A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Good, good. Now Mr, er, Mr Drinkwater, as to the conduct of the prize, I understand that Commander Griffiths had no prize money arrangement with Stuart or Ball, is that so?’ Blankett’s voice was suddenly confidential.

  ‘I believe that to be the case, sir.’

  ‘Good. Well you stand to profit from the venture if you bring her home in one piece.’ The admiral fixed Drinkwater with a steely eye.

  ‘I think your eighth will be safe, sir,’ he volunteered, forming the shrewd and accurate suspicion that the rear-admiral had some designs on Griffiths’s share of the head money on the action with La Torride as well as his portion of the condemned value of the Antigone. Blankett scratched his head beneath his wig.

  ‘You will need an additional officer; best keep that fellow Morris with you. Ball don’t want him aboard Daedalus. Damned fellow’s got some petticoat influence but Ball says he’s a sodomite. I’ll send the bugger home before I have to hang him.’

  Drinkwater’s mouth fell open. It was clear Blankett would not want Morris left on his hands, even that he knew all about him to the point of remembering his name.

  ‘That will do, Mr, er . . . yes that will do, now be damned sure you look after that frigate. Use caution in the Soundings, I don’t want my prize money ending up as firewood in some poxy Cornish wrecker’s hovel.’

  Drinkwater withdrew, mixed feelings raging within him. He stopped outside the admiral’s cabin to trim his hat. ‘Commander Nathaniel Drinkwater,’ he muttered experimentally beneath his breath. Then he flushed as the rigid marine sentry, bull-necked and bright red in the heat, coughed discreetly. He strode out onto Leopard’s quarterdeck.

  ‘Nothing serious I hope?’ asked Rogers anxiously, still smarting over the censuring of the court. Drinkwater smiled.

  ‘Depends on your point of view, Samuel.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’

  ‘That venal old reprobate,’ Drinkwater checked his wild exuberance at having his step in rank at last, ‘His Excellency Rear-Admiral John Blankett has had the goodness to promote me to commander.’

  ‘Well I’m damned! I mean, damn it, congratulations, Mr Drinkwater.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you, Samuel. But don’t let us count our chickens just yet. This news will poison Morris.’

  ‘Isn’t he to return to Daedalus . . . sir?’

  ‘No, I regret he is not. By a wonderful irony he is to be my first lieutenant. I’m sorry it ain’t you, Samuel, but there we are.’

  They hailed their boat, resolving to remain silent upon the matter until Drinkwater had the commission in his hand and could read himself in.

  He waited impatiently for the interminable afternoon to draw to a close. At two bells in the first dog watch he quietly desired Rogers to send a boat to Leopard for their orders. Rogers sent Mr Dalziell.

  Drinkwater sat in his cabin and took out his journal and began to write. It was with great satisfaction that I attended the R.Ad this morning and was acquainted with the fact that I am to be made Master and Commander. This in my thirty-sixth year, after twenty years sea service. This step in rank removes many apprehensions and vain imaginings from my mind. He paused then added: I thank God for it.

  It was both pious and pompous but he felt his moment of vanity, though it might earn a rebuke from Elizabeth, could be allowed expression in the privacy of his journal. He fell into a brown study dreaming of home.

  Aboard Leopard Mr Dalziell waited in the admiral’s secretary’s cabin while that worthy, a man named Wishart, inscribed with painful slowness upon a packet.

  ‘There are your orders.’ He carefully handed over a sealed bundle and being a proper man insisted Dalziell signed the receipt before receiving a second. ‘And there are the admiral’s dispatches. See that your commander puts them in a secure place.’ Again they performed the ritual of signature and exchange. ‘And now,’ said Mr Wishart drawing a paper towards him, ‘the admiral has a dreadful memory for names, what is the name of your senior lieutenant, eh?’

  He dipped his pen and held it expectantly. ‘Morris, sir, Mr Augustus Morris, related by marriage to the Earl of Dungarth, not unknown to the Earl of Sandwich sir,’ Dalziell wheedled ingratiatingly.

