by V. A. Stuart
“Good lad!” The cart lurched up a steep hill and Phillip raised himself on his elbow, to see the squat, stone-built fort directly ahead of them. “We are nearing our destination, Mr O’Hara,” he warned. “Prepare yourself; they may not receive us too kindly.”
Their escort clattered through the main gateway and came to a halt, surrounding the cart in which the two British officers lay, when it jolted to a standstill in a small, square courtyard in the center of the fort. After a short delay, a tall, white-haired man in the uniform of a Colonel of Artillery, having received a report from the escort commander, approached the rear of the cart and, in excellent French, courteously bade them descend. Phillip endeavoured to accede to his request but his legs buckled under him and he was compelled to cling on to the cart for support. The Russian Colonel apologized and motioned two of the escorting cavalrymen to go to his assistance.
“I will send a surgeon to you,” he promised. “And when he has attended to you both, no doubt you will be good enough to explain your presence on our shore, Monsieur. … Perhaps I may know your name?”
“It is Hazard, sir, Commander Phillip Hazard of the Royal Navy and this is one of my officers, Midshipman Patrick O’Hara.” Phillip spoke in English and the Colonel answered, a trifle haltingly, in the same language.
“I sank you, Commander. I am Colonel Piroff, commandant of this fort.”
They bowed to each other stiffly and then, leaning heavily on the arms of his escort, Phillip entered the fort shuffling barefooted down a long, dark corridor, O’Hara in a like state behind him. They were taken to a large, sparsely furnished room, the windows of which, set high in the walls and barred, looked out on to a blank stone wall. It was a cheerless room but within a few minutes of their arrival a soldier kindled a fire in the empty grate and another brought them a samovar, from which he drew two steaming glasses of tea. They were sipping this gratefully when an officer of about sixty, with sparse grey hair and a close-clipped beard, entered with the announcement, in French that he was the surgeon. His French, like the commandant’s, was fluent and his manner not unfriendly. He addressed each of them by name and his examination, courteously conducted, was thorough and painstaking.
“You were in the water—you were swimming, for how long, if I may ask, Monsieur Hazard?”
“I am not sure,” Phillip told him truthfully.
The surgeon did not press him. He probed his gashed head and replaced the sodden dressing and then, to Phillip’s relief, his attention was distracted by the old wound on his leg, concerning which he asked numerous interested questions. Phillip’s replies were cautious but the surgeon appeared satisfied and, after bandaging the leg for him, he rose, smiling from one to the other of his patients.
“In my opinion, messieurs, you will both recover with few ill-effects, if you rest for the next day or two. Needless to say, you have both been exceptionally fortunate. We have believed, until now, that five minutes in our ice-bound sea at this season of the year is the most a man can survive. But you have given that belief the lie and I offer you my felicitations—to you, Monsieur Hazard, in particular. It says much for your tough English constitution that, despite this old wound of yours and the severe blow on the head you have suffered, that you are still able to stand upright!” He shook his head in puzzled admiration. “Colonel Piroff will require to make a report on you to his superiors, but I will request that he postpone his interview with you until you have eaten and slept. Au revoir, messieurs. I shall call upon you again this evening.”
Soon after he had taken his leave, a meal was brought, on which both prisoners fell with sharpened appetites and afterwards, as the surgeon had advised, they slept, both of them exhausted. …
CHAPTER EIGHT
Phillip was wakened by a hand shaking his shoulder and, rising a trifle unsteadily from his bed, he saw that both his and O’Hara’s uniforms, dried and pressed, had been laid out for them, together with two pairs of cavalry boots to replace their own. The soldier who had roused him indicated by signs that he was to dress but he left O’Hara undisturbed, for which Phillip, glancing down at the boy’s white, exhausted face, was grateful.
He donned his uniform and the borrowed boots and two wooden-faced soldiers, both artillerymen, escorted him to what was evidently an ante-room to the commandant’s quarters. Here he was kept waiting for about five minutes and then a young officer, with a scarred face and an empty sleeve pinned across his tunic, requested him in remarkably good English to accompany him to the commandant’s office.
