines, and scooping up the treasure he swept them into his pocket.
Gold.
It threw off the reflections of the candle flames leaping and guttering as Patrician worked her way off shore in the first hours of the night. Tomorrow she would appear off Point Lobos, but tonight she would hide herself and her prize in the vastness of the Pacific.
Gold.
A king’s ransom lay before him. No wonder Mack had scorned the idea of payment for passing Patrician’s deserters to the Russians, and no wonder he had not wanted those same men wandering over wherever it was he found the stuff, for that was the only implication that fitted his deed and his character. He would not encourage the Spaniards, for their tentacles would spread inexorably northwards, while the Russians could supply him with those necessities he was compelled to get from civilisation. Powder, shot, steel needles, flints . . . Drinkwater had no idea how many natural resoures the wilderness contained.
But it contained gold.
And what the devil would such an unworldly man as ‘Captain Mack’ do with such a treasure? That was a mystery past his divining.
‘Cleared for action, sir!’
‘Very well, Mr Fraser.’
Above their heads the white ensign snapped in the breeze from the north that had blown fresh throughout the night and was only now losing its strength as they came under the lee of the land. From his post on the gun-deck, Quilhampton tried to locate the little cove where he and the cutter’s crew had holed up and from where he had seen the Patrician carried off into captivity. Suppose the Suvorov was waiting for them under the protection of the Spanish battery on Point Lobos? What would be the outcome of the action they were about to fight?
He found he dare not contemplate defeat, and felt the atmosphere aboard the ship imbued with such a feeling of renewal that defeat must be impossible, no matter what the odds. Those two raids, little enough in themselves, had patched up morale, made of them all a ship’s company again, a ship’s company that had endured much. There was talk of going home after the job was done, after the Spanish and the Russians had been made to eat their own shit, and the gun-captains kneeled with their lanyards taut in their fists in anticipation of this event.
‘Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war,’ the Reverend Jonathan Henderson had declaimed at Divine Service that morning, ‘for with Thee I will break in pieces the nations, and with Thee I will destroy kingdoms,’ he had railed, and if no one understood the finer theological points of his subsequent deductions, all made the blasphemous connection between Jeremiah’s imputed words and themselves.
‘Stand ready, sir,’ Mr Belchambers squeaked at the companionway, ‘maximum elevation,’ he went on repeating Drinkwater’s orders from the quarterdeck, ‘no sign of the Russian ships. Target to be the battery, starboard broadside.’
Quilhampton grinned. The boy had the phrases arse-about-face, but he was cool enough. He stooped and peered through the adjacent gun-port. He saw the smoke suddenly mushroom from the end cannon, wafting outwards in a great smoke-ring, but no fall of shot followed.
‘Make ready!’ Belchambers’s squeak came again.
‘Make ready there, starbowlines!’ Quilhampton roared with mounting excitement.
A second smoke-ring mushroomed from the embrasures of Point Lobos.
‘They’re bloody well saluting us,’ muttered Quilhampton, frowning.
‘Hold your fire, sir! There’s a flag of truce putting off from the shore.’
A groan of disappointment ran along the gun-deck.
‘Capitán, my brother, Don José Arguello de Salas, Commandante of His Most Catholic Majesty’s city of San Francisco extends his most profound apologies for this most unfortunate mistake.’
‘Damn you Don Alejo. Where is your brother? I demand to know more of this affair, this so-called mistake which I know to be nothing short of a towering fabrication, a . . . a . . .’ words failed to express Drinkwater’s angry sense of outrage.
So many half-guessed-at truths had found their answers in the hour since the flag-of-truce had first been seen. But Don Alejo was not a man to concede a thing. As Drinkwater faltered, the wily Spaniard rammed home his counter-stroke.
‘We are both guilty, Capitán. You, please, you steal our schooner, La Virgen de la Bonanza.’
‘That is an outrageous allegation . . .’
‘Capitán, please, it is one of the confusions of this war.’
