In Distant Waters nd-8

by Richard Woodman

  His frame was racked by monstrous sobs as he dragged the dead body of his lover out of the cave. It only seemed another paroxysm of grief when Mount's ball shattered his skull, and smashed his brains against the cliff behind him.

  Shaking from cold and shock Drinkwater followed Mount gingerly back across the stream. Once again he approached the entrance to the cave. In the last of the daylight the two officers stood staring down at their victims.

  'God's bones,' muttered Drinkwater, crouching down before his legs gave under him. His first shot had indeed hit Witherspoon, hit the breast and heart. Witherspoon must have died instantly, so silently that even Hogan himself had not realised until after Drinkwater's escape the damage that single shot had done. For Witherspoon's breast was exposed as Hogan had desperately sought to stem the bleeding wound. The shirt was torn back and the two officers stared down at the shapely breasts of a young woman.

  Chapter Four

  The Chase

  March 1808

  'I'm damned if I understand why we're not cruising off the Isthmus,' complained Mount as he lounged back in his chair and awaited the roast pig whose tantalising aroma had been permeating the ship for much of the forenoon. 'It is common knowledge, even to Their Lordships, that Panama is the focus of Spanish power.'

  'I think you jump to conclusions, Mount,' replied Fraser, cooling himself with an improvised fan fashioned from a sheet of discarded cartridge paper. The wardroom was insufferably hot, even with a windsail ducting air from the deck, and its occupants were as frayed as the end of the canvas pipe itself. 'Besides, preoccupations with opportunities for prize-money are an obstruction to duty.'

  'Don't preach to me, Fraser…'

  'Gentlemen, gentlemen… such querulous behaviour… it's too exhausting by far… be so kind as to leave the preaching to me.'

  'God save us from that fate,' said Mount accepting the glass from King, the negro messman, and rolling his eyes in a deprecating fashion at Fraser. Both officers looked at the temporiser in their midst.

  The Reverend Jonathan Henderson, chaplain to His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician, laid a thin, knotted finger alongside his nose in a characteristic gesture much loved by the midshipmen for its imitable property. It invariably presaged an aphorism which its originator considered of importance in his ministry. 'I am sure they know what they are about and it will avail us nothing if we quarrel.'

  'What else are we to do, God damn it?' said Mount sharply.

  'Come, Mr Mount, no blasphemy if you please.'

  'I'm a military man, Mr Henderson, and accustomed to speak my mind within the mess, and I've been too long at sea to have much faith in the wisdom of Their Lordships.'

  'If you're referring to my relatively short career…'

  'Short? Good God, man, you've not been at sea for a dog's watch! What the devil d'you know about it.'

  'Come, sir, I was chaplain to the late Admiral Roddam…'

  'Admiral Roddam? He spent the American War swinging round his own bloody chicken bones and port bottles until they had to move the Nore light to mark the shoal… Admiral Roddam… hey, King, refill my glass and deafen my ears to sacerdotal nonsense'

  Henderson looked furiously at the grinning negro and rounded on Mount.

  'Mr Mount, I'm a man of God, but I'll not…'

  'Gentlemen, pray silence… you raise your voices too loudly.' Fraser straightened up from the rudder stock cover from which vantage point he had been trying to ignore the petty squabble.

  'There has been a deal too much argument since that business at Juan Fernandez…'

  'There is usually a deal too much argument when empty vessels are banging about.'

  'Very well, Mr Lallo,' snapped Fraser at the surgeon who, until that moment, had occupied a corner of the table with his sick-book, 'belay that.' Lallo shrugged and pocketed his pencil. 'Tell us how Mylchrist is.'

  'He'll live, but his shoulder'll be damned stiff for a good while.'

  'Like the captain's.'

  'Aye, like the captain's.'

  'But he's over the worst of the fever?'

