They were crossing the stern of the leeward-most ship now and Ballantyne was gesticulating.
'Please, sir! Something is not correct!'
'Eh? What's that?'
'They are waving, sir, on the ship to starboard ...'
Drinkwater strode to the rail and peered over the hammock nettings. The square stern of the heavily laden Carnatic presented itself to his gaze. Two men were waving frantically from her rail and then a belch of smoke rolled from her waist as she discharged another gun.
'By God, it's an alarm!'
Drinkwater spun round. He had already detected the danger ahead by the sudden increase in the pitch of the deck.
'Braces, there! Lively now! Start 'em for your lives! Down helm! Down helm!'
There was no enemy frigate waiting to leeward of the convoy ready to snap up a prize; only an uncharted reef upon which the sea broke in sudden, serried ranks of rollers which exploded upwards, filling the air with an intense mist.
Mount saved them, slashing through the standing part of the main brace with his hanger, then cutting back into the strands of the topsail brace. As the yards flew round Patrician lay over assisting the helmsmen as they palmed the wheel-spokes rapidly through their hands. A member of the afterguard was already at the mizen braces while others started the main sheet at the chess-tree. The heavy frigate lurched to leeward, running her larboard gunports under water and taking gouts of streaming sea-water below as Lieutenant Quilhampton, in charge of the main batteries and suddenly aware of something amiss, ordered the ports secured.
'Jesus Christ ...' someone blasphemed. The steady stern breeze seemed, now that they reached obliquely across it, to blow with the ferocity of a gale. The extra canvas, shaken out again as they had overtaken the convoy, now pressed them over. To windward the seas assumed a new and forbidding aspect, heaping sharply into breaking peaks as they felt the rising sea-bed beneath them.
Drinkwater turned to leeward. He was beyond the heart-thumping apprehension of anxiety, his mind perfectly cool with that detachment that feared the worst. At any moment, driven by his own impetuosity, he expected Patrician's keel to strike the reef in a sudden, overwhelming shock that would carry her masts and yards over the side.
Beyond the narrow beam of the frigate's hull the seas downwind bore a different look. Their precipitate energy was spent, they crashed and foamed and flung themselves in a thundering welter of white and green water upon the invisible obstacle of the reef.
'Hold her steady!' he ordered, his voice level as every man upon the upper deck who was aware of their danger held his breath.
For a minute ... two ... Patrician skimmed, heeling along the very rim of the reef, held from dashing herself to pieces only by the unseen, submarine run-off where the broken waves, spending themselves above, poured back whence they had come.
Ten minutes later they were in clear water and the white surge of foaming breakers with its cap of wafting spume lay fine on the weather quarter.
'I'm obliged to you, Mr Mount.'
'Your servant, sir,' replied Mount, still amazed at his own prescience.
'A damned close thing ...' Drinkwater's heart was thumping vigorously now. Reaction had set in; he felt a wave of nausea and a weakling tremble in his leg muscles. 'Secure the guns and pipe the men down,' he said to Fraser between clenched teeth.
And then Morris was there, standing upon the quarterdeck watching Comley hustling a party along to reeve off a new main-brace, his loose, yellow silk robe flapping in the wind, the Indian, decorously turned out in coat, turban and aigrette, hanging by his side.
Men were nudging each other and staring at the bizarre sight. When Morris and Drinkwater confronted each other, the latter was still pale from his recent experience.
You alarmed us, Captain,' Morris said smoothly, 'we thought you were going into action, but I see that, like Caligula, you had declared war on the ocean.'
The smug, urbane transition of remark into insult struck Drinkwater. He was reminded of how dangerous a man Morris was, that he was not without education, and came from a class that accepted privilege as a birthright. It had formed part of Morris's original enmity that the youthful Drinkwater was an example of an upstart family.
But Drinkwater's nausea was swiftly overcome by a rising and revengeful anger. He recalled something of the detached coolness that sustained him in moments of extreme stress.
'The bulkheads will shortly be re-erected. You will be able to return to your quarters very soon.' The words were polite, the tone sharp.
