The Flying Squadron (30 page)

Drinkwater gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘So do I, James,' he interrupted.

‘How
are
you so sure?'

‘Because if I were in the same position this is what I would do.'

‘And you really think it is him? This man Stewart?'

‘Yes.'

‘How?'

‘I don't really know . . .'

‘Then how can you be sure of his mind?'

‘I can't be entirely sure of it, James . . .'

‘But,' Quilhampton expostulated vainly, frustrated at Drinkwater's failure to see where the decision to sail south might lead them, ‘a month ago you were in doubt as to how to proceed . . .'

‘But we reasoned here, in this very cabin, the interception of the East India fleet was the most likely thing,' Drinkwater paused. ‘Come, James, have faith; stick like a limpet to your decision.' There was a vehemence, a wildness in Drinkwater's voice, almost a passion that disturbed Quilhampton. It just then occurred to him with
a vivid awfulness that Drinkwater might indeed be on the verge of madness. He stared at his friend and tried again: ‘But how . . . ?'

‘By the prickin' of my thumbs,' Drinkwater said, looking down at the chart again, and Quilhampton withdrew, a cold and chilling sensation laying siege to his heart.

‘What do you think, damn it?' Quilhampton asked Pym as the surgeon, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, looked up from the candlelit pages that he held before him against the roll of the ship. ‘They're your confounded theories, ain't they? All this bloody obsession and conviction and what-not. Damn it, Pym, I've known the man since I was a boy. He's brilliant, but dogged like so many of us with never quite bein' in the right place at the right time. He got me out of Hamburg in terrible circumstances, all the way down the Elbe in the winter in a blasted duck-punt . . .'

‘Yes, I heard about that.'

‘D'you think the ordeal might have turned his mind?'

Pym shrugged. ‘This', he tapped the notes he had abandoned when Quilhampton sought him out, ‘is no more than a theory, based on a single case, that of your predecessor. I don't know about Drinkwater . . . You say he's changed?'

The use of Drinkwater's unqualified surname shocked Quilhampton. It almost smacked of mutiny, as if Pym, in his detached, objectively professional way, had actually committed a preliminary act by divesting Drinkwater of his rank. Quilhampton shied away from committing himself.

‘Certainly,' Pym rumbled on, ‘there are signs of obsession in his conduct, but I have to say we are not party to his orders and, as you yourself suggested, these may be of a clandestine nature. Wasn't he in Hamburg on some such mission?'

‘Yes,' Quilhampton agreed, worried at the direction the conversation was taking.

‘Perhaps,' Pym suggested with an air of slyness, removing his spectacles and leaning back in his chair to clean
them on his neck-cloth, ‘there is something else the matter.'

‘What the deuce d'you mean?' Quilhampton asked sharply.

‘You've heard the stories of the woman. Perhaps it isn't obsession he suffers from, but remorse . . .'

‘Preposterous!' snapped Quilhampton dismissively, starting to his feet and looking down at the surgeon.

‘If you say so, Mr Q.' Pym replaced the spectacles and picked up his pen.

‘I most emphatically do say so, Mr Pym.' Quilhampton turned the handle on the surgeon's cabin door, then paused in his exit. ‘This conversation, Mr Pym, must be regarded as confidential.'

‘We can regard it as never having happened if you wish, Mr Q.'

Quilhampton expelled his breath. ‘It would be best, I think.'

‘I think so too.'

‘Obliged. Good-night, Mr Pym.'

Pym bent to his manuscript and picked up his pen. The ship's motion was easier now and the lantern gyrated less, so he was able to write without the flying shadows distracting his failing sight.

It seems to me from a long observation of commanders in His Majesty's navy, that unopposed command may distort the reasoning powers of a clever man, that the balance of his rational, thinking mind may be warped by lack of good counter-argument and his imagination seized by obsession
.

Pym paused, tapping his pen on the broken teeth of his lower jaw. ‘The trouble is,' he puzzled to himself, ‘this is quite the reverse of a man vacillating between two distinct manners of thought. And if I am to identify the one, I needs must also consider the other.'

A warm glow of ambitious satisfaction welled in his stomach. Perhaps, unlike his subjects, he
was
in the right place at the right time. He dipped his pen and bent to his task.

‘The rendezvous, gentlemen.' Drinkwater tapped the spread chart with the closed points of the dividers and watched as they leaned forward to study the tiny, isolated archipelago a few miles north of the Equator and already far astern of them as they ran down the latitude of Ascension Island. ‘St Paul's Rocks, as likely a spot for the Americans to use too, so ensure you approach them with caution, should you become detached, and that you use the private signals . . .'

He looked round at them. Ashby was still studying the chart but Thorowgood's florid face, evidence, Drinkwater suspected, of a self-indulgent Christmas, hung on his every word, while Sundercombe, a mere lieutenant in the company of four post-captains, regarded him thoughtfully from the rear.

‘Now as for our cruising station, you will observe the rhumb-line from Ascension to St Helena as being exactly contrary to the south-east trade wind . . .'

They would, he explained, sweep in extended line abreast, the frigates just in sight of one another, tacking at dawn and dusk, in the hope of intercepting the East India convoy before any American privateers.

‘We know the Indiamen will have at least one frigate as escort, but Yankee clipper-schooners will have no trouble outmanoeuvring her and cutting out the choicest victims at their will. News of hostilities with America will have reached the Cape by now and it may be that a second
cruiser will have been attached; not that that will make very much difference. However, four additional frigates plus a schooner to match Yankee nimbleness', he paused and smiled at Sundercombe, ‘should bring the convoy home safely. Any questions?'

