Killigrew’s Run

by Jonathan Lunn

  ‘How will we know if that happens?’

  ‘You’ll see it give off a dull red gas. You’ll also asphyxiate, as nitrogen dioxide is deadly poisonous.’

  ‘Better keep the temperature down then, eh, sir?’

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there, man! Get some fresh sea water!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Taking the coil of rope, the petty officer sauntered towards the door.

  ‘Molineaux?’ Charlton called after him.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Run.’

  Molineaux ran. He stopped at the boatswain’s store to help himself to another bucket, tying the rope around the handle as he took the steps of the companion ladder two at a time. He dashed across the deck, threw the bucket over and drew it in as soon as it was full. Slopping water everywhere, he dashed below, almost slipping on the steps and barely saving himself from spilling the whole lot.

  He ran into the galley and skidded to a halt, mindful not to startle Charlton. ‘Fresh sea water, sir.’

  ‘Right. I’ll lift the saucepan; you take out the basin from below, tip out the water that’s already in it, then pour in the fresh sea water and replace it under the saucepan. And… Molineaux?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Once I lift the saucepan, speed is of the essence.’

  ‘I think I’ve got the gist of it, sir.’

  With sweat running from his hairline, Charlton lifted the saucepan. Molineaux removed the basin, tipping the old water into the first bucket, pouring sea water from the second in its place, and slid the basin back beneath the saucepan. Charlton lowered it again, and dipped the thermometer in the mixture once more. He watched the mercury rise.

  ‘Sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six… sixty-seven… sixty-seven… it’s holding at sixty-seven… Christ, why isn’t it dropping? It should be dropping!’

  ‘Give it a chance, sir,’ said Molineaux, trying to keep calm. The panic in Charlton’s face was infectious.

  ‘Sixty-seven… sixty-seven.’

  ‘It’s dropping, sir.’

  ‘So it is! Thank Christ for that! Sixty-six, sixty-five, sixty-four… oh, thank you, God! Jesus, that was a close one! Rinse,’ he added, handing the thermometer back to Molineaux. He slumped down on one of the chairs.

  Molineaux dabbled the thermometer in the first bucket and turned to look at Charlton. The assistant surgeon seemed to have shrunk six inches. He sat motionless, staring at the deck.

  ‘You oh-kay, sir?’

  ‘Hmph?’ Charlton was not used to the slang Molineaux had picked up while working on an American slave ship.

  ‘All right, I mean.’

  Charlton shook his head. ‘I can’t do it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Do what, sir?’

  ‘This!’ The assistant surgeon took in the saucepan, basin and buckets with a sweep of an arm. ‘Damn Killigrew! When I accepted a post on a naval ship, no one said anything about having to make explosives. I’m an apothecary, damn it, not a chemist!’

  ‘Mr Strachan used to be just an apothecary, but he used to do all kinds of things—’

  Charlton leaped to his feet. ‘Damn your eyes! Will you stop going on about Mr bloody Strachan? From the moment I stepped on board the Ramillies, it’s been nothing but “Mr Strachan this” and “Mr Strachan that” and “Mr bloody Strachan the other” from you and Endicott and Hughes. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not Mr Strachan. And I’m sorry if that makes me a lesser man in the eyes of you and your shipmates, but I can only be what I am.’

  It had never occurred to Molineaux that his constant reminiscing about Mr Strachan might make Charlton feel bad; but then, it had never occurred to him that he talked about Strachan so much. Now he realised that each time he and his friends had mentioned Strachan in passing, it must have been like a knife in the guts of Charlton’s self-esteem.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to compare you to Mr Strachan. I mean, for one thing, you’re a lot younger than he is. I remember when he started out, he was just as big a booby as… as anyone. You’ll learn. All I’m trying to say is, that’s when the Andrew Miller’s all about. We spend so much time cut off from all the conveniences of modern civilisation, whether we’re at sea in the middle of the Pacific or frozen in the heart of the Arctic… we just have to learn to adapt to our surroundings, to improvise with whatever materials we’ve got to hand to get ourselves out of whatever pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into. So sometimes an officer like Mr Killigrew has to be a diplomat, a petty officer like me has to be a sodger, and a pill-roller like you has to be a chemist. Maybe Mr Killigrew ain’t no Lord Palmerston, no more’n I’m Harry Flashman or you’re Humphry Davy. But what matters is that we’re all counting on one another, so we do our best and somehow scrape through.’