'But it is remarkably refreshing here on deck, Captain. You have a fine set of men ... handsome fellows ...'
The remark was loud enough to be overheard, on the face of it harmless enough, but tinged with notice of intent, judging by the amusement in Morris's deep-set, hooded eyes.
'Go below, sir,' Drinkwater snapped, facing his old enemy, and between them crackled the brittle electricity of dislike. Morris smiled and then turned to go. Drinkwater found himself confronted by Ballantyne. The master stood open-mouthed and Drinkwater thought of his earlier nervousness. He appeared to have a coward upon his quarterdeck.
'What the devil is it, Mr Ballantyne? Come, pull yourself together, the danger's past. Be kind enough to work out an estimate of our position so that we can amend the charts ...'
'No, no, sir. It is that man.' Ballantyne's head shook from side to side. 'I know him ...'
It occurred to Drinkwater that Ballantyne had not previously seen their passenger. For all Drinkwater knew, Morris had traded under a pseudonym.
'I knew him in Rangoon, sir,' Ballantyne persisted, 'he was up to mischief. He made much money.'
Mischief seemed a very mild word for what Drinkwater knew Morris was capable of.
'I should not believe all you hear, Captain Drinkwater, especially from a man of mixed blood.'
Overheard, Ballantyne paled, while Morris's head disappeared for the second time below the lip of the companionway coaming.
For two days nothing of note occurred. The wind eased, clearing the air so that the horizon became again the clear rim of visibility beloved by seamen. The convoy remained in good order and Drinkwater, immeasurably relieved by his move into the master's cabin, felt his spirits lighten. He dismissed his earlier fears of interference from Morris as foolish imaginings, recollections of the past when he had been a circumstantial victim of Morris's vicious and capricious nature. Now he had the upper hand; Morris was held aft under guard yet in the comparative freedom of the great cabin. His officers were loyal. The morale of his men was much improved by the news that their return home was now only a matter of time, and the convoy was well disciplined.
Privately, too, the move was beneficial. He had had Mullender take down the portraits, his journal was secure and his personal effects were removed from the defiling presence of Morris. What Morris did behind the canvas screen was his own affair, so long as it did not impinge upon the life, public or private, of Captain Drinkwater and his ship.
As Drinkwater's mood lifted, James Quilhampton's was damped by growing apprehension. The first excitements of departure from Whampoa had worn off, and the drudgery of watch-keeping imposed its own monotonous routines which combined with the demands of the ship and convoy to rouse dormant worries. It was Quilhampton who had, months ago, suppressed an incipient mutiny before its eruption. These were the same men, he thought as he paced the quarterdeck daily, observing them about their duties, the same unpaid labourers who were sorely tried by the hard usage of the King's Service. To Quilhampton, the spectre of mutiny assumed a new danger now that they were homeward bound; the danger that it might destroy any possibility of him marrying Mistress MacEwan. Part of his cavalier reception of Tregembo's warning was not so much because he did not believe in it, but because he did not want to contemplate any additional factor that might threaten or destroy his expectations.
Beyond the screen bisecting the captain's cabin Morris heard Captain Rakitin leave his indolent young companion wh
ile he took his exercise on deck. Morris, wrapped in his silk robe, touched the shoulder of his Ganymede and pointed at the screen. Impassively the boy rose and slipped past the end of the partition where, at the stern windows, communication between the divided cabin was possible. Morris waited, composing his face to its most benign expression, smoking a long, thin Burmese cheroot.
'Good morning,' he said as Chirkov, summoned by curiosity, followed the turbaned pixie. 'Please sit down. I hear you speak excellent English. Would you care for a glass ...?'
The boy produced a porcelain bottle and poured samsu into one of Drinkwater's glasses. Standing, Chirkov tossed back the glass, the raw rice spirit rasping his throat with a fire reminiscent of vodka. The glass was refilled. The Russian seemed reluctant to sit.
'We are both prisoners of Captain Drinkwater ...' Morris began experimentally, pleased with the contemptuously dismissive gesture made by Chirkov.
'You do not like Captain Drinkwater?' Morris asked.
'No! He is doing me dishonour, great dishonour. I will fight and shoot one of his officers soon.'
