A private revenge

CHAPTER 12 A Council of War

A sickeningly empty horizon greeted Drinkwater's eyes as he cast about the ship. In a despairing movement he looked aloft to where, astride the main royal yard, Midshipman Dutfield scanned the sea. Looking down, Dutfield shook his head.

'God's bones!' Drinkwater swore, then strode to the binnacle and stared at the compass. The lubber's line pointed unerringly at south by west. Drinkwater looked aloft again, the sails were drawing, all seemed well. He stood, puzzling. Some instinct was rasping his intelligence, telling him something was wrong, very wrong, though he was totally at a loss to understand what. Full daylight was upon them, the rising sun, above the horizon for fully half an hour, remained below a bank of wet and coiling cumulus to the east. For a long moment he stared at that cloud bank, as though seeking an answer there, cudgelling his brain to think, think.

Both he and Frey had seen the convoy last night. The cluster of ships had been quite distinct, to leeward of them, perhaps a little too far off the starboard bow for absolutely perfect station-keeping, but ...

Had that squall, local and intense, affected only Patrician? It was possible, but it had not lasted long enough to carry the frigate beyond the visible horizon of the group of ships.

A slanting shaft of sunlight speared downwards from a rent in the clouds. A moment later it was joined by another, and another. Three patches of glittering sea flared where the sunbeams struck, scintillating intensely.

'Bloody hell!'

Drinkwater's eye ran up the beams, seeking their theoretical intersection where, still hidden, the sun lurked behind the bank of cloud. In a stride he was beside the binnacle, sensing something was definitely wrong, electrified by suspicion.

He could not be sure. It was difficult to take an azimuth in such a way ...

He fumed, impatient for a sight of the sun. Not one of the three patches seemed to move nearer to them, then one disappeared.

'Is there something ... ?' Ballantyne's voice was nervously hesitant.

'Get an azimuth the moment the sun shows, get my sextant and chronometer up here upon the instant!'

It had to be the lightning, a corposant perhaps, that had run unobserved in all that black deluge the previous night. There was no other explanation ...

'Look, sir, the sun!'

Neither sextant nor chronometer had arrived but Drinkwater did not need to work out the calculation. It was too blindingly obvious. Though they crawled across the face of the globe and altered the bearing of the sun at any given time of the day, and although the sun was almost imperceptibly moving towards them as it orbited further and further north towards the equinoctial and the vernal equinox of the northern spring, he could see that an error existed in their compass; an error of perhaps thirty of forty degrees, sufficient to have misled them into sailing on a diverging course from the convoy. It was with something like relief that he offered the worried faces on the quarterdeck an explanation.

'Our compass is thirty or forty degrees in error, gentlemen. We have been sailing more nearly south-east than south all night. It must have been disturbed by the lightning.'

A murmur of surprise, mixed with wonder and relieved suspense, crossed several faces. Drinkwater looked at the dog-vane and made a hurried calculation, a rough estimate in triangulation that he would work out more carefully in a moment when he had the leisure to do so. For the time being a swift alteration of course and speed were needed.

'Lay me a course of south-west, Mr Ballantyne, and have the watch set all plain sail!'

'Sou' west and all plain sail, sir, aye, aye, sir!'

Drinkwater looked about him again. The wind was a light but steady breeze. God alone knew what the convoy commanders would think when they realised Patrician was absent, but he could imagine well enough! A creeping anxiety began to replace the feeling of relief at having discovered the cause of the navigational mystery.

The Natunas were astern; suppose they had concealed a Dutch cruiser, or even a French one? He rubbed his chin, feeling the scrubby bristles rough against the palm of his hand.

Canvas flogged above him and the cries of 'Let fall! Clew down!' and 'Sheet home!' accompanied the sudden bellying of the fore and main courses. Above the topsails the topgallants and royals were spreading Patrician's pale wings in the morning sunlight. His eye was caught by a sudden movement lower down. Midshipman Chirkov was on deck. Drinkwater recollected the presence of the young Russian the night before. He suddenly vented all his bile on the good-for-nothing young man.

'Mr Chirkov! Damn you, sir, but my orders are explicit! You are forbidden to be on deck at this hour!'

There seemed something vaguely dreamy about the young man, something weird that Drinkwater had neither the time nor the patience to investigate. Doubtless the young devil had got his hands on liquor, probably Rakitin gave him access to it ...

'Go below, sir, at once!'

'All plain sail, sir,' reported Ballantyne, recalling Drinkwater to normality.

'Very well, Mr Ballantyne, thank you.'

'Sir?'

'Well, what is it? Hurry man, for I want to set the stuns'ls.'

'Would not the lightning have affected other ships? We were, by all accounts, no distance from the convoy.'

'What?' Drinkwater looked sharply at the master. Did Ballantyne have a valid point, or did that single, fateful glimpse of the convoy argue that it had been immune from the lightning? He recalled the bolt hitting the sea quite close. Surely that was what had disturbed the magnetism in the needles suspended on their silken threads below the compass card. It had all been something of a nightmare, Drinkwater thought, recalling vignettes of evidence, lit by flashes of lightning or the unholy gathering of men round the binnacle light on the gun-deck.

'No. I think not,' he said with assumed certainty. 'There was a thunderbolt struck the sea quite close to us, Mr Ballantyne, I think it was that that mazed our compass ...'

And so he came to believe for the time being.

'Trouble never comes in small bottles, does it, Mr Lallo?'

'No, sir.'

'What should we do? Quarantine 'em?'

'We may be too late for that, sir,' Lallo cautioned.

'Is it as contagious as the Gaol Fever?' Gaol fever they called it aboard ship, and ship fever they called it ashore, ascribing its spread to the least desirable elements of each of the societies in which, amid the endemic squalor, it spread like wildfire.

'It's hard to say, sir. I'm not over-familiar with the yaws, but typhus ...'

'We've contained outbreaks of that before ...' Drinkwater said hopefully. It was true. Clean clothes and salt-water douches seemed, if not to cure typhus, at least to inhibit its spread. Perhaps the same treatment might stay this present unpleasant disease. He suggested it. Lallo nodded gloomily.

'We must try,' said Drinkwater encouragingly, bracing himself as Patrician leaned to a stronger gust under the press of canvas she was now carrying. Suddenly Drinkwater longed for the luxury of his own cabin; to be watching the white-green wake streaming astern from below the open sashes of the wide stern window, and the sea-birds dipping in it.

