The Pursuit

by Peter Smalley

  He made no further suggestions, and ate his supper largely in silence, responding to Rennie’s attempts at congeniality with brief, polite, but unconversable replies.

  Presently, when Rennie had drunk a glass of Madeira and eaten his cheese, and James had politely refused both, Rennie gave up, and James went away to his cabin.

  *

  On the next day an ordinary seaman, Nately Thoms, fell ill of fever on the lower deck, and was confined by Dr Empson in the sick berth forrard. Within twenty-four hours four other hands had fallen ill. The mood of the lower deck, already fractious because the ship was so short-handed, grew fearful and dark. On watch the hands were surly and reluctant, and at divisions refused to meet the gaze of their officers.

  Rennie ordered the ship to be washed and smoked between, and sent for the surgeon.

  ‘Doctor, I will ask you quite blunt. Are you able to prevent further cases?’

  ‘I fear that may be . . . difficult.’

  ‘In little, ye cannot.’ A grim nod. ‘How many cases, now?’

  ‘Two more, this morning. Seven in all. But I fear there may be more, perhaps many more. It is ship fever, very hard to eradicate once it has took hold in the confined space of—’

  Over him: ‘When y’say “ship fever”, Doctor, d’y’mean – typhus?’

  ‘It is a form of typhus, yes.’

  ‘Christ’s blood.’ Quietly.

  ‘I will do my best, sir, to quarantine those infected forrard in the sick berth, but with other men among the hammock numbers nearly certain to fall ill, the—’

  Again over him: ‘We must wash and smoke daily. All hammocks to be scrubbed in chamber-lye and triced up to air in the girt-lines, not left damp in the netting.’

  ‘Scrubbed – daily?’

  ‘Nay, not the hammocks every day, that ain’t practive. But they must be scrubbed today, certainly. I will say so to Mr Tangible.’

  ‘Very good, thank you, sir. Erm . . . any change in diet?’

  ‘Diet? Nay, I don’t think so.’ Looking at the surgeon. ‘The men must keep up their strength.’

  ‘I meant – in the matter of drink, sir, not food.’

  ‘I do not apprehend you, Doctor.’

  ‘Should not the men forgo their grog, sir, until the fever has burned out in the ship?’

  ‘Forgo their grog, Doctor? To what purpose?’ Shaking his head.

  ‘To aid in their resistance, sir. Grog can only inflame and weaken them, surely?’

  ‘Nonsense, Doctor, stark nonsense. Grog strengthens seamen, not merely in their physical beings, but in their souls. We are far at sea, upon a hazardous venture, and the people need lifting up. Without their grog they would grow listless and despondent.’

  The doctor took a deep breath, and: ‘Sir, Captain Rennie – I think with respect that your own view is nonsense. Fever is a disease that inimically heats the blood, and can only be made worse by the—’

  ‘What didy’say?’ Glaring at the surgeon.

  ‘Because grog heats the blood, sir. Cannot you see that? It can only make the fever infinitely worse!’

  ‘Do not raise your voice to me, sir.’

  ‘I – I beg your pardon, sir.’ The doctor checked himself, and looked away.

  ‘Your duty is one of healing, Doctor, not of discipline nor command.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very good.’ Not meeting the captain’s gaze.

  ‘Kindly have the good manners to look at me when I address you, sir.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The surgeon turned his head and looked the captain in the eye.

  Rennie in turn looked at him a long moment, then: ‘We must trust each other, you know, within these narrow wooden walls. I trust you to do your best for those that are ill. And you must trust me to know what is best for those that are hale. Thankee, Doctor. Report to me again at the change of the watch.’ And in dismissal he turned away to the stern-gallery window, his hands behind his back.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  When Dr Empson had left the cabin Rennie’s resolute, upright demeanour deserted him, and his shoulders sagged. He sat down frowning at his desk, and took up his quill to make lists. One of those lists was of the numbers of men left available to him to sail the ship and if need be to fight the guns. The list was far short of the ideal, so far short in fact that Rennie felt fear in his guts, flexing its needle claws.

  He laid aside his quill with a sniff, and murmured:

  ‘If this fever takes hold severe, and takes its toll, Expedient could become a sort of ghost ship – a three-masted wraith upon the wide, uncaring sea, slowly sailing toward oblivion . . .’

