Ричард Вудмен - Baltic Mission

As Memel dropped astern and the Nieman opened into the Kurische Haff and then the Baltic Sea, his anxiety waned. He had avoided pursuit and for a while he enjoyed the sensation of the brisk sail as the fishing boat scudded along before a moderate breeze. It was good to feel the sea-wind on his face and see a horizon hard-edged and familiar. He relaxed and smiled at the pipe-smoking Kurlander at the tiller.

'A good boat,' Drinkwater said, patting the low rail.

The man nodded. 'Gut. Ja, ja . ..'

Soon Drinkwater could see the masts and yards of the Antigone. His last fear, a childish one that the ship would not be on station, vanished. His problems were almost over. He could shave and bath and soak his raw flesh, and then sleep...

'All hands! All hands! All hands to witness punishment!'

Quilhampton looked up from the gunroom table where he had the midshipmen's journals spread out before him. He met the look of incredulity on Mount's face.

'Christ, not again...'

The two officers hurried into their coats, and left the gunroom buckling on their swords. As they emerged onto the upper deck they were aware of the ground-swell of discontent among the people milling in the waist. Rogers, in full dress, was already standing on the quarterdeck, Drinkwater's copy of the Articles of War in his hands.

'I should think he knows the Thirty-Sixth by heart,' Quilhampton heard someone mutter but he ignored the remark. Quilhampton took his now familiar place and cast a quick look over the marines. There might be a need for them shortly, but even among their stolid files there seemed to be a wavering and unsteadiness. He caught Blixoe's eye. The man's look was one of anger. Blixoe had acted to forestall mutiny in the night and Quilhampton had made a fool of him. Now the advantage of warning no longer lay with the officers and marines. With the whole ship's company assembled and every man except Rogers aware of what had transpired in the middle watch, a sudden explosion of spontaneous mutiny might result in the officers and marines being butchered on the spot.

'Silence there!' bawled Rogers, opening the book and calling for the prisoner.

It was Tregembo, his shoulder still bandaged, and pale from the effects of his wound. Quilhampton could only guess at Tregembo's crime and as Rogers read the charge it seemed to confirm his supposition. It was insolence to a superior officer. Tregembo had clearly spoken his mind to Rogers. The first lieutenant did not even ask if any officer would speak for the man. Once again he was lost to reason, consumed by whatever fires were eating him, possessed only of an insane hatred that had no meaning beyond expressing his own agony.

'Strip!'

Quilhampton was surprised to see the faint scars of previous floggings crossing Tregembo's back. Then Lallo stepped forward and declared the man unfit to undergo punishment. It was an act of considerable courage and so riveting was its effect on Rogers that no one saw the fishing boat swoop under the stern, nor paid the slightest attention to a fluttering of sails as it dropped briefly alongside.

'Stand aside!' roared Rogers, stepping forward.

Lallo fell back a pace and Rogers rounded on the bosun's mates standing by the prisoner. 'Secure him!'

They crucified Tregembo across the capstan, lashing his spread-eagled arms along two of the bars. A thin trickle of blood started down his back from beneath the bandage of his wound. Flogging against a capstan was a barbarism that refined an already barbaric custom; to flog a wounded man was a measure of Rogers's depravity. What he did next he must have conceived as an act of humanity. As a murmur of horror ran through the ship's company at the sight of Tregembo's reopened wound, Rogers nodded to the bosun's mate holding the cat.

'Strike low! And do your duty!'

By avoiding the shoulder, the cat would not do further damage to the wound. But it would lacerate the lower back and could damage the organs unprotected by the rib-cage. The bosun's mate hesitated.

'Do your duty!' Rogers shrieked.

'Mr. Rogers!'

The attention of every man swung to the rail. Teetering uncertainly at its top, a hand on each stanchion, an unshaven and dirty figure clung. The hatless apparition repeated itself.

'Mr. Rogers!'

'It's the cap'n,' said Quilhampton and ran across the deck. 'Get the ship under way at once!' Drinkwater ordered, before falling forward into Quilhampton's arms.

Drinkwater stood immobile by the starboard hance, leaning against the hammock netting and with one foot resting on the slide of a small brass carronade. It seemed to the watches, as they changed every eight bells, that the captain's brooding presence had been continuous since they had broken the anchor out of the mud of Memel road four days earlier.

In fact the truth was otherwise, for it was Rogers who got the ship under weigh and Hill who laid off the first of the courses that would take them home. The captain had vanished below, exhausted and, rumour had it, wounded as well. It was a measure of Drinkwater's popularity that when the nature of his indisposition was properly known it did not become the subject for ribald comment. Nevertheless, as soon as he was rested and the surgeon had dressed his raw thighs, Drinkwater was on deck and had remained so ever since. He moved as little as possible, his legs too sore and his gait too undignified, atoning in his own mind for the sin of absence from his ship and the troubles it had caused.

The reassuring sight of Drinkwater's figure calmed the incipient spirit of revolt among the people. The fact that they were carrying sail like a Yankee packet and were bound for England raised their hopes and fed their dreams like magic. The dismal recollections of their period off Memel faded, and only the unusual sight of a marine sentry outside the first lieutenant's cabin served to remind the majority. But there were men who had longer memories, men who bore the scars of the cat, and, while the news of Lord Walmsley's disappearance seemed to establish an equilibrium of sacrifice in the collective consciousness of the frigate's population, there were those who planned to desert at the first opportunity.

For Drinkwater there was a great feeling of failure, despite the importance of the news he carried. It was compounded from many sources: the high excitement of his recent sortie; the intense, brief and curiously unsatisfactory reunion with his brother; the death (for such he privately believed it to be) of Lord Walmsley; his uncertainty as to the fates of either Mackenzie or Santhonax; and finally, the tyrannical behaviour of Rogers and the maltreatment of Tregembo. All these had cast a great shadow over him and it took some time for this black mood to pass. It was in part a reaction after such exertion and in part a brooding worry over what was to be done about Samuel Rogers. There was a grim irony in contemplating the future of the first lieutenant; Rogers had failed worst where he had succeeded best. The effort of will and the strength of his addiction had combined to produce a monster. He had been placed under arrest and confined to his cabin where, so the surgeon reported, he had fallen into a profound catalepsy.

The only bright spots in Drinkwater's unhappy preoccupation were the continuing recovery of Tregembo and the value of the news from Tilsit. As the days passed these grew in strength, gradually eclipsing his misery. At last his spirits lifted, and he began to share something of the excitement of the ship's company at the prospect of returning home. He thought increasingly of his wife and children, of Susan Tregembo and the others in his household at Petersfield, but the heavy gold watch he carried in his waistcoat reminded him that, despite the lofty press of sail Antigone bore and the air of expectancy that filled the chatter of her messes, it was the realities of war that drove her onwards.