A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  ‘I should be honoured, sir. She is a fine ship.’

  ‘That is a compliment, yes?’

  ‘It was intended so, sir, and the only one I can offer, under the circumstances.’

  Santhonax narrowed his eyes. ‘You do not have many men to work her.’

  ‘Sufficient, sir.’

  ‘You are pleased with your success, hein?’ He bit his lip as a wave of pain swept over him, ‘pleased that I am your prisoner?’

  ‘C’est la guerre, sir, the fortune of war. I would rather Griffiths lived, you have the advantage over him there.’

  ‘He saved your life.’ Santhonax looked down at his shoulder.

  ‘But you are not dead, Capitaine.’

  Santhonax smiled. ‘He intended to kill me.’

  ‘He was intent upon revenge.’

  ‘Revenge? Pourquoi?’

  ‘Major Brown,’ Drinkwater said icily, ‘rotting on a gibbet over the guns of Kijkduin.’

  Santhonax frowned. ‘Ah, the English spy we caught . . .’ Drinkwater remembered the jolly brevet-major Santhonax had captured in Holland. He and Griffiths had been friends, brothers-in-arms.

  Santhonax shrugged. ‘Most assuredly, Lieutenant, we are all of us mortal. My wife has not yet forgiven you this . . .’ His finger reached up and indicated the disfigurement of his face. ‘I doubt she ever will.’

  For a moment it occurred to Drinkwater to roll up his sleeve and reveal the twisted flesh of his own right arm, but the childishness of such an action suddenly struck him. He remained silent.

  ‘You are bound for England, yes?’ Santhonax went on. Drinkwater nodded. ‘It is a long way yet, eh?’ Santhonax turned and began to pace the deck, leaning on Bruilhac’s shoulder.

  ‘Mr Drinkwater!’ Morris’s voice cut across the quarterdeck as he emerged from the companionway.

  ‘Mornin’ sir,’ Drinkwater uncovered again.

  ‘Mr Drinkwater, hands are to witness punishment at four bells.’

  ‘Punishment, sir? Nothing has been reported to me . . .’

  ‘Insolence, Mr Drinkwater, insolence was reported to me at six bells in the first watch, Mr Dalziell’s watch.’

  ‘And the offender sir?’

  ‘Your lackey, Drinkwater,’ said Morris with evident pleasure, ‘Tregembo.’

  Drinkwater forced himself to watch Tregembo’s face. The eyes were tight shut and the teeth bit into the leather pad that prevented the Cornishman from biting through his own tongue as each stroke of the cat made him flinch. At the twelfth stripe the bosun’s mates changed. The second man ran the bloody tails of the cat through his hand as he braced his feet. He hesitated.

  ‘Lay on there, damn you!’ Morris snapped and Drinkwater sensed the wave of resentment that ran through the people assembled in the waist. Tregembo’s ‘insolence’, Drinkwater had learned in the roundabout way that a good first lieutenant might determine the true course of events, had consisted of no more than being last back on deck after working aloft during Dalziell’s watch. When accused of idleness Tregembo had mumbled that one must always be last on deck and it was usually the first aloft who had been working on the yard-arm.

  For this piece of logic Tregembo was now being flayed. The bosun’s mates changed again. Drinkwater recollected Dalziell’s earlier attempt to have Tregembo flogged and the smirk on the young man’s face fully confirmed his present satisfaction. Morris too had a reason for flogging Tregembo. The Cornishman had been a witness to his disgrace aboard Cyclops, indeed Tregembo had had a hand in the disappearance one night of one of Morris’s cabal.

  Drinkwater was pleased to note that Lieutenant Rogers appeared most unhappy over an issue that previously might have pleased him, while Quilhampton, Appleby and the rest stood mutely averting their eyes. At the conclusion of the third dozen Tregembo was cut down. Drinkwater dismissed the hands in a dispassionate voice.

  That evening it fell calm again, the sea smooth on its surface with the ship rolling on a lazy swell. The sun had set blood-red, leaving an after glow of scarlet reaching almost to the zenith, through which the cold pin pricks of stars were beginning to break. Venus blazed above Africa eighty leagues to the west. Drinkwater paced the deck, an hour and a half of his watch to go. His uniform coat stuck to his back, a prickling example of Morris’s tyranny, for the commander had refused to allow his officers to appear on the quarterdeck in their shirt-sleeves as they had done under Griffiths.

