The Flying Squadron (18 page)

He looked at the moon. It would be setting over Gantley Hall, already the first pale flush of the morning would be turning the grey North Sea the colour of wet lead, glossing the ploughed furrows of his oh-so-proudly acquired acres.

With an effort he mastered his temper, his dark fears and forebodings. ‘I am grown selfish, morbid and gloomy,' he muttered to himself, ‘and there is work to do.' There was always work, always duty, always the submission of the self to the common weal. It was the great consolation. The thought steadied him, drove back the gathering megrims and the whimpering self-pity that threatened, for one desperate, lonely moment, to overwhelm him.

No, he could not visit his anger upon men who had
been merely neglectful of their duty. Doubtless the deserters had employed a degree of guile, slipping into the moored boat and shoving off as the guard-boat vanished round the far side of the frigate. Davies, the master's mate in charge, had heard nothing, nor seen anything. Yes, he had agreed, his men had been pulling somewhat lethargically and the current had, he admitted, swept them down a little too far from the ship than he would have wished, but he had forgotten how many circuits they had made during his watch . . .

Drinkwater could guess the rest. A distracted or dozing sentry, maybe even a colluding one, and who could blame the poor devils when some men had long been away from the kind of comforts he had so liberally indulged in the preceding day?

But eight men had run . . . He began to think logically again, thrusting aside the earlier train of thought. The ache in his old wounds throbbed into the background of his consciousness.

There must be those among them who remembered hanging a man for desertion before
Patrician
left for the Pacific. There was even less cause for mercy upon the present occasion. At least then the victim had the not unreasonable excuse of running to find out whether the tales of his wife's infidelity were true.

The thought of marital infidelity made Drinkwater sweat again. He had betrayed his wife and been unjust to Arabella; she was no wanton and, he reflected, he was no libertine. He took heart from the thought.

Eight men had run and it was time to tackle the problem, but in such a way as allowed him to control events. Yesterday, for that is how it was now, part of the unalterable past, yesterday had been a day during which he had lost control, been swept up by events, relaxed and forsaken his duty; perhaps for a few hours he had been merely himself, in all the lonely isolation of an individual human soul, but now, today, and from this very minute, he must be what he was: a sea-officer. He squared his shoulders, swung on his heel and strode forward.

‘Gentlemen,' he said coolly, ‘we are here to see Mr Vansittart lands safely and with every prospect of success
in his task. He is to board the schooner which arrived here at sunset and will do so at six bells in the morning watch. That is seven o'clock by your hunter, Vansittart, if you made the last correction for longitude. My barge is to be used for the transfer, Mr Belchambers in command. Do you understand?'

There was a mumbled chorus of comprehension.

‘Very well, then I suggest those of us not on duty should get some sleep.' He stepped forward and they drew apart.

‘Sir, what about . . .' Metcalfe began.

‘Let's deal with that in the morning, shall we? Goodnight, gentlemen, I trust you will sleep well.'

‘They will be laughing at us over there this morning,' Drinkwater said and Moncrieff, Gordon, Metcalfe and Frey all looked at the
Stingray
, visible in part through the stern windows. ‘More coffee . . . ?'

If the officers assumed their invitation to breakfast was an invitation to a council of war, they were disappointed. Their commander's detached and almost negligent approach was reminiscent of the night before.

Indeed, Metcalfe, going below to turn in, had expressed the opinion that Drinkwater seemed about to let the matter slide and to bid good riddance to the eight who had run. Such pusillanimity was, he concluded, quite within the captain's erratic character and would have a bad effect on the men. They could, he asserted with an almost cheerful conviction, look forward to more desertions if he proved correct in his assumption. In the prevailing gloom no one had seen fit to contradict him. He was, in any case, given to extreme expressions of opinion and no one took much notice of him. It was only over the coffee and burgoo that they recalled the matter and thought Metcalfe might, after all, have a point. Close to the land as she was, the ship might well become ungovernable and the thought made them all uneasy.

There was no doubt the Yankees would find the event most amusing.

‘What
are
your intentions, sir,' Moncrieff ventured boldly, anxiety plain on his open face, ‘now Mr Vansittart has gone?'

