Baltic Mission

by Richard Woodman

  ‘You sent for me, sir?’ Lallo suppressed a yawn with difficulty. ‘Is there something amiss? Are you unwell?’

  Drinkwater turned outboard, inviting Lallo’s confidence at the rail. ‘The matter is not to become common gossip, Mr Lallo.’

  Lallo frowned.

  ‘The first lieutenant . . . I want you to have him confined quietly in his cabin for a day or two, starve him of liquor and convince him it is in his own best interests. Tell the gunroom he is sick. D’you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, sir. You want Mr Rogers weaned from the bottle . . . ?’

  ‘And quickly, Mr Lallo, before he compels me to a less pleasant specific. I cannot hold my hand indefinitely. Once I am forced to recognise his true state then he is a ruined man. Quite ruined.’

  ‘I cannot guarantee a cure, sir, I can only . . .’

  ‘Do your best, yes, yes, I know. But I am persuaded that a few days reflection may bring him to his senses. Do what you can.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ Lallo sighed. ‘I fear it may be a violent business . . .’

  ‘I am sure that you will see to it, Mr Lallo. And please remember that the matter is between the two of us.’

  ‘The three of us, sir,’ Lallo corrected.

  ‘Yes, but it is my instructions that I want obeyed, damn it! Don’t haze me with pettifoggin’ quibbles and invocations of the Hippocratic oath. Rogers is half-way to the devil unless we save him,’ Drinkwater said brusquely, turning away in dismissal.

  ‘Very well, sir, but he is a big man . . .’

  ‘Just do your duty, Mr Lallo, if you please.’ Drinkwater’s exasperation communicated itself to Lallo at last and he hurried off. Drinkwater watched him waddle away then stared again over the sea. The waves were no longer spume-streaked. Fluttering up into the wake a bevy of gulls hunted in the bubbling water where the tiny creatures of the deep were caught up in the turbulence of Antigone’s passing hull. The crests broke infrequently now and the vice had gone out of the wind. He watched the pattern of quartering gulls broken up by the predatory onslaught of a sudden swift skua. The dark bird selected its quarry and hawked it mercilessly, folding its neck beneath one wing until the gull, terrified into submission, evacuated its crop in one single eructation. The skua released its victim and rounded on the vomited and part-digested food, folded its long dark wings over its back and settled in the frigate’s wake.

  He was startled by someone at his elbow.

  ‘Beg pardon, zur, but your shaving water’s getting cold in the cabin.’

  Drinkwater nodded bleakly to his coxswain. He thought that Tregembo already knew of the strong words that had been passed between captain and first lieutenant the previous evening. Doubtless Mullender had let the ship’s company know too, but that was unavoidable. He led Tregembo below.

  Taking off cloak, coat and hat, and unwinding the muffler from his neck, he began to shave. ‘Well, Tregembo . . . what do they say?’

  ‘The usual, zur.’

  ‘Which is one law for the officers . . .’

  ‘And one for the hands, zur.’

  ‘And what do they expect me to do about it, eh?’ He pulled his cheek tight and felt the razor rasp his skin. The water was already cold. He swirled the blade and scraped again.

  ‘They are content that you are a gennelman, zur.’

  Drinkwater smiled, despite his exasperation. It was a curious remark, designed to caution Drinkwater, to place upon him certain tacitly understood obligations. Only a man of Tregembo’s unique relationship could convey such a subtlety so directly to the commander of a man o’war; while only an officer of Drinkwater’s stamp would have taken notice of the genuine affection that lay beneath it. ‘Then I am content to hear it, Tregembo.’

  ‘There are four men in the bilboes, zur . . .’

  ‘Quite so, Tregembo.’ The eyes of the two men met and Drinkwater felt forced to smile again. ‘Life is like a ship, Tregembo.’ He saw a puzzled look cloud the old man’s face. ‘Nothing ever stays still for long.’

  Picking up the napkin he wiped the remaining lather from his face and held his hands out for his coat.