‘Sir,' said Ashby, ‘may I enquire whether your orders were to escort the East Indiamen, or remain on the American coast? I mean no criticism, but had we proceeded directly to the Cape we would have met with the India fleet for a certainty.'

A groundswell of concurrence rose from the other post-captains. Drinkwater had no way of knowing that the news of the silk petticoat had spread round the squadron by that mysterious telegraphy which exists among ships in company.
Sprite's
tendering and message-bearing had much to do with it, and the breath of intrigue had engendered a note of misgiving into the minds of Drink-water's young and ambitious juniors.

For himself, his own sense of guilt had been superseded by the conviction that he had picked up a vital trail at Castle Point, and he saw in Ashby's mildly impertinent question, full of the criticism he denied, the arrogance of young bucks seeking the downfall of an old bull. He lacked in their eyes, he knew, the bold dash expected of a frigate captain, and was, moreover, a tarpaulin officer of an older school than they cared to associate with. He knew, too, they had objected to his burning of the
Louise
. Tyrell, by being in sight in
Hasty
, would have had a legitimate claim to the prize money her sale might have realized, while the general principle of burning valuable prizes appealed to none of them. Ashby's question invited a snub; he decided to administer a lecture. Signalling Mullender to offer wine and sweet-treacle biscuits to his guests, he stared out of the stern windows. Only the lightest of breezes ruffled the sea and
Patrician
ghosted along, the other frigates' boats towing in the slight ripples of her wake. He knew from the silence, broken only by the soft chink of decanter on glass, that they waited for his reply. He swung on them with a sudden, unexpected ferocity.

‘You cannot
buy
yourself into the sea-service, gentle
men, as you can into the army. A ship-of-the-line is not to be had like a regiment or a whore. Oh, to be sure, interest, be it parliamentary or petticoat, sees many a fool up the quarterdeck ladder. But that does not
prevent
an able man getting there, though it stops many. Fortunately for the sea-service that peculiarly snobbish genius of the English, that of giving the greater glory to what costs 'em most, is absent in principle from naval promotion.'

He paused, glaring at them, gratified to see in their eyes the expressions of the midshipmen they once had been.

‘Nevertheless, a deal of useless articles have arrived on quarterdecks. Since Lord Nelson's apotheosis at Trafalgar, the Royal Navy has appealed to the second of England's vices after snobbery: that of fashion. How a service which accepts boys to be sodomized or killed at twelve or thirteen, poxed at eighteen and shot or knighted by their majority should become fashionable, is a matter for philosophers more objective than myself. All I know is that those of us who remember the last war with the Americans, if we aren't rotting ashore, dead, or been promoted to flags or dockyards, have been consigned to the living entombment of blockade, whilst injudiciously
fashionable
young men command our cruisers and risk destruction at the hands of the Americans . . .'

‘Excuse me, sir.'

‘What the devil d'you want?' Drinkwater broke off his diatribe, aware that Belchambers had been hovering by the door for some time. ‘Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, secretly delighted that Thorow-good was nearly purple with fury and Ashby's eyes glittered dangerously. Tyrell was studying his nails.

‘The wind's freshening a trifle, sir, and Mr Quilhampton says there's a strange sail coming up from the south'ard. She's carrying a wind and looks to be a whaler.'

The news transformed the gathering, the whiff of a prize, a Yankee whaler, affected them all, with the exception of their commodore.

‘Shall we go on deck, gentlemen, and see what we make of this newcomer before you return to your ships?'

The notion of waiting aboard
Patrician
while the whaler closed the squadron obviously irritated them still further.
Coolly Drinkwater led the way past the ramrod figure of the marine sentry and up the quarterdeck ladder.

‘British colours, sir.'

Quilhampton, who had the deck, lowered his glass and offered it to Drinkwater. Behind them the knot of frustrated frigate commanders and Lieutenant Sundercombe, who stood slightly apart and gravitated towards Mr Wyatt beside the binnacle, drew pocket-glasses from their tail pockets. With irritable snaps the telescopes were raised.

‘Maybe a ruse,' growled Thorowgood in a stage whisper.

‘Indeed it might,' Ashby added archly.

The whaler, her low rig extended laterally by studding sails, came up from the south with a bone in her teeth. Gradually her sails fell slack as she closed the British frigates and her way fell off.

‘I think not, gentlemen, she's losing the wind and lowering a boat.'

They watched as the whaleboat danced over the wavelets towards
Patrician
, the most advanced of the squadron.

‘He's pulling pell-mell. Ain't he afraid we might press such active fellows?' Drinkwater asked in an aside to Quilhampton.

‘D'you want me to, sir?'

‘I think we should see what he has to say, Mr Q,' Drinkwater replied.

The whaleboat swung parallel to the
Patrician
's side, half a pistol-shot to starboard.

‘Good-day, sir,' Drinkwater called, standing conspicuously beside the hance. ‘You seem in a damned hurry.'

‘Aye, sir, I've news, damnable news. Do I have to shout it out, or may I come aboard with the promise that you won't molest my men?'

‘Come aboard. You have my word on the matter of your men.' Drinkwater's heart was suddenly thumping excitedly in his breast. A sense of anticipation filled him, a sense of luck and providence conspiring to bring him at last the news he so desired.

The whaling master clambered over the rail. He was a
big, bluff, elderly man, dressed in an old-fashioned brown coat with grey breeches and red woollen stockings, despite the warmth of the day. He drew off his hat and revealed a bald pate and a fringe of long, lank hair.

‘I'm Cap'n Hugh Orwig, master of the whaling barque
Altair
homeward bound towards Milford,' the man said in a rush, waving aside any introductions Drinkwater might have felt propriety compelled him to offer, ‘you'll be after news of the Yankee frigate.'