Lallo coughed, aware of Drinkwater's sudden abstraction. He stared at the surgeon's lined face. Was he going out of his mind to be thinking such inane thoughts? How could he stare, delighting in the swirling wake, when Lallo was here, bent under the weight of his message of death?

'Quarantine 'em,' he said, suddenly resolute, 'station 'em at the after guns; to be issued with new slops at the ship's expense (we've widows' men to cover the matter), ditch their clothing. They're to be hosed down twice daily and dance until they're dry. Keep their bodies from touching anything ...'

Lallo nodded and rose. 'I'll tell Fraser to re-quarter them. You said after guns, sir?'

Drinkwater nodded. Yes, he thought, after guns, close to Morris ...

'Sail ho!'

Drinkwater stirred from his doze, fighting off the fog of an afternoon sleep.

'Two sails! No three-ee! Point to starboard! 'Tis the convoy!'

He was on deck before the hail was finished, up on the rail and motioning for the deck glass. Someone put it into his hand and he watched the sails of a brig climb up over the rim of the world, saw them foreshorten as she altered course towards them and then he jumped down on deck and felt like grabbing both Fraser's hands and dancing ring-a-roses with him for the sheer joy of finding the lost ships. Instead he said:

'Put your helm down a touch, Mr Fraser, let's close with 'em as fast as possible and offer our apologies ...'

The two vessels came up hand over fist. On the horizon to the south-west they could see the rest of the convoy close together.

'Odd, sir, they seem to be hove-to.'

'Shows they've been waiting for us. They've been buzznacking.'

Drinkwater's cheerful tone was redolent of the relief he was feeling at overtaking the convoy before dark. It was Hormuzeer that approached them, a trim little brig that had once been a privateer and now ran opium to China under the command of an elderly but energetic Scotsman named Macgillivray. Through their glasses they could see her come into the wind with a large red flag flying at her foremasthead.

'That's a damned odd signal for her to be flying,' someone said among the curious little knot of officers who had gathered on deck.

'Into action?'

'They're hoisting out a boat ...'

'Get the stuns'ls off her, Mr Fraser, if you please,' snapped Drinkwater, his face suddenly grim. 'If that's the convoy over there, we've two ships missing.'

'Aye, sir, we sorely missed you. Your absence, sir, was ill-timed. Dolorous, sir damned dolorous.' Macgillivray's face was thin, hollow-cheeked and pitted by smallpox. A hooked nose that belonged to a larger man jutted from between two deep-set and rheumy eyes that fixed Drinkwater with a piercing glitter. Across the nose and cheeks, red and broken veins spread like the tributaries of a mapped river, contrasting with dead-white skin that seemed to have been permanently shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. As if to augment the ferocity of his expression, grey whiskers, sharply shaved below the cheek­bone, grew upon his face below his eyes.

'I have explained, Captain Macgillivray, why I failed to keep station last night. The matter is done, sir, and the time for recriminations is past ...'

'No, sir! Damn no, sir! We shall have time for recriminations at Penang, you mark my words. We demand the navy protects us, sir, and you are missing. We lost two ships, sir ...'

'Captain Macgillivray, you have told me three times that two ships are missing and I have told you twice why we lost contact with you.' Drinkwater was almost shouting down the furious Scotsman, bludgeoning him into silence with his own anger. 'Now, sir, will you do me the courtesy of telling me which two ships and how they were lost?'

Macgillivray subsided, then he opened his thin mouth as though diving for more air. 'Pirates, sir, pirates. Sea-Dyaks from Borneo forty praus strong, sir, forty! Pirates with gongs and shrieks and stink-pots and blow-pipes in red jackets. Straight for the Guilford they came, took Hindoostan as well, swarmed aboard and carried her off before you knew it.'

'When?'

'At dawn.'

'Did you attempt to drive them off?

'Aye, we opened fire, but the wind was light ...'

And you were spread out?'

Aye, maybe a little ...'

Ah ...'

'Not for reasons of slackness, Captain, oh, no, not for that, I assure you. We had spread out to seek yourself. Some of us saw you struck by lightning, like you said, but we were mistaken, for you are here, now.'

That 'now' seemed like an accusation of a crime.

And they carried the Guilford off, from under your noses? You didn't pursue ... ?'

'It's your job to pursue, Captain, not ours to lose our cargoes. We did what we could. I followed a little myself. They went sou' b' west, for the Borneo coast ...'

The two men fell silent. After a while Drinkwater looked up. 'I will make the signal for all commanders in an hour, Captain Macgillivray. Then I shall decide what to do.'

'There's damn all you can do — now.'

Drinkwater looked up into the undisguised contempt in the Scotsman's eyes.

He had wanted the hour to work Patrician into the main body of the convoy. That was the reason he gave out on the quarter­deck. In reality he wanted the time to re-establish himself, albeit temporarily, in the more impressive surroundings of his cabin, to remove the screen and evict Morris and Rakitin. In the event it was noon before the last indignant master was pulled alongside and the ships rocked gently upon the now motionless sea. The wind had died and the calm was glassy, as though the ocean lacked the energy to move under the full heat of the brazen sun. Drinkwater had fended off the verbal assaults of each and every one of the merchant captains, reiterating the circumstances of Patricians separation until he was only half-convinced of its accuracy. It was too extravagant a tale to be wholly believable, particularly by men with little faith and large axes to grind.

The cabin, as he called the meeting to order, seemed to heave with indignation and Drinkwater himself was very close to losing his temper. Only the thought that an outburst of anger would carry to Morris on the quarterdeck held him in check.

'Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' He managed at last to quieten them. 'What has happened is a matter of regret to us all. Both you and I are incredulous at aspects of events, you that my frigate was absent, I because your pursuit seems to have been non-existent ...'

'There were forty praus, damn you, and poisoned darts all over the place and cannon ...'

'And bugger-all wind ...'

'There was sufficient of a wind to return me to station ... but let that all pass ...'

They subsided again. Drinkwater pressed doggedly on. 'What we must now decide is how to proceed.'

'Proceed?' queried one voice. 'Why to Penang, of course.'

'Aye!' A chorus of voices rose in assent.

Drinkwater frowned. Did they intend to abandon Callan? Was the motivation of these men solely and wholly governed by profit? So different from his own thinking was this conclusion that he stood for a moment nonplussed.