  Drinkwater looked down at the faces of the ship’s company assembled in the waist. They were the usual mixed bag, some thirteen score of men from all four corners of the world, but most from Britain and Ireland. There were the prime seamen, neat in their appearance, fit and energetic in their duties, those men for whom, in the purely professional sense, he had the highest regard. Yet they were no angels. Long service had taught them all the tricks of the trade. They knew when to ‘lay Tom Cox’s traverse’ and avoid work, how to curry favour with the petty officers and where to get extra rations, tobacco or spirits in the underworld that flourished aboard every King’s ship. Neither were they exclusively British or Irish. There was at least one Yankee, on board a British ship for a reason he alone knew though many suspected. There was also a Swede, two Finns and a negro whose abilities aloft were, within the little world of the Antigone, already part of legend. But the bulk of the frigate’s people were made up of ‘ordinary’ seamen, waisters and landsmen, in a strictly descending order of hierarchy as rigid as its continuation upwards among the officers. It was a social order imposed by the uncompromising nature of the sea-service and extended in its inflexible formality from Drinkwater to the stumbling, idiotic luetic whose only duty consisted of keeping the ship’s lavatories clean. Each man had a clearly defined task at sea, at anchor, in action and during an emergency in which the strength of his arm and the stamina of his body were the reason for his existence.

  They spread right across the beam of the ship, no further aft than the main-mast. Some ships bore a white line painted across their deck planking there, but not the Antigone. She had been acquired from the French and no such device had ever been added. They were perched in the boats on the booms, up on the rails and sitting on the hammock nettings. Men crowded into the lower ratlines of the main shrouds and all wore expressions of expectancy.

  Between the untidy mob of ‘the people’, the midshipmen, master’s mates and warrant officers occupied the neutral ground. Abaft them the files of marines made a hedge of fixed bayonets, cold steel ready for instant employment in defence of the commissioned officers.

  The murmur of comment that noted the absence of Rogers subsided the instant Drinkwater’s hat began to rise in the stairwell, but he heard it, as he was meant to. He strode to the binnacle and looked at the men and took his time, opening the punishment book with great deliberation, gauging the mood of the hands. He looked about him, checking that the helmsmen, quartermaster, sentinels and look-outs were at their stations.

  ‘Bring up the prisoners!’

  The ship’s corporal guarding the four seamen with a drawn bayonet shoved them forward from the companionway. They stood miserably after a cramped night in the bilboes, their ankles sore from the chafing of the irons. They could expect, by common custom, three dozen lashes apiece. Drinkwater turned to Fraser and raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Fraser . . .’ he reminded.

  ‘Off hats!’

  ‘Benson, Hacking, Kissel and Myers . . .’ Drinkwater read their names and then fixed the four guilty men with a baleful grey eye. He was not in the mood for the lugubrious formalities of the Articles of War with their dolorous recital of the punishment of death for each and every offence, scarcely suggesting that ‘such lesser punishment’ was ever employed in mitigation. ‘You four men were drunk last night at the call for all hands . . .’ Drinkwater pitched the words forward so that they could all hear. ‘If you had been topmen such conduct might have caused you to fall to your deaths. Indeed you might have killed others. Understand that I will not tolerate drunkenness . . .’ he looked from the four wretches in front of him and raked the whole assembly, officers included, with his eyes, ‘. . . from anyone, irrespective of station. At the next occurrence I shall punish to the very extremity of the regulations.’

  He turned to the four prisoners. ‘You four men are stopped all grog unt
il further notice. Mr Pater,’ he turned to the purser, ‘do you see to it: no grog.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  A murmur broke out amidships, but this time Fraser needed no prompting. ‘Silence there!’

  ‘Very well. Dismiss the ship’s company, Mr Fraser, and send Mr Comley aft.’

  Drinkwater stalked away and, tucking the punishment book in his pocket, grasped the taffrail with both hands and stared astern. Behind him Fraser ordered the ship’s company to disperse and they did so in noisy disorder, only the measured tramp of the marines’ boots conveying the impression of discipline. A few minutes later Comley appeared.

  ‘You sent for me, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’ Drinkwater turned and faced the bosun. ‘I shall flog on the next occasion, Mr Comley, be quite certain of that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You must see to it that it ain’t necessary.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Them four men’ll suffer more from loss o’ grog . . .’

