Richard Woodman - In Distant Waters

'She stank near as bad as you when you emerged out of that swine-midden,' remarked Drinkwater. 'I have never seen so slovenly maintained a ship.'

'You damned near had me finished with all that shouting,' said Tregembo.

'That's as maybe, Tregembo. Would you have had me abandon you? By God, Susan would never have let me forget it…'

They smiled at each other relieved, both aware that they had enjoyed a lucky escape. They withdrew from the stern window of the schooner, Drinkwater to pour himself a glass of the Spanish commander's excellent oloroso , Tregembo to fuss the elegant little cabin into something more befitting a British naval captain. The stink of smoke came in and Drinkwater waited for Quilhampton's party to get aboard. A moment or two later Quilhampton knocked on the door. He entered, grimy but smiling. He held out a rolled chart.

'A glass, James, you've earned it… what d' you have there?'

'The answer to the riddle, sir… yes, thank you.' Quilhampton took the glass from Tregembo, who gave him an old-fashioned, sideways look.

'How did they behave?' asked Drinkwater, unrolling the chart and staring at it.

'The men, sir?'

'Yes.'

'Like lambs, all eagerness to please. Never seen a firing party so eager to destroy a prize, couldn't do enough for me… would have burnt the damn thing twice over if it'd been a fit plea for mitigation…'

Drinkwater looked up from the chart and eyed the lieutenant speculatively. 'You think it should be, James?'

'We've little choice, sir. In any case, they outnumber us and I'm not sure about the men that were with me. It was only circumstances and self-preservation that kept us together… Marsden's all right, Derrick's a canting neutral and I suppose we can rely on old Tregembo…'

'Less of the "old", Mr Quilhampton, zur, if you please,' growled the Cornishman.

Quilhampton grinned and downed his glass, winking at Drinkwater.

'Let's hope they all appreciate which side their bread's buttered on now,' said Drinkwater, finishing his own glass, 'even so, I'll have to read 'em the riot act.'

'I'll muster them, then, sir.'

'Yes, if you please, and try not to look so damned pleased with yourself.'

'I think you'll find something to smile about, sir, if you study that chart.'

'Why?'

'I think it shows us where we may find Patrician .'

Drinkwater looked down at the chart with its unfamiliar script and mixture of incomprehensible Russian characters and French names favoured by more aristocratic hydrographers. 'Anyway,' went on Quilhampton, pausing by the cabin door, 'I'm uncommon pleased to be given a fighting chance again.'

'Yes,' agreed Drinkwater, 'it was quite a turn up for the books, eh?'

'Well, "fortune favours the brave", sir,' Quilhampton remarked sententiously.

'I think,' replied Drinkwater drily, 'that last night, fortune was merely inclined to favour the least incompetent.'

Quilhampton left with a chuckle, but Drinkwater exchanged a glance with Tregembo.

'I'll let 'ee know if I hear anything, zur, have no fear o' that.'

'Very well, Tregembo,' Drinkwater nodded, 'only I've a notion to set eyes on my family again.'

'You ain't the only one, zur.'

Drinkwater poured himself a second glass of the oloroso and, while he waited for the men to be mustered on deck, he studied the chart. The brig's Russian master was an untidy navigator; the erasure of her track was imperfectly carried out. It was quite obvious that Captain Rakitin had a nearer rendezvous than Sitka and, studying the features of the inlet, it was the very place he himself would have chosen to hide a prize. Delighted, he tossed off the glass and composed his features. He was going to have to scold the men, but by all accounts they had quite a tale to tell.

Quilhampton gathered the details, noting them down on a page torn from the schooner's log-book. The men who had absconded from Drake's Bay had found the same village that Quilhampton had been driven from and met the same reception from its inhabitants. Although a body of opinion sought revenge on the local peons , wiser councils prevailed and the deserters moved further inland, reducing the chances of being retaken by any parties sent out by Drinkwater. For a day or two they remained together until they reached the great sequoia woods where game, water and freedom had split them into groups and they had lost their discipline. For a few days they wandered happily about and then one party found an Indian village. Their attempt to establish friendly relations with the native women met a hostile rebuttal. Another party roamed into a Franciscan mission and were driven off by angry mestizos who had been told they were devils. Within a week the country was raised against them and several were killed or left to the mercies of the natives as the manhunt spread. Eventually twenty-two of them found themselves rounded up and turned over to a strange, English-speaking man in fringed buckskins whom the local people held in some awe.

To the British deserters he promised, with complicit winks and other indications of racial superiority, that if they played along, he would accomplish their rescue. There were prolonged parleys, exchanges of some form of gifts or money and then they were led off on the promise of good behaviour, by the mountain-man whom they knew by the obvious alias of 'Captain Mack'. Since the alternative was inevitable death at the hands of either Indians, half-caste Spanish or the tender ministrations of what they thought was the Inquisition, they shambled off in the wake of their rescuer.

After a march of three days, Captain Mack led them down to the sea, on the shores of Bodega Bay where, to their astonishment, they found soldiers who spoke a language they could not understand, but was clearly not Spanish. It did not take them long to find out that they had unwittingly become the serfs of the Russian-American Company, and that they were to be shipped in one of the filthy brigs that lay in the bay to the Company's more secure post on the Columbia River. Captain Mack had gone with them to strike his bargain with the commandant there, and had been waiting to return to the mountain forests of California when Drinkwater had arrived in the schooner. As for the men, they were to be employed refitting or serving in Russian ships in the Pacific.

'The hands are mustered, Captain.'

Drinkwater came out of his reverie to find Derrick confronting him. 'Eh? Oh, thank you, Derrick. I shall be up directly.'

There was something piratical about the assembly amidships. Whether it was the lean, dishevelled and indisciplined appearance of the men, or whether the character of the schooner under its false colours, or simply the crawling uncertainty that nagged at Drinkwater that contributed to this impression, he was not sure as they stared back at him. Despite his titular right to lead them, his tenure of command had never rested on such insubstantial foundations. Among the men confronting him were almost certainly those who had attempted to sabotage the Patrician .

'Very well,' he began, silencing them and studying their faces for traces of guilt, defiance, insolence or contrition. 'Fate has literally cast us in the same boat…' he slapped the rail beside him, 'and I intend to discover the whereabouts of the Patrician and free our shipmates from the kind of bestial treatment some of you have just subjected yourselves to. Make no mistake about it, there are worse forms of existence than service in the King's Navy.' He paused, to let the point sink in.

'I can offer you little beyond hardship and the possibility of retaking our ship from the Russians, clearing our name as a company and destroying our enemies.'

He paused again, clambering up on the carriage of a 6-pounder. 'Well, what d'you say? Are you for or against? Do we keep that rag aloft,' he pointed up at the red and gold ensign of Spain still at the main peak, 'or are we going to take this little hooker into Plymouth to be condemned as a prize to Patrician ?'