Richard Woodman - A Brig of War

Knowing Appleby's distrust of the sex in general, Drinkwater was amused at his initial discomfiture at having Catherine Best as his assistant. His mates found their unenviable work lightened considerably and that in the almost constant presence of a woman. Catherine Best made sure that her presence was indispensible and whatever her lack of beauty she had a figure good enough to taunt the two men, to play one off against the other and secure for herself the attentions of both. But this was not known to the inhabitants of the gunroom.

'Ha, Harry, it is time you damned quacks had a little inconvenience in your lives,' laughed Drinkwater as he directed a thunderstruck Appleby to find employment for the woman.

'I emphatically refuse to have a damned jade among my business… if it's true she's a midwife then I don't want her on several accounts.'

'Why the devil not?'

'Perceive, my dear Nathaniel,' began Appleby as though explaining rainfall to a child, 'midwives know very little, but that little knowledge being of a fundamental nature, they are apt to regard it as a cornerstone of science and themselves as the high priestesses of arcane knowledge. Being women, and part of that great freemasonry that seeks to exclude all men from more than a passing knowledge of their privy parts, they dislike the sex for the labour they are put to on their behalf and can never tolerate a man evincing the slightest interest in the subject without prejudice .'

Drinkwater failed to follow Appleby's argument but sensed that within its reasoning lay the cause of his misogyny. He was thinking of Elizabeth and her imminent accouchement. He did not relish the thought of Elizabeth in the hands of someone like Catherine Best and hoped Mrs Quilhampton would prove a good friend to his wife when her time came. But he could not allow such private thoughts to intrude upon his duty. He was impotent to alter their fates and must surrender the outcome to Providence. For her part the woman Catherine Best attended to Captain Torrington and earned from Appleby a grudging approval.

The men who had been rescued were soon indistinguishable from Hellebore 's crew, the soldiers as marines under Anton, hastily promoted to corporal. Captain Torrington emerged from his fever after a week. He had been thrust twice with a sword, in the arm and thigh. By great good fortune the hasty binding of his wounds in their own gore had saved them from putrefaction, despite the loss of blood he had suffered.

The sun continued to chase the brig into southerly latitudes so that they enjoyed an October of spring sunshine. The beautiful and unfamiliar albatrosses joined them, like giant fulmars, elegant and graceful on their huge wings. Here too they found the shearwaters last seen in the Channel, and the black and white Pintada petrels the seamen called 'Cape pigeons'.

They sighted land on the second Sunday in October, Griffiths's sonorous reading of Divine Service being rent by the cry from the masthead. At noon Lestock wrote on the slate for later transfer to his log: Fresh gales and cloudy, in second reefs, saw the Table land of the Cape of Good Hope. East and half North eight or nine leagues distant . In the afternoon they knocked the plugs out of the hawse holes and dragged the cables through to bend them on to the anchors. The following morning they closed the land, sounding as they approached, but it was the next afternoon before they let go the bowers and finally fetched an open moor in twenty-two fathoms with a sandy bottom. To the north of them reared the spectacular flat-topped massif of Table Mountain. Beneath it the white huddle of the Dutch-built township. Drinkwater reported the brig secure. The captain's leg was obviously giving him great pain.

'Very good, Mr Drinkwater. Tomorrow we will purchase what fresh vegetables we may and water ship. If any citrus fruits are available we will take them too. Do you let the purser know. As for our guests we will land them all except the seamen. They will stay. I wish the gig to be ready for me tomorrow at eight of the clock. I will call upon the Governor then; in the meantime do you direct Rogers to salute the fort.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' He turned away.

'Mr Drinkwater.'

'Sir?' Griffiths was lowering himself on to his chair, his leg stiffly extended before him. An ominous perspiration stood out on his forehead and his flesh had a greyish pallor.

'There are Indiamen inshore there, three of them. I am sure one of them will carry our mails to England.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you.'

As he sat to finish the long letter to Elizabeth the first report of the salute boomed out overhead.

Drinkwater woke with a start, instantly alert. He stared into the inky blackness while his ears strained to hear the sound that had woken him. The ship creaked and groaned as the following sea rolled up astern and passed under her. It had been blowing a near gale from the south-west when he had come below two hours earlier and now something had woken him from the deepest sleep. Whatever the cause of his disturbance it had not alerted those on deck, for there were no shouts of alarm, no strident bellows of 'All Hands!' He thought of the ten cannon they had struck down into the hold before leaving the Cape a week ago. There had been barely room for them and they were too well lashed and tommed to move. It might have been the boats. They had both been taken out of the davits and turned keels up either side of the capstan, partially sheltering the canvas covered grating amidships, in the room made by the absent six-pounders. He doubted they would have sent such a tremble through the hull as he was now persuading himself he had felt.

Then it came again, a slight jar that nevertheless seemed to pass through the entire hull. It had a remorseless quality that fully alarmed Drinkwater. He swung his legs over his cot and reached for his breeches and boots. The source of that judder was not below decks but above. Something had carried away aloft. In the howling blackness of the night with the roar and hiss of the sea and the wind piping in the rigging, those on deck would not be aware of it. He pulled on his tarpaulin and turned the lengths of spunyarn round his wrists. The bump came again, more insistent now but Drinkwater was almost ready. Jamming his hat on his head he left the cabin.

He was doubly anxious, for effective command of the brig was his. Griffiths had been afflicted with malarial fever, contracted long ago in the Gambia, which returned to incapacitate him from time to time. He had been free of it for over a year but as Hellebore reached into the great Southern Ocean, down to forty south to avoid the Agulhas current, and made to double the Cape before the favourable westerlies, it had laid him delirious in his cot.

The wind hit Drinkwater as he emerged on deck and pulled the companionway cover over after him. Holding his hat on he cast his eyes aloft, staggered over to the foot of the mainmast and placed his hand upon it. He could feel the natural tremble of the mast but nothing more.

A figure loomed alongside. 'Is that you, Mr Drinkwater?'

'Yes, Mr Lestock,' he shouted back, 'there's something loose somewhere, but I'm damned if I know where.' He turned forward as a sea foamed up alongside and sluiced over the rail. The first dousing after a dry spell was always the worst. Drinkwater shuddered under the sudden chilling deluge. He was cursing foully as he reached the foremast and looked up. The topgallant masts had been sent down and he saw the topmast sway against the sky. The racing scud made it impossible to determine details but the pale rectangle of the triple-reefed topsail was plain. The instant he put his hand upon the mast he felt the impact, a mighty tremble that shook the spar silently, transmitting a quiver to the keelson below. He looked up again, spray stinging his eyes. It crossed his mind that Lestock had furled the forecourse since the change of watch. Drinkwater would have doused the topsail to keep the centre of effort low. Lestock seemed to do things by some kind of rote, an old-fashioned, ill-schooled officer. He felt the shudder again and then he saw its cause.