  ‘A flogging still hurts ’em, Mr Comley, and I’d not have any of them thinking I’ve no stomach for it. You do understand, don’t you?’

  Comley looked at the captain. He was not used to being intimate with Drinkwater twice in two days, preferring his daily encounters with the first lieutenant. He had the measure of Mr Rogers who was no different from half-a-hundred first luffs in the navy. He had seen the captain in action and heard more of him from his old Cornish coxswain. For all that a shrewd cockney knew that a Kurnowic man could spin a lie like an Irishman and make it sound like the unvarnished truth, there was something in Drinkwater’s eyes that bade Comley take care.

  ‘I understand, sir,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘Very well. And now, Mr Comley,’ said Drinkwater more brightly, ‘I want you to put it about the hands that there’ll be a good-conduct payment at the end of this cruise, payable in cash . . . do close your mouth, there’s a good fellow.’

  Comley did as he was bid, but stared after the retreating figure of the captain as he was left standing thunderstruck by the taffrail.

  ‘Did you hear that, soldier?’ he asked the marine whose sentry post was across the frigate’s stern, ready to hurl a lifebuoy at any man who went overboard.

  ‘Does that include the sojers, Bose?’

  ‘I dunno,’ ruminated Comley.

  ‘He’s a rum bastard,’ offered the marine.

  ‘He is that,’ said Comley, going forward with the extraordinary news.

  Mr Lallo stared unhappily at the snoring figure in the cot. Inert, Lieutenant Rogers seemed even larger than the surgeon remembered him when standing. If he woke now, what the devil did one say to him?

  ‘Please, Mr Rogers, the captain says you’re a drunken oaf and would you be so kind as to keep quietly to your cabin for a day or so. After you have rested and your body has acclimatised itself to no rum, you’ll be fit as a fiddle to resume your duties.’ It was impossible. For days Rogers would toss and rave and drive himself to the edge of sanity. Lallo shook his head. In his younger days the surgeon had eaten opium. It had only been a mild addiction, but the memories of those hallucinations still haunted him.

  ‘ ’Ere ye are, Mr Lallo . . .’

  He turned, his finger to his lips, as his loblolly boy, Skeete, entered the first lieutenant’s cabin. Skeete wore an expression of impish glee that revealed a mouth full of carious teeth. Lallo took and shook out the heavy canvas strait-jacket.

  ‘Very-well, work your way round the cot and if you wake him I’ll have you at the gratings.’

  Rogers stirred as Lallo moved forward and Skeete moved round the cot. ‘What the . . . what the devil?’

  ‘Hold him!’

  ‘I am holding him!’

  ‘Let me go, damn you! Help, murder!’

  Lallo thrust a rag into Rogers’s gaping mouth and knelt upon his struggling body, trying to avoid the halitosis of Skeete. They passed the lashings of the jacket, rolling Rogers over and avoiding his thrashing feet. In that position it was easy to secure the leather gag and, wiping the sweat from their eyes, roll him face upwards once again.

  ‘There! It is done.’ Skeete grinned, his face hideous. ‘ ’Tis like trussing a chicken . . .’ His pleasure in so dealing with a person of Rogers’s importance was obvious.

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ snapped Lallo as the man’s stinking breath swept over him yet again. ‘Help me settle him a little more comfortably.’

  The fight had gone out of Rogers. The skin on his forehead was pallid and dewed with drops of heavy perspiration. His eyes were wide open, the pupils unnaturally dilated and expressive of a bursting sense of outrage.

  ‘Get out . . . and Skeete, try and keep your damned mouth shut about this, will you?’

  ‘Anything to oblige.’

  Lallo stared disgustedly at his assistant. His manner had the sincerity of a Jew proclaiming a bargain. The surgeon sighed and turned to Rogers when they were alone. He and Skeete were guardians of the frigate’s most arcane secrets. Mostly they consisted of who was receiving treatment for the clap or the lues, but now Rogers’s infirmity was to be included, under disguise, since the whole ship knew he was ‘indisposed’. Such an open secret had to be treated with due form, in accordance with the ritual that maintained the inviolability of the quarterdeck.

