In Distant Waters (31 page)

‘Clap a stopper on the noise, zur . . .'

‘God damn you, Tregembo . . .'

Drinkwater slashed wildly at the first assailant and felt his sabre knock aside the bayonet thrust. Whirling the blade he caught the second man as he tried to work round Drinkwater's rear, driving both off for a second. He began to fall back, waving Tregembo behind, him, ‘. . . why the devil didn't you answer me?'

‘I fell among swine,' Tregembo called as he moved towards the boat behind his commander.

‘Then run, man,
run
!'

Drinkwater saw an opportunity and slashed again, slicing in above the thrusting bayonet as the Russian infantryman lunged forward. The man's face was a pale blur and Drinkwater saw the dark splotch of blood against his cheek as the point of the sabre caught it, and then he turned and began to run, leaping the tussocks of grass and then slithering through soft sand and mud. He tripped and fell full length in the shallows, hard on Tregembo's heels. The Cornishman turned and helped him to his feet.

‘God! What a damned farce!'

They scrambled into the boat amid a confusion of limbs and bodies, dominated by Quilhampton's voice calling above the rain and the tumult, ‘Where's the captain? Has anyone seen Captain Drinkwater?'

‘Here . . . I'm here, Mr Q . . . now get this festerin' boat under way!'

‘Thank God! Aye, aye, sir . . . out oars! Come on there . . . for Christ's sake! Give way!'

As the boat pulled out into the estuary, a storm of small shot whined over their heads and all they could see were a few shapes splashing about in the shallow water in almost as much confusion as themselves.

‘Let's sort this boat out.' Drinkwater's own sense of dignity and his innate hatred of disorder surfaced in the rout. ‘Be silent there,' he ordered for the noise of swearing continued unabated and it suddenly dawned on him that it was no longer his own men who were responsible.

‘What the deuce?'

Drinkwater looked round, thinking for an instant he was going out of his mind for the noise came out of the night ahead of them and the oaths were unmistakably English. Then he saw the looming bulk of one of the anchored brigs athwart whose hawse the current was sweeping them.

It's the English prisoners, sir,' shouted Quilhampton in a moment of comprehension, ‘they must have heard us . . .'

Drinkwater considered the odds. How many Russians were aboard the brig? But the current had committed him.

‘Catch a-hold then . . . come lads quickly . . . up and board her! Come on there, lads, those are your festerin' shipmates aboard there, prisoners of the Russians . . .'

A groundswell of anger stirred the occupants of the boat and she rocked dangerously as men reached out at the passing hull. Then the cutter jarred against the brig with a crash and they found themselves jammed under her forechains and were swarming up over her ample tumblehome. Driven by their recent defeat and now finding themselves among the familiar surroundings of a ship, they swept the length of her deck within a minute. At her stern, the watch of a dozen men, confused by
the noises ashore, suddenly attacked by desperate assailants and mindful that below decks a score of rebellious prisoners only awaited liberty before cutting their gaolers to pieces, soon capitulated. Most jumped over the taffrail to save their lives by swimming ashore, though three were taken prisoner. Drinkwater realised he was in possession of a Russian brig at the same moment that he caught a glimpse of the unsecured cutter drifting away downstream.

‘What is it Mr Derrick?'

There was an odd formality about those left aboard the
Virgen de la Bonanza
. Mr Marsden, the
Patrician
's carpenter but the most experienced seaman on board, hurried to answer Derrick's summons. The Quaker's innate dignity, his literacy and his position as the captain's secretary, almost gave him the status of a gentleman, while his tenacious hold on his faith had elevated him from a mere curiosity to something of a sage among the hands.

‘I believe it to be the cutter, Friend Marsden, and it appears to be empty.'

