Baltic Mission (9 page)

Samuel Rogers woke in the night, his head thick and his mouth dry. He lay staring into the creaking darkness as the ship rose and fell, riding out the last of the gale under her reefed topsails and awaiting the morning.

The events of the previous evening came back to him slowly. The pounding of his headache served to remind him of his folly and, once again, he swore he would never touch another drop. He recalled the interview with Drinkwater and felt his resolve weaken, countered by his deep-seated resentment towards the captain. They were of an age; once a few days had differentiated them in their seniority as lieutenants. Now there was a world of difference between them! Drinkwater a post-captain, two steps ahead of Rogers and across the magic threshold that guaranteed him a flag if he lived long enough to survive his seniors on the captains' list.

It was convenient for Rogers, in the depths of his misery, to forget that it was Drinkwater himself who had rescued him from the gutter. Samuel Rogers was no different from hundreds of other officers in the navy. He had no influence, no fortune, no family. Fate had never put
him into a position in which he could distinguish himself and he lacked that spark of originality by which a man might, by some instinctive alchemy of personality, ability and opportunity, make his own luck. To some extent Rogers's very sense of obligation fired his steady dissolution; his jealousy of Drinkwater's success robbed him of any of his own. In his more honest moments he knew he had only two choices. Either he went to the devil on the fastest horse, or he pulled himself together and hoped for a change of luck. In the meantime he should do his duty as Drinkwater had advised and the consideration that he was on a crack frigate under an able officer seemed to offer some consolation. But after that one drink that was all he needed to settle himself, the axis of his rationality tilted. After the inevitable second drink it lost its equilibrium, leaving him ugly with ill-temper, inconsiderate and tyrannical towards the gunroom, cockpit and lower deck.

As he lay in the darkness, while above him the bells rang the middle watch through the night, he knew that some form of turning-point had been reached. Up until that moment his drunkenness had not come to Drinkwater's attention. Until that had happened, Drinkwater was simply the captain, a man of influence and advantage, one of the lucky ones in life's eternal lottery seen from the perspective of one of its losers. Now, however, the captain assumed a new role. His power, absolute and unfettered, could confront Rogers and demolish his alcoholic arrogance with fear.

For although the service had disappointed him, Rogers had nothing beyond the navy. If he was broken by a court martial as remorse said he deserved to be, he would have only himself to blame. The penury of half-pay in some stinking kennel of lodgings alongside the whores and usurers of Portsmouth Point was all that disgrace and dismissal would leave him with.

He lay in his night-shirt, sweat sticking it to his body, staring into the darkness of his tiny cabin. Loneliness possessed him in its chill and unconsoling embrace as he knew that, come the morning, he would be unable to resist the drinks that even now he swore he would never touch again.

Drinkwater was on deck at dawn. He, too, had slept badly and woke ill-at-ease. He had not liked humiliating Rogers any more than discovering four men turned-up drunk from their watch below. It was manifestly unfair to expect men who had more than a liberal amount of alcohol poured into them by official decree to offset the deficiencies
of their diet, to remain as sober as Quakers, particularly in their watch below. But, Drinkwater reasoned, four drunkards probably indicated that a hardened group had illicit access to liquor. In addition to these men, Rogers was obviously abusing his own powers to gain access to the spirit-room. The addictive qualities ofnaval rum were well known and many a man, officer and rating alike, had died raving from its effects upon the brain. Furthermore it was possible that whoever was aiding and abetting the first lieutenant was probably taking advantage of the opportunity to plunder an equal quantity for the hardened soaks among the crew.

The thought tormented Drinkwater as he lay awake, shivering slightly as a faint lightening of the sky began to illumine the cabin. He abandoned his efforts to sleep, swung his legs out of the cot and began to dress. Ten minutes later he was on deck. The wind had eased during the night and the approaching daylight showed it to be backing. They would have to tack again soon, and stand more to the west-north-westward. Hill had the morning watch and, having passed instructions to tack at the change of watch, Drinkwater fell to pacing the quarterdeck.

