A Brig of War

Unfamiliar figures emerged on deck and Drinkwater remembered his own orders. Gaston Bruilhac assisted the tall figure of Edouard Santhonax whose arm was still slung beneath his coat. The hands idled curiously as Santhonax cast his eyes aloft, noting the set of the sails.

'Good mornin', sir.' Drinkwater touched his hat out of formal courtesy. Long enmity had bred a respect for the Frenchman and Drinkwater hoped his presence as a prisoner satisfied the shade of Madoc Griffiths.

'Good morning, Boireleau…' He winced, adjusting himself against the motion of the ship. 'Perhaps I should call you Drinkwater, now the ship is yours.'

'I should be honoured, sir. She is a fine ship.'

'That is a compliment, yes?'

'It was intended so, sir, and the only one I can offer, under the circumstances.'

Santhonax narrowed his eyes. 'You do not have many men to work her.'

'Sufficient, sir.'

'You are pleased with your success, hein?' He bit his lip as a wave of pain swept over him, 'pleased that I am your prisoner?'

'C'est la guerre, sir, the fortune of war. I would rather Griffiths lived, you have the advantage over him there.'

'He saved your life.' Santhonax looked down at his shoulder.

'But you are not dead, Capitaine.'

Santhonax smiled. 'He intended to kill me.'

'He was intent upon revenge.'

'Revenge? Pourquoi?'

'Major Brown,' Drinkwater said icily, 'rotting on a gibbet over the guns of Kijkduin.'

Santhonax frowned. 'Ah, the English spy we caught…' Drinkwater remembered the jolly brevet-major Santhonax had captured in Holland. He and Griffiths had been friends, brothers-inarms.

Santhonax shrugged. 'Most assuredly, Lieutenant, we are all of us mortal. My wife has not yet forgiven you this…' His finger reached up and indicated the disfigurement of his face. 'I doubt she ever will.'

For a moment it occurred to Drinkwater to roll up his sleeve and reveal the twisted flesh of his own right arm, but the childishness of such an action suddenly struck him. He remained silent.

'You are bound for England, yes?' Santhonax went on. Drinkwater nodded. 'It is a long way yet, eh?' Santhonax turned and began to pace the deck, leaning on Bruilhac's shoulder.

'Mr Drinkwater!' Morris's voice cut across the quarterdeck as he emerged from the companionway.

'Mornin' sir,' Drinkwater uncovered again.

'Mr Drinkwater, hands are to witness punishment at four bells.'

'Punishment, sir? Nothing has been reported to me…'

'Insolence, Mr Drinkwater, insolence was reported to me at six bells in the first watch, Mr Dalziell's watch.'

'And the offender sir?'

'Your lackey, Drinkwater,' said Morris with evident pleasure, Tregembo.'

Drinkwater forced himself to watch Tregembo's face. The eyes were tight shut and the teeth bit into the leather pad that prevented the Cornishman from biting through his own tongue as each stroke of the cat made him flinch. At the twelfth stripe the bosun's mates changed. The second man ran the bloody tails of cat through his hand as he braced his feet. He hesitated.

'Lay on there, damn you!' Morris snapped and Drinkwater sensed the wave of resentment that ran through the people assembled in the waist. Tregembo's 'insolence', Drinkwater had learned in the roundabout way that a good first lieutenant might determine the true course of events, had consisted of no more than being last back on deck after working aloft during Dalziell's watch. When accused of idleness Tregembo had mumbled that one must always be last on deck and it was usually the first aloft who had been working on the yardarm.

For this piece of logic Tregembo was now being flayed. The bosun's mates changed again. Drinkwater recollected Dalziell's earlier attempt to have Tregembo flogged and the smirk on the young man's face fully confirmed his present satisfaction. Morris too had a reason for flogging Tregembo. The Cornishman had been a witness to his disgrace aboard Cyclops, indeed Tregembo had had a hand in the disappearance one night of one of Morris's cabal.

Drinkwater was pleased to note that Lieutenant Rogers appeared most unhappy over an issue that previously might have pleased him, while Quilhampton, Appleby and the rest stood mutely averting their eyes. At the conclusion of the third dozen Tregembo was cut down. Drinkwater dismissed the hands in a dispassionate voice.

That evening it fell calm again, the sea smooth on its surface with the ship rolling on a lazy swell. The sun had set blood-red, leaving an after glow of scarlet reaching almost to the zenith, through which the cold pin-pricks of stars were beginning to break. Venus blazed above Africa eighty leagues to the west. Drinkwater paced the deck, an hour and a half of his watch to go. His uniform coat stuck to his back, a prickling example of Morris's tyranny, for the commander had refused to allow his officers to appear on the quarterdeck in their shirt-sleeves as they had done under Griffiths.

Already shadows were deepening about the deck. The second dog-watch idled about restlessly. Drinkwater picked up the quadrant Quilhampton had brought up.

'Ready, Mr Q?'

'All ready, sir,' replied the midshipman, squatting down on the deck next to the chronometer box and jamming the slate between his crossed knees in the position he had found most suitable, minus one hand, for jotting down the first lieutenant's observations. Drinkwater smiled at the small, crouched figure. The boy frowned in concentration as he watched the second hand jerk round, the slate pencil poised in his only fist.

'Very well then, Venus first.' Drinkwater set the index to zero and caught the planet in the mirrors, twisting his wrist and rotating the instrument about its index. His long fingers twiddled the vernier screw and he settled the planet's disc precisely on the horizon, his fingers turning slowly as he followed the mensurable descent of it, rocking the whole so that the disc oscillated on the tangent of the horizon. 'On!'

Quilhampton noted the time as Drinkwater read the altitude off the arc and called the figures to the midshipman. Quilhampton dutifully repeated them.

Drinkwater took a second observation of Venus then crossed the deck. 'Canopus next!'

'Get up, brat!' Drinkwater turned at the intrusion. Morris stood over the midshipman who, in his concentration had not seen the commander arrive on the quarterdeck. 'Have you never been taught respect, you damned whoreson?'

Quilhampton put out his left arm to push himself to his feet, forgetting he had no hand. The still soft stump gave under him and he slipped on to his knees, the colour draining from his face. 'I, I'm sorry sir, I was watching the chronometer…' Morris's foot came back and sent the chronometer box spinning across the deck. It caught against a ring bolt, tipped and the glass shattered.

Drinkwater swiftly crossed the deck. 'Turn a glass,' he snapped at the quartermaster by the binnacle. Perhaps there was not too much damage and any stopping of the timepiece might be allowed for, 'then go below and get the precise time from Mr Appleby's hunter.' Morris had begun to rail at the terrified midshipman. It was clear that he was drunk.