  ‘Is that so? In that case,’ said Mr Wishart, sprinkling sand over the recipient’s name, ‘he seems admirably fitted to sail so fine a frigate home. Here is Mr Morris’s commission as Commander.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Morris

  October 1799

  Drinkwater was not listening to the garbled words of divine service as Morris mumbled his way through them. Morris’s voice had not the resonant conviction of Griffiths’s splendid diction and Drinkwater’s loathing of Morris’s too-obvious feet of clay made parody of the Book of Common Prayer. Instead Drink-water looked forward, beyond the semi-cricle of commissioned and warrant officers in full uniform with their left hands upon their sword hilts and cocked hats beneath their elbows, at the hands massed in the waist. There were about eighty men left to take the big frigate home, not many to work her, not enough to fight her.

  But it was not the quality of the number that concerned Drink-water. His acute senses were tuned to their mood, and in the present calm as the Indian Ocean lay quiet waiting for the first breath of the north-east monsoon, there was an ugliness about it. It was as though the expectant oiliness of the sea exerted some influence upon the minds of the men like that of the moon upon the sea itself.

  Drinkwater discarded the over-ripe metaphor, aware that his own chronic disappointment was souring him. Their hurried departure from Mocha, the stunned disbelief as he had stood as he did now and listened to Morris confidently reading his commission to the ship’s company had triggered his depression and sent him miserable to his cabin, to grieve over his own ill-fortune and, at last, the loss of Griffiths.

  In reality that onset of depression had saved him from rashness. Later Rogers had accosted him over the matter, only to reveal that he had himself sent Mr Dalziell to obtain the commission. Now Rogers, already shaken in his confidence over the loss of the brig and the censure of the admiral, had retreated into his own resentment. With the two lieutenants nursing their private grievances Morris had triumphed and Antigone was out of the Gulf of Aden before Drinkwater cast aside his ‘blue devils’ and resolved to make the best of things.

  But he knew it was already too late. While the officers had sulked the men had been scourged. Morris flogged savagely for every small offence that was brought to his notice by his toadies. Among these was a man named Rattray, Morris’s servant sent over from Daedalus, a thin seedy man who padded silently about the ship and swiftly became known, predictably, as ‘the Rat’. There was Dalziell, of course, promoted acting lieutenant by Morris, who terrorised the hands to Drinkwater’s fury; and there was Lestock, whose fussing temperament seemed seduced by Morris’s brand of command by terror. It was these men who formed the Praetorian Guard round their new commander, a little coterie of self-seekers and survivors who wielded enormous influence and filled the punishment book with trivial entries.

  Drinkwater’s mouth set in a hard line as he thought of the increased number of times he had had to make entries in that book. The binding no longer cracked as it had done when Griffiths commanded them. Of course the entries read well. Insolence for a man laughing too loudly when the captain was on deck; Defiling the Deck for a man who spilled his mess kid by accident; Improper Conduct when a rope was untidily belayed on the fife-rails, all trivial matters ending up with the culprit being seized to the gratings.

  Morris closed the Prayer Book with a snap, recalling Drinkwater to his duty.

  ‘On hats!’ Routinely Drinkwater touched his hat brim as Morris went below.

  ‘Bosun! Pipe the hands to dinner!’ He turned away to find Rattray alongside him, as though he had been there all the time, silently listening to Drinkwater’s thoughts.

  ‘Cap’n’s compliments, sir, and he’d be obleeged if you’d join him for dinner at four bells
.’

  Drinkwater searched the man’s face for some reason for this unexpected courtesy. He found nothing except a pair of shifty eyes and replied. ‘Very well. My thanks to the captain.’

  He looked forward again to see Appleby and Catherine Best crossing the deck. They had become very close since Morris took command and Drinkwater thought that the presence of the woman even exerted some restraining influence upon Morris himself. Drinkwater uncovered to her. ‘Mornin’ Mistress Best. I see Mr Wrinch’s promise of something more suitable to wear was no vain boast.’

  Catherine smiled at him, a shy kind of happiness lighting her eyes while her right hand swirled the skirt of Arab cotton in a small coquettish movement.

  ‘Indeed, Mr Drinkwater, it was not.’ Drinkwater looked at Appleby, who was blushing furiously. He smiled, touched his hat again and turned to the quartermaster.

  ‘Well bless my soul,’ he muttered to himself, then, in a louder tone, ‘call me if there’s any wind.’ The quartermaster acknowledged the first lieutenant and Drinkwater went below to change his shirt.