  Lallo nodded and a silence fell as they considered the events on the island. In the days that had followed their departure from Juan Fernandez the echoes of the affair had petered out except when conversation aimlessly disturbed it. Among the people it had lit another portfire of discontent, for two-thirds of the ship's company had not enjoyed the liberty of that first watch-ashore. Nevertheless, the nature of the incident had had less lasting impact on the men than upon the officers. The hands had preoccupations other than sentimental considerations over a pair of love-lorn deserters. In the collective wisdom of the crew there was an easier acceptance of the vagaries of human nature. Their lives were publicly lived, crude in their exposure, and therefore the revelation of Witherspoon's sex came as less of a shock than the vague realisation that they had, perhaps, been made fools of.

  Among the officers the reaction had been different. It was to them truly shocking that a woman, even a woman of the lowest social order which it was manifestly obvious that Witherspoon was not, should be driven to the extremity of resorting to concealment on a man-o'-war. Many and various were the theories advanced to explain her action. None was provable and therefore none was satisfactory. To some extent it was this inexplicable nature of the affair that made it most irritating. Unlike the people, the living conditions of the officers were such that they could function as individuals. The solitude of their tiny cabins enabled them to think in privacy and in privacy thoughts invaded unbidden. Of them all James Quilhampton had been most deeply stirred.

  It had been Quilhampton who had climbed back up the dark valley and found Mount and Drinkwater, and the dead bodies. It had been Quilhampton who had organised the burial party and stood beside the chaplain as he performed his first real duty since recovering from the sea-sickness induced by the doubling of Cape Horn. The two lovers had been buried that night and the sky above the lantern-lit burial-party had been studded by stars. This involvement had revived thoughts of his own hopeless love affair, left far behind on the shores of the Firth of Forth and long-since repudiated when the news that Patrician was bound for the distant Pacific had plunged him into extreme and private depression.

  Now he rose from his cot, disturbed by the squabble in the adjacent wardroom, and emerged from his cabin into the silence that had followed it.

  'You make as much noise as a Dover-court,' he muttered sleepily, slumping down in his chair and staring at the table-cloth before him, his nose wrinkling to the smell of roast pork.

  'You shouldn't be sleeping, James, my boy, when you can be drinking,' said Mount, pushing an empty glass towards him and beckoning King.

  'Fill Mr Q's glass, King.'

  'Yes sah… Missah Q?'

  'Oh, very well… have you shrub there, King? Good man…'

  'I was just saying, James, that it's damned odd we aren't attacking the Dons on the Isthmus…'

  'Oh, for God's sake don't start that again…'

  'Hold on, Fraser, it's a perfectly logical military consideration, isn't it, James?'

  Quilhampton shrugged.

  'He's still dreaming of the lovely Catriona MacEwan,' jibed Fraser grinning.

  'Well, he's precious little to complain of since he was the last of us to have a woman in his arms,' agreed Mount.

  'Except Hogan,' said Quilhampton.

  'Ah, you see, he was thinking of the fair sex… an inadvisable preoccupation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What you should be considering is what the devil we're doing so far north…'

  'If I remember correctly, Mr Q,' broke in Lallo, 'the captain was about to confide in us when the recall guns were fired on the desertion of those two…' Lallo hesitated.

  'Persons, Mr Lallo?' offered Henderson.

  'Exactly, Mr Henderson… now tell us… that confidence was interrupted, but you are in the captain's pocket enough to get furlough in Edinburgh town… What's this about Russians?'

  'I've
no more influence over the captain than you, Mr Lallo; indeed I've a good deal less, I dare say…'

  But their deliberations were cut short, for faintly down the cotton shaft of the windsail came a cry: 'Sail… sail ho! Two points on the larboard bow!'

  They forgot the roast pork and the glasses of shrub and sherry. Even the Reverend Mr Henderson joined the rush for the quarterdeck ladder adding to the clatter of over-turned chairs and the noise of cutlery as the dragged table-cloth sent it to the deck. King stood shaking his head and rolling his eyes in a melancholy affectation. Only Quilhampton remained impervious to the hail of the masthead lookout.

