A Brig of War

Chapter Seven Vanderdecken's Curse

Closing his mind to one problem Drinkwater was unwilling to face another. He was very tired and the implications of Appleby's remark took several seconds to penetrate his brain. The blackstrap coiled round his belly and radiated its warmth through him so that stiff muscles relaxed. But it stimulated his mind and he turned to Appleby. 'Woman? What the devil d'you mean? We landed 'em all at the Cape.'

Appleby shook his head, his jowls flapping lugubriously. 'You thought you did.'

Drinkwater swung his legs round and put both elbows on the table. 'Look man, I saw the bloody boat away from the ship's side. Big Meg actually smiled at me and I footed a bow at Miss Mary. Your wench was already in the boat when I reached the rail.'

'Exactly! Did she look up?'

'No. Why should she? She wasn't exactly undergoing a pleasure cruise. I daresay they put gyves on 'em as soon as they got ashore.'

'I don't doubt it, cully, but that is not the point. Who wrote out the receipt?'

'I did,' said Drinkwater rising to reach down the ship's letter book. He flicked over the pages. 'There!' He spun the book to face Appleby. The pasted in receipt bore the words 'Three convicts, ex Mistress Shore, Government Transport, female.'

'So?'

'Oh, for God's sake Harry, quit hazing me. If you've a woman on board let's see her.' But Appleby, angry and dismayed by the turn of events would not yet produce his evidence.

'That proves nothing, any fool can squiggle a signature and pretend it's that of a garrison subaltern. All one does is draw up a second one and throw it overboard on the way back to the ship.'

'But that indicates a conspiracy. Damn it, Griffiths would have reported three female convicts to the Governor; Torrington or his men knew there were three of 'em. Come on bring the woman in, I'm tired of fencing with words.' He swallowed the blackstrap.

'Look, Nat, I don't suppose Torrington gave it a second thought and I daresay the soldiers were a party to it. As for the Governor, who knows what our captain said to him? The Old Man was already feverish and we know His Excellency was annoyed that Griffiths had not called immediately upon arrival… who knows what either of them remembered to say during or after their interview? I daresay H.E. was obsessed with Griffiths's lack of protocol before worrying about whether he had reported two or three convicts. We sailed the following day… but one last question. Who took the boat ashore to see those trollops off?'

Drinkwater's argument was merely a symptom of his fatigue. Both of them knew Appleby was not lying but Drinkwater was trying to delay the inevitable with logic. It was a spurious argument. 'Rogers,' he said resignedly.

'Huh! Now, to reward your exemplary patience I will produce the evidence.' Appleby rose and left the gunroom. Drinkwater emptied the jug of blackstrap into his mug. The door opened and Appleby returned. Drinkwater looked up. Leaning against the closed door was Catherine Best. Her pinched face was almost attractive, half shadowed in the swaying lantern light. An insolent half-smile curled her mouth while a provocative hip was thrust out in allurement.

Drinkwater closed his mouth, aware that he had flushed. He was aware too that she knew well the hold she had over them all. It was not difficult to imagine a conspiracy among the hands, an easy woman amongst them would seem like the answer to a seaman's prayer.

'Where have you been living?'

'She's been in the cable tier,' volunteered Appleby.

'That is Lestock's province.'

'He delegates his rounds of the hold to one of his mates.'

'But I myself was there yesterday… no, no, the day before…'

'Efficient though you are, Nathaniel, you are an officer of regular habits. It is easy enough to give warning of your coming.'

Drinkwater nodded. It was all too true, a dreadful nightmare. He looked at the woman and was suddenly furious. 'I shall have you flogged!' he snapped vindictively. 'Turn Dalziell out of his cabin again and lock this trollop in for the night!' Appleby turned to take the woman out. She remained for a moment resisting the hand upon her arm, looked fixedly at Drinkwater. He felt again the colour mounting to his cheeks.

'Get out, damn you!' he roared, angry at his own weakness. As usual Drinkwater had the morning watch, from four until eight a.m. He woke with the realisation that something was very wrong and the bare two hours sleep that he had enjoyed left him in a foul temper when he reached the deck and realised the nature of his problems. Quilhampton brought him coffee but it did nothing to lighten his mood. The men avoided him, all knowing the mad scheme to carry their own doxy had been discovered by the surgeon and Mr Drinkwater.

