A Private Revenge

by Richard Woodman

  'And that is all?' asked Fraser, his sandy features furrowed by concern and confusion, turning the scrap of paper over and over, first looking at one side, then the other.

  'Yes, sir, beyond urging me to insist that you adhered to the instruction.'

  'Adhere to it! 'Tis little enough to go on ...'

  Frey had arrived back at the ship towing his grisly cargo, bringing the news that the captain had penetrated deeper into the jungle. Frey's mood had been brittle, a product of the weight of guilt he bore at not supporting Drinkwater. He now stood silently moody, his eyes downcast.

  Dutfield's arrival two hours after dark had plunged the waiting officers into still deeper gloom. The sense of having been abandoned filled Fraser with an unreasonable, petulant, but understandable anger. He knew of no precedent for the captain's conduct and sensed only personal affront. Fraser lacked both imagination and initiative, competent though he was at the routine duties of a first lieutenant.

  But to Quilhampton's relief, Mount regarded the matter in a different light. A more thorough professional, none of Mount's considerations were influenced by the possibility, or in this case difficulty, of advancement. It was to Drinkwater that Fraser and the sea-officers looked for the creation of their professional openings and opportunities. Drinkwater's irregular conduct had denied Fraser any discernible advantages, and yet his rank compelled him to undertake responsibilities for which he had little liking and less aptitude.

  The marine officer, however, regarded the task in a different light. Perhaps fortunately, it was a military rather than a naval problem. He leaned over and with the most perfunctory 'By y'r leave, Fraser ...' gently removed the scrap of paper from the first lieutenant's dithering hand. Meditatively he read again Drinkwater's scribbled instruction:

  Storm the place at dawn. Dutfield knows. Do not fail. N.D.

  'Do not fail, Nathaniel Drinkwater,' he said aloud, then turned the thing over, staring at the rough, pencilled sketch-map of the river passage. "Tis a simple enough matter, Fraser. We shall need all the men we've got and, as 'tis now near midnight, we have not a moment to lose.'

  Fraser confined himself to an unhappy grunt.

  'And you were not followed?' Mount asked Dutfield.

  'I ... I am not certain ... at first I thought we were, but no shot followed us and, after the business of the captain, we pulled like ... like ...'

  'Devils?' prompted Mount.

  'Yes, sir,' Dutfield hesitated, swallowed and then, foundering under the earnest scrutiny of the anxious faces added, 'though I will not admit to fear, sir, once the captain had gone ...'

  'It was as though the witch Nannie was after your horse's tail, eh?' Mount's literary allusion was as much to encourage Fraser as Dutfield. But Fraser did not appear familiar with the obscure poet and Mount let the matter drop. 'Do you tell off the men, Mr Fraser. Small arms, pikes, cutlasses, as many and as much as you can spare from the ship, with water and spirits, aye, and biscuit in the boats ...'

  'And food before we go,' put in Quilhampton, stirring at last from his catalepsy.

  'We?' said Fraser suddenly in the prevailing mood of coming to. 'You, sir, will stay with the ship ...'

  'But ...'

  'I command, Mr Quilhampton ... but you may see to the boats by all means. You are to plan the assault, Mount; Frey, you will second Mr Mount ...'

  'Aye, aye, sir.' Frey brightened a little.

  'Dutfield will be our guide ...'

  While Fraser grasped at straws obvious and expedient, Mount bent his attention to details. 'Now, Mr Dutfield, please be seated, help yourself to a glass there, and cast your mind back to the sight of the Dyak fortification. I want you to recollect calmly every little detail of the place ...'

  'I wish to God I knew the captain's mind,' said Fraser, voicing his thoughts out loud and earning from Mount a recriminatory glare.

  'Now, Dutfield, be a good fellow and think.'

  Drinkwater lay on his back and stared at the stars beyond the darkly indistinct shapes of the leaves overhead. Although the stridulations of cicadas rasped incessantly about him, it was the persistent echo of that terrible scream that seemed to fade and swell, fade and swell in his brain.

