In Distant Waters nd-8

by Richard Woodman

  'You will take men, Capitán Grant, because that is what you are being paid…'

  'Damn you, Rubalcava, I don't need men. I can sail this hooker from here to Baltimore with a mate and a cook!'

  Rubalcava's mouth curved in a sneer. 'You have a great reputation for bragging, Capitán. You will take men… as I give them…'

  'The hell I will…' Grant was on his feet. Rubalcava merely lifted his elegantly booted feet and put the red heels on Grant's table. 'I want gold, Rubalcava, gold…'

  'We have not yet found El Dorado, Capitán, in the meantime, you will settle for men, otherwise…'

  'Shit, man, there is gold in California… what the devil do you mean otherwise?'

  'Otherwise, Capitán Grant, we shall have to inform the authorities that you have been selling aguardiente to the natives.'

  'The hell you will… I bought the fucking stuff from the authorities!'

  'I think you are mistaken, Capitán. At least, the authorities know nothing about the matter.'

  Grant expelled a long, frustrated breath. 'You will regret getting the better of me, Rubalcava, damn your insolence…'

  Rubalcava smiled again. 'Perhaps, Capitán… anyway I have six men for you. All prime seamen, just as you require.'

  'Six. Good God, man, you have a whole frigate's crew imprisoned. You could have let me have more than six!'

  'For you to sell to the Russians? No, no, Capitdn, these are honourable prisoners-of-war. Besides, we need them to work cargo in the merchant ships.' Rubalcava paused, catching the American's eye. 'Or to dig for gold in the hills, Capitán, eh?'

  Grant laughed, good-naturedly. 'Oh, sure, Captain Rubalcava, sure.'

  'It is thirsty work, discussing business, Capitán Grant.'

  Grant blew out a breath and reached for two glasses and a bottle of aguardiente. He slopped a finger of the brandy into each glass and handed one to the Spaniard. 'To what do we drink then? Eh?'

  'To the late Nicolai Rezanov, eh, Capitdn Grant?' And with his free hand Rubalcava piously crossed himself. 'Requiescat in pace.'

  Lieutenant Quilhampton waved Blixoe's flanking party forward, waiting with the main body in a slight hollow in the sand. He watched Blixoe and two of his marines edge forward, approaching the strangely silent village. The smoke of cooking fires rose into the air and the clucking of hens could be heard, but the bark of a dog or the squeal of a child was suspiciously absent.

  There was a sudden shout and sand spurted up around Blixoe's party. A haze of smoke hung over the wall of a ramshackle hut and Quilhampton could see the rough timber had been loopholed for small arms. Blixoe began to wriggle back in retreat. There was a second volley and then a whoop. Ragged Indians and half-castes, the tiny population of fishermen, ran out of the hut and launched an impetuous charge across the beaten sand towards them. They waved a few muskets and staves and pikes, and they outnumbered the cutter's crew. Quilhampton turned to his men, but they were already in full flight. He made a violent movement of his good hand to Blixoe, who needed no second bidding, and twenty minutes later they had tumbled into the cutter and were pulling as hard as they could from the desultory shots and the shouted insults of the natives.

  When they had opened the range they hung over their oarlooms and, those of them that could, laughed at the comic humiliation of their predicament. Others sat and pondered what was to be done.

  'It is God's will, friends, we shall have to make the best of it. It is not the first time we have been torn from our places by the rough circumstances of existence.'

  'For Chrissakes, you witless fool, do you not know that a Yankee packet is hell compared to old Drinkwater's barky.'

  'Old Drinkwater don't have a fucking barky, Sam, so let's take Derrick's advice and make the best of it. They say these Yankees pay well and sail like witches.'

  'And their women is handsome, their land rich and we shall find the streets of Baltimore paved with gold… yes, I heard the same kind of crap from a recruiting lieutenant somewheres…'

  'Well, my lads… so you've volunteered for service under the old stars and stripes, the flag of liberty, free trade and sailor's rights and glad we are to welcome you all aboard the old Abigail Starbuck.'

  Captain Grant came on deck to review his new recruits.