  The meal, at which no others were present, was conducted in silence. Rattray padded behind their chairs and even with the after sashes lowered the air in the large cabin was stale and hot. When the dishes were cleared away a bottle of port was decanted in Santhonax’s personal crystal and, Drinkwater noticed, circulation was slow. The decanter did duty at Morris’s glass three times before being shoved reluctantly in his direction. Drinkwater drank sparingly, aware that Morris’s appetite was gross.

  ‘Have you seen that?’ Morris pointed to where, half hidden behind the cabin door a woman’s portrait hung on the white bulkhead. Already his voice was slurred. ‘I presume it to be the Frog’s whore.’ Drinkwater found the portrait amazing. Hortense’s grey eyes stared out of the canvas, her long neck bared and her flaming hair piled up above her head, wound with pearls. A wisp of gauze covered the swell of her breasts. He remembered the woman in the cabin of Kestrel and stumbling on the beach at Criel where they had let her go free. He found the portrait disquieting and turned back to Morris. The man was watching him from beneath his hooded eyelids.

  ‘She’s his wife,’ said Drinkwater, returning Morris’s stare.

  ‘And what of Appleby’s whore, Nathaniel? Is she what I am told she is, a convict?’

  It was pointless to deny it, but then it was unnecessary to confirm it. ‘I believe she has redeemed herself by her services to the ship. As to her status, I think you are mistaken.’

  Morris waved aside Drinkwater’s compassion, to him the pompous assertion of a liberal. ‘Pah! She is Appleby’s whore,’ repeated Morris, slumping back into his chair.

  Drinkwater shrugged, aware that Morris was wary, beating about the bush of his intention in asking Drinkwater to dine. He wished they might reach a truce, unaware that Morris had left him upon the beach at Kosseir. Their enmity aboard Cyclops was long past, they were grown men now. Whatever Morris’s private desires were, they were not overt.

  ‘You are wondering why I have asked you to dine with me, eh? You, who crossed me years ago, who saw to it that I was dismissed out of Cyclops . . .’

  ‘I did no such thing, sir.’

  ‘Don’t haze me, damn you!’ Morris restrained himself and Drinkwater was increasingly worried about the reason for this cosy chat. Drinkwater had played a small part in Morris’s disgrace, which had largely been accomplished by his own character. The captain of the frigate was long dead; the first lieutenant, now Lord Dungarth, beyond Morris’s vengeance. But Drinkwater was again at his mercy and Morris had intended his ruin, for he had nursed a longing for revenge for twenty years; twenty years that had twisted rejected desire into an obsession.

  The pure, vindictive hatred that had made Morris drop the fainting Drinkwater on the beach at Kosseir had been thwarted in the latter’s survival, but was now complicated by his reliance on the man he had tried to kill.

  ‘I have my own command now, Drinkwater,’ he said, his mouth slack, his chin on his chest, a sinister cartoon by Rowlandson. ‘Do anything to prejudice me again and I’ll see you in hell . . .’

  ‘I shall do my duty, sir,’ said Drinkwater cautiously, but too primly for Morris’s liking.

  ‘Aye by God you will!’ Spittle shot from Morris’s mouth.

  ‘Then why should you suppose . . .’

  ‘Because there is a damned rumour persisting in this ship that I have the swab,’ he gestured at the damaged epaulette on his shoulders that he had rifled from Griffiths’s belongings, ‘that should have gone to you.’ It was not the only reason but one on which Morris might draw a reaction from Drinkwater whom he now watched closely, his mind concentrated by alcohol on the focus of his obsession.

  But Drinkwater did not perceive this, merely saw the matter as something to be raised between them, another ghost to be laid. ‘I was given to understand Admiral Blankett desired I should command the prize, certainly. Whatever made him change his mind is no longer any concern of mine.’ He paused, sitting up, hoping to terminate the interview. ‘But in the meantime I shall do my duty as first lieutenant as I did for Commander Griffiths, sir.’ Then he added, irritated at being catechised: ‘Unless you have a notion to promote Mr Dalziell over my head.’

