by V. A. Stuart
Phillip stayed where he was. He saw Niger steaming up from the direction of Odessa and she, too, signalled an enquiry concerning the assistance that had come—tragically—so much too late. All three frigates, receiving no reply from the stricken Tiger, approached cautiously, their gun-ports open and their crews at action stations. Glasses were trained on beach and clifftop, as the signals were repeated. Niger altered course and ran out her port side guns, directing them at the cliff-top battery, but did not fire.
Phillip measured the distance between himself and Trojan and started to strip off his already sodden jacket. He was not a member of Tiger’s crew and therefore, he thought, would be breaking no pact to surrender if he were to endeavour now to swim back to his own ship. He had reached the rail, his jacket over his arm, when Graham—evidently divining his intention—shouted something he could not make out and pointed urgently shorewards. To his dismay he saw that the Russian artillerymen were once more manning their guns and the first of these, still trained on Tiger’s smouldering upper deck, opened fire with shell. A fresh rain of missiles, which included redhot shot, descended upon her forecastle, as the other cannon followed suit.
The shots were obviously intended as a warning to the other British ships to come no closer and to deter them from making an attempt to rescue any of Tiger’s crew, most of whom were, by this time, either already on shore or making their way there in her badly damaged boats. But … Phillip drew in his breath sharply. A few remained, including his brother Graham and, in the act of lowering himself over the side, he hesitated. The last salvo from the Russian battery on shore had rekindled the fire they had fought so hard to put out and two wounded men, who had been receiving attention from the assistant-surgeon, lay perilously close to where the blaze had been restarted. If they were not moved, they would be cut off from the after part of the deck … and the boats.
Graham saw them too. He started forward and, aware that even if it meant jeopardising his only chance of escape, he could not leave his brother in such circumstances, Phillip dropped his jacket and followed him. He neither saw nor heard the approach of the shell which struck the deck a few yards behind him but he heard it explode and was conscious of a searing pain in his right side. He stumbled, biting back the cry which rose to his lips and striving vainly to regain his balance, and then the strength drained from him and he felt himself falling, apparently from a great height.
His last memory, before all awareness left him, was of a high-pitched scream, which he did not recognize as his own, and of hands reaching out to seize him, whose clutches he fought vainly to evade… .
2
From a long way away, a voice asked kindly, “Well, how are you today, old fellow?”
Another voice, coming from nearer at hand, answered the question, “He’s not conscious, sir, and there is no change in his condition. His head injuries are severe, I’m afraid. I removed the shell splinters from his thigh yesterday evening, after they brought us here, but the wound is too high up for me to amputate. If the leg turns gangrenous, then …” the voice trailed off into silence but Phillip could guess the implications of that unfinished sentence and could imagine the resigned shrug that accompanied it. He had seen wounds turn gangrenous before and he wondered pityingly of whom the two men were talking.
The first voice, which sounded familiar, although he could not recall where he had heard it before, went on, “Then he will not be sending any letters with the Vesuvius, I fear. How about you, Dr Lawless? If yours are prepared, I can take them and send them aboard with mine.”
“I’m obliged to you, sir, but the Surgeon took all I had time to write about an hour ago. We understood that the Furious was leaving at once. I did not realize that Vesuvius was still here.”
Furious … Vesuvius? Phillip puzzled over the names, still hearing the two voices as if from a considerable distance. He heard the first voice say, “Commander Powell agreed to wait for news of Captain Giffard and the Governor gave his consent. I only wish the news we had to send of him were more hopeful … his wife is in Therapia, you know. This will come as a terrible shock to her.”
“Yes, sir, undoubtedly it will. I very much fear that he cannot last much longer but … the Surgeon is at his bedside, if you would care to have a word with him.”
“I’ve seen him, Doctor … and I spoke very briefly to the Captain. All he can talk about is the kindness and consideration he has been shown since his capture by the Governor. He asked me if the men were being shown equal consideration and I was able to assure him that they were, which seemed to relieve his mind. He hasn’t a thought for himself, has he?”
“No, sir, he hasn’t. The Governor visited him in person this morning, as you probably know … with the Baroness Osten-Sacken. Her Excellency brought every kind of delicacy from her own kitchens, in the hope that Captain Giffard might be persuaded to eat but …” again the sentence was left in mid-air and as before its implications were all too plain. “She even suggested that Mrs. Giffard might be brought here, sir.”
Phillip attempted to sit up but was unable to, feeling as if a heavy weight across his chest held him down. His efforts to speak to his two companions were equally vain. The room was dark and he was unable to see either of them, although he continued to eavesdrop on their conversation, and now he identified the first voice as that of Tiger’s First Lieutenant. He also recalled that Baron Osten-Sacken was Governor of Odessa … Odessa? Bewildered, he once more struggled to sit up but the weight on his chest held him imprisoned.
“Poor fellow, he is restless,” the doctor said. “But at least he does not know anything.”