  Charlton sat down, shaking his head. There were tears on his cheeks. ‘Maybe you can live like that, Molineaux. I’m not cut out for it, I tell you. I should never have joined the navy.’

  ‘Well, you’re here now.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! It’s no good, Molineaux. I can’t do it. I refuse. So you can just go up on deck and tell Mr Killigrew he’ll have to find someone else to mix his pyroglycerin, because I won’t do it.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. He’ll understand.’

  ‘Will he?’ Charlton wiped his face with his hands. ‘He always expects so much of the men who serve under him.’

  ‘Only ’cause he’s got such a high opinion of us, sir.’

  ‘Well, in me he’s mistaken.’

  ‘All I know is, he grannies the risk in making this stuff, and he wouldn’t ask you to do it if it weren’t important.’ Molineaux glanced at the saucepan. ‘Maybe I can do it?’

  ‘You? You wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘You could talk me through it, couldn’t you?’ Molineaux picked up the thermometer and dipped it in the mix. ‘Temp’rature’s down to fifty now, sir. Reckon it’s safer to start adding the glycerine again?’

  Staring at the deck between his feet, Charlton just shook his head and said nothing.

  Molineaux took a deep breath, picked up the medicine dropper, and sucked some more glycerol from the bottle the way he had seen the assistant surgeon do it. ‘One drop at a time, eh?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Charlton demanded bitterly.

  ‘That’s what I always tell meself, sir. I used to be afraid of croaking, but I don’t reckon being dead’s so bad. Now, being maimed – winding up only one foot, like poor Mr Strachan – that scares me. It’s all right for him, he’s blunted, he don’t need both his dew-beaters to make a living; but a cove like me, if I lost a foot? I’d be on the griddle. But if this stuff is half as powerful as you say, I don’t reckon there’s any chance of that. Don’t reckon we’d feel a thing.’

  ‘But that’s just it, isn’t it? If it was just me, maybe – maybe – I could do it. But it’s the responsibility. It’s not just our lives in the balance… it’s the others, as well. One slip, and they’ll all die too.’

  ‘We’ll all croak anyhow, if the Ivans catch us. Given the choice, I’d rather get blown up than face a Russki firing squad. You ever work as an apothecary ashore, sir?’

  ‘For a while. Couldn’t make a go of it. The working-class people didn’t trust my homeopathic cures, and I didn’t have the right contacts to get any clients from the more open-minded middling sort,’ Charlton added bitterly.

  ‘Y’see, that I could never do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be an apothecary.’

  ‘It’s not difficult, if you can pass the exams. You’re bright enough; with the right training, I’m sure you’d be as good an apothecary as anyone.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I reckon I’d have an even harder time getting clients than you did. It’s the skin, see? White folks like you don’t trust blacks, you all think we’re thick, that we’d get the dosage wrong or prescribe the wrong drugs or something like that.’

  ‘Now, I never said you were thick.’

  ‘Not you p
ersonally, sir. White folks in general, I mean.’ Molineaux shrugged. He’d got past bitterness about it a long time ago. Bigotry was one of those things in life you had to learn to accept, like cholera, typhus and lawyers. He did not like it, but he was not going to let it control his life; the way he looked at it, if he did, he would be letting the bigots win. Better to get on with his life, and pray that one day the world progressed to the stage where there was no more room in it for bigotry or any of those other unnecessary evils.

  ‘No, prescribing drugs to sick folk: I couldn’t do that. I mean, suppose I made a mistake? I might make someone sick; or – worse – kill ’em off altogether.’ The medicine dropper was empty. The level of the glycerine left in the bottle had dropped too low for him to be able to draw out any more that way, so he found a clean dish Hughes had missed and poured some into that. ‘I couldn’t handle that responsibility.’

