Richard Woodman - In Distant Waters

'Tregembo!'

He spat the rain from his mouth and almost retched on the sudden, overpowering stench of pigs. Somewhere close by was a sty and he heard the ruminant grunts of its occupants change to a squealing. Two men and the dull gleam of steel were approaching and must have disturbed the swine.

'Tregembo!'

How many shots had the mountain-man fired? Was Tregembo lying out there dying like Lacey, while he had run for his life?

The two men were nearer and he swung round to defend himself.

'Tregembo!' he roared in one last desperate attempt to locate his servant. Suddenly a third man was upon him, risen, it appeared, from the very ground itself.

'Clap a stopper on the noise, zur…'

'God damn you, Tregembo…'

Drinkwater slashed wildly at the first assailant and felt his sabre knock aside the bayonet thrust. Whirling the blade he caught the second man as he tried to work round Drinkwater's rear, driving both off for a second. He began to fall back, waving Tregembo behind him,'… Why the devil didn't you answer me?'

'I fell among swine,' Tregembo called as he moved towards the boat behind his commander.

'Then run, man, ran!'

Drinkwater saw an opportunity and slashed again, slicing in above the thrusting bayonet as the Russian infantryman lunged forward. The man's face was a pale blur and Drinkwater saw the dark splotch of blood against his cheek as the point of the sabre caught it, and then he turned and began to run, leaping the tussocks of grass and then slithering through soft sand and mud. He tripped and fell full length in the shallows, hard on Tregembo's heels. The Cornishman turned and helped him to his feet.

'God! What a damned farce!'

They scrambled into the boat amid a confusion of limbs and bodies, dominated by Quilhampton's voice calling above the rain and the tumult, 'Where's the captain? Has anyone seen Captain Drinkwater?'

'Here… I'm here, Mr Q… now get this festerin' boat under way!'

'Thank God! Aye, aye, sir… out oars! Come on there… for Christ's sake! Give way!'

As the boat pulled out into the estuary, a storm of small shot whined over their heads and all they could see were a few shapes splashing about in the shallow water in almost as much confusion as themselves.

'Let's sort this boat out.' Drinkwater's own sense of dignity and his innate hatred of disorder surfaced in the rout. 'Be silent there,' lie ordered for the noise of swearing continued unabated and it suddenly dawned on him that it was no longer his own men who were responsible.

'What the deuce?'

Drinkwater looked round, thinking for an instant he was going out of his mind for the noise came out of the night ahead of them and the oaths were unmistakably English. Then he saw the looming bulk of one of the anchored brigs athwart whose hawse the current was sweeping them.

'It's the English prisoners, sir,' shouted Quilhampton in a moment of comprehension, 'they must have heard us…'

Drinkwater considered the odds. How many Russians were aboard the brig? But the current had committed him.

'Catch a-hold then… come, lads, quickly… up and board her! Come on there, lads, those are your festerin' shipmates aboard there, prisoners of the Russians…'

A groundswell of anger stirred the occupants of the boat and she rocked dangerously as men reached out at the passing hull. Then the cutter jarred against the brig with a crash and they found themselves jammed under her forechains and were swarming up over her ample tumblehome. Driven by their recent defeat and now finding themselves among the familiar surroundings of a ship, they swept the length of her deck within a minute. At her stern, the watch of a dozen men, confused by the noises ashore, suddenly attacked by desperate assailants and mindful that below decks a score of rebellious prisoners only awaited liberty before cutting their gaolers to pieces, soon capitulated. Most jumped over the taffrail to save their lives by swimming ashore, though three were taken prisoner. Drinkwater realised he was in possession of a Russian brig at the same moment that he caught a glimpse of the unsecured cutter drifting away downstream.

'What is it, Mr Derrick?'

There was an odd formality about those left aboard the Virgen de la Bonanza . Mr Marsden, the Patrician's carpenter but the most experienced seaman on board, hurried to answer Derrick's summons. The Quaker's innate dignity, his literacy and his position as the captain's secretary almost gave him the status of a gentleman, while his tenacious hold on his faith had elevated him from a mere curiosity to something of a sage among the hands.

'I believe it to be the cutter, Friend Marsden, and it appears to be empty.'

Marsden took up the offered glass and levelled it. The dawn was heavy with the night's rain, the sea a sluggish undulating plain of uniform grey. No wind above the whisper of a breeze ruffled its surface, as though the sea was suppressed beneath the sheer weight of the sky's bequest. Every rope and spar, every sail and block was sodden with water. Rain had run below through cracks and companion-ways, scuttles and ports and, though it was not actually falling at that moment, more was threatened and the coming of day was only a lightening of the tone of the gloom. Their visible horizon was bounded by mist, a murky perimeter into which the grey, unoccupied shell of the cutter rocked, not above six cables away, borne seawards by the inexorable current of the Columbia River.

Fifteen minutes later the thing lay not thirty yards off and they could clearly see it was empty. There were disorderly signs of hurried evacuation. Several of the oars were missing, one stuck up, its blade jammed in the thole pins. Another was broken, the jagged loom indicating it had struck hard against something.

The remnants of rags hung down from the rowlocks, where, the night before, they had muffled them. Oddly the painter lay neatly coiled in the bow.

'Damned if I understand the meaning o' this,' muttered Marsden.

'I think we are alone, Friend, left to our own resources,' said Derrick, his sonorous tone carrying the dreadful implication to Marsden.

'Streuth! What's to be done? And the cap'n gone, an' all…'

'Could we fetch San Francisco?'

Marsden shrugged. 'God knows… I suppose we could… ain't my trade, nor yours neither… hell and damnation take it!'

'Come, Friend, such language availeth nothing.' Derrick turned away from the rail and looked along the schooner's deck. Their handful of a crew would be hard-pressed to bring the schooner back to San Francisco.

'Oh, my fuckin' oath,' moaned Marsden and Derrick turned. The carpenter was staring to starboard where, out of the mist, the grey shape of a ship was emerging. 'We be sunk good an' proper now, Mister Derrick, that's one o' them Russian brigs we saw yesterday. Reckon they know all about us an' what's happened to the Cap'n.'

'Shall we run then?' Derrick suggested querulously.

'Is that a Russkie?' asked one of the seamen, coming up to the two men while behind him the remainder stood and stared despairingly to leeward. Marsden looked at first Blixoe and then Derrick. He was not given to quick thinking.

'Run? Where to?'

'Anywhere… we're faster than a brig, can sail closer to the wind…'

Marsden looked at the Quaker with something akin to respect. 'I suppose running ain't fighting,' he said, rubbing his chin and considering the matter.

'Of course we'll run' snapped the seaman, shouting for them to start the headsail sheets and cast loose the lashings on the helm.

'Wait!' Derrick was staring through the telescope. 'I'd swear that was Mr Quilhampton on the knightheads…'

'Seems a shame, zur, to burn a prize like that,' Tregembo muttered, watching Quilhampton's firing party at work and the flames take hold of the brig.