'I think we have just forced the gates of the fortress,' Drinkwater said for the benefit of his toiling boat's crew.
CHAPTER 18
Pursuit
February 1809
Drinkwater tried to calculate the distance they were travelling, but found it difficult. Though he had a compass he had no watch and therefore, though his men pulled with a steady stroke, no accurate means of charting the seemingly endless corridors of smooth water which led deeper into the jungle. At a rough estimate, he guessed, they must be some four or five miles from Patrician, and should be overhauling Ballantyne's boat.
He was increasingly concerned about the master, a feeling that was heightened by the sense of entrapment caused by the surrounding jungle. The white-painted tree and the concealed entrance told him they were on the right trail, confirming, if he glanced at his compass, his observations from the main-top. But the oppressive silence of the vegetation, the increasing density of the mangroves and the brazen heat which increased as the sun climbed into the sky, weighed on him.
Only once had he seen a sign of life. A bright-eyed monkey had peered suddenly and shockingly at him and his cry of alarm was only stifled by the chattering retreat made by the animal. Instead he coughed, to cover his confusion.
Occasionally he stood, peering ahead and seeking evidence of Ballantyne, but the oily water ran on through the overhanging foliage, trailing creepers and burping gently from the unseen activities of the trumpet fish. The sense of oppression, of being watched, was omnipresent. The men pulled obediently, but their eyes were downcast or stared apprehensively at the passing blur of leaves and shadows. If their eyes met Drinkwater's they looked quickly away. He knew they were as nervous as kittens. In a little while they would rest on their oars and he would stoke up their courage from the spirits keg.
Drinkwater was certain now that he would not find Guilford or Hindoostan hidden here. They had probably been burnt and were lying beneath the waters of the anchorage, stripped of whatever this nest of devils could find useful. He did not like to contemplate what reserves of powder and shot the Dyaks might have accrued by such means. The question was, did they need it for their attacks, for the manufacture of stink-pots and so on, or had they fortified their stronghold? And if they had access to powder, they also had access to firearms, for Guilford had had an arms chest and all her officers had had sporting guns. The sense of being lured into the mangrove jungle fastened more firmly on Drinkwater's imagination. The morning's attack, though it might have succeeded and delivered him a prisoner to Morris, was a feint, a further stratagem designed to draw Drinkwater in pursuit.
Should he go on?
He could not now abandon Ballantyne.
'Is your gun loaded, Mr Dutfield?' he asked, breaking the almost intolerable silence at last.
'Yes, sir. Langridge shot.'
'Very well, pull a little harder, my lads, I want to come up with the other boat.'
Frey saw his intention, pulled to one side and rested his men at their oars. Drinkwater's launch drew alongside, and as both crews refreshed themselves and the two boats glided onwards under their own momentum, he and Frey conferred.
'He's got a long way ahead, sir.'
'My own thoughts exactly. I think we may have lost him ...'
'I've seen no other channels, sir ...'
'No; I don't mean in that way, Mr Frey ...' Drinkwater left the sentence unfinished. Frey grasped his meaning and nodded glumly. But they could not abandon the master, although Drinkwater's instincts told him to return to the ship, to work out a better strategy and recruit his strength. He looked at the sky. He could see what he was looking for now in the almost white heat above the jungle.
'We'll continue a little further, Mr Frey. Give way.'
Grunting and sullen, the boats' crews pushed out their oars and bent once more to their task. Fifteen minutes later they discovered Ballantyne.
The creek had opened out into a wide pool into which three other inlets appeared to debouch. Ballantyne's cutter was at the far end, adrift, its oars oddly disposed, some trailing, others sticking upwards, as though their looms were jammed in the bottom boards.
The oarsmen appeared exhausted, slumped over their bristling oars while Ballantyne sat upright in the stern. As the barge and launch came into line abreast, spreading over the greater width of the pool, Drinkwater and Frey both urged their men to greater efforts. Something about the attitude of the cutter's crew combined with the oppressive silence of their surroundings to restrain joyous shouts of recognition. That, and the realisation that it was pointless.
