A Brig of War (10 page)

And then the South Atlantic surprised them a second time. At four bells in the forenoon eight days after their escape from the French cruiser a cry from the masthead summoned Drinkwater on deck.

‘Deck there! Boat, sir, broad on the weather bow!'

He joined Lestock by the rail, steadying his glass against a shroud. A minute later Griffiths limped over to them.

‘Well?' he growled, ‘can you see it?' Both officers answered in the negative.

Patiently they scanned the tumbling waves until suddenly something held briefly in clear silhouette against the sky. It was undoubtedly a boat and for the smallest fraction of a second they could see the jagged outline of waving arms and a strip of red held up in the wind.

‘On the beam, sir, there! Passing fast!' The boat was no more than half a mile from them and had already disappeared in the trough of a wave.

‘Watch to wear ship, Mr Lestock. Call all hands.'

The cry was taken up as Lestock turned to pass orders through the speaking trumpet. ‘I'll get up and keep an eye on 'em sir.' Without waiting for acknowledgement Drinkwater leapt into the main rigging and raced for the top. The sudden excitement lent energy to his muscles and he climbed as eagerly as any midshipman. Over on his back he went, scrambling outboard over the futtocks and up the topmast shrouds to cock his leg over the doublings at the topmasthead. Below him, her spanker brailed,
Hellebore
had begun her turn to starboard, the watch squaring the yards until she had the wind aft. Drinkwater looked out on the starboard beam. At first he could see nothing. The occupants of the boat might have subsided in despair and he could think of no greater agony than being passed so close by a vessel that did not sight them. Then he saw the flicker of red. Despair had turned to joy as the castaways watched the brig manoeuvre.
Hellebore
was still turning, the red patch nearly ahead now. Around him the yards groaned slightly in their parrels as the braces kept them trimmed.

‘Keep her off the wind, sir, they are fine on the weather bow,' he yelled down.

Hellebore
steadied with the wind on her beam. The watches below, summoned for whatever eventuality that might arise, were crowding excitedly forward. Drinkwater saw an arm outstretched, someone down there had spotted the boat. Mindful of his dignity he descended to the deck.

‘Afterguard! Main braces! Leggo and haul!'
Hellebore
was hove to as the main topsail and topgallant cracked back against the mast, reining her onward rush and laying her quiet on the starboard tack some eighty yards from the boat.

They could see it clearly now as its occupants got out a couple of oars and awkwardly pulled the boat to leeward.

‘ 'Ere, there's bleeding women in it!' came a shout from forward
as the Hellebores crowded the starboard rail. A number of whistles came from the men, accompanied by excited grins and the occasional obscene gesture. ‘ 'Cor ain't we lucky bastards.'

‘Don't count yer luck too early, one of 'em's pulling an oar.'

‘An 'hore on an oar, eh lads?'

‘If thems whores the officers'll 'ave 'em!' The ribald jests were cut short by Drinkwater's ‘Silence! Silence there! Belay that nonsense forward!'

He and Griffiths exchanged knowing glances. Griffiths had refused to sanction celebrations on the equator for a good reason. ‘They'll dress them powder monkeys up like trollops, Nathaniel, and all manner of ideas will take root . . . forget it.' They had forgotten it then but now they were confronted with a worse problem. There seemed to be three women in the boat, one of whom was a large creature whose broad back lay on an oar like a regular lighterman on his sweep. She had a wisp of scarlet stuff about her shoulders and it was the waving of this that had saved their lives. Exciting less interest there were also six scarecrows of men in the boat which bumped alongside the
Hellebore
. The brig's people crowded into the chains and reached down to assist. There was much eager heaving and good natured chaffing as the unfortunate survivors were hoisted aboard. ‘ 'Ere, there's a wounded hofficer 'ere.' A topman jumped down into the boat and the limp body of a red-coated infantry captain was dragged over the rail.

Appleby was called and immediately took charge of the unconscious man; in the meantime the other nine persons were lined up awkwardly on deck. They drank avidly from the beakers brought from the scuttlebutt by the solicitous seamen. The six bedraggled men consisted of two seamen and four private soldiers. The soldiers' red coats were faded by exposure to the sun and they wore no cross-belts. They were blear-eyed, the skin of their faces raw and peeled. The two seamen were in slightly better shape, their already tanned skins saving them the worst of the burning. But it was the women who received the attention of the Hellebores.

