The Distant Ocean

by Philip K Allan

  ‘I am to be cast as the avenging spirit, am I? Well, let the haunting commence, then.’

  ‘Mr Russell, kindly send this signal,’ ordered Clay. ‘Titan to commodore. Have on board Sutton, commander; Croft, midshipman; and one seaman. You will need to spell the names, I fear.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the midshipman, still busy with his chalk on the slate.

  It took two hoists for the entire signal to be transmitted. While the lines of flags were hauled aloft, Clay looked towards the other two ships and wondered what the reaction would be to the news. He noticed for the first time that the forecastle of the Titan was thronged with crew, with more joining them from below all the time.

  ‘Mr Taylor!’ barked Clay. ‘Is this a King’s ship or a Spanish Bumboat? Why, there must be every idler onboard up on the forecastle.’

  ‘The men have taken a keen interest in Captain Sutton’s return, sir,’ replied the first lieutenant. ‘I should imagine they do not want to miss anything.’

  ‘I don’t care if they wish to witness the second coming of Christ, I will not have the ship disgraced in this way! Look at them, gaping like village idiots that have just seen their first stagecoach! Kindly have them cleared away below, if you please. If they have no duties to attend to, I shall find them all employment cleaning the heads.’

  ‘Commodore signalling again, sir,’ announced the signal midshipman. ‘Report on board with Captain Sutton.’

  ‘Acknowledge, if you please, Mr Russell,’ said Clay. ‘And have my barge crew summoned.’

  The Titan stood on, the gap to the other two ships shrinking all the time. As she neared the little sloop, Clay thought he heard something, drifting across the sea.

  ‘What on earth is that noise?’ he asked.

  ‘It is cheering I think, sir,’ replied Russell. ‘It seems to be coming from the Echo.’

  They were very close now, about to pass behind the ship. There could be no mistaking the sound, as it rolled across the narrow stretch of water. He could see individual crewman who had climbed part way up the shrouds and waved their hats towards them. Others were gathered along the sides, arms aloft as they yelled. All seemed to be straining to get a glimpse of Sutton. Then they were level with her stern. Clay could see the sloop’s name picked out in gilded letters across her counter. For a brief moment he thought he saw a pale face looking back at him from one of the window lights, but then it vanished.

  *****

  ‘Sir, may I come in?’ asked Lieutenant Noble. He had the door ajar and was peering around it.

  ‘What the hell is it now?’ demanded Windham, his voice angry. The gin bottle was almost empty, and the air in the cabin was fogged with alcohol fumes.

  ‘Only Mr Galbraith reported there was no answer when he knocked earlier, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘He wondered if you were quite well.’

  ‘You can tell that little Scottish shit I don’t care for his damned signals,’ said Windham. ‘Damn and blast his eyes!’ Noble came into the cabin and stood over the slumped figure of his captain.

  ‘You must see this signal, sir,’ he said. ‘May I take a seat?’ There was no response from Windham, and after a pause Noble sat down anyway. ‘The Titan has signalled that they have Captain Sutton and Midshipman Croft onboard, sir.’

  ‘Sutton!’ yelled Windham. ‘I don’t believe it! He is dead! I saw the list of survivors and he wasn’t on it!’

  ‘The signal is quite certain, sir,’ continued the lieutenant. ‘The names had to be spelt out, letter by letter. There can be no mistake.’ Windham looked straight into his lieutenant’s eyes, his vision clear for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped.

  ‘I just don’t believe it,’ he muttered.

  ‘Now come on, sir,’ said Noble briskly. ‘The Titan is almost up with the squadron and is closing with the Black Prince. If there is truly some confusion, I am sure it will be resolved shortly. The commodore has ordered her captain and Mr Sutton on board to report. She will pass astern of us at any moment.’ Windham’s bloodshot eyes began to fill with tears.

  ‘All I ever wanted was justice, for my uncle,’ he spluttered. ‘Was that too much to seek?’ Noble looked away as his captain’s shoulders worked with grief and he sobbed over his empty glass.