  His only reaction was to bring his wooden hand down on the table in a savage blow, bruising the pine board and giving vent to the intensity of his feelings. For underneath his personal misery, below the strange disturbance caused by the desertion on Juan Fernandez, lay the knowledge that most oppressed him and of which he had been dreaming fitfully as he had dozed on his cot. More than any other officer, it was James Quilhampton who best understood the smouldering mood of the men. It had been Quilhampton alone who had defused the incipient mutiny aboard the Antigone the previous summer. Very little had happened to placate the men since Drinkwater's bounty, paid out of the captain's own pocket, had eased tension for a while. But the money had been paid to the whores of Sheerness and any good that Drinkwater's largesse had achieved had long since evaporated. Somehow the affair at Juan Fernandez had crystallised a conviction that had come to him as he had held the tawny-haired Catriona in his arms on his departure from Edinburgh, the conviction that Patrician was unlucky and that she would never return home.

  Captain Drinkwater had been more relieved than otherwise at the discovery of Witherspoon's sex. No captain, particularly one engaged on a distant cruise in the Pacific, relished the discovery of sodomitical relationships within his crew any more than he relished the problem of desertion. The fact that Witherspoon was a woman made Hogan's action understandable and lent a measure of reason to the twin absenteeism that stemmed from passion, not mutiny. What Drinkwater had dreaded when he learned of the failure of two hands to muster was a sudden, unpredictable revolt among the men. His orders were difficult enough to execute without the ferment that such a disorder would cause, a disorder which might threaten not merely his command, but his very life. He was not untouched by the tragedy that had happened beneath the waterfall, but he perceived again the workings of providence and when he had entered the initials D.D. against the two names in the ship's muster book, his sense of relief had been very real. In the margin provided for remarks, he had added: Killed while resisting arrest, having first Run.

  It was a poor epitaph. A poetaster might have conjured up a romantic verse at the tragedy; a venal commander might have kept the two names on the ship's books and drawn the pay himself, or at least until he had repaid himself the cost of the sword he had lost in the pool beneath the waterfall. But Drinkwater felt only a further sadness that Hogan and Witherspoon had gone to join those damned souls who awaited judgement in some private limbo, watched over by the guardian angels of the Admiralty. Such, at least, had been the incongruous core of Mr Henderson's homily on the subject. Drinkwater had begun to doubt the wisdom of Their Lordships in soliciting the aid of the Established Church to subdue the convictions of men forced into His Britannic Majesty's Navy. Drinkwater considered such solecisms foolish; ignorant diversions from the grim realities of the sea-service. He was concluding his private remarks in his journal when he heard the cry from the masthead.

  'He has a wind, by God!'

  'By your leave, Mr Hill, a rest for my glass on that stanchion.'

  'Of course, sir… he has a wind…'

  'So you said… a devil's wind, too, what d'you make of him?'

  'I reserve my judgement, sir.'

  'Eh? Oh, you refer to that fellow we saw off the Horn?' Drinkwater caught the stranger in his image glass. To whatever the sail belonged, it was not a black-hulled two-decker. 'By the spread of her masts and her stuns'ls, I'd wager on her being a frigate… and Spanish?'

  'Yes… yes, I'd not dispute that, sir.'

  'Spanish frigate, sir.'

  Drinkwater looked aloft. In the mizen top Mr Frey looked down, smiling broadly, and Drinkwater was aware that the deck was crammed with officers and men milling about, awaiting news from the privileged few at posts of vantage or with glasses to their eyes. He caught the ripple of eagerness that greeted the news, saw the smiles and sensed, despite everything, the metamorphosis that transformed his ship at the sight of an enemy.

  'Very well, Mr Frey, you may come down and hoist Spanish colours! Clear for action and beat to quarters!' Then he raised his glass again and studied the enemy, hull up now, crossing their bow from the west. 'Mr Frey should know a Don when he sees one, Mr Hill, given his time watching 'em at Cadiz… oh, for a breeze!'

  'Would to God hers would carry down to us… she's seen us, throwing out a private signal.' Hill looked at the masthead pendant and at the dogvanes. They barely lifted in the light airs that slatted Patrician's canvas.

