He jerked awake, the sweat pouring from him, the thin laughter coming from beyond the cabin door. It was high-pitched and piping, and combined with the dream to bring him leaping from his cot, his heart thundering in his chest, his night-shirt sticking to his body and the lank locks of his loosely bound hair plastered to his scalp.
Pulling on breeches and tucking the tails of his night-shirt into them, he yanked his cloak from the hook by the door and stepped precipitately out on to the gun-deck. The dozing marine sentry sprang upright with a click of musket against buckles.
The giggling laughter came again, resolving itself into the now familiar sounds of pre-dawn coition from the berth-deck. His confusion clearing from his fogged mind, Drinkwater ran up the quarterdeck ladder, announcing his presence by a discreet cough.
Mr Meggs, the gunner, appeared from beyond the mizen mast. 'Sir?'
'What day is it?'
'Why, er, Sunday, sir.'
'And the time?'
'A little before three bells, sir,' and then added, as if sensing the captain's distraction, 'in the morning watch, sir.'
'Pipe all hands.'
All hands, sir?'
'You heard me, damn it, and clear the ship. No showing of legs, Spithead style, I want the lower deck cleared fore and aft and the people mustered.'
'Ship's company to muster, sir, aye, aye.'
Somewhat bemused at this extraordinary behaviour, the elderly Meggs shuffled forward, hesitated, looked back at the captain, then called for the bosun's mate of the watch.
'Mr Meggs!'
The gunner turned at the captain's shout. He began to shuffle aft again.
'Mr Meggs,' said Drinkwater quietly, 'I am aware that only the recent casualties force you to keep watch on deck, but be so kind as not to appear on the quarterdeck in your slippers.'
Meggs looked down at his erring feet. Habitual use of felt slippers in Patrician's magazine, where the wearing of leather soles might rasp and ignite the coarse grains of spilt gunpowder, probably rendered it instinctive that the poor fellow put them on at the call of the watch. Perhaps, thought Drinkwater, catching a smell of the man, he slept in the festering things!
'I beg your pardon, sir.' Meggs looked crestfallen.
'Be a good fellow and have something more suitable on when you muster.'
'Very well, sir ...' Meggs looked hard at his captain and Drinkwater suddenly looked down at his own appearance.
'Perhaps,' he said, recovering himself at last, 'that had better stand for both of us, eh? You may wait until four bells before turning up the ship.'
Fully awake and aware of the ludicrous appearance he would cut even in the predawn gloom, Drinkwater hurried below. As he turned for his cabin above the companionway, he was aware of a face staring up at him. For a second he stopped, his heart beating as though this was some impish visitation from his dream, and then it was gone, the young Chinese girl vanishing into the stygian darkness.
'Pass word for my steward,' he growled at the marine, and the whisper went around the ship that Captain Drinkwater was awake and something was afoot.
Sluicing his face after the harsh ministrations of the razor Drinkwater called for a clean shirt. It occurred to him that the few days of relatively relaxed routine might prove fatal to the delicate matter of morale. He was aware that he had left the refitting of the ship to Fraser and though he could find little to fault with the first lieutenant's arrangements, only time would prove their thoroughness.
Drinkwater was unhappily conscious that any loosening of the bonds of discipline was a risky matter, and that mumblings of discontent had accompanied Patrician from the moment the crew of Antigone had been turned wholesale into her, topped up with the scum of a hot press and sent round Cape Horn to absent them all from European waters.
The long-service volunteers had had their willingness to serve eroded by lack of shore leave and the association of landsmen, lubbers, thieves and petty felons; men whose proper habitat was a gaol, but whom the Admiralty saw fit to pour into men-of-war to fill their impossible complements. It was for prime seamen to tolerate them, but to be reduced to their level was something that proud men, jealous of their expertise, could not submit to.
Drinkwater's greatest enemy was desertion. Jack had a simple understanding of the world and to him the foreign shore of China offered escape from the endless round of grinding labour expected of him aboard a King's ship. Drinkwater knew and understood all this, and before Patrician had sailed for the Pacific he had had to hang a man at the fore-yardarm for desertion, pour encourager les autres.
He shook the awful image from his mind's eye and summoned more cogent reasons for his attitude. He could not afford to lose a single man. Ballantyne had told him the Indiamen were often short of hands on a China voyage, of how they embarked Chinese to make up their complements, and how their commanders would be keen to secure the services of a dozen active topmen, even to the extent of hiding them until they were out of sight of land. To this must be added the potent inducement of the high and guaranteed wages paid on Company ships.
In short, Drinkwater mused as he tied his stock and reached behind him for the coat that Mullender held out, he would not be at all surprised if he was short of men. The question was, how many?
Beyond the cabin door the pipes squealed as four bells struck. Drinkwater stood before his mirror, head a-cock, listening to the sounds of reaction, judging by the inevitable sluggishness, the little shrieks of the whores and the suppressed oaths, the temper of his men.
Midshipman Count Vasili Chirkov felt his hammock shake. 'Come on, Vasili, get out ... uniform ... muster ...'
Midshipman Dutfield was climbing into his breeches, rousing the indolent Russian between grunts of effort as he and his colleagues sought the neglected items of their uniform in the gloomy chaos of the gunroom.
'Non ... no ...'
The girl stirred in the crook of his arm and nestled comfortably up to him.
Dutfield shook the hammock violently and then Frey was standing close, holding up a glim so that it shone unequivocally over the exposed bodies.
'Come on, you lubber!' the acting lieutenant urged, 'Or the Captain will marry you to the gunner's daughter.'
'No ...' Chirkov peered over the edge of the hammock. 'I have girl first ...'
Dutfield and Frey exchanged glances. Frey winked and shrugged. He felt his new-found authority inadequate to the task. The midshipmen left the gunroom and joined the rush to the upper deck.
The ship was a babel of confusion. Everywhere along the berth-deck men were hurriedly drawing on clothes and unlashing and rolling hammocks. Small brown Tanka women, their usefulness now past and to whom the sudden shrill of the pipes and flurry of activity must have been beyond all comprehension, were being roughly shoved aside. In one place two men were busy thrusting their paramours through an open gun-port into a waiting sampan, in another one of these unfortunate creatures was crying like a child, her ankle badly sprained from too sudden a descent from a hammock.
'Clear lower deck! Out! Out! Out!' Bosun Comley was bawling, urging his mates to use their starters, and lashing about him with his cane.
'Get these whores over the side! This is a King's ship, not a kennel!'
'Bloody hypocrite!' remarked a Quotaman who had once entertained social expectations but had been found guilty of embezzlement.
'Clear lower deck!'
Lieutenant Mount appeared, buttoning his tunic and shouting.