A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Hoist the boat out.’ Morris addressed the perfunctory order to Drinkwater who ignored the implied discourtesy. They had repaired a single boat for use at the Cape and Drinkwater watched it swung up from the waist and over the side by the yardarm tackles. The crew tumbled down into it. A sight of the land had cheered the hands at least, he mused, wondering if he dared dispatch the letter in the boat.

  He decided against it and joined the side party waiting to see Commander Morris ashore. He knew Morris would keep them all waiting. Rogers joined him, having secured his signal guns.

  ‘I suppose we must wait for that dropsical pig like a pair of whores at a wedding, eh?’ Rogers muttered into Drinkwater’s ear. Drinkwater found himself oddly sympathetic to Rogers’s crude wit. From a positive dislike of each other the two men had formed a mutual respect, acknowledging their individual virtues. In the difficulties they had shared since the loss of the brig and assumption of command by Morris this had ripened to friendship. Drinkwater grinned his agreement.

  Morris emerged at last in full dress. He paused in front of Drinkwater, swaying slightly, the stink of rum on his breath.

  ‘And now,’ said Morris with quiet purpose, ‘we will see about you.’

  As he stared into Morris’s eyes Drinkwater understood. The death of Dalziell removed substantial evidence of any possible case against Morris. Dalziell was a used vessel, the breaking of which liberated Morris from his past. The action which Antigone had fough With Romaine had been creditable and, as commander, Morris would benefit from that credit. A feeling almost of reform animated Morris, consonant with his new opportunities and encouraged by his reinvigoration after his illness. The huge irony that Morris had obtained his step in rank thanks to Drinkwater’s efforts was enlarged by the reflection that he might yet found a professional reputation based upon his lieutenant’s handling of the Antigone during the action with the Romaine. All these facts were suddenly clear to Nathaniel as he returned Morris’s drunken stare.

  He took his hat off as Morris turned to the rail. Another thought struck him. To succeed in his manipulation of events Morris must now utterly discredit Drinkwater. And Nathaniel had no doubt that was what he was about to do.

  The problem of conveying the letter to Telemachus solved itself an hour later when Drinkwater renewed his acquaintance with Mr Mole. Drinkwater had viewed the approaching boat with some misgivings but was relieved when Mole’s mission was revealed to be the bearing of an invitation to the promised dinner aboard White’s frigate.

  ‘Would you oblige me, Mr Mole,’ Drinkwater had said after accepting the kindness and privately hoping he was still at liberty to enjoy it, ‘by delivering this note to Captain White when you return to your ship. It is somewhat urgent.’

  ‘Captain White attends the commodore aboard Jupiter, sir.’

  Drinkwater thought for a second. ‘Be so kind to see he receives it there, Mr Mole, if you please.’ The departure of Mr Mole sent Drinkwater into an anxious pacing during which Appleby tried to interrupt him. But Appleby was snubbed. Drinkwater knew of the surgeon’s apprehensions, knew he was worried about the possible discovery of Catherine Best’s activities and guessed that the future of Harry Appleby himself figured largely in those fears. But Drinkwater’s anxiety excluded the worries of others. That pendant at the masthead of Jupiter meant the formal and sometimes summary justice of naval regulation. The Cape might be an outpost, a salient held in the Crown’s fist at the tip of Africa but it was within the boundaries of Admiralty. Nathaniel shivered.

  When nemesis appeared a little later it was in the person of a midshipman even more supercilious than Mr Mole. Mr Pierce was conducted to Drinkwater by Quilhampton.

  ‘The commodore, desires, sah, that you be so kind as to accompany me to the Jupiter without unnecessary delay, sah,’ he drawled. Pierce’s manner was so exaggerated that it struck Drink-water that all these spriggish midshipmen must see him as an old tarpaulin lieutenant, every hair a rope-yarn, every finger a marline spike. The thought steadied him, sent him below for his sword with something approaching dignity. When he emerged in his best coat, now threadbare and shiny, the battered French hangar at his side and his hat fresh glazed with some preparation concocted by Meyrick from God knew what, only the violent beating of his heart betrayed him.

  ‘Very well, Mr Pierce, let us be off.’