  Already shadows were deepening about the deck. The second dog-watch idled about restlessly. Drinkwater picked up the quadrant Quilhampton had brought up.

  ‘Ready, Mr Q?’

  ‘All ready, sir,’ replied the midshipman, squatting down on the deck next to the chronometer box and jamming the slate between his crossed knees in the position he had found most suitable, minus one hand, for jotting down the first lieutenant’s observations. Drinkwater smiled at the small, crouched figure. The boy frowned in concentration as he watched the second hand jerk round, the slate pencil poised in his only fist.

  ‘Very well then Venus first.’ Drinkwater set the index to zero and caught the planet in the mirrors, twisting his wrist and rotating the instrument about its index. His long fingers twiddled the vernier screw and he settled the planet’s disc precisely on the horizon, his fingers turning slowly as he followed the mensurable descent of it, rocking the whole so that the disc oscillated on the tangent of the horizon. ‘On!’

  Quilhampton noted the time as Drinkwater read the altitude off the arc and called the figures to the midshipman. Quilhampton dutifully repeated them.

  Drinkwater took a second observation of Venus then crossed the deck. ‘Canopus next!’

  ‘Get up, brat!’ Drinkwater turned at the intrusion. Morris stood over the midshipman who, in his concentration had not seen the commander arrive on the quarterdeck. ‘Have you never been taught respect, you damned whoreson?’

  Quilhampton put out his left arm to push himself to his feet, forgetting he had no hand. The still soft stump gave under him and he slipped onto his knees, the colour draining from his face. ‘I, I’m sorry sir I was watching the chronometer . . .’ Morris’s foot came back and sent the chronometer box spinning across the deck. It caught against a ring bolt, tipped and the glass shattered.

  Drinkwater swiftly crossed the deck. ‘Turn a glass,’ he snapped at the quartermaster by the binnacle. Perhaps there was not too much damage and any stopping of the timepiece might be allowed for, ‘then go below and get the precise time from Mr Appleby’s hunter.’ Morris had begun to rail at the terrified midshipman. It was clear that he was drunk.

  ‘I think, sir,’ intervened Drinkwater, ‘that you are mistaken in supposing Mr Quilhampton intended any disrespect. The loss of his hand necessitates that he . . .’

  ‘Be silent, Mr Drinkwater,’ slurred Morris, ‘and have this scum at the foremasthead at once.’

  Drinkwater took one look at the swaying figure of Morris. ‘Up you go, Mr Q,’ he said quietly, lowering the quadrant into its case. Quilhampton’s eyes were filling with tears. Drinkwater jerked his head imperceptibly and the boy turned forward. Drinkwater bent over the chronometer case.

  ‘Mr Drinkwater! I am addressing you!’ Drinkwater picked up the case.

  ‘Sir?’ he was looking down at the bent gimbals. The second hand no longer moved. ‘I don’t expect that sort of disrespect on my quarterdeck . . .’ Morris was very drunk. It was clear that he had not yet realised what it was he had kicked across the deck.

  ‘I doubt that it will occur again, sir,’ said Drinkwater looking down at the ruined chronometer.

  ‘It had better bloody not.’ Suddenly Morris heaved, swallowed and staggered below. Darkness stole over the ship. The time to take stellar observations had passed. Drinkwater did not know precisely where they were and, in truth, he did not greatly care.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Drinkwater,’ said Lestock, apparently pleased at the destruction of the timepiece. ‘Your theoretical navigation lost us a brig and the captain has had
the sense to deprive you of your toy before you cause more damage.’

  ‘Go to the devil, you addle-brained old fool!’ snapped Drinkwater.

  They got Quilhampton down at dawn, calling the surgeon to roll him in warmed blankets and chafe him with spirits. The inside of his left elbow was raw from where the laborious climb had caused him to use it as a hook. At the conclusion of his watch Drinkwater sought out the surgeon and found him still attending the boy in the company of Catherine Best.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’ll live, but he’s chilled to the marrow and cramped.’

  ‘Aye the damned wind got up during the middle watch and it’s already half a gale. This is the monsoon all right.’

  ‘Damn your monsoon, Nat, have we to put up with that vicious bastard aft all the way home? Oh, don’t worry about Catherine,’ he added seeing Drinkwater’s covert glance at the woman, ‘she well knows all my sentiments on Mister festering Morris.’

  ‘You know the answer to your own question, Harry.’

