In the hiatus that followed, as they waited for the rekindled light for the binnacle that, to judge by the curses muttered from the companionway, was extinguished as soon as it reached the deck, Drinkwater remembered Chirkov.
'Was that Mr Chirkov on deck?' he asked Frey in a more intimate, conversational tone.
'Chirkov? Oh, yes, sir, I expect so. He's taken to coming on deck. Ballantyne says he's interested in the navigation of the ship.'
'Well keep the lubber below after dark. You know my orders.'
Aye, aye, sir,' replied Frey, thoroughly peeved, and ready to shoot Chirkov any moment the Russian gave him opportunity.
Going below, Drinkwater found the ship in a state of disruption. The two Chinese pigs kept in the manger forward of the breakwater were terrified by the over-charged atmosphere and had begun squealing. Men below in the berth-deck were grumbling and Corporal Grice had turned out some of his men, so that a foot patrol in cross-belts and drawers had emerged from the orlop deck and were just then going below again to the hoots and jeers of those able to see the fools they had made of themselves. There was something chaotic about the ridiculous scene as it met Drinkwater's eyes, reminding him of one of the seditious drawings he had seen by Mr Gillray. For, at the foot of the ladder, a little pool of light was formed by half a dozen purser's glims from which an obscenely swearing quartermaster was trying to relight the binnacle lamp. It was this bizarre source of illumination that drew attention to Corporal Grice's folly. Drinkwater stepped over the hunched and cursing backs, leaving them to their task without his presence being known. Rain was streaming over the coaming of the companionway and he was chilled to shuddering by it.
He found Tregembo waiting for him with a towel.
'Thank you, Tregembo'
'Zur ...'
The remains of the candle he had extinguished earlier guttered on its holder. As he dried himself he felt the heel of the deck ease and a few moments later little Belchambers came below to report normality established on deck.
'Is the convoy in sight?'
'No, sir, the rain is still obscuring it, though it's much lighter now than it was, but Mr Frey says he had a good look at the convoy's bearing in the lightning, sir, and he's quite happy.'
'Very well, Mr Belchambers. Thank you.'
'Good-night, sir.'
'Good-night.'
'Thank you, Tregembo. You may get your own head down now.'
'Aye, zur ... G'night, zur.'
Outside the cabin Tregembo bumped into the surgeon.
'Cap'n's just turning in,' he said defensively, standing in Lallo's way.
'Very well,' said Lallo. The surgeon had been meditating all day when to tell Drinkwater about the epidemic of yaws that he might anticipate and had turned in irresolute. Woken by the general agitation of the ship and the clap of thunder he had resolved to act immediately. Now he felt a little foolish, and not a little relieved. A night would make no difference.
'I'll see him first thing in the morning,' he said, turning away.
But Mr Lallo was not the first officer to report to Drinkwater next morning; he was beaten by Mr Ballantyne who, head shaking and excited, burst in to Drinkwater's cabin with such violence that he fetched up against the rim of the bunk. Drinkwater started from sleep as if murder was in the wind.
'Sir! Oh, sir, calamity, sir!'
'What the devil is it? Why have you left the deck, Mr Ballantyne?' Drinkwater spluttered.
'The convoy, sir, it is not in sight!'
PART TWO
Nemesis
'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'
CHAPTER 12
A Council of War
A sickeningly empty horizon greeted Drinkwater's eyes as he cast about the ship. In a despairing movement he looked aloft to where, astride the main royal yard, Midshipman Dutfield scanned the sea. Looking down, Dutfield shook his head.
'God's bones!' Drinkwater swore, then strode to the binnacle and stared at the compass. The lubber's line pointed unerringly at south by west. Drinkwater looked aloft again, the sails were drawing, all seemed well. He stood, puzzling. Some instinct was rasping his intelligence, telling him something was wrong, very wrong, though he was totally at a loss to understand what. Full daylight was upon them, the rising sun, above the horizon for fully half an hour, remained below a bank of wet and coiling cumulus to the east. For a long moment he stared at that cloud bank, as though seeking an answer there, cudgelling his brain to think, think.
Both he and Frey had seen the convoy last night. The cluster of ships had been quite distinct, to leeward of them, perhaps a little too far off the starboard bow for absolutely perfect station-keeping, but ...
Had that squall, local and intense, affected only Patrician? It was possible, but it had not lasted long enough to carry the frigate beyond the visible horizon of the group of ships.
A slanting shaft of sunlight speared downwards from a rent in the clouds. A moment later it was joined by another, and another. Three patches of glittering sea flared where the sunbeams struck, scintillating intensely.
'Bloody hell!'
Drinkwater's eye ran up the beams, seeking their theoretical intersection where, still hidden, the sun lurked behind the bank of cloud. In a stride he was beside the binnacle, sensing something was definitely wrong, electrified by suspicion.
He could not be sure. It was difficult to take an azimuth in such a way ...
He fumed, impatient for a sight of the sun. Not one of the three patches seemed to move nearer to them, then one disappeared.
'Is there something ... ?' Ballantyne's voice was nervously hesitant.
'Get an azimuth the moment the sun shows, get my sextant and chronometer up here upon the instant!'
It had to be the lightning, a corposant perhaps, that had run unobserved in all that black deluge the previous night. There was no other explanation ...
'Look, sir, the sun!'
Neither sextant nor chronometer had arrived but Drinkwater did not need to work out the calculation. It was too blindingly obvious. Though they crawled across the face of the globe and altered the bearing of the sun at any given time of the day, and although the sun was almost imperceptibly moving towards them as it orbited further and further north towards the equinoctial and the vernal equinox of the northern spring, he could see that an error existed in their compass; an error of perhaps thirty of forty degrees, sufficient to have misled them into sailing on a diverging course from the convoy. It was with something like relief that he offered the worried faces on the quarterdeck an explanation.
'Our compass is thirty or forty degrees in error, gentlemen. We have been sailing more nearly south-east than south all night. It must have been disturbed by the lightning.'
A murmur of surprise, mixed with wonder and relieved suspense, crossed several faces. Drinkwater looked at the dog-vane and made a hurried calculation, a rough estimate in triangulation that he would work out more carefully in a moment when he had the leisure to do so. For the time being a swift alteration of course and speed were needed.
'Lay me a course of south-west, Mr Ballantyne, and have the watch set all plain sail!'
'Sou' west and all plain sail, sir, aye, aye, sir!'
Drinkwater looked about him again. The wind was a light but steady breeze. God alone knew what the convoy commanders would think when they realised Patrician was absent, but he could imagine well enough! A creeping anxiety began to replace the feeling of relief at having discovered the cause of the navigational mystery.