  A sigh, and he stared unseeing at the sword rack. A movement at his calf. He looked down, and saw his cat Dulcie. For the first time since she had littered she had come to him now and rewarded him with her familiar affectionate bumping.

  ‘Dulcie, my dear.’

  Answered with a miaow, and an upward look.

  ‘Where’s your brood, then, my dear? Sleeping, hey? Are you hungry?’

  Another miaow, and he rose from his chair and busied himself with finding titbits for his cat, and a saucer of milk, and was relieved for a few moments of all the hard, vexing, worrying exigency of command, and became simply a domestic being, seeing to the needs of his closest companion.

  In the second hour of the afternoon watch, Nately Thoms died. By eight bells, two further men had died, and a third was near the end, sweating and retching in his hammock, his skin speckled with the telltale rash.

  Dr Empson came aft to the great cabin, and duly reported this news.

  Rennie stood silently listening and staring out of the stern-gallery window, his back to the surgeon. When the surgeon had finished, Rennie at last turned round.

  ‘Very good, thankee, Doctor. Return to your duty, if y’please. I must find a way to lift the people.’ A nod of dismissal, and the surgeon bowed and withdrew.

  But Captain Rennie could not think of a way to lift his people. Although Expedient was still in pursuit of the far ahead ship, the importance of the pursuit was beginning to recede in his mind, to be replaced by something like dread. In God’s name . . . what was he to do?

  *

  ‘“. . . for the resurrection of the body – when the Sea shall give up her dead – and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”’

  A nod. The rattling drone of the drum. The tipping of the boards, and the canvas-shrouded corpses plummeted into the sea. Subdued splashes in the gently rolling swell, the ship hove to out of respect for the dead, her pennant running long from the mainmast trucktop on the rippling wind.

  Captain Rennie closed the book, put on his hat, thwartwise upon his head, and:

  ‘Mr Hayter.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We will get under way, if you please.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’ His own hat on. ‘Mr Tangible! Hands to make sail!’

  And now something happened – did not happen – that at first shocked Rennie, then made him angry, then dismayed. The hands assembled in the waist did not disperse. Mr Tangible’s piping call, repeated by his mate’s call forrard, went ignored, the high, piercing sounds echoing over the deck as unremarked as the calls of a passing seabird.

  A long moment, as Rennie at the breast-rail of the quarterdeck stared at his motionless, surly crew. And then, one by one, slowly and reluctantly, the men began to move. Rennie quietly let out a long-held-in breath, and turned aft to the companionway ladder. A seaman of the afterguard moved to the weather-rail by the hammock cranes, and stood there. He had clapped on to a sheet, but was not pulling his weight, the hawser-laid rope hanging loose in his hands. He met Rennie’s gaze and returned it unblinking, neither defiant nor deferential. For several seconds Rennie was utterly nonplussed. Was the man being insolent? Or was he asking a silent question: what is to become of us?
Rennie came to himself with a sharp sniffing intake of breath, and pointed at the seaman, who immediately turned his back and began hauling on the rope.

  ‘That man!’

  The seaman took no notice, and continued hauling down on the sheet with both hands, his back turned.

  ‘That man, there!’ Rennie’s voice now raised to a full, carrying, quarterdeck bellow.

  And again the man ignored him, busy with the rope.

  It had become a contest of wills on the open deck, a contest Rennie knew he could not afford to lose.

  ‘Master-at-arms!’

  The man was seized, taken below, and put into the bilboes.

  Captain Rennie paced aft to the wheel, and to the officer of the watch, loudly:

  ‘Mr Tindall!’

  ‘Sir?’ Attending, his hat off and on.

  Again loudly, for the benefit of all within earshot, Rennie gave his instruction:

  ‘Mr Tindall, I will like you to impress on every man of the watch that I will not tolerate insolence, idleness, nor disobedience on deck. Nay, nor anywhere in the ship. Any man that shows reluctant, nor slow, nor slovenly, neglectful and vicious, will be clapped in irons directly, d’y’hear me, now?’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  ‘We are short-handed, and engaged upon a long and vital pursuit in the service of the king. No man that is defiant of good order and discipline will escape harsh punishment! He will be tied upon a grating and flogged, and his grog stopped indefinite! You apprehend me, Mr Tindall?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Your deck.’

