'Go on, Mr Fraser, and do stop begging my pardon; you are, after all, the first lieutenant.'
Fraser's diffidence seemed to slip from him, and Drinkwater mentally reprobated himself for his cross-grainedness. He sometimes forgot the age difference between himself and his officers and the intimidating effect it could have on their confidences.
'Well, sir, I got wind o' scuttlebutt that the people had heard you knew the whereabouts o' the deserters ...' (How? Drinkwater asked himself. Not Tregembo, certainly; perhaps Mullender or the Quaker Derrick, whose loyalty lay closer to his moral creed than any imposed regulations of the Admiralty.) '... and that you wouldn't reclaim them on account o' the fact that you didna' want trouble.'
'I see. But such an assumption of weakness might provoke trouble nevertheless.'
'Aye, sir, that's true,' said Fraser, relieved that the captain took his point.
Drinkwater recalled his remark to Callan about not wanting to disaffect the men when the ship was idle. Misinterpretation of such a speech was not surprising. He still had Phaeton in company, he could alter course for Macao and arraign the recaptured deserters before a court martial which would assuredly hang them. Or he could affect to ignore the matter a while longer, and deal with it when he judged proper.
'I shall recover the deserters tomorrow, Mr Fraser, if the sea permits it. In the meantime deal with Midshipman Chirkov and get Marsden to rig up those screens.'
In the gloom of the gunroom, lit by the grease-dips' guttering flames, the Patrician's midshipmen stood alongside their Russian counterparts. In the main they had got on well together. Frey, partly by virtue of his personality, partly by his acting rank, was the acknowledged senior, and there was some evidence that Chirkov was not liked by the other Russians on account of his overwhelming idleness. There was, therefore, no particular objection to the first lieutenant's announcement of the punishment, nor any move to release Chirkov when he struggled, protesting the indignity of being held by two of Comley's mates. It was no fault of the other midshipmen, British or Russian, if Chirkov failed to understand that he was being let off lightly, given what amounted to a private punishment on a crowded man-of-war, rather than the spectacular public humbling of being beaten over the breech of a quarterdeck carronade.
Comley laid on over Chirkov's breeched backside to the count of twelve, and when he marched his mates out of the cockpit he respectfully touched his hat to them all. 'Gentlemen ...' he said.
'There, sir,' Frey remarked reasonably to the straightening Chirkov who was choking back tears of rage, pain and humiliation, 'you have had the honour of a thrashing from one of His Britannic Majesty's bosuns, he is senior to you and therefore your submission is without prejudice to your character as an officer.'
Grins greeted this droll speech, but its humour was lost on Chirkov.
'A Mister Bosun is not superior to a Russian Count,' he hissed.
'Perhaps not, sir,' replied Frey quickly, 'but he is most assuredly superior to a midshipman.'
'Particularly a Russian midshipman,' added Belchambers boldly.
Enraged, Chirkov turned on the diminutive Belchambers, but the boy adroitly dodged him and the sudden movement sent agonies of pain through Chirkov's buttocks. As Belchambers slipped past his would-be assailant and made for the companionway to the deck, Frey, Dutfield and the rest barred his retreat. Chirkov was faced with an unsmiling wall of bodies.
'You deserved it, Count Chirkov,' said Frey, 'recall you are a prisoner of war. You would do best to forget the matter. I can assure you that Captain Drinkwater has dismissed it from his mind.'
'What do I worry about your Captain Drinkwater's mind? Captain Drinkwater can go to the devil! I am insulted. I cannot call for satisfactions from Mister Bosun but I can from you!' Chirkov rammed a finger into Frey's face. 'You are only acting lieutenant, you are challenged!'
A stillness fell on the gunroom. The midshipmen swayed amid the creaks and groans of the ship's fabric as it worked easily in the quartering sea. They watched Frey's reaction.
'Duelling is forbidden on board ship, sir, but I shall be pleased to meet you ashore upon our arrival at Prince of Wales Island.'
'Pistols,' snarled Chirkov, and stumbled unhappily from the circle of onlookers.
Captain Drinkwater looked about him. He knew he ought to be contented. The convoy was closed up in good order, spread over some five square miles of the China Sea, not in columns, but a loose formation centred on Guilford and Ligonier, the big
Indiamen, both of which had lanterns in their mizen tops that glowed weakly in the failing daylight. Clouds covered the sky, outriders of the northerly monsoon that drove them southwards with a fair wind for the Malacca Strait. In accordance with his Standing Orders the ships were taking in their topgallants for the night, snugging down to avoid the separation that might make one of them a vulnerable hen for any marauding French reynard cruising on the horizon. Drinkwater looked at the main crosstrees from which Midshipman Dutfield was just then descending. When the midshipman reached the deck he made his report.
'Two junks in the north-east quarter, sir, otherwise nothing in sight beyond the convoy.'
Acknowledging the intelligence, Drinkwater was peeved that the news brought him no satisfaction. He nodded and turned to Frey.
'You may fire the chaser, Mr Frey, and make Phaeton's number ...'
Drinkwater looked astern. Fleetwood Pellew's crack frigate dipped her ensign in farewell, hauled her yards and, on a taut bowline, stood to windward, returning to the coast of China. Patrician was in sole charge now and Drinkwater could go below.
But he lingered. There was no solace in the cabin, divided as it was and with Morris inert and inscrutable behind the canvas screen. So far Drinkwater had avoided all contact with his enemy, unwilling to stir any memory or allow Morris the slightest grounds for reawakening old enmities. Drinkwater did not know how Morris had got word of his presence in the Pearl River, though it was not hard to imagine in the circumscribed circle of gossip attached to the trading fraternity at Canton, but he was convinced Morris had some ulterior motive for selecting Patrician as his means of reaching India. And it went beyond the customary carriage of specie in His Majesty's ships, as witness the chests put aboard Guilford.
No, Morris had personal reasons for seeking passage with Nathaniel Drinkwater, and the quondam naval officer had once sworn he would professionally ruin the man who had displaced him on a quarterdeck.
Coxswain Tregembo lay in his hammock and stared at the dimly visible deck beam a few inches above his nose. During the night the sea had risen and Patrician was scending before the quartering waves. On either side of him the hammocks of other men pressed against his own in the fourteen inches allowed each man. Tregembo was part of a suspended island of humanity that moved almost independently of the ship, adding its own creaks and rasps and rub of rope and ring and canvas to the aching groans of the working timbers of the frigate.
To a less inured nose than Tregembo's, the stench would have been overpowering, for all Lieutenant Fraser's sedulous swabbing with vinegar, airing and burning of loose powder. Ineffectually washed bodies, the exhalations of men on an indifferent diet that whistled through badly maintained teeth and the night-loosening of wind combined with the effluvia of the bilge that rose from below. Rat droppings and the residual essences of the myriad stores concealed in the storerooms and hold added to the decomposing mud and weed drawn inboard on the cables so lately laid on the bed of the Pearl River. Flakes of green and noxious matter gave off gases as they broke down into dust, to be carried into the limbers of the ship by the trickling rivulets of leaks that found their inexorable way below.