Ричард Вудмен - A private revenge

'Talk of the devil,' muttered Quilhampton, drawing himself up as officer-of-the-watch to give the paroled prisoners formal permission to exercise on the quarterdeck.

'Good morning, Captain.'

The tall, heavily built figure of the Russian nobleman crossed the deck towards Drinkwater, staring about curiously. Rakitin was pale from his enforced confinement below decks for the duration of the typhoon.

'Good-day.'

Drinkwater was icily polite to his prisoner.

'You have refitted your ship in good time.'

Rakitin's excellent English was unnerving. The Russian had served with the Royal Navy before the Tsar had turned his coat and succumbed to Napoleon's blandishments at Tilsit. Drinkwater found this familiarity as repulsive as the man himself.

'My men know their duty, Captain,' he replied softly.

The two commanders stood side by side, united in rank, divided by hostility and yet compelled by convention to maintain a degree of amity. Considering them from the other side of the quarterdeck, Quilhampton thought them an odd pair. Tall and powerful, Rakitin's broad shoulders stretched the cloth of his high-collared uniform, an a la mode outfit that stank of Parisian fashion. Beside him, half a head shorter, his soft undress uniform coat lapels fluttering in the breeze, Captain Drinkwater balanced himself against the Patrician's motion.

Quilhampton could see the inequality of Drinkwater's shoulders, the result of two wounds that even padding and the heavy bullion epaulettes could not disguise. The hair, receding slightly from the high forehead, still hung in a thick, ribboned queue down Drinkwater's back, an old-fashioned affectation that conveyed an impression of agelessness to the loyal and devoted Quilhampton. As if sensing this scrutiny Drinkwater turned, catching Quilhampton's eye. The thin scar on the left cheek showed livid after the weathering of recent weeks, and the powder burns about Drinkwater's eye puckered the soft skin to give him a curious, quizzing appearance.

'Mr Q!' Drinkwater called. 'Have the kindness to arrange for

Captain Rakitin's officers to attend the purser and supervise an issue of grog to their men in compliment to their labours at the pumps.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Rakitin turned, an expression of surprise on his face. 'My men have been pumping?' he asked.

'Yes,' replied Drinkwater smoothly, 'in order that mine might repair the ship.'

Drinkwater felt a contempt for Rakitin's ignorance of what his men had been doing. It seemed for a moment that Rakitin might protest, but he held his tongue. The Russian seamen had proved tireless and dogged workers, as conscientious at pumping as they had been serving the Suvorov 's, guns. But indomitable as they had been in action, they had been ravaged by scurvy, reduced in numbers by sickness, and the high sea running during the battle had made it difficult for Rakitin to use his lower-deck guns. In the end Suvorov had been at the mercy of Patrician's 24- and 18-pounder cannon which had cut up her rigging and masts, hulled her repeatedly, and swept her decks with a hail of canister and langridge. By the time Rakitin struck his colours, Suvorov 's powers of resistance were as shattered as her hull and when, in the moderating sea of the following day, they had taken off all those that they could, she had settled so low in the water that the fire they had started aboard her had barely caught. As for Drinkwater, he had lost more men in the rescue than in the action.

Rakitin, left to a sullen contemplation of his fate, had persuaded himself that his ship had been wantonly sacrificed by the British acting under Drinkwater's orders. The fact that Drinkwater possessed neither the resources nor the men to take the Suvorov as a prize did not enter into the Russian commander's bitter reflections. Aware that he had failed in his mission, Rakitin sought among his officers men of like opinion, cultivating them assiduously in this assumption, until they had convinced themselves of its accuracy. It was an understandable enough attitude, Drinkwater reflected, aware of the under­current of hostility. Rakitin would have to account for the loss of his ship to the Admiralty at St Petersburg, and the difference in force between a seventy-four and a frigate, albeit a heavy one, was going to be difficult to explain.

Rakitin had seized eagerly on the intelligence that the British ship had been built twenty-four years earlier as a 64-gun line-of-battle ship, insinuating this into his persuasive argument and glossing over the fact that she had been cut down to her present establishment in 1795. Somehow Rakitin had mitigated his defeat, at least in his own mind.

Despite this, Drinkwater could not deny an underlying sympathy with Rakitin's plight. He knew what it was to lose a ship. The loss of self-confidence alone could sink a man's spirits beyond revival. Nor did Drinkwater forget other matters concerning Russia; his brother Edward was serving with the Russian army, an agent of Great Britain now, nominally at least, an enemy. So Drinkwater cultivated Rakitin with an icy reserve, not knowing, in this long and bitter war, when Tsar Alexander might turn his coat again, or when some obligation towards himself might not prove of advantage.

'Our men work well together, Captain. We should not be enemies. I believe Admiral Seniavin feels this.'

'Seniavin?' Rakitin looked at Drinkwater in astonishment, his mind plucked from the narrow contemplation of his misery to the speculative castle-building that officers called 'strategy'.

'Yes,' went on Drinkwater, 'I am advised that he is opposed to the Tsar's alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte.'

'I have my orders, Captain. It is my duty to obey them,' Rakitin growled.

'But,' said Drinkwater, suddenly brightening at the prospect of a little innocent bear-baiting, 'you also have your opinion, n'est-ce que pas ?'

Rakitin turned and drew himself up. 'The alliance with the Emperor Napoleon is one offering great advantages to Russia. It is impossible that the French should rule Europe from Paris, but Europe ruled from Paris and St Petersburg must be, he shrugged, très formidable ...'

'Until the Emperor Napoleon wishes otherwise, eh?'

'Captain Drinkwater, you cannot hold out the hand of friendship to Russia. Your army abandoned ours in the Netherlands, your Nelson threatened our ships in our own Baltic Sea. You still have a fleet there blockading our coasts, you tell us we can only trade with you ...'

You sailed in our ships, Prince Vladimir, you learned much from us and supported us in the North Sea. We pressed gold and arms on you, even refitted your ships; was not this proof of our friendship?'

Rakitin flushed with anger and was about to launch into a tirade on Britain's perfidy when there came a cry from the masthead.

'Deck there! Sail to leeward!'

Quilhampton reacted instantaneously, leaping into the lee mizen shrouds and yelling back: 'Where away?'

'Three points on the lee bow, sir ... looks like a vessel under jury-rig!'

Quilhampton scanned the horizon and could see nothing. He jumped to the deck and held his glass out to Midshipman Dutfield.

'Up you go, cully, and see what you make of her.'

Drinkwater and Rakitin, their interest aroused, dropped their conversation instantly and stood watching the nimble boy ascend the rigging of the main mast. Dutfield reached the topgallant yard and threw a leg over it, hooking himself steady and releasing his two hands to raise the glass. His body arced against the sky for what seemed an eternity as everybody on deck waited for his opinion of the stranger.

They saw him lower the glass and look down, expecting any moment to hear news, but, apparently unsure, the midshipman raised the telescope again. The waist was filled with a murmur at the delay.