A Private Revenge

by Richard Woodman

  'The fulmineous intervention of nature you say you experienced, Captain Drinkwater, offers poorly against the loss of two ships.'

  'One of which carried specie,' put in another.

  They were the kicks of a cowardly mob, delivered after a man was in the gutter.

  Drinkwater stood before his accusers. Inwardly he felt crushed. Fate had dealt him a cruel blow! To be singled out by Macgillivray's 'fulmineous intervention of nature' seemed so cruelly unjust as to anger some primitive inner part of him so that, although silent, he raked their faces with a baleful glare. He mastered the inner seething with the realisation that he wanted a drink. He would have one in a minute, immediately he had disposed of these men, bent to their wishes.

  'Very well, gentlemen. I shall accede to your request and escort you to Penang.'

  'Well let us hope you do, Captain,' said Macgillivray, as the downcast company turned for the cabin door. Drinkwater stood stock-still as they filed out. Then, almost out of habit, he turned towards the pantry and bawled for his steward. The cathartic bellow did him good and Mullender, by some small miracle of intuition, appeared with a bottle and glasses.

  Drinkwater took a glass. As he stood impatiently waiting for Mullender to fill it with blackstrap, unannounced Morris reentered the cabin. His expression bore witness to the fact that he had gleaned knowledge of Drinkwater's discomfiture.

  'Where is Captain Rakitin?' Drinkwater asked, delaying his need to swallow the cheap port.

  'On the quarterdeck, zur.'

  It was Tregembo who answered, stooping at the pantry door, ancient, worn, like a futtock of the ship itself. It seemed oddly appropriate that Tregembo, like Mullender, should have mustered in the pantry, for all that his occupation of the cabin was to be short-lived.

  'Thank you.'

  Drinkwater fixed both steward and coxswain with the stare of dismissal. Mullender put down the bottle and the pantry door closed behind them, though their listening presence beyond the mahogany louvres was almost visible.

  'Your health, Nathaniel.' Morris helped himself to a glass, an ironical smile about his hooded eyes. 'And, of course, your damnation.'

  Drinkwater merely glared, then seized gratefully on the excuse to gulp his drink, making to leave the cabin.

  'Don't go,' said Morris, divining his purpose, 'we have been so little together. Intolerably little for such old shipmates ...'

  'Morris, we never made the least pretence at friendship. We fought, if I recollect, some kind of duel, and you made numerous threats against my person. You behaved abominably to members of the Cyclops's company and, if there was such a thing as natural justice in the world, you should have been hanged.'

  He tailed off. Morris was laughing at him. 'Oh, Nathaniel, Nathaniel, you are still an innocent I see. Still dreaming of "natural justice" and other such silly philosophies ... How much have you missed, eh? You and I are old men now and here you are beset by worries, buggered upon the altar of your duty ... You left me at the Cape a sick man ... I hungered for the destiny you had before you and hated you for seeming to command fate. That was ten years ago, before Bonaparte burst upon us all ...'

  'Bonaparte?' Drinkwater frowned, bemused by this drivel of Morris's.

  'Yes, Bonaparte, blazing like a comet across the imaginations of men. "Do as you will," he screamed at the world. "Do as you will ..."'

  There was something about Morris that was not quite drunkenness, but nevertheless reminded Drinkwater of intoxication. There was also, now he came to think of it, a faint, unfamiliarly sweet aroma in the cabin, gradually reasserting itself after the sweaty stink of the convoy masters. Of course! A man of Morris's disposition, influenced by every sensuous inclination of the human body, would be an opium eater. Drinkwater poured himself another drink.

  'So I forsook my duty,' went on Morris, 'she was a raddled whore that had nothing to offer me but the pox of responsibility that now consumes you. I counted myself lucky to have found my destiny half-way to India, and took ship to find what I knew to exist if prudish knaves like you did not stand in my way ...'

  'You charm me by your tale, sir,' said Drinkwater unmoved. 'No doubt your little Indian Ganymede approves wholly of tearing out his tongue for your unnatural pleasure! I doubt even the monstrous genius of Bonaparte would approve of that!'

  Drinkwater half turned away but his arm was caught by Morris. Both the speed and the force of the grip surprised Drinkwater and he felt himself pulled back to face his enemy.

