The Distant Ocean

by Philip K Allan

  ‘Croft, Chapman!’ he croaked, ‘bailer!’ They crouched around the little wooden container like acolytes about an idol, and squeezed their shirts into it. Sutton rinsed it thoroughly, and then they filled it to the brim. As soon as it was full, they returned to drinking the rain water, thirsty once more. The squall thundered on for a while, and then swept on across the sea. The rain grew thin before it petered out all together. The three men resorted to licking droplets from their wet skin and sucking the last water they could from their damp shirts. When they had finished, they flopped down in the boat, their stomachs distended with all the liquid they had taken on board.

  ‘Christ, it’s good to be able to speak again,’ said Sutton, rubbing his throat. In truth his voice was still weak and croaky. Chapman in the bow sighed with contentment.

  ‘I even reckon I may need the heads afore long, sir,’ he said, ‘an’ that ain’t happened for a while.’ The sailor’s voice was more gravely than usual. Croft went to speak, but then paused as he saw something out to sea.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘But I think I can see a light.’ Sutton looked up.

  ‘Where away?’ he asked. The midshipman pointed towards the horizon, and he followed the line of his arm. A dusting of stars were visible through a break in the clouds. Stood against them was a stronger, nearer light. As the men watched it seemed to move across the backdrop of spangled night. Sutton found the telescope on the floor of the boat and pointed it towards the sighting.

  ‘It might be a ship,’ he muttered. ‘Take the glass and see what you make of it.’

  ‘Lamp at a masthead for certain, sir,’ said Croft. ‘She’s a long way off, mind.’

  ‘If she is still in sight come dawn, we will be able to signal to her,’ said Sutton. ‘See, first water and now rescue. I told you there was no need for despair. Let’s us bail out our boat before it founders. I am afraid we shall need to use our hands.’

  Once the boat was reasonably clear of water, the castaways sprawled around the interior, too excited to sleep. For once they no longer felt thirsty, although hunger still gnawed at them.

  ‘Salt pork, spluttering hot from the pan, next to some fried eggs,’ announced Sutton. ‘That is what I shall want when I am rescued, with hot coffee. I doubt if this ship will run to soft tack, but good biscuits with jam will serve for the present.’

  ‘That all sounds very acceptable, sir,’ said Croft.

  ‘A simple mess of burgoo will do me, sir,’ sighed Chapman. ‘I have had it most mornings since I joined the navy, but right now another bowl would not be unwelcome. Mind, that does require that yonder ship ain’t no Frenchie, as will clap us in irons as soon as look at us.’

  ‘Oh, that would be too cruel,’ said their captain. ‘Besides, the squadron will be keeping the French blockaded in St Paul. No, nine in ten it is one of our ships.’

  ‘A wash and clean linen,’ said Croft, his voice dreamy. ‘Once I have eaten my fill.’

  ‘Been a good few weeks since I had any baccy,’ added Chapman.

  Sutton settled back, leaning against the side of the boat, his mind full of contented thoughts now that he had a belly that groaned with rain water. He might even find himself breakfasting aboard the Titan in a few hours time, his good friend Clay seated opposite him. And with survival came other delightful possibilities. He thought of Betsey Clay once more, lent over her manuscript, her coral-pink lips pursed with concentration. She was brushing the white feather of her pen against the line of her cheek as she worked. In his mind’s eye she was back in the orchard at Rosehill cottage once more, in the pale green dress he remembered her wearing last time they met. It would be late spring now, warm even in the shade of the apple trees, and the grass would be studded with flowers and humming with drowsy insects.

  ‘Can’t see that ship no more, sir,’ announced Chapman, hauling him back to reality. Sutton joined the sailor, staring out into the night. The storm had moved far away, but some of its lightning could still be seen as distant silver threads flickering near the horizon. Above them was a bowl of stars.

  ‘She is probably masked by another squall,’ he said. ‘We will see her at first light.’

  ‘Aye, but will she see us, sir?’ queried the sailor. Sutton patted him on the arm.

  ‘She will, when I flash the morning sun into the lookout’s eyes with the lens of Mr Croft’s spy glass.’