'Captain Drinkwater, I think you misunderstand us.' Drinkwater looked at the speaker, glad at last that one reasonable voice spoke from the hostile group before him. It was that of Captain Cunningham, commander of the Ligonier.

'I rather hope I do,' replied Drinkwater curtly.

'It is not that we wish to abandon Captain Callan; in all likelihood he will be repatriated by the Dutch, for this kind of thing has happened before. The Sea-Dyaks are interested only in booty. They will strip Guilford of all that they require or can trade with the Dutch; powder, small arms, shot, plus cargo. Since hostilities with the Batavians began, the wily square­heads have sought out the princes of the Sarawak tribes and offered them bribes for the capture and surrender of any of our Indiamen. I doubt Callan or his officers will come to any personal harm ...' Cunningham paused and a stillness filled the hitherto noisy cabin. Drinkwater sensed the compliance of the other masters: Cunningham was poised for the coup de grace. 'Your own predicament, Captain, is perhaps even less certain of its outcome than Captain Callan's.'

A further pause, pregnant with opprobrium, let the implied threat sink in. Macgillivray, a man of little subtlety, could not let the matter rest on so insubstantial a foundation; besides, he had concocted a phrase of such obscurity that he flung it now like an accusation of untruth.

'The fulmineous intervention of nature you say you experienced, Captain Drinkwater, offers poorly against the loss of two ships.'

'One of which carried specie,' put in another.

They were the kicks of a cowardly mob, delivered after a man was in the gutter.

Drinkwater stood before his accusers. Inwardly he felt crushed. Fate had dealt him a cruel blow! To be singled out by Macgillivray's 'fulmineous intervention of nature' seemed so cruelly unjust as to anger some primitive inner part of him so that, although silent, he raked their faces with a baleful glare. He mastered the inner seething with the realisation that he wanted a drink. He would have one in a minute, immediately he had disposed of these men, bent to their wishes.

'Very well, gentlemen. I shall accede to your request and escort you to Penang.'

'Well let us hope you do, Captain,' said Macgillivray, as the downcast company turned for the cabin door. Drinkwater stood stock-still as they filed out. Then, almost out of habit, he turned towards the pantry and bawled for his steward. The cathartic bellow did him good and Mullender, by some small miracle of intuition, appeared with a bottle and glasses.

Drinkwater took a glass. As he stood impatiently waiting for Mullender to fill it with blackstrap, unannounced Morris re­entered the cabin. His expression bore witness to the fact that he had gleaned knowledge of Drinkwater's discomfiture.

'Where is Captain Rakitin?' Drinkwater asked, delaying his need to swallow the cheap port.

'On the quarterdeck, zur.'

It was Tregembo who answered, stooping at the pantry door, ancient, worn, like a futtock of the ship itself. It seemed oddly appropriate that Tregembo, like Mullender, should have mustered in the pantry, for all that his occupation of the cabin was to be short-lived.

'Thank you.'

Drinkwater fixed both steward and coxswain with the stare of dismissal. Mullender put down the bottle and the pantry door closed behind them, though their listening presence beyond the mahogany louvres was almost visible.

'Your health, Nathaniel.' Morris helped himself to a glass, an ironical smile about his hooded eyes. 'And, of course, your damnation.'

Drinkwater merely glared, then seized gratefully on the excuse to gulp his drink, making to leave the cabin.

'Don't go,' said Morris, divining his purpose, 'we have been so little together. Intolerably little for such old shipmates ...'

'Morris, we never made the least pretence at friendship. We fought, if I recollect, some kind of duel, and you made numerous threats against my person. You behaved abominably to members of the Cyclops's company and, if there was such a thing as natural justice in the world, you should have been hanged.'

He tailed off. Morris was laughing at him. 'Oh, Nathaniel, Nathaniel, you are still an innocent I see. Still dreaming of "natural justice" and other such silly philosophies ... How much have you missed, eh? You and I are old men now and here you are beset by worries, buggered upon the altar of your duty ... You left me at the Cape a sick man ... I hungered for the destiny you had before you and hated you for seeming to command fate. That was ten years ago, before Bonaparte burst upon us all ...'

'Bonaparte?' Drinkwater frowned, bemused by this drivel of Morris's.

'Yes, Bonaparte, blazing like a comet across the imaginations of men. "Do as you will," he screamed at the world. "Do as you will ..."'

There was something about Morris that was not quite drunkenness, but nevertheless reminded Drinkwater of intoxication. There was also, now he came to think of it, a faint, unfamiliarly sweet aroma in the cabin, gradually reasserting itself after the sweaty stink of the convoy masters. Of course! A man of Morris's disposition, influenced by every sensuous inclination of the human body, would be an opium eater. Drinkwater poured himself another drink.

'So I forsook my duty,' went on Morris, 'she was a raddled whore that had nothing to offer me but the pox of responsibility that now consumes you. I counted myself lucky to have found my destiny half-way to India, and took ship to find what I knew to exist if prudish knaves like you did not stand in my way ...'

'You charm me by your tale, sir,' said Drinkwater unmoved. 'No doubt your little Indian Ganymede approves wholly of tearing out his tongue for your unnatural pleasure! I doubt even the monstrous genius of Bonaparte would approve of that!'

Drinkwater half turned away but his arm was caught by Morris. Both the speed and the force of the grip surprised Drinkwater and he felt himself pulled back to face his enemy.

'D'you dream, Nathaniel? Eh? Of course you do — unholy dreams here, on your cot, eh? Coiled by the legs of ... of whom, eh? Your Elizabeth, or other, secret women? Well, I dreamed my own dreams ...'

With a violent gesture Drinkwater shook himself free. The compulsion to run, to escape the cabin and Morris's contaminating company was strong in him, but some dreadful fascination kept him rooted to the spot. As abruptly as he had advanced, Morris fell back. The intense, almost complicit tone vanished and he spoke again in his arch, mocking manner.

'Do you know,' Morris said, 'they say in Peking that the Son of Heaven finds the most exquisite pleasure in impaling a goose who, at the appropriate moment, is strangled ... ?'

'Damn you ...'

Sickened, Drinkwater turned away. As he made for the door he caught sight of the boy. He was asleep, had slept, it seemed, all through the noisy council and its revolting aftermath, half-naked, a brown curl in the corner of Drinkwater's quondam cabin.