  There was no doubt in his mind but that a man within the precincts of the fortress was undergoing torture, and that that man was Tregembo.

  The absolute certainty of this fact seemed enshrined in that provocative gesture of Morris's: Tregembo had been made to scream to Morris's order, made to scream to communicate Morris's power in this terrible place.

  As the cutter had been swung short-round amid a furious splashing of tugging and back-watering oars, no shot had splintered them, no sumpitan had spat its venomous darts after their retreat. They had been defeated by that chilling, heartrending cry, echoed and amplified by their primitive fear.

  It had been the conviction of the source of the scream that had thrust into Drinkwater's mind the impetuous notion of remaining. He had had few moments to plan beyond scribbling the urgent need for an attack in force, before ordering Dutfield, ashen-faced over the tiller, to swing the cutter into the bank, trail his oars and allow Drinkwater to leap clear. He had landed among the ferns and grass of that first low clearing they had spotted shortly before the Dyak fortress came into view. He still lay there, waiting to order his thoughts, summon his courage; waiting for the night ...

  The night had come now with the swiftness characteristic of the tropical latitudes and still he lay supine, like a dead man, fearful of the predicament his folly had led him into.

  But he knew it was not simply impetuosity that had made him jump. It was something far less facile, a complex mixture of obligation, hatred and loathing, wounded pride, a ludicrous sense of justice and, God help him, that raddled whore duty. Stern, inflexible and dutiful, Drinkwater's inner self was capable of excoriating self-criticism. If that leap from the cutter had been the compound product of largely virtuous qualities, he knew inwardly such virtue was a product of deep-seated fear. And that fear now had his heart in its cold clutch, immobilising him on the damp ground.

  He recalled Mount's unanswered question: what power did Morris exert over these remote and warlike people? He supposed it must lie rooted in the silver. A Dyak prince's confederation could be purchased, no doubt, and he had learned that silver was the principal currency in these waters. But Morris must have more influence than that, for he had trusted them with thirty thousand sterling! It remained a mystery, though he was no longer in doubt that it had been Morris who had abducted Tregembo, though by what means he had no idea. A message, perhaps, through the boy, a luring to his cabin, the application of a drug ... Guiltily, Drinkwater remembered his own exhaustion that night. He had dismissed Tregembo early ...

  It was as dark as the tomb now but for the stars. He wished he had one of Ballantyne's cheroots to ward off the mosquitoes that sought his flesh in droves. Eventually it was this irritating attack that brought him to himself. He stretched, fighting off the cramp that lying on the damp earth had induced. He had no clear idea of what he was going to do, or even attempt to do. He had vague ideas of reconnoitring the fortress, or attempting a diversion when Fraser launched his attack ...

  Or freeing Tregembo.

  How could a man survive the pain inherent in that scream?

  He rose to his feet. He had a marine's water-bottle, a cartouche box with powder and shot, two pistols and a sword. At the last second of his hurried departure Dutfield had hurled his dirk as enhancement to Drinkwater's armoury. It was of an unfashionable design, round-hilted, a lion's head snarling up the arm of its wielder. Drinkwater picked it up and stuck it into his belt. His eyes were accustomed to the dark now and the river threw off a weird light. Cautiously he took a draught of water, corked and slung the flask. No boats had followed the retreating cutter. Morris was damnably confident ...

  He had not gone a hundred yards before he discovered his first obstacle, a secondary creek separating the clearing where he had landed from the ris
ing ground upon which the Dyak stronghold was located. Some trick of the twists of the creeks obscured the point at which he came upon it from the main landing, though he could see clearly the hard line of the parapet set dimly against the velvet sky.

  It took him half an hour to work his way slowly and as silently as possible upstream over the tangle of roots, fallen trees and hanging vines that strung themselves like malevolent ropes across his path. The night was filled with the steaming of the rain forest, the stink of rich blooms, of humus and decay, of fungus and the rancidly sharp stench of excrement. Rustlings and sudden, startling flappings marked his disturbance of the unseen denizens of this foliated habitat. He thrust his mind away from thoughts of serpents. Ballantyne had spoken of the hamadryad cobra, of enormous lizards, of bats that drew blood from men ...

