In Distant Waters nd-8

by Richard Woodman

  Drinkwater was pacing the long quarterdeck, reluctant host to Arguello who walked beside him maintaining a difficult conversation.

  'Capitán 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?'

  'Si… 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.'

  'Si, 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 Seven

  San Francisco

  March 1808

  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.

  'Si… 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 sea-bed 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 pelicans 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.

  When this purely domestic contention had finally died down, Drinkwater had found himself drawn into further argument following repudiation of his terms. The wood and water promised by Don Alejo were not available, said de Soto; upon that the Commandante, Don José Henrique Martin Arguello de Salas, was adamant. The lie of the land persuaded Drinkwater that both were readily available elsewhere, except that the point had become a matter of honour. De Soto's insistence compromised Don Alejo, despite the mandate of the Commandante, and Drinkwater sensed the Spanish hidalgo's loss of face before his juniors. He decided to intervene.

  'Don Alejo,' he interrupted, 'I am willing to forgo the wood and water.'

  Don Alejo's face brightened. 'Capitán, you are a man of honour…'

  The indispensable formula of bow and counter-bow threatened to reassert itself and Drinkwater cut it short. 'All I ask, Don Alejo, is a written undertaking that Captain Rubalcava, his officers and the seamen taken out of His Most Catholic Majesty's ship Santa Monica, will not bear arms against the forces and possessions of His Britannic Majesty for the duration of the present war.'

  'Que?' The vehemence of Rubalcava's interjection suggested he understood the gist of Drinkwater's demand. Rubalcava had been watching Drinkwater closely, knowing him for a wily opponent, and now asked what the heretic commander demanded under the very guns of Spain!

  'Otherwise,' went on Drinkwater unperturbed, 'we will have to discuss the terms of ransom. You are my prisoners, Don Alejo, I have treated you as men of honour after you struck your country's colours in the face of superior force. You bear your swords and I offer you your freedom. All I ask is your parole not to serve again in the present war. It is nothing.'

  He shrugged, aware that the gesture was catching, and feigned to dismiss further argument. Nevertheless it broke out with renewed violence, but in Spanish and detached from Drinkwater. In the end Don Alejo agreed, but it was clear that Rubalcava did not intend to adhere to whatever the others committed him.

  De Soto had departed to confer with the Commandante, and the prisoners had resigned themselves to wait. Drinkwater had not agreed to Don Alejo's accompanying de Soto; the muzzles of those Spanish guns were too damned close.

  De Soto returned an hour later. He was much changed, an affable, effusive and courtly man who requested the honour of Captain Drinkwater's presence at the Commandante's table that evening. An hour later they had begun to disembark the prisoners. They were still landing them as Drinkwater and Frey looked down into the dark cusp of the bay where, like a giant water-beetle, Patrician's long-boat made its way to the quays of the town.

  'You are spared that tedious task, Mr Frey,' he nodded down at the labouring boat.

  'Yes, sir.' Spruce in his new coat, its white collar patches bright in the twilight, Frey grinned back from the unaccustomed throttling of his formal stock. He had heard something about meeting a lady tonight. The occupants of the gunroom thought a great deal about meeting ladies.

  Drinkwater moved his right shoulder beneath the heavy material of his own full-dress coat, glad of its weight in the evening chill. A touch of mist trailed across the dark foliage of the trees below them and the sudden concussion of the sunset gun made him start. It was echoed smartly by Patrician and the two brigs as their colours fluttered down. Night fell on the great bay, the lights of the ships twinkling across the smooth water. Two more beetles crept out from Patrician's side and began to circle her darkening bulk languidly.

  'And that duty too, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater nodded, and both watched the two cutters begin to row the night's guard round and round the frigate.

  The wait was beginning to tel
l on Drinkwater's patience and he sighed impatiently. He was tired, exhausted by three days of vigilance and today's largely irrelevant exertions. He had wanted only to disencumber himself of the damned prisoners, not to fence endless words, to be caught up in the parish-pump politics of a colonial outpost. He detested such futile activities, longed for the fresh air of the open sea. He straightened his back, eased his shoulder and drew in a long breath of the damp, aromatic evening air.

  'Ah, Capitán, please forgive… His Excellency will receive you…'

  Don Alejo Joaquin Arguello waved his arm for Drinkwater and Frey to follow.

  Lieutenant James Quilhampton nodded a curt farewell to Lieutenant Cesar Lecuna of the Santa Monica. Upon these two officers had fallen the duty of co-operation during the landing of the prisoners. He looked briefly at the signed receipt.

  'Adios… vaya con Dios…' Lecuna turned to his own men. 'Adelante!'

  Quilhampton turned to walk back along the quay to the waiting long-boat, almost bumping into Midshipman Belchambers who ran up at full tilt.

  'Sir! Sir! The men are running!'

  'What? God damn! Why didn't you stop 'em?' Quilhampton clapped a hand to his hat and began to run. It was the hour of corso, the promenade. The draggle-tailed society of San Francisco was airing its social pretensions. Amid such a crowd, many of whom gathered to hiss and barrack the English sailors, he knew his seamen would melt like snow on a hearthstone.

  'We couldn't stop 'em, sir… not without firing into this crowd.'

  'No, of course not,' Quilhampton replied sourly to the marine corporal whose three men looked down sheepishly. The Spaniards had not liked the presence of the armed marines on their soil and Quilhampton had been obliged to admit they were appointed to the boats for his own protection and to prevent his men deserting. When that news had been communicated to Captain Rubalcava it had brought the first smile to the Spanish commander's face. Doubtless a few dollars had been spread amongst the boat's crew. Now only four men remained on board, studying the bottom boards under Quilhampton's withering glare.