How one forgot, Drinkwater mused sadly, how one forgot. Again the spectre of age rose to haunt him. He shook the queer feeling off. He had remembered the girl's shattered and beautiful body earlier that very morning; it had stimulated the coarse joke that had bound his ship's company together. He felt a mood of awful self-loathing sweep over him. He himself had shot the girl, shot her unknowingly it was true, but had nevertheless been the agent of her death. Something of his personal disquiet must have showed on his face, for he sighed and then looked up to see Huke staring at him.
'Are you all right, sir?'
Drinkwater smiled ruefully. 'Well enough, Tom, well enough.' He brightened with an effort. 'An attack of the megrims, nothing more.' He forced a laugh. 'Too many damned islands.'
CHAPTER 8
A Bird of Ill-omen
The morning bore a different aspect. Drinkwater woke to the short, jerking plunges of the creaking frigate as she butted into a young head sea and knew the worst. Dressing hurriedly, he went on deck to find his apprehensions confirmed. As he ascended to the deck, he noticed the hammock of the sick man swinging in isolation beneath the open waist, slung between the boat-booms. Then, as he emerged on to the quarterdeck, the near gale buffeted him, the howl of it low in the rigging. Under topsails and a rag or two of staysails and jibs, Andromeda rode a grey sea studded with paler crests which reflected the monotone of the sky. Curtains of rain swept eastwards some two miles away on the lee bow, and the blurred horizon to windward promised more. The decks were already sodden, and much of the good work of the day before was already undone. Staring about him he saw no sign of Utsira.
'Morning, sir.' Lieutenant Jameson touched the forecock of his hat which, Drinkwater noted, dripped from earlier rain as he held his head down against the wind. 'A few squalls ha'e blown through, but she's snug enough under this canvas, sir.'
'Yes.' Drinkwater wanted to ask if they had seen any sign of the Kestrel, but it would only have betrayed the extent of his anxiety, for it was obvious there was no sign of the cutter in the grey welter beyond the safety of Andromeda’s bulwarks. Instead he asked with almost painful inconsequence, 'Where are you from, Mr Jameson?'
'Montrose, sir.'
'And your family? Do they farm?'
'My father is an apothecary, sir,' Jameson said, with a hint of defiance, as though he was half ashamed and half daring his commander to scoff at his low birth.
'A useful calling, Mr Jameson. I wonder what he would have thought of the event of yesterday?'
'I doubt that he would ha'e seen the amusing side of it, sir.'
'And you? What did you think?'
'I, sir ... well, I ... I don't know . . .'
'Come, come, I never knew a lieutenant who had no opinion. I'll warrant you had one in the wardroom last night. Perhaps you did not approve?'
'No! I mean, I don't think I would ha'e done ... I mean ...'
'You mean you could not have done it, I sense. Is that not so?'
'Well, sir, perhaps,' agreed Jameson, whose chief objection had been having to jump around naked himself, though he had taken his discomfiture out on the embarrassed Walsh.
'Sometimes, Mr Jameson, it is very necessary to do things which seem, at face value, to be ridiculous. Your joke about the flea party was a good one, for, though you may have considered the proposition ridiculous, I am of the opinion that the ship-fever is caused by that annoying little parasite and that he will hop aft along the gangway and nip you as readily as he will nip those men forrard there.'
You are very probably right, sir,' capitulated Jameson resignedly.
'Well, then, perhaps you are more resolute in what you think we should do today. What would you advise?'
Jameson shrugged. He was not used to having his opinion sought, least of all by the captain. 'Heave to, I suppose, since we are on the rendezvous.' He paused and looked at Drinkwater who said:
'Nothing more?'
'No ... well, yes, I suppose it would be best to run back towards the island, we ha'e hauled out to the nor' west during the night.'
Drinkwater nodded. 'See to it then,' he ordered curtly and turned away, to begin pacing the deck along the line of the starboard carronades.
'Strange old cove,' Jameson muttered to himself, raising the speaking trumpet to his mouth. 'Stand by the braces, there!' he called, then lowering the trumpet towards the men at the helm, 'Larboard wheel if you please ...'
In the cabin Drinkwater was studying the spread charts with Birkbeck when Huke knocked and entered.
'Fishing boats in sight, sir. I thought at first it was the cutter. I've told Mosse to drop down towards them.'
'What good will that do, Tom? To maintain the fiction of being Danish we would need to speak…'
'We've a Dane on board, sir,' Huke interrupted, 'I meant to tell you earlier. His name is Sommer. I have instructed him to lay aft.'
'Well done. Bring him below.'
Huke disappeared and returned a few moments later with an elderly man who, from his sandy eyebrows, might once have been blond, but whose head was now devoid of hair.
'You are Sommer?'
Yah. I am Per Sommer.'
'How long have you been in this ship?'
'Oh, long time, Captain. In Agamemnon before, and Ruby and some other ships. In King George's service long time.'
You have no wish to go home to Denmark?'
Sommer shrugged. 'I have no family. My mother died when I was born, my father soon after. He was fisherman. I become fisherman. Then one day we have big storm, off the Hoorn's Rev. Later we see ship and I become British seaman. Now Andromeda my home. Not go back to Denmark. Too old.'
Drinkwater looked blankly at the elderly man. For a moment or two he was lost in contemplation at the sad biography, moved at the surrender to providence. Had fate compelled Sommer to this comfortless existence just to provide him, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, with an interpreter at a crucial moment?
'Lucky for us, sir,' prompted Birkbeck.
'What? Oh, yes. D'you know why we are flying the Danish flag?'
Sommer shrugged. 'Not worry very much about flags.'
'Very well. We want you to speak to the fishing boats ahead, Sommer. I want to ask them if they have seen any strange ships, big ships. American ships, in fact, Sommer. D'you understand?'
'American ships, yah, I understand.'
'What about...?' began Huke, but Drinkwater had already considered the matter.
'I want you to put on my hat and cloak when you speak to them, Sommer, to look like an officer.'
'An officer ...?' Sommer grinned, not unwilling to enter the little conspiracy. 'Yah, I can be captain.'
And they bowed him out of the cabin with almost as much ceremony as if he were.
The two fishing boats, their grey sails almost indistinguishable against the sea, lay to leeward as the mainyards were swung aback and Sommer hoisted himself up on to the rail. There followed an exchange which, by its very nature, raised Drinkwater's spirits, for it was obvious from the Dane's question and the pointing gestures that followed that it had been positively answered.