  Watching from forward Tregembo muttered his ‘good luck’, aware that his own future was allied to Drinkwater’s. Further aft Mr Quilhampton saw him go. The midshipman had watched the furious pacing of the last hour, knew the Antigone’s open secret and shared his shipmates’ hatred of their commander. He had also once taken a most ungentlemanly look at Mr Drinkwater’s journals. He too muttered his good wishes which mingled with a quixotic vision of shooting Morris dead in a duel if anything happened to Mr Drinkwater.

  Captain George Losack, commodore of the naval forces then at the Cape, leaned back in his chair and looked up at Captain White. The cabin of Jupiter had an air of relief in it, as though something unpleasant had just occurred and both men wished to re-establish normality as quickly as possible; to divert their minds from contemplating the recently vacated chair and the papers surrounding it. Commander Morris’s hat still lay on the side table where he had laid it earlier.

  ‘Well, by God, what d’you make of that?’

  ‘He did not want me here, sir,’ replied White, ‘it was clear he considered I prejudiced his case.’

  ‘Because you are an acquaintance of this fellow Drinkwater?’

  ‘That sir, and the fact that the baser side of his nature is known to me . . .’

  Losack looked up sharply. ‘Be advised and drop that, Richard. A court-martial under that Article would be politically risky for us both. Though Jemmy Twitcher no longer rules the Admiralty and addresses blasphemous sermons to a congregation of cats he is still powerful. To antagonise the brother of his lordship’s mistress would not only move the earl’s malice it might invite the enmity of his whore.’

  White shut his mouth. He did not subscribe to the older man’s fear of the Earl of Sandwich. Petticoat interference in the affairs of the navy had affected men of his generation deeply. The disasters of the American War could in part be attributed to this form of malign influence. ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘Morris terrorised the cockpit and lower deck of the Cyclops in the last war. Sometimes a man is called to account for that.’

  ‘Rarely,’ replied Losack drily, ringing the bell on his deck, ‘though ’tis a fine, pious thought.’ His man appeared. ‘Wine Jacklin, directly if you please.’

  White watched Losack as the commodore once again scanned the papers before him. The allegations that Morris had made against Drinkwater looked serious for the lieutenant. But the circumstances that had followed White’s own questions had thrown a doubt over the whole and Losack was too diligent an officer to take refuge in his isolation from London and dismiss the affair. And the matter of Morris’s influence could not be ignored. It behove Losack to tread carefully. He had seen something of one party. What of the other?’

  ‘You say Drinkwater had a commission years ago?’

  ‘He had a commission as acting lieutenant back in eighty-one. He passed over Morris.’

  ‘Ah. Then Morris was appointed over him at Mocha, eh? The first action turns his head, the second overturns his senses. The consequence is bad blood . . .’ Losack paused as the wine arrived. Jacklin placed the salver and decanters. He turned to White.

  ‘Mr Mole’s compliments sir, and I was to give you this at once.’ White took the letter. Losack went on: ‘There would be a case to answer if I was sure . . .’ he stopped indecisively, worried about Morris’s wild allegations.

  ‘I do not think Drinkwater was greatly disappointed in eighty-one, sir. His commission dates from ninety-seven . . .’

  ‘Well what manner of man is he, White?’ snapped Losack exasperated. ‘You seem damned eager to befriend him.’

  ‘Damn it, sir,’ said White flushing
with anger, ‘ ’tis a devilish difficult business serving under a . . . a . . .’ he recovered himself. ‘Drinkwater, sir, is a thoroughly professional officer. He commands little or no influence. I doubt he gave Morris grounds for his allegations beyond an excess of zeal and surely it has not come to an officer suffering for that?’

  Losack stood and turned to stare through the cabin windows, his hands clasped behind his back. He found his command at the Cape a tiresome business. His force was inadequate to police the converging trade routes that made his post so important and such a rich hunting ground for French corsairs. The parochial problems of passing ships were a confounded nuisance. The present one was no exception; bad feeling between the officers of a prize, a woman convict mixed up in some unholy cabal. He felt irritated by the demands of his rank, envying White who sat on the table edge, his leg swinging while he read the letter Jacklin had brought in.

