Should he go on?
He could not now abandon Ballantyne.
'Is your gun loaded, Mr Dutfield?' he asked, breaking the almost intolerable silence at last.
'Yes, sir. Langridge shot.'
'Very well, pull a little harder, my lads, I want to come up with the other boat.'
Frey saw his intention, pulled to one side and rested his men at their oars. Drinkwater's launch drew alongside, and as both crews refreshed themselves and the two boats glided onwards under their own momentum, he and Frey conferred.
'He's got a long way ahead, sir.'
'My own thoughts exactly. I think we may have lost him ...'
'I've seen no other channels, sir ...'
'No; I don't mean in that way, Mr Frey ...' Drinkwater left the sentence unfinished. Frey grasped his meaning and nodded glumly. But they could not abandon the master, although Drinkwater's instincts told him to return to the ship, to work out a better strategy and recruit his strength. He looked at the sky. He could see what he was looking for now in the almost white heat above the jungle.
'We'll continue a little further, Mr Frey. Give way.'
Grunting and sullen, the boats' crews pushed out their oars and bent once more to their task. Fifteen minutes later they discovered Ballantyne.
The creek had opened out into a wide pool into which three other inlets appeared to debouch. Ballantyne's cutter was at the far end, adrift, its oars oddly disposed, some trailing, others sticking upwards, as though their looms were jammed in the bottom boards.
The oarsmen appeared exhausted, slumped over their bristling oars while Ballantyne sat upright in the stern. As the barge and launch came into line abreast, spreading over the greater width of the pool, Drinkwater and Frey both urged their men to greater efforts. Something about the attitude of the cutter's crew combined with the oppressive silence of their surroundings to restrain joyous shouts of recognition. That, and the realisation that it was pointless.
The cutter's crew were dead, dead from a volley of air-blown darts that had silently struck them in their pursuit. Ballantyne's body had endured the added mutilation of throat-slitting; a distinction reserved for the officer whose implication was not lost on Drinkwater.
Horror-struck, the gasping crews of barge and launch lay across their own oar looms, white-faced. Someone threw up, the yellow vomit coiling viscously in the water. For a long moment Drinkwater too fought down the gall rising in his throat, a bilious reaction compounded of revulsion and fear.
'We can't go on, sir,' said Frey, with a sense of relief, 'we don't know which channel to take.' He nodded at the three creeks that wound out of the pool and lost themselves in a tangle of trailing vegetation.
Drinkwater looked up. He could still see that fortuitous manifestation he had first spotted from Patrician. It was less than a long cannon shot away and it was not difficult to guess which creek led to it.
'I wonder how long they towed Ballantyne's boat after they ambushed it?' he said. 'A long way ... long enough to lure us here, and then they released it when we were confronted with a confusing choice ...'
'Yes, sir,' Frey agreed hastily, staring round, wondering how many unseen eyes were watching them, waiting to employ their deadly blow-pipes. His eagerness to be off was obvious, as was that of all the others.
With what he knew would be infuriating deliberation, Drinkwater picked up his glass and, focusing it, raked the shadows beneath the overhanging trees for any sign of an enemy. He did not expect to see very much, but a hidden boat or canoe would signal extreme danger. The silence of the jungle remained impenetrable. He closed the glass with a click.
'I believe we are supposed to be scared off, Mr Frey ... but that channel there', he pointed to a gap in the grey-green tangle of leaves, 'leads to ...'
To what?
He did not know, had no means of knowing beyond the simple and obvious deduction that somewhere beyond that opening in the dense vegetation lay the answer to the riddle of Morris and the whereabouts of Tregembo.
'To the bastards that did this!'
His vehemence raised a grunting response from a few of the more impetuous men.
'How d'you know, sir?'
Frey was ashen-faced, aware that he was, for the first time in his life, confronting authority. Fear had made him suddenly bold, fear and the revelation that Captain Drinkwater was not here the gold-laced and puissant figure whose will directed the Patrician and her company. To his keen and artistically responsive intelligence, Drinkwater's sharp, vehement outburst only underlined the captain's weakness. To young Frey, Drinkwater at that moment was a rather pathetic man driven on by guilt at the loss of a faithful servant and an obsession with their peculiar passenger. He had learned about Morris from Quilhampton and, as he challenged Drinkwater, he fancied the captain's wounded shoulder sagged more than usual, as though, divested of coat and bullion epaulettes, it was unequal to the weight it bore.
Just as Drinkwater's outburst had stirred a response, so too did Frey's, a buzz of agreement from men who could see no point in going on. Drinkwater's eyes met those of his lieutenant. He knew Frey was no coward, but he also knew that Frey's confrontation was deliberate. For a moment he sat in an almost detached contemplation, his eyes remaining locked on to those of his subordinate. Frey was sweating, the sheen of it curiously obvious on his pale face. Drinkwater grinned suddenly and he was gratified at Frey's astonishment.
'How do I know, Mr Frey? Look!' Drinkwater pointed at the sky. 'An intervention of nature,' he said, deliberately self-mocking.
'Those ... birds?' The crews of both boats were staring after Drinkwater's pointing arm and Drinkwater could sense the incredulity in all their minds, voiced for them by Acting Lieutenant Frey.
'Yes, Mr Frey, those birds ... D'you perceive what they are, sir? Eh?' There were nine of them, large, dark birds with wide wings that terminated in splayed pinions and broad, forked tails. They wheeled effortlessly round and round so limited an axis that they betrayed the Dyak stronghold, even from the distance of Patrician's anchorage.
'They're kites, sir,' answered Frey with dawning comprehension.
'Yes, Mr Frey, that's exactly what they are, kites giving away the position of our enemy.' The silence that followed was filled only with the hum of flies that were already blackening the bodies in the adjacent cutter.
'We've got our own, sir,' said one of the launch crew. They looked directly above their heads.
A single kite soared in a tightening spiral, seeing and scenting the mortifying carrion in the drifting cutter.
'Very well,' said Drinkwater with sudden resolution. 'I want six volunteers to take the oars; five marines, also volunteers, with ten muskets. I will exchange these men into the cutter as being handier upstream. You, Mr Frey, will take the launch and tow the barge back to the ship. You will put the bodies of our shipmates into the barge. Mr Dutfield, I'd be obliged of your company, but I want only volunteers.'
'Of course, sir, I'll come.'
'Obliged. Now, the rest of you. Who's with me?'
'I'll come with you, sir!'
They lashed the three boats together and, rocking madly, gunwhale banging against gunwhale, effected the transfers. When they had sorted themselves out and he had disposed the marines as he wanted them in the cutter, each with two muskets and a double supply of powder and shot, Drinkwater looked at Frey.
'Well, Mr Frey, we've left you a little water, and you take our best wishes back to the ship. Be off with you.'
Frey seemed to hesitate. 'I'll exchange with Dutfield, sir,' he said.
'No you won't,' replied Drinkwater, 'give way, lads.'