  ‘I imagine that Sir George will want to see you soon, too, sir,’ he continued. ‘I will get your steward to make some coffee, and a bite to eat. Lay out some new clothes for you to wear, sir. You need to be ready for when he signals.’ His captain made no response, and after a moment Noble stood up and left the little cabin.

  For a long while Windham continued to sit at his desk. Then he looked up as a new sound echoed through the ship. It was the sound of the crew cheering. At first it confused him, and then the implications of it hit him.

  ‘The damned bastards,’ he muttered. ‘How can they cheer him, and yet loathe me?’ The level of light dropped in the cabin as a dark shape appeared astern of the sloop, looming over the little ship. He lurched up from the desk and staggered towards the stern windows. The Titan slid past, a seemingly endless hull of yellow and black. He peered up at the quarterdeck and saw the tall Clay, looking back at him. Stood next to him, also in a captain’s coat, was the unmistakable shape of John Sutton.

  He ducked back from the glass and stood, swaying uncertainly as he wondered what to do. The warmth of the gin leaked away, leaving behind only cold despair. This was it, the end of the road, he thought. Sutton will denounce me to Sir George. At that moment his steward came through the door with a steaming pot of coffee on a tray.

  ‘Get out,’ ordered Windham, his voice almost calm, with hardly a trace of the black feeling inside him. The cabin door clicked shut again, and he was alone once more. He sat back down at the desk, sure of what he would do. He pushed the empty glass and bottle aside with a sweep of his arm and both smashed on the deck, sending shards of glass far across the planking. He drew a sheet of paper towards him, dipped his pen into the ink well and scratched off a brief note. He folded it closed, rose to melt some wax on the cabin’s oil lamp, and sealed it shut. When the wax was hard he turned it over, wrote Commodore Sir George Montague, His Majesty’s Ship Black Prince, on the front, and propped it up against the ink stand. Then he reached for the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a large, polished mahogany box. It required both his hands to lift it to the desk top, such was its weight. He opened the lid and looked into velvet-lined interior.

  The metal of the pistol felt cold against his lips. A few grains of powder dropped onto his tongue, leaving an unpleasant, gritty taste. He tried to hold the heavy gun steady, but he found his hands trembled too much. The hard barrel rattled against his teeth in an unpleasant way and seemed to fill his whole mouth. He suppressed the feeling of being choked, and felt with one finger to check that the steep angle of the pistol pointed towards the roof of his mouth. Then he closed his eyes, pulled back the lock with a smooth click and gently squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 14 Plan

  A few months later, the remaining three ships of the squadron lay at anchor once more in a line beside the ramparts of the Dutch fort in Table Bay. Close at hand was the little naval dockyard, where the hull of the captured Prudence had been hauled out of the water to be repaired before her long trip back to Britain. It was deep winter now in the Cape, but the weather was little different from a spring day at home. The heavy rain clouds of the morning had been swept inland and were draped around the bulk of Table Mountain. Behind them, down near the coast, the sunlight sparkled off the choppy waters of the bay.

  All three ships rode high in the water, with long strips of copper sheathing flashing in the sunshine amongst the little waves. After months at sea they had all consumed their many tons of food and water. The Titan rode highest of them all, having blazed off a portion of her powder and shot into the unfortunate Prudence. Yet in spite of this, there seemed to be no great urgency to resupply the squadron. No lighters, packed with hogsheads of beef and sacks of biscuit, were
rowed out from the deserted dockyard. The French frigate lay on her slipway, her hull only partly repaired, with no one attending to her.

  In contrast the great cabin of the Titan had been a hive of activity for much of the morning. Just after dawn, the planking had been scrubbed clean, the windows and the woodwork polished and the stone grey paintwork refreshed. Once the floor covering and furniture had been returned to the room, the table had been covered with a snowy damask cloth, borrowed from the steward of the Black Prince, and laid with a blazing array of polished silver and cut glass. In his day cabin Clay pulled on his full dress coat and settled his Nile Medal around his neck. He caught it in a button hole, so that the heavy disc would not swing around as he moved. He may not have a ribbon and glittering order like Sir George, he thought as he touched the warm metal, but he was one of only a handful of captains entitled to wear this.