‘If you had informed me, as you were duty bound to do, that she brought news of our new alliance, I should not have been forced to capture her. You, Don Alejo, acted outside all international law by selling, yes sir, selling His Britannic Majesty’s ship Patrician to the Russian power in the person of Prince Rakitin after you had heard that your country was once again an ally of mine. Such an action is the basest and most dishonourable that I have ever heard of.’
‘A little mistake, Capitán Drinkwater,’ snapped Don Alejo,’ a little . . . what did your English papers say, eh? Ah, sí, a quibble, like when your ships come under your Admirality orders and attack Bustamente’s frigates and blow up the Mercedes and send women to God before you have a declaration of war! It is nothing! Nothing!’ Don Alejo made a gesture contemptuous dismissal.
‘But you traded, Don Alejo, sold my ship. You have been trading with the Russians ever since Rezanov came, eh? Your Most Catholic Master does not approve of his servants trading in his monopolies.’
‘It was for my country that I remove your ship. You too-much disturb trade. Now we are at peace and allies, you have your ship back.’ Don Alejo spoke in a lower key. ‘Perhaps, Capitán Drinkwater, you should be a little obliged to me . . .’
‘Upon my soul, why?’ asked Drinkwater aback.
‘When you first take me prisoner, Capitán, Don Jorge Rubalcava, he want to tell you to go to Monterey. There you not escape. There you lose your ship. Here in San Francisco . . .’ He shrugged, a gesture full of implications and Drinkwater understood that Don Alejo was beyond his comprehension in cunning. Whatever the venal sins of his brother, Don Alejo would emerge on the winning side. If he knew of the presence of gold in California, as that shrewd observation of Quilhampton’s suggested, Don Alejo was not the man to make the knowledge public. Had he in some subtle way suggested to Doña Ana Maria that honour was at stake and so ensured Drinkwater’s escape through her action? Looking at him, Drinkwater thought the thing at least a possibility. And Don Alejo had nothing to lose by it, for Drinkwater might have failed, lost in some obscure and savage fracas on the coast. He shuddered at the mere recollection of the night raid on the Columbia River.
‘Now, Capitán, as to the matter of your men . . .’ said the Spaniard smoothly.
Drinkwater frowned. ‘I shall expect them returned instantly.’
‘As soon as Don Jorge takes possession of the aviso, Capitán.’ Don Alejo smiled victoriously. Drinkwater opened his mouth to protest the injustice of losing their prize. Then he remembered the gold and felt the weight of those nuggets dragging down the tails of his full-dress coat. When the time came, he thought, he could purchase comforts enough to compensate his men for the loss of their paltry share in the schooner. Perhaps they were better off, for the matter might lay before a prize-court for years, and only the attorneys would benefit. Besides, he had other matters to attend to. There were despatches, brought weeks earlier, carried overland to Panama with the news of the rising against the French, then up the coast in La Virgen de la Bonanza. Don Alejo swore he had intended to pass them to Drinkwater on his release, the very day Drinkwater had succeeded in es
caping. And there was still the Russian power to destroy.
Don Alejo was holding out a glass.
‘A toast to our new alliance, Capitán . . . to Dos de Mayo . . . the second day of May, the day Madrid rose against the French. It is a pity good news travels so slow, eh?’
He knew he was not supposed to see her, that she broke some imposition of her father’s or her uncle’s to contrive this clumsy meeting on the path. She was as lovely as ever and yet there was something infinitely sad about the cast of her features, despite her smile. She held two books out to him. They were his log and journal and he took them, thanking her and tucking them under his arm with the bundle of despatches Don Alejo had at last given him. He smiled back at her.
‘Señorita, I am indebted to you for ever for my freedom, even,’ he added, the smile passing from his face, ‘for my very life.’ He paused, recalling how close he had come to the ultimate act of despair and her face reflected her own grief. Then he brightened. ‘And thank you for your kindness in retrieving my books.’