Marsden took up the offered glass and levelled it. The dawn was heavy with the night's rain, the sea a sluggish undulating plain of uniform grey. No wind above the whisper of a breeze ruffled its surface, as though the sea was suppressed beneath the sheer weight of the sky's bequest. Every rope and spar, every sail and block was sodden with water. Rain had run below through cracks and companion-ways, scuttles and ports and, though it was not actually falling at that moment, more was threatened and the coming of day was only a lightening of the tone of the gloom. Their visible horizon was bounded by mist, a murky perimeter into which the grey, unoccupied shell of the cutter rocked, not above six cables away, borne seawards by the inexorable current of the Columbia River.

Fifteen minutes later the thing lay not thirty yards off and they could clearly see it was empty. There were disorderly signs of hurried evacuation. Several of the oars were missing, one stuck up, its blade jammed in the thole pins. Another was broken, the jagged loom indicating it had struck hard against something.
The remnants of rags hung down from the rowlocks, where, the night before, they had muffled them. Oddly the painter lay neatly coiled in the bow.

‘Damned if I understand the meaning o' this,' muttered Marsden.

‘I think we are alone, Friend, left to our own resources,' said Derrick, his sonorous tone carrying the dreadful implication to Marsden.

‘Streuth! What's to be done? And the cap'n gone, an' all . . .'

‘Could we fetch San Francisco?'

Marsden shrugged. ‘God knows . . . I suppose we could . . . ain't my trade, nor yours neither . . . hell and damnation take it!'

‘Come Friend, such language availeth nothing.' Derrick turned away from the rail and looked along the schooner's deck. Their handful of a crew would be hard-pressed to bring the schooner back to San Francisco.

‘Oh, my fuckin' oath,' moaned Marsden and Derrick turned. The carpenter was staring to starboard where, out of the mist, the grey shape of a ship was emerging. ‘We be sunk good an' proper now, Mister Derrick, that's one o' them Russian brigs we saw yesterday. Reckon they know all about us an' what's happened to the Cap'n.'

‘Shall we run then?' Derrick suggested querulously.

‘Is that a Russkie?' asked one of the seamen, coming up to the two men while behind him the remainder stood and stared despairingly to leeward. Marsden looked at first Blixoe and then Derrick. He was not given to quick thinking.

‘Run? Where to?'

‘Anywhere . . . we're faster than a brig, can sail closer to the wind . . .'

Marsden looked at the Quaker with something akin to respect. ‘I suppose running ain't fighting,' he said, rubbing his chin and considering the matter.

‘Of course we'll run,' snapped the seaman shouting for them to start the headsail sheets and cast loose the lashings on the helm.

‘Wait!' Derrick was staring through the telescope. ‘I'd swear that was Mr Quilhampton on the knightheads . . .'

‘Seems a shame, zur, to burn a prize like that,' Tregembo muttered watching Quilhampton's firing party at work and the flames take hold of the brig.

‘She stank near as bad as you when you emerged out of that swine-midden,' remarked Drinkwater. ‘I have never seen so slovenly maintained a ship.'

‘You damned near had me finished with all that shouting,' said Tregembo.

‘That's as maybe, Tregembo. Would you have had me abandon you? By God, Susan would never have let me forget it . . .'

They smiled at each other relieved, both aware that they had enjoyed a lucky escape. They withdrew from the stern window of the schooner, Drinkwater to pour himself a glass of the Spanish commander's excellent
oloroso
, Tregembo to fuss the elegant little cabin into something more befitting a British naval captain. The stink of smoke came in and Drinkwater waited for Quilhampton's party to get aboard. A moment or two later Quilhampton knocked on the door. He entered, grimy but smiling. He held out a rolled chart.

‘A glass, James, you've earned it . . . what d' you have there?'

‘The answer to the riddle, sir . . . yes, thank you.' Quilhampton took the glass from Tregembo, who gave him an old-fashioned, sideways look.

‘How did they behave?' asked Drinkwater unrolling the chart and staring at it.

‘The men, sir?'

‘Yes.'

