It was impossible that he could excuse or exculpate them, for he had hanged a man for the same crime before leaving for the Pacific and such unheard-of leniency would, by its inconsistency, lead others into the same path. But their downcast misery as they sat in the stern sheets of the barge, in such close proximity to their captain, filled Drinkwater with an odd, angering compassion that, by the time he reached the ship, had dispelled his good humour.
'Put those men in the bilboes,' he curtly ordered Fraser as the first lieutenant stood with the rigid side-party, 'and prevent anyone approaching them,' he said to Mount, before hurrying below, only just catching himself in time to turn aside for the master's cabin and not walk, seething, into the main cabin. Suddenly the confines of his self-imposed prison oppressed him, and he as quickly returned to the deck, to pace up and down, up and down along the line of quarterdeck guns until he had mastered himself.
'He doesn't want to hang 'em,' said Quilhampton to the lounging officers in the wardroom.
'He'll have to. A court martial at Prince of Wales Island will condemn them without a thought ...' remarked Fraser.
'Not if he punishes 'em now, quickly ...'
'You mean flogs them?' asked Fraser.
'Yes,' replied Quilhampton, "twill serve as an example to the rest.'
'Good God, man, we were hanging people before! D'you think their blessed Lordships 'd approve of a mere flogging? They want stiffs for desertion, not red meat. He'll no' flog them, but keep them in irons until he can have them court-martialled by a full board at Penang.'
'But he doesn't want to hang 'em,' persisted Quilhampton.
'Och, you presume on your knowledge o' the man, Jamie. I sympathise but not even Captain Drinkwater can get awa' from the fact that desertion's a hanging offence.'
'Tomorrow will tell who's right. If he hasn't flogged 'em by seven bells in the forenoon watch I'm not James Quilhampton.' Quilhampton rose, yawning. 'I've the middle tonight, and I'm weary ...'
'What do you think, Mister Lallo?' Fraser asked of the surgeon who had sat silently through this exchange.
Lallo shrugged. 'I've no idea. Mr Q's solution seems the most humane, yours the most in conformity with the regulations ...'
'And the easiest for you,' added Fraser drily.
Ah yes.' Lallo's tone was unenthusiastic. 'Mr Fraser,' he said, suddenly shifting in his chair and reaching for the decanter on the wardroom table, 'there are other problems that confront us, you know.'
'Oh ... ?' Something in Lallo's voice caught Fraser's attention. 'What?'
'I thought I had three cases of lues as a legacy of California, now I have five, maybe six.'
'And is that so unusual? I saw the venereal list myself only this morning.'
'Two of the cases I'm certain are syphilitic, but the others ...'
'You are not sure?'
'No, I mean, yes, I'm sure.' Lallo rubbed his hand across his forehead in a gesture of extreme exhaustion. 'But it isn't the pox.'
'Well what is it?' snapped Fraser, a sudden fearful cramp contracting the muscles of his belly.
'Button-scurvy ...'
'Scurvy?'
'No! Button-scurvy, Mr Fraser, framboesia, the yaws ...'
'The yaws!'
'Aye, and it's contagious.'
Midshipman Chirkov's quarterdeck appearances had begun to assume a semblance of normality, so much so that the flattered Ballantyne remarked upon his regular interest to Quilhampton when handing over the deck to him at midnight. Together with the details of the course steered and the bearings of the merchantmen, the information made no impression upon the still sleep-dulled Quilhampton until he had been on watch for some time and had dismissed the more immediate preoccupations of his duty. It occurred to him then that Midshipman Chirkov's sudden enthusiasm was singularly uncharacteristic and that, for reasons of his own, he was currying favour with the vulnerable and somewhat pathetic Ballantyne. Had Quilhampton also known the state of hostility that existed between Chirkov and Frey, he might have associated Chirkov's sudden interest in navigation with something more sinister. But that was a matter of honour, a matter of honour forbidden on board ship, and so a closely guarded secret of the gunroom. As it was, his conversation with Ballantyne led him to make other assumptions, blinding him to what was going on almost under his very nose.
Morris had made no attempt to convert the indolent and sensual Russian to his own particular vice. Indeed, age, jaded appetite and excessive corpulence had rendered him less active himself in its pursuit. Besides, his seduction of the Russian youth had aims other than the fulfilment of his own overt desires; what Morris meditated was something infinitely more pleasurable than the mere gratification of lust, something that still appealed to a man far gone in lechery, holding out the budding promise of the most exquisite pleasure.
The boy he had had fashioned for his unique and effortless delight could be employed with equal facility to enrapture the libidinous Chirkov without too much arousing the young man's disgust at himself. Morris was delighted for the gift of so compliant an accomplice as Chirkov.
Nor did the lounging Chirkov, half drunk, half drugged by samsu and Malwa opium during the nights in which Rakitin slept and he and Morris held their unholy court, realise the extent to which he was being used. Morris had explained the dislike Drinkwater felt for them both as an unmannerly prejudice, offering Chirkov a spiteful little revenge upon the British captain by finding out the location of the frigate from the log and traverse board so that he, Morris, might be kept abreast of events that Drinkwater, out of malice, denied him. In return, the extravagant pleasures of Morris's half of the cabin amused the young man as an acceptable alternative to the gypsies who had first introduced him to the gratification of the flesh.
And unbeknown to anyone, even his helpless catamite, Morris plotted the southward progress of the convoy on a chart of his own.
CHAPTER 11
Blood and Rain
'One!'
Spread-eagled against the triced-up grating the man's body jerked in reflexive response to the first stroke of the cat. The flesh of the back was surprisingly pale, turning bronze at the nape of the neck. As he watched, his face a grim mask, Drinkwater saw the red weals begin to streak the skin . . .
'Two!'
As the second weals emerged beneath the unruptured skin, the first were rising in sharp relief. Drinkwater watched the man's face, the mouth distorted by the leather pad upon which he bit. The deserter had his eyes screwed tight-shut and Drinkwater knew he was bracing himself for the dreadful assault upon his body ...
'Three!'
The stretched skin, pressed upwards from below by the bleeding tissues beneath, began to break. At first the stretched pores exuded suppurations of blood and plasma, giving the impression of a rosy sweat that spread in bands across the man's back ...
'Four!'
Was this better than hanging? Was this man's life confined in the wooden bulwarks of His Britannic Majesty's frigate Patrician, in which even the ship's very name emphasised the subordination of her company, better than a swift and final agony at the end of a yard-rope? Was there, Drinkwater wondered as the bosun's mate laid on the tailed whip again, not one sublime second of freedom before the awful darkness of oblivion? One infinitesimal fragment of time and space where the spirit was free of obligation, of duty, of subservience?
'Six!'
His own freedom to think such thoughts suddenly overcame him. He wanted to ask whether, in that conjectural moment, a man would be free too of the awful obligation to have another man whipped; as if, in some way, the recipient of those lacerations should feel grateful to him for the moderation of the punishment his crime had merited. Drinkwater's eyes flickered to the mass of the ship's company gathered in the waist. Were they, could they fail to be aware of the condign nature of this thrashing? Did they not see in it a spirit of leniency, of sympathy, almost? Or did they see in it a weakness in himself, a weakness, perhaps, to be exploited?