Whilst the watch below melted away and the unhappy culprits in Mr Drinkwater's watch busied themselves about the decks, the first lieutenant paced up and down. An hour passed before he realised that daylight was upon them, that the sun was above the horizon, revealing a grey-white sea, furrowed and torn by the ferocity of the gale the night before. The wave crests, half a mile apart were already losing their anger as the gale abated, to turn them slowly from breaking seas to crested swells.

He swept his glance over the shambles of the deck. Luck had been with them again last night. Later he hoped he would find Griffiths surfacing for a lucid moment and could tell him what they had been through. But then he would also have to tell him about the woman Catherine Best, and he was not looking forward to that. He swore to himself. He could not flog the woman alone since all were guilty, all these sheepish seamen who crept round the deck pretending to check the lashings on the pieces of yard. Tregembo passed him and Drinkwater was struck by a feeling of abandonment.

'Tregembo!'

'Zur?'

'Did you know about this woman?' he asked in a low voice.

'Aye zur.'

'And you didn't tell me?'

Tregembo looked up agonised. 'I couldn't zur, couldn't welsh on my mates… besides, zur, there was officers involved.'

Drinkwater bit his lip. Tregembo could no more pass tittle-tattle than he could have favoured Tregembo over the ridiculous flogging business. Nevertheless the apparent disloyalty hurt. 'Have you lain with her?'

'No, zur!' Tregembo answered indignantly. 'I've my Susan, zur.'

'Of course… I'm sorry.'

'It's all right, zur… you've a right to be angry, zur, if you'll pardon me for so saying.' He made to move away. Drinkwater detailed him.

'Just tell me by whom I was deceived?'

'Zur?'

'Who dressed as the jade in the boat at the Cape?'

'Why Mr Dalziell, zur.'

Drinkwater closed his gaping mouth. 'How very interesting,' he said at last in an icy tone that brought an inner joy to Tregembo. 'Thank you Tregembo, you may carry on.'

Tregembo touched his forehead and moved aft, passing the wheel.

'What was he asking you?' growled the quartermaster apprehensively.

'Only who was tarted up like the woman at the Cape, Josh. And I reckon the buggers'll see the sparks fly now. He's got his dander up.'

Drinkwater took two more turns up and down the deck then he spun on his heel. 'Mr Quilhampton! Pipe all hands!'

That would do for a start. The middle watch would be deeply asleep now, damn them, and the members of the first watch had been a-bed too long. If they thought they could pull the wool over the eyes of Nathaniel Drinkwater they were going to have to learn a lesson; and if he could not flog them all then he would work them until sunset.

The men emerged sleepily. Lestock came up, followed by Rogers. 'Ah, Mr Lestock, I do not require your presence, thank you.' The elderly man turned away muttering. 'Mr Rogers I desire that you take command of the hands and unrig the broken yard, clear that raffle away and then get one of those Corsican pines inboard and rig it as a jury yard to reset the spare topsail without delay. Wind's easing all the time. When you have completed that bring in a second tree and get a party of men under the direction of Mr Johnson to start work with draw knives in shaping up a new yard, better Johnson choose the spars. We'll transfer the iron work after that and paint the whole thing before swaying it aloft. Your experience on Hecuba should stand you in good stead.'

Still fuddled with sleep Rogers could not at first understand what was happening. It dawned on him that it was not much past five a.m. and that he had had hardly any sleep. It was doubtful if he yet knew of Drinkwater's discovery of Mistress Best or of his part in the conspiracy. 'Look, damn you Drinkwater, if you think…'

Drinkwater took a step quickly and thrust his face close to Rogers's. 'It used to be said that every debt was paid when the main topsail halliards were belayed, Rogers, but it ain't so. Newton's third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Now you are about to have that demonstrated to you. You have had your pleasure, you poisonous blackguard, and by God, sir, now you are going to pay for it! Carry on!' Drinkwater turned contemptuously away and called Mr Quilhampton to his side.

'Fetch my quadrant and the time-keeper from my cabin, take your time, Mr Q. Make two trips. If you drop that chronometer it will be the worse for you.'

The boy hurried off. Drinkwater was beginning, just beginning, to feel better. He would take a series of sun altitudes in a while and calculate their longitude by chronometer. He was very proud of the chronometer. The convalescing Captain Torrington had been landed with his men at the Cape. The army officer had been most grateful to the commander and gunroom officers of the Hellebore and asked if there was any service he could perform for them. By chance his brother, a civil officer in the service of the East India Company was taking passage home in one of the Indiamen in Table Bay and Torrington intended to return with him to England. His brother had advanced the Captain a considerable sum of money to defray his expenses whilst the Indiamen were at the Cape and he was willing to do his best to purchase some comforts for his benefactors.