There was nothing he could bring himself to do in the remaining hours of that disastrous day but pace up and down the quarterdeck, biliously angry as the convoy stood for the entrance of the Malacca Strait. Great clouds reared on the horizon, huge anvil-shaped thunderheads that rose over the steaming tropical rain forests of the distant land. As night fell these huge, billowing clouds were illuminated from within, possessed by flickering demons as lightning, too far away to crackle with thunder, sparked and flashed tremendously within their charged and coiling vapours. The sight tormented Drinkwater as he continued his lonely, self-imposed vigil, recalling over and over again Macgillivray's facetious phrase: 'fulmineous intervention of nature'.

In deference to his savage mood, men moved quietly about the upper decks and the officers, alternating as the ship's routine ground its remorseless way into time, gave their orders in low voices. It seemed, as he gradually emerged from the depths of introspection, that they were humouring him, like a child. The thought made him unreasonably angry and he cast about for some weapon of chastisement. Was that Frey on watch? No, Quilhampton.

'Mr Quilhampton.'

'Sir?'

'Have we established, sir,' spat Drinkwater, with unbending formality, 'why the binnacle lamp was extinguished last night?'

'Er ... I ... I've no idea, sir ... was it not the rain, sir?'

Drinkwater's temper fed deliriously on such foolishness. 'The lamp has a chimney, sir, is set in a binnacle for the purpose of protecting it from the weather. Its wick may have become soaked when it was removed from such protection, but that was not the reason for its extinguishing. May I suggest a lack of oil as a plausible explanation, eh? I recognise it as one out of favour with the officers as bespeaking a slackness on their part, but ...', he faltered. He was going to say something about a lack of oil providing a natural explanation, but it smacked so of Macgillivray's phrase that it cut his tirade dead.

'Oh, for God's sake check the damned thing now!'

He cast Quilhampton aside and stalked off into the night, ashamed of himself. God! How he hated this commission! Ever since that poor devil had been swung to the yard-arm at the Nore there had been ill-luck aboard. Now they even had to compensate for a compass deviating thirty-eight degrees, at least until the effects of the thunderbolt wore off ...

'Sir!'

Something urgent in Quilhampton's tone brought him up. Any peevishness Quilhampton might have felt at his commander's unspeakable behaviour was absent from the imperative note in the lieutenant's voice. Drinkwater turned. Quilhampton was advancing towards him. The binnacle lamp had been extinguished to check the reservoir, but in the gloom Drinkwater could just make out the faint sheen of the glass door of the locker and something in Quilhampton's hand.

'What is it?'

'This, sir.' Drinkwater was aware that Quilhampton was holding out his hand.

'I can't see a damned thing.' Then he was vaguely aware of a dark shape, like an irregular musket ball darkening Quilhampton's palm.

'Bit of metal, sir,' said Quilhampton in a low voice, 'half filling the oil reservoir. Could have put the lamp out prematurely ...'

'God's bones!'

An act of sabotage? The thought was in both their minds, for it would not be the first that had occurred. A similar event had happened on the coast of California when the ship was found to have developed a persistent and elusive leak.

'Say nothing more,' Drinkwater whispered urgently, then raised his voice to a normal level. 'Very well, Mr Q, relight the lamp.'

Drinkwater walked across the gently leaning deck and stopped beside the wheel. In such light winds only two men stood beside it, staring aloft at the main topsail, steering by the wind until the light was re-established in the binnacle. It was all clear to him now. It was no mere reduction of the volume of the reservoir that had been sought, it was something far more sinister. In a few moments the lamp would come back on deck and prove him correct, but the metallic lump he held in his hand was no melted leaden musket ball poured molten into the base of the lamp. It resisted the imprint of his thumb-nail with an almost crystalline stubbornness.

'Here, sir ...'

Drinkwater stood aside. The lamp was placed back between the two copper grooves that held it in place, throwing a gentle radiance across the neatly inscribed compass card.

'What course, sir?' asked the puzzled helmsman, sure that he had held the ship's head steady relative to the wind during the last quarter of an hour.

'You may steer sou' west a-half west.'

'Sou' west a-half west, aye, aye, sir.' There was a brief pause, then the helmsman said, 'She's that now, sir.'

'Yes,' replied Drinkwater quietly, 'I know she is.'

'Sir?' In the dim glow the rumple of a frown creased Quilhampton's forehead.

Drinkwater held up the small nugget. 'It's a piece of magnetic lodestone, Mr Q, perfect for deliberately inducing a deviation in the compass.'

CHAPTER 13 A Round Robin

'What d'you intend to do, sir?'

Fraser's voice was tight with anxiety. Ever since the flogging of the deserters he had been half expecting some such outbreak among the people.

'What the devil can I do, Mr Fraser, except abjure you and all the officers to be on their guard?'

'Could be the quarantined men, sir,' suggested Fraser.

'What? Some kind of collective revenge for their misfortune?'

Fraser shrugged. 'Ye canna let it pass, sir.'

'No. But they all know we discovered the thing, 'tis common gossip throughout the ship. Such scuttlebutt spreads like wildfire ...'

'Could you not ...' Fraser looked conspiratorially about the deck, to make sure that no one was within earshot of the pair of them, '... ask Tregembo to ...?'

'Spy, you mean? Carry lower-deck tittle-tattle?'

'Aye, sir.' Fraser seemed rather relieved that Drinkwater grasped his meaning.

'If it was known, I'm damned certain Tregembo would have told me. The trouble is Tregembo don't know.'

Fraser subsided into unhappy silence. Drinkwater was aware that Midshipman Dutfield was trying to catch his eye.

'Beg pardon, sir, but Mr Ballantyne's compliments and the entrance to the strait is in sight.'

'Very well, Mr Dutfield, thank you.'

They had, for the past two days, been aware of the presence of land. At first they had seen the electric storms above the distant, jungle-covered mountains, then the clusters of islands forming the Anambas archipelago lifted over the horizon. Odd tangles of floating vegetation, bound by the roots and stumpy remnants of mangroves, drifted past. 'Floating islands' Ballantyne called them, recounting how sometimes they reached astonishing size and had once concealed a host of Dyak canoes from which he and his father had only escaped with difficulty and the prompt arrival of a breeze.

