'Give way, Mr Belchambers, back to the ship for reinforcements, some kegs and lashings, and we'll have that launch up in a trice.'
With renewed hope the seamen bent to their oars.
'I'll see you get a tot for your trouble, lads,' said Frey magnanimously, raising grins of anticipation.
'I never thought I'd say it, sir,' said Carey, the man who had spotted the scuttled boat, 'but I'd rather have a tumbler o' water ...'
A silence greeted Drinkwater's hypothesis. Fraser crossed then recrossed his legs in an unconscious gesture of disbelief. Eventually Mount spoke.
'That's rather unlikely, sir.'
'Is it?' Drinkwater looked at Ballantyne. 'Mr Ballantyne, how familiar were you with Midshipman Chirkov?'
Ballantyne, a little mystified at the direction of the discussion, rose like a fish to a fly. 'Count Chirkov did me the honour of requesting instruction upon navigation, sir.'
'And you discussed such matters as the navigation of the ship?'
'Yes.' Ballantyne's head shook slightly, a note of uncertainty in his voice.
'To the extent of disclosing our position?'
'Well, to the extent of illustrating my talks about the day's work, the traverse and so forth, yes ...' He stared about him. The faces of the other officers were turned towards him, their eyes hardening as he spoke. 'Have I committed some indiscretion?'
'Unwittingly, I think you have. Chirkov, by your own admission, was able to keep Morris informed of our position.
We follow a predictable route, it was only necessary for Morris to detach us near the Natunas for his allies to attack. You see Morris had a most detailed chart of this area. I caught only a glimpse of it, and accepted his assurance that Hennessey's was adequate enough for our navigation.'
'And Chirkov interfered with the compass too?' asked the embarrassed Ballantyne.
Drinkwater nodded. 'I believe so, he too was capable of such a thing. Then Morris, knowing of my intention to return and search for the Guilford, persuaded me to accept his own offer of assistance ...'
'And led us here?' said Mount, only half-questioningly. 'But why?'
'Because somewhere out there in that wilderness is, if not Guilford, then the fruit of a long matured plan ...'
'I don't understand,' puzzled Fraser.
'Guilford was carrying thirty thousand sterling.'
Whistles of wonder came from his listeners. 'Thirty thousand ...!'
A prodigious sum, you'll allow, and Morris had planned to seize it at a time when the naval command on the East Indies station was changing, when the Selectmen were making such a racket in Macao and Canton that Admiral Drury was distracted and had no spare frigates to escort the small and vulnerable convoy that Morris knew would get out of the Pearl River before the negotiations reached stalemate. That is why the arrangements were made for the specie to travel aboard the Indiaman and not a warship, why Callan was reluctant to admit he had a large sum in case I was jealous and insisted on carrying it for my percentage.'
'Our arrival threatened Morris's plan but my arrival gave him an opportunity for personal vengeance. He knew the point at which the convoy would be attacked, it was only necessary to detach us from it to accomplish both his basic plan and my own professional ruin.' He looked round, watching their faces for acceptance of his theory. And very soon,' he added, 'I expect an attack.'
'Who by, sir? asked Fraser, still unconvinced. 'And who are these allies you speak of?'
'Sea-Dyaks,' snapped Quilhampton with a sharp air of impatience at the first lieutenant's obtuseness.
'As the hoplites,' agreed Mount with greater perception, 'but by what power does this Morris bend them to his will?'
'Sir, look!'
Mount's rhetorical question went unanswered, for Quilhampton was pointing excitedly through the stern windows to which Drinkwater had his back. He turned. Frey was standing in the bow of the barge, waving his arms above his head. Even at that distance they could see his shirt was torn to the waist and the thighs of his breeches were dark with mud. Behind the barge, towing on its painter and still somewhat waterlogged, followed the red cutter.
Drinkwater pulled himself laboriously over the last of the futtock shrouds and into the main-top. He paused for a minute, unseen from the deck, and caught his breath. He was exposed fully to the noonday glare of the sun, and the heat and exertion made him dizzy. The heavy cross timbers of the semicircular fighting top were warm to the touch, the iron eyebolts and fittings that secured the dark hemp rigging burnt his fingers when he touched them. Across the after side of the platform ran a low barricade terminating in mountings for two small swivel guns. He pulled the telescope from his belt, levelled it along a swivel crutch and painstakingly surveyed the surroundings.
Beyond the indentation of the coast, the sea was vast and empty, reflecting the blue of the sky and rippled here and there by catspaws of wind. To the west the prominence of Tanjong Sirik lay blue on the horizon, its distal point curled upwards as if shrivelling in the heat, a blue tongue shimmering below it — the effect of refraction, a mirage, giving the illusion of the cape being elevated above the horizon.
To the north-east the coast continued, jungle lapping the ocean with its scalloped edge of swamp. To the east and south the horizon was bounded by a spine of hills and mountains above which white coils of cloud drifted lazily upwards. Here and there spurs ran off this distant range, light green and with intervening blue furrows where, Drinkwater presumed, hidden rivers poured from the uplands. These streams with their suggestions of plashing waterfalls and cool, silver torrents sliding over smooth pebbles brought a sudden longing to him. But his shirt stuck clammily to his skin and the rivers vanished below the dark mantle of the jungle. It was not all mangroves. He could see some five miles away the different foliage of higher, more majestic species: banyan, tamarind and peepul trees, and the fronded heads of nipah palms. But in the end the mangrove swallowed everything, obscuring the streams, now become sluggish rivers that capitulated to inlets of the salt sea, to mix in the creeks and islets below Tanjong Sirik in a complex tangle of nature that defied penetration.
But Morris had penetrated it. Somewhere in that green desert Morris waited expectantly with Tregembo as his prisoner. Drinkwater knew with the clarity of absolute certainty that Tregembo had been taken not merely as an oarsman, but as a lure. Morris had cut loose and sunk the boats simply to delay Drinkwater, for he knew Drinkwater's character well enough to depend upon him following, just as he had worked upon old Tregembo with subtle cunning. Drinkwater could not guess with what ploy Morris had tempted Tregembo, but he knew that the Cornishman would have gone with Morris and his catamite, not in fear of Morris's pistol at his brain, but in the foolish conviction that he could save Drinkwater and that he could turn the tables on Morris before Drinkwater himself was lured to his death. But Tregembo could not have known that the rain and the squall would have covered the approach of Morris's Dyak allies and aided their retreat with all the boats so that the presence of an oarsman was barely necessary.
And now Drinkwater scanned the jungle, aware that angry pursuit would be a trap, that his seamen would flounder up every blind alley of a creek, hot, tired, bitten and, in a day or so, utterly demoralised, easy targets for the deadly blow-pipes of the Dyaks.