The cutter's crew were dead, dead from a volley of air-blown darts that had silently struck them in their pursuit. Ballantyne's body had endured the added mutilation of throat-slitting; a distinction reserved for the officer whose implication was not lost on Drinkwater.
Horror-struck, the gasping crews of barge and launch lay across their own oar looms, white-faced. Someone threw up, the yellow vomit coiling viscously in the water. For a long moment Drinkwater too fought down the gall rising in his throat, a bilious reaction compounded of revulsion and fear.
'We can't go on, sir,' said Frey, with a sense of relief, 'we don't know which channel to take.' He nodded at the three creeks that wound out of the pool and lost themselves in a tangle of trailing vegetation.
Drinkwater looked up. He could still see that fortuitous manifestation he had first spotted from Patrician. It was less than a long cannon shot away and it was not difficult to guess which creek led to it.
'I wonder how long they towed Ballantyne's boat after they ambushed it?' he said. 'A long way ... long enough to lure us here, and then they released it when we were confronted with a confusing choice ...'
'Yes, sir,' Frey agreed hastily, staring round, wondering how many unseen eyes were watching them, waiting to employ their deadly blow-pipes. His eagerness to be off was obvious, as was that of all the others.
With what he knew would be infuriating deliberation, Drinkwater picked up his glass and, focusing it, raked the shadows beneath the overhanging trees for any sign of an enemy. He did not expect to see very much, but a hidden boat or canoe would signal extreme danger. The silence of the jungle remained impenetrable. He closed the glass with a click.
'I believe we are supposed to be scared off, Mr Frey ... but that channel there', he pointed to a gap in the grey-green tangle of leaves, 'leads to ...'
To what?
He did not know, had no means of knowing beyond the simple and obvious deduction that somewhere beyond that opening in the dense vegetation lay the answer to the riddle of Morris and the whereabouts of Tregembo.
'To the bastards that did this!'
His vehemence raised a grunting response from a few of the more impetuous men.
'How d'you know, sir?'
Frey was ashen-faced, aware that he was, for the first time in his life, confronting authority. Fear had made him suddenly bold, fear and the revelation that Captain Drinkwater was not here the gold-laced and puissant figure whose will directed the Patrician and her company. To his keen and artistically responsive intelligence, Drinkwater's sharp, vehement outburst only underlined the captain's weakness. To young Frey, Drinkwater at that moment was a rather pathetic man driven on by guilt at the loss of a faithful servant and an obsession with their peculiar passenger. He had learned about Morris from Quilhampton and, as he challenged Drinkwater, he fancied the captain's wounded shoulder sagged more than usual, as though, divested of coat and bullion epaulettes, it was unequal to the weight it bore.
Just as Drinkwater's outburst had stirred a response, so too did Frey's, a buzz of agreement from men who could see no point in going on. Drinkwater's eyes met those of his lieutenant. He knew Frey was no coward, but he also knew that Frey's confrontation was deliberate. For a moment he sat in an almost detached contemplation, his eyes remaining locked on to those of his subordinate. Frey was sweating, the sheen of it curiously obvious on his pale face. Drinkwater grinned suddenly
and he was gratified at Frey's astonishment.
'How do I know, Mr Frey? Look!' Drinkwater pointed at the sky. 'An intervention of nature,' he said, deliberately self-mocking.
'Those ... birds?' The crews of both boats were staring after Drinkwater's pointing arm and Drinkwater could sense the incredulity in all their minds, voiced for them by Acting Lieutenant Frey.
'Yes, Mr Frey, those birds ... D'you perceive what they are, sir? Eh?' There were nine of them, large, dark birds with wide wings that terminated in splayed pinions and broad, forked tails. They wheeled effortlessly round and round so limited an axis that they betrayed the Dyak stronghold, even from the distance of Patrician's anchorage.
'They're kites, sir,' answered Frey with dawning comprehension.
'Yes, Mr Frey, that's exactly what they are, kites giving away the position of our enemy.' The silence that followed was filled only with the hum of flies that were already blackening the bodies in the adjacent cutter.