Of Dyaks they had seen nothing, gliding over a smooth, empty sea, and now picking up their landfall with gratifying precision. Rank upon rank of hills were emerging blue and low from the clouds hovering over them, a seemingly impenetrable barrier whose nearer bastions were turning slowly green as they approached. Stretching away into the northern distance the long finger of the Malay peninsula crept round almost a third of the horizon, its distal point Pulo Tumasek. To larboard rose a wild jumble of islands, the Rhio archipelago, which, from this distance, retained the impression of a continuous, if indented coastline. Beyond, indicated as yet by clouds, lay the vast island of Sumatra, parallel to the Malay coast and containing, between the two, the Malacca Strait, highway to Prince of Wales Island, as Penang was then more familiarly known. Beyond all lay the Indian Seas.

Drinkwater strained his glass further to larboard. Somewhere to the southwards, beyond the Rhio islands, lay the Gaspar and Sunda Straits, shortest route to the Cape of Good Hope, and barred to the China fleet by Dutch and French cruisers. But today he could see nothing, nothing but an empty blue sea, glittering beneath a brazen sky. And, curiously, it brought him no pleasure. Somehow he would rather have seen an enemy, been faced with a task; somehow the very emptiness of the ocean seemed ominous.

'Beg pardon, sir.'

Belchambers's face, poked round the door of the tiny cabin, was more readily seen in his shaving mirror, thought Drinkwater, as he rasped the razor upwards over the stretched skin of his throat.

'What is it?'

He forced the query through the clenched teeth of a jutting jaw.

'This, sir.'

Drinkwater swivelled his eyes a little. The image of Belchambers's hand could be seen in the cracked mirror. The fingers unfolded to reveal a crushed scrap of paper.

Drinkwater had seen one before and the shock made him nick himself. It was a round robin, a message from the ship's company, and it cast his mind uneasily back to the days of ninety-seven, the year of the great mutinies. They had been a common thing then, demands, protests, both reasonable and unreasonable, sent aft to the officers in this anonymous, yet neatly demotic way.

'What does it say?'

Affecting a sang-froid he did not feel, Drinkwater dabbed at his bleeding throat and completed his shave. 'Read it,' he commanded, a little more forcefully.

Belchambers cleared his throat. The self-conscious gesture relaxed Drinkwater. 'Are they going to cut my throat, or should I complete the matter myself, Mr Belchambers? Eh? Give the thing here, thank you.'

He took the crumpled and grubby paper and the boy fled gratefully. Captain Drinkwater's mood had been dangerously unpredictable of late.

Drinkwater smoothed the sheet and stared at it. In all justice to the midshipman, it was not easy to read, almost obscured by the creases into which it had been balled, the easier to be thrown on to the quarterdeck. It would have been tossed at Quilhampton's feet, no doubt, with not a man on deck anywhere near it as the lieutenant bent to pick it up. Or, of course, it would have been dropped during the night. No matter now; here it was, in the hands for which it was intended, and the writing was well formed, legalistic and educated — a bad sign. Drinkwater frowned; he was seeing ominous signs in everything these days. He read:

To Captain Drinkwater, Esquire

Y'r Honour,

We, the Ship's Company, with our Humble Duty beg to Acquaint Your Honour of our Reprobation of the Events of this Day. Knowing Your Honour's Mind to be of Lofty Principles, we, the Ship's Company, Entreat you not to be Misled by former Occurrences. We Solemnly Swear that no Malice Aforethought attaches to the Heinous and Hideous Interference with the Binnacle Lantern that Must be Contemptible to the Minds of British Seamen.

We, the Ship's Company, Desire to Inform Your Honour of our Loyalty to Our Duty and Our Country.

Signed,

By Us All,

One and Indivisible.

It was a concoction worthy of the most appalling Patriotic Club, but its outrage rang with sincerity. Its very vehemence suggested a wiping out of the shameful acts off California. These were men, quite capable of outrageously mutinous behaviour, angrily repudiating any suggestion of its initiation in this case.

'They want to go home,' muttered Drinkwater, smiling at himself in the battered glass, and crushing the round robin in his hand.

But it offered little peace of mind, merely diverting his suspicion elsewhere. Morris he knew to be too motivated by self-interest to have attempted such a stupid thing. Morris had nothing to gain by diverting Patrician and could not possibly have known of the Dyak presence. Drinkwater was tempted to seek its motivation in mischief rather than malice. He recalled Midshipman Chirkov's sudden interest in navigational matters, and the suspicion, once it crossed his mind, seemed a reasonable one, redolent of idle folly and petulant resentment over earlier humiliation.

Dangerously stupid and consequentially disastrous as the matter had been, he realised his suspicions were circumstantial and unprovable. He knew only that his own vigilance must increase, and that the burden of his responsibilities weighed even heavier upon him. When later that day, as the sun dipped crimson towards the thunderheads above the blue mountains of Sumatra, the masthead reported two sails, Captain Drinkwater could not have cared whether or not they were enemies.

They made contact with the two ships just before daylight finally vanished from the tropic sky, two sloops from Penang sent questing down the Malacca Strait after reports of enemy cruisers off the Rhio archipelago. They were not naval ships, but belonged to the East India Company's Bombay Marine, the Arrow and the Dart, nattily smart twenty-two-gun ship-rigged sloops aswarm with lascars and a commander not much older, or so it seemed to Drinkwater's jaundiced eye, than Fleetwood Pellew.

Convoy, escort and new arrivals lay to in a calm through the night. The continuing windlessness of the following morning, with the sea like blue steel, pricked here and there by the lifting spearheads of flying fish, allowed much boat-trafficking between the ships. Drinkwater, watching the masters rowed about the wallowing fleet, knew that tittle-tattle was being plied about, mostly pejorative to his reputation, a fact confirmed by the boats' avoidance of the Patrician.

After an hour or so of this feeling of having been sent to Coventry, Drinkwater ordered the signal hoisted for 'all captains'. In the event only two boats pulled towards the frigate, one from the Ligonier, bearing an embarrassed Cunningham, the other from the Arrow. Cunningham made the introductions and Drinkwater was aware that, in the Company's service, the commander of an Indiaman outweighed an officer of the Marine. For this he was profoundly grateful, for the young prig seemed ready to read Drinkwater a lecture.

' ... And so, sir,' concluded Cunningham with a decent preamble about Drinkwater's able, though unfortunate, escort, 'Captain Hennessey here ...', Hennessey footed the meagrest of bows by way of identification, 'is of the opinion that he should take over the escort.'

'And what is your opinion, Captain Cunningham, might I ask?'

