A Sea Unto Itself (33 page)

“All right, fine. I’ll give you two months,” Charles said irritably. “I’ll take you off near Koessir, but you must be there at the agreed time. I’ll give a day or two’s grace; after that I’ll sail without you.”

Jones glowered at him. He had just opened his mouth to speak when Hitch raced in, slamming the door loudly behind him. “Sir,” the midshipman began excitedly.

Charles could not remember hearing the capstan turn to take up the strain on the anchor cable or any of the other activity which he would have expected preparatory to weighing. “Just a moment, Mr. Hitch,” he snapped. “Watch your manners, if you please. I will attend to you as soon as Mr. Jones and I are finished.”

“Yes, sir,” Hitch said, fidgeting nervously.

“Then we are agreed?” Charles said, turning back to Jones.

“Sir, the crew has mutinied!” Hitch blurted out, unable to contain himself any longer. “They refuse to lift the anchor or go further until their grievances are answered.”

“What?” Charles said.

“Lieutenant Bevan has requested your presence on the quarterdeck as soon as you find it convenient, sir,” the boy said, finishing his message.

Jones rolled his eyes heavenward in disbelief.

CHAPTER TEN

Charles bolted from the wardroom without thinking to take up his uniform coat and hat, or even his sword. “Come with me,” he snapped at the marine sentry outside the door, leapt onto the aft ladderway and ran upwards. He had thought to make for his quarterdeck, but as he emerged onto the gundeck he saw the crew clustered in the waist. He could see from their attitude that it was not a mutiny, at least not in the sense that they were attempting to seize control of the ship by force. Hitch had said that they refused orders to hoist the anchor; he could guess why. Charles started forward, angry that his crew was once again disobedient, angry at the impossible situation he found himself in, and above all, angered that he had been frustrated at every turn in finding a solution.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted. He pushed the first man he came to aside and forced his way into the crowd, then moved to the center of the deck and looked around him. “Who’s in charge here?” No one spoke or stepped forward except the lone marine from outside his cabin who had finally caught up and moved to stand nervously beside him. “Who’s in charge?” he repeated loudly. “Who is your spokesman?” Still no one moved, so he said, “For Christ’s sake, what kind of mutiny is this? You have to have a spokesman if I’m to hear your complaints. Pick someone then.” There was a small commotion on the starboard side near the number nine gun. After a moment an able seaman Charles recognized as Thomas Sherburne was thrust to the front of the circle. Hesitantly, Sherburne knuckled his forehead. “It ain’t no mutiny,” he said. “We have grievances. Yer ain’t goin’ to flog me for speakin’ out, is ye?”

“I’ve never flogged anyone for speaking their mind,” Charles answered. At that moment Augustus made his way toward him, carrying Charles’ sword and pistols. Charles motioned for him to wait. “Speak up, Sherburne; I’ll hear what you have to say.”

“Ye have broken yer word to us, sur,” the seaman said, more sure of himself. “Ye promised us leave ashore at the first opportunity. Well, here it is,” he pointed toward Massawa, “and we ain’t got it.” Before Charles could speak, a second man—one of the Americans he’d pressed at Bunce Island—stepped forward. “We ain’t sailing nowhere ‘til we get what’s due us.” Charles noticed that all of the men in his field of vision—British, American, senior seamen and junior—nodded in agreement. He heard a chorus of “ayes and yeas,” and similar sentiments all around him. He suddenly saw the irony of it. All of his efforts to stop the crew from fighting among themselves had finally succeeded. He had somehow managed to unify them in opposition to himself instead. He raised his arms for silence. “You’re right,” he said, leaving his hands partway up in a gesture of conciliation. “It so happens that I looked into the port here, but it wouldn’t do. To be sure they are Europeans, but there are no brothels or taverns, not even a shop for trinkets or a coffee house. There’s nothing you would find of interest.”

“Respectfully, sir,” another seaman spoke out. “You should ‘ave let us ashore anyhow. There’s women there, I saw ‘em.”

“Thank you for being respectful, Fox. I did request it, and yes there are women there, proper women, not your bumboat whores. The governor turned me down flat, and that’s likely the reason.”

A murmur went up around him, not an angry, defiant murmur; more one of digesting information. He felt he was making progress. “Look, I’ll give you the facts and tell you what I’ll do, on my word as your captain. Cassandra is ordered to sail north to deliver our passengers to Egypt to the detriment of the French forces there. It is important for king and country that we do this; otherwise the Admiralty wouldn’t have asked us. Once completed, I promise to return south without delay and I’ll put you ashore somewhere suitable, permission or no, but then I will tolerate no more of this nonsense. Will you agree to that?”

A second hum of conversation started as the men turned to each other to discuss his offer. Charles glanced up at the quarterdeck and saw Bevan and his other officers, as well as the marines with their bayonets fixed, aligned along its forward edge. Bevan looked at him quizzically; Charles shook his head to indicate he not intervene. While he waited, Augustus approached and wordlessly buckled his sword belt, with its sword and scabbard, around his waist. Charles stood silently, his fingers tapping a tattoo on the blade’s hilt as soon as they found it. After a few moments that seemed like an hour, Sherburne came forward with two of his mates. “Aye, we find it agreeable,” he said. “But I’m to say that we’ll hold ye to it, just as ye spoke.”