The big woman was in her forties, red-faced and tough, with forearms like hams and a tangled mass of black hair about her shoulders. She tossed her head and planted her bare feet wide on the planking. Next to her was a strikingly similar younger version, a stocky well-made girl whose ample figure was revealed by rents
in the remains of a cotton dress. Her face was burnt about the bridge of her nose and slightly pockmarked.

Beside him Drinkwater heard Griffiths relieve himself of a long sigh. ‘Convicts,' he muttered, and for the first time Drinkwater noted the fetter marks on their ankles. The third woman was a sharp faced shrew whose features fell away from a prominent nose. She was about thirty-five and already her dark eyes were roving over the admiring circle of men.

‘Which of our men is the tailor, Mr Drinkwater?'

‘Hobson, sir.'

‘Then get him to cobble something up this very day to cover their nakedness; he can use flag bunting if there's nothing else, but if I see more than an ankle or a bare neck tomorrow I'll have the hide off him.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘And turn the two midshipmen out of their cabins. They can sling their hammocks in the gunroom. I want the women accommodated in their cabins,' he raised his voice, ‘now you have had something to drink which of you will speak? Who are you and whence do you come from?'

‘We come from His Majesty's Transport
Mistress Shore
, captain,' replied the big woman, clearing her throat by spitting on the spotless deck. The officers started at this act of gross impropriety for which a seaman would have had three dozen lashes. Griffiths merely rasied his voice to send the off-duty watches below and to get the gobbet swabbed off His Majesty's planking.

‘Do not do that again,' he said quietly, 'or I'll flog you. Now why were you adrift?'

‘Ask the sojers, captain, they're the blackguards who . . .'

‘Shut your mouth woman,' snapped one of the soldiers appearing to come out of a trance. Drinkwater guessed the poor devils had been sick as dogs in the boat while the indomitable spirit of this big woman had kept them all alive. The woman shrugged and the soldier took up the tale, shambling to a position of attention.

‘Beggin' your honour's pardon, sir, but I'm Anton, sir, private soldier in the New South Wales Corps. Forming part of a detachment drafted to Botany Bay, sir. The officer wot's wounded is Captain Torrington, sir. We was aboard the
Mistress Shore
, sir, twenty men under the Cap'n. The main guard consisted of French emigré soldiers and some pardoned prisoners of war, sir, who had volunteered for service with the colours,' Anton turned his
head to express his disapproval of such an improvident arrangement and caught himself from spitting contemptuously at the last moment. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘Beg pardon, sir . . . these dogs rose one night and under a French gent called Minchin they overpowered the guard, murdered the officers of the ship and took her over.'

‘You mean they overpowered the whole crew?'

‘It were a surprise, sir,' Anton said defensively, ‘they put twenty-nine off in the longboat and twelve of us away in the cutter . . . two of 'em died, sir.'

‘How many days were you adrift?'

‘Well, sir, I don't rightly . . .'

‘Twenty-two, Captain,' said the big woman, ‘with a small bag of biscuit and a small keg o' water.'

Griffiths turned to Drinkwater. ‘Have the men berthed with the people, the soldiers to be quartered in the tops, the two seamen into the gun crews. As to the women I'll decide what to do with them tomorrow when they are presentable. In the meantime, Mr Lestock, we will now be compelled to call at the Cape.'

Drinkwater and Lestock touched their hats and moved away to attend their orders.

Manifold and strange are the duties that may befall a lieutenant in His Majesty's service
, Drinkwater wrote in the long letter he was preparing for Elizabeth and that he could send now from the Cape of Good Hope. It was two days after the rescue of the survivors of the
Mistress Shore
. Already they had been absorbed in the routine of the ship. Drinkwater had learned something of their history. The big woman and her daughter were being transported for receiving stolen goods, offenders against the public morality who had yet thought their own virtue sacrosanct enough to have denied it to the treacherous Frenchmen. So spirited had been their resistance that Monsieur Minchin had wisely had them consigned to a boat before they tore his new found liberty to pieces. The woman was known as Big Meg and her daughter's name was Mary. They were decked out in bizarre costume by Hobson since when Big Meg was also known as ‘Number Four', the greater part of her costume having been made from the black and yellow of the numeral flag.

