A Private Revenge

by Richard Woodman

  He would confide in Mount. He would trust Mount with his life, but Ballantyne ...? Ballantyne was not quite one of them; a merchant officer, a man of colour, a man for whom the grey seas of Ushant and the Channel were a closed book. Was Drinkwater truly going to confirm his appointment as master?

  Quilhampton shrugged, drained his glass and made for his cabin. He did not want to socialise with Fraser, only to thrust his mind back to the pleasurable agony of dreaming of Catriona MacEwan.

  On deck Mr Ballantyne paced up and down and dreamed of glory. He had set down upon Captain Drinkwater's chart the estimated position of the reef upon which the Patrician and her convoy had so nearly met disaster and earned a word of approval. He had modestly demurred from appending his own name to the shoal and now he fantasised about earning a more durable reward from the taciturn Captain Drinkwater. A commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy could lead him to social heights denied him on the Indian coast, — for his mother had not been the Begum of Drinkwater's fancy, but a nautch-girl stolen from a temple by his lusty father, a beauty, true, but a woman of no consequence in Indian society. His father cared little for the conventions of the coast and had set his heart on an estate in the English shires if fortune smiled on him. But Ballantyne the son had a sharper perception of values, forced upon him by bastard birth, a tainted skin and opportunities that had raised him from the gutter in which an Indian Brahmin had once suggested he belonged. Something of a subconscious resentment of his father for the predicament in which he had been placed prevented him from accepting a life in merchant ships, and the turn of events which took him from the labouring hull of the dismasted Musquito and placed him aboard the puissant mass of Patrician had awakened a sentiment of predestination in him.

  It was this happy mood, combined with a lack of appreciation of the exact status of Midshipman Chirkov that led him to indulge the Russian prisoner when he requested to take the air on deck.

  Mr Ballantyne, Master of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician, felt a certain lofty condescension to Count Anatole Vasili Chirkov, and indulged the young and apparently interested Russian officer in a dissertation on their navigational position in the South China Sea.

  CHAPTER 10

  A Small Victory

  January 1809

  In the stuffy hutch that had formerly been inhabited by Patrician's sailing master Drinkwater sat writing his journal. For a few moments he reflected before dipping his pen. Then he carefully scribed the date, forming the numerals of the new year with care.

  We are now south of the twelfth parallel in less misty weather and lighter winds. My apprehensions of attack by Spanish cruisers from the Philippines seem unfounded and I assume their recent loss added to the knowledge of Drury's squadron in the area has made them more concerned for their own register ships than the plunder of our India trade. The convoy continues to behave well. The discipline of the Indiamen is excellent and the Country ships seek to emulate them to the extent of making the throwing out of recriminatory signals unnecessary. This good behaviour is not consistent with the conduct of all convoys ...

  Drinkwater paused. While he allowed himself a certain latitude in personal asides, he was conscious of a desire to scribble all his random thoughts on to paper. He knew it was a consequence of his loneliness and the thought usually stopped him short of such confessions. Besides, they were too revealing when read later. But the urge to place something on record about Morris was strong, though the nature of the words he would employ eluded him. All he had written to date was a brief entry that Morris, formerly Master and Commander in His Majesty's Service, now a merchant at Canton, has come aboard for the passage with a quantity of specie.

  It was a masterpiece of understatement, making no allusion to their previous acquaintance. Drinkwater knew the omission begged the question of for whom he wrote his journals. He had been ordered to destroy them, but had refused, considering them personal and not public property. In accordance with John Barrow's instructions his ship's logs had been dumped, so that no record of her activities in the Baltic existed; but even a man in the public employ was not to be utterly divested of personal life at the whim of another so employed.

  He knew that, in truth, he wrote his journals for himself, an indulgence taken like wine or tobacco. It was unnecessary for him to have written anything about Morris beyond the fact that, like a phoenix, the man had risen from the ashes of the past. Out of the uncertainties and passions of adolescence when their antipathy had first found form, to the hatred of maturity aboard the brig Hellebore where Morris had indeed been 'Master and Commander', they had come now to a snarling and wary truce.