  But the second scream turned his thoughts to Morris waiting for him on the hill beyond the creek.

  He made the crossing at a spot where overhanging branches obscured him from all but an observer opposite. The slime of the muddy banks covered the white linen of his shirt and the calico of his breeches. Taking his shoes from between his teeth and rearranging the parcel of powder and arms he had held above his head, he found his bearings and moved slowly uphill.

  In the direction of Morris.

  Ever since his boyhood when his father had been thrown from a bolting horse and killed, Nathaniel Drinkwater had believed in fate. His thirty years' service as a sea-officer, subject to the vicissitudes of wind and weather, of action, of orders, of disaster, victory and defeat, had only confirmed his belief. Although paying formal respect to the Established Church and owning a vague acknowledgement of God, he privately considered fate to be the arbiter of men's destinies. Fate was the Almighty's agent, prescribing the interlocking paths which formed the lives of the men and women he had known. These men and women had marked him for better and for worse: the gentle constancy of Elizabeth, the friendship of Quilhampton, the haunting loveliness of the Spanish beauty at San Francisco, the patronage of Lord Dungarth and the devoted loyalty of Tregembo who now endured God knew what horrors on his behalf...

  And the enmity of Morris ...

  Drinkwater only half acknowledged that it was perverse love that bound him to Morris. The passion, unrequited by himself, had twisted the heartless young Morris into a cruel, vicious and domineering character whose forbidden vice gained greater satisfaction from the infliction of pain upon those who came under his influence. Unresolved emotions, unsatiated lusts, lay like unseen strands of circumstance between them, exerting their own ineluctable influence like lunar gravity upon the sea.

  A third scream froze the sweat on Drinkwater's back as he stumbled suddenly into the edge of a small, steeply inclined plantation. It was Tregembo's fate to have drawn these men together.

  Drinkwater moved with infinite caution now. Hunger sharpened his awareness and he dug from his body the reserves that the sea-service had laid there. Movement stimulated an irrational, feral thrill, a compound of fear and nervous reaction that acted on his spirit like a drug.

  Making his way round the perimeter of the standing crops, he knew himself to be climbing, climbing up the northern or left flank of the stronghold as viewed from the river. It was the shoulder of the hill and he guessed, from the rising vastness of the sky ahead of him, that he was nearing the summit. Somewhere hidden beyond the crops and the shoulder of the hill, the rampart projected. Behind and below him, the dense jungle stretched in a monotonous grey, partly hidden under its nocturnal mantle of mist.

  On the hillside a faint breeze stirred, striking his damp body with a chill, and bearing too the bark of a dog, suddenly near, and the sound of men's voices.

  The small cultivated patch gave way to a steepening of the gradient where an outcrop of rock thrust through the soil. He edged under its cover and took stock. If there were guards they watched the river, for below him rolled the jungle running north to the sea, south and east interminably, a grey, mist-streaked wilderness under the stars, impassable to all but the Malay Dyaks who were bred to its secrets.

  Cautiously he edged round the rock.

  The elevation he had achieved surprised him. He had supposed the rampart was constructed on the hill's highest point and knew now that this was incorrect. The rampart was formed on a natural level commanding the river; the summit, hidden from the observation of an attacker, was set back a little.

  But there was someone on the rampart below him, a long figure, dark against the lighter tone of the river. The man moved, a leisurely, unhurried gesture like a stretch. Drinkwater considered the wisdom of attempting his murder and decided so positive a proof of his presence would do him little good. Instead he was distracted by laughter, a rising cadence of voices and then again, only much louder now, loud enough for him to hear it start with a series of sobs and end in the terrible gasps of a man fighting for air, came the scream.

  Withdrawing behind the summit Drinkwater wriggled backwards then moved to his left, eastwards and upstream so that when he next crossed the skyline he should, he estimated, have a view of the native village, for the scent of wood smoke was strong in his nostrils, mixing with the subtle-sweet reek of humanity.

