A Brig of War (14 page)

‘Come, come, Mr Lestock, the Board of Longitude thought the problem worth twenty thousand sterling. All I ask is that you have a little faith in their investment.' But he did not wish to get involved in an argument and he went on, ‘It's high time we had those guns out of the hold. We're coming up with Ile de France, even you latitude sailors must know that, and it's time we mounted a full broadside before we meet a Frenchman. If it is calm tomorrow we'll hoist 'em out. In the meantime she's full and bye, nor'nor'east, all plain sail and nothing reported. Logged six knots five fathoms at one bell, wheel and lookouts relieved. Good night, Mr Lestock.'

‘Good night, Mr Drinkwater.'

As he broke his fast the following morning, when a dying wind held every prospect of their being able to remount the guns, he
heard again the words ‘Flying Dutchman'. He called Meyrick from the pantry. ‘Come now what's all this about?'

Meyrick was shamefaced but clearly confused. He told how a tale was going round the brig about them being condemned to everlasting drifting about, like the Flying Dutchman. It was all on account of the woman. ‘It's nothing but scuttlebutt, sir, but . . . well I . . .' Drinkwater smiled. It sounded ridiculous but he knew the grip a superstition could have over the minds of these men. It was not that they were simple but that their understanding was circumscribed. They had no idea where they were, they endured hours of remorseless labour to no apparent purpose. The best of them was paid twenty-nine shillings and sixpence gross, less deductions for the Chatham Chest, medical treatment, slops and whatever remaining delights, like tobacco, the purser sold them. Their lives were forfeit if they broke the iron-bound rules of conduct, and ruled by an arbitrary authority which was a yoke, no matter how enlightened. Recent events had conspired to make it the more irksome and there would be those among them with sufficient theology to assure their more credulous messmates that they were being punished for their carnal misdemeanours. It was not surprising therefore that their minds should react to a story as vivid as that of Vanderdecken, the legendary Flying Dutchman. The question was who had started its circulation?

‘Where did you first hear the story, Meyrick?'

The man pondered. ‘It was here in the gunroom, sir. Begging your pardon sir, I wasn't listening deliberately, sir but I heard . . .'

‘Well who was telling it, man?' said Drinkwater impatiently, well knowing Meyrick eavesdropped and passed the conversation of the officers to the cook who, from his centrally situated galley where all came during the day, fed out to the hands the gossip he saw fit.

‘I think it were Mr Quilhampton, sir.'

‘Mr Q, eh? Thank you, Meyrick. By the way you did not concern yourself over such things on
Kestrel
did you?'

‘Lord love you no, sir. But we was never far from home, sir. Ushant, Texel, them's home for British jacks sir, but up there now,' he pointed to the deckhead, ‘why nobody knows the stars, sir, even the bleeding sun's north of us at noon, sir. One of the men says there's islands of ice not many leagues to the south. It just don't seem right sir, kind of alarming . . .'

Drinkwater sent for Mr Quilhampton. ‘Meyrick tells me he
heard you spinning the yarn of the Flying Dutchman, is this true?'

‘Well no, sir. Actually I was listening. I mean I had heard it before, but I didn't like to say so, sir.'

‘Who was telling the tale then?'

‘Oh it was just by way of entertainment, sir. I was listening with Dalziell.'

‘But who was telling it?'

‘Why Mr Rogers, sir.'

‘No wind, Mr Lestock.'

‘None, Mr Drinkwater.'

‘Very well, clew up all sails and square the yards. A tackle at each of the lower yard arms, one on the main topmast stay and a bull rope to the capstan. The watch can rig those then turn up all hands.'

