'Perhaps,' Pym suggested with an air of slyness, removing his spectacles and leaning back in his chair to clean them on his neck-cloth, 'there is something else the matter.'
'What the deuce d'you mean?' Quilhampton asked sharply.
'You've heard the stories of the woman. Perhaps it isn't obsession he suffers from, but remorse ...'
'Preposterous!' snapped Quilhampton dismissively, starting to his feet and looking down at the surgeon.
'If you say so, Mr Q.' Pym replaced the spectacles and picked up his pen.
'I most emphatically do say so, Mr Pym.' Quilhampton turned the handle on the surgeon's cabin door, then paused in his exit. 'This conversation, Mr Pym, must be regarded as confidential.'
'We can regard it as never having happened if you wish, Mr Q.'
Quilhampton expelled his breath. 'It would be best, I think.'
'I think so too.'
'Obliged. Good-night, Mr Pym.'
Pym bent to his manuscript and picked up his pen. The ship's motion was easier now and the lantern gyrated less, so he was able to write without the flying shadows distracting his failing sight.
It seems to me from a long observation of commanders in His Majesty's navy, that unopposed command may distort the reasoning powers of a clever man, that the balance of his rational, thinking mind may be warped by lack of good counter-argument and his imagination seized by obsession.
Pym paused, tapping his pen on the broken teeth of his lower jaw. 'The trouble is,' he puzzled to himself, 'this is quite the reverse of a man vacillating between two distinct manners of thought. And if I am to identify the one, I needs must also consider the other.'
A warm glow of ambitious satisfaction welled in his stomach. Perhaps, unlike his subjects, he was in the right place at the right time. He dipped his pen and bent to his task.
CHAPTER 15
The Whaler
'The rendezvous, gentlemen.' Drinkwater tapped the spread chart with the closed points of the dividers and watched as they leaned forward to study the tiny, isolated archipelago a few miles north of the Equator and already far astern of them as they ran down the latitude of Ascension Island. 'St Paul's Rocks, as likely a spot for the Americans to use too, so ensure you approach them with caution, should you become detached, and that you use the private signals…'
He looked round at them. Ashby was still studying the chart but Thorowgood's florid face, evidence, Drinkwater suspected, of a self-indulgent Christmas, hung on his every word, while Sundercombe, a mere lieutenant in the company of four post-captains, regarded him thoughtfully from the rear.
'Now as for our cruising station, you will observe the rhumb-line from Ascension to St Helena as being exactly contrary to the south-east trade wind ...'
They would, he explained, sweep in extended line abreast, the frigates just in sight of one another, tacking at dawn and dusk, in the hope of intercepting the East India convoy before any American privateers.
'We know the Indiamen will have at least one frigate as escort, but Yankee clipper-schooners will have no trouble outmanoeuvring her and cutting out the choicest victims at their will. News of hostilities with America will have reached the Cape by now and it may be that a second cruiser will have been attached; not that that will make very much difference. However, four additional frigates plus a schooner to match Yankee nimbleness', he paused and smiled at Sundercombe, 'should bring the convoy home safely. Any questions?'
'Sir,' said Ashby, 'may I enquire whether your orders were to escort the East Indiamen, or remain on the American coast? I mean no criticism, but had we proceeded directly to the Cape we would have met with the India fleet for a certainty.'
A groundswell of concurrence rose from the other post-captains. Drinkwater had no way of knowing that the news of the silk petticoat had spread round the squadron by that mysterious telegraphy which exists among ships in company. Sprite's tendering and message-bearing had much to do with it, and the breath of intrigue had engendered a note of misgiving into the minds of Drinkwater's young and ambitious juniors.
For himself, his own sense of guilt had been superseded by the conviction that he had picked up a vital trail at Castle Point, and he saw in Ashby's mildly impertinent question, full of the criticism he denied, the arrogance of young bucks seeking the downfall of an old bull. He lacked in their eyes, he knew, the bold dash expected of a frigate captain, and was, moreover, a tarpaulin officer of an older school than they cared to associate with. He knew, too, they had objected to his burning of the Louise. Tyrell, by being in sight in Hasty, would have had a legitimate claim to the prize money her sale might have realized, while the general principle of burning valuable prizes appealed to none of them. Ashby's question invited a snub; he decided to administer a lecture. Signalling Mullender to offer wine and sweet-treacle biscuits to his guests, he stared out of the stern windows. Only the lightest of breezes ruffled the sea and Patrician ghosted along, the other frigates' boats towing in the slight ripples of her wake. He knew from the silence, broken only by the soft chink of decanter on glass, that they waited for his reply. He swung on them with a sudden, unexpected ferocity.
'You cannot buy yourself into the sea-service, gentlemen, as you can into the army. A ship-of-the-line is not to be had like a regiment or a whore. Oh, to be sure, interest, be it parliamentary or petticoat, sees many a fool up the quarterdeck ladder. But that does not prevent an able man getting there, though it stops many. Fortunately for the sea-service that peculiarly snobbish genius of the English, that of giving the greater glory to what costs 'em most, is absent in principle from naval promotion.'
He paused, glaring at them, gratified to see in their eyes the expressions of the midshipmen they once had been.
'Nevertheless, a deal of useless articles have arrived on quarterdecks. Since Lord Nelson's apotheosis at Trafalgar, the Royal Navy has appealed to the second of England's vices after snobbery: that of fashion. How a service which accepts boys to be sodomized or killed at twelve or thirteen, poxed at eighteen and shot or knighted by their majority should become fashionable, is a matter for philosophers more objective than myself. All I know is that those of us who remember the last war with the Americans, if we aren't rotting ashore, dead, or been promoted to flags or dockyards, have been consigned to the living entombment of blockade, whilst injudiciously fashionable young men command our cruisers and risk destruction at the hands of the Americans ...'
'Excuse me, sir.'
'What the devil d'you want?' Drinkwater broke off his diatribe, aware that Belchambers had been hovering by the door for some time. 'Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, secretly delighted that Thorowgood was nearly purple with fury and Ashby's eyes glittered dangerously. Tyrell was studying his nails.
'The wind's freshening a trifle, sir, and Mr Quilhampton says there's a strange sail coming up from the south-'ard. She's carrying a wind and looks to be a whaler.'
The news transformed the gathering, the whiff of a prize, a Yankee whaler, affected them all, with the exception of their commodore.
'Shall we go on deck, gentlemen, and see what we make of this newcomer before you return to your ships?'
The notion of waiting aboard Patrician while the whaler closed the squadron obviously irritated them still further.
Coolly Drinkwater led the way past the ramrod figure of the marine sentry and up the quarterdeck ladder.