Both Meg and her daughter adapted cheerfully to the tasks that Drinkwater gave them to keep them occupied. They chaffed
cheerfully with the men and appeared to maintain their independence from any casual liaisons as Griffiths intended. This the men took in good part. There were women aboard big ships of the line, leigitmate wives borne on the ship's books and of inestimable use in tending the sick. They became mothers to the men, confessors but not lovers, and stood to receive a flogging if they transgressed the iron rules that prevailed between decks. But on
Hellebore
a more delicate situation existed. While the women might be thought to be everybody's without actually being anybody's, while they were willing to banter with the men, their effect was salutary. Even, despite the roughness of their condition, the nature of their convictions and their intended destinations, improving both the manners and the language of the officers. Rogers paid a distant court to Miss Mary who was much improved by some crimson stuff Hobson had laid his hands on which had been tastefully piped with sunbleached codline. Opinion was apt to be kind to them: there were, after all, kindred spirits on the lower deck. If they were guilty in law there was in them no trace of flagitiousness.

Big Meg and her daughter picked oakum and scrubbed canvas, scoured mess kids, mended and washed clothes, while the third woman assisted Appleby. Her crimes were less easy to discover. A sinister air lay about her and it was darkly hinted by her companions that abortion or murder might have been at the root of her sentence of seven years transportation, rather than the procuring commonly held to be her offence. Certainly she claimed to have been a midwife and Appleby was compelled to report she had a certain aptitude in the medical field.

Knowing Appleby's distrust of the sex in general, Drinkwater was amused at his initial discomfiture at having Catherine Best as his assistant. His mates found their unenviable work lightened considerably and that in the almost constant presence of a woman. Catherine Best made sure that her presence was indispensible and whatever her lack of beauty she had a figure good enough to taunt the two men, to play one off against the other and secure for herself the attentions of both. But this was not known to the inhabitants of the gunroom.

‘Ha, Harry, it is time you damned quacks had a little inconvenience in your lives,' laughed Drinkwater as he directed a thunderstruck Appleby to find employment for the woman.

‘I emphatically refuse to have a damned jade among my
business . . . if it's true she's a midwife then I don't want her on several accounts.'

‘Why the devil not?'

‘Perceive, my dear Nathaniel,' began Appleby as though explaining rainfall to a child, ‘midwives know very little, but that little knowledge being of a fundamental nature, they are apt to regard it as a cornerstone of science and themselves as the high priestesses of arcane knowledge. Being women, and part of that great freemasonry that seeks to exclude all men from more than a passing knowledge of their privy parts, they dislike the sex for the labour they are put to on their behalf and can never tolerate a man evincing the slightest interest in the subject without prejudice.'

Drinkwater failed to follow Appleby's argument but sensed that within its reasoning lay the cause of his misogyny. He was thinking of Elizabeth and her imminent accouchement. He did not relish the thought of Elizabeth in the hands of someone like Catherine Best and hoped Mrs Quilhampton would prove a good friend to his wife when her time came. But he could not allow such private thoughts to intrude upon his duty. He was impotent to alter their fates and must surrender the outcome to Providence. For her part the woman Catherine Best attended to Captain Torrington and earned from Appleby a grudging approval.

The men who had been rescued were soon indistinguishable from
Hellebore
's crew, the soldiers as marines under Anton, hastily promoted to corporal. Captain Torrington emerged from his fever after a week. He had been thrust twice with a sword, in the arm and thigh. By great good fortune the hasty binding of his wounds in their own gore had saved them from putrefaction, despite the loss of blood he had suffered.

The sun continued to chase the brig into southerly latitudes so that they enjoyed an October of spring sunshine. The beautiful and unfamiliar albatrosses joined them, like giant fulmars, elegant and graceful on their huge wings. Here too they found the shearwaters last seen in the Channel, and the black and white Pintada petrels the seamen called ‘Cape pigeons'.