'We've got our own, sir,' said one of the launch crew. They looked directly above their heads.
A single kite soared in a tightening spiral, seeing and scenting the mortifying carrion in the drifting cutter.
'Very well,' said Drinkwater with sudden resolution. 'I want six volunteers to take the oars; five marines, also volunteers, with ten muskets. I will exchange these men into the cutter as being handier upstream. You, Mr Frey, will take the launch and tow the barge back to the ship. You will put the bodies of our shipmates into the barge. Mr Dutfield, I'd be obliged of your company, but I want only volunteers.'
'Of course, sir, I'll come.'
'Obliged. Now, the rest of you. Who's with me?'
'I'll come with you, sir!'
They lashed the three boats together and, rocking madly, gunwhale banging against gunwhale, effected the transfers. When they had sorted themselves out and he had disposed the marines as he wanted them in the cutter, each with two muskets and a double supply of powder and shot, Drinkwater looked at Frey.
'Well, Mr Frey, we've left you a little water, and you take our best wishes back to the ship. Be off with you.'
Frey seemed to hesitate. 'I'll exchange with Dutfield, sir,' he said.
'No you won't,' replied Drinkwater, 'give way, lads.'
'And then he disappeared?' Quilhampton asked.
'Leaving no orders?' added Fraser.
Frey nodded unhappily at Quilhampton and answered the first lieutenant upon whom the imminent burden of command was settling like a sentence of death. 'No, none.'
'Bluidy hell!' Fraser ran the fingers of his right hand through his sandy hair with a gesture of despair. 'Has the man taken leave of his senses?' He sought consolation in the faces of Frey, Quilhampton and the silent Mount. 'This is taking a vendetta too bluidy far ...'
'No,' Mount broke in sharply, his tone cautionary and his eye catching that of Fraser. 'No. I understand your feelings, Fraser, but Captain Drinkwater is not a fool. There is the matter of two captured ships and thirty thousand sterling.'
'And Tregembo,' said Quilhampton.
The four officers were silent for a moment, then Mount went on. 'If Captain Drinkwater issued no orders, then he wants nothing done. Nothing, that is, beyond maintaining our vigilance here.'
Drinkwater stirred and sat up. He was stiff and bruised from the hard thwarts, aware that he had dozed off. His movement rocked the boat and other men stirred, groaning faintly.
'Shhh ...'
Those awake pressed their shipmates into silence and Drinkwater looked enquiringly at Dutfield. The midshipman, left with half the cutter's crew on watch, shook his head. Both 'halves' of the volunteer crew had dossed down in the boat as best they could for an hour or so each. Now the afternoon was far advanced and Drinkwater meditated taking them back into the stream, out of the cover of the mangroves that hung close overhead. They had heard and seen nothing in the period they had rested.
'Splice the mainbrace,' Drinkwater whispered. The raw spirits animated the men and he watched them as they drank or impatiently awaited their turn. Most of the men were members of his own barge crew, strong hefty fellows with some sense of identification with himself. He was glad to see, too, Corporal Grice among the marines. Grice had a wife and family to whom he was said to be devoted and Drinkwater had not expected him to volunteer. He smiled bitterly to himself; he also had a wife and family. Not for the first time he thought that war made fools of men ...
'Muffle your oars now ... perfect silence from now on ...'
They pulled out into the stream. The kites had gone, forsaking their aerial vantage point as the air cooled a little. Or perhaps they had settled themselves on whatever it was that attracted them.
The narrow corridor of green seemed interminable. From time to time the foliage met overhead, shutting out the sky and filtering the increasingly slanting sunlight so that well-defined shafts of it formed illuminated patches, contrasting with the shadowed gloom of the leafy tunnel.
