The flying squadron

'Indiamen be buggered. If we were going to do that why did we go all the way to America?'

'Why did we go to America then, Wyatt?' Pym asked provocatively.

Wyatt swung a pitying look on Pym. 'So he', Wyatt gestured a thumb at the deck above, 'could lay with his lady love again.'

'Mr Wyatt, hold your tongue!' Frey snapped, leaping to his feet and this time avoiding Simpson's tardy hand.

'Ah, be buggered,' Wyatt sneered, 'Caldecott saw the woman; half naked she was, in her shift...'

'Are you drunk again, Mr Wyatt?'

Quilhampton stood just inside the doorway, his one hand grasping a stanchion. The creaking of the ship and the gloom of the day had allowed him to enter unobserved. Wyatt swung ponderously on his accuser as the other officers heaved a sigh of collective relief. As the frigate lurched and rolled to leeward, the master lost his already unsteady balance and reached for the back of his chair which he only succeeded in knocking over. The motion of the frigate accelerated their fall and Wyatt stretched full length on the deck. He made no move to recover himself and for a long, expectant moment no one in the wardroom moved. Then a snore broke what passed for silence between decks.

'I see you are,' said Quilhampton drily. Looking round the table, he continued, 'Let us avoid complete dishonour, gentlemen, and get the old soak into his cot without the benefit of the messman.'

They rallied round the one-armed lieutenant and, shuffling awkwardly with the dead weight of the big man between them, squeezed into his cabin and manhandled Wyatt into his swinging cot.

Catching their breath they regarded their late burden for a moment.

'Sad when you see drink consume an otherwise able man, ain't it?' Quilhampton asked in a general way. 'I presume he was running the Captain down again.'

'Yes,' Frey said, 'like Metcalfe used to, and in a particularly personal manner, too.'

'It was disgraceful,' said Simpson.

'This story about the woman again, was it?' asked Quilhampton.

'Indeed it was, Mr Q,' said Simpson.

'Well, gentlemen, let me tell you something,' Quilhampton said, herding them back into the common area of the wardroom where they resumed their places at the battered table. 'I have been acquainted with Captain Drinkwater for many years and in that time I have not known him to act improperly. Moreover, I do know him to have the confidence of government, and that if he claims this mysterious woman was an agent, or a spy, then that is very likely what she was. Now I think we can cease speculatin' on the matter and assume the Captain knows what he is doin', eh?' Quilhampton looked round the table as Moncrieff came in.

'Don't you think, Mr Q,' Simpson said, his neat, rosebud mouth pursed primly, 'that you should properly refer to Drinkwater as the Commodore?'

'I daresay I should, Mr Simpson,' Quilhampton said laconically, helping himself to a biscuit, 'what is it, Moncrieff?'

'I am a messenger, James. The Captain, I beg your pardon, Mr Simpson, the Commodore,' Moncrieff said, with ironic emphasis, desires a word with you.'

Quilhampton brushed his coat, rose and bowed to the company. 'Gentlemen, excuse me ...'

'I suppose they think I'm mad in the wardroom?' Drinkwater said flatly, not expecting contradiction. He remained bent over the chart as Quilhampton replied, 'Something like that, sir.'

Drinkwater looked up at his first lieutenant. 'You're damnably cheerful.'

'The weather's to my taste, sir.'

'You're perverse, James.'

'My wife says something similar, sir.' They grinned at each other.

'What is it they say?' Drinkwater asked, now he had Quilhampton's full attention. He saw Quilhampton drop his eyes, saw the evasive, non-committal shrug and listened to the half-truth.

'Oh, that damned fool Wyatt thinks we should stay on the American coast. I've tried to explain, but...'

Again the shrug and then Quilhampton looked up and caught a bleak look of utter loneliness on Drinkwater's face, a look which vanished as Drinkwater recovered himself, cast adrift his abstracted train of thought and fixed his eyes upon his friend.

'I'll admit to it being a long shot, James; perhaps a very long shot, and certainly a risky one. I appreciate too, that twenty-two days out of the Chesapeake with nothing to our account beyond a fired brig don't amount to much but...'

Quilhampton watched now, saw the inward glance take ignition from the conviction lurking somewhere inside this man he respected and loved, but could never understand.

'You have explained to me, sir, at least in part, but may I presume?'

'Of course.'

'We are on the defensive now. Even our blockading squadrons keep watch and ward off the French ports as the first line of defence against invasion. To some extent I share Wyatt's misgivings. We are a long way from home. Our present passage to the South Atlantic exposes our rear when every ship should be sealing home waters against the enemy. That is where, I have heard you yourself say, American privateers struck hardest during the last war. I fear, sir, for what may happen if you have miscalculated…'

Drinkwater gave a short bark of a laugh. 'So do I, James,' he interrupted.

'How are you so sure?'

'Because if I were in the same position this is what I would do.'

'And you really think it is him? This man Stewart?'

'Yes.'

'How?'

'I don't really know ...'

'Then how can you be sure of his mind?'

'I can't be entirely sure of it, James ...'

'But,' Quilhampton expostulated vainly, frustrated at Drinkwater's failure to see where the decision to sail south might lead them, 'a month ago you were in doubt as to how to proceed…'

'But we reasoned here, in this very cabin, the interception of the East India fleet was the most likely thing,' Drinkwater paused. 'Come, James, have faith; stick like a limpet to your decision.' There was a vehemence, a wildness in Drinkwater's voice, almost a passion that disturbed Quilhampton. It just then occurred to him with a vivid awfulness that Drinkwater might indeed be on the verge of madness. He stared at his friend and tried again: 'But how ... ?'

'By the prickin' of my thumbs,' Drinkwater said, looking down at the chart again, and Quilhampton withdrew, a cold and chilling sensation laying siege to his heart.

'What do you think, damn it?' Quilhampton asked Pym as the surgeon, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, looked up from the candlelit pages that he held before him against the roll of the ship. 'They're your confounded theories, ain't they? All this bloody obsession and conviction and what-not. Damn it, Pym, I've known the man since I was a boy. He's brilliant, but dogged like so many of us with never quite bein' in the right place at the right time. He got me out of Hamburg in terrible circumstances, all the way down the Elbe in the winter in a blasted duck-punt...'

'Yes, I heard about that.'

'D'you think the ordeal might have turned his mind?'

Pym shrugged. 'This', he tapped the notes he had abandoned when Quilhampton sought him out, 'is no more than a theory, based on a single case, that of your predecessor. I don't know about Drinkwater ... You say he's changed?'

The use of Drinkwater's unqualified surname shocked Quilhampton. It almost smacked of mutiny, as if Pym, in his detached, objectively professional way, had actually committed a preliminary act by divesting Drinkwater of his rank. Quilhampton shied away from committing himself.

'Certainly,' Pym rumbled on, 'there are signs of obsession in his conduct, but I have to say we are not party to his orders and, as you yourself suggested, these may be of a clandestine nature. Wasn't he in Hamburg on some such mission?'

'Yes,' Quilhampton agreed, worried at the direction the conversation was taking.