  ‘It’s easy enough, when you know what you’re doing. You just have to concentrate on your work and make sure you don’t make a mistake.’

  ‘Kind of like cooking up this stuff, eh, sir?’

  Charlton grimaced. ‘Have you checked the temperature of that lately?’

  The petty officer dipped the thermometer in again and watched the mercury crawl up the scale. ‘Fifty-two degrees. That oh-kay?’

  ‘You’re safe enough as long as you keep it below sixty.’

  The two of them lapsed into silence once more, Molineaux concentrating on what he was doing, Charlton lost in his own thoughts. After a while, the petty officer looked up. ‘That’s the last of the glycerine, sir. What do I do now?’

  ‘Tip out the water in the second saucepan until there’s an amount left equal to the mixture in the other pan… no, use the measuring cup. Here, let me get it.’ Charlton stood up and joined him at the worktop. ‘Gently does it! You can’t see it, but the pyroglycerin should have formed a layer above the remaining acid below.’

  ‘You mean, it’s ready to use?’

  ‘Not quite. First we have to decant it, then wash it with a sodium carbonate solution to neutralise the acid left in suspension.’

  ‘Have we got any sodium carbo-whatsit?’

  Charlton picked up the tub of baking soda. ‘A fancy name for this. Rinse out the first saucepan and dissolve some of the baking soda in ordinary water from the cistern… here, let me help.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  Charlton realised he was holding the pan with the pyroglycerin in it. ‘You’re a sneaky bastard, Molineaux, did anyone ever tell you that?’

  The petty officer beamed proudly. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  * * *

  Killigrew waited until the Milenion was on an easterly heading, sailing into the Skärlandet Channel, before leaving Thornton in charge of the watch and making his way below. He unlocked the door to Lord Bullivant’s stateroom, but only found his lordship flat out on the bunk, snoring like a pig, two bottles of brandy on the deck, his breath rank with it.

  ‘Don’t think too harshly of him, Mr Killigrew.’

  He turned to find Lady Bullivant standing in the doorway behind him.

  ‘His father died young,’ she explained. ‘All his life he’s been used to getting his own way. These past few days have… well, taken the wind out of his sails, I suppose you’d say.’

  Killigrew nodded. As long as Bullivant was asleep, he could not give the commander any trouble; that was something to be thankful for, at least. ‘I understand you had a bit of excitement while I was ashore earlier, ma’am.’

  She smiled. ‘Nothing I was unable to cope with.’

  ‘Endicott tells me you managed to wing Pechorin.’

  ‘I’m only sorry I did not kill the swine. Is that a terrible thing to say?’

  ‘We’re in a terrible situation. If we’re going to get back to safety, we must take drastic measures. We are at war, after all. And they were the ones who dragged you into this business.’

  ‘It would never have happened if we had stayed in England. I confess, I was against this voyage from the outset. But once Rodney’s made his mind up about something… he grew up during the Great War with France, don’t forget. I think he’s always regretted having been too young to fight.’

  ‘Where were you, when the Atalanta first overhauled the Milenion?’

  ‘On an island, out in the Gulf of Finland. I forget its name; Captain Thornton would know. We’d gone ashore for a picnic. It seemed a pretty spot. Lord Dallaway wanted to take some calotypes of Araminta standing in front of the lighthouse. Why do you ask?’

  ‘There has to be some reason why Nekrasoff wants us all dead. The only possible explanation I can think of is that you saw something… something the Russians don’t want anyone to know about; something they’d go to any lengths to stop Admiral Napier from discovering.’

  ‘I certainly don’t recall seeing anything that would be remotely interesting to Admiral Napier.’

  He nodded. ‘How is Miss Maltravers, by the way?’

  ‘A little shaken. Pechorin held a carving knife at her throat. I don’t believe he intended to use it, but I doubt she saw it that way at the time. I had Nicholls make her some camomile tea. She’s sleeping in one of the staterooms, I hope; or trying to, at least.’