‘Like lambs, all eagerness to please. Never seen a firing party so eager to destroy a prize, couldn't do enough for me . . . would have burnt the damn thing twice over if it'd been a fit plea for mitigation . . .'

Drinkwater looked up from the chart and eyed the lieutenant speculatively. ‘You think it should be, James?'

‘We've little choice, sir. In any case, they outnumber us and I'm not sure about the men that were with me. It was only circumstances and self-preservation that kept us together . . . Marsden's all right, Derrick's a canting neutral and I suppose we can rely on old Tregembo . . .'

‘Less of the “old”, Mr Quilhampton, zur, if you please,' growled the Cornishman.

Quilhampton grinned and downed his glass, winking at Drinkwater.

‘Let's hope they all appreciate which side their bread's buttered on now,' said Drinkwater, finishing his own glass, ‘even so, I'll have to read 'em the riot act.'

‘I'll muster them, then, sir.'

‘Yes, if you please, and try not to look so damned pleased with yourself.'

‘I think you'll find something to smile about sir, if you study that chart.'

‘Why?'

‘I think it shows us where we may find
Patrician
.'

Drinkwater looked down at the chart with its unfamiliar script and mixture of incomprehensible Russian characters and French names favoured by more aristocratic hydrographers. ‘Anyway,' went on Quilhampton, pausing by the cabin door, ‘I'm uncommon pleased to be given a fighting chance again.'

‘Yes,' agreed Drinkwater, ‘it was quite a turn up for the books, eh?'

‘Well, “fortune favours the brave”, sir,' Quilhampton remarked sententiously.

‘I think,' replied Drinkwater drily, ‘that last night, fortune was merely inclined to favour the least incompetent.'

Quilhampton left with a chuckle, but Drinkwater exchanged a glance with Tregembo.

‘I'll let 'ee know if I hear anything, zur, have no fear o' that.'

‘Very well Tregembo,' Drinkwater nodded, ‘only I've a notion to set eyes on my family again.'

‘You ain't the only one, zur.'

Drinkwater poured himself a second glass of the
oloroso
and, while he waited for the men to be mustered on deck, he studied the chart. The brig's Russian master was an untidy navigator; the erasure of her track was imperfectly carried out. It was quite obvious that Captain Rakitin had a nearer rendezvous than Sitka and, studying the features of the inlet, it was the very place he himself would have chosen to hide a prize. Delighted, he
tossed off the glass and composed his features. He was going to have to scold the men, but, by all accounts they had quite a tale to tell.

Quilhampton gathered the details, noting them down on a page torn from the schooner's log-book. The men who had absconded from Drake's Bay had found the same village that Quilhampton had been driven from and met the same reception from its inhabitants. Although a body of opinion sought revenge on the local
peons
, wiser councils prevailed and the deserters moved further inland, reducing the chances of being retaken by any parties sent out by Drinkwater. For a day or two they remained together until they reached the great sequoia woods where game, water and freedom had split them into groups and they had lost their discipline. For a few days they wandered happily about and then one party found an Indian village. Their attempt to establish friendly relations with the native women met a hostile rebuttal. Another party roamed into a Franciscan mission and were driven off by angry
mestizos
who had been told they were devils. Within a week the country was raised against them and several were killed or left to the mercies of the natives as the manhunt spread. Eventually twenty-two of them found themselves rounded up and turned over to a strange, English-speaking man in fringed buckskins whom the local people held in some awe.

To the British deserters he promised, with complicit winks and other indications of racial superiority, that if they played along, he would accomplish their rescue. There were prolonged parleys, exchanges of some form of gifts or money and then they were led off on the promise of good behaviour, by the mountain-man whom they knew by the obvious alias of ‘Captain Mack'. Since the alternative was inevitable death at the hands of either Indians, half-caste Spanish or the tender ministrations of what they thought was the Inquisition, they shambled off in the wake of their rescuer.