He was aware of a quickening feeling of panic and forced his mind to concentrate on other matters, matters that might legitimately justify him in sending his boats into that hostile and unfamiliar wilderness. But there was no sign of Guilford. Carefully, fighting down the impatient urge to be impotently active, he rescanned the jungle, systematically working over it. Pausing occasionally to wipe and rest his straining eye, he studied every exposed inch of jungle ...
Nothing ...
He blew out air and settled back against the mast. He used to sit in Cyclops's top like this, learning how to make a carrick bend and a stuns'l sheet bend, and how to whip and point a rope, while Tregembo, a red-faced topman of near thirty summers, good-naturedly corrected his fumbling fingers. This had been his battle station and he had fought his first action from such a place, in Rodney's Moonlight Battle off Cape St Vincent.
January 1780.
It was all so long ago. Tregembo and then Elizabeth ... and then Tregembo and his Susan, waspish Susan who was now cook to the Drinkwater menage ...
God! He had to do something! Something for Susan and something for Elizabeth. He could not sit here and let the sun burn him up, no matter what the odds Morris had stacked against him.
He drew the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead, blinked his eyes and stared again over the undulating plain of tree-tops.
Suddenly he clapped his glass to his eye. Damn! The bloody thing had become unfocused. He twisted the two tubes, muttering at his own ineptitude, his sweaty hands slipping on the warm brass.
'Yes!' He felt the sudden surge of his heart. He had been hoping, hoping for the sight of an ill-concealed mast, or the thin blue column of cooking smoke, but they were too cunning for that!
He felt like laughing, so great was his sensation of relief, but the thought of Tregembo sobered him. He lowered the glass, his head unmoving. Could he see them without the glass ...?
Yes.
He leaned over the edge of the top. 'Mr Dutfield! In my cabin, next to the chronometer you'll find my pocket compass ...'
He waited, fixing his eyes upon the vague and distant shapes, so tiny, so indicative ...
He felt the faint vibration of Dutfield's ascent.
'Here, sir.'
Drinkwater took the offered brass instrument, snapped up the vanes and sighted through the slits. Yes, he could see them quite well now ...
'Beg pardon, sir, may I ask what you have seen?'
Carefully Drinkwater adjusted his head and made sure of the bearing.
'What I can see, Mr Dutfield, is ... is ...' he floundered for a phrase worthy of the occasion. 'What I'd call an intervention of nature, yes, that's it, an avifaunal intervention of nature.'
Dutfield's blank look made him grin as he threw his leg over the edge of the top and sought with his foot for the top futtock shroud.
'Steady ... keep still, Carey ... that's it ... bail some more.'
The launch just floated. The slop of water in it made its motion sluggish under the influence of free-surface effect and occasionally it lurched so that water poured back in over the gunwhale. The quick righting moment exerted by the nimble Carey corrected this, restabilising the thing, and, as it rolled the other way, Carey steadied it, feet spread apart, arms outstretched, like a circus rope-walker.
Men floundered alongside, half swimming, half walking in the soft, insubstantial ooze, working the rope net beneath the launch's keel as it stirred itself an inch off the bottom.
'Pull it tight!' Frey held a corner and waved to the barge, lying ten yards away. 'Let's have those kegs, and lively, before we're stuck in this shit!'
They lashed the kegs, already haltered, as low as they could force them, fighting their buoyancy until at last the thing was done. The waterlogged launch lay within the net which in turn was buoyed up by the hard-bunged kegs.
'Right. All aboard!'
They floundered back to the barge where they clambered in over the transom. Frey was last aboard. He took the launch's painter from his teeth and handed it to Belchambers. The midshipman took a turn round the barge's after thwart.
'Very well ... give way!'
It was a hard slog. The weight of the launch was terrific and, unless they maintained a steady drag, the water in the launch slopped into her stern, reducing her after freeboard.
Leaves brushed them, dead branches tore at them as they dragged their burden out into the wider stream. Already the sun was dropping fast.
'Back by sunset, lads, come on,' Frey urged. 'A steady pull.'
There was a sudden clatter forward. Frey leant over the side and tried to grab the oar that slid past them.
'Carey! What the fucking hell ... ?'
'He's dead, sir! Got a fuckin' arrer stuck in 'im!'
But only Belchambers saw the gleam of brown flesh as an arm was withdrawn, and a sudden fear chilled him to silence.
CHAPTER 17
The Gates of the Fortress
'Yes, I know what it is ... do not touch the point, it may still bear poison. It is a dart from a sumpitan, a blow-pipe.'
'Thank you, Mr Ballantyne,' said Drinkwater.
'It is very effective, sir, and dangerous. The Dyaks use them. This man Carey was killed by Dyaks. They also carry the parang, a sword with which they are able to inflict a terrible wound, and they are famed for their skill with the kris, a knife with an undulating blade.'
'Have you fought them before, Mr Ballantyne?'
'In a hand-to-hand action only once, though I have been attacked by them more often. They will not press an attack if met with resolution, but resort to cover and strategies.'
'Stratagems, Mr Ballantyne,' corrected Mount with military punctiliousness.
'Stratagems then,' said Ballantyne, petulant at this humiliation.
'We are indebted to you, Mr Ballantyne,' Drinkwater soothed. He looked down at the chart spread before him and the pencilled line of his bearing: it petered out in a vast blank area. 'Now oblige me by listening carefully ...'
It was that period of the crepuscular hour that nautical astronomists call 'nautical twilight', when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon, rising to 'civil twilight' at six degrees and the full splendour of the dawn. Already the world had lost its monotones, the first shades of green were emerging from the variant greys, dull as slate still, but discernible to the acutely trained sailor's eye. Drinkwater reached the main-top.
'Morning, sir.' Belchambers greeted him with a whisper and his damp party stirred, three seamen and four marines who had slept at their action stations.
'Mornin', Mr Belchambers. Pray let me rest my glass ...'
The whole ship's company had slept on their arms. Below, the boats were hoisted out of the water, though ready provisioned and prepared after their adventure of the previous day. Boarding nettings stretched upwards from the rail triced out to the yard-arms ready to catch any attempts to sneak aboard Patrician while the ship herself, her guns loaded though withdrawn behind closed ports, lay with her broadside facing the land, a spring tensioned upon her anchor cable.
Drinkwater peered southwards in the direction of his bearing. The landscape was shrouded by thin veils of mist that lay more densely in long, pale tendrils, winding across the lower parts of the swamps. In this light they seemed to stretch into infinity. Somewhere in the jungle a tribe of monkeys stirred with a sudden chattering.
'Morning, Belchambers.' Frey clambered up after Drinkwater who was already busy with his compass. Frey produced his drawing block and conferred with the captain. Drinkwater pointed out the wider streaks of fog that lay in definite lines over the mangroves.