The trio was dominated by Tregembo, for Tregembo was a man of forthright stamp, whose wife Susan was cook to the Drinkwater menage in distant Hampshire. Long service and Cornish cunning had ensured Tregembo exercised influence, even in the wardroom, and his protection of his master was legendary throughout the ship. It was Tregembo who first sensed danger.
'What means this 'ere?' he asked Derrick, holding out the letter from Canton that Drinkwater had left upon his desk.
'Thou should'st not read the captain's correspondence ...'
'Thou knows I can't read, that's why I'm asking thee!' snapped Tregembo at the Quaker, 'tis what that boy brought ...'
'Yes ... 'tis only a request for a passage,' said Derrick dismissively, taking the sheet of paper and slipping it into the ship's letter book.
'I didn't like the cut o' that boy ...' ruminated Tregembo, 'he put me in mind o' something ...'
'Thou seest knots in a bullrush, Friend,' muttered Derrick, and Tregembo, staring through the stern windows at the emerging grey of the Pearl River, growled uncharitably.
'He put me in mind of a boy who used to be a whatsit to Captain Allen o' the Rattler.'
'And what does that signify?' asked Derrick.
'Nothing,' said Tregembo, 'but that Captain Allen was hanged for buggery.'
Lieutenant Quilhampton was called with the news that the captain was already on deck. James Quilhampton had suffered the agonies of sexual temptation while Patrician had swung to her anchor. He was near despair, for it was months earlier that he had received a letter already half a year old, that Catriona MacEwan would not repulse his advances if he pressed his suit. To the thin, one-handed young man, such a prospect offered a happiness that he had once despaired of, and the Captain's announcement that they were homeward bound only made their present tardiness the more reprehensible. He was suddenly, expectantly awake on this dawn of departure, eager to get the anchor atrip and loose off the gun that, with a shaking topsail, would signal the convoy to weigh. Waving aside the offered coffee he pulled on shirt and breeches, rasped his cheeks and wound a none-too-clean stock about his neck. Kicking his feet into pinchbeck-buckled shoes he strapped his wooden forearm in place, pulled on coat and hat, and hurried on deck.
His arrival coincided with the midships sentry's challenge.
'Boat 'hoy!'
In a frenzy of efficiency he hurried to the entry and peered over the side. 'It's only a junk, man,' he snapped at the marine, waving at the score or so of batwinged sails that moved slowly over the almost windless river.
'Aye, sir, but she's been standing towards us since she came through the Indymen ...'
'She does appear to be approaching us, Mr Q,' remarked Drinkwater, coming up.
'Morning, sir.'
'Mornin', replied Drinkwater, turning to the marine. 'Give her another hail.' Drinkwater raised his glass and levelled it at the junk. Quilhampton spotted activity about the mast, one of the three sails beginning to collapse, flattening the row of battens one on top of the other as the halliard was let go.
'Boat, 'hoy!' bellowed the marine.
'Ah, I thought so ...' Drinkwater lowered his glass and Quilhampton could himself see the flash of colour in the grey dawn, like the blue of a jay's wing, where the gaily coloured figure of the little Indian boy stood at the junk's ungainly bow.
'I think we have a passenger or two, Mr Q, and a whip at the main yardarm might prove useful.'
Aye, aye, sir.' Quilhampton turned away just as the bosun's pipes began squealing at the hatchways to turn up Patrician's company. It did not seem to matter that they had thirteen or fourteen thousand miles of ocean to cross before a sight of the English coast would greet them: there was nothing so exciting as the final moment of homeward departure!
Behind him, watched by the marine and Captain Drinkwater, the junk rounded to under the Patrician's quarter and dropped alongside.
Tregembo watched the junk from the starboard quarter-gallery. Something in the appearance of that boy and the mention of sodomy had brought back unpleasant memories of the berth-deck of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Cyclops and the unpleasant coterie that had held sway under the leadership of a certain Midshipman Morris. Morris had been the evil genius who had presided over the cockpit and whose authority the young Drinkwater had challenged. Tregembo too had been mixed up in the dark and unacknowledged doings of the lower deck that had ended the tyranny by the quiet murder of one of Morris's confederates. Not that Tregembo possessed a conscience over the matter, rather that the disturbing influence had dominated an unhappy period of his hard life and the unbidden memory had made him introspective, in the manner of all elderly men. That is why for several moments he could not believe his eyes and thought himself victim of a trick of the light.
'It be impossible,' he muttered, for the figure was too gross, too robed in fantastical costume and too given to fat to be anything other than someone else. But just for a moment, as the mandarin hoisted himself up Patrician's tumblehome by way of the man-ropes, Tregembo fell victim to the fanciful notion that he was the man Morris.
It was Quilhampton who first recognised the stranger stepping down on to Patrician's deck. Quilhampton had known Morris when that officer had briefly commanded the brig Hellebore and Drinkwater had served as his first lieutenant. Unlike Tregembo he knew little of the man's history or his appearance as a younger man. Quilhampton recalled him already running to seed, though not as gross or disguised as he now appeared. Quilhampton had half forgotten the sick commander they had left in hospital at the Cape of Good Hope, forgotten the rumours that the ship's surgeon had been poisoning him, forgotten even the few facts from his own past that Captain Drinkwater had let slip. To Quilhampton recognition came most easily, though he too was surprised at the extravagant appearance of this quondam naval officer.
Drinkwater, his mind ranging from the forthcoming details of ordering his charges under weigh to the potential securing of the specie he anticipated off the junk's deck, saw only a large, obese man in the yellow silk robe of a mandarin. Recognition of the man as a European was incidental to the sudden flurry of activity about the deck. Fraser was alongside him, as was Ballantyne, and Acting Lieutenant Frey had his yeoman of signals bending flags on to halliards.
Reports flooded aft: the capstans were manned and the nippers in place, below in the cable tiers the Russians prepared to coil the huge, wet and heavy cable. Mr Comley had his fo'c's'le men at their stations and the topsail sheets and halliards were manned. On the quarterdeck a party of marines were tailing on to the main topsail halliards and a quarter-gunner, lanyard in hand, had a carronade charged and ready to fire as the signal for the convoy to weigh.
Gradually a calm settled over Patrician. Men stood expectantly at their stations; Fraser told off the acknowledged reports as they came in; Ballantyne stood by the wheel. Only Quilhampton seemed party to the drama at the embarkation point.