  'D'you dream, Nathaniel? Eh? Of course you do — unholy dreams here, on your cot, eh? Coiled by the legs of ... of whom, eh? Your Elizabeth, or other, secret women? Well, I dreamed my own dreams ...'

  With a violent gesture Drinkwater shook himself free. The compulsion to run, to escape the cabin and Morris's contaminating company was strong in him, but some dreadful fascination kept him rooted to the spot. As abruptly as he had advanced, Morris fell back. The intense, almost complicit tone vanished and he spoke again in his arch, mocking manner.

  'Do you know,' Morris said, 'they say in Peking that the Son of Heaven finds the most exquisite pleasure in impaling a goose who, at the appropriate moment, is strangled ... ?'

  'Damn you ...'

  Sickened, Drinkwater turned away. As he made for the door he caught sight of the boy. He was asleep, had slept, it seemed, all through the noisy council and its revolting aftermath, half-naked, a brown curl in the corner of Drinkwater's quondam cabin.

  There was nothing he could bring himself to do in the remaining hours of that disastrous day but pace up and down the quarterdeck, biliously angry as the convoy stood for the entrance of the Malacca Strait. Great clouds reared on the horizon, huge anvil-shaped thunderheads that rose over the steaming tropical rain forests of the distant land. As night fell these huge, billowing clouds were illuminated from within, possessed by flickering demons as lightning, too far away to crackle with thunder, sparked and flashed tremendously within their charged and coiling vapours. The sight tormented Drinkwater as he continued his lonely, self-imposed vigil, recalling over and over again Macgillivray's facetious phrase: 'fulmineous intervention of nature'.

  In deference to his savage mood, men moved quietly about the upper decks and the officers, alternating as the ship's routine ground its remorseless way into time, gave their orders in low voices. It seemed, as he gradually emerged from the depths of introspection, that they were humouring him, like a child. The thought made him unreasonably angry and he cast about for some weapon of chastisement. Was that Frey on watch? No, Quilhampton.

  'Mr Quilhampton.'

  'Sir?'

  'Have we established, sir,' spat Drinkwater, with unbending formality, 'why the binnacle lamp was extinguished last night?'

  'Er ... I ... I've no idea, sir ... was it not the rain, sir?'

  Drinkwater's temper fed deliriously on such foolishness. 'The lamp has a chimney, sir, is set in a binnacle for the purpose of protecting it from the weather. Its wick may have become soaked when it was removed from such protection, but that was not the reason for its extinguishing. May I suggest a lack of oil as a plausible explanation, eh? I recognise it as one out of favour with the officers as bespeaking a slackness on their part, but ...', he faltered. He was going to say something about a lack of oil providing a natural explanation, but it smacked so of Macgillivray's phrase that it cut his tirade dead.

  'Oh, for God's sake check the damned thing now!'

  He cast Quilhampton aside and stalked off into the night, ashamed of himself. God! How he hated this commission! Ever since that poor devil had been swung to the yard-arm at the Nore there had been ill-luck aboard. Now they even had to compensate for a compass deviating thirty-eight degrees, at least until the effects of the thunderbolt wore off ...

  'Sir!'

  Something urgent in Quilhampton's tone brought him up. Any peevishness Quilhampton might have felt at his commander's unspeakable behaviour was absent from the imperative note in the lieutenant's voice. Drinkwater turned. Quilha
mpton was advancing towards him. The binnacle lamp had been extinguished to check the reservoir, but in the gloom Drinkwater could just make out the faint sheen of the glass door of the locker and something in Quilhampton's hand.

  'What is it?'

  'This, sir.' Drinkwater was aware that Quilhampton was holding out his hand.

  'I can't see a damned thing.' Then he was vaguely aware of a dark shape, like an irregular musket ball darkening Quilhampton's palm.

  'Bit of metal, sir,' said Quilhampton in a low voice, 'half filling the oil reservoir. Could have put the lamp out prematurely ...'

  'God's bones!'

  An act of sabotage? The thought was in both their minds, for it would not be the first that had occurred. A similar event had happened on the coast of California when the ship was found to have developed a persistent and elusive leak.

  'Say nothing more,' Drinkwater whispered urgently, then raised his voice to a normal level. 'Very well, Mr Q, relight the lamp.'