'Why, sir, that you continue to accompany us to Penang; only a fool would opine that your guns are not valuable.'

There was the slightest emphasis on the word 'fool'. Clearly Hennessey was attempting to arrogate command of the escort against Cunningham's inclination. The young commander flared his nostrils in a spiritedly equine fashion, registering well-controlled indignation.

'Well, sir, since I am ordered by Admiral Drury to command and escort this convoy, I shall continue to do so until I see it safe at anchor at Penang. Captain Hennessey and his colleagues are welcome to join us, subordinate to my command, of course.'

It did not gratify Drinkwater to argue about such matters. The thing was plain as the nose on one's face if one took the trouble to look at it.

'Might I ask what Captain Hennessey's orders are?'

The young man spoke for the first time, a nasally superior voice, just as Drinkwater had expected, wondering, in an errant moment, if the salons or withdrawing rooms, or whatever they called them in Calcutta, made a point of turning out such stuffed shirts.

'I am ordered upon a cruise, sah, reports having reached Fort Cornwallis that Dutch and French cruisers were active in the Rhio Strait. Captain Cunningham informs me that you saw nothing and passed safely through. Therefore I shall consider it my duty, there being, according to Captain Cunningham, no further trade coming down from Canton, to see these ships back to Prince of Wales Island.'

Are you apprehensive of attack between here and Penang, sir?' asked Drinkwater.

'I have no reason to be, but one never knows, and the Company cannot stand the loss of a second of its own ships ...'

'Ligonier will be the only Company ship to get through from Canton, Captain Drinkwater,' broke in Cunningham, as though to add a reasonable weight to Hennessey's plan.

'It occurs to me, gentlemen, that Captain Hennessey, with his local knowledge of these waters, might double that score and recover Guilford.'

Cunningham and Hennessey exchanged glances; it was clear they had already discussed the matter and Cunningham's anxiety had prevailed.

'I would go myself, but for a lack of charts,' Drinkwater added quickly. Hennessey shot him a swift glance. Was the young dandy subtle enough to spot the gauge flung at his feet? 'Is Admiral Pellew at Penang?'

'He is expected, sah,' drawled Hennessey, speculatively, add­ing, 'I have charts, Captain Drinkwater, Dutch charts ...'

'Perhaps you will allow me the use of them. Now I shall escort the convoy to Prince of Wales Island and then we shall see ...'

He ushered the two men to the rail. Hennessey left first, Cunningham hanging back a little.

'I am sorry for the outcome of all this, Captain Drinkwater. I am aware that you have done your utmost.'

'You imply repercussions, sir. I am conscious of having done my duty. There may be a little more I can do. At any event I shall make my report to Admiral Pellew in due course.'

'Pellew will stand by you. He is himself under attack by the merchant houses of Calcutta as well as the Company.'

Drinkwater was close to grinning. With Dungarth dead and John Barrow hostile at the Admiralty, he expected little further employment. What did it matter if providence had made his name smell in the noses of the Court of Directors in Leadenhall Street? The baying of the Calcutta merchants could touch him very little. He longed to be home with Elizabeth and the children. 'Let us hope poor Callan survives,' he added, as Cunningham shook out the man-ropes that lay down the curve of Patrician's tumblehome.

'Indeed,' said Cunningham, 'but I fear 'tis not Callan that will upset the Directors, but his thirty thousand sterling ...'

'I beg your pardon?' Drinkwater's sharp interrogative held Cunningham one-footed at the rail.

'The specie, aboard Guilford...'

'How much, though, sir? How much did you say?'

'Thirty thousand sterling.'

'God's bones, the man told me three!'

Cunningham frowned. 'Three? Three thousand? Good heavens, no. Mind you Callan was a thoughtful fellow, perhaps he did not wish to worry you.'

Drinkwater stared after the boat as it pulled Cunningham back to the massive bulk of the Indiaman. What a bootless concern, Drinkwater thought ironically, as if anything could stop him from worrying.

It took some eight days to work their way northwards in the capricious winds of the land-locked strait, eight days of bracing yards and tacking, of easing sheets and hauling tacks, of setting studding-sails and dousing them when they began to outrun their charges. And for Drinkwater eight days of brooding introspection. He had decided to return and make a sweep along the Borneo coast; perhaps his luck might come back and he would catch a sleeping Dutchman in a river mouth — he hardly dared hope for the recapture of Guilford. At any rate Pellew would approve, he had no need to report to the Admiral in person, merely to send in his written account via Cunningham and then turn south off Pulo Penang.

The green and lush island hove into view at last, and the cluster of ships, steadied finally before a westerly breeze, stood north along its west coast to avoid the shoals to the south of the island.

They bore away round Muka Head and Drinkwater stood in until he could see the low, embrasured ramparts of Fort Cornwallis commanding the anchorage on the eastern flank of the heights, between Prince of Wales Island and the mainland. Here he anchored, hoisted out all boats and divested himself of his Russian prisoners. Pellew was not at the anchorage, but a frigate was, commanded by an officer far junior to himself, who grudgingly obeyed the order by the hand of Acting Lieutenant Frey to hold the prisoners against his return. Three of the moujiks, Lithuanians from the old Duchy of Kurland, swore their oaths to King George and remained aboard Patrician.

Drinkwater bade a civil farewell to Rakitin. The man was far gone in lethargy, a catalepsy tending, according to Lallo, to suicide and common among the Slavic peoples. Rakitin had eaten Morris's opium, but it was not the white poppy that killed him, nor remorse over his defeat. He died within a week of leaving Patrician of a cancer undiagnosed by Lallo.

Midshipman Count Vasili Chirkov left under protest, swearing that when Patrician returned, he and Frey must settle their affair of honour. It was perhaps fortunate that Frey was employed upon his errand in another boat at the time, for Drinkwater was impatient to be gone. Frey had secured the promised charts, poor enough things by the look of them, and had filled them a few stummed casks of fresh water.

All day Drinkwater was active on deck, aware that below Mullender and Tregembo were clearing his cabin, dislodging Morris from it and burning gunpowder within, to stum it like the water-casks of any impurities.

'Mr Fraser, do you see the launch? Damn it. but I want to be under weigh within the hour, before sunset at the latest ...'

Both men strained their eyes to locate the launch amid the anchored ships and bum-boats, praus and tonkangs that teemed in the sheltered waters.

'Beg pardon, zur.'

Distracted, Drinkwater turned. Tregembo stood before him.