  'Like two senescent dogs,' Drinkwater muttered, half lifting his pen as if to write down the words. But he laid the pen aside and closed his journal.

  'We are too old now, too interested in feathering nests for our old age to disturb our lives with the revival of former passions.'

  He spoke the words to himself, a low mumble that at least satisfied him in their formation, even though they failed to find their way on to the written page.

  The improvement in the weather, the convoy's discipline in maintaining station and the apparently resigned behaviour of Morris persuaded Drinkwater that, subject to a degree of vigilance, his bete noire might be permitted the occasional freedom of the quarterdeck. The incongruous sight of Morris, corpulent under the shimmering silk of his robe, pacing beside Rakitin, became familiar to the other occupants of the quarterdeck during the first dog watch. As the hour of tropical sunset approached, Drinkwater also kept the deck, maintaining his own watch upon the two men. Little appeared to pass between them beyond the odd word, and the Russian seemed to have shrunk beside the obscene bulk of Morris. No longer filling his elegant uniform, Rakitin paced with hunched shoulders next to his enforced companion. The relentless nature of the ship's routine soon removed the novelty of this odd, morose promenade.

  Midshipman Chirkov was also more in evidence, showing active signs of growing interest in professional matters and receiving instruction from Mr Ballantyne in a most gratifying manner. Drinkwater hoped the young man was taking advantage of the opportunity to increase his knowledge and that, reconciled to his fate, circumstances had wrought a sea-change in him.

  The lighter winds slowed their southward progress and allowed fraternising between the ships so that, late one afternoon, Drinkwater found himself aboard the Guilford, dining at Callan's ample table.

  Throughout the meal Drinkwater felt a sense of detachment. It was partly due to the fact that he was an outsider and not one of the small band of intimates who had grown wealthy in the service of the Honourable East India Company. Among the diners, four of Callan's own officers and an equal number from the Ligonier, including her commander, had been joined by several of the masters of the Country ships, men who considered themselves, equal to, if after, the lordly Company captains. Drinkwater found the overt and artificial social posturing rather amusing, though their knowledge of the trade and navigation of the eastern seas, expressed in an argot with which he was unfamiliar, increased his sense of being an outsider.

  The assumed superiority on the part of the East India commanders, whose wealth and power conferred on them a cachet that found its greatest expression in these remote oriental waters, seemed to Drinkwater a bubble ripe for pricking. He had accepted Callan's invitation, he privately admitted to himself, for motives other than the anticipation of a good meal. Looking down the table, however, he could see James Quilhampton entertained no such ulterior considerations for the meal was sumptuous, served on crisp, white linen, eaten off splendid porcelain with fine silver cutlery and accompanied by wines drunk from glittering crystal glasses.

  Drinkwater enjoyed the luxury of the meal. He played up to Callan's efforts to engage him in conversation, but both men knew that unfinished business lay between them and only the convention of good manners prevented its open and indelicate discussion before the other guests. Quilhampton and a handful of his own subo
rdinates were being entertained by the Indiamen's. Drinkwater's attention was engaged by the senior men about him, portly men, for the most part, fleshy and rubicund from the climate and its alcoholic antidotes. They were men of strong opinion, products of almost unbridled licence and power, and although this fell short of the life-and-death power of a post-captain in the Royal Navy, it was clear that the opportunities their commands gave them for making money had given them confidence of another kind.

  It occurred to Drinkwater that Callan might have assembled these men as allies to shame him into passing over the matter of the deserters. He smiled inwardly. He was quite capable of enjoying the fruits of Callan's table with as much insouciance as was Callan in accepting the protection of his frigate's cannon.

  "Twas a trifle of a near-run thing t'other day, Captain Drinkwater,' remarked one of the masters of a Country ship. 'We were firing alarm guns and you took 'em for shots at an enemy, eh?'

