The Flying Squadron

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Though he don’t drink much,’ he had observed to Wyatt when they had been gossiping.

  ‘Perhaps he’s poxed,’ Wyatt had suggested in his own down-to-earth manner.

  ‘Or has incipient mercurial nephritis,’ Pym had humbugged elevatingly.

  But now, watching Metcalfe while the others stared at Frey recovering his breath and his composure, Pym thought him mad from another source and the seed of an idea finally germinated in his mind.

  ‘I say, Metcalfe,’ Moncrieff growled as Frey exchanged near-asphixiation for indignation.

  ‘I . . . ain’t . . . a . . . damned . . . puppy!’ Frey gasped.

  ‘You even talk like the man,’ Metcalfe went on, and Pym realized Metcalfe’s train of thought was somehow not normal. Here again was the recurrence of this obsessive disparagement of Captain Drinkwater, and Pym wondered at its root. Metcalfe’s condemnation of the captain had become almost a ritual of his wardroom conversation, ignored by the others, tolerated only because he was the first lieutenant. Captains had a right to be eccentric, disobliging even, and first lieutenants an obligation to be unswervingly, silently loyal. That was how the writ ran in Pym’s understanding.

  Poor Frey, unaware of any irregularity in Metcalfe’s personality beyond the generally unpleasant, thought the first lieutenant must have heard something about the confidences he and Drinkwater had exchanged earlier. He resolved to have words with Mullender, forgetting in his anger that Mullender had not been in the pantry, and disgusted that Metcalfe had such spies about the ship.

  ‘Take that back, sir . . .’

  ‘Steady, Frey . . .’ Moncrieff advised.

  ‘Stap me, you’re all in this.’ There was a bewildered wildness in Metcalfe’s eyes. ‘Why are you looking at me, Pym? Don’t you think such insolence is intolerable?’

  And so the patient delivered himself to the quack and Pym received the means by which he was to achieve fame. ‘To a degree, yes, Mr Metcalfe. I concur you’ve been badly treated,’ Pym went on, mentally rubbing his hands with glee and ignoring the astonishment of his messmates’ faces. ‘Come, sir, don’t let your meat spoil. Afterwards you and I shall take a turn on deck.’

  For a moment Metcalfe stared at the surgeon, something akin to disbelief upon his face. Pym, in a rare and perceptive moment, interpreted it as relief. Metcalfe bent to his dinner and over his head Pym winked at the others.

  Pym was not objective enough to recognize the crisis Metcalfe had reached. He preened his self-esteem even while planning his therapy and probing his patient’s mind. Overall lay a vague image of his discovery in print, a seminal work dislodging Brown’s Elements of Medicine. He would complement Keil’s Anatomy, Shaw’s Practice of Physic; alongside Munro on the bones and Douglas on the muscles, they would set Pym’s On the Mind. Yet amid this self-conceit and at the moment imperfectly glimpsed, Pym had caught sight of a great paradox. Within Metcalfe he sensed a twin existence . . .

  And already the opening words of his treatise came to him: Just as, in utero, a foetus may divide and produce two unique human beings, so in the skull, twin brains may develop, to dominate the conduct and produce responsive contrariness and a lack of logical direction . . .

  Pleased with the portentious ring of the phrases he abandoned them, setting the composition aside as Metcalfe, unsuspicious, soothed by Pym’s solicitude, confirmed the growing certainty in Pym’s ecstatic imagination.

  ‘Damn the man, Mr Pym,’ Metcalfe was saying, ‘what is he about? The men have run and we know where they are.’

  ‘Quite, quite, Mr Metcalfe, what do you propose, that we should take them by force and precipitate a crisis at this delicate juncture?’ Their situation had been much rehearsed in the wardroom during the week and Pym laid out the logic to see where Metcalfe diverged from its uncompromising path, for he was familiar with a method used to cure the megrims by first rooting out their source.

  ‘We should beat ’em, Pym’, Metcalfe said fervently, ‘blow ’em from the water, pound ’em to pieces . . .’ The wildness was back in Metcalfe’s eyes now and Pym felt disappointment. This was a normal, naval, fire-eating madness after all.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said disconsolately, ‘we are to take our leave without raising the matter.’ He paused, seeking to lead Metcalfe’s thoughts along a different path. ‘It is clear to me and all the others you dislike Captain Drinkwater, though he seems reasonable enough to me . . .’