He fell to pondering the problem. Since the discovery of Catherine Best, Rogers had been very quiet. Whether or not he had had a relationship with the woman Drinkwater did not know. Neither did he care. Appleby told him the woman believed herself barren and there seemed no evidence of other complications. Nevertheless Rogers had been a party to the conspiracy. More, Drinkwater hoped, out of a misplaced, schoolboy prankishness than a calculated act. But Drinkwater was not sure. Rogers might have been evening the score, proving himself smarter than the first lieutenant. But that did not ring quite true. Rogers was an impetuous, fiery officer, spirited if low in moral character, certainly able and probably brave. The service was full of his type; they were indispensible in action. But Rogers was not a dissembler. His weakness lay in his impetuous temper. When Dalziell had brought Tregembo for a flogging Rogers had acted without a second thought. So was Dalziell behind this silly rumour? There was an inescapable logic about it. Not that the yarn was, in itself sinsister, but the persistence of its power to unsettle and subvert was real; very real. The sooner they had the guns remounted the better. Now that they were in temperate latitudes once again they could resume their routine of general quarters, suspended since the Cape in the heavy weather of the Roaring Forties. Drinkwater knew it was not sufficient to read the Articles of War once a month to keep the people on their toes. Only the satisfying roar and thunder of their brutish artillery could do that.

‘All ready, Mr Drinkwater. Hands at the tackles, the hatches off and the toms off the guns.'

‘Very well, Mr Lestock, then let us turn to.'

The first to emerge was the foremost starboard waist gun. The tackles of the starboard fore and main yardarms were overhauled and married to the big stay tackle. The three purchases thus joined were lowered into the hold. There they were hooked onto the gun, ready slung by a strop around its trunnions.

A bosun's mate commanded the hauling part of each tackle and at the gratings the bosun, Mr Grey, his silver chained whistle suspended about his neck, stood poised.

‘Set tight all!' The slack in the three tackles was taken up.

‘Stay tackle heave! Handsomely there now . . . yard tackles up slack!'

The black doubled hemp of the main topmast stay assumed a shallow angle and the mainmast creaked gently. The six pounder weighed eighteen hundredweights. Below in the hold six men tallied on a bull-rope round the gun's cascabel, steadying the black barrel. The next order came as the gun rose level with the deck: ‘Yard tackles heave!' The men grunted away in concerted effort. There were no merchant ship's shanties but a rhythmic grunt as fifty men, barefoot and sweating in the sunshine, strained at their work. ‘Walk back the stay tackle handsomely!'

The gun, suspended now from all three tackles, began to move horizontally across the deck. The bull-rope trailed slack and was pulled onto the deck by one of the topmen who ran forward to reeve it through a train tackle block.

‘Vast heaving main yard!' As the stay tackle party lowered slowly back and the mainyard party ceased work, the gun slewed forward under the pull of the foreyard tackle. It began to move across the deck diagonally.

‘Capstan party heave tight!' Twenty men walked round the capstan and tightened the bull-rope. Theirs was a job of adjustment, as was that of the gunner's party that stood by the waiting gun carriage.

‘Walk back the mainyard!' The gun moved forward now, almost over the carriage.

‘ 'Vast all!'

‘Walk back handsomely!' Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the gun began to descend. Trussel made some furious signals while Mr Grey held first the foreyard party, then the main. The gun
stopped while Trussel's men shoved the carriage a little. A minute later the gun rested on its trunnions. The cap-squares were shut. The carriage was slewed into position and run up against its port linel, then the breechings were passed.

‘Overhaul all . . .' The three tackles were passed down into the hold for the second gun.

They finished by mid-afternoon and were piped to dinner after which they were piped up again and went to general quarters. The broadsides were ragged and from his cot Griffiths expressed his disappointment.

‘Tell the people,' he muttered crossly, ‘that if that is the best they can do I will stop their grog again.'

It was not an order Drinkwater made haste to obey. The mood of the ship was too delicate and Appleby had told him the fever had aggravated Griffiths's leg and he was likely to be irritable and a semi-invalid for some time.

‘God knows what will become of him,' the surgeon said worriedly, ‘but his powers of recovery are greatly diminished since last year's attack.'

The silence of exhaustion fell upon the brig as the sun set. It was mixed with discontent for, despite reprovisioning at the Cape, some of the salt junk had been found bad and there had been no more that day to replace it. ‘It is likely to be a long voyage,' Drinkwater had reluctantly told the purser, ‘we must adhere to the rationing.'

He came below at eight p.m. his shirt sticking to his back, too tired for sleep. Not that sleep was to be had in the airless cabin. In the gunroom Appleby dozed over his madeira. Drinkwater slumped in a chair as the door to Griffiths's cabin opened and Catherine Best emerged. She held a finger to her lips, the very picture of solicitude.

