What had troubled him outside his cabin door was not a total silence, but a curious modulation somewhere that was not right, existing alongside an equally curious lack of noise to which he could not lay a cause.
Irritated and a little alarmed, still cloaked though he had tossed his hat aside, he threw open the door and stalked outside. The gun deck was quiet. The men who slept there appeared to have turned in, for the few lamps showed bulging hammocks above the faintly gleaming gun breeches.
He turned abruptly and descended to the berth deck. Immediately he knew something was wrong. He sensed rather than saw a movement, but clearly heard the hissed caveat that greeted his intrusion. He moved quickly forward, ducking under hammocks and brushing them with his head and shoulders. Many of those slung were full and he provoked the occasional grunted protest from them, but more were empty and, with a mounting sense of apprehension, he dodged forward, aware of someone moving parallel to himself, trying to beat him but, having to move in semi-concealment, not making such light work of it.
He could hear the source of that strange modulation as he drew up beside the bitts and suddenly saw below him a press of men crowded into the cable-tier. Their faces were rapt, lit by the grim light of a brace of battle-lanterns as the listened in silence to a voice which, though it spoke in a low tone, carried with it such a weight of conviction it sounded upon the ears like a shout.
So strong was the impact of this oration that it, as much as astonishment, made Drinkwater pause to listen. In the wings of the berth deck, his shadower paused too.
'The rights of kings might be supported as an argument; nay, friends, adopted as a principle for good government were it not for the fact that it in all cases without exception reduces us to the status of subjects and, moreover, many of us to abject and necessary poverty. For to glorify one requires a court whose purpose is adulatory, if not purely idolatrous, and which, to support itself, requires the extraction of taxes from the subjected.
'Furthermore, it promotes excessive pride amongst those close to the throne. This in turn excites envy among the middling sort who, gaining as they are power in the manufacturies, seek to adopt the manners and privileges of noblemen. Under the heels of this triple despotism are ground the poor, the weak, the hungry, the dispossessed, the homeless and the helpless: men, women and children — free-born Britons every one, God help them!'
Drinkwater drew back in retreat. He had not seen the speaker but knew the man's identity: Thurston, the Paineite, the disaffected seducer of men's minds, a suborner, a canting levelling republican subversive ...
Drinkwater flew up the ladder and Todd snapped to attention, his face an enigmatic mask. Drinkwater had no idea whether or not the marine knew of the combination gathered in the cable-tier, but he surely must have done. Without pausing, saying nothing, but conveying much to the sentry, he sought the refuge of his cabin, his mind a whirl.
He had suspected something of the sort as he had edged forward under the hammocks. A meeting of Methodists, perhaps, even a mutinous assembly, but this, this was intolerable ...
Why had he done nothing about it?
The thought brought him up with a round turn. The man keeping cave had known of his presence, if not his identity; Todd would soon let them know the captain had been down to the orlop and come up again looking as though he had seen a ghost! Good God, what was the matter with him?
And then the appalling thought struck him that Thurston spoke with an irrefutable logic. What little he knew of the Court of St James and the prancing, perfumed and portentious Regent, struck a note of revulsion in his puritan heart...
And yet his duty, his allegiance ...
'God's bones!' he raged. What was he going to do, flog the lot of them? Suppose the bosun's mates refused? And how could he discover who was in attendance and who had turned in? Could he punish Thurston alone, and for what? Speaking a truth that some called sedition? White had been lenient; had White caught the refreshing breath of truth and let the man escape the horrors of the law's worst excess?
'God damn them!' he snarled, finding himself at the decanter stowed in its fiddle. His hand was already on the stopper when he realized he had no time for such indulgence. He had to do something, something which was both everything and nothing, something that would not rouse them to spontaneous and hot-headed mutiny, for what Thurston was undoubtedly ignorant of was the fact that he might ignite something of which he was not master. Yet Drinkwater had to signify his displeasure, his disapproval and his power, in order to dissuade them from ever attempting any mass action. He realized what he faced was not mutiny, not something he could quell by summoning the marines and arming his officers. That would be desperate enough, for God's sake!
What he faced was something infinitely worse: its results would be mass desertion in the United States.
Patrician slammed into a wave and Drinkwater felt her bow thrust into the air as she climbed over it and fell into the trough beyond.
'God damn!' he swore again, with a mindless and futile anger. Then he snatched up his hat. Out on the gun deck he knew his visit had disturbed them. There was a low murmur of voices as men hurriedly turned in; he knew he had rattled them. Even if they did not know yet it was the captain who had discovered their meeting, they would guess it had been an officer.
He emerged on to the quarterdeck. All was still well there, he consoled himself. They would do nothing until they arrived in American waters. Unless, of course, they decided to seize the ship ...
'Sir . ..' Frey began, seeing the captain unexpectedly on deck.
'Call all hands,' Drinkwater snapped, 'upon the instant, d'you hear?'
'Aye, sir ...' An astonished Frey relayed the order and the bosun's mate of the watch piped and shouted at the hatchways.
Drinkwater drew his cloak around him, stood at the windward hance and watched them turn up.
'Sir ... ?'
'Double reef the tops'ls, Mr Frey, and look lively, a watch to each mast.' Drinkwater cut poor Frey off short and watched for Thurston. The men emerged, many of them stumbling uncertainly, torn unceremoniously from their hammocks by the shrilling of the pipes. Drinkwater was not an inhumane commander and worked his crew in three watches. To be turned up like this suggested some disaster in the offing, perhaps an enemy, and to the uncertainty of those aware their political meeting had been discovered was now to be added this element of panic.
Frey and his bosun's mate were already translating Drinkwater's order: 'Way aloft, topmen! Double reef the tops'ls! Hands by the lee braces, halliards and bowlines...!'
Drinkwater had no difficulty in singling out Thurston. The man made no effort to merge inconspicuously with the mass of the people, but stood stock still for a moment, at the far end of the starboard gangway. There was no one between them, until a petty officer shoved him roughly into his station with a cut of his starter across Thurston's buttocks.
With a sudden feeling of guilt, Drinkwater turned away. Was he one of Thurston's 'middling sort', apeing the manners and seeking the privileges of a discredited nobility? Was the acquisition of Gantley Hall such an act?
'Is something the matter?'
'Eh, what?'
Vansittart stood beside him, the silk dressing-gown flamboyant even in the darkness of a rising gale.
'Matter, Mr Vansittart?' said Drinkwater, aware of the irony of his situation, 'Why no, we are shortening sail, there's a blow coming on.'