Aye, maybe a little ...'
Ah ...'
'Not for reasons of slackness, Captain, oh, no, not for that, I assure you. We had spread out to seek yourself. Some of us saw you struck by lightning, like you said, but we were mistaken, for you are here, now.'
That 'now' seemed like an accusation of a crime.
And they carried the Guilford off, from under your noses? You didn't pursue ... ?'
'It's your job to pursue, Captain, not ours to lose our cargoes. We did what we could. I followed a little myself. They went sou' b' west, for the Borneo coast ...'
The two men fell silent. After a while Drinkwater looked up. 'I will make the signal for all commanders in an hour, Captain Macgillivray. Then I shall decide what to do.'
'There's damn all you can do — now.'
Drinkwater looked up into the undisguised contempt in the Scotsman's eyes.
He had wanted the hour to work Patrician into the main body of the convoy. That was the reason he gave out on the quarterdeck. In reality he wanted the time to re-establish himself, albeit temporarily, in the more impressive surroundings of his cabin, to remove the screen and evict Morris and Rakitin. In the event it was noon before the last indignant master was pulled alongside and the ships rocked gently upon the now motionless sea. The wind had died and the calm was glassy, as though the ocean lacked the energy to move under the full heat of the brazen sun. Drinkwater had fended off the verbal assaults of each and every one of the merchant captains, reiterating the circumstances of Patricians separation until he was only half-convinced of its accuracy. It was too extravagant a tale to be wholly believable, particularly by men with little faith and large axes to grind.
The cabin, as he called the meeting to order, seemed to heave with indignation and Drinkwater himself was very close to losing his temper. Only the thought that an outburst of anger would carry to Morris on the quarterdeck held him in check.
'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' He managed at last to quieten them. 'What has happened is a matter of regret to us all. Both you and I are incredulous at aspects of events, you that my frigate was absent, I because your pursuit seems to have been non-existent ...'
'There were forty praus, damn you, and poisoned darts all over the place and cannon ...'
'And bugger-all wind ...'
'There was sufficient of a wind to return me to station ... but let that all pass ...'
They subsided again. Drinkwater pressed doggedly on. 'What we must now decide is how to proceed.'
'Proceed?' queried one voice. 'Why to Penang, of course.'
'Aye!' A chorus of voices rose in assent.
Drinkwater frowned. Did they intend to abandon Callan? Was the motivation of these men solely and wholly governed by profit? So different from his own thinking was this conclusion that he stood for a moment nonplussed.
'Captain Drinkwater, I think you misunderstand us.' Drinkwater looked at the speaker, glad at last that one reasonable voice spoke from the hostile group before him. It was that of Captain Cunningham, commander of the Ligonier.
'I rather hope I do,' replied Drinkwater curtly.
'It is not that we wish to abandon Captain Callan; in all likelihood he will be repatriated by the Dutch, for this kind of thing has happened before. The Sea-Dyaks are interested only in booty. They will strip Guilford of all that they require or can trade with the Dutch; powder, small arms, shot, plus cargo. Since hostilities with the Batavians began, the wily squareheads have sought out the princes of the Sarawak tribes and offered them bribes for the capture and surrender of any of our Indiamen. I doubt Callan or his officers will come to any personal harm ...' Cunningham paused and a stillness filled the hitherto noisy cabin. Drinkwater sensed the compliance of the other masters: Cunningham was poised for the coup de grace. 'Your own predicament, Captain, is perhaps even less certain of its outcome than Captain Callan's.'
A further pause, pregnant with opprobrium, let the implied threat sink in. Macgillivray, a man of little subtlety, could not let the matter rest on so insubstantial a foundation; besides, he had concocted a phrase of such obscurity that he flung it now like an accusation of untruth.
'The fulmineous intervention of nature you say you experienced, Captain Drinkwater, offers poorly against the loss of two ships.'
'One of which carried specie,' put in another.
They were the kicks of a cowardly mob, delivered after a man was in the gutter.
Drinkwater stood before his accusers. Inwardly he felt crushed. Fate had dealt him a cruel blow! To be singled out by Macgillivray's 'fulmineous intervention of nature' seemed so cruelly unjust as to anger some primitive inner part of him so that, although silent, he raked their faces with a baleful glare. He mastered the inner seething with the realisation that he wanted a drink. He would have one in a minute, immediately he had disposed of these men, bent to their wishes.
'Very well, gentlemen. I shall accede to your request and escort you to Penang.'
'Well let us hope you do, Captain,' said Macgillivray, as the downcast company turned for the cabin door. Drinkwater stood stock-still as they filed out. Then, almost out of habit, he turned towards the pantry and bawled for his steward. The cathartic bellow did him good and Mullender, by some small miracle of intuition, appeared with a bottle and glasses.
Drinkwater took a glass. As he stood impatiently waiting for Mullender to fill it with blackstrap, unannounced Morris reentered the cabin. His expression bore witness to the fact that he had gleaned knowledge of Drinkwater's discomfiture.
'Where is Captain Rakitin?' Drinkwater asked, delaying his need to swallow the cheap port.
'On the quarterdeck, zur.'
It was Tregembo who answered, stooping at the pantry door, ancient, worn, like a futtock of the ship itself. It seemed oddly appropriate that Tregembo, like Mullender, should have mustered in the pantry, for all that his occupation of the cabin was to be short-lived.
'Thank you.'
Drinkwater fixed both steward and coxswain with the stare of dismissal. Mullender put down the bottle and the pantry door closed behind them, though their listening presence beyond the mahogany louvres was almost visible.
'Your health, Nathaniel.' Morris helped himself to a glass, an ironical smile about his hooded eyes. 'And, of course, your damnation.'
Drinkwater merely glared, then seized gratefully on the excuse to gulp his drink, making to leave the cabin.
'Don't go,' said Morris, divining his purpose, 'we have been so little together. Intolerably little for such old shipmates ...'
'Morris, we never made the least pretence at friendship. We fought, if I recollect, some kind of duel, and you made numerous threats against my person. You behaved abominably to members of the Cyclops's company and, if there was such a thing as natural justice in the world, you should have been hanged.'
He tailed off. Morris was laughing at him. 'Oh, Nathaniel, Nathaniel, you are still an innocent I see. Still dreaming of "natural justice" and other such silly philosophies ... How much have you missed, eh? You and I are old men now and here you are beset by worries, buggered upon the altar of your duty ... You left me at the Cape a sick man ... I hungered for the destiny you had before you and hated you for seeming to command fate. That was ten years ago, before Bonaparte burst upon us all ...'
'Bonaparte?' Drinkwater frowned, bemused by this drivel of Morris's.
'Yes, Bonaparte, blazing like a comet across the imaginations of men. "Do as you will," he screamed at the world. "Do as you will ..."'