In Distant Waters nd-8

by Richard Woodman

  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 Espana. 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 Doña 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 face 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 Espana… 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 battleship.

  '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?'

  '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!'

  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.

  Chapter Twelve

  Drake's Bay

  April 1808

  '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 de
ck 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 accent was exaggerated by stress. Wearily Drinkwater acknowledged his plight.

  'It's not your fault, Mr Fraser, not entirely. We must worry about Mount. I hope to God he does not run foul of those men. Have they arms?'

  'Two or three were marines, sir… aye, they've a gun or two between them.'

  'Get a signal of recall up to Mount and then let us haul her into deeper water.'

  Suddenly the danger from surprise attack by Russian battleships seemed a foolishly mythological preoccupation. Patrician herself appeared to carry her own ill-luck.

  Drinkwater stared down at the rag tied round the hawser. It had definitely crawled aft an inch or two. By a stroke of misfortune the ship had grounded close to high water, and now she was reluctant, twelve hours later, to come off. Above them a full moon hung in the velvet sky and from time to time the ship lifted and then bumped on the bottom as a low swell rolled in from a distant gale somewhere in the vast Pacific.

  'Again, my lads.' He could hear the creak of the capstan, the grunts of the straining men and the slither of their bare and sweaty feet on the planking. The rag moved aft another inch. A feeling of hope leapt in Drinkwater's breast. 'Again, lads, again!'

  They caught his tone and the grunts came again. He heard Lieutenant Quilhampton's exhortations. Thank heavens they had shoed the anchors, augmented the palms of the flukes with facing pieces of hard-wood, so that they held better and allowed the anchors to bite and not drag home to the ship before they had hauled her into deep water.

  The rag jerked again and then began to move steadily. The ship lifted to a swell, the rag surged aft, there was a dipping in the rope and the men cheered, they could feel the tension on the messenger and the nippers ease, someone had fallen over and a ribald laugh came to him. The swell crashed onto the beach and the ship shook with great violence as the entire length of her keel struck the bottom.

  'Heave again… heave away!'

  She was off now, he could feel it through the deck. The next swell passed under her and, though he waited for it, she did not strike in the low trough that followed. Half-an-hour later they had her safe in deeper water.

  'Stand the men down, now, Mr Fraser. Six hours below, then turn 'em out again. I want this ship in fighting trim by this time tomorrow.'

  They had not finished by the following night, for the long presaged gale burst upon them in the late afternoon. The lurid sunset of the previous evening, green as verdigris, had held its ill-promise by a deceptively mild morning; but gradually cloud had obscured the sun and a damp, misty wind had rolled in from the Pacific. Urgently they had hoisted in the boats and had recovered all but the damaged barge abandoned by the deserters on the distant beach. Even the masts and spars were ready to go aloft again.

  As the wind freshened they watched Grant get his ship underway. There was a flamboyant style to the American commander. He loosened his sail and threw his foreyards aback, making a stern-board, until he brought the wind broad onto his starboard bow. Drinkwater watched in admiration, aware that Grant was cocking-a-snook at the British Navy, demonstrating the supreme ability of both himself and his men, men that Drinkwater would fain have had aboard Patrician at that moment despite his promises to the American. Grant hauled his foreyards with a nicety that would have delighted even that old punctilio, Earl St Vincent, and stood out to sea, heading southeastwards for the better shelter of San Francisco Bay. As Drinkwater watched in his glass the last thing he saw was the American vessel's name, Abigail Starbuck, gold letters fading in the grey mist, above which, conspicuous at the taffrail, stood a single figure. Drinkwater could almost imagine Grant winking that pale and sinister ice-blue eye.

  'Do you trust him to hold his tongue, sir?' asked Hill, who had also been watching the departure of the American ship. 'Or will he gossip our predicament through every bagnio in San Francisco?'

  'I mind someone telling me the word "Yankee" is Cherokee Indian for one who is untrustworthy. In Captain Jackson Grant's case I would certainly judge him to be opportunistic' Drinkwater wondered if Grant might make use of what he knew to gain access to Don José and, through him, to Doña Ana Maria. 'But that, Mr Hill, is just the opinion of a bigoted Englishman with a deal of things on his mind.'

  'Aye… the men…'

  'Or lack of 'em. God's bones, Hill, I wish to God I'd not gone gamming with that damned Yankee!' Drinkwater's tone was suddenly ferocious.

  'You'll not go chasing after them, sir?'

  Drinkwater turned to the old sailing master. He shook his head.

