A Private Revenge

by Richard Woodman

  He found Tregembo waiting for him with a towel.

  'Thank you, Tregembo'

  'Zur ...'

  The remains of the candle he had extinguished earlier guttered on its holder. As he dried himself he felt the heel of the deck ease and a few moments later little Belchambers came below to report normality established on deck.

  'Is the convoy in sight?'

  'No, sir, the rain is still obscuring it, though it's much lighter now than it was, but Mr Frey says he had a good look at the convoy's bearing in the lightning, sir, and he's quite happy.'

  'Very well, Mr Belchambers. Thank you.'

  'Good-night, sir.'

  'Good-night.'

  'Thank you, Tregembo. You may get your own head down now.'

  'Aye, zur ... G'night, zur.'

  Outside the cabin Tregembo bumped into the surgeon.

  'Cap'n's just turning in,' he said defensively, standing in Lallo's way.

  'Very well,' said Lallo. The surgeon had been meditating all day when to tell Drinkwater about the epidemic of yaws that he might anticipate and had turned in irresolute. Woken by the general agitation of the ship and the clap of thunder he had resolved to act immediately. Now he felt a little foolish, and not a little relieved. A night would make no difference.

  'I'll see him first thing in the morning,' he said, turning away.

  But Mr Lallo was not the first officer to report to Drinkwater next morning; he was beaten by Mr Ballantyne who, head shaking and excited, burst in to Drinkwater's cabin with such violence that he fetched up against the rim of the bunk. Drinkwater started from sleep as if murder was in the wind.

  'Sir! Oh, sir, calamity, sir!'

  'What the devil is it? Why have you left the deck, Mr Ballantyne?' Drinkwater spluttered.

  'The convoy, sir, it is not in sight!'

  PART TWO

  Nemesis

  'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'

  Edmund Burke

  CHAPTER 12

  A Council of War

  January 1809

  A sickeningly empty horizon greeted Drinkwater's eyes as he cast about the ship. In a despairing movement he looked aloft to where, astride the main royal yard, Midshipman Dutfield scanned the sea. Looking down, Dutfield shook his head.

  'God's bones!' Drinkwater swore, then strode to the binnacle and stared at the compass. The lubber's line pointed unerringly at south by west. Drinkwater looked aloft again, the sails were drawing, all seemed well. He stood, puzzling. Some instinct was rasping his intelligence, telling him something was wrong, very wrong, though he was totally at a loss to understand what. Full daylight was upon them, the rising sun, above the horizon for fully half an hour, remained below a bank of wet and coiling cumulus to the east. For a long moment he stared at that cloud bank, as though seeking an answer there, cudgelling his brain to think, think.

  Both he and Frey had seen the convoy last night. The cluster of ships had been quite distinct, to leeward of them, perhaps a little too far off the starboard bow for absolutely perfect station-keeping, but ...

  Had that squall, local and intense, affected only Patrician? It was possible, but it had not lasted long enough to carry the frigate beyond the visible horizon of the group of ships.

  A slanting shaft of sunlight speared downwards from a rent in the clouds. A moment later it was joined by another, and another. Three patches of glittering sea flared where the sunbeams struck, scintillating intensely.

  'Bloody hell!'

  Drinkwater's eye ran up the beams, seeking their theoretical intersection where, still hidden, the sun lurked behind the bank of cloud. In a stride he was beside the binnacle, sensing something was definitely wrong, electrified by suspicion.

  He could not be sure. It was difficult to take an azimuth in such a way ...

  He fumed, impatient for a sight of the sun. Not one of the three patches seemed to move nearer to them, then one disappeared.

  'Is there something ... ?' Ballantyne's voice was nervously hesitant.

  'Get an azimuth the moment the sun shows, get my sextant and chronometer up here upon the instant!'

  It had to be the lightning, a corposant perhaps, that had run unobserved in all that black deluge the previous night. There was no other explanation ...

  'Look, sir, the sun!'