His mind was in a turmoil. He loathed using the cat o' nine tails except for serious crimes. For most minor punishments, public humiliations and loss of privilege served to make a man regret his folly. Besides, it was Drinkwater's firm belief that a strong discipline, strictly enforced, prevented most men from overstepping the mark. At home he tired of debates with Elizabeth upon the subject. She considered his rule illiberal, but failed to understand the cauldron of suppression that a man o' war on a long commission became: some ten score of men whose only reason for existence was to pull and haul, to hand, reef and steer, to load and ram and fetch and carry and fight when called upon to do so, in the name of a half-witted old king and a country that cared more about the nags and fillies of Newmarket than their seamen.

Drinkwater's anger grew as he paced up and down. It was Rogers's business to manage this motley mixture of seamen, this polyglot collection of the ‘jolly-jack tars' of popular imagination, who were everywhere shunned once they got ashore among the gentry of the shires. It was a simple enough matter, if attended to sensibly. The might of the Articles of War stopped the poor devils from being men and turned them into pack-animals deserving of a little attention. God knew they asked little enough! Damn Rogers! He had no business behaving like this, no business prejudicing the
whole commission because he could not leave the bottle alone!

Little Midshipman Frey skidded across the deck on some errand for the master.

‘Mr Frey!' he called, and the lad turned expectantly. ‘Mr Frey, give my compliments to the surgeon and ask him to step on deck as soon as he can.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater stared grimly after the retreating figure. It was not yet time for Mr Lallo to be called. He was one of the ship's idlers, men whose work occupied them during daylight hours and absolved them from night duty except in dire emergencies. From his eventual appearance it was obvious Drinkwater's summons had called him from the deepest slumber. Drinkwater was suddenly touched by envy of the man, that he could so sleep without the intereference of troublesome thoughts.

‘You sent for me, sir?' Lallo suppressed a yawn with difficulty. ‘Is there something amiss? Are you unwell?'

Drinkwater turned outboard, inviting Lallo's confidence at the rail. ‘The matter is not to become common gossip, Mr Lallo.'

Lallo frowned.

‘The first lieutenant . . . I want you to have him confined quietly in his cabin for a day or two, starve him of liquor and convince him it is in his own best interests. Tell the gunroom he is sick. D'you understand?'

‘Yes, I think so, sir. You want Mr Rogers weaned from the bottle . . . ?'

‘And quickly, Mr Lallo, before he compels me to a less pleasant specific. I cannot hold my hand indefinitely. Once I am forced to recognise his true state then he is a ruined man. Quite ruined.'

‘I cannot guarantee a cure, sir, I can only . . .'

‘Do your best, yes, yes, I know. But I am persuaded that a few days reflection may bring him to his senses. Do what you can.'

‘Very well, sir.' Lallo sighed. ‘I fear it may be a violent business . . .'

‘I am sure that you will see to it, Mr Lallo. And please remember that the matter is between the two of us.'

‘The three of us, sir,' Lallo corrected.

‘Yes, but it is
my
instructions that I want obeyed, damn it! Don't haze me with pettifoggin' quibbles and invocations of the Hippocratic oath. Rogers is half-way to the devil unless we save him,' Drinkwater said brusquely, turning away in dismissal.

‘Very well, sir, but he is a big man . . .'

‘Just do your duty, Mr Lallo, if you please.' Drinkwater's exasperation communicated itself to Lallo at last and he hurried off. Drinkwater watched him waddle away then stared again over the sea. The waves were no longer spume-streaked. Fluttering up into the wake a bevy of gulls hunted in the bubbling water where the tiny creatures of the deep were caught up in the turbulence of
Antigone
's passing hull. The crests broke infrequently now and the vice had gone out of the wind. He watched the pattern of quartering gulls broken up by the predatory onslaught of a sudden swift skua. The dark bird selected its quarry and hawked it mercilessly, folding its neck beneath one wing until the gull, terrified into submission, evacuated its crop in one single eructation. The skua released its victim and rounded on the vomited and part-digested food, folded its long dark wings over its back and settled in the frigate's wake.

He was startled by someone at his elbow.