  A silence had fallen and faces turned towards him. A conspiracy to embarrass him seemed in the air, or was it a remark provoked by over-much liquor? At the lower end of the table, too, there was a stir of interest and Drinkwater was gratified at the sudden irritation in Quilhampton's loyal eyes. Deliberately Drinkwater drained his glass.

  'I took 'em, sir, for what you say they were, alarm guns. I would have been failing in my duty had I ignored them. Had you perused your instructions you would have observed a signal to indicate the convoy was standing into danger ...'

  Drinkwater watched the face of his interlocutor flush. The company shifted awkwardly in its chairs and he was persuaded that there was at best some practical joke afoot to throw him in a foolish light, for another spoke as though trying to regain the initiative.

  'I don't think there was time for the hoisting of flags, Captain Drinkwater ...'

  The diners sniffed agreement, as though implying such niceties were all very well for a well-manned frigate, but a tightly run merchant ship could not afford the luxuries of signal staff.

  'You were damned lucky to get away with it,' remarked the commander of the Ligonier.

  'Now there I would agree with you, sir,' Drinkwater said smoothly, 'but a miss is as good as a mile, they say ...'

  'And we were fortunate not to lose your services,' said Callan soothingly.

  'Yes,' agreed Drinkwater drily. 'What bothers me, gentlemen, is how such experts in the navigation of these seas as yourselves came to be so misled in your navigation.' He paused, gratified by a suggestion of embarrassment among them.

  'I take it,' he went on, 'that we nearly ran ashore upon a hitherto uncharted spur of the Paracels? I trust you have all amended your charts accordingly ...'

  Drinkwater looked the length of the table. It had been a foolish attempt to mock him, of that he was now certain, and unwittingly they had given him a means to get his own back.

  'A delightful meal, Captain Callan, and one in which the humour of the company induces me to ask you for the return of my men.'

  There was only the briefest of pauses and then Callan urbanely agreed.

  'Of course, Captain Drinkwater, of course ...'

  Was there the merest twinkle in Callan's eye? Drinkwater could not be certain, but he hoped so, for they had measured blade for blade and Drinkwater was fencer enough to know he had the advantage.

  Contrary to expectations aboard Patrician, Drinkwater did not punish the deserters immediately. He had, he admitted to himself as he sat, wooden-faced, in the stern of his barge, fully intended to, but the sullen faces of his barge crew as, eyes averted, they rocked back and forward, half-heartedly pulling at the knocking oar-looms, dissuaded him. Not that he was afraid of the consequences of the flogging as he had earlier been. Indeed his mood was almost one of light-heartedness, so clumsy had been the efforts of the merchant masters to disconcert him, but Drinkwater possessed a strong, almost puritanical sense of propriety born of long service, and he would have despised himself if, after a magnificent dinner, he had viciously flogged the deserters.

  It was impossible that he could excuse or exculpate them, for he had hanged a man for the same crime before leaving for the Pacific and such unheard-of leniency would, by its inconsistency, lead others into the same path. But their downcast misery as they sat in the stern sheets of the barge, in such close proximity to their captain, filled Drinkwater with an odd, angering compassion that, by the time he reached the ship, had dispelled his good humour.

  'Put those men in the bilboes,' he curtly ordered Fraser as the first lieutenant stood with the rigid side-party, 'and prevent anyone approaching them,' he said to Mount, before hurrying below, only just catching himself in time to turn aside for the master's cabin and not walk, seething, into the main cabin. Suddenly the confines of his self-imposed prison oppressed him, and he as quickly returned to the deck, to pace up and down, up and down along the line of quarterdeck guns until he had mastered himself.

  'He doesn't want to hang 'em,' said Quilhampton to the lounging officers in the wardroom.

  'He'll have to. A court martial at Prince of Wales Island will condemn them without a thought ...' remarked Fraser.

  'Not if he punishes 'em now, quickly ...'

  'You mean flogs them?' asked Fraser.

  'Yes,' replied Quilhampton, "twill serve as an example to the rest.'

  'Good God, man, we were hanging people before! D'you think their blessed Lordships 'd approve of a mere flogging? They want stiffs for desertion, not red meat. He'll no' flog them, but keep them in irons until he can have them court-martialled by a full board at Penang.'