  All these preparations were for the benefit of just three naval officers. Two bells rang out from the belfry on the forecastle, and the sound was echoed faithfully from the other two ships. Clay hurried out of his cabin and grabbed the hat that his servant, Yates, held out to him. He then made his way across to join the throng of men grouped around the entry port. Moments later his two guests arrived, amongst a squealing of boatswain’s pipes and saluting marines. He greeted them both on the sunlit main deck, and then led the way down to the freshly cleaned cabin.

  ‘I fear that we must wait till the morning before we can be resupplied, gentlemen,’ explained the trim figure of Sir George Montague as he settled himself into the chair of the principle guest. ‘I have pleaded on bended knee to the superintendent, without any effect. Apparently all the dockworkers are Hollanders. Dutch Reform zealots to a man. War or no war, not one of them will stir from his home on a Sunday, save to attend divine service.’

  ‘Fortunately the wine merchant my steward engaged with must be a papist,’ said Clay. ‘He was quite content to stir himself to supply a dozen bottles of his best Cape bishop. Would you care to try some, Sir George?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ said the commodore. ‘Perhaps when our glasses are charged, we might drink to the health of the captain of the Echo.’ The two frigate captains held their wine up towards the last guest, and then drained them.

  ‘I must say, it is good to see you restored to health once more, Captain Sutton,’ continued Montague. ‘You start to resemble more your old self.’

  ‘Hear him!’ said Clay, drumming a hand on the tabletop in approval. ‘The waif we collected from Hope Island was as skinny as the sop of a midshipman I first met in the gunroom of the old Marlborough, if you will credit it. That was back in the year eighty-four. ’

  ‘I confess that I have been quite gorging myself,’ replied the commander of the Echo. ‘They say that absence breeds fondness, and that is certainly true where food is concerned. I shall need to stop soon, else I will be unable to fit into any of the uniforms that have been made for me.’

  ‘Not too soon, I trust, John,’ said his friend. ‘Harte has a splendid pudding for us to sample later.’

  ‘And how do you find the Echo?’ asked Montague. ‘The people were very unsettled before the unfortunate demise of Captain Windham, and such tragedies can have a pronounced effect.’

  ‘It has not been easy, Sir George,’ said Sutton. ‘Apart from Mr Croft and my steward, I have no followers with me aboard. I do not want to speak ill of my predecessor, but the men had been allowed to become rather slack. Some of their more rebellious urges had not been properly checked. But the officers are on the whole sound, and a few months of sail and gun drill has served to improve matters. They are not yet a match for the crew of my Rush, but they will be able to take their place in the battle line against the French with some credit, before too long.’

  ‘Whenever that shall be,’ muttered the commodore. ‘The damned cowards refuse to stand and fight us. Yet now we are driven off station to resupply, you may wager your commissions that they are abroad once more and busy preying on our commerce.’

  ‘We will be back in a month or so, to put pay to their mischief,’ said Clay.

  ‘Aye, but then they will simply fly back to hide behind their damned guns at Reunion!’ exclaimed Montague. ‘The whole thing is very vexing.’

  ‘Might something not be tried against Reunion, Sir George?’ asked Sutton. ‘If we were to deny them the comfort of their base, they would have little alternative but to return home.’ Montague toyed despondently with his food.

  ‘But how is that to be achieved?’ he asked. ‘You know the defences of St Paul better than most, captain. Are they not quite formidable?’

  ‘From the sea, certainly, but less so from the landward side,’ said Sutton. ‘If you had a body of troops that you might throw ashore a little farther down the coast, something might be attempted. I even know the spot to choose. I used to walk that stretch of beach most mornings.’

  ‘But we have little more than the hundred-odd marines we carry between us,’ said Montague. ‘No, unless we receive some troop reinforcements from home, we shall just have to return to our station, and hope for some chance circumstance to fall in our favour.’

  ‘On the subject of reinforcements from home, there was a very pleasing quantity of mail that awaited us in Cape Town,’ said Clay. ‘No less than twenty letters from my wife, if you will credit it.’

  ‘Any news?’ asked Sutton. ‘Of the child, I mean?’

