'No, really. I am quite content to sit still a little longer.'
Frey stepped back behind the easel and resumed work. 'I cannot imagine why your conscience should trouble you, sir. I have not known another person with your sense of duty'
'That is kind of you, Frey, but it may be the essence of the problem. Duty is a cold calling. It induces men to murder, giving them licence without consolation. Have you any idea how many men I have killed?'
'Well no, sir.' Frey looked up, astonished at the candour of the question.
'No,' replied Drinkwater bleakly, 'neither have I.' 'But...' Frey began, but Drinkwater pressed on. 'One remembers only a few of them and they were almost all friends! James, for example ...'
'You did not kill James!' Frey protested. 'There were others, Frey...' 'I cannot believe ...'
'You do not have to. It is only I who need to know. And I don't...'
'But you once said to me that you did not believe in God, Sir Nathaniel, that matters were moved by great but providential forces. Providence has been good to you. This portrait, for example,' Frey said, stepping back and waving his brush at the canvas, 'is evidence of that. Surely the reward is to be enjoyed... To be appreciated...'
'You are probably right, my dear fellow. I was always a prey to the blue-devils. We drag these deadweights through our lives, and the megrims have been a private curse of mine for many years.'
'You have been lonely, sir,' Frey said reasonably. 'Perhaps it is the penalty for bearing responsibility.' He paused and worked for a moment of furious concentration. 'Perhaps it is the fee you must pay to achieve what you have achieved, a kind of blood-money.'
Drinkwater grinned and nodded. 'You are a great consolation, Frey, and I thank you for it. Alas,' he added sardonically, 'I think there may yet be unnamed tortures still awaiting me.'
'Apart from your rheumaticks, d'you mean?' Frey replied, returning the smile, pleased to see the lugubrious mood lifting.
'Oh yes, far worse than mere rheumaticks.'
For a further fifteen minutes, silence fell companionably between them and then Frey stepped back, laid down his brushes and palette, and picked up a rag. Vigorously wiping his hands he said, 'There, that is all I shall need you for. I think perhaps you had better pass verdict, Sir Nathaniel. Though I say so myself,' he added, grinning with self-satisfaction, 'I do believe 'tis you to the life.'
CHAPTER 16
The Rescue
The spectral faces of the dead came near him now, touching him with their cold breath. If he expected vengeful reproaches, there was only a feeling of acceptance, that all things came to this, and that this was all there was and would ever be. His mind rilled with regrets and great sadnesses, too complex and profound for him to recognize in their particulars, and in these too he felt touched by the unity of creation, reached through the uniqueness of his own existence.
In his dying, providence made one last demand upon him. There was someone near him, someone tugging at the oar with a frantic desperation which seemed quite unnecessary.
'Oh, God!' the man spluttered, thrashing wildly. 'Oh, thank God!' Dimly it was borne in upon Drinkwater that clinging with him on the oar was Mr Quier.
'Sir Nathaniel... 'Tis you ...' The oar sank beneath their combined weight. It's me, Sir Nathaniel... Quier, sir, Second Mate ...'
Odd that he should have known two men whose names began with that curious letter of the alphabet. Odder still that he should make the comparison now, in this extremity, a last habitual shred of rational thought. But he was feeling much warmer and he had seen Quilhampton a little while ago, he was sure of it. Or perhaps it was Frey... Frey and Catriona, yes, that was it, the presence of Catriona had confused him.
'The oar', he said with a slow deliberation, 'will not sustain us both...' Drinkwater felt the oar suddenly buoyant again, relieved of the young man's weight. Mr Quier, it appeared, had relinquished it and kicked away.
This was wrong. It was not what he had meant by his remark, but it was so difficult to talk, for his jaw was stiffened against the task. With a tremendous effort of will, Drinkwater hailed Quier.
'Mr Quier, don't let go, I beseech you!'
Quier headed back, gasping and spitting water, righting his sodden clothing in his effort to stay afloat. He suddenly grasped the oar loom again with a desperate lunge just as Drinkwater let go.
'Hold on, my boy,' he whispered, 'they're sure to find you ...'
It was Mr Forester who saw the man in the water waving. He shouted the news to Captain Poulter without taking his eyes off the distant speck as, every few seconds, it disappeared behind a wave only to reappear bobbing over the passing crest.
'Six points off the port bow, sir! Man waving!'
Poulter called out, 'Hard a-port! Stop port paddle!' He heard with relief the order passed below via the chain of men and was gratified when Vestal swung in a tight turn. Poulter was sodden with the perspiration of anxiety, yet his mouth was bone dry and he felt a stickiness at the corners of his lips.
'Come on, come on,' he muttered as he willed the ship to turn faster.
'Three points ... Two!' Vestal came round with ponderous slowness.
"Midships! Steadeeee ...'
'Coming right ahead!' Forester bellowed, his voice cracking with urgency.
'Meet her!' Poulter ordered. 'Steady as she goes!'
'Steady as she goes, sir. East by south, a quarter south, sir.'
'Aye, aye. Make it so. Both paddles, dead slow ahead!'
Vestal responded and Poulter, seeing Forester's arm pointing right ahead, ordered Potts to bring the ship's head back to starboard a few degrees, to open the bearing of the man in the water whom he himself could see now.
'Steer east by south a half south.' He turned aft from the bridge wing to check the men were still at their stations, ready to lower the boat once more. Reassured, he noted they were only awaiting the word of command. Poulter swung forward again and watched as they approached the man in the water. Poulter could see it was Quier, the second mate, who maintained himself by means of his arms hanging over the loom of one of the smashed boat's oars.
'Thank God for small mercies,' Poulter breathed to himself, then, raising his voice, he ordered: 'Stop engines! Half astern!'
Beneath him, hidden under the box and sponson, the paddle-wheels churned into reverse. Slowly Quier drifted into full view almost alongside them, some twenty yards away on the port beam. As Vestal came to a stop, he looked up at them. He was quite exhausted, his face a white mask devoid of any emotion, bereft of either relief or joy. Quier's expression reminded Poulter of a blank sheet of paper on which he might write 'Lost at sea', 'Drowned' or 'Rescued'.
'Stop her!' he called out, then, leaning over the rail, shouted, 'Boat away!'
So close was Quier that it seemed almost superfluous to lower the boat. It looked as if he might be hooked neatly with the long boat-hook and hove on board like a gaffed fish, but Poulter knew the second officer's life was not saved yet, that considerable effort had still to be expended by the boat's crew to haul the helpless, sodden man out of the sea and into the boat. Poulter turned to the able-seaman stationed on the port bridge wing as lookout.
'Run down to the officers' steward and tell him to bring hot blankets from the boiler room up to the boat-deck right away.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' The man abandoned his post for a moment and disappeared below. Poulter envied the sailor the opportunity to run about, for he found such moments of inactivity irksome in the extreme. He was impatient now. Locating a man was so damnably difficult and the weather was not going to last. The glass was already falling and the sky to the westwards looked increasingly threatening