They were crossing the stern of the leeward-most ship now and Ballantyne was gesticulating.
'Please, sir! Something is not correct!'
'Eh? What's that?'
'They are waving, sir, on the ship to starboard ...'
Drinkwater strode to the rail and peered over the hammock nettings. The square stern of the heavily laden Carnatic presented itself to his gaze. Two men were waving frantically from her rail and then a belch of smoke rolled from her waist as she discharged another gun.
'By God, it's an alarm!'
Drinkwater spun round. He had already detected the danger ahead by the sudden increase in the pitch of the deck.
'Braces, there! Lively now! Start 'em for your lives! Down helm! Down helm!'
There was no enemy frigate waiting to leeward of the convoy ready to snap up a prize; only an uncharted reef upon which the sea broke in sudden, serried ranks of rollers which exploded upwards, filling the air with an intense mist.
Mount saved them, slashing through the standing part of the main brace with his hanger, then cutting back into the strands of the topsail brace. As the yards flew round Patrician lay over assisting the helmsmen as they palmed the wheel-spokes rapidly through their hands. A member of the afterguard was already at the mizen braces while others started the main sheet at the chess-tree. The heavy frigate lurched to leeward, running her larboard gunports under water and taking gouts of streaming sea-water below as Lieutenant Quilhampton, in charge of the main batteries and suddenly aware of something amiss, ordered the ports secured.
'Jesus Christ ...' someone blasphemed. The steady stern breeze seemed, now that they reached obliquely across it, to blow with the ferocity of a gale. The extra canvas, shaken out again as they had overtaken the convoy, now pressed them over. To windward the seas assumed a new and forbidding aspect, heaping sharply into breaking peaks as they felt the rising sea-bed beneath them.
Drinkwater turned to leeward. He was beyond the heart-thumping apprehension of anxiety, his mind perfectly cool with that detachment that feared the worst. At any moment, driven by his own impetuosity, he expected Patrician's keel to strike the reef in a sudden, overwhelming shock that would carry her masts and yards over the side.
Beyond the narrow beam of the frigate's hull the seas downwind bore a different look. Their precipitate energy was spent, they crashed and foamed and flung themselves in a thundering welter of white and green water upon the invisible obstacle of the reef.
'Hold her steady!' he ordered, his voice level as every man upon the upper deck who was aware of their danger held his breath.
For a minute ... two ... Patrician skimmed, heeling along the very rim of the reef, held from dashing herself to pieces only by the unseen, submarine run-off where the broken waves, spending themselves above, poured back whence they had come.
Ten minutes later they were in clear water and the white surge of foaming breakers with its cap of wafting spume lay fine on the weather quarter.
'I'm obliged to you, Mr Mount.'
'Your servant, sir,' replied Mount, still amazed at his own prescience.
'A damned close thing ...' Drinkwater's heart was thumping vigorously now. Reaction had set in; he felt a wave of nausea and a weakling tremble in his leg muscles. 'Secure the guns and pipe the men down,' he said to Fraser between clenched teeth.
And then Morris was there, standing upon the quarterdeck watching Comley hustling a party along to reeve off a new main-brace, his loose, yellow silk robe flapping in the wind, the Indian, decorously turned out in coat, turban and aigrette, hanging by his side.
Men were nudging each other and staring at the bizarre sight. When Morris and Drinkwater confronted each other, the latter was still pale from his recent experience.
You alarmed us, Captain,' Morris said smoothly, 'we thought you were going into action, but I see that, like Caligula, you had declared war on the ocean.'
The smug, urbane transition of remark into insult struck Drinkwater. He was reminded of how dangerous a man Morris was, that he was not without education, and came from a class that accepted privilege as a birthright. It had formed part of Morris's original enmity that the youthful Drinkwater was an example of an upstart family.
But Drinkwater's nausea was swiftly overcome by a rising and revengeful anger. He recalled something of the detached coolness that sustained him in moments of extreme stress.
'The bulkheads will shortly be re-erected. You will be able to return to your quarters very soon.' The words were polite, the tone sharp.
'But it is remarkably refreshing here on deck, Captain. You have a fine set of men ... handsome fellows ...'
The remark was loud enough to be overheard, on the face of it harmless enough, but tinged with notice of intent, judging by the amusement in Morris's deep-set, hooded eyes.
'Go below, sir,' Drinkwater snapped, facing his old enemy, and between them crackled the brittle electricity of dislike. Morris smiled and then turned to go. Drinkwater found himself confronted by Ballantyne. The master stood open-mouthed and Drinkwater thought of his earlier nervousness. He appeared to have a coward upon his quarterdeck.
'What the devil is it, Mr Ballantyne? Come, pull yourself together, the danger's past. Be kind enough to work out an estimate of our position so that we can amend the charts ...'
'No, no, sir. It is that man.' Ballantyne's head shook from side to side. 'I know him ...'
It occurred to Drinkwater that Ballantyne had not previously seen their passenger. For all Drinkwater knew, Morris had traded under a pseudonym.
'I knew him in Rangoon, sir,' Ballantyne persisted, 'he was up to mischief. He made much money.'
Mischief seemed a very mild word for what Drinkwater knew Morris was capable of.
'I should not believe all you hear, Captain Drinkwater, especially from a man of mixed blood.'
Overheard, Ballantyne paled, while Morris's head disappeared for the second time below the lip of the companionway coaming.
For two days nothing of note occurred. The wind eased, clearing the air so that the horizon became again the clear rim of visibility beloved by seamen. The convoy remained in good order and Drinkwater, immeasurably relieved by his move into the master's cabin, felt his spirits lighten. He dismissed his earlier fears of interference from Morris as foolish imaginings, recollections of the past when he had been a circumstantial victim of Morris's vicious and capricious nature. Now he had the upper hand; Morris was held aft under guard yet in the comparative freedom of the great cabin. His officers were loyal. The morale of his men was much improved by the news that their return home was now only a matter of time, and the convoy was well disciplined.
Privately, too, the move was beneficial. He had had Mullender take down the portraits, his journal was secure and his personal effects were removed from the defiling presence of Morris. What Morris did behind the canvas screen was his own affair, so long as it did not impinge upon the life, public or private, of Captain Drinkwater and his ship.
As Drinkwater's mood lifted, James Quilhampton's was damped by growing apprehension. The first excitements of departure from Whampoa had worn off, and the drudgery of watch-keeping imposed its own monotonous routines which combined with the demands of the ship and convoy to rouse dormant worries. It was Quilhampton who had, months ago, suppressed an incipient mutiny before its eruption. These were the same men, he thought as he paced the quarterdeck daily, observing them about their duties, the same unpaid labourers who were sorely tried by the hard usage of the King's Service. To Quilhampton, the spectre of mutiny assumed a new danger now that they were homeward bound; the danger that it might destroy any possibility of him marrying Mistress MacEwan. Part of his cavalier reception of Tregembo's warning was not so much because he did not believe in it, but because he did not want to contemplate any additional factor that might threaten or destroy his expectations.