  And the captain strode aft and stood at the tafferel, hands clasped behind his back, every inch of him the stern disciplinarian, upright, determined and strong. Within he was quaking and nauseous, twinges of fear in his guts and in his water. He had not lifted his people at the burial service, as he had meant to. Somehow the right words – heartening, gathering, encouraging – would not come to him as they had always come in the past, when he had wished to unite the ship in a common purpose. And within moments of this failure he had been obliged to chastise and confine a man who was very likely as fearful as himself – with every good reason.

  ‘Men are dying.’ In his head. ‘Men are sickening and dying. And even when I told James I was certain of Terces ahead – in truth I was not, and am not yet.’

  Captain Rennie stood watching the wake – outwardly resolute, inwardly quaking – for several glasses together, and then he went below.

  During the night the pursuit disappeared. One moment the distant light was there, visible from the mainmast crosstrees, and a moment after it had vanished. The lookout informed the deck, and presently Lieutenant Hayter went aloft to see for himself – that there was nothing to be seen.

  Lieutenant Hayter remained in the crosstrees a further glass, hoping against hope that the light would reappear. It did not. He debated descending to the deck, going below to the great cabin to wake the captain and inform him, and decided to wait until first light. Perhaps the lantern had simply gone out on the mast of the distant ship, and not been relit.

  At first light, the pale gleaming of the sky reflected in the bleak wilderness of the rolling sea, there was no sign of a sail.

  James slid to the deck by a backstay, and went below.

  ‘She must have cracked on, sir, when the—’

  ‘God damn your reckless neglect, Mr Hayter!’ Rennie flung himself out of his hanging cot, stubbed his toe against a timber standard, and stumbled against the gun. In a fury:

  ‘You was obliged to tell me at once of any development, any change, and you did not! You skulked there aloft, fearful and irresolute, like some fucking little mid in his first year at sea!’

  ‘Sir, I do not think that is quite fair, when I—’

  ‘Be quiet, sir! Christ knows how far ahead Terces has gone by now! Christ knows if we will ever find her again! Why was not I informed immediate!’

  ‘I was not certain, sir. I could not be certain, when the ship was so far ahead, and perhaps the masthead light had simply—’

  ‘Silence! Y’will be silent, sir! I will not hear these damned piddling middy’s excuses on your lips! They sicken me! Sicken and disgust me! Cutton! – Cutton!’

  ‘I has just boiled my spirit kettle, sir, and shall bring your tea directly.’ Cutton, pushing his head round the door of the sleeping cabin. Rennie thrust him aside, and strode into the day cabin, pulling on his breeches. The ship lurched a little, and Rennie steadied himself against his table, and again turned on his lieutenant:

  ‘What o’clock did she disappear, hey? Can you remember even that little fact, I wonder? Or has it escaped you, as Terces has escaped us? Hey!’

  ‘The masthead light of the pursuit vanished at three minutes past six bells of the middle watch, sir.’ Checking a note with studied care, then looking up directly into Rennie’s eye.

  ‘What o’clock is it now?’

  James fumbled for his pocket watch, and at the same moment the ship’s bell sounded on the forecastle. Three bells. Half past five.

  ‘So we have lost two hours and a half!’ Rennie, in something like triumph.

  James made no reply.

  ‘Well!’

  ‘Well – what, sir?’

  ‘You acknowledge that we have lost all that time? Two hours and a half?’

  A light knocking now, at the door of the cabin. Rennie ignored it, and it was repeated – tap-tap-tap.

  ‘Cutton!’

  His steward did not appear, and in a fury of irritation Rennie strode to the door and flung it wide.

  ‘Well!’

  It was the surgeon’s mate, a thin, apologetic man with the face of an aged boy.

  ‘I humbly beg your pardon, sir, for disturbing you so early, but the surgeon—’

  ‘Yes yes, well well, Dr Empson has sent you to say there is more fever cases? Yes?’ Interrupting him.

  ‘No, sir, he has not sent me. I came of my own accord, sir. The surgeon himself has been took ill.’

  ‘The surgeon? Is it the fever?’

  ‘I – I wish it were not.’