Drinkwater sat back and regarded the company. Metcalfe looked his usual indecisive, critical self, an air of mock gravity wrapping his moon face in a cocoon of self-importance. Gordon and Frey looked concerned, ready to act upon orders but too junior to have any influence upon events. Only Moncrieff, the ever-resourceful marine lieutenant, had physical difficulty in holding his eager initiative in check.

Drinkwater smiled. ‘What do you suggest, Mr Frey?'

Frey's Adam's apple bobbed. ‘Well, sir, I should, er, send out a search party . . .'

‘Mr Gordon?'

‘I agree, sir, perhaps to scour the countryside, check the buildings on the estate here . . .'

‘Run downstream, they'd have used the current to put as great a distance between us and them and they know there are towns and villages for miles along the banks of the bay . . .'

‘Very good, Mr Moncrieff. Mr Metcalfe?'

‘I agree with Moncrieff, sir, and they already have a head start of', he pulled out his watch, ‘almost ten and a half hours.'

‘Do we know exactly what time they got away?'

‘Well no, not exactly, sir, but . . .'

‘Very well. The launch, with a corporal's guard and provisions for three days, is to leave for a search along the shore. Mr Frey, you are to command. Mr Gordon, you may run along the Potomac shore in the remaining cutter. Take a file of marines, but contrive to look like a watering party, not a war party. I don't want trouble with the local population. Be certain of that. Under the circumstances I would rather lose the men than have a hornets' nest stirred up to undermine Vansittart's mission. That is an imperative, do you understand?'

‘Aye, sir.'

‘Aye, sir.'

‘Very well, you may carry on.'

Frey and Gordon scraped back their chairs. Metcalfe and Moncrieff made to rise too, but Drinkwater motioned them to remain seated. After the junior lieutenants had gone Drinkwater rose, lifted the decanter of Madeira
from its fiddle and, with three glasses, returned to the table.

‘I was surprised no one mentioned the
Stingray,'
he said as the rich, dark wine gurgled into the crystal glasses.

‘The
Stingray
, sir?' Moncrieff said with quickening interest, ‘They wouldn't dare . . . I mean how the deuce . . . ?'

‘When I went ashore, the blue cutter was alongside the starboard main-chains. Davies, the master's mate rowing guard, said they dropped too far downstream before they rounded the stern, but even then I suspect they were too stupefied by the monotony of their duty to notice immediately the cutter was missing in the darkness. They probably fell downstream
every
circuit they made. But being downstream they commanded a fair view of the larboard side of the ship and, with the light southerly breeze then blowing, the ship was canted across the current sufficient to render the starboard, not the larboard side the more obscured . . .'

‘And the
Stingray
was in, as it were, the shadow of the ship, lying to starboard of us, begging your pardon, sir,' Moncrieff added hurriedly. ‘God damn it, of course! They pulled directly for the
Stingray
!'

‘What makes you so sure, sir?' asked the unconvinced Metcalfe. Drinkwater's clever assessment undermined his own carefully argued case for the captain's general incompetence.

‘I've a notion, shall we say, Mr Metcalfe? Nothing more.' But it was more, much more. He did not explain that something in Captain Stewart's over-confident demeanour had laid a suspicion in his mind. He had only just realized that himself, but now it gripped his imagination with the power of conviction.

‘What about the boat, though?' persisted Metcalfe, unwilling to give up his theory.

‘Oh, I expect Frey will find it downstream somewhere. The current and the wind will probably have grounded it on the Maryland shore.'

‘Damn it, I think you're right, sir.' Moncrieff's eyes were glowing with certainty.

‘Thank you, Moncrieff,' Drinkwater said drily. ‘And now I think I'd better write to Mr Shaw and explain why
marines and jacks are likely to be seen trampling over his land this morning. Perhaps you'd pass word for Thurston . . .'

‘He was among the eight, sir,' said Metcalfe, his theory bolstered by Drinkwater's forgetfulness. ‘I told you last night.'

