An hour later the brig Louise of Norfolk, Virginia, Captain Samuel Bethnal, Master, had been fired. Bethnal and his people hoisted the lugsail of the red cutter lately belonging to His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician and miserably set course to the south-west and the coast of Virginia. To the east the horizon was broken only by the grey smudges of a pair of British frigates, and the twin jags of a schooner's sails as she slipped over the rim of the world and left the coast of America astern.
'I don't see the sense in it myself,' said Wyatt, burying his nose in a tankard and bracing himself as the Patrician shouldered her way through a swell. 'It ain't logical,' he added, surfacing briefly to deliver his final opinion on Captain Drinkwater's conduct in the dank haven of the wardroom.
'I suppose the Commodore has his reasons,' offered Pym with a detached and largely disinterested loyalty.
'I'm sure he has,' Simpson, the chaplain, said cautiously, then affirming, 'of course he has,' with an air of conviction, before destroying the effect by appending in a far from certain tone of voice: 'in fact I'm certain of it.'
Slowly Wyatt raised his face from the tankard. Rum ran from his slack mouth, adding gloss to an already greasy complexion. 'You don't know what you're talking about,' he mouthed with utter contempt.
'Nevertheless, Mr Wyatt,' the hitherto silent Frey piped up, 'I agree with Simpson and the surgeon.'
Wyatt turned his red eyes on the junior lieutenant. 'An' you know bugger all,' he said offensively.
Frey was about to leap to his feet when he felt Simpson's restraining hand on his sleeve. 'Hold hard, young man, he doesn't know what he's saying.'
'Don't know what I'm saying, d'you say? Is that what you said, you God-bothering bastard?' Wyatt rose unsteadily to his feet, instinctively bracing himself against Patrician's motion. 'With hundreds of bloody privateers shipping out of every creek and runnel on the coast of North America, we, we,' Wyatt slammed his now empty tankard on the table top with a dull, emphatic thud, 'we go waltzing off into the wide Atlantic with the strongest frigate squadron south of Halifax ...'
'We're going to rendezvous with the homeward Indiamen ...' Frey began, but was choked in mid-sentence.
'Indiamen be buggered. If we were going to do that why did we go all the way to America?'
'Why did we go to America then, Wyatt?' Pym asked provocatively.
Wyatt swung a pitying look on Pym. 'So he', Wyatt gestured a thumb at the deck above, 'could lay with his lady love again.'
'Mr Wyatt, hold your tongue!' Frey snapped, leaping to his feet and this time avoiding Simpson's tardy hand.
'Ah, be buggered,' Wyatt sneered, 'Caldecott saw the woman; half naked she was, in her shift...'
'Are you drunk again, Mr Wyatt?'
Quilhampton stood just inside the doorway, his one hand grasping a stanchion. The creaking of the ship and the gloom of the day had allowed him to enter unobserved. Wyatt swung ponderously on his accuser as the other officers heaved a sigh of collective relief. As the frigate lurched and rolled to leeward, the master lost his already unsteady balance and reached for the back of his chair which he only succeeded in knocking over. The motion of the frigate accelerated their fall and Wyatt stretched full length on the deck. He made no move to recover himself and for a long, expectant moment no one in the wardroom moved. Then a snore broke what passed for silence between decks.
'I see you are,' said Quilhampton drily. Looking round the table, he continued, 'Let us avoid complete dishonour, gentlemen, and get the old soak into his cot without the benefit of the messman.'
They rallied round the one-armed lieutenant and, shuffling awkwardly with the dead weight of the big man between them, squeezed into his cabin and manhandled Wyatt into his swinging cot.
Catching their breath they regarded their late burden for a moment.
'Sad when you see drink consume an otherwise able man, ain't it?' Quilhampton asked in a general way. 'I presume he was running the Captain down again.'
'Yes,' Frey said, 'like Metcalfe used to, and in a particularly personal manner, too.'
'It was disgraceful,' said Simpson.
'This story about the woman again, was it?' asked Quilhampton.
'Indeed it was, Mr Q,' said Simpson.