‘Beg pardon, zur, but your shaving water's getting cold in the cabin.'

Drinkwater nodded bleakly to his coxswain. He thought that Tregembo already knew of the strong words that had been passed between captain and first lieutenant the previous evening. Doubtless Mullender had let the ship's company know too, but that was unavoidable. He led Tregembo below.

Taking off cloak, coat and hat, and unwinding the muffler from his neck, he began to shave. ‘Well, Tregembo . . . what do they say?'

‘The usual, zur.'

‘Which is one law for the officers . . .'

‘And one for the hands, zur.'

‘And what do they expect me to do about it, eh?' He pulled his cheek tight and felt the razor rasp his skin. The water was already cold. He swirled the blade and scraped again.

‘They are content that you are a gennelman, zur.'

Drinkwater smiled, despite his exasperation. It was a curious remark, designed to caution Drinkwater, to place upon him certain tacitly understood obligations. Only a man of Tregembo's unique relationship could convey such a subtlety so directly to the commander of a man o'war; while only an officer of Drinkwater's stamp would have taken notice of the genuine affection that lay beneath it. ‘Then I am content to hear it, Tregembo.'

‘There
are
four men in the bilboes, zur . . .'

‘Quite so, Tregembo.' The eyes of the two men met and Drinkwater
felt forced to smile again. ‘Life is like a ship, Tregembo.' He saw a puzzled look cloud the old man's face. ‘Nothing ever stays still for long.'

Picking up the napkin he wiped the remaining lather from his face and held his hands out for his coat.

Drinkwater looked down at the faces of the ship's company assembled in the waist. They were the usual mixed bag, some thirteen score of men from all four corners of the world, but most from Britain and Ireland. There were the prime seamen, neat in their appearance, fit and energetic in their duties, those men for whom, in the purely professional sense, he had the highest regard. Yet they were no angels. Long service had taught them all the tricks of the trade. They knew when to ‘lay Tom Cox's traverse' and avoid work, how to curry favour with the petty officers and where to get extra rations, tobacco or spirits in the underworld that flourished aboard every King's ship. Neither were they exclusively British or Irish. There was at least one Yankee, on board a British ship for a reason he alone knew though many suspected. There was also a Swede, two Finns and a negro whose abilities aloft were, within the little world of the
Antigone
, already part of legend. But the bulk of the frigate's people were made up of ‘ordinary' seamen, waisters and landsmen, in a strictly descending order of hierarchy as rigid as its continuation upwards among the officers. It was a social order imposed by the uncompromising nature of the sea-service and extended in its inflexible formality from Drinkwater to the stumbling, idiotic luetic whose only duty consisted of keeping the ship's lavatories clean. Each man had a clearly defined task at sea, at anchor, in action and during an emergency in which the strength of his arm and the stamina of his body were the reason for his existence.

They spread right across the beam of the ship, no further aft than the main-mast. Some ships bore a white line painted across their deck planking there, but not the
Antigone
. She had been acquired from the French and no such device had ever been added. They were perched in the boats on the booms, up on the rails and sitting on the hammock nettings. Men crowded into the lower ratlines of the main shrouds and all wore expressions of expectancy.

Between the untidy mob of ‘the people', the midshipmen, master's mates and warrant officers occupied the neutral ground. Abaft them the files of marines made a hedge of fixed bayonets, cold steel ready for instant employment in defence of the commissioned officers.

The murmur of comment that noted the absence of Rogers subsided the instant Drinkwater's hat began to rise in the stairwell, but he heard it, as he was meant to. He strode to the binnacle and looked at the men and took his time, opening the punishment book with great deliberation, gauging the mood of the hands. He looked about him, checking that the helmsmen, quartermaster, sentinels and look-outs were at their stations.

‘Bring up the prisoners!'

The ship's corporal guarding the four seamen with a drawn bayonet shoved them forward from the companionway. They stood miserably after a cramped night in the bilboes, their ankles sore from the chafing of the irons. They could expect, by common custom, three dozen lashes apiece. Drinkwater turned to Fraser and raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Fraser . . .' he reminded.