As she passed Drinkwater she gave a little curtsey. He could scarcely believe his eyes and his mind was just forming a quite unjustified suspicion that she must have ulterior motives when a piercing cry of alarm came from the deck.

A silence followed, brief but oppressive with the most awful horror. Then, in that stunned hiatus, clearly heard through the open skylights and companionways: ‘It's him, boys! It's the Dutchman!'

So potent had been the cry that the senses seemed devoid of reason. Drinkwater felt his intelligence replaced by fear, then
with a curse he rose and rushed on deck. He ran forward to where Kellett, captain of the foretop, his arm outstretched was open mouthed in terror.

Others arrived and they too pointed, muttering fearfully, a papist or two crossing themselves, a good protestant on his knees confessing his sins direct to his maker. ‘Oh God forgive me that I did indeed have carnal knowledge of Mistress Best when that vessel of uncleanness was a greater whore than all the . . .' Next to him Drinkwater saw Dalziell. The midshipman was shaking as though palsied.

Drinkwater stared ahead at the dull, greenish glow. The night had become cloudy and dark, there was just a breath of wind and the glow grew larger. If his theory about Dalziell having initiated the silly rumours was correct the youth was paying for it now in a paroxysm of fear.

‘Whisht, listen boys! Listen!' The hubbub faded and they could hear the screams, the screams of souls in torment. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, blessed is the fruit of thy womb . . .'

‘Jesus Christ, what the hell is it?'

‘ 'Tis the Dutchman, boys . . . the Dutchman . . .'

Drinkwater pushed his way aft, unceremoniously grabbing Lestock's glass from the master's paralysed hand. He swung himself into the mainchains.

It was the hull of a galleon all right, with a high poop. But the vessel had been dismasted. He thought he could see movement, pale shapes flitting about on it. The hair on the nape of his neck crawled. He dismissed the superstition with an effort. But perhaps an old wreck, like those supposedly trapped in the weed of the Sargasso . . . ?

No, there was something familiar about those screams. ‘Mr Lestock!'

‘Eh? What?'

‘Do we have steerage way?'

‘Steerage way? Eh, oh, er we did, sir, just. Come you lubbers back to the wheel, damn it, what d'ye think this is?'

‘A point to starboard if you please.'

A gasp of incredulity greeted this order. Cries of supplication and threats floated aft. ‘The devil may take you, Mr Drinkwater, but not us, hold your course mates.'

‘Belay that forward! What's the matter my bully boys? Have you
lost your stomachs? Come now, I don't believe it. A point to starboard there . . .'

‘What the deuce is it Drinkwater?' muttered Rogers below him, ‘lend me the glass.' Drinkwater handed it down. ‘Let me see after you,' said Appleby. ‘Damn your eyes, it's my bloody glass.' Lestock snatched it peevishly from Rogers's eye.

‘You can see for yourself, Harry,' said Drinkwater suppressing laughter.

They were closing the apparition fast now. The supposition that it was a galleon had made a fantasy of distance. In fact it was quite close and as they passed it there was a surge backwards from the rails, cries of revulsion as the stink of the dead whale assailed their noses.

‘Well it stinks like hell for sure!' There was the laughter of relief up and down the deck as they realised what huge fools they had been.

The decomposing whale had swelled up and glowed from the millions of tiny organisms that fed upon it. Shrieking and screaming above it a thousand seabirds enjoyed the funeral feast of the enormous mammal while the water about it was thrashed to a frenzy by a score of sharks.

They watched it fade astern. Laughing at themselves the men drifted below. It seemed the atmosphere about the ship had been washed clean by that appalling smell. Drinkwater wished his companions good night when a party was seen coming from forward. Four men were carrying the inert white-shirted and breeched body of a midshipman. ‘Is that Mr Q?'

‘Lord no, sir. I'm here.'

‘It's Mr Dalziell, zur,' said Tregembo, lowering the midshipman. ‘Fainted he did, zur, in a swoon.'

‘Well, well, well,' said Drinkwater ironically, ‘it seems that vengeance is still the Lord's.'