Ричард Вудмен - A private revenge

'I tried a cast o' the lead, sir, but nae bottom ...' said Fraser, suddenly thrusting out an arm. Drinkwater grasped it, and clawed his way uphill towards the starboard rail, then immediately found himself cannoned into Fraser by the frigate's lurch.

'Devil take it! Obliged, Mr Fraser ...'

Drinkwater caught his breath and looked about him again.

He had, he realised now, known instinctively that this terrible motion was not due to shoal water; the extraordinary funnel of clear and windless sky stirred something else in his tired brain. He fought to clear it, buying time with a pathetic joke.

'Belchambers bid me "step" on deck, Mr Fraser. If it was your choice of phrase you could have bettered it.'

A thin, respectful grin spread briefly across the Scotsman's worried face.

'Aye, sir, 'twas ill-chosen.'

'No matter.' Drinkwater jerked his head at the sky. 'This present lull will not last. I mind some instruction on the matter, 'tis the same as a West India hurricane, though known differently in these seas. Do you look again to the breeching of the guns. I wish we had struck some of them down into the hold, but it is too late now. I'll take the deck.'

Aye, aye, sir. We've beckets on the wheel and clapped lashings on the tiller. All she'll do is lie a-hull.'

'That's well done.'

Fraser skidded off, shouting names at the duty bosun's mate, and Drinkwater jammed his body against the starboard mizen pin-rail, feeling the sore places on his back where the ropes had abraded him earlier. He looked after his first lieutenant: poor Fraser, as first luff he should have enjoyed the privilege of being exempt from watch-keeping. But with Lieutenant Mylchrist and Mr Hill dead, only he and Quilhampton remained of the lieutenants and senior officers, though Drinkwater had written out an acting commission for Mr Midshipman Frey.

Fraser's predicament led Drinkwater's thoughts to a review of his hard-pressed command. In addition to her present plight there were other concerns that drove his mind into a remorseless circle of worry. The presence of over a hundred Russian prisoners placed strains upon the domestic arrangements of a ship and company already stretched by a long and dangerous voyage. Patrician 's own people were worn out with the war, transferred from one ship to another at the whim of the almighty Admiralty and now fighting for their very existence in this dismal corner of the north-west Pacific.

Captain Drinkwater stared bleakly ahead, noting the relative shift in the shrinking patch of blue sky and weighing up the chances of a glimpse of the sun before the cloud lowered over them again.

The squawks of the birds drew his thoughts inboard once more as a handful of seamen, clinging on to any handhold, strove to clear the decks of some of the hundreds of dying creatures. He watched them, trying to judge their temper for though they had fought well against a Russian battle-ship in the Pacific, their mood had been uncertain off the Horn and they had been near-mutinous off California, several of them deserting at San Francisco.

In his heart, Drinkwater knew he could expect no less. Some of them had been at sea since the turn of the century, had served as volunteers in the Peace of Amiens and had then been swept up in the turbulence of the renewed war with France.

Drinkwater cursed the chain of events that had led them to this day, for he too suffered, suffered as personally as his men, for the secret he and they had brought back from the Baltic in the late summer of 1807. That overwhelming need for secrecy had led Their Lordships to despatch him to the Pacific to head off Britain's quondam ally Russia, whose Tsar had abandoned his alliance with the Court of St James in favour of a shoddy opportunist accommodation with Napoleon Bonaparte. This allowed Tsar Alexander to meddle with Sweden and Turkey and lend his British-trained fleet to the Emperor of the French. Had Drinkwater, despite the odds, succeeded in crushing the Russian presence in the Pacific? He had fought the Suvorov to a standstill, as the state of his frigate testified, but his cruise to locate the Juno had failed. She had slipped from him, and his nature would not allow him the reasonable excuse of having the whole Pacific to search to comfort him in his failure.

Perhaps she was at Canton, perhaps not ...

A watery gleam caught his attention to larboard. He turned and lifted his eyes. As the circle of clear sky moved over them a shredding of the cloud on its eastern rim exposed for a second a pale yellow disc. The sun!

'Mr Belchambers! My sextant and the chronometer! Upon the instant, sir!'

Transfixed, Drinkwater watched the face of the sun darken as, like dense smoke, cloud trailed across it, then lighten again. Impatiently he waited for the boy's return. The sun swam clear of cloud, hurting his eyes, and he thought its warmth struck him, though afterwards it seemed a mere illusion. Suddenly the confusion of the sea held less terrors and flashed friendly fire back at them in reflections. Amidships a man smiled and raised a low cheer. All about him there was a spontaneous outburst of relief. The watch, huddling in the lee of the boats on the booms, struggled to their feet, other seamen stopped throwing the birds overboard and even, it seemed, the birds themselves ceased their death struggles to bask in the sunlight.

Drinkwater's patience snapped. 'Where the devil's that boy?'

'Beg pardon, sir ...'

His sentry's head was poked up the companionway level with the deck.

'Eh? What is it?' Drinkwater asked the marine.

'Begging your pardon, sir, but Mr Belchambers 'as 'ad a fall, sir.'

'What? God-damn! What about my sextant?' Drinkwater was already crossing the deck and exchanging the ineffable sweetness of sunshine for the stygian gloom of the gun-deck. Shoving aside the sentry, he entered his cabin. By the grace of God Belchambers had not reached the Hadley sextant, nestling in its baize-lined box and lashed atop his locker. Instead the boy lay amid the swirl of biscuit and china with a sprained ankle. His small, frightened face was twisted with agony.

'I ... I'm sorry, sir ... I acted with haste ... festina lente , sir,' the boy added gamely.

'No matter, Mr Belchambers, are you all right?' Drinkwater bent over the midshipman.

'Apart from my ankle, sir ...'

Drinkwater turned to the marine. 'Get a couple of hands to carry Mr Belchambers to his berth.'

Drinkwater reached across the midshipman who was drawing himself up against the locker. 'You must excuse me, I have urgent matters to attend to.'

Lifting the sextant from its box he caught the strap of the chronometer case with his left hand. Sticking his elbows out for balance he gingerly made for the bottom of the companionway and shouted up for assistance.

'Here, zur, let me ...'

Old Tregembo his coxswain shouldered past him and took the chronometer box.

'Mind how you go, damn it,' snapped Drinkwater as both men grabbed the man-rope at the same instant.

'Up you goes, zur, an' I'll follow ...'

But it was too late. Already the sun had been swallowed by cloud and the eye of the storm was passing over them. Fractus again curtained the sky and the confusion of the sea was abating. Streaks of spume were appearing upon its surface which was heaping once more in regular ridges. The calm of the dawn had vanished. Patrician , with her lashed tiller and locked rudder, was paying off to lie beam on to the rising wind that came at them now from the contrary direction. Drinkwater bit off his disappointment at failing to get a sight. As the deck steadied to a roll, he crossed it swiftly and peered into the binnacle. He had at least a notion of their heading and now, as it blew with swiftly increasing strength, the direction of the gale. That brief glimpse of the sun had fed his starved seaman's instinct with a morsel of information.