“Young John Giffard dead, Boy Hood, Trainer, Tanner, and that lad from Trojan … and now the Captain himself and, in all probability, your patient as well …” the First Lieutenant spoke bitterly. “It’s a high price to pay, is it not, Mr Lawless, for a trifling error caused by fog and an inaccurate chart? But at least they did not take the ship … she’s burnt out, you know, so they cannot claim her as a prize. All they managed to save were three of her guns, two of which they had to recover from under water. I saw them brought in … the streets were lined with people, cheering insanely, as if in celebration of a major victory!”
“You’re allowed out quite freely then, sir?”
“Yes, Mr Lawless, I am. I’ve given my parole … a course I shall advise all officers to take when it is offered to them, as I understand it will be in the near future. We do not know for how long we shall have to remain here as prisoners.”
“And the men, sir?” Phillip heard Surgeon Lawless ask.
“The men are to be permitted their liberty within the confines of the town. I see them daily, with the Governor’s full knowledge and consent.”
“And this is the town we bombarded and set on fire less than three weeks ago! The Governor is displaying a high degree of Christian forbearance, is he not?”
“A remarkably high degree, Doctor. I confess it surprises me to receive such treatment from an enemy but His Excellency the Governor is a gentleman of the old school. I have been invited to dine with him this evening; in order to discuss the advisability of removing Captain Giffard to his residence and of accommodating our midshipmen and cadets there also. His Excellency feels that, in view of their youth, they should not remain here any longer than necessary, among the sick and wounded. There is even talk of sending them to St Petersburg, if their captivity should be prolonged.”
“It’s almost unbelievable, sir!” Lawless exclaimed. “After all the stories one hears of Russian barbarity.”
“I gather, from what the Governor has told me,” Tiger’s First Lieutenant went on, “that he is grateful for the fact that we confined our recent attack on Odessa to military targets and used only frigates to undertake the bombardment. The fire which destroyed part of the town was accidental. His Excellency knows that, and due, in part at least, to the inefficiency of his own fire-fighters, who failed to bring it under control. His Excellency told me that he was expecti
ng us to destroy the entire town, as a reprisal for Sinope and …” his voice faded suddenly and, strain his ears as he might, Phillip could hear no more. Having nothing now to distract him, he drifted into sleep.
Everything became strangely confused after that. He slept and wakened, heard voices and sometimes understood what they were saying. More often, however, he did not understand and life took on a curiously dreamlike quality, in which he lost all consciousness of time, all sensation of reality. He experienced pain during his occasional lucid moments … a pain which was, at times, almost unendurable. But this passed and finally he was aware of little discomfort save when, borne down by the weight on his chest, he found difficulty in drawing breath. His body became numb and inert, scarcely possessed of feeling, and his mind wandered apart from it in a lost, dream world peopled by ghosts, in which there was neither night nor day.
A few of the ghosts were recognisable by voice or touch. He knew the hands of Lawless, Tiger’s young assistant-surgeon, for their skilled gentleness and for the relief they brought him when he suffered a bout of pain. The voice of his brother Graham sometimes penetrated the mists which encompassed his brain, although he was seldom able to make out what his brother was saying. The other voices were distant and unintelligible, often speaking in a foreign language which he could neither follow nor translate. He sensed that they were kindly and concerned but that was all and they made very little impression on him.
The only ghost, among the many that haunted his dreams, whose voice reached him and whose presence seemed real was, ironically, the one he knew with clear, cold certainty to be a ghost … or, at best, figment of his imagination. For Mademoiselle Sophie, Phillip told himself, could not in reality be there. It was quite inconceivable that a Russian Grand-Duchess, a member of the Imperial family of the Tsar, should sit for hours at his bedside, moving only when it was necessary to hold a cup of water to his parched lips or lay a small, cool hand on his sweat-drenched brow. Certainly it was inconceivable that Mademoiselle Sophie should speak to him, in tones of anxious affection, that she should call him by name and beseech him, her voice choked with sobs, to answer her. Still less was it likely, Phillip was aware, that—when his pain was at its worst—he should lie with her fingers entwined about his own and the salty dampness of her tears falling on their two linked hands.
Yet the dream was a source of intense happiness and comfort to him and he clung to it with all his failing strength, letting his imagination have free rein, seeing her face, hearing her voice, deriving pleasure from the illusion of her nearness to him, her concern for him. In his imagination he held long conversations with her, answered her tearful enquiries as to his progress, and more than once, greatly daring, bore her hand to his lips and kissed it. He was indifferent to the murmured protests of the Baroness von Mauthner and another elderly woman—a stranger to him—the intrusion of whose presence occasionally detracted from his enjoyment of his dream. For the most part, however, he noticed no one else when Mademoiselle Sophie appeared to him and he waited eagerly for her to come, the time between one dream-visit and the next seeming endless.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the dream ended. Mademoiselle Sophie’s visits inexplicably ceased and Phillip felt bereft. She came to him for the last time one day—or one night, he could not be certain which—and stayed for only a few brief moments, not seating herself, as she usually did, in the chair at his bedside but standing looking down at him, her face too shadowy and far away from him to be able to read the expression on it.