‘It was nothing . . .’
‘You knew about the changes in your country’s circumstances?’
She nodded. ‘Sí.’
‘And disobeyed your father?’
‘My father is sometimes deceived by Don Alejo.’ Drinkwater remembered her obvious dislike of Don Alejo.
‘He was engaged in some illegal traffic with the Russians?’
She shrugged. ‘All would have been well had Nicolai lived.’
‘It was fated otherwise, Señorita.’
‘Sí. Qué será será,’ she murmured.
‘Why did you release me?’
She looked him full in the face then. ‘Because you told the truth about Nicolai.’
‘It was a small thing.’
‘For me it was not. It has changed my life. I am to go into a convent.’
He remembered the Franciscan. ‘It is the world’s loss, Señorita.’
‘I prayed for your wife and family . . . Adiós, Capitán.’
‘Adiós, Señorita.’ He bowed as she turned away.
Drinkwater watched through his glass as Hill brought La Virgen de la Bonanza to her anchor under Point Lobos that evening. He watched Don Jorge Rubalcava board her and wished he could shoot the treacherous dog with Mack’s long rifle that now lay below in his cabin. Then he swung his glass to see if the rest of the bargain was being kept. He watched the boat approach, returning the ragged remnants of his men from the chain gang of servitude. By the time Hill and Frey came back from the schooner, Patrician’s anchor was a-trip.
‘I would not stay in this pestilential spot another moment,’ he remarked to Hill as the sailing master made his report. The knot of officers within hearing nodded in general agreement. Only Mr Frey stood pensively staring astern.
‘She intends to become a nun, Mr Frey,’ he snapped, an unwonted harshness in his voice.
CHAPTER 21
September 1808
The Night Action
Drinkwater stared at the empty bulkhead. The paint was faintly discoloured where the portraits of Elizabeth and the children used to hang. Before him, on the table, were scattered the contents of the despatch brought weeks ago by the aviso. It had been a day of explanations, not least that of the most perplexing of his worries, one that had concerned him months earlier at the time of their departure from the Nore.
Some departmental inefficiency had delayed it and now it had been sent out after him to the West Indies, overland to Panama by mule and shipped up the Isthmus, to be opened and scrutinised by Don Alejo Arguello, no doubt, before finding its way to him. It was months old, so old, in fact, that its contents were rendered meaningless by the train of events, except that they heartened him, gave him some insight into his apparent abandonment by the head of the Admiralty’s Secret Department, Lord Dungarth. He read the relevant passage through again.
I write these notes for your better guidance, my dear Drinkwater, for I find, upon my return from Government business elsewhere, that Barrow has sent you out insufficiently prepared. Seniavin declined to serve against us after his Imperial master succumbed to the seductions of Bonaparte, having seen service with us at an earlier period in his career. Rakitin is a less honourable man, untroubled by such scruples and well-known to some of your fellow officers. I would have you know these things before you reach the Pacific, for it reaches me that he is to command a ship of someforce, perhaps a seventy-four, and capitalise upon the work done by Rezanov . . .
Drinkwater folded the letter. So, Dungarth had been absent on Government business elsewhere. Drinkwater was intrigued as to where that business might have been. Had his Lordship been back to France? He had made some vague allusions to Hortense Santhonax having become the mistress of Talleyrand. She had turned her coat before, might she not do so again?
He thrust the ridiculous assumption aside. That was altogether too fanciful. What advantage could either Hortense Santhonax or the French Foreign Minister derive from betraying such an unassailably powerful man as the Emperor Napoleon? It was a preposterous daydream. He picked up another letter. The superscription was familiar, but he could not place it. Then he recollected the hand of his friend, Richard White. Drinkwater slit the seal, anticipating his old shipmate must be writing to inform him he had hoisted a rear-admiral’s flag.
A deck below Captain Drinkwater, Lieutenant Quilhampton was also reading a letter.