Drinkwater, having missed the opportunity to obtain a timekeeper at Syracuse, knew that John Company's ships carried them. 'Sir, if I could prevail upon you to beg a chronometer from the commander of one of the Indiamen we should be eternally obliged to you. You are aware of the nature of our mission and that we were sent on it somewhat precipitately; a chronometer would be of great use.'

'I should regard myself an ingrate if I were not to purchase you one my dear Drinkwater, a few wounds and a clock are a small price to pay to avoid Botany Bay.' They had laughed heartily at the noble captain as they lowered him into the boat.

'You know I used to deplore the sale of army commissions but when you have a generous and wealthy fellow like that to deal with it don't seem so bad a system,' Griffiths had said ironically.

The following morning the instrument arrived in an exotically smelling teak case. Drinkwater had taken it in charge, not trusting Lestock to wind it daily at the appointed hour. He had confirmed the longitude of Table Bay to within seven minutes of arc and this morning would be the first time they had seen the sun since leaving to run their easting down in the Roaring Forties. The result would make a nice matter for debate when Lestock came below for dinner.

After Lestock relieved him at eight bells and Drinkwater permitted the hands to cease their labour for half an hour to break their fasts, the first lieutenant sent for the woman. He sat himself down at the gunroom table and made her sit opposite while Appleby passed through into Griffiths's cabin to tend the commander.

The door had hardly closed on the surgeon when Drinkwater felt his calf receive a gentle and seductive caress from her leg. Last night, tired and a little drunk he had been in danger of succumbing. The lure of even Catherine's used body had sent a yearning through him. But this morning was different. His position would not tolerate such licence as the men toiled in expiation above his head. Besides, despite his fatigue, his spirit was repaired and his body no longer craved the solace of poor, plain and desperate Catherine. Daylight did not help her case.

'Last night I threatened to have you flogged. I have decided against that, but if you attempt the seduction of me or a single one of the men I will visit the cat upon your back.' He saw the initiative fade from her eyes. 'Have you ever seen a flogging, Catherine?' he asked coldly.

She nodded. Drinkwater opened the ship's muster book, snapped open the inkwell and took up his pen. 'I am entering you on the ship's books as a surgeon's assistant. You will be fed and clothed. If you prove by adhering to the regulations of the ship, that you can carry out your duties I will use my best endeavours to have your sentence remitted by whatever time you serve aboard this ship. I have a little influence through a peer of the realm and it may prove possible, if your services are of a sufficiently meritorious nature, that the remission of the whole of your sentence is not beyond the bounds of possibility'

He did not know if such a course was remotely possible but it kindled hope in Catherine's eyes. She was a creature of the jungle, an opportunist, amoral rather than immoral and yet possessed of sufficient character to have hazed a whole ship's company. That showed a certain laudable determination, Drinkwater thought. His plan might just work. 'Will you agree to my conditions? The alternative is to be put in irons indefinitely.'

'Yes, yer honour.' She lowered her face.

'Look at me Catherine. You must understand that any infringement of the ship's rules will destroy our agreement.' She looked up at him then at Appleby who had come from Griffiths's cabin shaking his head over the captain's condition. 'Mr Appleby here will witness your undertaking.'

'I understand yer honour, but…'

'But what?'

'Well sir, she said ingenuously, 'it's Mr Jeavons and Mr Davey, sir.'

'The surgeon's mates?' She nodded.

'They're my regulars, like, sir, they've come to expect… you know…' She looked down again while Drinkwater looked at an Appleby empurpling with rage. 'Why the damned, festering…' Drinkwater held his hand up.

'I will deal with them Catherine. They will not trouble you again.' He turned the book round and held the pen out. 'Make your mark there,' he pointed to the place but she said indignantly 'I know, sir, I can read and write.'

She signed her name with some confidence. 'Very well, Catherine, now while I read out the men's names do you tell me with whom you have slept.' He began to read. She did not know all their names but the percentage of the crew who had visited her was large. But neither was it surprising. It was even possible that this bedraggled creature possessed a gentleness absent from the lives of the seamen and that it was for more than lust that they came to her.

'It must stop now, Catherine.' She nodded, while Appleby, with a hideous implication said, 'I will look into this matter.'