'Well? What the devil is it now?'

'It's Morris, zur ... he won't leave your cabin.'

CHAPTER 14 The Winds of Fortune

'I can help you, Drinkwater.'

This was a different Morris. Gone was the overt hedonist, the flaunting amoral character that sought to discomfit his old enemy. This was the wily man who had succeeded in trade, swindled or earned his enviable position at Canton and wherever else the winds of fortune had blown his perverted and unlovely carcase. Drinkwater saw, to his surprise, flashes of the old Morris he had first known, the tyrannical bully, but also the seaman and officer, the man of gentle birth whose sexual excesses, had they been discreet, might not have disturbed the outward life of a gentleman of substance and quality.

Drinkwater thrust aside Morris's blandishments. 'I do not want you on my ship a moment longer than necessary,' Drinkwater stated bluntly.

'But you want that Indiaman back, don't you?' Morris stood his ground. 'You are returning to search for her and have, I'll warrant, not the slightest idea where to look ...'

'What interest can you have in the matter? You and your silver are safely here in Penang; you can leave for Calcutta with the trade, my orders were only that I should see it safely this far ...'

'Do you think I have no interest in the specie aboard Guilford ...?'

'You showed precious little interest in the matter at the time ...'

'My dear Nathaniel, how you misunderstand and misjudge me. Of course I relished your embarrassment. I do not hold your values, I seek my amusements where I may find them. I do not offer my help out of friendship, you know me too well for that ... no, no ... But I do have an interest in the fate of that silver ...'

'Well, of what help can you be? broke in Drinkwater impatiently. 'Do you know where Guilford is now? How can you? Do you know anything of this coast? And what motivates this sudden about-face, this, this impetuous urge to assist?'

'Nathaniel, Nathaniel, your questions are too fast. Listen, I have told you, I have some interest in the silver; I alone brought it out of Canton in defiance of the Viceroy, its loss alone may be held against me, my business interests will suffer from its loss; my "face", my standing, my good name will be diminished. As to the coast, let me tell you I know both the estuaries of the Sekrang and the Sarebas Rivers, for I travelled on two Dutch ships and know them for haunts of the Sea-Dyaks.'

'But why ... ?' Doubts assailed Drinkwater, but Morris pressed on.

'When the Guilford was taken I was more amused by your discomfiture than the loss. Recollect how long I have waited for your humiliation. But now you are determined to return. That is a different matter. For a while we have something in common ...'

'You are offering me ...'

'Terms ... an alliance.'

'God's bones ...'

'Furthermore,' Morris persisted, 'I have charts, better charts than those there ...' Morris pointed to the half-unwound rolls of Hennessey's charts flung upon the cabin table until, later, Drinkwater could study them.

'See ...'

Morris turned, drawing the top off a leather tube that he took from a fold of his robe. He drew a tightly rolled paper and held it out. Drinkwater took it and opened it. It was remarkably detailed, annotated with neatly pencilled notes. He moved across to hold it in the light from the stern windows but Morris took it from him, rolling it up again with his pudgy, beringed fingers.

'A sprat, Nathaniel, to catch the mackerel of your good favour ...'

Drinkwater looked at Morris. The odium of him! He was almost wheedling in that mincing mode the seamen called nancying.

'You will let me have access to those charts?' Drinkwater asked.

'I will pilot you, using them. You need them only for the estuaries, your boats may search the edges of the swamps and mangroves.' Morris paused and Drinkwater hesitated.

You need me, Nathaniel,' Morris said softly, almost seductively, 'you need me to rescue your reputation ...'

It was true. Despite the doubts and uncertainties, it was true.

'Do you think we have the slightest chance?' Drinkwater asked.

Morris noted the plural pronoun. He had hooked his prey. He forced his features into a grave, counselling expression.

'A good one ... with a little luck ...'

Drinkwater prevaricated a moment longer, though both men knew his mind was made up. 'How much specie was aboard Guilford? he asked guilelessly.

Morris shrugged. 'Oh, ten, twenty thousand perhaps, certainly ten.'

Was the imprecision of Morris's reply sinister? And why had Callan himself lied about the amount of specie aboard his ship? For a moment or two Drinkwater stood indecisively, gauging the intentions of the man before him. He was already determined to turn back in quest of the lost ships, but he knew that he was without resources and that, intolerable though it was, Morris might be able to help. If, as he claimed, the good name of Morris himself would be impugned, then for a while they might hold something in common. Repugnant though the consideration might be to Drinkwater, honour and duty compelled him to submit to this personal humiliation in the hope of recovering the captured ships.

Drinkwater sighed. 'Very well, I’ll give the order to weigh.'

By the light of the candles Drinkwater studied Hennessey's charts. They were not comparable with Morris's, but adequate for strategic planning ...

Strategic planning!

The whole business was a mockery, a wild goose chase of the utmost folly, an attempt to save his ... what was it Morris called it? His 'face'. That barometer of a man's standing in the world. 'You need me to rescue your reputation,' Morris had said, and Drinkwater ground his teeth at being so beholden. There was a knock at the cabin door. 'Enter!'

'You sent for me, zur?'

'Aye, Tregembo ... what is the temper of the men? This is a testing time. Today they saw Penang and know it for an English post, now we sail south-east and only a fool knows that ain't for home.'

'Like you said, zur, I've given out that you've to clear the Dutchies out o' the strait, zur; said you'd orders for a month's cruise and that after that the Admiral's promised to hoist his flag aboard us for passage to the Cape.'

'Damn it, Tregembo, I didn't ask you to embroider my intention. Now you've made me a liar!'

'I've bought ye a month, zur.'

'Damn me!' Drinkwater's eyes met those of the old Cornishman. Yes, you have, and I thank you for it.' Drinkwater smiled. 'A month to keep us out of the Comptor, eh?'

'It'll not come to that, zur.'

'No.' No, it would not come to that. He no longer feared poverty, but there were other things. 'Thank you, Tregembo.' He bent over the chart, but the old Cornishman did not budge.

'Zur ...'

'Well, what is it?'

'Morris, zur, don't trust him.'

'I don't ... only I must, just a little.'

'Zur, I knows how you judged it were that young devil that played hokey with the compass.'

'Chirkov? Yes ... though I can prove nothing.'