  ‘Pray God she will still be in range!’ exclaimed Croft. ‘And we find some manner of rescue tomorrow.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Sutton. ‘Come, you two had best get some sleep till then. I will keep watch, in case we get another squall.’

  But the night passed quietly, with no more rain. In the stern Sutton sat, alone under the stars with his thoughts. Now that rescue seemed close, he allowed his mind to wander over images of Betsey, but he found himself turning to other, more immediate concerns. Her delicate features seemed to slide and contort in his mind into those of an altogether less agreeable countenance. The eager face of Windham, his eyes alight, as they had sat around the cabin table in the Rush, finalising the plan to attack the Prudence. Soon he would be able to confront him at last. His grip tightened on the telescope at the prospect. But then other things worried him too. He kept searching for the comforting presence of the ship, but he could no longer find the masthead light, despite the air having been swept clean by the storm.

  A few hours later the first rose-blush of dawn stole into the east. Sutton stretched and yawned in the early morning sunlight. In spite of all the rain he had drunk he was now thirsty once more. He looked at the bailer of water, licked his lips, and then ignored it. Instead he picked up the telescope and started to search the ocean all around him. As the light spread it revealed a growing circle of pearl-blue sea. There was no sign of the ship they had seen in the night.

  Chapter 12 Found

  ‘What do you mean, we ain’t going to be bleeding rescued?’ exclaimed Chapman.

  ‘I am afraid not,’ said Sutton.

  ‘What has become of the ship we saw last night, sir?’ asked Croft.

  ‘It must have sailed over the horizon.’

  The teenager buried his head in his hands, while Chapman kicked out at the side of the boat.

  ‘Steady there!’ said his captain. ‘Don’t upset the bailer. It is all the water we have.’ Chapman threw himself down in the bows.

  ‘Why did you bleeding lead us on!’ he yelled. ‘All that talk of what we was going to scoff for breakfast! Jesus Christ!’ He turned away and glared out to sea, his arms tightly crossed. After a long silence Croft looked up.

  ‘Why are we in this mess, sir?’ he asked, his face blank with despair. ‘I don’t mean adrift in this boat, I mean why did the Echo leave us to be captured? None of this would have happened if they had played their proper part in the action.’

  ‘I am not sure why they did that,’ said Sutton. ‘But I intend to find out, once we are rescued.’

  ‘Rescued!’ scoffed Chapman, spinning round, his face contorted by fury. ‘There ain’t going to be no bleeding rescue! We got a single cup of water, and no food. So why don’t you answer the boy straight? We’ve followed you into this fucking mess, you owe us that at least!’

  ‘What did you say to me?’ said Sutton, staring towards the sailor. ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head there! I know I have allowed you both a degree of freedom, given our predicament, but I am still your captain.’

  ‘Beg my pardon, sir, for my want of respect, but we are properly screwed out here, and look sure to die, sir. The least we deserve is to know why?’

  Sutton continued to glare at him, and then looked across at Croft.

  ‘I am sorry, but he is right, sir,’ said the midshipman. ‘We all lost good shipmates in the fight with the Prudence. You must own there was more to that battle than a simple defeat. Just before the main mast fell, I recall how you said we should not be concerned, as the Echo would be busy raking the enemy. You seemed surprised when I told you that was not th
e case.’

  ‘And you’ve been proper lively in your sleep, sir,’ added Chapman. ‘Doing no end of muttering to yourself, as well as all that rattling up and down the beach back in Reunion.’

  Sutton looked out at the empty sea for a long moment. Every instinct of his training told him how bad for discipline this talk was, but then his commonsense reasserted itself. He wasn’t the commander of a ship in anything but name anymore. His Rush had been reduced to ash, and what the tide had not washed away the wind would have taken. Chapman was probably right; they would die out here in this little boat. He looked back at his two companions.

  ‘I suppose you do deserve to know the truth of it,’ he conceded. ‘What happened that day was that I arranged with Captain Windham for both ships to fall on the Prudence from separate directions, and for whatever reason he was unable to carry out his part of the enterprise.’