Drinkwater dismissed Catherine and sent for Appleby's mates. It was certain that they had been instrumental in suggesting Catherine dupe the brig's officers to their own advantage. Their plan had misfired when they discovered that many more of the hands would have to be a party to it and that those men would soon come calling for their share of the trophy. Besides, Catherine had to be found employment under supervision. Appleby was the only trustworthy person who did not have to keep a watch, and as the woman showed an aptitude for medical work she would be best employed with him.

It was the work of a moment to disrate the surgeon's mates. They protested they held their warrants from the College of Surgeons, that they were gentlemen unused to the labour of seamen. But being alone in the Southern Ocean had its advantages. There was neither court of appeal nor College of Surgeons south of the equator and they were soon turned to on deck where the starters of the bosun's mates were stinging their backsides with a venom spurred by a gradual realisation that the hands were being worked like dogs because of a certain lady of easy morals between decks. That her two pimps had been turned among them was a matter of some satisfaction.

Drinkwater concluded his morning's work by also appointing Tyson surgeon's assistant. He too could write, they had discovered, and Drinkwater was amused to find Appleby growling over the radical alterations to his department. 'My dear fellow,' said Drinkwater summoning Merrick from the pantry with some blackstrap, 'you have always fancied your chances as a philosopher, now you have the most literate department in the ship. You will be able to plead the benefit of clergy for all of 'em. Now do be a good fellow and allow me to compute this longitude before Lestock comes below.'

At noon Drinkwater called the hands aft. His announcement to them was brief and to the point. The woman, Catherine Best, he told them, had been apprehended. The deception against the Regulations for the Good Order of His Majesty's Navy on board His Britannic Majesty's Brig of War Hellebore was at an end. Although it verged upon the mutinous by virtue of its very nature as 'a combination', in the effective absence of the captain, he had decided that he could not flog the woman without inflicting the penalty upon them all. He held them all culpable, however, and would punish all of them by a stoppage of grog, to be indefinite against their good behaviour. The groan that met this announcement convinced Drinkwater that it was the correct measure. The deprivation of jack's grog was a punishment incomprehensible to landsmen. As for the woman, he continued, she was now part of the ship's company. Any man found lying with her would receive the same punishment as that prescribed by the Articles of War for that unnatural act whereby one man had knowledge of another. He did not need to remind them that the punishment for sodomy was death.

When he had finished he sent them to their dinner. 'By heaven, Nathaniel, that was a rare device,' muttered Appleby admiringly, 'what a splendid pettifogging notion. Worthy of Lincoln's Inn.'

Drinkwater smiled thinly. He was thinking how far they had yet to travel and how little of their task they had yet accomplished.

'What d'you intend to do about Dalziell and Rogers?'

'Let them stew a little, Harry, let them stew.'

In longitude forty-five east they hauled to the northward, the wind quartering them until it gradually eased and died away from the west. They entered the great belt of variables south of Madagascar and worked north by frequent yard trimming. Twice they sighted sails but on both occasions they did not seek to close the other. The men began to mutter. The deprivation of their grog continued days after they had toiled to get first the jury foreyard up, then its permanent replacement. The lack of it was beginning to rankle. As the weather continued to improve Drinkwater had sent up the topgallant masts. On their first day of light winds they had hoisted the boats out and hauled them up to the davit heads on either quarter. Griffiths had recovered sufficiently to be told of the events of the fortnight. He had been so choleric that Appleby feared for a recurrence of his fever, but the old man had subsided to order that Drinkwater continue the ban on grog just at the point when Drinkwater was considering reinstating it.

'No indeed! The weather is improving, the men do not need it to drive them aloft, see; let them feel the want of it a little longer.'

Catherine Best appeared a reformed character and Appleby was the butt of jokes about the reclamation of fallen women. Although he resisted at first, Griffiths had finally allowed her to attend him. Reporting to the commander one morning Drinkwater had commented on her as she left the cabin. 'There is a little good in the worst of us,' Griffiths quoted with more than a trace of Welsh piety, Drinkwater thought wryly. 'Duw, but she's a sight better than those gin-soaked mountains of lard at Haslar… or for that matter the herring gutters they had in the hospital at Yarmouth…' Griffiths was beginning to enjoy his convalescence and if the men thought their commander had adopted their bawd then let them, he thought. They would be of that opinion anyway and Drinkwater was at last able to wring the issue of grog from Griffiths.