  Clucking his tongue and pronouncing himself satisfied, he delivered them to his chief mate.

  It was towards evening when the bolts of Drinkwater's cell were drawn back again. Don Alejo Arguello entered the tiny room and swept a bow at his prisoner.

  'Capitán … I am so sorry that you have been the misfortunate victim of the bad luck of war.'

  'The misfortunes of war have little to do with it, Don Alejo. I had your words that Captain Rubalcava would not serve again…'

  'Capitán,' Don Alejo protested, his tone exaggeratedly reasonable, 'Don Jorge, he is an officer of, of energy, of spirit… he was on board with me, one of the four fregatas that your navy attacked without declaration of war four years ago… Do not talk of civilisation, Capitán Drinkwater…'

  Drinkwater remembered the incident. Their Lordships had despatched a force of four frigates to intercept a squadron of Spanish cruisers homeward from Montevideo with specie worth over a million pounds sterling. Their force had been so equal that the Spanish commander, Rear-Admiral Don Joseph Bustamente, had been compelled to fight to defend the honour of his flag. A superior force would have achieved the same result (which was to provoke Madrid to declare war) and have avoided the loss of many lives and the explosion of the Spanish frigate Mercedes. Governments could forget such things easier than the men whose lives they marked.

  'You understand, Capitán… Doña Ana Maria said you were simpatico…'

  'Where are my men, Don Alejo, and my officers? Is the surgeon allowed to attend the wounded… ?'

  'Capitán, I forgot, you are wounded. I will have to send for…'

  'I am all right, Don Alejo,' snapped Drinkwater, 'it is my men I ask after.'

  'My dear Capitán,' Don Alejo shed some of his easy humour and his tone hardened, 'we are civilised people. They are being looked after and your officers, they are in the charge of military officers… come, I will bring you ink and a pen and send you some meat; we shall look after you. Good night…'

  And he was gone, leaving Drinkwater alone with his thoughts.

  'Belay that sheet and settle down… now pay attention. We have only about ten leagues to sail to San Francisco. When we get there we can find out what has become of the ship and our shipmates. Then I will decide what to do. Whatever happens we will have to slip into the harbour unobserved, either at night, or in a fog. I am relying on your loyalty. That's all.'

  I'm hungry…'

  'Aye and thirsty…'

  'You can belay that lubberly talk. We're all hungry and thirsty, but tomorrow we will find water at least…'

  'I bloody hope so… for your sake… lieutenant…'

  Quilhampton ignored the sneer. The boat rose and fell on the long Pacific swells that were the aftermath of the recent gale and other, more distant, disturbances. Under its single lugsail the cutter made a good speed and the tiller kicked under his arm. The day was leaching a golden glow across the western horizon behind them as they steered south-east and the first stars were visible against a clear, rain-washed sky.

  It was curious, he mused, how the merest chance could comfort a man and how insubstantial a foundation was required for hope. But the disastrous loss of the ship seemed to satisfy some arcane and superstitious foreboding that had haunted him for so long that its fulfilment had come as something of a relief. And so retrospectively ridiculous had the day's events seemed, that their escape was like an entr'acte. This instant was reality; this kick of the tiller, this dying of the day and the chuckle of water along the boat's strakes. He sensed a curious and inappropriate contentment, as of one having turned a momentous corner. The episode on the beach had been one of desperation. He was now engaged on something of purpose. The boat's course was his best ch
ance of seeing Catriona MacEwan once again. And as his men dozed James Quilhampton hummed gently to himself, and beat time with his wooden hand upon the gunwhale of the cutter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prisoner

  May-June 1808

  Time hangs heavily upon a lonely man who has suffered a great misfortune. His troubles dominate his thoughts and disturb his attempts at sleep. He relives the hours of his disaster in a knowingly fruitless attempt to reverse time; he attempts to shift blame and then to acknowledge his own responsibility. His mind deploys logic and then rejects it in favour of vague, superstitious emotions which play on the very vulnerability of his isolation. Culpability seems his alone; he has dared too much and providence has cut him down to size. Such solitary pits for the soul are dug by circumstance for every commander of ships. In this, Drinkwater was no exception.