  Metcalfe grunted but offered no more.

  ‘Well, I suppose you require his good opinion for advancement . . .’ the surgeon suggested slyly.

  ‘Me, Pym? What the devil for? I may make my own opportunities, damn it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Pym shrugging, a sense of failure, of approaching boredom, of finding the task he had set himself too difficult making him lose interest. It had seemed a good idea earlier, but perhaps that was the wine. He failed to recognize Metcalfe’s massive self-delusion and reverted to a clinical examination. Stopping his pacing, he compelled Metcalfe to do the same. The two turned inwards and Pym looked deliberately into Metcalfe’s eyes, while saying with exaggerated and insincere concern, ‘How can you be sure of that, Mr Metcalfe? It seems to me the war is a stalemate. All the opportunities seem to have evaporated.’

  ‘If we were to fight them,’ Metcalfe replied, jerking his head in the direction of the Stingray, ‘then things would soon be different.’

  ‘But,’ said Pym frowning, suspending his clandestine examination of Metcalfe’s pupils and rekindling his theory, ‘I thought you once expressed a contrary opinion, or was that’, he affected a conspiratorial expression, ‘merely a matter of dissembling; of, shall we say, seeking the captain’s good opinion?’

  Metcalfe stared back at the surgeon. ‘Good opinion?’ he murmured, almost abstractedly, and Pym’s heart leapt with enthusiasm again. ‘Oh, yes, perhaps . . . yes, perhaps it was.’

  And Metcalfe, like a man who had suddenly remembered a forgotten appointment, abruptly walked away. Pym watched him go. ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ he muttered to himself, but later that afternoon he fashioned a new quill-nib and began to write: I conducted my first series of clinical observations, engaging my patient in conversation designed to draw out certain convictions, simultaneously examining his eyes for luetic symptoms. He displayed a vehement conviction at first, which yielded to a meeker and contrary opinion when this was suggested, thus exhibiting a predisposition towards influence . . .

  Pym sat back very pleased with himself and at that moment the quarter sentry called out that the schooner aboard which Vansittart had left for Baltimore was in sight.

  ‘It is good news,’ Vansittart said, sitting back in the offered chair and taking the glass Drinkwater held out. ‘I think we shall simply rescind the Orders-in-Council where the United States are concerned, provided they do not press the matter of sailors’ rights. There seems little pressure to do so in Washington, whatever may be said elsewhere.’

  ‘I daresay seamen are as cheaply had here as elsewhere,’ Drinkwater observed, marvelling at this change of diplomatic tack. ‘Did you meet Mr Madison?’

  ‘Alas, no, Augustus Foster handled all formal negotiations, but I learned something of interest to you.’

  ‘To me? What the devil was that?’

  ‘Captain Stewart is shortly to be relieved of his command.’

  ‘Why? Surely not because of his indiscreet . . . ?’

  ‘No, no, nothing to do with that,’ Vansittart affirmed, swallowing a draught of Madeira. ‘It seems to be Navy Department policy to rotate the commanders of their, how d’you say, ships and vessels? Is that it? Anyway, he won’t be allowed the opportunity of quenching his fire-eating ardour one way or another now.’

  ‘Well, there is my consolation for eating humble pie and holdin’ my hand.’ Drinkwater explained about the location of his deserters. ‘And it don’t taste so bad either. So we may weigh at first light?’

  ‘No. Stewart left word that we should drop downstream at, how d�
��you say? Four bells?’

  Drinkwater grunted non-committally. It would be unwise to seek a meeting with Arabella. He had existed for eight days without her and he had no right to any expectations there. They both had their bitter-sweet memories. It was enough.

  Besides, he was meditating something which would hardly endear him to any American.

  An hour before dawn Drinkwater turned all hands from their cots and hammocks. The bosun’s mates moved with silent purpose through the berth deck, their pipes quiescent, their starters flicking at the bulging canvas forms, stifling the abusive protests.

  ‘Turn out, show a leg, you buggers, no noise, Cap’n’s orders. Turn out, show a leg, no noise . . .’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Man the capstan, afterguard aft to rouse out a spring, gun crews stand to.’ Mr Comley, the boatswain, passed the word among the men tumbling out of their hammocks.