  ‘It was the remark you made about the striking of the flag that caused our late visitor to fly into a passion. What was behind that, eh?’

  White looked up from the letter. ‘May I suggest you ask Drink-water, sir. I have here a letter from him. It would appear that at Mocha some error was committed. Morris’s commission should have gone to him!’

  ‘Good God!’ Losack looked up sharply. ‘An excess of zeal, d’you say? By God, it looks to me more like bloody-minded madness! “Quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat”.’

  ‘I do not think for a moment that he is mad, sir. Overwrought, perhaps. Angry even. As Horace has it, “Ira furor brevis est”.’

  ‘Hmmm. Let us send for this friend of yours.’

  Appleby too had been summoned. He sat on a bench in the bare anteroom of the hospital and looked down at the chequered Dutch floor tiles. Despite the cool of the room he was sweating profusely, his mind a confusion of counteracting thoughts in which his professional detachment was knocked all awry by the depth of his feeling for Catherine Best. ‘They have sent for me,’ he had told her shakily, ‘I am too old to dissemble, Catherine, I am fearful there may be consequences . . .’

  She had been silent, having said all she had to say days before. Now her opportunist nature waited upon events. She was not a maker of circumstances, simply a manipulator of their outcome. But she kissed him as he left, puffing up the ladders, fat, ungainly, ageing and kind. Now he sweated like a man under sentence.

  ‘You seem to be suffering from diaphoresis yourself, Mr Appleby,’ said the physician, surprising him. Appleby rose to his feet. ‘Shall we take a turn in the garden, my dear sir?’

  Mr Macphadden was a dry, bent little Scot who exuded an air of erudition, the garden a cloistered square of trimmed lawn suitable for the exchange of medical confidences. ‘From the message that ran ahead of the patient I fully expected to find I had a derangement on my hands. Indeed I had effected the precaution of preparing a jacket for the fellow. But I was misinformed. The ravings were no more than those of a drunk, far gone in his cups and overcome by an exaggeration of the choleric humour, so my anticipation was a little out of kilter with the facts.’ The doctor chuckled wheezily to himself while Appleby held his breath. ‘The effects of rum are well-known. I don’t doubt but that you know Haslar is full of men for whom rum has been a consolation, men for whom responsibility is too great, whose expectations have been disappointed, whose abilities are inadequate. Why the chemical effect of rum upon the brain itself . . .’

  ‘But his sickness, doctor. The diaphoresis, the purging and vomiting . . .’ Appleby could restrain himself no longer, though he checked himself sufficiently to adopt a tone of deference, not daring to suggest a diagnosis lest such presumption invited contradiction.

  ‘Oh, you are worried about his wild allegations about being poisoned, eh? Well he is, in a manner of speaking, but I think we may consider that he is effecting his own ruin. No, he has chronic gastric inflammation, undoubtedly due to a peptic ulcer of some inveteracy. You see, my dear sir, his temperament seems to vacillate between the choleric and the melancholic humours. The man who depends upon drink hides both an acknowledged weakness and an inability to accept his own culpability for self-destruction. The consequence of such a vicious spiral can have but one result. That of the unhappy man now lying in his bed yonder.’

  Macphadden turned and they began pacing back to the white walled hospital. A flood of relief began to wash over Appleby and he nodded at the physician’s words: ‘I doubt you will want a commanding officer in the throes of a delirium tremens.’

  Drinkwater returned to Antigone after the frustrations of an hourlong interview with Losack. It was clear from the manner of the commodore’s questions that the contents of his letter to White had been made known. A sense of betrayal that the information had been made available to Losack was heightened by White’s silence during Drinkwater’s ordeal. The letter had been a private document between friends. Now it seemed a court-martial might be pending against him.

  The knock at his cabin door announced the arrival of Appleby for whom he had sent as soon as the surgeon arrived from the shore.

  ‘Things have turned out well, Nat. A didactic Scot named Macphadden has diagnosed gastritis . . .’

  ‘Things are not well, Harry . . .’

  ‘What the devil is it?’

  ‘Catherine, Harry. She is known to be a convict. She is to be transported. I did my best,’ he paused at the unintended pun, ‘my uttermost, but Morris has revealed her real status to Losack.’