‘Oh yes, I had forgot.' Drinkwater felt a sensation of shock. He had been too self-obsessed last night to assimilate that detail. If Metcalfe's nervously delivered report had contained the information, it had simply not sunk in. It was not Arabella who had gulled him, he thought now, kinder to himself and therefore to her, she had merely let passion run away with her, as he had done himself; but Thurston had most assuredly duped him, lectured him and then pulled wool over his preoccupied eyes!

‘But if you are right, sir, what do you intend to do about the Americans?' Metcalfe asked, prompting, aware that if Captain Drinkwater did not do something then he would most assuredly dishonour the flag.

‘I am going to dissemble a little, Mr Metcalfe.'

‘Dissemble, sir?' It was a policy Metcalfe had neither considered himself, nor thought his superior capable of.

‘Yes. They are not going to sail until we do; they will sit as post-guard upon us until we depart. Let us bluster about our searches and, while we can, keep a watch upon her deck. You have a good glass, Mr Metcalfe?'

‘Aye, sir, a Dollond, like yours.'

‘Very well, busy yourself about the quarterdeck without making your spying too conspicuous. How many of these eight men would you recognize?'

‘Well, Thurston, sir, and a man called King, foretop-man, one of our best . . .'

‘I know Carter, sir,' put in Moncrieff, ‘and the Dane Feldbek . . .'

‘And there were the two Russians, the fellows from the
Suvorov
, Korolenko and Gerasimov,' Drinkwater added, remembering now how Metcalfe had stumbled over the pronunciation of their names, ‘you'd recognize them, surely?'

‘Yes, of course, sir,' Metcalfe hurriedly agreed, surprised at Drinkwater's access of memory.

‘Well, that is six of them,' Drinkwater said, finishing his wine and rising from the table. ‘They cannot keep 'em below indefinitely.'

Moncrieff and Metcalfe rose at this signal of dismissal. Drinkwater turned to stare out through the stern windows at the American ship. Sunlight picked out her masts and yards and the thin, pale lines of her immaculately stowed sails. Her ports were open and her guns run out. There were signs of men at exercise about her decks, the glint of cutlasses and boarding pikes.

‘What will you do if and when we spot them, sir?' asked Metcalfe from the doorway.

‘Mmmm?' Drinkwater grunted abstractedly, still gazing at the Yankee sloop.

‘What will you do, sir,
vis-à-vis
the Yankee?'

‘Ain't it a first lieutenant's privilege to lead cutting-out parties, Mr Metcalfe?' Drinkwater replied absently, turning back into the cabin.

Metcalfe had difficulty seeing the captain's expression, silhouetted as he was against the sun-dappled water in the background, but Drinkwater stepped forward and Metcalfe was shocked to see a look of implacable resolve fixed upon Drinkwater's face. ‘Almost', he said to himself, ‘as if he had been staring at an enemy.'

Frey's party found the missing cutter. It had grounded on a spit fifty yards from the Maryland shore.

‘I don't know where they landed, sir,' he reported later that day, ‘but that boat had been drifting.'

‘We know where they landed, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater said, nodding at the sloop they could see through the stern windows.

‘The
Stingray
, sir?' queried Frey in astonishment.

Drinkwater nodded. ‘We've seen both the Russians using the head,' he said drily. ‘I daresay if we wait long enough we'll see all eight of them bare their arses in due course.'

‘So, er, what do you intend doing, sir?'

Drinkwater drew in his breath and let it out again. ‘Well, I believe the Americans call it playing possum, but you've a little time before dark. I want you to go and beat up a bit
of shore-line. Pull round a little, let our friends over there think we're hoodwinked.' Drinkwater rose and leaned forward, both hands spread on the table. ‘I don't want to do
anything
to jeopardize Vansittart's mission. On the other hand, the ship's company must not be allowed to think we are taking no action, so make no mention of the fact that we know about the presence of the deserters aboard the
Stingray
, do you understand?'

‘Perfectly, sir. In fact the men may already know.'

‘Good, now be off with you and conduct yourself like a man who's just had a flea in his ear and been told not to come back empty-handed.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Frey turned and was about to open the cabin door when Drinkwater added: ‘You
can
come back though, Mr Frey, and with all your boat's crew, if you please.'