  ‘Unable or unwilling, sir?’ asked the midshipman. ‘You were the senior officer. Surely what you term an arrangement was an order, was it not?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Croft, it was. That is why I was so surprised when you told me that they had hauled their wind.’

  ‘So let me get this straight, sir,’ said Chapman. ‘You ordered Windy to attack, and he didn’t do it. That’s a hanging matter, if a simple Jack was to hold back in such a fashion. What would have caused him to risk such a thing? I mean, the whole bleeding squadron knew how you and Windy weren’t mates, but it must have been a proper ruckus for him to do what he done.’ Sutton looked at Chapman, unsettled by the shrewdness of his questions. His two fellow castaways waited for him to answer.

  ‘It is certainly true that Captain Windham and I were not intimate,’ he said eventually. ‘Our quarrel goes back some years, to a time when he and I were lieutenants together back in ninety-five, on board the Agrius, with you too, Mr Croft. You will recall how we fought a single ship action with that big French frigate, the Couraguese, and matters were not proceeding at all well. Our captain was his uncle, and when our mizzen mast came down, he was knocked into the water and drowned. I was the senior officer on the quarterdeck at the time, and Windham has always held me to be in some manner responsible for his uncle’s death. But I never suspected for a moment that he would take matters so far as to seek his revenge in such a base way.’

  ‘So in some part, you’re to blame for all this, then,’ said Chapman.

  ‘Of course I am damned well not,’ shouted Sutton. ‘How dare you say such a thing! Hold your tongue there!’

  ‘What a fuck up,’ continued the sailor. ‘No, beg your pardon, sir, but if I am to die in this bleeding boat, I wants to say my piece. You bloody officers, with all your grand notions of honour and all that bollocks! Why the hell couldn’t you sort out this tiff between you? You’ve had nearly four bleeding years to do it, either man to man in one of them duels you gentlemen so love, or friendly like, over a glass of grog. It don’t make no odds to the likes of me. But oh no! You have to let it fester between you both, till it spills over into the lives of the poor bastards under you. How many of our shipmates had to die because you and Windy couldn’t sort out who done what in a battle on the other side of the bleeding world?’

  ‘Now just you look here, Chapman,’ said Sutton, his face resolute. ‘I understand your anger, but let me be quite clear with you. Whatever the rights or wrongs of his uncle’s death, I never put anyone else in danger because of it. That crime can only be placed at Captain Windham’s feet. And I swear, here and now, that we shall not die in this boat. We will live, if only so that we are able to witness that man hang for what he did to the Rush and our shipmates.’

  As the day wore on, the hot anger of dawn slumped back into lethargy. The delicious rain that had come the previous night became a distant memory. They tried to hoard their little wooden bailer of fresh water, but by the day’s end it had almost gone. Under the remorseless sun their thirst returned, accompanied by fresh torments. Their gnawing hunger was giving them the periodic agony of stomach cramps. Even though their shelter offered them some protection it was only partial, and they were all becoming badly burnt. Croft in particular had skin that had peeled away in sheets from his raw neck and arms. To add to their woes, exposure to salt water was now creating sores on their skin that wept and bled. After yet another day huddled in the stifling heat of their shelter, the sun at last dipped towards the western horizon. As it lost its fierce heat, the three men emerged like nocturnal beasts to enjoy the cool of the evening.

  ‘One sip each,’ announced Sutton, his voice a croak once more. He passed the almost empty bailer to Croft, who drank and then passed it to Chapman. He took his portion, passed it back to Sutton, and returned to a fragment of wire that he had been working on.

  ‘What are you about, Chapman?’ asked Croft, after a while.

  ‘Fish hook, sir,’ he replied. ‘I found a bit of wire in the collar of the captain’s coat.’ He carried on working with his knife, using the gunwale as a bench. The others watched as, beneath his skillful fingers, the tiny piece of metal slowly changed. After a while he laid aside his knife and held the hook up for inspection. He had doubled one end over to make a barb, while the other end of the curve of wire ended with a tiny loop.