  Drinkwater walked across the gently leaning deck and stopped beside the wheel. In such light winds only two men stood beside it, staring aloft at the main topsail, steering by the wind until the light was re-established in the binnacle. It was all clear to him now. It was no mere reduction of the volume of the reservoir that had been sought, it was something far more sinister. In a few moments the lamp would come back on deck and prove him correct, but the metallic lump he held in his hand was no melted leaden musket ball poured molten into the base of the lamp. It resisted the imprint of his thumb-nail with an almost crystalline stubbornness.

  'Here, sir ...'

  Drinkwater stood aside. The lamp was placed back between the two copper grooves that held it in place, throwing a gentle radiance across the neatly inscribed compass card.

  'What course, sir?' asked the puzzled helmsman, sure that he had held the ship's head steady relative to the wind during the last quarter of an hour.

  'You may steer sou' west a-half west.'

  'Sou' west a-half west, aye, aye, sir.' There was a brief pause, then the helmsman said, 'She's that now, sir.'

  'Yes,' replied Drinkwater quietly, 'I know she is.'

  'Sir?' In the dim glow the rumple of a frown creased Quilhampton's forehead.

  Drinkwater held up the small nugget. 'It's a piece of magnetic lodestone, Mr Q, perfect for deliberately inducing a deviation in the compass.'

  CHAPTER 13

  A Round Robin

  January 1809

  'What d'you intend to do, sir?'

  Fraser's voice was tight with anxiety. Ever since the flogging of the deserters he had been half expecting some such outbreak among the people.

  'What the devil can I do, Mr Fraser, except abjure you and all the officers to be on their guard?'

  'Could be the quarantined men, sir,' suggested Fraser.

  'What? Some kind of collective revenge for their misfortune?'

  Fraser shrugged. 'Ye canna let it pass, sir.'

  'No. But they all know we discovered the thing, 'tis common gossip throughout the ship. Such scuttlebutt spreads like wildfire ...'

  'Could you not ...' Fraser looked conspiratorially about the deck, to make sure that no one was within earshot of the pair of them, '... ask Tregembo to ...?'

  'Spy, you mean? Carry lower-deck tittle-tattle?'

  'Aye, sir.' Fraser seemed rather relieved that Drinkwater grasped his meaning.

  'If it was known, I'm damned certain Tregembo would have told me. The trouble is Tregembo don't know.'

  Fraser subsided into unhappy silence. Drinkwater was aware that Midshipman Dutfield was trying to catch his eye.

  'Beg pardon, sir, but Mr Ballantyne's compliments and the entrance to the strait is in sight.'

  'Very well, Mr Dutfield, thank you.'

  They had, for the past two days, been aware of the presence of land. At first they had seen the electric storms above the distant, jungle-covered mountains, then the clusters of islands forming the Anambas archipelago lifted over the horizon. Odd tangles of floating vegetation, bound by the roots and stumpy remnants of mangroves, drifted past. 'Floating islands' Ballantyne called them, recounting how sometimes they reached astonishing size and had once concealed a host of Dyak canoes from which he and his father had only escaped with difficulty and the prompt arrival of a breeze.

  Of Dyaks they had seen nothing, gliding over a smooth, empty sea, and now picking up their landfall with gratifying precision. Rank upon rank of hills were emerging blue and low from the clouds hovering over them, a seemingly impenetrable barrier whose nearer bastions were turning slowly green as they approached. Stretching away into the northern distance the long finger of the Malay peninsula crept round almost a third of the horizon, its distal point Pulo Tumasek. To larboard rose a wild jumble of islands, the Rhio archipelago, which, from this distance, retained the impression of a continuous, if indented coastline. Beyond, indicated as yet by clouds, lay the vast island of Sumatra, parallel to the Malay coast and containing, between the two, the Malacca Strait, highway to Prince of Wales Island, as Penang was then more familiarly known. Beyond all lay the Indian Seas.

  Drinkwater strained his glass further to larboard. Somewhere to the southwards, beyond the Rhio islands, lay the Gaspar and Sunda Straits, shortest route to the Cape of Good Hope, and barred to the China fleet by Dutch and French cruisers. But today he could see nothing, nothing but an empty blue sea, glittering beneath a brazen sky. And, curiously, it brought him no pleasure. Somehow he would rather have seen an enemy, been faced with a task; somehow the very emptiness of the ocean seemed ominous.