'Well, gentlemen, let me tell you something,' Quilhampton said, herding them back into the common area of the wardroom where they resumed their places at the battered table. 'I have been acquainted with Captain Drinkwater for many years and in that time I have not known him to act improperly. Moreover, I do know him to have the confidence of government, and that if he claims this mysterious woman was an agent, or a spy, then that is very likely what she was. Now I think we can cease speculatin' on the matter and assume the Captain knows what he is doin', eh?' Quilhampton looked round the table as Moncrieff came in.
'Don't you think, Mr Q,' Simpson said, his neat, rosebud mouth pursed primly, 'that you should properly refer to Drinkwater as the Commodore?'
'I daresay I should, Mr Simpson,' Quilhampton said laconically, helping himself to a biscuit, 'what is it, Moncrieff?'
'I am a messenger, James. The Captain, I beg your pardon, Mr Simpson, the Commodore,' Moncrieff said, with ironic emphasis, desires a word with you.'
Quilhampton brushed his coat, rose and bowed to the company. 'Gentlemen, excuse me ...'
'I suppose they think I'm mad in the wardroom?' Drinkwater said flatly, not expecting contradiction. He remained bent over the chart as Quilhampton replied, 'Something like that, sir.'
Drinkwater looked up at his first lieutenant. 'You're damnably cheerful.'
'The weather's to my taste, sir.'
'You're perverse, James.'
'My wife says something similar, sir.' They grinned at each other.
'What is it they say?' Drinkwater asked, now he had Quilhampton's full attention. He saw Quilhampton drop his eyes, saw the evasive, non-committal shrug and listened to the half-truth.
'Oh, that damned fool Wyatt thinks we should stay on the American coast. I've tried to explain, but...'
Again the shrug and then Quilhampton looked up and caught a bleak look of utter loneliness on Drinkwater's face, a look which vanished as Drinkwater recovered himself, cast adrift his abstracted train of thought and fixed his eyes upon his friend.
'I'll admit to it being a long shot, James; perhaps a very long shot, and certainly a risky one. I appreciate too, that twenty-two days out of the Chesapeake with nothing to our account beyond a fired brig don't amount to much but...'
Quilhampton watched now, saw the inward glance take ignition from the conviction lurking somewhere inside this man he respected and loved, but could never understand.
'You have explained to me, sir, at least in part, but may I presume?'
'Of course.'
'We are on the defensive now. Even our blockading squadrons keep watch and ward off the French ports as the first line of defence against invasion. To some extent I share Wyatt's misgivings. We are a long way from home. Our present passage to the South Atlantic exposes our rear when every ship should be sealing home waters against the enemy. That is where, I have heard you yourself say, American privateers struck hardest during the last war. I fear, sir, for what may happen if you have miscalculated…'
Drinkwater gave a short bark of a laugh. 'So do I, James,' he interrupted.
'How are you so sure?'
'Because if I were in the same position this is what I would do.'
'And you really think it is him? This man Stewart?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'I don't really know ...'
'Then how can you be sure of his mind?'
'I can't be entirely sure of it, James ...'
'But,' Quilhampton expostulated vainly, frustrated at Drinkwater's failure to see where the decision to sail south might lead them, 'a month ago you were in doubt as to how to proceed…'
'But we reasoned here, in this very cabin, the interception of the East India fleet was the most likely thi
ng,' Drinkwater paused. 'Come, James, have faith; stick like a limpet to your decision.' There was a vehemence, a wildness in Drinkwater's voice, almost a passion that disturbed Quilhampton. It just then occurred to him with a vivid awfulness that Drinkwater might indeed be on the verge of madness. He stared at his friend and tried again: 'But how ... ?'
'By the prickin' of my thumbs,' Drinkwater said, looking down at the chart again, and Quilhampton withdrew, a cold and chilling sensation laying siege to his heart.
'What do you think, damn it?' Quilhampton asked Pym as the surgeon, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, looked up from the candlelit pages that he held before him against the roll of the ship. 'They're your confounded theories, ain't they? All this bloody obsession and conviction and what-not. Damn it, Pym, I've known the man since I was a boy. He's brilliant, but dogged like so many of us with never quite bein' in the right place at the right time. He got me out of Hamburg in terrible circumstances, all the way down the Elbe in the winter in a blasted duck-punt...'
