'Bosun's mate! Keep the men busy there!' Quilhampton ordered, adding, 'Watch your helm there, quartermaster,' as the petty officer at the con inattentively let the ship's head pay off.
At last Dutfield's voice hailed them from aloft.
'Brig, sir, and seen us by the colours reversed in her rigging!' 'What colours?' bellowed Drinkwater through cupped hands. 'British, sir ...'
'Up helm a trifle Mr Q, let's bear down on this fellow. Call all hands to stand by to reduce sail ...'
Patrician lay hove-to, her main-topsail billowed back against the mast and her fore and main courses flogging sullenly in the buntlines as they brought the brig under their lee and prepared to hoist out a boat. Drinkwater studied the craft through his Dollond glass. She was a brig all right, and lying low in the water with both masts gone by the board. Her crew had managed to fish a yard to the stump of her foremast and had a leg-of-mutton sail hoisted, just, Drinkwater judged, giving her master command of his vessel.
'Ah, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater turned to the young man at his elbow, 'do you be kind enough to go over and offer what assistance is in our power. Find out her port of destination and her master's name. If she requires it, we can get a line aboard.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
And Mr Frey . . .'
'Sir?'
'Ask if she has any charts of the China coast.'
Drinkwater watched the boat bob over the swell, the oar-blades catching the brilliant sunshine, then disappearing in the deep troughs. As the boat rose again he recalled himself and turned suddenly, casting an incautious eye skywards and receiving the solar glare in his face.
'How bears the sun, Mr Q?' he asked urgently.
Quilhampton grasped Drinkwater's meaning and covered the three yards' distance to the binnacle. 'Close to the meridian, sir.'
'Damn!' With the agility of a younger man, Drinkwater made for the companionway and dropped below, startling Mullender as he fussed about the cabin. Grabbing the sextant from its lashed box and crooking it in his arm, he hastened back on deck. He flicked down the shades and clapped it to his right eye. To his relief he saw the sun was still increasing its altitude, climbing slowly to the meridian, and he waited for the ascent to slow.
'Watch the glass, there!' he called.
The quartermaster of the watch moved aft to heave the log as Quilhampton stood ready to turn the sand-glass. Forward the lookout on the knightheads walked aft and stood beside the belfry. Drinkwater caught the culmination of the sun on the meridian. He could compute their latitude exactly now and by a piece of legerdemain determine, to a reasonable accuracy, their longitude as well. Knowledge of their position would be invaluable both to himself and, he suspected, the beleaguered master of the wallowing brig.
'Eight bells!' he called, lowering the sextant. The log was streamed, the glass turned and eight bells struck. The watch was called and yet another day officially began on board the Patrician .
An hour later he was bent over the cabin table, comparing his calculations with the reckoning of Captain Ballantyne, Master of the Country brig Musquito of Calcutta. Ballantyne was a short, red-faced man in a plain blue coat and tall boots, a tired man who had wrestled gamely with the typhoon for ten days and been forced to sacrifice his masts in order to preserve his ship.
Sunlight reflected off the swell beyond the windows and danced upon the white paintwork of the cabin, filling it with flickering lights as the frigate rolled easily.
'Well, sir,' said Drinkwater straightening up, 'will you serve us as pilot? If we are to bring both our ships safely to an anchor our need of each other is mutual.'
He was aware of continuing suspicion in Ballantyne's face. The merchant shipmaster remained obviously circumspect. To Ballantyne, Drinkwater was something of an enigma, for he was no youthful popinjay like so many of the young sprigs that came out in sloops and frigates to press men like carcasses from Country ships. In fact his appearance in these eastern seas was something of a mystery to a man like Ballantyne who, in common with all the trading fraternity, liked to keep his fingers on the pulse of Government business. Drinkwater's request for a pilot and charts confirmed him in one suspicion.
'I am indeed under an obligation to you, Captain Drinkwater, and one that I would not willingly shirk, but I am surprised to find you here. Are you not part of Drury's squadron?'
It was Drinkwater's turn to show surprise. 'Drury's squadron ... ? No sir, I am not. I am from the coast of Spanish America. Furthermore I understood Admiral Pellew to be commanding the East India station ...'
'Pellew still commands, but Drury has a squadron at Macao ...'
The welcome news that British men-of-war were at hand, that he might speedily obtain spare spars and canvas, perhaps fresh victuals too, besides making good other deficiencies in his own stores from Drury's ships, seemed to lift a massive burden from Drinkwater's weary shoulders.
'Then let us make for Macao, Captain Ballantyne ...'
'No, sir! That I must urge you not to ...'
Drinkwater was surprised and said so.
'Captain Drinkwater,' Ballantyne said as patiently as he could, 'you are clearly unacquainted with the situation in these seas. Drury has been empowered by the Governor-General of India to offer what Lord Minto is pleased to call "protection" to the Portuguese Governor at Macao. This is nothing more nor less than coercion, for the Portuguese colonists there are friendly to us, the more so since the damned French have designs on both Portugal herself and her overseas settlements. There are already stories of a French army coming overland through Persia and of an enemy squadron bound for these waters. If they take Macao then our China trade would be ended at a stroke ...'
Ballantyne stopped, his serious expression adding emphasis (o his speech. 'It would mean ruin for many of us in Country ships and the end of the East India Company.'
Drinkwater regarded this information with some cynicism. He held no brief for the India monopoly, but he acknowledged the influence of those who did. Ballantyne seemed to sense some of this indifference.
'Consider, sir,' he said, 'what the alliance between the Dutch and French has already achieved: the Sunda Strait is closed to our ships and it has been necessary to convoy the trade through the Strait of Malacca. I do not think you can be aware of the numbers of French cruisers, both privateers and men-o'-war frigates, that the French have operating out of the Mauritius. One, the Piemontaise , a National ship, was taken by the San Fiorenzo off Cape Comorin, but at appalling cost, and that is our only success! That damned rogue Surcouf plundered our shipping right off the Sand Heads with complete impunity ...'
'The Sand Heads ... ?' queried Drinkwater, aware of his ignorance and the apparent hornet's nest that he was blundering into.
'Aye, off the entrance to the Calcutta river, Captain, plumb under the noses of the Hooghly merchants and Admiral Pellew himself!' Ballantyne's tone was incredulous.
'Pellew cannot have liked that,' observed Drinkwater drily, 'he used to enjoy the boot being on the other foot.'
'You know him then?' asked Ballantyne.
'A long time ago, when he commanded the Indefatigable . But this does not explain your reluctance to allow me to take you to Macao. You must understand that now I have learned of a British flag-officer in the area it is my plain duty to report to him.'
'By all means do so, sir, but after you have towed me into the Pearl River. It will delay you perhaps a day, two at the most.'
You have a reluctance to go to Macao, Captain Ballantyne? A commercial one, perhaps?'
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