  ‘So it’s shorten canvas and ride out the gale even if it lasts another three or four months, eh?’

  ‘Your metaphor is good enough.’

  ‘Pity he can’t be ill like poor old Griffiths, then he could let you run the blasted ship.’

  ‘I doubt he would allow that,’ smiled Drinkwater resignedly.

  ‘Well if he goes on swilling rum at the present rate he’ll either destroy his intestines or drink us out of the damned stuff and be raving from delirium tremens!’ Appleby stood up as Quilhampton opened his eyes. ‘Then you would have to take over, eh?’

  ‘That talk from another I would take as sedition, Harry,’ said Drinkwater seriously. ‘I beg you do not be so free with your opinions.’

  ‘Bah!’ said Appleby contemptuously while Catherine Best gave both the men an odd look.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Woman’s Touch

  October–November 1799

  Appleby regarded his new patient with distaste. Commander Morris lay exhausted in his cot, the sweat pouring from him, the seat lid of his cabin commode lifted and a bucket swilling with vomit by his side. Appleby moved nearer the open stern window for some fresh air. Antigone slipped south, her clean hull slicing the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, her towering pyramids of canvas expanding laterally as studding sails increased her speed. Beneath her elegant bowsprit and white figurehead the bottle-nosed dolphins leapt and cavorted, effortlessly outstripping the ship as she threw up scores of flying fish on either hand. October was passing to November and the high summer of the southern hemisphere.

  The hiss of the sea, upwelling green and white from under the frigate’s plunging stern, the creak of the rudder chains and tiller ropes a deck below and the chasing seas seemed a cleansing antidote to the stink of the cabin. Appleby turned back into it.

  ‘The diaphoresis is very severe, sir, and the flux abnormal. How many times did you purge yourself during the night?’

  ‘Don’t bandy your medical quackery here Appleby, I was up shitting most of the night and when I was not doing that I was puking my guts into that bucket. I tell you someone is poisoning me!’

  ‘Come, come, sir. Don’t be ridiculous. These are not the symptoms of poison. Where would one obtain poison on a ship? My chest is locked and I wear the keys, here,’ he jingled the bunch on his fob.

  ‘Appleby, you damned fool, you can poison a man . . .’

  ‘Sir,’ cut in Appleby sharply, ‘I assure you that you are not being poisoned. Such a notion is preposterous. You are exhibiting symptoms of chronic gastritis. Your dependence upon alcohol has ulcerated the mucous membrane of the stomach as a result of which you are unable to retain nourishment in your belly. The natural reaction of the body is to void itself. If you do not trust my diagnosis sir, I would be only too happy to transfer to another ship at the Cape. In the meantime I shall send Tyson in to attend you and clean up some of this mess. Good morning.’

  Appleby left the commander to attend to Santhonax. His wound was healing badly, a continuing process of exfoliation preventing the tissues from knitting properly. An easy familiarity had developed between the Frenchman and the surgeon as commonly exists between a man and his physician.

  ‘Where did you learn to speak English, sir?’ asked Appleby removing the dressing.

  ‘I was the son of a half-English mother, Mr Appleby, the daughter of a wild-goose Englishman who supported King James III.’

  ‘Ah, the Old Pretender, eh?’ said Appleby wryly, ‘but you are not so partial to kings since the Revolution?’

  ‘They are not noted for their gratitude to even their most loyal adherents.’

  ‘We notice that in King George’s navy.’

  ‘Treason, Mr Appleby?’

  ‘Truth, Captain Santhonax.’

  ‘You would make a most excellent revolutionary.’

  ‘Perhaps, if the material was worth the saving, but I doubt even your brand will materially alter this tired old world. Were you not yourself about to enslave the Hindoos?’

  Santhonax smiled, a bleak, wolfish smile. ‘Had that damned combination of Drinkwater and Griffiths not been at my tail I might have succeeded.’

  ‘You forget, captain, I too was on Kestrel . . .’

  ‘Diable, I had forgot . . . yes it was you sutured my face. It is a strange coincidence is it not, that we should find ourselves fighting a private war?’

  Appleby finished binding the new dressing over a clean pledget. ‘Griffiths called it proof of Providence, Captain. What would your new religion of Reason call it?’

  ‘Much the same, Mr Appleby . . . thank you.’

  ‘You will be well enough soon. I think the exfoliation almost complete. It will be a whole man we return to the hulks at Portsmouth.’