  He had not miscalculated. The flattening of the hill that had formed a narrow terrace behind the rampart before rising to the rocky summit, was here wider and further widened by the artifice of man. Beyond his sight the atap roofs of the huts stepped down the hillside to the landing place he had seen earlier. But immediately below him, on the flattened area, the low wooden istana stood, the palace of the chieftain, thatched with the atap leaves of the nipah palm. Before the istana extended an area of beaten earth illuminated by four blazing fires. Men wearing sarongs hitched like breech clouts squatted around the flames, eating and drinking. Some wore short, red jackets and head-dresses of bright cloth. The flickering light reflected from the sweat on their brown bodies and glanced off the rings they wore in their ears. Outside the gaping entrance of the istana were three chairs. In these sat the leaders of these men: a native chieftain dressed in yellow silk; a lesser Dyak conspicuous, even at fifty yards, by the quantity and size of the rings in the pendant lobes of his ears; and Morris.

  Morris too wore yellow silk, and sat like the jade and soapstone images of the Buddha Drinkwater had seen offered for sale at Whampoa. So vivid was the firelight and so animated the scene below him that it was some seconds before Drinkwater noticed the three timbers of the tripod that rose above the area, its apex in the dark.

  As he directed his attention to this central contrivance, allowing his pupils to adjust, he saw something square hanging from a heavy block. It seemed to sway slightly of its own volition, though the light from below made it hard for his tired eyes to see ...

  A wave of excited chatter rose and Drinkwater was distracted from his speculation by a group of women emerging from the istana. Their arrival was accompanied by a sudden drumming and they moved amongst the men in an undisciplined but arousing dance that induced the warriors to stamp their feet in time with the pounding rhythm. One or two leapt to their feet and joined the women, others did the same and a jostling throng of wild and lasciviously abandoned Dyaks was soon dancing to the insistent drum. Cries and whoops came from the mob and Drinkwater was aware that this was no native ritual and that many of the men below him were not Sea-Dyaks, but half-breeds, Tamils and Chinese, Mestizo Spaniards from Manila, miscegenate Portuguese from Macao, bastard Batavians and degenerate Britons from God knew where.

  Morris had his own Praetorian guard amongst the sea-pirates of the Borneo coast, deserters, escaped prisoners, drunks and opium-eaters, a rag-bag of riff-raff and scum that the lapping tide of European civilisation had cast up like flotsam on this remote shore. Here were the means to attack Company and Country ships, here were the means to work them, to infiltrate their crews, to rise in coordinated piracy that needed only the Dyaks for cover and the expertise of their skills in handling their praus. The cleverness of the thing astonished Drinkw
ater; how perfectly they had been fooled, he thought.

  His deductions were confirmed by shouts of abuse in recognisable English and Spanish. Several men were arguing over women, and the drum beats died away as, aroused to an erotic frenzy, the purpose of the Bacchanalia reached its climax. Frantic coupling was already in progress, less uninhibited pairs melting into the shadows or seeking privacy in the huts lower down the slopes.

  A rustling in the undergrowth below him impelled Drinkwater to retreat, moving sideways into brush and ferns as a libidinous couple burst over the ridge, flinging themselves on to the ground vacated by himself. Within seconds they were engrossed in an urgent and grunting embrace; Drinkwater took advantage of their preoccupation and shifted his position.

  When he again looked down on to the beaten earth before the istana he was closer to the seated leaders. They remained after the departure of their men, seemingly impassive to the arousing frenzy of the dance. A few guards stayed in attendance on the triumvirate, who appeared to be puffing on pipes.

  Suddenly Morris heaved himself to his feet and, like a crouching familiar, Drinkwater saw the turbanned boy scuttle from the shadow of his robe. In the dying flames of the now neglected fires the yellow silk seemed to shimmer and the guards cringed as Morris shot out an imperative arm. The Dyaks seemed galvanised, moving to the tripod. The dark square was lowered, revealing itself as a small cage of bamboo. A prescient cramp seized Drinkwater's gut, contracting it sharply. His heart thundered in his chest. The Dyaks opened a rickety door and dragged out a bundle which they quickly hitched to the lowered rope.