It was whilst observing Venus after sunset that he first heard the rumour. Beneath the poop two men sat in the gloom of dusk while Hellebore ran north-east under easy sail.

'We be a cursed ship with a woman on board,' said one voice.

'Ah, bull's piss. They Indiamen carry women and chaplains, they seem to manage. Anyway you tried hard enough to have her.'

'No I didn't.'

'You bloody well did, you said yerself that if you'd been below before that slimy rat Jenkins you'd'ave slipped her what she had coming to her. I heard you.'

'We still be accursed. You heard o'the Flying Dutchman? Him what inhabits these waters? You heard of him then?'

Drinkwater brought the planet down to the fast fading horizon, twisting the quadrant gently and smoothly. Satisfied he rocked it slightly from side to side so that the gleaming disc just cut the horizon, all the time adjusting the index to follow the planet's setting. 'Now!' he called to Quilhampton who was taking the time on the chronometer. He paid no more attention to the rubbish he had overheard. Lestock came up shortly afterwards to relieve him and looked suspiciously at the longitude Quilhampton had chalked on the slate.

'Come, come, Mr Lestock, the Board of Longitude thought the problem worth twenty thousand sterling. All I ask is that you have a little faith in their investment.' But he did not wish to get involved in an argument and he went on, 'It's high time we had those guns out of the hold. We're coming up with Île de France, even you latitude sailors must know that, and it's time we mounted a full broadside before we meet a Frenchman. If it is calm tomorrow we'll hoist 'em out. In the meantime she's full and bye, nor'nor'east, all plain sail and nothing reported. Logged six knots five fathoms at one bell, wheel and lookouts relieved. Good night, Mr Lestock.'

'Good night, Mr Drinkwater.'

As he broke his fast the following morning, when a dying wind held every prospect of their being able to remount the guns, he heard again the words 'Flying Dutchman'. He called Merrick from the pantry. 'Come now what's all this about?'

Merrick was shamefaced but clearly confused. He told how a tale was going round the brig about them being condemned to everlasting drifting about, like the Flying Dutchman. It was all on account of the woman. 'It's nothing but scuttlebutt, sir, but… well I…' Drinkwater smiled. It sounded ridiculous but he knew the grip a superstition could have over the minds of these men. It was not that they were simple but that their understanding was circumscribed. They had no idea where they were, they endured hours of remorseless labour to no apparent purpose. The best of them was paid twenty-nine shillings and sixpence gross, less deductions for the Chatham Chest, medical treatment, slops and whatever remaining delights, like tobacco, the purser sold them. Their lives were forfeit if they broke the iron-bound rules of conduct, and ruled by an arbitrary authority which was a yoke, no matter how enlightened. Recent events had conspired to make it the more irksome and there would be those among them with sufficient theology to assure their more credulous messmates that they were being punished for their carnal misdemeanours. It was not surprising therefore that their minds should react to a story as vivid as that of Vanderdecken, the legendary Flying Dutchman. The question was who had started its circulation?

'Where did you first hear the story, Merrick?'

The man pondered. 'It was here in the gunroom, sir. Begging your pardon sir, I wasn't listening deliberately, sir but I heard…'

'Well who was telling it, man?' said Drinkwater impatiently, well knowing Merrick eavesdropped and passed the conversation of the officers to the cook who, from his centrally situated galley where all came during the day, fed out to the hands the gossip he saw fit.

'I think it were Mr Quilhampton, sir.'

'Mr Q, eh? Thank you, Merrick. By the way you did not concern yourself over such things on Kestrel did you?'

'Lord love you no, sir. But we was never far from home, sir. Ushant, Texel, them's home for British jacks sir, but up there now,' he pointed to the deckhead, 'why nobody knows the stars, sir, even the bleeding sun's north of us at noon, sir. One of the men says there's islands of ice not many leagues to the south. It just don't seem right sir, kind of alarming…'

Drinkwater sent for Mr Quilhampton. 'Merrick tells me he heard you spinning the yarn of the Flying Dutchman, is this true?'

'Well no, sir. Actually I was listening. I mean I had heard it before, but I didn't like to say so, sir.'

'Who was telling the tale then?'

'Oh it was just by way of entertainment, sir. I was listening with Dalziell.'

'But who was telling it?'

'Why Mr Rogers, sir.'

'No wind, Mr Lestock.'

'None, Mr Drinkwater.'