  Neither sextant nor chronometer had arrived but Drinkwater did not need to work out the calculation. It was too blindingly obvious. Though they crawled across the face of the globe and altered the bearing of the sun at any given time of the day, and although the sun was almost imperceptibly moving towards them as it orbited further and further north towards the equinoctial and the vernal equinox of the northern spring, he could see that an error existed in their compass; an error of perhaps thirty of forty degrees, sufficient to have misled them into sailing on a diverging course from the convoy. It was with something like relief that he offered the worried faces on the quarterdeck an explanation.

  'Our compass is thirty or forty degrees in error, gentlemen. We have been sailing more nearly south-east than south all night. It must have been disturbed by the lightning.'

  A murmur of surprise, mixed with wonder and relieved suspense, crossed several faces. Drinkwater looked at the dog-vane and made a hurried calculation, a rough estimate in triangulation that he would work out more carefully in a moment when he had the leisure to do so. For the time being a swift alteration of course and speed were needed.

  'Lay me a course of south-west, Mr Ballantyne, and have the watch set all plain sail!'

  'Sou' west and all plain sail, sir, aye, aye, sir!'

  Drinkwater looked about him again. The wind was a light but steady breeze. God alone knew what the convoy commanders would think when they realised Patrician was absent, but he could imagine well enough! A creeping anxiety began to replace the feeling of relief at having discovered the cause of the navigational mystery.

  The Natunas were astern; suppose they had concealed a Dutch cruiser, or even a French one? He rubbed his chin, feeling the scrubby bristles rough against the palm of his hand.

  Canvas flogged above him and the cries of 'Let fall! Clew down!' and 'Sheet home!' accompanied the sudden bellying of the fore and main courses. Above the topsails the topgallants and royals were spreading Patrician's pale wings in the morning sunlight. His eye was caught by a sudden movement lower down. Midshipman Chirkov was on deck. Drinkwater recollected the presence of the young Russian the night before. He suddenly vented all his bile on the good-for-nothing young man.

  'Mr Chirkov! Damn you, sir, but my orders are explicit! You are forbidden to be on deck at this hour!'

  There seemed something vaguely dreamy about the young man, something weird that Drinkwater had neither the time nor the patience to investigate. Doubtless the young devil had got his hands on liquor, probably Rakitin gave him access to it ...

  'Go below, sir, at once!'

  'All plain sail, sir,' reported Ballantyne, recalling Drinkwater to normality.

  'Very well, Mr Ballantyne, thank you.'

  'Sir?'

  'Well, what is it? Hurry man, for I want to set the stuns'ls.'

  'Would not the lightning have affected other ships? We were, by all accounts, no distance from the convoy.'

  'What?' Drinkwater looked sharply at the master. Did Ballantyne have a valid point, or did that single, fateful glimpse of the convoy argue that it had been immune from the lightning? He recalled the bolt hitting the sea quite close. Surely that was what had disturbed the magnetism in the needles suspended on their silken threads below the compass card. It had all been something of a nightmare, Drinkwater thought, recalling vignettes of evidence, lit by flashes of lightning or the unholy gathering of men round the binnacle light on the gun-deck.

  'No. I think not,' he said with assumed certainty. 'There was a thunderbolt struck the sea quite close to us, Mr Ballantyne, I think it was that that mazed our compass ...'

  And so he came t
o believe for the time being.

  'Trouble never comes in small bottles, does it, Mr Lallo?'

  'No, sir.'

  'What should we do? Quarantine 'em?'

  'We may be too late for that, sir,' Lallo cautioned.

  'Is it as contagious as the Gaol Fever?' Gaol fever they called it aboard ship, and ship fever they called it ashore, ascribing its spread to the least desirable elements of each of the societies in which, amid the endemic squalor, it spread like wildfire.

  'It's hard to say, sir. I'm not over-familiar with the yaws, but typhus ...'

  'We've contained outbreaks of that before ...' Drinkwater said hopefully. It was true. Clean clothes and salt-water douches seemed, if not to cure typhus, at least to inhibit its spread. Perhaps the same treatment might stay this present unpleasant disease. He suggested it. Lallo nodded gloomily.

