'Chirkov? Yes ... though I can prove nothing.'
'No, zur. Mullender'll tell 'ee, though it took me long enough to get it out of him, he's the wits of a malkin, but he's certain sure it were the Russian. Mullender was in an' out, tendin' to 'em all in here.' Tregembo waved a hand about the cabin, disturbing the candle flames and making shadows leap like the spectres he invoked. 'You know 'ow 'e comes and goes silent like. He says how he saw 'em all smoking and drinking together, right little hell's kitchen they made o' this place, zur, beggin' your pardon ...'
'Go on.'
'The boy too, zur, that little Turk. You know what he's for?'
'I can guess, Tregembo. Morris hasn't changed his habits.'
"Tis worse than a Portsmouth knocking shop ... Mullender didn't say much. Learnt to keep his mouth shut, I s'pose, or didn't want to start Derrick a-Quakering at him ...'
'If all he saw was Morris and Chirkov ...'
'Not buggering, zur, though I daresay they did that too, but in conversation, zur ...'
'Conversation?'
'And Morris gave Chirkov a lump o' something ...'
'A lump of opium, perhaps?'
'Only if opium's hard enough to rattle on the deck when it's dropped, zur.'
'The lump of lodestone?'
'Aye ...'
Both men looked at each other, recalling the web of intimidation and cruelty that Morris had once cast over the helpless seamen aboard Cyclops thirty years earlier.
'So, the leopard hasn't changed his spots, has he?'
'No, zur.'
But why had Morris engineered such an act? The question tormented him after Tregembo had gone, and he sat slumped at the cabin table, toying with an empty glass and staring at Hennessey's charts. There was no reasonable explanation. Even though personal revenge was a powerful motive, particularly to a man as amoral as Morris, Drinkwater was convinced that Morris's pecuniary interests would have outweighed any other considerations during their passage from Canton.
As Drinkwater wrestled with the problem he felt a rising tide of panic welling in his gut. His loneliness seemed to crush him and in his weakness he reached out for the bottle. From forward, beyond the barrier of the cabin door, came the tinny, quadruple double strikes of eight bells and he heard the ship stir as the watch changed. He withdrew his hand from the bottle and swore. He commanded a fine ship, he had sufficient fire-power at his finger-tips to bolster his courage better than any damned bottle! And he had Morris close by, damned near mewed up under lock and key.
Drinkwater rose and, leaning forward on his hands, stared unseeing down at Hennessey's charts. He was a fool and Tregembo an alarmist. Certainly Morris had put Chirkov up to the stupid act of tampering with the compass, but they had been drunk, or drugged, befuddled to an act of gross irresponsibility. Their jape had misfired and gone disastrously wrong. It was not Drinkwater who needed Morris, but Morris who needed Drinkwater! Surely that was the explanation, for not even the malevolent Morris could have foreseen that the convoy would be attacked by piratical Sea-Dyaks the following dawn and that the treasure aboard Guilford would be spirited away.
Thirty thousand sterling!
No wonder Morris had been imprecise about the amount, for its enormity was a measure of his consummate folly. Morris had wished to make trouble, to discredit Drinkwater and, like a good puppet-master, pull strings to rob his enemy of influence in London. Recovering his spirits, Drinkwater thought there was an ironical satisfaction in this line of reasoning, a grimly humorous if somewhat chilly comfort. Providence, it seemed, had failed them both.
'Devil take it,' he murmured reaching for his hat, 'but it argues powerfully for the bugger's cooperation.'
And with that conclusion, Captain Drinkwater went more cheerfully on deck.
'Red cutter's in sight, sir.'
Drinkwater looked up from Hennessey's chart pinned to a board a-top the binnacle and covered the three yards to Quilhampton's side in an instant. The lieutenant had his eye screwed to the long-glass, bracing its weight against a mizen backstay as Patrician, her main topsail backed to the mast, lay hove to off the Borneo coast. It was the second week of their search and January was already over. Another hot and almost windless day had dawned. There was barely enough movement in the air to press the heavy canvas against the main-top and the sea was flat, metallic and seemingly motionless, reflecting the refulgence of the sun.
Drinkwater stared in the direction of Quilhampton's telescope. He could just make out the wavering quadrilateral of the red cutter's lugsail as she cleared the Sarebas River. The estuary was invisible from this distance.
'Damn coast looks all the same,' Drinkwater muttered. 'Is she signalling?'
'Not at the moment ... I think they're trimming the sheets, sir.'
Even from the mastheads the entrance of the creeks and obscure rivers that wound their way into the interior were impossible to make out. There seemed no appreciable difference in the endless miles of coastline they had patiently worked along. Endless vistas of ragged-edged blue-green swamp formed an indeterminate littoral. Distant hills rose blue-green, climbing into rolling cloud, evidence of firm footing beyond the sub-aqueous morass of the swamp which lay steaming under the sun.
'Cutter's signalling, sir ...'
A tiny bubble of expectation formed in the pit of Drinkwater's stomach: perhaps this time ...?
Drinkwater knew their chances of finding Guilford and Hindoostan had diminished to the point of impossibility. They would have been burnt, or disposed of by now.
'Nothing to report.' Quilhampton lowered and closed the glass with a snap. The tiny, half-formed bubble in Drinkwater's gut burst. He felt the sun hot upon his shoulders. With every day that passed it had climbed further up the sky as it approached the equinox. Its relentless heat paralysed his will.
'Make the signal for recall.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
The bark of the carronade drawing attention to the numeral flag jerking aloft drew Morris on deck. With him came his helot, small and brown, near-naked, but for a loin-cloth and the jewelled turban.
'No luck?' Morris asked.
'No,' Drinkwater answered flatly.
Morris met Drinkwater's eyes. The sight of Drinkwater's wilting resolve brought a thrill of both pleasure and sudden alarm to Morris. He had intended torture, but he must not lose the initiative. Drinkwater must not be driven to give up the search. Besides, he was as eager to reach the location of that mighty haul of specie as was Drinkwater! He bent over the chart, his fat, fleshy and glittering finger indicating a headland where the coast swung sharply east.
'Tanjong Sirik, Captain,' he said, drawing Drinkwater's attention to the point. 'Our last hope is here, Sumpitan Creek, Blow-pipe Creek we called it, naming it for the ferocity of its inhabitants and their use of poisoned darts.'
Drinkwater stared at the pointing finger. It was beautifully manicured and reminded Drinkwater of a fat Duchess's digit. More significantly, it pointed to a white blank on Hennessey's chart. Where the coast swung round Tanjong Sirik, a gap appeared, an area of unsurveyed coastline unknown to the Dutch hydrographers.
'Into uncharted waters,' Drinkwater said ruminatively: a last chance. Morris had played his fish with infinite cunning. Drinkwater had will enough for one last throw.
'Not quite, Captain,' Morris said in a low voice, 'perhaps uncharted, but not quite unknown.'
Beyond Tanjong Sirik there was no mystery. The endless jungle of mangroves dipped south and seemed to disappear in an inlet beyond which it curved north and then eastward as far as the keenest eye at the masthead could discern. They passed small native praus and men fishing, and the smoking fires and atap-roofed huts on stilts which emerged like excrescences of the jungle itself. Small strips of sand with beached dugouts gave indications of firmer ground and the reason for these remote habitations, but of the mighty war-praus, the sea-going assault craft of the Sea-Dyaks called bankongs, there was no sign.