  ‘You have yet to get your stolen vessel past Ile de France, Appleby. Perhaps it may yet be me who will be visiting you.’

  ‘Well what is the matter with him?’ asked Drinkwater, straightening up from the chart spread on the gunroom table, ‘he tells me he is of the opinion that he is being poisoned. Damn it, I think he half thought I might have instigated it! What Morris surmises he believes, God help us all, and if there is a shred of truth behind such an apparently monstrous allegation . . .’

  ‘Oh for the love of heaven don’t you start, Nat. Permit me the luxury of knowing my own business yet. You would take exception to my advice upon the reduction of altitudes. I tell you the man is suffering from alcohol induced gastritis.’

  ‘Very well, Harry, I trust your judgement.’ Drinkwater cut short the long dissertation that he knew would follow once Appleby was allowed to start expanding on Morris’s symptoms.

  Rattray scratched at the gunroom door. ‘Cap’n’s compliments, Mr Drinkwater, and would you join him in the cabin.’ Drinkwater cast a significant glance at the surgeon, picked up his hat and followed ‘the Rat’.

  Drinkwater bridled at the stench in the cabin. Morris looked ghastly, weak and pale, his face covered with perspiration, his cot sheets twisted. He spoke with the economy of effort.

  ‘Would you poison me, Drinkwater?’ The man was clearly desperate.

  ‘Certainly not!’ Drinkwater’s outrage was unfeigned. He recollected himself. Whatever Morris was, he was a sick man now. ‘Please rest assured that the surgeon is quite confident that you are suffering from a gastric disorder, sir. I have no doubt that if you modify your diet, sir . . .’

  ‘Get out, Drinkwater, get out . . . Rattray! Where the devil is that blagskite?’

  As he left Drinkwater noticed the tear in the portrait of Hortense.

  The bottle Rattray brought to Drinkwater’s cabin that evening for him to take with his biscuits in the gunroom was a surprise. Drinkwater removed the cork and sniffed suspiciously. He was alone in the room, Rogers having turned in and Appleby gone to change Santhonax’s dressing. He poured the Oporto that had arrived, uncharacteristically, with the captain’s compliments and held the glass against the light of the lantern.
He sniffed it then, shrugging, he sipped.

  If it was supposed that this was poisoned wine, Drinkwater mused, then it was indeed nonsense and Morris’s generosity was but a manifestation of his phobia. He finished the glass and felt nothing more than a comfortable warmth radiating in his guts. Dismissing the matter he sat down, pulled his stores ledger towards him and unsnapped the ink-well. Meyrick brought him a new quill from his cabin and he dismissed the messman for the night and stretched his legs.

  The water biscuits were in quite good condition, he thought, picking up a third. He settled to his work. And poured a second glass of wine.

  Dawn found Nathaniel Drinkwater violently sick, a pale sheen of perspiration upon his face. He sent for Appleby who came on deck expecting he had been summoned to attend the captain.

  ‘What is it, Nat?’ Drinkwater beckoned the surgeon to windward, out of earshot of the helmsmen and the quartermaster at the con.

  ‘What d’you make of my complexion, Harry?’

  ‘Eh?’ Appleby paused then peered at the lieutenant. ‘Why a mild diaphoresis.’

  ‘And I’ve been violently sick for an hour past. Also I purged myself during the middle watch . . .’

  Appleby frowned. ‘But that’s not possible . . . no, I mean . . .’

  ‘It means that Morris may indeed be being poisoned, man. Last night he sent me a bottle of Oporto . . . he must have meant me to try it, to see if it had any effect upon me! I drank it entire!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nat, of course he’s being poisoned. Rum and fortified wines addle the brain, corrode the guts. Try cleaning brass with them.’ Appleby’s exasperation was total. Then he calmed, looking again at his friend. ‘Forgive me, that was unpardonable. Your own condition I would ascribe to a tainted bottle. Maybe Morris had been consuming a case of bad wine. That would produce such symptoms and aggravate the peptic ulcer I am certain he suffers from.’

  ‘But the wine tasted well, seemed not to be bad.’

  Appleby was not listening. Even in the vehemence of his diagnostic defence a tiny doubt had crept into his mind. The symptoms were those produced by sudorifics, used by himself to promote the sweating agues that eased Griffiths’s malaria. And though the key to his dispensary never left his side he was wondering who possessed knowledge enough to incapacitate Morris.