Ричард Вудмен - A private revenge

'Mr Chirkov won't like it, sir, he's a very particular young gentleman.'

Drinkwater turned. 'He's a prisoner-of-war, damn it, Mullender, not a maid to be cossetted over her mooning ... my apologies, Mr Ballantyne, come, let us go on deck ...'

Tregembo, Drinkwater's coxswain, emerged from the pantry grinning at the discomfited steward who stood in the centre of the suddenly empty cabin.

'What did you stand up for that Russian booby for?' he growled at Mullender. ' Particular gennelmen aren't exactly the Cap'n's cup o' tea.'

Mullender shrugged, a man of proprieties more than words, and deeds.

'Ain't proper ... Count Chirkov's a gentleman ...'

' Count Chirkov's a damned bugger, you old toss-pot,' said Tregembo dismissively.

'But he's a gentleman,' persisted Mullender doggedly.

Midshipman Count Anatole Vasili Chirkov of the Imperial Russian Navy found captivity amusing rather than irksome. A proclivity for indolence helped, together with a rather fetchingly cultivated languor. Chirkov had discovered that a certain type of lady in the salons of St Petersburg found the affectation attractive, combined as it was with a biting sarcasm about the endeavours of others. It was a pretension peculiarly adapted to a rich adolescent. The conceit had also proved surprisingly useful aboard ship where, he had realised, a dearth of variety gave him a natural advantage over the dullards on board and provided him with innumerable targets. In fact, captive or not, Midshipman Count Chirkov found himself rather more popular than otherwise.

An exception to this general rule was Captain Drinkwater who proved impervious to Chirkov's charm. The Russian regretted he had not killed the British captain when he had had the chance in Lituya Bay. The momentary advantage he had enjoyed over Captain Drinkwater had enlarged itself in Chirkov's fertile imagination and he would have boasted about it, but for the fact that losing it so swiftly argued against himself. Drinkwater, Chirkov reluctantly had to admit, was no fool. But then neither was he a gentleman, for Chirkov had felt Drinkwater's contempt as long ago as their first encounter in San Francisco and was happy to shrug him off as a curiosity of the British navy. His own captain, Prince Vladimir, had more or less confirmed this, calling Drinkwater 'a tarpaulin', to be tolerated, when he could not be avoided, whilst Chirkov's present inconvenient circumstances persisted.

Chirkov, fluent in the French of his class, had had only a rudimentary knowledge of English when he had been taken prisoner. Recent association with Patrician 's 'young gentlemen', particularly since his transfer from a cabin to the gunroom, had brought them into a greater intimacy. Chirkov had assumed a casual ascendancy over the youthful Belchambers, and formed a loose friendship with Frey who, although rated acting lieutenant, remained accommodated in his former quarters due to the overcrowding of the ship.

Although Chirkov had some duties, they were nominal. He was supposed to supervise a division of the Russian sailors who had their hammocks slung in the cable tiers, but this irksome responsibility was easily delegated to a petty officer. This allowed him to indulge his apparently limitless capacity for doing nothing. At the present moment he was leaning on Patrician 's fo'c's'le rail, half-propped on the breech of the foremost larboard chase gun while Mr Comley, Patrician 's bosun and another amusing tarpaulin, hove a cable up outside the ship from the hawse pipe and bent it on to one of the sheet anchors.

Astern of them and, remarkably, still afloat, the brig Musquito stretched her towline. It had taken almost a fortnight to beat up into the mouth of the Pearl River among the blue hills and myriad islands of the Kwangtung coast. The bat-winged sails of the big fishing junks that had loomed out of the dawn mist two days earlier were here replaced by hundreds of small sampans. Under sail, fishing or being patiently sculled by short Chinese who tirelessly manipulated their long stern scull, or yuloh , they dotted the waters of the estuary. Ahead Chirkov could see that the banks of the river came together and pale marks against the grey-green of the distant hills betrayed the embrasures of forts.

Far above Chirkov's indolent head the lookout reported the presence of 'sails', by which all on the quarterdeck assumed he meant he had sighted the heavy crossed yards of European vessels.

'They will be the Indiamen loading, I suppose,' remarked Drinkwater to Mr Ballantyne who stood next to him on the quarterdeck. A warm afternoon was producing a sea breeze, giving them their first favourable slant since they had picked up the tow, and under all the sail she could set, the British frigate was working slowly inshore.

This fair breeze had produced a mood of contentment in Captain Drinkwater. Ballantyne's fears of pirates had proved groundless. Though two big junks had closed with them in the morning's mist, they had sheered off when they ranged up close, and there was no evidence to suspect their motives had been sinister.

'No, sir ... they cannot be Indiamen or Country ships,' replied Ballantyne. He raised his glass and studied the masts and spars of the distant ships at anchor. Then he lowered it and pointed ahead of them. 'See, there are the forts at the Bogue, sir, what is sometimes called the Bocca Tigris. Those are the Vice­roy's war-junks, three of them anchored under the cannon of the forts. The Indiamen are inside the Narrows, beyond the Bogue at Whampoa. They should already be discharging. Some of those ships may be Indiamen but ...' Again he raised his glass and stared at the anchored vessels, some two points to larboard.

'They're men-o'-war, sir,' shouted Quilhampton suddenly. He had hoisted himself into the mizen rigging and had been looking at the ships himself. 'And flying British colours ...'

'They must be Admiral Drury's ships, sir,' said Ballantyne.

Drinkwater sensed a rivalry existing between the two young men. He turned to Fraser, standing beside the binnacle and watching anxiously as they crept into Chinese waters.

'What's your opinion, Mr Fraser?'

Fraser borrowed Quilhampton's proffered glass and clambered on to the larboard rail. At last he jumped down.

'No doubt, sir. A British seventy-four, two frigates and two sloops ...'

'A seventy-four!' exclaimed Drinkwater, unable to contain his surprise. The presence of a powerful third-rate argued it was, at the very least, a force under a senior captain flying a commodore's broad pendant. And that meant an officer senior to Drinkwater. Now his plan to recruit his ship before reporting his presence to his seniors was impossible. He fished irritably in his tail-pocket for his Dollond glass and, stepping up on a carronade slide, half-hoped to confound the experts beside him. To his intense annoyance he found they were correct.

There was something familiar about the seventy-four. She lay with her head to the eastward, riding to a weather tide, and he had a good view of her. He was certain he had seen her before. Then he recognised her. He shut his glass with a snap and jumped down to the deck.

'She's the Russell , gentlemen, unless I am greatly mistaken.' But he was confident of her identity. She had been part of Onslow's division at Camperdown and had stood in the line at Copenhagen where, punished for her mistake in following the Bellona , she had taken the ground under the Danish guns. 'And she flies a flag at her mizen ...'

There was no doubt in Drinkwater's mind that he had discovered the squadron under Rear-Admiral Drury.

He had his barge called away as soon as he had saluted Drury's flag, leaving Fraser to anchor Patrician and Musquito . He could only clearly identify one of the two frigates, the Dedaigneuse , for a fine rain had begun to fall and a damp chill filled the air so that the oarsmen bent to their task over a smooth sea, blowing the trickling rain from their mouths. Drinkwater sat wrapped in his thoughts. He watched the big two-decker loom over them as they approached, remembering her on a grey, gun-concussed October afternoon off Camperdown eleven years earlier. Eleven years! Where had the time gone? He wondered if Tregembo, sitting beside him at the tiller, entertained himself with such gloomy thoughts. Eleven years! They were both worn out in the King's Service, grown grey in the harness of duty like their ships.