  The colour drained from Appleby’s face. ‘Why the uncharitable whoreson bastard!’

  ‘Calm yourself. There is nothing either of us can do here. Perhaps when we reach home . . .’ It was a straw held out to a drowning man. It was doubtful if he would reach home with a reputation untarnished enough to secure a convict’s pardon, no matter how meritorious her services.

  ‘But Nat, I cannot let her go.’

  ‘She is to take passage in the Lord Moira without delay. I am so very sorry.’

  In silence Appleby left the cabin. Opening his desk Drinkwater took out inkwell and pen and began to write the report Losack had requested.

  Drinkwater sat in silence while Losack read his report, occasionally referring to the corroborative evidence of the deck and signal logs and what remained of Griffiths’s papers. At last the commodore looked up and removed his spectacles. For a moment he regarded the man sitting anxiously before him.

  ‘Mr Drinkwater,’ he said after this pause, ‘it seems that I have been unnecessarily suspicious of you.’ He waved the spectacles over the books and papers spread out upon the table. ‘I am persuaded that your services merit some recognition, but you will understand it is a difficult matter to resolve. I am not empowered to restitute your commission and it may be some consolation to you that in any event it would have required their Lordships’ ratification. There the matter must rest.’

  Drinkwater inclined his head. ‘I understand, sir.’

  Losack smiled. ‘The only reparation I can offer you is command of the prize home. Do you attend to her refit. A convoy sails in some three weeks. You should be ready to join it. Your devoted friend Captain White will command the escort.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. And Commander Morris?’

  ‘Is sick, Mr Drinkwater. A peptic ulcer, I understand.’ Losack closed the subject.

  Drinkwater rose and Losack tossed a bundle across the table. ‘My secretary recognised your name, this letter has been here for months waiting for you.’

  With a beating heart he picked up Elizabeth’s letter.

  The air of the quarterdeck of the Jupiter was undeniably sweet and in an unoccupied corner he tore open the packet, catching the enclosure for Quilhampton and stuffing it in his pocket. Impatiently he began to read.

  My Dearest Nathaniel,

  At long last I have received news of you, that you were sent round Africa in accordance with some notion of Ad. Nelson’s. I write in great anxiety about you and pray nightly for your well-being and that, if God wills it, you will return whole
and safe.

  But you will not wish to hear of me now that another claims your affections, my dearest. Your daughter Charlotte Amelia is past a twelve-month now and has her father’s nose poor lamb . . .’

  Drinkwater handed the letter with the thin feminine superscription to Quilhampton. ‘Pass word for Tregembo, Mr Q.’ When the boy had gone he peered into the mirror let into the lid of his cabin chest. What the devil was the matter with his nose?

  Tregembo coughed respectfully at the open door and Drinkwater started, aware that for several minutes he had been staring vacantly at his reflection contemplating his new role as a father.

  ‘Ah, Tregembo. Your Susan is quite well. Mrs Drinkwater writes to tell me the news. She had a little quinsy some months past but was in good spirits. The letter is some months old I am afraid.’

  ‘An’ your baby, zur?’

  ‘A daughter, Tregembo.’

  ‘Ahhh.’ The awkward, almost embarrassed monosyllable was full of hidden pleasure. Tregembo flushed and Drinkwater swallowed. ‘And the commission, zur?’

  ‘No commission, not yet.’

  ‘ ’Tis nought but a matter of time, zur.’

  Drinkwater smiled as Tregembo resumed his duties. It occurred to him that he was smiling a lot this morning. He turned again to the letter and re-read it.

  Appleby burst in upon him. ‘Nat, a word, do I hear correctly that you command the ship home?’

  Drinkwater looked up. The surgeon was agitated, his hands fluttering, his jowls wobbling. ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘Then I beg you will permit me to leave the ship.’

  ‘What the devil d’you mean?’

  ‘The Lord Moira has a vacancy for a surgeon’s assistant. I have made enquiries, there are precious few surgeons in the colony . . . I have taken the vacancy for the passage.’ Appleby swallowed hard. He had crossed his Rubicon.