'A duel, eh? Well, well.' Morris motioned the boy to produce more samsu. 'And what is this great dishonour the ignoble Captain has done you?' Morris's voice had a soothing, honeyed tone.
'He ordered me to be beaten!' Chirkov spluttered indignantly.
'Beaten?' Morris's tongue flickered pinkly over his lips in a quicksilver reaction of heightened interest. He flickered a commanding glance at the Indian boy and more samsu tinkled into Chirkov's glass to be tossed back by the impetuous Russian. 'How barbaric,' Morris muttered sympathetically. 'And it is still painful, eh?'
Chirkov nodded, watching the boy pour yet more samsu. 'Oui ... yes.'
'I have a salve ... a medicine, specific against such a wound. If it is not treated it may fester.' Morris smiled, reassuringly. 'You do not want gangrene, do you?' Abstractedly Morris touched the glowing end of his cheroot to a bundle of sticks by his elbow.
'Gangrene?' Chirkov frowned.
'Mortification ...'
Chirkov understood and the dull gleam of alarm deliberately kindled by Morris appeared in his fuddled eyes.
'Would you like me to ... ? Morris's hands made a gesturing of massage and he addressed a few words of Hindi to the Indian boy.
Samsu and sympathy and the strange scent that wafted now about the cabin from joss-sticks burning in a brass pot beside Morris dissolved the young man's suspicions. The turbanned boy returned to his master's side with a pot of unguent. Morris made a sign for Chirkov to expose himself. Morris smiled a complicit smile and Chirkov, drunk and of sensuous disposition, did as he was bid. Morris dipped his hands in the salve and began to apply it as Chirkov, holding on to the edge of the table, stood before him.
For a few seconds a heavy silence filled the cabin. Morris felt the fierce triumph of discovery as Chirkov's compliance revealed his own hedonistic nature and then the Russian too was aware of the most pleasurable and undreamed of sensations' flooding through him as the tongueless boy obeyed his master's instructions.
'A glass, Mr Ballantyne?'
'Er, thank you, Mr Quilhampton.' Ballantyne struggled with the awkward surname. In the post-daylight gloom of the wardroom Quilhampton pushed the glass across the table, taking two fingers off its base as Ballantyne seized it. Then, holding the neck of the decanter in one hand, his own glass in the other, he tipped his chair back against the heel of the ship and with the unthinking ease of long practice, threw both feet on to the edge of the table. Ballantyne watched with fascination, for the hand in which Quilhampton held his glass, his left, was of wood.
'A rum thing, ain't it?' remarked the unabashed lieutenant.
'I beg your pardon, Mr Q ...' Ballantyne's overwhelming predilection for formality was one of his characteristic features. 'You lost it in action, I believe?'
'Yes. Damned careless of me, wasn't it? Have a biscuit. No? Then pass the barrel, there's a good fellow.'
'Have you had much experience of action?' There was an eagerness in Ballantyne's question that, together with other remarks he had made, had provoked a character analysis from Mount that suggested the new sailing master nurtured a desire to distinguish himself. 'To prove himself,' Mount had explained, with a knowing look that attributed Ballantyne's desire for glory to his coloured skin.
'Action?' remarked Quilhampton. 'Yes, I've seen enough. And you, have you had much experience with women, Mr Ballantyne, for I'm woefully ignorant upon the subject.'
'Women?' A faint light of astonishment filled Ballantyne's eyes. 'But you talk often of your woman, Mr Q ...'
'Because I am a besotted fool,' Quilhampton said in an attempt at flippancy, 'but I want to know of women, of the gender as a whole, not one in particular.'
'What is it you want to know?'
'Have you known many women?'
'Of course. Many, many women.' Ballantyne rolled his head in his quaint, exotic manner.
'Can a woman love a man with a wooden hand?'
'Now you are asking about one woman, Mr Q, and I am not comprehending you.'
'But to answer honestly you need to have known many women,' Quilhampton replied, a faint edge of desperation entering his voice.
'That is true. But I cannot answer for the particular ...'