This proved to be a spacious room, furnished with bookcases, a desk, and several padded leather chairs, and with a view across the bay from its single window, through which he was able to see the Gladiator and her squadron, still lying at anchor. He was permitted only a glimpse before being conducted to a chair placed with its back to the window, but this was enough to enable him to see that his own ship had returned to her original anchorage and he breathed a relieved sigh.
“And now, if you please, Commander Hazard,” Colonel Piroff invited, with faultless courtesy, speaking in French, “I should be obliged if you would give me an explanation of your actions during the early hours of this morning—yours and your ship’s. You may give your account in your own language —Captain Schiller will act as interpreter.” He gestured to the young officer with the empty sleeve and added, a faint edge to his voice, “He has recently returned from the Crimea.”
Phillip gave as convincing an account as he could, aware as he told it that his story had a number of discrepancies in it. He did his best to gloss over these and saw that the commandant was listening with furrowed brows, as Captain Schiller translated what he had said.
“And that is all you have to tell me?” his interrogator demanded, in French, when he had done.
Phillip bowed. “Yes, sir, that is all. I can only ask you to believe me.”
Colonel Piroff turned to his interpreter and spoke to him at length in his own language. The young German shrugged, his face expressionless.
“Commander Hazard, the Colonel finds your account of your actions very hard to believe. He requests me to point out to you that if you attempted to land on this coast for the purpose of spying, your offense is punishable by death, and he asks if you understand this?”
“I understand it, yes. But I assure you, sir, I am not a spy. I am an officer of Her Britannic Majesty’s Navy and in command of one of Her Majesty’s ships-of-war—”
“Which ships-of-war, sir,” Schiller put in sharply, “are at anchor inside Russian territorial waters, under a flag of truce, are they not? To say the least, your actions were in serious breach of the truce, if your account of them is true.”
Phillip could feel the palms of his hands go clammy with perspiration as he clenched them. “I can only offer my apologies if anything I have done is in breach of the truce,” he said. “That was not my intention … but when a man is lost overboard and in danger of drowning, as his commander, I am bound to do all in my power to find and save him. That was my purpose in lowering a boat.”
Schiller translated his reply and then said, “Colonel Piroff wishes to know why your ship was signalling with lights, sir, for almost half an hour before you lowered your boat. Did you expect to find your missing sailor alive, after half an hour’s immersion in a sea from which the ice has only recently melted?”
Phillip silently cursed Ambrose Quinn for his signals but he answered, as calmly as he could, “The signals were to two other boats I had lowered, which were also searching the area for my seaman. I was anxious to recover his body, even if I could not recover him alive.”
Schiller, still without a change of expression, translated this hastily extemporized reply for the commandant’s benefit and the interrogation continued. Phillip stuck obstinately to his story, conscious that almost every word he said was making his case sound less and less convincing but doing his utmost now to ensure that O’Hara, at least, was exonerated, on the grounds that he had simply obeyed orders.<
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“My junior officer is only a boy. If there has been anything to which exception can be taken, please tell Colonel Piroff that the fault is mine, not his.”
“The Colonel is well aware of that, sir,” Schiller assured him. “It is your actions that we are concerned with, Commander Hazard and frankly, sir, the Colonel does not find your explanation at all satisfactory.”
“I am very sorry,” Phillip returned, with conscious irony. “But it is the only explanation I can offer him.”
He had expected an equally ironic retort but, to his stunned amazement, Captain Schiller presented him with a more plausible story. “Is it not a fact, Commander, that the English Navy has many disaffected sailors, who desert their ships, even in time of war?” the young German suggested and, before Phillip had recovered from his surprise, he added forcefully, “I would understand your anxiety to lower boats and make signals if, for example, some of your men had attempted to desert your ship and seek sanctuary with us here in Odessa. Some, I say—not just one! And if these deserters had stolen a boat, in order to make their escape, then neither I nor, I am sure, the Colonel would find your explanation hard to believe.” Taking Phillip’s look of stupefaction as tantamount to an admission that he was right, Schiller turned to the commandant and, a note of satisfaction in his voice, evidently repeated his suggestion in Russian.