'Very well, clew up all sails and square the yards. A tackle at each of the lower yardarms, one on the main topmast stay and a bull rope to the capstan. The watch can rig those then turn up all hands.'

He fell to pondering the problem. Since the discovery of Catherine Best, Rogers had been very quiet. Whether or not he had had a relationship with the woman Drinkwater did not know. Neither did he care. Appleby told him the woman believed herself barren and there seemed no evidence of other complications. Nevertheless Rogers had been a party to the conspiracy. More, Drinkwater hoped, out of a misplaced, schoolboy prankishness than a calculated act. But Drinkwater was not sure. Rogers might have been evening the score, proving himself smarter than the first lieutenant. But that did not ring quite true. Rogers was an impetuous, fiery officer, spirited if low in moral character, certainly able and probably brave. The service was full of his type; they were indispensible in action. But Rogers was not a dissembler. His weakness lay in his impetuous temper. When Dalziell had brought Tregembo for a flogging Rogers had acted without a second thought. So was Dalziell behind this silly rumour? There was an inescapable logic about it. Not that the yarn was, in itself sinister, but the persistence of its power to unsettle and subvert was real; very real. The sooner they had the guns remounted the better. Now that they were in temperate latitudes once again they could resume their routine of general quarters, suspended since the Cape in the heavy weather of the Roaring Forties. Drinkwater knew it was not sufficient to read the Articles of War once a month to keep the people on their toes. Only the satisfying roar and thunder of their brutish artillery could do that.

'All ready, Mr Drinkwater. Hands at the tackles, the hatches off and the toms off the guns.'

'Very well, Mr Lestock, then let us turn to.'

The first to emerge was the foremost starboard waist gun. The tackles of the starboard fore and main yardarms were overhauled and married to the big stay tackle. The three purchases thus joined were lowered into the hold. There they were hooked on to the gun, ready slung by a strop around its trunnions.

A bosun's mate commanded the hauling part of each tackle and at the gratings the bosun, Mr Grey, his silver chained whistle suspended about his neck, stood poised.

'Set tight all!' The slack in the three tackles was taken up.

'Stay tackle heave! Handsomely there now… yard tackles up slack!'

The black doubled hemp of the main topmast stay assumed a shallow angle and the mainmast creaked gently. The six pounder weighed eighteen hundredweights. Below in the hold six men tallied on a bull-rope round the gun's cascabel, steadying the black barrel. The next order came as the gun rose level with the deck: 'Yard tackles heave!' The men grunted away in concerted effort. There were no merchant ship's shanties but a rhythmic grunt as fifty men, barefoot and sweating in the sunshine, strained at their work. 'Walk back the stay tackle handsomely!'

The gun, suspended now from all three tackles, began to move horizontally across the deck. The bull-rope trailed slack and was pulled onto the deck by one of the topmen who ran forward to reeve it through a train tackle block.

'Vast heaving main yard!' As the stay tackle party lowered slowly back and the mainyard party ceased work, the gun slewed forward under the pull of the foreyard tackle. It began to move across the deck diagonally.

'Capstan party heave tight!' Twenty men walked round the capstan and tightened the bull-rope. Theirs was a job of adjustment, as was that of the gunner's party that stood by the waiting gun carriage.

'Walk back the mainyard!' The gun moved forward now, almost over the carriage.

'Vast all!'

'Walk back handsomely!' Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the gun began to descend. Trussel made some furious signals while Mr Grey held first the foreyard party, then the main. The gun stopped while Trussel's men shoved the carriage a little. A minute later the gun rested on its trunnions. The cap-squares were shut. The carriage was slewed into position and run up against its port lintel, then the breechings were passed.

'Overhaul all…' The three tackles were passed down into the hold for the second gun.

They finished by mid-afternoon and were piped to dinner after which they were piped up again and went to general quarters. The broadsides were ragged and from his cot Griffiths expressed his disappointment.

'Tell the people,' he muttered crossly, 'that if that is the best they can do I will stop their grog again.'

It was not an order Drinkwater made haste to obey. The mood of the ship was too delicate and Appleby had told him the fever had aggravated Griffiths's leg and he was likely to be irritable and a semi-invalid for some time.

'God knows what will become of him,' the surgeon said worridedly, 'but his powers of recovery are greatly diminished since last year's attack.'