  ‘If we ain’t about to be rescued, we may as well try for some vittles, sir,’ he announced. ‘I’ve made a bit of line to go with it. It’s a bare fathom long, but it may serve. I don’t know about you, but I could eat a bleeding whale.’ He held up a thin coil of thin rope.

  ‘Where did you find the hemp?’ asked the midshipman.

  ‘I unpicked that little bit of a painter as was attached to the bow. It weren’t long enough to serve no purpose.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ said Sutton. ‘What will you use for bait?

  ‘A scrap of your gold lace, sir. Mackerel and the like back home will take anything as glistens, so maybe there be similar fish hereabouts.’

  The prospect of food stimulated the three men into action. Sutton tore some more braid off one of the panels of the coat that made up part of their shelter. Croft secured one end of the line to the boat’s bow post, while Chapman attached the hook. They dropped it over the side, and the little strip of gold flashed for a moment in the evening sun as it sank. All three men sat back, their eyes glued on the line, willing it to jerk into life. The sun sank below the horizon in a blaze of fire and darkness crept across the heavens. Nothing was drawn to their hook.

  *****

  ‘Come in!’ called Alexander Clay in response to the knock at his cabin door. The marine sentry held it open for Midshipman Russell to enter.

  ‘Letter from the commodore, sir,’ he announced. ‘It’s just been delivered by the Black Prince’s launch.’

  ‘A letter?’ queried Clay, looking up from his desk. ‘Do you not mean a dispatch?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the teenager. ‘Least ways it isn’t sealed up in a package like orders normally are.’ He held out the single folded sheet of paper. His captain lay down his pen and stretched forward to take the note from the young officer.

  ‘And this arrived in an open boat?’ he asked. ‘Is the flagship in sight?’

  ‘Not from the deck, sir. Midshipman Kemp who delivered it said they left at two bells in the forenoon watch.’

  ‘Goodness, that was a fair trip for them to have made,’ exclaimed Clay. ‘Kindly see that Mr Kemp and his crew receive some refreshment to sustain them on their long return journey, if you please, Mr Russell.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said the midshipman, before smartly turning away to leave the cabin.

  ‘Now then,’ said Clay to himself. ‘What news warrants such a communication, I wonder?’ He broke the seal and unfolded the note from Montague.

  My dear Captain Clay,

  Thank you for the list of officers and crews taken from the French National Ship Prudence that you were kind enough to furnish me when I last had the pleasure of your company. I have now had occasion to send an officer under a flag of truce to enquire about the
possibility of an exchange of prisoners. He has been received by a Monsieur Morliere, Commandant of St Paul, who has supplied my representative with the particulars of the officers and crew of His Majesty’s late vessel Rush, who survived and are in his custody. I have studied the list, and it is with sincere regret that I must inform you that the name of Captain Sutton does not feature. From this absence, I fear we must conclude that a fine officer, and dear friend, fell defending his ship. I am sensible as to the distress and deep sorrow you must feel at this time.

  I shall write to Monsieur Morliere in a private capacity to see if he is in possession of the details surrounding your friend’s sad demise, and you naturally have my sincere condolences.

  I have the honour to be your obliged friend,

  George Montague

  The letter fluttered down from Clay’s grasp, and his vision blurred as hot tears began to flow.

  ‘No!’ he exclaimed. ‘How can this be? Preston and Macpherson both saw his sea chest in that damned house! John, dead? It isn’t possible!’ He stumbled up from behind the desk, his chair falling to the deck behind him, and began to pace feverishly up and down the cabin.

  Had his dear, courageous friend really died bravely at his post, sword in hand, as his ship was overwhelmed? That would certainly be in keeping, he told himself, his pace faltering. But then where did his sea chest fit in? Surely it must mean something? He resumed his pacing, dashing away his tears as he tried to work at the problem. What had the officers truly seen, that night in the pool of light from Macpherson’s lamp? It was certainly Sutton’s chest, both men had recognized it, but what did that really prove? Had they interpreted what they had seen as what they had wanted to see? Proof that Sutton had survived, rather than just a box, looted by some Frenchman from the wreck of the poor Rush? But then how had it come to be in the house that the signal had been sent from? It all made no sense.