“And what, monsieur,” Colonel Piroff asked, addressing Phillip in French, “have you to say to Captain Schiller’s suggestion that your sailors are disaffected and that some of them attempted, during the hours of darkness, to desert your ship?”
“Sir, I …” Phillip hesitated, still bewildered by the accusation and searching for the right answer. His instinctive reaction was to defend his ship and his Service from so damning a slur but, over-riding this was the awareness that he must convince the commandant, if he could, that the truce had not been broken. Finally, deciding that, even if there had been any basis of truth in Schiller’s accusation, he would have been in honor bound to deny it, he shook his head emphatically. “There is no disaffection among my ship’s company, sir. Nor is there in Her Majesty’s Navy, I assure you.”
Both Russian officers smiled. This, clearly, was the answer they had expected him to give and almost certainly neither believed him, although he was at a loss to understand why. Schiller said, his tone disparaging, “There are desertions from your ships. I have heard it on good authority, Commander Hazard. But naturally you cannot admit that it is so.”
Before Phillip could accept his challenge, the Colonel rose and moved across to the window. A telescope lay on a table beside it and, picking this up, he invited Phillip to join him at his vantage point and put the glass into his hand. “With the aid of this instrument,” he stated gravely, “we are able, as you can see, to observe much of what is going on aboard your ships. This morning, not long after the return of your boat, we witnessed what I think you call a punishment parade on board that ship … which is yours, is it not?” He pointed unerringly to the Huntress.
Phillip nodded, feeling the colour drain from his cheeks. For a moment, he was so shocked and angry that he could not speak and the Colonel went on, “Three of your sailors were flogged, monsieur, ceremoniously and before the eyes of their comrades … for the crime of attempting to desert, perhaps? This is Captain Schiller’s interpretation and he knows your country and your people well as, I think, his command of your language proves. For myself, while I try to keep an open mind, I confess that I am inclined to agree with him.”
Much of what he said was lost on Phillip and, sensing this, Schiller repeated it in English, his tone now unashamedly triumphant. “I am right, am I not?” he demanded.
Anger caught at Phillip’s throat, directed not against the young German mercenary but against Ambrose Quinn. He could guess which seamen his second-in-command had flogged —Williams and Jackson would, no doubt, have been two of the three and the third—God help him—might well have been O’Leary. Sick with bitterness he knew that, whatever lies he had to tell or allow his interrogators to believe, he must somehow persuade them to release him, so that he might return to his ship and deal with the man who had usurped his command. At that moment nothing else mattered to him and, when he made no reply to Schiller’s taunting question, the German turned to his superior, unleashing a spate of words, the meaning of which was clear enough, although Phillip could not understand the actual words. He was immeasurably relieved when Colonel Piroff summoned his escort and requested him, politely, to go back to the room he was sharing with O’Hara.
“I shall make a full report to the Deputy Governor,” were the Colonel’s parting words, swiftly translated by Schiller. “It would seem not improbable that His Excellency may decide to order your release, Commander Hazard, with that of your young officer. I will, of course, inform you of his decision in due course.”
This was the outcome he had wanted, Phillip thought and, forcing himself to speak calmly despite the tumult of conflicting emotions within him, he thanked his captors and returned to his room. O’Hara was still sound asleep and, wanting a chance to think, he did not waken the boy.
He spent a miserable evening, battling with his conscience and even the arrival of an excellent dinner failed to rally his flagging spirits. O’Hara, roused at last from sleep, came pink-cheeked and hungry to the table, where he did full justice to the food, but Phillip had no appetite. He told the boy as much as he felt he could concerning his interrogation and saw the bright, intelligent eyes widen in dismay when he was compelled to admit that he had not decisively denied the accusations levelled against him by Captain Schiller. But Patrick O’Hara was loyal; he offered neither reproach nor criticism, the look of pained disillusionment in his eyes the only indication of his real feelings.