  Although logic told him the chain of bad luck began when the leak forced him to seek the shelter of a careenage, superstition sought an earlier explanation: the hanging at the Nore, the loss of the Danish privateer, the sighting of the strange ship off the Horn, the incident at Mas-a-Fuera. Even the worthless capture of the Santa Monica seemed but another malevolent step in a fantastic conspiracy by fate. Such fears, dominant in the small hours, could have been dispelled by a turn on the quarterdeck at dawn while the watch swabbed down and the smell of coffee blew about the ship. The 'blue-devils' was a misanthropy endemic among sea-officers but against which there were known specifics.

  Some men played instruments, some invited company, some diverted their minds by reading, writing, sketching. Some drank. All relied upon the routines of the naval day to ameliorate their obsessive preoccupations. Some carried the dissolution of their lives within their characters, some gave way to jealous fits, some to violent abuses of their powers. Some bickered with their officers, some immersed themselves in trivial matters and disturbed the tranquillity of their ships. Most ultimately coped, because demands were put upon them that compelled them to submit to influences beyond their own passions.

  Cooped day after day in solitary confinement, allowed no exercise beyond the tiny cell, Drinkwater went unrescued by routine or any demand upon his expertise with which to patch his spirit. He was left alone with the wild fears of his imagination. Logic told him that he was guilty of misjudgement and incompetence, and every view from his tiny window reinforced this opinion as he looked down upon his captured ship. Superstition told him he had been abandoned to his fate, that dark, unworldly spirits had been released by his actions. From beyond the grave Edouard Santhonax laughed; a great hollow laugh that brought him bolt upright from sleep, and his old enemy melted into the gentle, uncomprehending pity of his own wife's face.

  How would Elizabeth feel when she heard? What would Lord Dungarth conclude? What would John Barrow think of him?

  'What will they say in England?' he whispered to himself. They had become too used to victory…

  But that was no good. That was merely another excuse. Discontent had caused the leak and for that he alone was responsible. For several days his mind revolved along this morbid orbit. He sought consolation in the writing of his journal, but after the harrowing experience of recording the events in the log, he could put nothing in his private papers that did not reek of self-pity. He began to dismiss in his mind all mitigating factors. His own culpability began to assume its own stature and grow in his thoughts so that it threatened to unhinge him. But in the end long experience of a solitary existence saved him. The learnt disciplines of combating the blue-devils came to his rescue. At first he stood upon the table and scanned the anchorage, avoiding the sad sight of Patrician. He watched the merchant ships, half a dozen of which he could just see. The comings and goings of their boats, the laboriously swept lighters that crabbed out to them like giant water-beetles with the hides and tallow and assorted exports of the colony. He could see among them the Abigail Starbuck, a tall-sparred, handsome vessel, as were all the latest American ships. Once he thought he saw Jackson Grant, and once, quite ridiculously, the figure of the Quaker Derrick upon her deck.

  It was that sighting that brought him to the recognition of his self-deception. It was clearly a ridiculous fancy! He would have to take hold of himself. Although he had not mitigated his self-blame, from that moment it ceased to be a passive response to his predicament and began to spur his resolution to transcend his plight. He began to write in his journal and in doing so called up incidents of the previous days that were not directly connected with the loss of the Patrician.

  … I realised the place of my imprisonment when I heard the laugh of Doña Ana Maria…

  He stopped writing as a thought struck him. If Grant had betrayed him to the Spanish, why had not Grant told Don José of the death of Rezanov? And if he had, why had the news not been communicated to the Russian's betrothed?

  That laughter had been full of unalloyed joy, the expectant, irrepressible joy of someone expecting the arrival of a lover. Drinkwater recalled how her eyes had glowed as she had spoken of the Russian. He shook his head. The time for such abstruse preoccupations was over. He wrote on, dismissing the matter, for it made no sense to him and had no bearing on his fate.

  He was woken next morning by the concussion of guns. For an instant hope leapt into his heart but the noise, answered somewhere to seaward, resolved itself into an exchange of salutes. He clambered up onto his table. For a long time he could see nothing and then, into his field of view and bringing up to an anchor slightly to seaward of the Patrician, was the heavy black hull of a Russian line-of-battle-ship.