  ‘Of course! Your wife was expecting when we left, I collect,’ exclaimed Montague. ‘Why, the blighter must have been born by now!’

  ‘Born, and several months old, if all has proceeded satisfactorily,’ said Clay. ‘But her last letter still predates the event. She speaks only of being very large and rather vexed at not being able to ride of a morning.’

  ‘Let us trust to Providence that all is indeed well, and toast the health of young Master or Miss Clay,’ said the commodore. ‘Come, charge your glass, Mr Sutton.’

  ‘Did you have much correspondence, John?’ asked Clay, once the toast had been drunk. He glanced significantly across the table.

  ‘I did, thank you,’ his friend replied with a grin. ‘And it was all of a very satisfactory character.’ Clay smiled back, and mouthed ‘Good’ at him, before rising from his place at the table.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘I also received a package from my sister, containing a most intriguing item.’ He picked up a thin volume bound in brown leather from his desk, and brought it over. ‘What do you make of this, Sir George?’

  The commodore picked up the book and flipped it open to the title page. It was dominated by an oval engraving of the head and shoulders of a solid looking man in sailor’s garb.

  ‘He looks vaguely familiar,’ mused Montague. He reached into his coat, produced a pair of silver reading glasses and perched them on his nose. ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Ablanjaye Senghore, or Able Sedgwick, the African,’ he read, and then looked up. ‘By Jove, Clay, ain’t he your coxswain?’

  ‘That’s right, Sir George. It is an account of his life to date. He spent much of his leisure time on my last commission setting it down. My sister has assisted him with finding a publisher.’

  ‘Did she now?’ said Montague. ‘And has it been well received?’

  ‘According to Miss Clay, it has caused quite a sensation back home. The abolitionists have made much of it, and all want to know where the author is to be found. Reports that he is thousands of miles away and fighting the enemies of the country that once enslaved him, has merely added to his fame, apparently.’

  ‘That all sounds well and good,’ said the commodore, putting the book down. ‘But I find this talk of ending the slave trade to be very ill-judged. Fact is that the country needs sugar and the navy needs rum. It won’t answer for our folk to work on these plantations in the Caribbean; they all die like flies of Yellow Jack or the Ague. What these dashed abolitionists don’t say is what will we do should the trade end? Without any Negros to cut the cane, where shall w
e be then, what?’

  ‘When I first served on the Rush, Sir George, it was in the Caribbean,’ said Sutton. ‘Our surgeon at the time married the daughter of a plantation owner in Barbados and subsequently left the service. His father-in-law freed his slaves, and then re-employed them as labourers. He found the change worked passing well, for although he had to pay them, they were much more productive.’

  ‘One enterprise don’t prove much,’ sniffed the commodore. ‘I hold all this talk of freeing slaves to be very ill-judged. Besides, I have always understood slavery to be the natural state of your Negro, back in Africa. If the trade was to end tomorrow, the condition of most Africans would hardly change.’

  ‘Perhaps you might care to borrow my copy of Sedgwick’s book, Sir George,’ suggested Clay. ‘Then you could judge for yourself?’

  ‘I could, but only if I thought his account to be genuine,’ he said, returning the book to its owner. ‘How do I know his head has not been turned with all manner of abolitionist nonsense, eh? Or that it is even a genuine account. Who ever heard of a Blackamoor who could write a book? No, he must surely have been assisted by someone.’

  ‘It is true that he learnt his letters from another shipmate, Sir George,’ explained Clay.

  ‘There you go,’ said the commodore. ‘Doubtless this other man or your sister are enemies of the trade and steered this narrative appropriately. Is this other sailor still aboard?’

  ‘No, he was killed at the Battle of the Nile, Sir George,’ said Clay. ‘As for the work, I need to read it myself to judge properly, but I believe it was chiefly Sedgwick’s own creation. Certainly I think that he had no more than a little assistance from my sister with finding a publisher.’

  ‘Sedgwick’s creation is certainly right,’ muttered the commodore.

  ‘I can assure you that Miss Clay would not be party to any work that was untruthful, or sort to dissemble, Sir George,’ said Sutton, glaring across the table. ‘I happen to know that she has an unimpeachable character.’ Montague stared back at him.