  'We must try,' said Drinkwater encouragingly, bracing himself as Patrician leaned to a stronger gust under the press of canvas she was now carrying. Suddenly Drinkwater longed for the luxury of his own cabin; to be watching the white-green wake streaming astern from below the open sashes of the wide stern window, and the sea-birds dipping in it.

  Lallo coughed, aware of Drinkwater's sudden abstraction. He stared at the surgeon's lined face. Was he going out of his mind to be thinking such inane thoughts? How could he stare, delighting in the swirling wake, when Lallo was here, bent under the weight of his message of death?

  'Quarantine 'em,' he said, suddenly resolute, 'station 'em at the after guns; to be issued with new slops at the ship's expense (we've widows' men to cover the matter), ditch their clothing. They're to be hosed down twice daily and dance until they're dry. Keep their bodies from touching anything ...'

  Lallo nodded and rose. 'I'll tell Fraser to re-quarter them. You said after guns, sir?'

  Drinkwater nodded. Yes, he thought, after guns, close to Morris ...

  'Sail ho!'

  Drinkwater stirred from his doze, fighting off the fog of an afternoon sleep.

  'Two sails! No three-ee! Point to starboard! 'Tis the convoy!'

  He was on deck before the hail was finished, up on the rail and motioning for the deck glass. Someone put it into his hand and he watched the sails of a brig climb up over the rim of the world, saw them foreshorten as she altered course towards them and then he jumped down on deck and felt like grabbing both Fraser's hands and dancing ring-a-roses with him for the sheer joy of finding the lost ships. Instead he said:

  'Put your helm down a touch, Mr Fraser, let's close with 'em as fast as possible and offer our apologies ...'

  The two vessels came up hand over fist. On the horizon to the south-west they could see the rest of the convoy close together.

  'Odd, sir, they seem to be hove-to.'

  'Shows they've been waiting for us. They've been buzznacking.'

  Drinkwater's cheerful tone was redolent of the relief he was feeling at overtaking the convoy before dark. It was Hormuzeer that approached them, a trim little brig that had once been a privateer and now ran opium to China under the command of an elderly but energetic Scotsman named Macgillivray. Through their glasses they could see her come into the wind with a large red flag flying at her foremasthead.

  'That's a damned odd signal for her to be flying,' someone said among the curious little knot of officers who had gathered on deck.

  'Into action?'

  'They're hoisting out a boat ...'

  'Get the stuns'ls off her, Mr Fraser, if you please,' snapped Drinkwater, his face suddenly grim. 'If that's the convoy over there, we've two ships missing.'

  'Aye, sir, we sorely missed you. Your absence, sir, was ill-timed. Dolorous, sir damned dolorous.' Macgillivray's face was thin, hollow-cheeked and pitted by smallpox. A hooked nose that belonged to a larger man jutted from between two deep-set and rheumy eyes that fixed Drinkwater with a piercing glitter. Across the nose and cheeks, red and broken veins spread like the tributaries of a mapped river, contrasting with dead-white skin that seemed to have been permanently shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. As if to augment the ferocity of his expression, grey whiskers, sharply shaved below the cheekbone, grew upon his face below his eyes.

  'I have explained, Captain Macgillivray, why I failed to keep station last night. The matter is done, sir, and the time for recriminations is past ...'

  'No, sir! Damn no, sir! We shall have time for recriminations at Penang, you mark my words. We demand the navy protects us, sir, and you are missing. We lost two ships, sir ...'

  'Captain Macgillivray, you have told me three times that two ships are missing and I have told you twice why we lost contact with you.' Drinkwater was almost shouting down the furious Scotsman, bludgeoning him into silence with his own anger. 'Now, sir, will you do me the courtesy of telling me which two ships and how they were lost?'

  Macgillivray subsided, then he opened his thin mouth as though diving for more air. 'Pirates, sir, pirates. Sea-Dyaks from Borneo forty praus strong, sir, forty! Pirates with gongs and shrieks and stink-pots and blow-pipes in red jackets. Straight for the Guilford they came, took Hindoostan as well, swarmed aboard and carried her off before you knew it.'