I am sure you meant no unkindness, Catriona had written, but I assure you that if the necessity to which you were put was painful to you, it was doubly so to me. You had the benefit of long consideration, I had only the most profound of shocks. I have burned those letters you returned but, sir, circumstanced as I am, I must risk all reputation and request you repent yourself of so rash an act.
‘God bless my soul,’ he muttered, ‘what a surprise! What a marvellous, bloody surprise!’
Drinkwater read White’s letter with a profound sense of horror. Following so soon upon the last he could scarce believe its contents and compared the dates. But White’s was written a full fortnight after Lord Dungarth’s and he had no reason to doubt its accuracy.
My main purpose in writing, my dear Nathaniel, is to acquaint you of the event of Thursday last when, on a lonely stretch of the Canterbury road near Blackheath, an incendiary device exploded beneath the coach of Lord Dungarth and his lordship’s life is feared for . . .
He ruffled through the remaining papers (some routine communications from the Navy Office and an enquiry from the Sick and Hurt Board) for a later letter informing him of Dungarth’s death, but could find nothing. A feeling of guilt stole over him; he had condemned a friend without cause and now Dungarth might be dead. And there was not even a letter from Elizabeth to console him. He looked up at the bare patches on the forward bulkhead and shook off the omen.
‘Is she gaining on us, Mr Hill?’ Drinkwater looked astern at the big, dark hull with the bow wave foaming under her forefoot and her pale patches of sails braced sharp up in pursuit of them. There was no doubt of her identity, she was the Russian seventy-four Suvorov.
‘Gaining steadily, sir,’ reported the sailing master.
‘Good,’ said Drinkwater, expressing satisfaction. He swung to the west where the day was leaching out of the sky and banks of inkily wet cumulus rolled menacingly against the fading light. The pale green pallor of the unclouded portion of the sky promised a full gale by morning. For the time being the wind was fresh and steady from the north-west. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour, that’ll be our time. So you ease that weather foretack, Mr Hill, slow her down a little, I don’t want him to lose sight of us, keep him thinking he has all the advantages.’
‘Aye, aye sir.’
‘Mr Fraser!’
‘Sir?’
‘Have you inspected all the preparations?’
‘Aye, sir, and your permission to pipe the men below for something to eat, if you please.’
‘Most certainly; and a tot for ’em, I want devils ton
ight.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Fraser touched the fore-cock of his hat and turned. Drinkwater went below himself, leaving the deck to Hill. In his cabin Mullender poured him a glass of rum and mixed it with water.
‘There’s some cold pork, sir, sour cabbage and some figgy duff. Tregembo’s put a keen edge on your sabre, sir, and your pistols are in the case.’
Mullender indicated the plates and weapons laid in readiness along the sill of the stern windows where the settee cushions had been removed. Drinkwater had lost the privacy of his cabin bulkheads, since Patrician was cleared for action and only a curtain separated him from the gun-deck beyond.
‘And I found the portraits, sir, they’re all right.’
‘Good. Where were they?’
‘Tossed in the hold.’
Drinkwater nodded and stared through the windows astern. ‘Put out the candles, Mullender, I’ll eat in the dark.’
He did not want to lose his night vision and the extinguishing of even so feeble a light would indicate some form of preparation was being made aboard Patrician. Drinkwater fervently hoped that Prince Vladimir Rakitin’s opinion of him remained low. It had wounded him at the time it had been expressed, but Drinkwater sought now to fling it in the Russian’s face.
But he must not tempt providence. She was a fickle deity, much given to casting down men in the throes of over-weening pride.
On deck again it was completely dark. They were near the autumnal equinox and already an approaching winter was casting its cold shadow over the water of the North Pacific. They pitched easily over the great swells, thumping into the occasional waves so that the spray streamed aft after every pale explosion on the weather bow.
‘Very well, Mr Hill, pass word for all hands to stand to. Divisional officers to report when ready.’
In Distant Waters Page 25