  'Damn it, no. We'll lose the whole festering lot of them once they get ashore. Grant spent yesterday selling rot-gut spirits to the Indians, and I daresay our fellows will soon hear about that. These men will go to the devil if they have half a chance. No, I'll not go chasing after them… but damn it, Hill, we've hardly men left to fight. Grant said there was at least a frigate at Sitka…'

  'But no two-decker…' Hill's tone was tolerantly reasonable like a parent leading a wilful child to a desired conclusion.

  'You still don't think that ship we saw off the Horn was a Russian, do you?'

  Hill shrugged, almost non-committally. 'No, sir, I'm more inclined to think it was a Don and is presently sitting off Panama. And even if it was a Russian, what in the world makes you think it's hovering over the horizon, like Nemesis?'

  'You think I am obsessive, eh?'

  'You've had a deal of doings with Russia, sir,' Hill said circumspectly, 'I know that…' Drinkwater looked at Hill. They shared past clandestine 'doings' on behalf of Lord Dungarth's Secret Department, and Drinkwater saw concern in the older man's eyes. '… But here, in the Pacific, surely it's unlikely…'

  'Unlikely? What's unlikely? That the Russians are anxious to dominate the Pacific? Or that I'm off my head about a ship I saw off the Horn? Damn it, Hill, what the deuce d'you think we're out here for but to lick the blasted Russians before they take advantage of the decaying power of Spain? What better time for 'em with Spain a nominal ally, but the whole damned world knowing that the Dons are under the Corsican's tyranny and rotten at the core. D'you think if the Russians land there, that whoremonger Godoy in Madrid is going to lift a finger? Why, he's too busy lifting the skirts of the Queen of Spain!'

  Drinkwater's diatribe descended to crudity for lack of better argument. Though he saw Hill could not dismantle it and was reluctantly conceding his viewpoint. He could not explain to the master that he was haunted by fears of a less logical kind.

  Hill had not had that prescient dream off Cape Horn, Hill had not been touched by the strangeness of the incident on Mas-a-Fuera, nor by the undercurrents of something sinister between the Arguello brothers, nor the beauty of Doña Ana Maria, nor the jealous lusts she excited, nor the ghost of Nicolai Rezanov. Some intuition, born perhaps of the blue-devils, of the isolation of command, of too introspective a nature, or too vivid an imagination, but some powerful instinct told him with a certainty he could not explain that they were in danger.

  Its source was, as yet, conjectural, but its reality was as obvious to him as the smell of distant blood to a famished shark.

  The gale lasted two days. Patrician escaped the worst of it behind the low shelter of Punta de los Reyes, though she snubbed at her cable and rolled in the swells that cart-wheeled into Drake's Bay. They got her topmasts hoisted despite it, and set up her rigging to the upper hounds. A lighter mood settled on the ship as they prepared to
face the second night of dismal and howling blackness.

  'We're better off without them…' said Mylchrist as the wardroom officers relaxed after the day's labours and discussed the matter of the deserters.

  'Good God, Johnnie, you ain't going to give us a speech about "we happy few" and "summoning up the blood" are you? For God's sake we're in the Pacific, not on the stage.' Quilhampton slumped in his chair and toyed dejectedly with a biscuit.

  'James is right, you know, we're in a damned parlous condition,' observed Mount seriously. He too sat downcast at the table, his fingers fiddling with the stem of a wine glass, rolling it and fitting it over the numerous wine-rings that marked the table-cloth. He had taken the defection of his two marines badly and was angry that his detachment to the observation post had occurred at all. In Mount's opinion, the desertions would not have taken place had he been directly in control of the sentries.

  'And now there's a gale…'

  'And a delay…'

  Hill came into the wardroom, peeling off his tarpaulin and shaking his head. Water flew from his soaked hair as though from a dog. 'A delay that'll ensure the Dagoes know of our whereabouts… give me some shrub, for God's sake, that rain makes a man chilly…'

  'Have a biscuit…' Quilhampton pushed the barrel towards the master who occupied a vacant chair. 'Where's the first luff?'

  'Wandering about worried sick…'

  'Och, an' away,' mocked Mylchrist, but no one paid this puerility any attention.

  'And what does the Captain think, Hill? You had his ear all morning?'

  Hill looked at Mount, aware that the marine officer held Drinkwater to blame for his absence from the ship at a crucial time.

  'You know damned well what the Captain thinks; he's as concerned as the rest of us.'

  'And this Russian nonsense? He'd do better thinking the Americans have their greedy eyes on this coast…'

  'We ain't at war with the Americans,' drawled Mylchrist, eager to re-establish his credibility after his rebuff.