  James Quilhampton had seen her the previous day from the rocks of a small and insignificant headland a few miles north of the entrance to San Francisco. In the little cove behind him the cutter lay drawn up on the beach, while from the wooded slope that rose behind the strip of sand came the dull sound of an axe. Occasionally the snap of a musket betrayed Blixoe's hunting party. They had crept into the cove to hide and recruit their strength while Quilhampton decided what to do. Sweet water streamed out of the dense woods and they slaked their thirst and rinsed the salt from their clothes and bodies. That night they bivouacked in the fragrant undergrowth and loafed the following morning away, waiting for the night. In the late afternoon they had sighted the big ship coming down from the northward. From the little promontory, Quilhampton saw she was a two-decked man-of-war, black-hulled and flying the dark, diagonal ensign of Russia.

  It seemed the final bar on the stronghold of the enemy, setting awry his carefully made plan. Ordering the men to spend another day in idleness he languished in indecision. But game and water were plentiful, and the fresh meat emboldened him. When the next evening Blixoe came to him for orders, he had decided to throw everything to hazard.

  'Very well,' he said as they lay back round the fire, licking their fingers clean of the juice of venison, 'this is what I intend that we do, and if any man will not gamble on the outcome he is free to take his chance…'

  Quilhampton wanted none but willing spirits with him.

  His fears were vindicated; he had no doubt this was the ship they had seen off Cape Horn and now she arrived like Nemesis. Through his glass he saw the twinkle of gold braid upon her quarterdeck, saw her entry manned and the Spanish officer board her. He could hear the faint piping shriek of the calls, given in the British style by officers who had trained with the Royal Navy. Drinkwater remembered Admiral Hanikov's fleet in the North Sea in the summer of 1797 and wondered whether this ship had come direct from Kronstadt or had been detached from Seniavin's Adriatic squadron.

  He saw, too, the procession of boats leave the side of the Russian ship and, half an hour later, heard the sound of voices speaking French pass below his window, Russian officers ascending the path that wound upwards to the Residence from the boat jetty and the battery below. Surely now the news of the death of Rezanov would be made known to Doña Ana Maria? To his recovering mind the preoccupation offered a point of focus beyond his own unhappiness.

>   'Capitán, I have the honour to present Prince Vladimir Rakitin, of His Imperial Majesty's ship Suvorov.'

  Drinkwater gave a short and deliberately frigid bow. Although he was curious about the Russian his incarceration had made him angry and he fixed his eyes on Don José.

  'Don José, I protest at the dishonour you have done to me. Where are my officers? Why have you not permitted a surgeon to visit me, or allowed me to exercise? What have you done with my people? I had always thought the Spanish a civilised nation. I am mortified to find myself, so recently a guest at your table, treated with every courtesy due an honourable enemy employed on a mission of humanity, suddenly deprived of the courteous formalities of war. You are, sir, guilty of having condoned the breaking of the terms of exchange by Captain Rubalcava and his men.'

  Drinkwater felt invigorated by the cathartic effects of this outburst. He felt washed clean of the self-pity that had nearly drowned him in his confinement. Now there were other causes to fight, exposures to make before this newly arrived ally of the Spanish authorities. He turned towards the Russian officer: 'I am sure that His Imperial Majesty's Navy would not have treated the courtesies of war with such disdain…'

  He bowed with an exaggerated politeness to the Russian officer. Both Don José and his brother were angry. They understood the gist of his wordy accusation although they wore smiles and made gestures of incomprehension. For a moment Drinkwater expected to be conducted peremptorily back to his cell, but it seemed that he had been brought here for other reasons.

  'Capitán,' said Don Alejo, 'Don Jorge Rubalcava is a zealous officer… you see, I know the word from reading your newspapers… it is perhaps that he has been,' again the ritual of shrugging, 'much revenge to you… but, well, you are our enemy. England is…' Don Alejo waved towards the doorway and across the terrace upon which Drinkwater had waited the summons to meet the Commandante all those days ago. The gesture was redolent of vast, insurpassable distances.