  ‘What the hell d’you mean by that?’ flared Morris, and Drinkwater sensed he had touched a nerve. Dalziell. The relative, quiescent of late. A catamite? Drinkwater looked sharply at Morris. The commander’s glare was unchanged but a sheen of sweat had erupted across his face.

  All was suddenly clear to Drinkwater. Morris had obtained his command at last. Unable to earn it by his own merits, a twist of fate had delivered it unexpectedly into his lap. A further helix in that turn of circumstances had made Drinkwater both his unwitting benefactor and first lieutenant on whose abilities he must rely to take advantage of this new opportunity. He would not sacrifice the possibility of a post-captaincy even for revenge on Drinkwater, but Drinkwater knew of his past and might know of his present. Morris, long driven by vengeance, could not imagine another dismissing such an opportunity with contempt. Even a sanctimonious liberal like Drinkwater. And Morris was guilty of unnatural crimes specifically proscribed by the Articles of War.

  But this potential nemesis was of small apparent consolation to Nathaniel. He merely found it odd that that usurped tangle of gold wire could tame so disturbed a spirit as Augustus Morris’s.

  ‘It was a poor jest, sir. I am sure you will know how to keep Mr Dalziell in his proper place.’ Drinkwater rose. It had not been a deliberate innuendo but Morris continued to stare suspiciously at him. ‘Thank you for the courtesy of your invitation.’ He turned for the door, his eye falling on the picture of Hortense. ‘By the way sir, the surgeon tells me Santhonax would benefit from some fresh air. May I have permission to exercise him on deck tomorrow?’

  ‘Solicitude for prisoners, eh?’ slurred Morris, his eyes clouding, turning inwards. ‘Do as you see fit . . .’ He dismissed Drinkwater with a flick of his wrist, then reached for the decanter. Alone, he saw, with the perception of the drunk the pair of level grey eyes staring at him from the bulkhead. They seemed to accuse him with the whole mess of his life. Viciously his hand found a fork left on the table by the careless Rattray. With sudden venom he flung it at the canvas. The tines vibrated in the creamy shoulder, reminding Morris of the past, good old days when the senior midshipmen drove a fork into a deck beam as a signal to send their juniors to bed while they ‘sported’. The euphemism covered many sins. Things had changed in His Majesty’s navy since the mutinies of 1797. Now canting bastards like Drinkwater with their liberal ideas were ruining the Service, God damn them. He flung his head back and roared ‘Rattray!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pass word for Mr Dalziell.’

  Drinkwater drew the air into his lungs. After the calm the strengthening north-easter was like champagne. Above his head the watch had just taken in the royals and were descending via the backstays. Those to windward were taut and harp
ing gently as a patter of spray came over the windward rail. He walked over to the binnacle. ‘Steer small now, a good course will bring us home the sooner.’

  He resumed his pacing, free of the effects of his bruising and the cauterised cut on his leg that would not even leave a scar worth mentioning. He passed along the squat black breeches of the quarterdeck carronades, as near content as his circumstances would permit. After the dinner with Morris he sensed an easing of tension between them, aware that his own duties preoccupied him while Morris, isolated in command, would brood in his cabin. Despite the promotion of Dalziell to acting lieutenant, Drinkwater had not relinquished his watch. He might have availed himself of big-ship tradition, had not the notion with so small a crew been a piece of conceit that ran contrary to his nature. In Dalziell’s abilities he had no confidence whatsoever, regarding his elevation as a shameful abuse of the system, a blatant piece of influence that he thought unlikely to last long after their return home. For himself he kept the privacy of his morning and evening watches while the poor devils forward were compelled to work watch and watch. It could not be helped. It was the way of the world and the naval service in particular.

  Unfamiliar figures emerged on deck and Drinkwater remembered his own orders. Gaston Bruilhac assisted the tall figure of Edouard Santhonax whose arm was still slung beneath his coat. The hands idled curiously as Santhonax cast his eyes aloft, noting the set of the sails.

  ‘Good mornin’, sir.’ Drinkwater touched his hat out of formal courtesy. Long enmity had bred a respect for the Frenchman and Drinkwater hoped his presence as a prisoner satisfied the shade of Madoc Griffiths.

  ‘Good morning, Boireleau . . .’ He winced, adjusting himself against the motion of the ship. ‘Perhaps I should call you Drinkwater, now the ship is yours.’