  ‘Come on, my bullies, lash up and stow. Look lively.’

  ‘We’re gonna fuck the Yankees,’ someone said and the echo of the statement ran about the berth deck as the men rolled their hammocks. Whatever their individual resentments, the abrupt and rude awakening shattered the boredom of the routine of a ship at anchor. An expectant excitement infected officers and men alike as they poured up through the hatchways, their bare feet slap-slapping on the decks as they ran to their stations like ghosts.

  Wrapped in his cloak against the dawn chill Captain Drinkwater stood by the starboard hance and watched them emerge. Any evolution after a period of comparative idleness was a testing time. Men quickly became slack, lacked that crispness of reaction every commander relied upon. Eight days of riding to an anchor could, Drinkwater knew, have a bad effect.

  In the waist Metcalfe leaned over the side as a spring was carried up the larboard side. Drinkwater waited patiently, trying to ignore the hissed instructions and advice offered to the toiling party dragging the heavy hemp over and round the multiplicity of obstructions along the Patrician’s side. Finally they worked it forward and dangled it down until it was fished from the hawse-hole and dragged inboard to be wracked to the cable. He knew, from the sudden relaxation of the men involved, when they had finished, even before Midshipman Bel-chambers ran aft with the news.

  ‘Mr Wyatt requests permission to commence veering cable, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Aft on the gun deck the spring would have been hove taught and belayed; now the slacking of the anchor cable would cause the ship’s head to fall off, some of the weight being taken by the spring.

  Drinkwater turned and spoke to the nearest gun-captain. ‘Campbell, watch your gun, now, tell me when she bears.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ the man growled, bending his head in concentration.

  ‘Mr Metcalfe, be ready to hold the cable.’

  Metcalfe waited to pass the word down the forward companionway.

  ‘Gun’s bearing, sir.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Drinkwater called in a low voice and bent beside Campbell’s 18-pounder. He could see the grey shape of the USS Stingray against the darker shore, her tracery of masts, yards and the geometric perfection of her rigging etched against the grey dawn. Patrician adjusted her own alignment and settled to her cable.

  ‘She’s a mite off now she’s brung up, sir,’ Campbell said and Drinkwater could smell the sweat on the man.

  ‘Veer two fathoms,’ Drinkwater called, straightening up. It would be enough. He turned to Frey. ‘Your boat ready, Mr Frey?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Drinkwater looked at the growing glow in the east, an ochreous backlighting of the overcast which seeped through it to suffuse the sky with a pale, bilious light.

  ‘We’ll give it a minute longer,’ Drinkwater said, raising his glass and staring at the American ship upon which details were emerging from the obscurity of the night.

  ‘We’ll not want a wind outside,’ someone muttered.

  ‘What’s happening?’ a voice said and a score of shadowy figures shushed the coatless Vansittart to silence. ‘For God’s sake . . .’

  ‘Quiet, sir!’ Metcalfe snapped, fidgeting as usual.

  ‘I forbid . . .’ Vansittart began, but Frey took his elbow.

  ‘It’s a piece of bluff, sir. The Captain wants his men back before he goes.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Shhhh . . .’ Drinkwater’s figure loomed alongside him and Vansittart subsided into silence.

  ‘Very well.’ Drinkwater shut his telescope with an audible snap. ‘Off you go, Frey.’

  With a flash of white stockings, a whirl of coat-tails and a dull gleam of gilt scabbard mountings, Frey went over the rail into the waiting boat.

  Drinkwater returned to the hance and again levelled his Dollond glass. He could see a figure on the Stingray’s quarterdeck stretch lazily. ‘Any moment now,’ he said, for the benefit of the others. The cutter cleared the Patrician’s stern and rapidly closed the gap between the two ships.

  In the stillness the plash of her oars sounded unnaturally loud to the watching and waiting British. Then the challenge sounded in the strengthening daylight.

  ‘Boat, ahoy!’

  ‘Hey, what the hell . . . ?’