There was a difference in the vegetation now, Drinkwater noticed. No longer was the mangrove ubiquitous; there were an increasing number of nipah palms and heavy trunked trees like beeches, he thought, suggesting a firmer foundation for their roots. His theory found confirmation almost immediately as a low clearing came into view, a semi-circle of ferns and grass that surrounded a low slab of rock. He noticed, too, that about the broken branches that lay in the shallows, the creek ran with a perceptible stream, indicating a faster current than lower down. This was not merely an indented coast, it was indeed, as he had guessed from his masthead observations, fed by rivers. He strained his eyes ahead. Judging by his last sighting of the kites they could not have far to go now. His heart beat crazily in his chest. They had seen no sign, no indication of hostility, of being watched, if one discounted the creeping feeling along the spine.
A bend lay ahead. There was a break in the trees ...
'Oars!' he hissed urgently. The blades rose dripping from the water and waited motionless, the men craned anxiously round. In the bow, muskets ready, two marines nervously fingered their triggers.
Through the break in the trees, brief though it was, he could just see, not more trees as he had expected, but a rising green bluff and the grey, sunlit outcrops of rock. What appeared to be too straight a line for nature ran across the summit of the eminence. This line was nicked by small gaps: an embrasured rampart, its guns commanding the creek up which they now glided.
Had they been seen?
He thought he detected a man's head above the line of the parapet. Then he was sure of it. As the boat silently advanced out of the shadows with the setting sun behind it, the light fell upon the stronghold of the Sea-Dyaks.
Above a wooden jetty, alongside which a number of the heavy praus were moored, numerous huts dotted the hillside and stretched higher upstream in a veritable township. More huts stood out over the river on stilts with another group of praus tied to stakes and smaller dugouts bobbing alongside them. Men and, he guessed, women moved about, the colours of their sarongs a brilliant contrast to the unrelieved green of the jungle. Here and there he spotted the scarlet jackets that he had observed on the attackers of that dawn. The lazy blue of cooking smoke rose from a single fire and a low, mellifluous song was being sung somewhere.
The whole scene was one of tranquil and arresting beauty. The still evening air was now filled with the stridulations of cicadas and the faint scent of roasting meat came to them, stirring the pangs of hunger in their empty, deprived bellies.
'Hold water!'
Jerked from meditation the oars bit the water, arresting the gentle forward motion of the cutter. It slowed to a stop under the last overhanging branches of a gigantic peepul tree, concealed in the growing pool of shadow. Drinkwater could see the place was cunningly fortified. Several batteries of cannon covered the approach, and a palisade of stakes seemed to be arranged in some way that protected the hill itself. Off the river bank he could see the water streaming past the pointed spikes of an estacade. He would
need more than a boat gun to force a landing, unless he could take the place by subterfuge.
As he stood making his reconnaissance he was aware of the dull mutters of men being eaten by insects, and the sudden flutter of a giant fruit-bat made him jerk involuntarily. For a moment the boat rocked and Drinkwater expected a shout and the roar of a cannon to signal they had been seen, but nothing happened. He raked the parapet with his telescope and then stopped, feeling his heart leap with shock.
A yellow-robed figure stood against the sky staring through a glass directly at him. They were observed!
For a moment he seemed paralysed, the realisation that the man was Morris slowly dawning on him. As he lowered his glass Drinkwater saw Morris turn and move an arm, giving an obvious signal.
Drinkwater's guts contracted, expecting the well-aimed shot to smash the boat and end his life in a sudden bone-crushing impact. But instead there came a scream, a scream of such intense agony that it made their flesh creep and their very blood run cold.
PART THREE
A Private Revenge
'A man does not have himself killed for a few halfpence a day ... you must speak to the soul in order to electrify the man ...'
Napoleon
CHAPTER 19
The Tripod
February 1809
It seemed to Quilhampton an act of lese-majeste to be thus conferring in Drinkwater's cabin. Behind him, in silent witness, the portraits of Elizabeth and her children seemed pathetic effects. He was too stunned, too mystified to pay much attention to what Fraser and Mount were saying and he stood obedient to whatever decision they made as, with Dutfield, they bent over the chart laid on the table and the scrap of paper the midshipman had brought back. The group monopolised the candles, leaving Quilhampton and a disconsolate Frey in umbral shadow.
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