The silence of exhaustion fell upon the brig as the sun set. It was mixed with discontent for, despite reprovisioning at the Cape, some of the salt junk had been found bad and there had been no more that day to replace it. 'It is likely to be a long voyage,' Drinkwater had reluctantly told the purser, 'we must adhere to the rationing.'

He came below at eight p.m. his shirt sticking to his back, too tired for sleep. Not that sleep was to be had in the airless cabin. In the gunroom Appleby dozed over his madeira. Drinkwater slumped in a chair as the door to Griffiths's cabin opened and Catherine Best emerged. She held a finger to her lips, the very picture of solicitude.

As she passed Drinkwater she gave a little curtsey. He could scarcely believe his eyes and his mind was just forming a quite unjustified suspicion that she must have ulterior motives when a piercing cry of alarm came from the deck.

A silence followed, brief but oppressive with the most awful horror. Then, in that stunned hiatus, clearly heard through the open skylights and companionways: 'It's him, boys! It's the Dutchman!'

So potent had been the cry that the senses seemed devoid of reason. Drinkwater felt his intelligence replaced by fear, then with a curse he rose and rushed on deck. He ran forward to where Kellet, captain of the foretop, his arm outstretched was open mouthed in terror.

Others arrived and they too pointed, muttering fearfully, a papist or two crossing themselves, a good protestant on his knees confessing his sins direct to his maker. 'Oh God forgive me that I did indeed have carnal knowledge of Mistress Best when that vessel of unclean-ness was a greater whore than all the…' Next to him Drinkwater saw Dalziell. The midshipman was shaking as though palsied.

Drinkwater stared ahead at the dull, greenish glow. The night had become cloudy and dark, there was just a breath of wind and the glow grew larger. If his theory about Dalziell having initiated the silly rumours was correct the youth was paying for it now in a paroxysm of fear.

'Whisht, listen boys! Listen!' The hubbub faded and they could hear the screams, the screams of souls in torment. 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, blessed is the fruit of thy womb…'

'Jesus Christ, what the hell is it?'

'Tis the Dutchman, boys… the Dutchman…'

Drinkwater pushed his way aft, unceremoniously grabbing Lestock's glass from the master's paralysed hand. He swung himself into the mainchains.

It was the hull of a galleon all right, with a high poop. But the vessel had been dismasted. He thought he could see movement, pale shapes flitting about on it. The hair on the nape of his neck crawled. He dismissed the superstition with an effort. But perhaps an old wreck, like those supposedly trapped in the weed of the Sargasso…?

No, there was something familiar about those screams. 'Mr Lestock!'

'Eh? What?'

'Do we have steerage way?'

'Steerage way? Eh, oh, er we did, sir, just. Come you lubbers back to the wheel, damn it, what d'ye think this is?'

'A point to starboard if you please.'

A gasp of incredulity greeted this order. Cries of supplication and threats floated aft. 'The devil may take you, Mr Drinkwater, but not us, hold your course mates.'

'Belay that forward! What's the matter my bully boys? Have you lost your stomachs? Come now, I don't believe it. A point to starboard there…'

'What the deuce is it Drinkwater?' muttered Rogers below him, 'lend me the glass.' Drinkwater handed it down. 'Let me see after you,' said Appleby. 'Damn your eyes, it's my bloody glass.' Lestock snatched it peevishly from Rogers's eye.

'You can see for yourself, Harry,' said Drinkwater suppressing laughter.

They were closing the apparition fast now. The supposition that it was a galleon had made a fantasy of distance. In fact it was quite close and as they passed it there was a surge backwards from the rails, cries of revulsion as the stink of the dead whale assailed their noses.

'Well it stinks like hell for sure!' There was the laughter of relief up and down the deck as they realised what huge fools they had been.

The decomposing whale had swelled up and glowed from the millions of tiny organisms that fed upon it. Shrieking and screaming above it a thousand seabirds enjoyed the funeral feast of the enormous mammal while the water about it was thrashed to a frenzy by a score of sharks.

They watched it fade astern. Laughing at themselves the men drifted below. It seemed the atmosphere about the ship had been washed clean by that appalling smell. Drinkwater wished his companions good night when a party was seen coming from forward. Four men were carrying the inert white-shirted and breeched body of a midshipman. 'Is that Mr Q?'

'Lord no, sir. I'm here.'

'It's Mr Dalziell, zur,' said Tregembo, lowering the midshipman. 'Fainted he did, zur, in a swoon.'

'Well, well, well,' said Drinkwater ironically, 'it seems that vengeance is still the Lord's.'