  ‘They’ve noticed our changed aspect,’ Drinkwater observed, again peering through his glass. An officer was leaning over the side of the American sloop as the cutter swung to come alongside. Frey was standing up in her stern and they could hear an indistinct exchange. The cutter’s oars were tossed, her bow nudged the Stingray’s tumblehome and Frey nimbly ran along the thwarts between the oarsmen. A second later he was leaping up the sloop’s side.

  ‘It’s a master’s mate . . . no, there’s a lieutenant on deck without his coat . . . looks like Tucker, aye, ’tis, and there are men turning up.’ The squeal of pipes came to them, floating across the smooth water.

  ‘What’s Frey saying, sir?’ Metcalfe asked in an agony of suspense, frustration and resentment, because Drinkwater had briefed the third lieutenant without mentioning anything to his second-in-command, though everyone grasped the gist of Frey’s purpose. For Metcalfe it was one more incident in a long series of similar slights.

  ‘Why, to request an escort downstream, Mr Metcalfe,’ jested the preoccupied Drinkwater, glass still clapped to his eye.

  ‘Not to demand the return of our men?’ Metcalfe’s dithering lack of comprehension, or dullness of wit, irritated Drinkwater. ‘That as well, Mr Metcalfe,’ he added sarcastically.

  Metcalfe turned on his heel wounded, his hands outspread, inviting his colleagues to share in his mystification. Drinkwater had ordered him from his bed an hour earlier, told him he wanted the ship’s company turned-to at their stations, a spring roused out, run forward and hitched to the cable and thought that sufficient for him to be getting on with. Frey’s briefing was a different matter. It had to be precise, exact, not subject to committee approval; besides, there had been no time for such niceties, however desirable. As Metcalfe turned he caught Gordon nudging Moncrieff at the first lieutenant’s discomfiture. The ridicule struck Metcalfe like a blow.

  ‘Ah, here’s Captain Stewart . . .’

  Drinkwater’s commentary had them craning over the hammock nettings. A group of pale figures in their shirt-sleeves were grouped round the darker figure of Lieutenant Frey in his full-dress. And as their attention was diverted to the Stingray, Metcalfe slipped below.

  ‘Good mornin’, sir.’

  Lieutenant Frey, unconsciously aping his commander’s pronunciation, gave the emerging American commander a half-bow.

  ‘Captain Drinkwater’s compliments, sir, and his apologies for disturbing you at this hour. He is aware you had arranged with Mr Vansittart via the master of the schooner that we should weigh and proceed in company at four bells, but he insists upon the immediate return of the British deserters you have been harbouring. Truth is, sir, we have known about their presence aboard your ship for several days; saw ’em, do you see, through our glasses. Captain Drinkwater was partic
ularly desirous of not compromising Mr Vansittart’s mission and hoped you’d return ’em yourself, but his patience is now run out to the bitter end and, well, you will oblige, sir, won’t you? Otherwise . . .’

  ‘Otherwise what?’

  Frey had enjoyed himself. He was not sure if he had the message word-perfect, but the gist of it, delivered at the run, as Drinkwater had ordered, had been surprisingly easy. Stewart, clogged with sleep, had twice or thrice tried to interrupt him, but Frey had had the advantage and each successive statement had demanded Stewart’s sleep-dulled concentration. In the end, despite himself, he had succumbed to the coercion.

  ‘Otherwise what?’ he repeated angrily.

  Frey heard Tucker mumble something about a spring and a cable.

  ‘Otherwise, sir, the most unpleasant consequences will arise. You lie under our guns.’ Frey, his hat in his hand, stepped aside and, with a theatrical flourish about which he was afterwards overweeningly boastful, he indicated the unnatural angle of the Patrician and the ugly, black foreshortening of her gun muzzles.

  ‘Why you goddammed . . .’ Stewart’s face was flushed and his eyes staring as he transferred them from Frey to the Patrician, then back to Frey.

  ‘I believe, sir,’ Frey continued, overriding Stewart’s erupting anger, ‘your removal from your command might be a consequence of interfering with the speedy return of a British emissary after such a happy accommodation has been reached by our two governments.’

  Whether or not Stewart knew he was due to be replaced, or that the matter was a mere possibility, Frey had no idea. It was to be his last card and it appeared to work. The American captain clamped his mouth in a grimace and let his breath hiss out between his teeth. The muscles of his jaw worked furiously and when he spoke his voice cracked with the strain of self-control.