  'But he doesn't want to hang 'em,' persisted Quilhampton.

  'Och, you presume on your knowledge o' the man, Jamie. I sympathise but not even Captain Drinkwater can get awa' from the fact that desertion's a hanging offence.'

  'Tomorrow will tell who's right. If he hasn't flogged 'em by seven bells in the forenoon watch I'm not James Quilhampton.' Quilhampton rose, yawning. 'I've the middle tonight, and I'm weary ...'

  'What do you think, Mister Lallo?' Fraser asked of the surgeon who had sat silently through this exchange.

  Lallo shrugged. 'I've no idea. Mr Q's solution seems the most humane, yours the most in conformity with the regulations ...'

  'And the easiest for you,' added Fraser drily.

  Ah yes.' Lallo's tone was unenthusiastic. 'Mr Fraser,' he said, suddenly shifting in his chair and reaching for the decanter on the wardroom table, 'there are other problems that confront us, you know.'

  'Oh ... ?' Something in Lallo's voice caught Fraser's attention. 'What?'

  'I thought I had three cases of lues as a legacy of California, now I have five, maybe six.'

  'And is that so unusual? I saw the venereal list myself only this morning.'

  'Two of the cases I'm certain are syphilitic, but the others ...'

  'You are not sure?'

  'No, I mean, yes, I'm sure.' Lallo rubbed his hand across his forehead in a gesture of extreme exhaustion. 'But it isn't the pox.'

  'Well what is it?' snapped Fraser, a sudden fearful cramp contracting the muscles of his belly.

  'Button-scurvy ...'

  'Scurvy?'

  'No! Button-scurvy, Mr Fraser, framboesia, the yaws ...'

  'The yaws!'

  'Aye, and it's contagious.'

  Midshipman Chirkov's quarterdeck appearances had begun to assume a semblance of normality, so much so that the flattered Ballantyne remarked upon his regular interest to Quilhampton when handing over the deck to him at midnight. Together with the details of the course steered and the bearings of the merchantmen, the information made no impression upon the still sleep-dulled Quilhampton until he had been on watch for some time and had dismissed the more immediate preoccupations of his duty. It occurred to him then that Midshipman Chirkov's sudden enthusiasm was singularly uncharacteristic and that, for reasons of his own, he was currying favour with the vulnerable and somewhat pathetic Ballantyne. Had Quilhampton also known the state of hostility that existed between Chir
kov and Frey, he might have associated Chirkov's sudden interest in navigation with something more sinister. But that was a matter of honour, a matter of honour forbidden on board ship, and so a closely guarded secret of the gunroom. As it was, his conversation with Ballantyne led him to make other assumptions, blinding him to what was going on almost under his very nose.

  Morris had made no attempt to convert the indolent and sensual Russian to his own particular vice. Indeed, age, jaded appetite and excessive corpulence had rendered him less active himself in its pursuit. Besides, his seduction of the Russian youth had aims other than the fulfilment of his own overt desires; what Morris meditated was something infinitely more pleasurable than the mere gratification of lust, something that still appealed to a man far gone in lechery, holding out the budding promise of the most exquisite pleasure.

  The boy he had had fashioned for his unique and effortless delight could be employed with equal facility to enrapture the libidinous Chirkov without too much arousing the young man's disgust at himself. Morris was delighted for the gift of so compliant an accomplice as Chirkov.

  Nor did the lounging Chirkov, half drunk, half drugged by samsu and Malwa opium during the nights in which Rakitin slept and he and Morris held their unholy court, realise the extent to which he was being used. Morris had explained the dislike Drinkwater felt for them both as an unmannerly prejudice, offering Chirkov a spiteful little revenge upon the British captain by finding out the location of the frigate from the log and traverse board so that he, Morris, might be kept abreast of events that Drinkwater, out of malice, denied him. In return, the extravagant pleasures of Morris's half of the cabin amused the young man as an acceptable alternative to the gypsies who had first introduced him to the gratification of the flesh.