“Phillip …” He heard her voice but this, too, was indistinct, as if it were coming from a distance and, although he exerted every effort to concentrate on what she was trying to tell him, her words had no meaning for him. “Phillip, I … I do not know whether you can understand or even whether you can hear me. I … tomorrow is my wedding day. Here, in the Cathedral, I am to be married and then I have to go away. I have no choice, you see, I … I have to go with my husband. First to St Petersburg, where we shall present ourselves to Uncle Nikita for his blessing and then … then I do not know. We may go to Sebastopol, perhaps, or to Georgia … there is fighting everywhere.” She spoke with infinite sadness and Phillip put out his hand in search of hers, thinking to offer her comfort. Her fingers felt cold to his touch and they were trembling, he realised, when at last he found them with his own. She let him hold her hand for a moment or two and then withdrew it.
“We shall not meet again, Phillip,” Mademoiselle Sophie told him with finality. “We cannot meet again, I … I know my duty.” Her small, lovely face, remote in its grief, was no longer the face of a child but of an adult woman, courageous and resolute, and Phillip sensed the change in her, without understanding what had caused it. “This time,” she went on, “it is not ’au revoir,’ this time I must bid you farewell. But you will grow strong and well again, you will live … for my sake, you must live, Phillip.” There was a catch in her voice. “To know that you are living somewhere in the world will … comfort me. I shall think of you and pray for you … for you and your valiant Trojan. And one day, when you are Trojan’s Captain, I shall know because my heart will tell me. The heart does not forget, Phillip, however sad it is … and when peace comes, I shall see you with the eyes of the heart, as you set your course for England. May God be with you, now and always, my dear English sailor … ” She stooped over him and Phillip felt her lips lightly brush his cheek.
Even when she had left him, he could not quite take in what she had said to him, could not believe he would not see her again. Her words remained locked in his memory, treasured there, although they were incomprehensible to him for a long time, because they were the last words he had heard her speak to him. Slowly his condition improved and the dream which had meant so much to him during his illness began to fade. It had, after all, he told himself repeatedly, been no more than a dream and, as his fever abated and he began to regain his strength, he had less need of illusion to sustain him. Other people became recognisable as people, not simply as voices, and the ghosts took on substance and emerged from the shadows when Phillip found that he could see and communicate with them once more.
Tiger’s young assistant-surgeon was the first with whom he was able to hold a rational conversation, in the course of which he learned of Captain Giffard’s death.
“It was a tragedy,” Dr Lawless told him. “His wife came, at Baroness Osten-Sacken’s personal invitation, to be with him … Retribution brought her here with all possible speed but alas, poor soul, she arrived too late to see her husband alive. We did everything we could—indeed, the Surgeon scarcely left his side but the Captain had not your robust constitution, Mr Hazard. He succumbed to the infection caused by his wounds and was buried, with full military honours, on the second of June. The whole ship’s company attended the funeral, the officers acting as pall bearers, and the garrison troops, and, also the townspeople lined the streets in his honour. It was a most moving ceremony.”
“The townspeople of Odessa, do you mean?” Phillip asked, in astonishment.
“They bear us no ill-will,” the surgeon assured him. “We are permitted to wander freely about the town, officers and blue-jackets alike, and no one displays the slightest sign of hostility towards us. The officers are in great demand socially and receive frequent invitations to attend balls and concerts and to visit private houses … the midshipmen and cadets especially were showered with invitations, before being sent to St Petersburg. Our men are allowed a good deal more freedom here in Odessa than they would have in Portsmouth or Plymouth … and few of them abuse it. Even the few who do are treated very leniently by the Russian authorities. Of course …” he smiled, “this all stems from the Governor and his good lady. They have overwhelmed us with kindness, Mr Hazard. You, for example, are in His Excellency’s residence now, occupying one of his guest-rooms.”
Phillip stared about him. “In the Governor’s residence, Doctor? I do not understand, I thought … that is I am a little confused, you see.”
“That is not to be wondered at … you have been very ill, Mr Hazard,” Dr Lawless explained gently. “At one time we despaired of your life. When His Excellency the Governor heard of this, he had you brought here from the lazaretto, so that you might be better cared for, and he put the services of his own physician at your disposal. It is to his skill, rather than mine, that you owe your life … he is a brilliant man and has been in attendance on you ever since you were brought here.”
“Have I been here for very long?” Phillip questioned and the assistant-surgeon nodded.
“For nearly eight weeks, Mr Hazard. You were wounded by an exploding shell, splinters from which entered your head and chest and also your right leg, high up in the thigh. Infection set in and you suffered a severe fever, which few men would have survived. But you have a remarkably strong constitution and … you had the will to live. This and the skill of Baron Osten-Sacken’s physician pulled you through, together with the care lavished on you by the ladies of the household.”
“The ladies of the household?” Phillip echoed, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Indeed yes, Mr Hazard … including the Baroness herself,” Lawless confirmed warmly. “You were still very weak, of course, but you are making an excellent recovery. In another month or so, you should be as fit and healthy as you ever were. Even the wound in your leg is healing well.”
Phillip thanked him and ventured a few more questions, which the young assistant-surgeon answered fully and frankly. But he made no mention of Mademoiselle Sophie, adding only that Graham had done much to aid his recovery.