“If they ask me the same questions, sir, am I to back you up?” he inquired, with such obvious reluctance that Phillip could not find it in his heart to ask this sacrifice of him.
“No,” he returned shortly. “You must answer as you see fit, Mr O’Hara. All I do ask of you is that you make no admission that might lead them to suspect that we did infringe the truce. If they should have reason to believe we did, our chances of getting out of here will be slight.”
“I understand, sir. But … did we infringe the truce, sir?”
“I did,” Phillip answered.
“But on orders, sir?” the midshipman persisted.
“Yes, lad. But they were secret orders and I cannot use them to justify any infringement of the truce.” Phillip smiled at him wryly. “It was not my intention to be taken by the enemy but unfortunately that’s what happened, so …” He shrugged. “I’m not left with much choice—I must either lie or take the consequences. However, I fancy that you’ll be released—the Russians are not inhuman and, in view of your age, I don’t think they will hold you. Tell me”—as O’Hara started to voice an indignant protest—“did Mr Quinn, did the First Lieutenant give any reason that you’re aware of for making those flashing light signals and for the shift of anchorage?”
The boy shook his head. “No, sir, not that I’m aware of, but Mr Grey was instructed to make the signals and he understood that you had left orders to that effect, sir. He remarked to me at the time that you seemed to be taking rather a chance and that …” he broke off, reddening, as if suddenly realizing that he had said too much.
“Well?” Phillip prompted. “And that, Mr O’Hara? I’d like to know, if you please. What else did Mr Grey say to you?”
“Well, sir”—O’Hara’s eyes avoided his—“only that I might have a sticky time with the gig, sir, when I picked you up. He—that was why he volunteered to come with us, sir. He said there was a lot going on that we didn’t know anything about and … well, sir, I fancy he thought there’d be the chance of a scrap with the enemy, sir.”
Phillip controlled himself with an almost visible effort. So that was how Ambrose Quinn planned to keep his sheet clean, was it? He was to be blamed for orders he had never issued and ce
rtainly had not entered in the log. He smothered a sigh. Quinn could have added to the logged orders, of course, and almost certainly had added to them by this time.
“Sir,” O’Hara ventured, “did you leave orders for those signals to be made?” Phillip affected not to have heard the question and the boy hesitated for a moment and then added diffidently, “If they—if the Russians question me, I’ll back you up, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr O’Hara,” Phillip acknowledged, with restraint. “I’m grateful to you.”
O’Hara, however, was not questioned and, after an uneasy and virtually sleepless night, it was again Phillip who was summoned to the commandant’s office the following morning. But now there was a subtle change in the atmosphere, of which he became conscious within a few moments of entering the room. Gone was the courteous friendliness that Colonel Piroff had displayed towards him yesterday and Captain Schiller, he realized, was regarding him with undisguised mistrust, his manner, when he spoke, coldly hostile. There was a third officer in the room this time, a man in a dark uniform he did not recognize, who sat in silence, watching him from beneath beetling black brows. He was not introduced and offered no greeting and he remained seated when Colonel Piroff led Phillip to the window and, gesturing to the British squadron lying at anchor far below them, observed flatly, “Your ship, monsieur, has sailed without you, it would appear.”
“Sailed … but—” taken completely off his guard by this unexpected news, Phillip stared down at the anchored ships. The Gladiator, with Lieutenant Risk’s small, sturdy Wrangler and the French frigate Mogador lay as they had lain the previous evening but, search for her as he would, he could see no sign of his own Huntress and his heart sank. When and why had she gone, he asked himself, and where? He could only surmise that Captain Broke had ordered her to rejoin the Fleet, an action he would surely not have taken unless he had reason to suppose that her commander was dead, which meant—he drew in his breath sharply … which meant that Quinn must have reported him drowned or killed—and O’Hara with him—and could also mean that Broke would make no inquiries, no representations for their release. Indeed, the Gladiator’s captain might be preparing to sail himself, with the rest of the squadron, in order to avoid any accusations of breaking the truce. In his place, Phillip thought, he would have been on tenterhooks, hourly waiting for an official protest to reach him from the port authorities and …