  Killigrew took his leave of Lady Bullivant, and knocked softly on the door of Araminta’s stateroom. When there was no reply, he opened the door a crack and peered through to see her fast asleep, her chest rising and falling beneath the covers to assure him she was alive. He smiled, and was tempted to go into the stateroom to kiss her on the forehead, but he was afraid of waking her. She needed her sleep; so did he, for that matter, but he had resigned himself to not getting any this night.

  He made his way up on deck. With the wind broad on the starboard quarter, the schooner was clipping along at a good five and a half knots, the fastest rate they had yet attained on the voyage from Ekenäs; but it was still not fast enough to outrun the Atalanta. Other than praying for stronger winds, however, there was nothing they could do about that. He checked his watch: incredibly, it was still only twenty-five past two in the morning; twilight could not be far off in these latitudes, although there was no sign yet of the sky lightening in the east.

  ‘Captain Thornton!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Killigrew?’

  ‘What was the name of the island where you dropped anchor when the Atalanta caught you?’

  ‘Jurassö, a small island about six miles off the coast of the mainland.’

  The name meant nothing to Killigrew. ‘What’s at Jurassö?’

  ‘Nothing much: a lot of trees, a lighthouse, some ironworks…’

  ‘You went ashore?’

  ‘Yes. Miss Maltravers suggested a picnic. I saw no reason not to. Lord Dallaway was taking some photographic pictures and Nicholls was laying out the picnic when the Atalanta appeared.’

  ‘What the devil was she doing so far out from the coast? If she was sailing from Barösund to Ekenäs, she could have used this channel, instead of running the risk of falling in with a British ship.’

  ‘Captain-Lieutenant Pechorin did not strike me as the sort of commander who would run shy of an encounter with an enemy vessel.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Killigrew admitted. ‘All the same, it’s damned queer…’

  ‘Mind your backs!’ called Endicott, backing out of the fore hatch and dragging one end of an enamelled bathtub out after him. When it was all the way out of the hatch, Iles was revealed holding the other end. The two of them crossed to the gunwale.

  ‘Hi! You there!’ called Thornton. ‘What the devil d’you think you’re doing with that?’

  ‘They’re carrying out my orders,’ Killigrew told him. ‘We’ve got to lighten the load.’

  ‘That’s his lordship’s bathtub!’

  ‘One… two… three!’ With a tremendous effort, Endicott and Iles managed to get the bathtub on the bulwark, from where they could push it over. It hit the water with a terrific splash. For a few moments it floated, but water fount
ained up through the plughole, until it foundered and sank without trace.

  ‘Was his bathtub, you mean,’ said Killigrew.

  Hughes followed Endicott and Iles on deck, carrying a couple of bulging sacks that followed the bathtub over the side.

  ‘What was in those?’ demanded Thornton.

  ‘Hughes!’ called Killigrew.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What was in those sacks you just threw overboard?’

  ‘Pots, pans, and his lordship’s best silver.’

  ‘But this is outrageous!’ protested Thornton. ‘What the devil do you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘We’ve got to keep our weight down to keep our speed up,’ said Killigrew.

  ‘It’s all right, Thornton,’ said Lady Bullivant, emerging from the after hatch. ‘Mr Killigrew has my permission. He is in charge, after all.’

  ‘If you say so, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you, my lady,’ Killigrew said with feeling.

  ‘On deck there!’ O’Leary called from the maintop.

  ‘What is it, O’Leary?’

  ‘Sail ho!’

  ‘Where away?’

  ‘Dead astern!’

  Killigrew glanced back over the taffrail, but could see only darkness. He swung himself up into the ratlines and clambered up to join O’Leary at the maintop. The Irishman handed him a telescope. ‘See it, sir?’

  The commander raised the telescope to one eye and levelled it. He could just make out the deck lights.

  ‘Might not be the Atalanta, sir,’ O’Leary said dubiously, not really believing it himself.

  Killigrew handed back the telescope and shinned down a backstay to the deck. ‘We’ve got a steamer coming up astern, about a mile off.’

  ‘The Atalanta?’ asked Lady Bullivant.

  ‘More than likely,’ admitted Killigrew. ‘I’m afraid Count Pechorin was more intelligent than I gave him credit for: it seems he’s double-guessed me.’

  ‘How long until she overhauls us?’