  'When?'

  'At dawn.'

  'Did you attempt to drive them off?

  'Aye, we opened fire, but the wind was light ...'

  And you were spread out?'

  Aye, maybe a little ...'

  Ah ...'

  'Not for reasons of slackness, Captain, oh, no, not for that, I assure you. We had spread out to seek yourself. Some of us saw you struck by lightning, like you said, but we were mistaken, for you are here, now.'

  That 'now' seemed like an accusation of a crime.

  And they carried the Guilford off, from under your noses? You didn't pursue ... ?'

  'It's your job to pursue, Captain, not ours to lose our cargoes. We did what we could. I followed a little myself. They went sou' b' west, for the Borneo coast ...'

  The two men fell silent. After a while Drinkwater looked up. 'I will make the signal for all commanders in an hour, Captain Macgillivray. Then I shall decide what to do.'

  'There's damn all you can do — now.'

  Drinkwater looked up into the undisguised contempt in the Scotsman's eyes.

  He had wanted the hour to work Patrician into the main body of the convoy. That was the reason he gave out on the quarterdeck. In reality he wanted the time to re-establish himself, albeit temporarily, in the more impressive surroundings of his cabin, to remove the screen and evict Morris and Rakitin. In the event it was noon before the last indignant master was pulled alongside and the ships rocked gently upon the now motionless sea. The wind had died and the calm was glassy, as though the ocean lacked the energy to move under the full heat of the brazen sun. Drinkwater had fended off the verbal assaults of each and every one of the merchant captains, reiterating the circumstances of Patricians separation until he was only half-convinced of its accuracy. It was too extravagant a tale to be wholly believable, particularly by men with little faith and large axes to grind.

  The cabin, as he called the meeting to order, seemed to heave with indignation and Drinkwater himself was very close to losing his temper. Only the thought that an outburst of anger would carry to Morris on the quarterdeck held him in check.

  'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' He managed at last to quieten them. 'What has happened is a matter of regret to us all. Both you and I are incredulous at aspects of events, you that my frigate was absent, I because your pursuit seems to have been non-existent ...'

  'There were forty praus, damn you, and poisoned darts all over the place and cannon ...'

  'And bugger-all wind ...'

  'There was sufficient of a wind to return me to station ... but let that all pass ...'

  They subsided again. Drinkwater pressed doggedly on. 'What we must now decide is how to proceed.'

  'Proceed?' queried one voice. 'Why to Penang, of course.'

  'Aye!' A chorus of voices rose in assent.

 
Drinkwater frowned. Did they intend to abandon Callan? Was the motivation of these men solely and wholly governed by profit? So different from his own thinking was this conclusion that he stood for a moment nonplussed.

  'Captain Drinkwater, I think you misunderstand us.' Drinkwater looked at the speaker, glad at last that one reasonable voice spoke from the hostile group before him. It was that of Captain Cunningham, commander of the Ligonier.

  'I rather hope I do,' replied Drinkwater curtly.

  'It is not that we wish to abandon Captain Callan; in all likelihood he will be repatriated by the Dutch, for this kind of thing has happened before. The Sea-Dyaks are interested only in booty. They will strip Guilford of all that they require or can trade with the Dutch; powder, small arms, shot, plus cargo. Since hostilities with the Batavians began, the wily squareheads have sought out the princes of the Sarawak tribes and offered them bribes for the capture and surrender of any of our Indiamen. I doubt Callan or his officers will come to any personal harm ...' Cunningham paused and a stillness filled the hitherto noisy cabin. Drinkwater sensed the compliance of the other masters: Cunningham was poised for the coup de grace. 'Your own predicament, Captain, is perhaps even less certain of its outcome than Captain Callan's.'

  A further pause, pregnant with opprobrium, let the implied threat sink in. Macgillivray, a man of little subtlety, could not let the matter rest on so insubstantial a foundation; besides, he had concocted a phrase of such obscurity that he flung it now like an accusation of untruth.