Dennis Wheatley: The Sultan's Daughter

Seeing no reason to get up, he lay in his bunk all the morning reading a book. At midday he dressed and went on deck. It was Formby's watch below and his Second-in-Command, a stodgy, moon-faced fellow named Trumper, stood near the binnacle, keeping an eye on the sails. Having acknowledged Trumper's greeting, Roger quickly turned away and began to pace the narrow quarter-deck.

As he reached its limit amidships, he noticed one of the hands coiling down a rope at the foot of the mast. The man's face seemed vaguely familiar, so he stopped and asked, 'Have I not seen you somewhere before? '

The sailor straightened himself and replied with a surly frown. ' Aye. My name be Giffens and you knows me well enough though it be a few years since we met. I were groom up at Wal-hampton to Miss Amanda afore you married she.'

Roger nodded. ' I recall you now. But I find it surprising that you should have chosen to go to sea rather than continue to care for horses.'

'Chosen! ' Giffens echoed with a snort. 'There were no choice about it. I were catched by the Press Gang in Christchurch three months back.'

'Indeed. But the servants of the quality are immune from pressing. You had only to show that you were in Sir William Burrard's service to secure your release.'

'I were so no longer. Sir William got to know that I were a member of the Corresponding Society. 'E were that angry that 'e took 'is cane to me and drove me from Walhampton 'Ouse. Aye, and with 'alf a week's wages owing me ter boot.'

' So,' remarked Roger coldly, ' you are a member of the Corresponding Society. As such, you would no doubt like to see the King dethroned and a bloody revolution here, similar to that there has been in France? '

Giffens eyed him angrily. ' I've naught against King George, but I 'ave against gentry the like o' you. To further your own fortune in some way you've a mind to go to France, an' a word with others of your kidney is enough to 'ave a sloop-of-war bidden to land ye there. Yet what of us afore the mast who 'as the doin' of it? Should we be taken by the Frenchies us will find ourselves slaves chained to an oar in them's galleys.'

It was a point of view that Roger had never before had put to him. Had he heard it voiced in other circumstances he would have agreed that it was hard upon the common seaman that his lot, perhaps for years, should he be made a prisoner-of-war, would be the appalling one of a felon. On the other hand, the officers who ordered him into danger could count upon being treated fairly decently and were often, after only a few months of captivity, exchanged for enemy officers of equivalent rank.

But for some years past there had been serious unrest in England. Among the lower orders the doctrines of atheism and communism rampant in France had spread alarmingly. In Bristol, Norwich and numerous other cities troops had had to be used to suppress riots and defend property. In London mobs many thousands strong had publicly demanded the abolition of the Monarchy and the setting up of a People's Republic. Mr. Pitt had found it necessary to suspend Habeas Corpus and had passed a law sentencing to transportation for life street agitators caught addressing more than four people. Such measures might appear harsh but, having witnessed the horrors of the French Terror, Roger felt that no severity against individual trouble-makers was too great, when only by such means could they be prevented from bringing about the destruction in a welter of blood and death of all that was best in Britain. By admitting to being a member of the revolutionary Corresponding Society, Giffens had virtually revealed himself as a potential sans-culotte; so Roger said to him sternly:

'I go to France not for my own pleasure or profit, but upon the King's business. And since you are now one of His Majesty's seamen, however unwillingly, it is your duty to accept any risk there may be in doing your part to land me there.'

Giffens spat upon the deck. 'Aye! Duty and weevilly biscuits, that's our lot. But you're not one of my officers; so it's not for you to preach duty to me.'

* Speak to me again like that,' Roger snapped, 'and I'll have the Captain order you strapped to a grating for six lashes of the ''cat".' Then he swung on his heel and recommenced pacing the quarter-deck.

Within a few minutes he had dismissed Giffens from his mind and was thinking of his last conversation with Mr. Pitt. Together they had surveyed the international situation and, for Britain, it could hardly have been worse.

Between March '96 and April '97 Bonaparte's victorious army had overrun Piedmont, the Duchies of Milan, Parma and Modena, the Republic of Genoa and an area as big as Switzerland in north-east Italy that had for centuries been subject to Venice. He had dethroned their rulers, set up People's Governments and merged a great part of these territories into a new Cisalpine

Republic. He had also invaded the Papal States and had blackmailed both the Pope and the Duke of Tuscany into making huge contributions to the cost of his campaign. As a result, the whole of northern Italy now lay under the heel of France.

Yet he had fallen short of achieving his great plan, as he had described it to Roger before setting out for Italy. It had been that he should fight his way up to the Tyrol while the French Army of the Rhine marched south to make junction with him there; then with this overwhelming force, he would thrust east and compel the Austrians to sign a peace treaty in Vienna. He had reached the Tyrol, but the Army of the Rhine had failed him; so, to give it further time, he had agreed to an armistice with the Austrians. For six months the plenipotentiaries had wrangled over peace terms at Leoben. By then autumn had come again, and the Army of the Rhine had made little progress. Although the great prize, Vienna, lay less than a hundred miles away, Bonaparte did not dare, with snow already falling in the mountains, resume his advance alone and risk a defeat so far from his base. Reluctantly he had come to terms and signed a peace treaty with the Austrians at Campo Formio on October 17th.

When making peace Austria had not consulted Britain, thus betraying the ally who had sent her many millions in subsidies to help her defend herself. Still worse, by the terms of the Treaty, she surrendered all claim to her Belgian territories. Her flat refusal to do so previously had been the stumbling block which Mr. Pitt had felt he could not honourably ignore when he had had the opportunity to agree a general pacification with France some two years earlier.

Still earlier Prussia, too, had betrayed Britain by making a separate peace; and although Frederick William II had died in the previous November his succssor, Frederick William III, as yet showed no inclination to re-enter the conflict against the Power that threatened every Monarchy in Europe.

Catherine of Russia had realized belatedly the danger, and had promised to send an Army against France. But she had died just a year before the King of Prussia, and her death had proved another blow to Britain. Her son, who succeeded her as Paul I, had detested his mother so intensely that he senselessly sought to be avenged upon her in her grave by reversing every policy she had favoured and, overnight, he tore up the agreement by which Russia was to join the Anglo-Austrian alliance.

Holland lay at the mercy of France, Portugal had signed a separate peace and Spain ' had gone over to the enemy. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies alone, owing to the influence of Queen Caroline, the sister of the martyred Marie Antoinette, pursued a neutrality strongly favourable to Britain, and would have entered the war again if she could have been supported. But she could not. The combination of the French and Spanish Fleets, after Spain had become the ally of France in '96, gave them such superiority that Britain had been forced to withdraw her Fleet from the Mediterranean; so for the past two years Naples had remained cut off.