“You always have,” Charles answered, relieved in spite of himself. “I have given my word. Now, if you would be so good as to come under your officers’ orders again, we have an anchor to hoist aboard. The sooner we are away, the sooner we can return.” As the crew returned to their business, he stayed in the waist a moment longer, thinking about what he had promised. He wondered where he could put them ashore, and what the consequences might be, then decided they were questions he could worry about later. Not entirely satisfied, he turned and made his way to the quarterdeck.

“God’s bones, Charlie,” Bevan greeted him. “What have you agreed to?”

“Leave ashore at the first opportunity,” Charles answered, not wanting to talk about it.

“And when will that be?”

“After we return from the north.”

“Where, for Christ’s sake? They’ve been banned from Mocha and even this little place here. There isn’t anywhere else.”

This was, of course the single flaw in his plan, or at least he thought it was the only flaw. “I don’t know,” he said testily. “I’ll think of something.” His mind turned to a more pressing concern. “Daniel, where’s the French frigate run to? She hasn’t passed this way; the Italians on shore haven’t seen anything of her.”

Bevan shrugged. “With the wind as it is, I would think to the north the most likely. Beyond that it’s anybody’s guess. Another question is, where might that seventy-four have set off for, and what are her intentions?” Charles had no answer to this, or whether Raisonnable was even in the Red Sea, or whether L'Agile and Raisonnable were the only French warships present.

The capstan began to clank on its pawl as the men heaved the anchor cable short. Bevan turned away to shout out orders for the gaskets on the yardarms to be cast loose and the spars braced around. “Take her out into the bay,” Charles said. “I’ll speak with Cromley about the course.”

“Aye, sir,” the master answered after Charles had queried him. His fingertip traced a line upward from Massawa on his chart, following the coast. “There’s a channel here, close in to the shore at ten and twenty fathoms. If the breeze holds, we should clear them islands by nightfall.” The islands Cromley tapped at with his fingers marked the northern edge of the Dahlak Archipelago. What soundings there were on the chart showed safer seas beyond .

“Will we be able to fetch the deep-water channel up the center of the sea then?” Charles asked. He would be more than relieved to be clear of the treacherous maze of islands and shoals.

Cromley nodded. “Aye, it’ll be easy sailing all the way to Koessir and beyond. Depends on where you’re headed. And on the wind, of course.”

“Zafarana,” Charles said, remembering Jones’s request. “It’s north a ways past Koessir, I believe.” It took several moments for the two men to locate the landing place on the chart—well up the Gulf of Suez, one of two sizable inlets at the northern end of the sea. Zafarana wasn’t a town so much as a stretch of barely inhabited coast along a section of rugged Egyptian highlands. Charles’ jaw tightened as he looked at the chart. It would be a long run, longer than he’d thought and longer that the crew was going to like. It couldn’t be helped.

The direction of the prevailing winds would be crucial for his own wellbeing as well as for whatever plans the French might have. “Tell me, Mr. Cromley, when do you expect the breeze might shift around to from the north?”

The master pulled to loosen his stock in deference to the stifling midday heat. Even on the water it was like being in an oven. “It could be anytime now if it starts early,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Most likely toward the middle of the month; later if it’s slow in coming. We’ll know when we begin to see clouds. The northerlies bring the start of the rainy season, such as it is.”

*****

Day by day, Cassandra sailed large on a course north by northwest on a soldier’s wind over the taffrail. By the master’s log, they made a steady one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred miles each day, noon to noon. They stayed largely out of sight of land, with rare sightings of Arab traders in their sambuks and baghalas who universally fled pell-mell at their appearance. Cromley’s recordings were sparse:.

Charles was thankful for the constant breeze which hurried them up the sea. He looked skyward frequently for signs of change above the masts with their expanse of canvas. There were small and scattered white puffs, too high and too few for rain, drifting slowly toward the east most days and an increasing humidity which cast a haze off the water and limited their range of vision.

On June twelfth, a Wednesday, he ordered that the sails be shortened to topgallants alone and that the ship heave to precisely at midnight. The following morning he came on deck at dawn. Beechum stood officer of the watch with Sykes his second. Immediately he exchanged “Good morrows” with the two, he opened his long glass and trained it to port, sweeping the surface of the sea. He scarcely needed the instrument in the growing light. Not six miles off the bow he picked out two small islands, mere lumps, barely above the surface of the water. From his study of Cromley’s chart, he knew they were the Brothers, so named by the sloop Dolphin on a survey some twenty years before. “Mr. Sykes,” Charles called.

The midshipman approached and touched his hat. “Yes, sir?”

“If you would please inform Mr. Jones that I require his presence on deck immediately.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Sykes, and left.

It was an uncommonly long period before Jones appeared, somewhat bedraggled looking, probably fresh from his bed. “What do you want at this ungodly hour?” Jones said by way of introducing himself.

“It’s a fine morning,” Charles responded. “Pity to sleep it away.” Then, feeling the social amenities had been completed, he said, “Do you see those two islands there?”

“You woke me to look at islands?”

“Do you know what they signify?”

“How would I know that?”

Charles sighed. “Ten leagues due west of this spot is the Egyptian port of Koessir. We must arrange a rendezvous for when your work is done.”

“Anywhere will do,” Jones snapped.