  ‘Damnation.’ Softly, turning away to the window. Presently he faced the cabin again, his face sombre, and: ‘Very well, thankee . . . what is your name?’

  ‘Dart, sir. Eloquence Dart.’

  ‘Elo— Hm. Thankee, then. Are there any further cases of fever this day?’ Anxiously.

  ‘Only the surgeon himself, sir – so far.’

  ‘Ay, so far.’ A brief grimace – his attempt at a smile. ‘Will you do your best for him, Mr Dart, and say to him that I wish him a speedy recovery? Please to carry on with the surgeon’s duties in aiding the other sick men, and report to me again at noon today, will you?’ A nod of dismissal.

  When the surgeon’s mate had gone, Rennie thought a moment, a finger to his lips, then strode to the door, and:

  ‘Sentry!’

  ‘Sir?’ The Marine in his red coat.

  ‘Send word for the sailing master Mr Loftus to attend me in the great cabin at his earliest convenience.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  James waited, and when after a minute or more Rennie had said nothing further to him, he asked:

  ‘Do you wish me to remain, sir?’

  Rennie looked at his lieutenant, frowned, and curtly:

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I am expected on deck, sir, as officer of the watch, at eight bells.’

  ‘Y’will remain here until I dismiss you, Mr Hayter.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  When Bernard Loftus came to the great cabin a few minutes after, fully dressed but his eyes still muzzed with sleep, Rennie greeted him with another of his brief grimaces.

  ‘Mr Loftus, good morning to you.’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘I am making you Pursuit Officer, Mr Loftus, effective immediate. Mr Hayter will take his instruction in all matters pertaining to the pursuit from you. Your first task is to find her.’
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br />   ‘D’y’mean – find Terces, sir? Ain’t she there . . . ?’ A glance at James.

  James opened his mouth to speak, but Rennie, over him:

  ‘Mr Hayter has contrived to lose her in the night.’

  ‘At any rate, she has disappeared.’ James, glancing away toward the window.

  ‘A fact he did not report to me until a few minutes since. We have lost not only Terces, therefore, but a very great deal of time, whilst he deliberated, and procrastinated, and neglected his duty to inform me at once. Your task, Mr Loftus, is to make up that time and find me Terces, right quick. You have me?’

  ‘If indeed the ship that vanished was Terces.’ James, as if to himself.

  ‘Do you apprehend me, Mr Loftus?’ Rennie, ignoring James.

  ‘Yes, sir. Erm . . . are my duties as sailing master to be—’

  ‘Y’duties as sailing master will not be in any way interrupted. Your duties as Pursuit Officer will be consonant with them, entire. Thank you, Mr Loftus. Good morning.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ His hat on, and he departed. As he did so eight bells was struck on deck. When the door had closed, Rennie:

  ‘Are not you expected on deck, Mr Hayter? Ain’t it your watch, sir?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is. But I—’

  ‘Then why d’y’linger below deck, sir?’

  ‘I wished merely to ascertain my standing in the ship, sir.’ Not quite defiantly.

  ‘Your “standing”, sir, did y’say? You are a commissioned sea officer, with the rank of lieutenant, and your obligation is to perform your duties accordingly. “Standing” don’t come into it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. You said I was to take instruction from Mr Loftus. Did you mean that I was to confer with Mr Loftus about his new duties, or that he was to confer with me?’ An inquiring smile so icily polite it was nearly an outright rebuke, and at last Rennie reacted.

  ‘Take your watch, sir!’

  ‘Very good, sir. But may I—’

  ‘Not another word! Not one! Go on deck!’

  When James had gone Rennie sat down at his desk, and found that he was trembling with anger. His hands shook, his heart was thudding in his breast. Muttering furiously:

  ‘God damn and blast the bloody fellow! Cannot he see the gravity of our position? Cannot he grasp the extremity of the hazard we face, with fever raging in the lower deck, the pursuit lost, the people increasing fearful and reluctant, and Expedient far from any safe haven? Why must he take the adversarial role in any and every damned discussion, good God! Why does he look on me as his enemy, when I have strained every sinew to aid and assist him in his career! What has provoked this wretched, lunatic disloyalty! I do not deserve this treatment! Nay, I do not, I do not!’