  'Beg pardon, sir.'

  Belchambers's face, poked round the door of the tiny cabin, was more readily seen in his shaving mirror, thought Drinkwater, as he rasped the razor upwards over the stretched skin of his throat.

  'What is it?'

  He forced the query through the clenched teeth of a jutting jaw.

  'This, sir.'

  Drinkwater swivelled his eyes a little. The image of Belchambers's hand could be seen in the cracked mirror. The fingers unfolded to reveal a crushed scrap of paper.

  Drinkwater had seen one before and the shock made him nick himself. It was a round robin, a message from the ship's company, and it cast his mind uneasily back to the days of ninety-seven, the year of the great mutinies. They had been a common thing then, demands, protests, both reasonable and unreasonable, sent aft to the officers in this anonymous, yet neatly demotic way.

  'What does it say?'

  Affecting a sang-froid he did not feel, Drinkwater dabbed at his bleeding throat and completed his shave. 'Read it,' he commanded, a little more forcefully.

  Belchambers cleared his throat. The self-conscious gesture relaxed Drinkwater. 'Are they going to cut my throat, or should I complete the matter myself, Mr Belchambers? Eh? Give the thing here, thank you.'

  He took the crumpled and grubby paper and the boy fled gratefully. Captain Drinkwater's mood had been dangerously unpredictable of late.

  Drinkwater smoothed the sheet and stared at it. In all justice to the midshipman, it was not easy to read, almost obscured by the creases into which it had been balled, the easier to be thrown on to the quarterdeck. It would have been tossed at Quilhampton's feet, no doubt, with not a man on deck anywhere near it as the lieutenant bent to pick it up. Or, of course, it would have been dropped during the night. No matter now; here it was, in the hands for which it was intended, and the writing was well formed, legalistic and educated — a bad sign. Drinkwater frowned; he was seeing ominous signs in everything these days. He read:

  To Captain Drinkwater, Esquire

  Y'r Honour,

  We, the Ship's Company, with our Humble Duty beg to Acquaint Your Honour of our Reprobation of the Events of this Day. Knowing Your Honour's Mind to be of Lofty Principles, we, the Ship's Company, Entreat you not to be Misled by former Occurrences. We Solemnly Swear that no Malice Aforethought attaches to the Heinous and Hideous Interference with the Binnacle Lantern that Must be Co
ntemptible to the Minds of British Seamen.

  We, the Ship's Company, Desire to Inform Your Honour of our Loyalty to Our Duty and Our Country.

  Signed,

  By Us All,

  One and Indivisible.

  It was a concoction worthy of the most appalling Patriotic Club, but its outrage rang with sincerity. Its very vehemence suggested a wiping out of the shameful acts off California. These were men, quite capable of outrageously mutinous behaviour, angrily repudiating any suggestion of its initiation in this case.

  'They want to go home,' muttered Drinkwater, smiling at himself in the battered glass, and crushing the round robin in his hand.

  But it offered little peace of mind, merely diverting his suspicion elsewhere. Morris he knew to be too motivated by self-interest to have attempted such a stupid thing. Morris had nothing to gain by diverting Patrician and could not possibly have known of the Dyak presence. Drinkwater was tempted to seek its motivation in mischief rather than malice. He recalled Midshipman Chirkov's sudden interest in navigational matters, and the suspicion, once it crossed his mind, seemed a reasonable one, redolent of idle folly and petulant resentment over earlier humiliation.

  Dangerously stupid and consequentially disastrous as the matter had been, he realised his suspicions were circumstantial and unprovable. He knew only that his own vigilance must increase, and that the burden of his responsibilities weighed even heavier upon him. When later that day, as the sun dipped crimson towards the thunderheads above the blue mountains of Sumatra, the masthead reported two sails, Captain Drinkwater could not have cared whether or not they were enemies.

  They made contact with the two ships just before daylight finally vanished from the tropic sky, two sloops from Penang sent questing down the Malacca Strait after reports of enemy cruisers off the Rhio archipelago. They were not naval ships, but belonged to the East India Company's Bombay Marine, the Arrow and the Dart, nattily smart twenty-two-gun ship-rigged sloops aswarm with lascars and a commander not much older, or so it seemed to Drinkwater's jaundiced eye, than Fleetwood Pellew.