  'Shall I hoist out the boats and tow, sir?' asked Fraser, suddenly impatiently efficient.

  'No, Mr Fraser, that'll exhaust the men…'

  The marine drummer was beating the tattoo and the hands were scrambling about the ship. Below, the bulkheads were coming down and aloft the chain slings were being passed, while along the deck sand was being sprinkled and the gun-captains were overhauling their train tackles and their gun-locks. Above their heads fluttered a huge and unfamiliar ensign: the yellow and gold of Spain. Then Drinkwater had a happy inspiration.

  'Mr Henderson!' The thin face of the chaplain turned towards him. The fellow was showing a very unclerical interest in the enemy. 'Do you pray for a wind, sir.'

  Henderson frowned and Drinkwater saw the men pause in their duties and look aft, grinning.

  'But, sir, is that not blasphemy?'

  'Do you do as I say, sir, pray for a wind, 'tis no more blasphemous than to pray for aid on any other occasion.'

  Henderson looked doubtful and then began to mumble uncertainly: 'Oh most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow…'

  'D'you think it will work?' asked Hill, grinning like the midshipmen. Somewhere in the waist a man had begun to whistle and there came sounds of laughter.

  'I don't know, but 'tis a powerful specific against dispirited men by the sound of it…'

  'How goes the chase, Mr Fraser?'

  'To windward, sir, like a winged bird.'

  'I had no notion you had anything of the poet in you.'

  'No.'

  'It has a Homeric quality… the warm wind, the moon, and a windward chase.'

  'Yes.'

  They had got their wind, though whether it was attributable to the praying of the chaplain or the whistling that breached the naval regulations was a matter for good-natured conjecture throughout the ship as the men settled down for a night sleeping at the guns. Patrician was a big ship, a heavy frigate, a razee, cut down from a sixty-four-gun line-of-battle-ship, but she spread her canvas widely, extended her yards by studding sail booms and hoisted a skysail above her main royal when the occasion demanded.

  'Turn!' Midshipman Belchambers turned the glass and the log-party watched the line reel out, dragged by the log-chip astern.

  'Stop!' called the boy, the line was nipped, the peg jerked from the chip and the line hauled in.

  'Nine knots, sir.'

  'Very well… like a winged bird indeed, Mr Fraser.' Drinkwater smiled in the darkness, sensing the embarrassed flush he had brought to the first lieutenant's cheeks. 'But do we gain on our chase?'

  Fraser turned. 'Mr Belchambers… my quadrant, if you please.'

  'Aye, aye, sir.' The boy ran off.

  'How do you find our youngest addition?' Drinkwater asked.

  'Eager and agile as a monkey, sir.'

  'Hmm. But he's too young. There seems no shortage of such boys with parents eager enough to
send 'em to damnation while they are still children. I doubt they can know what their offspring are condemned to endure.'

  'Your own son is not destined for the sea-service, sir?'

  'Not if I can find him a fat living in a good country parish!' Both men laughed as Belchambers returned with Fraser's quadrant. The first lieutenant hoisted himself up on the rail, bracing himself against the main shrouds, and took the angle subtended by the white shape ahead of them.

  Drinkwater watched. The pale pyramid of canvas would be much more difficult to see within the confinement of the telescope and it would take Fraser a moment or two to obtain a good reading. Drinkwater waited patiently. Patrician lay over to the breeze, close hauled on the larboard tack. Above him the studding sails bellied out, spreading the ship's canvas and bending the booms.

  The sky was clear of cloud, studded with stars and the round orb of a full moon which laid a dancing path of silver light upon the water. The breeze was strong enough to curl the sea into small, breaking crests and these, from time to time, were feathered with phosphorescence.

  Fraser jumped down from the rail.

  'Aye, sir, I can detect a slight enlargement o' the angle subtended by the enemy'

  'Good; but it's going to be a long chase and this moonlight will discourage him from trying to make a sharp turn… 'tis a pity he rumbled us so early'

  'I expect he knew well enough what ships to expect hereabouts.'

  'Yes, the Dons are apt to regard the Pacific Ocean as their own.'