'No.' Quilhampton's face fell. In the silence the messman entered with a lantern.
'But ...' said Ballantyne as the man retired, 'but I think it would be easier for a woman to love a man with a wooden hand than for a man to love a woman with a wooden leg.'
Quilhampton paused in the act of refilling his glass and stared at Ballantyne. The master was deadly serious and suddenly Quilhampton burst into laughter, giggling uncontrollably so that he only got all four chair legs and both his feet back on the deck with difficulty.
'What the devil is this rumpus?' asked Mount, emerging from his cabin, unfamiliarly attired in shirt-sleeves.
'Ballantyne,' gasped Quilhampton, 'Ballantyne is making up riddles ...'
Mount leaned against the door frame of his cabin and looked upon the young lieutenant indulgently as Quilhampton recounted the conversation. Switching his glance to the master Mount was aware that Quilhampton's unbridled mirth had irritated Ballantyne. He was bristling with affront, unable to see anything beyond Quilhampton's ridicule of his remark. Mount was quick to retrieve the situation.
'Perhaps, Mr Ballantyne, you would favour me with an answer to a more serious question than a young jackanapes like James is capable of framing.'
'What is it, Mr Mount?' Ballantyne asked, suspicious now that the two Englishmen were going to bat him back and forth like a shuttlecock.
'I heard you remark to the Captain that you knew something of our somewhat unusual passenger. Who, or what exactly is he?'
Quilhampton was still giggling, but Mount's question almost silenced him for he could make his own contribution to its answer. Almost, for his amusement was sustained by the sudden overwhelmingly serious cast that Ballantyne's swarthy features assumed. It seemed to Quilhampton that this gravity of its own accord drew Mount to a vacant chair, and his amusement only subsided slowly, for his sensibilities still lingered on Catriona MacEwan, the point from which his question arose.
'He is a bad man, Mr Mount. It is said that he was formerly a naval officer, but he was in Calcutta for some years and then moved to Rangoon where he traded with a Parsee. My father had some business with their house and they cheated him. My father has never divulged the particulars of their transactions, for I believe the loss was too shameful for him. Some time after this the Parsee was found dead, and although nothing could be proved against this man he moved on to Canton where he had considerable influence with the Hong in the interest of the opium trade. It is said that he had connections with the Viceroy and these enabled him to travel outside the normal limits imposed by the authorities on the foreign devils ...'
'Foreign devils?' queried Mount, frowning.
'The Europeans in the factories ...'
'I cannot tell you much more, except that I know of his dishonest connections with my father and that when, on one or two occasions I saw him in Canton, my father warned me against him.'
'But you are not going into trade, are you, Mr Ballantyne? You have volunteered for King George's service, at least for the time being.'
'I should like to serve His Majesty,' said Ballantyne. 'Is it true that by being master I cannot obtain a commission?'
'It is unusual, certainly, unless you distinguish yourself in action against the enemy. I suppose if you earned Captain
Drinkwater's approbation and were mentioned in the Gazette, a commission might be forthcoming.'
There was a dry edge to Mount's voice that only Quilhampton recognised as faintly mocking. Now all suspicion was gone from Ballantyne's mind.
'And do you think we shall see action on a convoy escort?' Ballantyne asked.
Mount shrugged. 'One can never tell ...'
The noise of the fo'c's'le bell rang through the ship and the frigate stirred to the call of the watch. 'On the other hand the call of duty is remorseless,' he added. 'Your watch, Mr Ballantyne ...'
'You should not bait him, James,' remarked Mount, stretching himself and yawning.
'I didn't'
'Then keep your love-sickness to yourself.'
'It ain't contagious.'
'No, but misery is and a long commission's fertile ground for that.' Mount rose. 'Good-night, James, and sweet dreams.'
Quilhampton sat alone for a few moments. Soon Fraser would come below demanding a glass and the remains of the biscuit barrel. Quilhampton threw off his thoughts of Catriona, for the image of Morris had intruded. He wondered why he had not added his own contribution to the pooling of knowledge about Morris. Was it because he could not admit that such a man had once held a commission as a naval officer?
A Private Revenge Page 11