It was the lookout again. Perhaps Dunwoody was too choked by spray to call out.
"Deck there! She's a brig, sir! Can't make it out! "
Adam said, "Use your speaking trumpet, Aubrey. Bring Dunwoody down. None of this is making any sense! "
Dunwoody arrived on deck, shivering badly in spite of the steam that was rising from his dripping shirt.
Adam asked, "What ails you, Mr. Dunwoody?" He was surprised that he could sound so calm, yet feel only apprehension.
Dunwoody stared down at the deck and would have fallen in the next wild plunge but for Bond, a master's mate, catching his arm. The boy turned his head to gaze across the water as if he could still see it.
"She's no slaver, sir. She is one of ours, the brig Orcadia, "
Adam turned to Martin.
"Is she mauled?" He squeezed the boy's arm very gently. "Tell me. I need to know! "
Dunwoody shook his head, unable to accept it. "She is out of command, sir, but she has not a mark on her! "
Martin persisted, "Adrift? Abandoned? Speak out, man! "
Adam swung into the lee shrouds and began to climb, each ratline scraping at his fingers while the ship rolled from side to side.
He had to wait a long time for the ship to steady herself enough on one crested roller, and for the glass to clear while he rested against the shrouds.
Orcadia was pitching and rolling very badly, the sunlight sweeping across her stern windows and gilded gingerbread so that the cabin looked as if it were on fire. The quarter boat was still in place, but another was dangling from some loose tackles alongside, upended and smashing against the brig's side.
Not abandoned then. He waited for the next up-thrust beneath the keel and tried again. Orcadians ensign was tangled in the rigging. Adam could feel the upturned faces below him willing him to tell them, just as he could sense the apprehension which had banished their sudden excitement. Another look through the dripping telescope, although he knew what he had seen. He lowered himself more quickly. Very soon everybody else would see it.
He found his lieutenant and Partridge waiting together. There was no sense in delaying it.
He faced them and said simply, "Muster the after guard and then arm yourselves, gentlemen." He held up his hand as Lieutenant Lewis began to hurry away. "She is Orcadia." He wanted to lick his dry lips but dared not. "She flies the Yellow Jack."
Lewis croaked, "Fever! "
"As you say, Mr. Lewis." His voice hardened. "Feared and hated by sailors even more than fire."
Lieutenant Baldwin came on deck, his eyes everywhere as he buttoned his scarlet coat.
Adam said, "We will bear up to wind'rd of her and lower a boat." He saw the quick exchange of glances. "I shall call for volunteers and go across myself."
"You'll not put aboard her, sir?" Dacre was staring around as if he could see the horror of it already in this crowded frigate.
"I will decide later."
Marines were emerging from below deck, all armed, ready to fight and kill if necessary to retain order.
Martin watched the realisation running through the ship as the fear became a certainty.
He said, "Her commander is a friend of Sir Richard's, I believe?"
"Mine too." He was thinking of the Jenour he had known, trusting, loyal and likeable. Adam had thought him dead with all the others when he had gone to the memorial service at Falmouth. When his first lieutenant, Sargeant, and this same Aubrey Martin had galloped all the way from Plymouth to tell him the people most dear to him had survived. When he had lost Zenoria for all time.
"Will you take her in tow, sir?"
When Adam faced him again Martin was shocked to see tears in his eyes, running uncontrollably down his face to mingle with the spray.
"In God's name, Aubrey, you know I dare not! " It was another captain whom Martin had never seen.
Adam turned to Dunwoody, oblivious to those nearby. "But Jenour comes from my uncle. It must be important." He stared hard at the distant brig until his eyes were too blurred to see.
He heard Martin call, "Hands aloft! Shorten sail, Mr. Lewis! "
But only Dunwoody heard his captain's voice as he whispered, "Dear God, forgive me for what I must do."
Closer, and closer still to the stricken Orcadia until every telescope on the Anemone's quarterdeck would recognise the vessel's absolute desolation: the double wheel untended and jerking this way and that while the brig drifted and rolled to the pressure of sea and wind. Near the compass box Adam saw two men lying as if asleep, their bodies moving only to the brig's violent motion. There was another corpse trapped by a line against the splintered boat alongside, and as Anemone worked nearer, her yards braced almost fore-and-aft as close-hauled as she could respond, he saw the other spray-soaked bundles who had once been Orcadia's company.
He heard the surgeon say, "It must have been of the worst kind, sir. In a small vessel like her it would spread like wildfire."
Adam did not reply. He had heard of such virulent plagues in these waters, but had never seen them. Men falling at their stations, some dying before they had realised what was happening. The infection could have begun anywhere, in a vessel suspected of slavery perhaps. It had not been unknown for such ships, crammed to the deck beams with human cargo by captains who had put numbers before all else, to arrive at their destinations with most of the slaves dead and many of the crew soon to follow.
He said, "Near enough, Mr. Martin." He sounded clipped and, to those who did not know him, without emotion.
Both watches were standing-to, some staring at the deserted brig as if it had harboured some kind of destructive force. A ghost-ship returned to avenge some past horror.
Several faces turned aft as Adam called, "I want volunteers to crew the gig."
He watched the mixed expressions: fearful, hostile, some filled with an overriding dread.
Nobody moved as he continued, "She is one of us, as was the Thruster. Orcadia is a victim of war as much as any who fall to the enemy's iron. I have to know if anybody is left alive." He saw McKillop the surgeon give a brief shake of his head. It only added to his sense of hopelessness, and his own profound foreboding.
"Orcadia was sailing with despatches for the squadron. They must be vital or my unc… or Sir Richard would not have spared her. Her captain was a friend to all of us. Must this suffering be for nothing?"
His coxswain George Starr said bluntly, "I won't leave you, sir."
Another shouted, "Put me down! " It was Tom Richie,
Eaglet's boatswain, who had changed sides despite the risk to himself.
Adam said coolly, "Still with us, Richie?"
A seaman whose name he could not remember banged his big hands together and even managed to grin. "Never volunteer, they said! Look where it got me! "
Nervously, defiantly, one by one they came aft until Starr whispered, "Full crew, sir."
Adam turned as Dunwoody said, "I'll come, sir." He lifted his chin but it made him appear even younger.
Adam said gently, "No. Stay with the first lieutenant. He'll need your loyalty."
He looked over to Martin. "Still want a command, Aubrey?" He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
My ship. My lovely Anemone… and I am leaving you.
He watched the gig being lowered and brought alongside under the frigate's lee.
Several men gasped at the sound of a single shot. Others flung their heads up as if expecting to see a hold punched in the reefed topsails.
Adam remarked to no one in particular, "Yes, I think I would end it like that." He touched the pistol in his belt, wondering how it would be.
Starr called, "Ready, sir! "
Adam left the quarterdeck and walked to the port. He stopped as some sailors reached out to touch him. As if they were seeing him for the last time.
"Good luck, sir! "
"Watch out if they tries to board you, sir! " That from an older seaman, who could judge the real danger of close contact. He had made Orcadia seem like one of the enemy in just a few simple words.