'Good night, Mr Drinkwater.'
As he broke his fast the following morning, when a dying wind held every prospect of their being able to remount the guns, he heard again the words 'Flying Dutchman'. He called Merrick from the pantry. 'Come now what's all this about?'
Merrick was shamefaced but clearly confused. He told how a tale was going round the brig about them being condemned to everlasting drifting about, like the Flying Dutchman. It was all on account of the woman. 'It's nothing but scuttlebutt, sir, but… well I…' Drinkwater smiled. It sounded ridiculous but he knew the grip a superstition could have over the minds of these men. It was not that they were simple but that their understanding was circumscribed. They had no idea where they were, they endured hours of remorseless labour to no apparent purpose. The best of them was paid twenty-nine shillings and sixpence gross, less deductions for the Chatham Chest, medical treatment, slops and whatever remaining delights, like tobacco, the purser sold them. Their lives were forfeit if they broke the iron-bound rules of conduct, and ruled by an arbitrary authority which was a yoke, no matter how enlightened. Recent events had conspired to make it the more irksome and there would be those among them with sufficient theology to assure their more credulous messmates that they were being punished for their carnal misdemeanours. It was not surprising therefore that their minds should react to a story as vivid as that of Vanderdecken, the legendary Flying Dutchman. The question was who had started its circulation?
'Where did you first hear the story, Merrick?'
The man pondered. 'It was here in the gunroom, sir. Begging your pardon sir, I wasn't listening deliberately, sir but I heard…'
'Well who was telling it, man?' said Drinkwater impatiently, well knowing Merrick eavesdropped and passed the conversation of the officers to the cook who, from his centrally situated galley where all came during the day, fed out to the hands the gossip he saw fit.
'I think it were Mr Quilhampton, sir.'
'Mr Q, eh? Thank you, Merrick. By the way you did not concern yourself over such things on Kestrel did you?'
'Lord love you no, sir. But we was never far from home, sir. Ushant, Texel, them's home for British jacks sir, but up there now,' he pointed to the deckhead, 'why nobody knows the stars, sir, even the bleeding sun's north of us at noon, sir. One of the men says there's islands of ice not many leagues to the south. It just don't seem right sir, kind of alarming…'
Drinkwater sent for Mr Quilhampton. 'Merrick tells me he heard you spinning the yarn of the Flying Dutchman, is this true?'
'Well no, sir. Actually I was listening. I mean I had heard it before, but I didn't like to say so, sir.'
'Who was telling the tale then?'
'Oh it was just by way of entertainment, sir. I was listening with Dalziell.'
'But who was telling it?'
'Why Mr Rogers, sir.'
'No wind, Mr Lestock.'
'None, Mr Drinkwater.'
'Very well, clew up all sails and square the yards. A tackle at each of the lower yardarms, one on the main topmast stay and a bull rope to the capstan. The watch can rig those then turn up all hands.'
He fell to pondering the problem. Since the discovery of Catherine Best, Rogers had been very quiet. Whether or not he had had a relationship with the woman Drinkwater did not know. Neither did he care. Appleby told him the woman believed herself barren and there seemed no evidence of other complications. Nevertheless Rogers had been a party to the conspiracy. More, Drinkwater hoped, out of a misplaced, schoolboy prankishness than a calculated act. But Drinkwater was not sure. Rogers might have been evening the score, proving himself smarter than the first lieutenant. But that did not ring quite true. Rogers was an impetuous, fiery officer, spirited if low in moral character, certainly able and probably brave. The service was full of his type; they were indispensible in action. But Rogers was not a dissembler. His weakness lay in his impetuous temper. When Dalziell had brought Tregembo for a flogging Rogers had acted without a second thought. So was Dalziell behind this silly rumour? There was an inescapable logic about it. Not that the yarn was, in itself sinister, but the persistence of its power to unsettle and subvert was real; very real. The sooner they had the guns remounted the better. Now that they were in temperate latitudes once again they could resume their routine of general quarters, suspended since the Cape in the heavy weather of the Roaring Forties. Drinkwater knew it was not sufficient to read the Articles of War once a month to keep the people on their toes. Only the satisfying roar and thunder of their brutish artillery could do that.
'All ready, Mr Drinkwater. Hands at the tackles, the hatches off and the toms off the guns.'
'Very well, Mr Lestock, then let us turn to.'
The first to emerge was the foremost starboard waist gun. The tackles of the starboard fore and main yardarms were overhauled and married to the big stay tackle. The three purchases thus joined were lowered into the hold. There they were hooked on to the gun, ready slung by a strop around its trunnions.
A bosun's mate commanded the hauling part of each tackle and at the gratings the bosun, Mr Grey, his silver chained whistle suspended about his neck, stood poised.
'Set tight all!' The slack in the three tackles was taken up.
'Stay tackle heave! Handsomely there now… yard tackles up slack!'
The black doubled hemp of the main topmast stay assumed a shallow angle and the mainmast creaked gently. The six pounder weighed eighteen hundredweights. Below in the hold six men tallied on a bull-rope round the gun's cascabel, steadying the black barrel. The next order came as the gun rose level with the deck: 'Yard tackles heave!' The men grunted away in concerted effort. There were no merchant ship's shanties but a rhythmic grunt as fifty men, barefoot and sweating in the sunshine, strained at their work. 'Walk back the stay tackle handsomely!'
The gun, suspended now from all three tackles, began to move horizontally across the deck. The bull-rope trailed slack and was pulled onto the deck by one of the topmen who ran forward to reeve it through a train tackle block.
'Vast heaving main yard!' As the stay tackle party lowered slowly back and the mainyard party ceased work, the gun slewed forward under the pull of the foreyard tackle. It began to move across the deck diagonally.
'Capstan party heave tight!' Twenty men walked round the capstan and tightened the bull-rope. Theirs was a job of adjustment, as was that of the gunner's party that stood by the waiting gun carriage.
'Walk back the mainyard!' The gun moved forward now, almost over the carriage.
'Vast all!'
'Walk back handsomely!' Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the gun began to descend. Trussel made some furious signals while Mr Grey held first the foreyard party, then the main. The gun stopped while Trussel's men shoved the carriage a little. A minute later the gun rested on its trunnions. The cap-squares were shut. The carriage was slewed into position and run up against its port lintel, then the breechings were passed.
'Overhaul all…' The three tackles were passed down into the hold for the second gun.
They finished by mid-afternoon and were piped to dinner after which they were piped up again and went to general quarters. The broadsides were ragged and from his cot Griffiths expressed his disappointment.
'Tell the people,' he muttered crossly, 'that if that is the best they can do I will stop their grog again.'
It was not an order Drinkwater made haste to obey. The mood of the ship was too delicate and Appleby had told him the fever had aggravated Griffiths's leg and he was likely to be irritable and a semi-invalid for some time.