'Yes, I heard about that.'
'D'you think the ordeal might have turned his mind?'
Pym shrugged. 'This', he tapped the notes he had abandoned when Quilhampton sought him out, 'is no more than a theory, based on a single case, that of your predecessor. I don't know about Drinkwater ... You say he's changed?'
The use of Drinkwater's unqualified surname shocked Quilhampton. It almost smacked of mutiny, as if Pym, in his detached, objectively professional way, had actually committed a preliminary act by divesting Drinkwater of his rank. Quilhampton shied away from committing himself.
'Certainly,' Pym rumbled on, 'there are signs of obsession in his conduct, but I have to say we are not party to his orders and, as you yourself suggested, these may be of a clandestine nature. Wasn't he in Hamburg on some such mission?'
'Yes,' Quilhampton agreed, worried at the direction the conversation was taking.
'Perhaps,' Pym suggested with an air of slyness, removing his spectacles and leaning back in his chair to clean them on his neck-cloth, 'there is something else the matter.'
'What the deuce d'you mean?' Quilhampton asked sharply.
'You've heard the stories of the woman. Perhaps it isn't obsession he suffers from, but remorse ...'
'Preposterous!' snapped Quilhampton dismissively, starting to his feet and looking down at the surgeon.
'If you say so, Mr Q.' Pym replaced the spectacles and picked up his pen.
'I most emphatically do say so, Mr Pym.' Quilhampton turned the handle on the surgeon's cabin door, then paused in his exit. 'This conversation, Mr Pym, must be regarded as confidential.'
'We can regard it as never having happened if you wish, Mr Q.'
Quilhampton expelled his breath. 'It would be best, I think.'
'I think so too.'
'Obliged. Good-night, Mr Pym.'
Pym bent to his manuscript and picked up his pen. The ship's motion was easier now and the lantern gyrated less, so he was able to write without the flying shadows distracting his failing sight.
It seems to me from a long observation of commanders in His Majesty's navy, that unopposed command may distort the reasoning powers of a clever man, that the balance of his rational, thinking mind may be warped by lack of good counter-argument and his imagination seized by obsession.
Pym paused, tapping his pen on the broken teeth of his lower jaw. 'The trouble is,' he puzzled to himself, 'this is quite the reverse of a man vacillating between two distinct manners of thought. And if I am to identify the one, I needs must also consider the other.'
A warm glow of ambitious satisfaction welled in his stomach. Perhaps, unlike his subjects, he was in the right place at the right time. He dipped his pen and bent to his task.
CHAPTER 15
The Whaler
December 1812-January 1813
'The rendezvous, gentlemen.' Drinkwater tapped the spread chart with the closed points of the dividers and watched as they leaned forward to study the tiny, isolated archipelago a few miles north of the Equator and already far astern of them as they ran down the latitude of Ascension Island. 'St Paul's Rocks, as likely a spot for the Americans to use too, so ensure you approach them with caution, should you become detached, and that you use the private signals…'
He looked round at them. Ashby was still studying the chart but Thorowgood's florid face, evidence, Drinkwater suspected, of a self-indulgent Christmas, hung on his every word, while Sundercombe, a mere lieutenant in the company of four post-captains, regarded him thoughtfully from the rear.
'Now as for our cruising station, you will observe the rhumb-line from Ascension to St Helena as being exactly contrary to the south-east trade wind ...'
They would, he explained, sweep in extended line abreast, the frigates just in sight of one another, tacking at dawn and dusk, in the hope of intercepting the East India convoy before any American privateers.
'We know the Indiamen will have at least one frigate as escort, but Yankee clipper-schooners will have no trouble outmanoeuvring her and cutting out the choicest victims at their will. News of hostilities with America will have reached the Cape by now and it may be that a second cruiser will have been attached; not that that will make very much difference. However, four additional frigates plus a schooner to match Yankee nimbleness', he paused and smiled at Sundercombe, 'should bring the convoy home safely. Any questions?'
