There was something about Morris that was not quite drunkenness, but nevertheless reminded Drinkwater of intoxication. There was also, now he came to think of it, a faint, unfamiliarly sweet aroma in the cabin, gradually reasserting itself after the sweaty stink of the convoy masters. Of course! A man of Morris's disposition, influenced by every sensuous inclination of the human body, would be an opium eater. Drinkwater poured himself another drink.
'So I forsook my duty,' went on Morris, 'she was a raddled whore that had nothing to offer me but the pox of responsibility that now consumes you. I counted myself lucky to have found my destiny half-way to India, and took ship to find what I knew to exist if prudish knaves like you did not stand in my way ...'
'You charm me by your tale, sir,' said Drinkwater unmoved. 'No doubt your little Indian Ganymede approves wholly of tearing out his tongue for your unnatural pleasure! I doubt even the monstrous genius of Bonaparte would approve of that!'
Drinkwater half turned away but his arm was caught by Morris. Both the speed and the force of the grip surprised Drinkwater and he felt himself pulled back to face his enemy.
'D'you dream, Nathaniel? Eh? Of course you do — unholy dreams here, on your cot, eh? Coiled by the legs of ... of whom, eh? Your Elizabeth, or other, secret women? Well, I dreamed my own dreams ...'
With a violent gesture Drinkwater shook himself free. The compulsion to run, to escape the cabin and Morris's contaminating company was strong in him, but some dreadful fascination kept him rooted to the spot. As abruptly as he had advanced, Morris fell back. The intense, almost complicit tone vanished and he spoke again in his arch, mocking manner.
'Do you know,' Morris said, 'they say in Peking that the Son of Heaven finds the most exquisite pleasure in impaling a goose who, at the appropriate moment, is strangled ... ?'
'Damn you ...'
Sickened, Drinkwater turned away. As he made for the door he caught sight of the boy. He was asleep, had slept, it seemed, all through the noisy council and its revolting aftermath, half-naked, a brown curl in the corner of Drinkwater's quondam cabin.
There was nothing he could bring himself to do in the remaining hours of that disastrous day but pace up and down the quarterdeck, biliously angry as the convoy stood for the entrance of the Malacca Strait. Great clouds reared on the horizon, huge anvil-shaped thunderheads that rose over the steaming tropical rain forests of the distant land. As night fell these huge, billowing clouds were illuminated from within, possessed by flickering demons as lightning, too far away to crackle with thunder, sparked and flashed tremendously within their charged and coiling vapours. The sight tormented Drinkwater as he continued his lonely, self-imposed vigil, recalling over and over again Macgillivray's facetious phrase: 'fulmineous intervention of nature'.
In deference to his savage mood, men moved quietly about the upper decks and the officers, alternating as the ship's routine ground its remorseless way into time, gave their orders in low voices. It seemed, as he gradually emerged from the depths of introspection, that they were humouring him, like a child. The thought made him unreasonably angry and he cast about for some weapon of chastisement. Was that Frey on watch? No, Quilhampton.
'Mr Quilhampton.'
'Sir?'
'Have we established, sir,' spat Drinkwater, with unbending formality, 'why the binnacle lamp was extinguished last night?'
'Er ... I ... I've no idea, sir ... was it not the rain, sir?'
Drinkwater's temper fed deliriously on such foolishness. 'The lamp has a chimney, sir, is set in a binnacle for the purpose of protecting it from the weather. Its wick may have become soaked when it was removed from such protection, but that was not the reason for its extinguishing. May I suggest a lack of oil as a plausible explanation, eh? I recognise it as one out of favour with the officers as bespeaking a slackness on their part, but ...', he faltered. He was going to say something about a lack of oil providing a natural explanation, but it smacked so of Macgillivray's phrase that it cut his tirade dead.
'Oh, for God's sake check the damned thing now!'
He cast Quilhampton aside and stalked off into the night, ashamed of himself. God! How he hated this commission! Ever since that poor devil had been swung to the yard-arm at the Nore there had been ill-luck aboard. Now they even had to compensate for a compass deviating thirty-eight degrees, at least until the effects of the thunderbolt wore off ...
'Sir!'
Something urgent in Quilhampton's tone brought him up. Any peevishness Quilhampton might have felt at his commander's unspeakable behaviour was absent from the imperative note in the lieutenant's voice. Drinkwater turned. Quilhampton was advancing towards him. The binnacle lamp had been extinguished to check the reservoir, but in the gloom Drinkwater could just make out the faint sheen of the glass door of the locker and something in Quilhampton's hand.
'What is it?'
'This, sir.' Drinkwater was aware that Quilhampton was holding out his hand.
'I can't see a damned thing.' Then he was vaguely aware of a dark shape, like an irregular musket ball darkening Quilhampton's palm.
'Bit of metal, sir,' said Quilhampton in a low voice, 'half filling the oil reservoir. Could have put the lamp out prematurely ...'
'God's bones!'
An act of sabotage? The thought was in both their minds, for it would not be the first that had occurred. A similar event had happened on the coast of California when the ship was found to have developed a persistent and elusive leak.
'Say nothing more,' Drinkwater whispered urgently, then raised his voice to a normal level. 'Very well, Mr Q, relight the lamp.'
Drinkwater walked across the gently leaning deck and stopped beside the wheel. In such light winds only two men stood beside it, staring aloft at the main topsail, steering by the wind until the light was re-established in the binnacle. It was all clear to him now. It was no mere reduction of the volume of the reservoir that had been sought, it was something far more sinister. In a few moments the lamp would come back on deck and prove him correct, but the metallic lump he held in his hand was no melted leaden musket ball poured molten into the base of the lamp. It resisted the imprint of his thumb-nail with an almost crystalline stubbornness.
'Here, sir ...'
Drinkwater stood aside. The lamp was placed back between the two copper grooves that held it in place, throwing a gentle radiance across the neatly inscribed compass card.
'What course, sir?' asked the puzzled helmsman, sure that he had held the ship's head steady relative to the wind during the last quarter of an hour.
'You may steer sou' west a-half west.'
'Sou' west a-half west, aye, aye, sir.' There was a brief pause, then the helmsman said, 'She's that now, sir.'
'Yes,' replied Drinkwater quietly, 'I know she is.'
'Sir?' In the dim glow the rumple of a frown creased Quilhampton's forehead.
Drinkwater held up the small nugget. 'It's a piece of magnetic lodestone, Mr Q, perfect for deliberately inducing a deviation in the compass.'
CHAPTER 13
A Round Robin
'What d'you intend to do, sir?'
Fraser's voice was tight with anxiety. Ever since the flogging of the deserters he had been half expecting some such outbreak among the people.
'What the devil can I do, Mr Fraser, except abjure you and all the officers to be on their guard?'
'Could be the quarantined men, sir,' suggested Fraser.
'What? Some kind of collective revenge for their misfortune?'
Fraser shrugged. 'Ye canna let it pass, sir.'
'No. But they all know we discovered the thing, 'tis common gossip throughout the ship. Such scuttlebutt spreads like wildfire ...'