  Rogers grunted and Lallo gave his patient his full attention. ‘Now, Mr Rogers, please try and behave yourself. You have been drinking far too much. Your liver is swollen and enlarged, man. You are killing yourself! You know this, don’t you?’ Rogers’s eyes closed. ‘You have got to stop and the captain has ordered you be confined for a day or two, to see you over the reaction . . . now you try and relax and we’ll see if we can’t dry you out, eh? Until I’m sure you’ll behave, I am compelled to restrain you in this way. Do you understand?’

  Rogers grunted, but the malevolent glare from his eyes was full of a terrible comprehension.

  5

  April–May 1807

  News from Carlscrona

  Drinkwater laid down the pencil and stared at the little column of figures with a sense of quiet satisfaction. With only a one per cent commission on the specie in the strong-room, to which as captain he was entitled, he would be able to pay a ‘good conduct’ bounty of three pounds per man and still have a few guineas left over for himself. Not only that, he had acquired another form of punishment: that of cancelling the bounty if an individual deserved it.

  It was true that his own fortune would be the poorer, but he was not a greedy man. The days ofbeing an indigent midshipman and making free with gold taken aboard a prize or two were behind him, thank God. A small bequest by an old and bachelor shipmate had rescued him from the poverty of reliance upon pay and his home was comfortable if modest. Although he had withered Tregembo’s suggestion that he purchase a gentleman’s estate, the idea occasionally occupied his thoughts, but in a sense he thought the money better spent this way. Commissions on specie were a perquisite of which his puritan soul did not whole-heartedly approve. Besides, he knew Elizabeth would have appreciated his action and that she, unlike so many post-captains’ wives, did not measure her husband’s success by the number of horses that drew her carriage.

  Drinkwater’s mood of self-esteem was ruptured by the sudden appearance of Midshipman Frey. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the look-out’s reporting a sail . . .’

  A few minutes later he stood beside the master, levelling his glass and focusing upon the newcomer. ‘What d’you make of her, Mr Hill?’

  ‘Swede, sir . . . naval dispatch vessel, from Carlscrona probably . . . ah, that’s interesting.’

  Drinkwater saw it at the same time. In addition to the yellow and blue of the Swedish national colours at her main peak, the schooner had broken out a flag at her fore-masthead as she altered course towards them. The flag was the British Union.

  ‘She wants to speak to us. Heave to, Mr Hill, and a whip and a chair at the main-yard arm.’

  Half an hour later a damp civilian gentleman in a cape
d surtout stood uncertainly upon Antigone’s deck and looked curiously about him. Drinkwater approached and extended his hand. ‘May I present myself. I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater of His Britannic Majesty’s . . .’

  ‘I know, Captain,’ the stranger cut him short, ‘and damned glad I am to have found you.’ He laughed at Drinkwater’s surprise. ‘Yes, I’m British. Straton, British Resident at Stockholm.’ They shook hands. ‘May we adjourn to your cabin? I have something of the utmost importance to communicate.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Straton.’

  ‘Would you be so good as to hoist in Johansson, the pilot?’

  ‘Pilot? Why should I need a pilot? Where is he for?’

  ‘Carlscrona, Captain. Come, let me explain in your cabin.’

  ‘Very well. Mr Hill, you are to hoist in another person. It seems you are right about Carlscrona. Come, sir, this way.’ He led Straton below.

  In the cabin he indicated a seat and sent Mullender for a bottle of wine.

  ‘Our present position is about twenty miles south-east of Gotland, I believe, Captain,’ said Straton non-committally as Mullender fussed around.

  As soon as the steward had gone Drinkwater said, ‘Well, sir?’ expectantly.

  ‘Well, sir. To be brief, you are not to deliver your consignment of specie to the Russians.’

  ‘The devil I’m not! And on whose instructions, may I ask?’

  ‘Those’, said Straton, drawing a slim leather wallet from a voluminous pocket in his greatcoat, ‘of His Majesty’s Government . . .’ He handed a paper to Drinkwater who took it and examined it closely. As he did so Straton studied the captain.