'Sir,' said Ashby, 'may I enquire whether your orders were to escort the East Indiamen, or remain on the American coast? I mean no criticism, but had we proceeded directly to the Cape we would have met with the India fleet for a certainty.'
A groundswell of concurrence rose from the other post-captains. Drinkwater had no way of knowing that the news of the silk petticoat had spread round the squadron by that mysterious telegraphy which exists among ships in company. Sprite's tendering and message-bearing had much to do with it, and the breath of intrigue had engendered a note of misgiving into the minds of Drinkwater's young and ambitious juniors.
For himself, his own sense of guilt had been superseded by the conviction that he had picked up a vital trail at Castle Point, and he saw in Ashby's mildly impertinent question, full of the criticism he denied, the arrogance of young bucks seeking the downfall of an old bull. He lacked in their eyes, he knew, the bold dash expected of a frigate captain, and was, moreover, a tarpaulin officer of an older school than they cared to associate with. He knew, too, they had objected to his burning of the Louise. Tyrell, by being in sight in Hasty, would have had a legitimate claim to the prize money her sale might have realized, while the general principle of burning valuable prizes appealed to none of them. Ashby's question invited a snub; he decided to administer a lecture. Signalling Mullender to offer wine and sweet-treacle biscuits to his guests, he stared out of the stern windows. Only the lightest of breezes ruffled the sea and Patrician ghosted along, the other frigates' boats towing in the slight ripples of her wake. He knew from the silence, broken only by the soft chink of decanter on glass, that they waited for his reply. He swung on them with a sudden, unexpected ferocity.
'You cannot buy yourself into the sea-service, gentlemen, as you can into the army. A ship-of-the-line is not to be had like a regiment or a whore. Oh, to be sure, interest, be it parliamentary or petticoat, sees many a fool up the quarterdeck ladder. But that does not prevent an able man getting there, though it stops many. Fortunately for the sea-service that peculiarly snobbish genius of the English, that of giving the greater glory to what costs 'em most, is absent in principle from naval promotion.'
He paused, glaring at them, gratified to see in their eyes the expressions of the midshipmen they once had been.
'Nevertheless, a deal of useless articles have arrived on quarterdecks. Since Lord Nelson's apotheosis at Trafalgar, the Royal Navy has appealed to the second of England's vices after snobbery: that of fashion. How a service which accepts boys to be sodomized or killed at twelve or thirteen, poxed at eighteen and shot or knighted by t
heir majority should become fashionable, is a matter for philosophers more objective than myself. All I know is that those of us who remember the last war with the Americans, if we aren't rotting ashore, dead, or been promoted to flags or dockyards, have been consigned to the living entombment of blockade, whilst injudiciously fashionable young men command our cruisers and risk destruction at the hands of the Americans ...'
'Excuse me, sir.'
'What the devil d'you want?' Drinkwater broke off his diatribe, aware that Belchambers had been hovering by the door for some time. 'Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, secretly delighted that Thorowgood was nearly purple with fury and Ashby's eyes glittered dangerously. Tyrell was studying his nails.
'The wind's freshening a trifle, sir, and Mr Quilhampton says there's a strange sail coming up from the south-'ard. She's carrying a wind and looks to be a whaler.'
The news transformed the gathering, the whiff of a prize, a Yankee whaler, affected them all, with the exception of their commodore.
'Shall we go on deck, gentlemen, and see what we make of this newcomer before you return to your ships?'
The notion of waiting aboard Patrician while the whaler closed the squadron obviously irritated them still further.
Coolly Drinkwater led the way past the ramrod figure of the marine sentry and up the quarterdeck ladder.
'British colours, sir.'
Quilhampton, who had the deck, lowered his glass and offered it to Drinkwater. Behind them the knot of frustrated frigate commanders and Lieutenant Sundercombe, who stood slightly apart and gravitated towards Mr Wyatt beside the binnacle, drew pocket-glasses from their tail pockets. With irritable snaps the telescopes were raised.
The flying squadron nd-11 Page 21