'No, zur. Mullender'll tell 'ee, though it took me long enough to get it out of him, he's the wits of a malkin, but he's certain sure it were the Russian. Mullender was in an' out, tendin' to 'em all in here.' Tregembo waved a hand about the cabin, disturbing the candle flames and making shadows leap like the spectres he invoked. 'You know 'ow 'e comes and goes silent like. He says how he saw 'em all smoking and drinking together, right little hell's kitchen they made o' this place, zur, beggin' your pardon ...'

'Go on.'

'The boy too, zur, that little Turk. You know what he's for?'

'I can guess, Tregembo. Morris hasn't changed his habits.'

"Tis worse than a Portsmouth knocking shop ... Mullender didn't say much. Learnt to keep his mouth shut, I s'pose, or didn't want to start Derrick a-Quakering at him ...'

'If all he saw was Morris and Chirkov ...'

'Not buggering, zur, though I daresay they did that too, but in conversation, zur ...'

'Conversation?'

'And Morris gave Chirkov a lump o' something ...'

'A lump of opium, perhaps?'

'Only if opium's hard enough to rattle on the deck when it's dropped, zur.'

'The lump of lodestone?'

'Aye ...'

Both men looked at each other, recalling the web of intimidation and cruelty that Morris had once cast over the helpless seamen aboard Cyclops thirty years earlier.

'So, the leopard hasn't changed his spots, has he?'

'No, zur.'

But why had Morris engineered such an act? The question tormented him after Tregembo had gone, and he sat slumped at the cabin table, toying with an empty glass and staring at Hennessey's charts. There was no reasonable explanation. Even though personal revenge was a powerful motive, particularly to a man as amoral as Morris, Drinkwater was convinced that Morris's pecuniary interests would have outweighed any other considerations during their passage from Canton.

As Drinkwater wrestled with the problem he felt a rising tide of panic welling in his gut. His loneliness seemed to crush him and in his weakness he reached out for the bottle. From forward, beyond the barrier of the cabin door, came the tinny, quadruple double strikes of eight bells and he heard the ship stir as the watch changed. He withdrew his hand from the bottle and swore. He commanded a fine ship, he had sufficient fire-power at his finger-tips to bolster his courage better than any damned bottle! And he had Morris close by, damned near mewed up under lock and key.

Drinkwater rose and, leaning forward on his hands, stared unseeing down at Hennessey's charts. He was a fool and Tregembo an alarmist. Certainly Morris had put Chirkov up to the stupid act of tampering with the compass, but they had been drunk, or drugged, befuddled to an act of gross irresponsibility. Their jape had misfired and gone disastrously wrong. It was not Drinkwater who needed Morris, but Morris who needed Drinkwater! Surely that was the explanation, for not even the malevolent Morris could have foreseen that the convoy would be attacked by piratical Sea-Dyaks the following dawn and that the treasure aboard Guilford would be spirited away.

Thirty thousand sterling!

No wonder Morris had been imprecise about the amount, for its enormity was a measure of his consummate folly. Morris had wished to make trouble, to discredit Drinkwater and, like a good puppet-master, pull strings to rob his enemy of influence in London. Recovering his spirits, Drinkwater thought there was an ironical satisfaction in this line of reasoning, a grimly humorous if somewhat chilly comfort. Providence, it seemed, had failed them both.

'Devil take it,' he murmured reaching for his hat, 'but it argues powerfully for the bugger's cooperation.'

And with that conclusion, Captain Drinkwater went more cheerfully on deck.

'Red cutter's in sight, sir.'

Drinkwater looked up from Hennessey's chart pinned to a board a-top the binnacle and covered the three yards to Quilhampton's side in an instant. The lieutenant had his eye screwed to the long-glass, bracing its weight against a mizen backstay as Patrician, her main topsail backed to the mast, lay hove to off the Borneo coast. It was the second week of their search and January was already over. Another hot and almost windless day had dawned. There was barely enough movement in the air to press the heavy canvas against the main-top and the sea was flat, metallic and seemingly motionless, reflecting the refulgence of the sun.

Drinkwater stared in the direction of Quilhampton's telescope. He could just make out the wavering quadrilateral of the red cutter's lugsail as she cleared the Sarebas River. The estuary was invisible from this distance.

'Damn coast looks all the same,' Drinkwater muttered. 'Is she signalling?'

'Not at the moment ... I think they're trimming the sheets, sir.'

Even from the mastheads the entrance of the creeks and obscure rivers that wound their way into the interior were impossible to make out. There seemed no appreciable difference in the endless miles of coastline they had patiently worked along. Endless vistas of ragged-edged blue-green swamp formed an indeterminate littoral. Distant hills rose blue-green, climbing into rolling cloud, evidence of firm footing beyond the sub-aqueous morass of the swamp which lay steaming under the sun.

'Cutter's signalling, sir ...'

A tiny bubble of expectation formed in the pit of Drinkwater's stomach: perhaps this time ...?

Drinkwater knew their chances of finding Guilford and Hindoostan had diminished to the point of impossibility. They would have been burnt, or disposed of by now.

'Nothing to report.' Quilhampton lowered and closed the glass with a snap. The tiny, half-formed bubble in Drinkwater's gut burst. He felt the sun hot upon his shoulders. With every day that passed it had climbed further up the sky as it approached the equinox. Its relentless heat paralysed his will.

'Make the signal for recall.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

The bark of the carronade drawing attention to the numeral flag jerking aloft drew Morris on deck. With him came his helot, small and brown, near-naked, but for a loin-cloth and the jewelled turban.

'No luck?' Morris asked.

'No,' Drinkwater answered flatly.

Morris met Drinkwater's eyes. The sight of Drinkwater's wilting resolve brought a thrill of both pleasure and sudden alarm to Morris. He had intended torture, but he must not lose the initiative. Drinkwater must not be driven to give up the search. Besides, he was as eager to reach the location of that mighty haul of specie as was Drinkwater! He bent over the chart, his fat, fleshy and glittering finger indicating a head­land where the coast swung sharply east.

'Tanjong Sirik, Captain,' he said, drawing Drinkwater's attention to the point. 'Our last hope is here, Sumpitan Creek, Blow-pipe Creek we called it, naming it for the ferocity of its inhabitants and their use of poisoned darts.'

Drinkwater stared at the pointing finger. It was beautifully manicured and reminded Drinkwater of a fat Duchess's digit. More significantly, it pointed to a white blank on Hennessey's chart. Where the coast swung round Tanjong Sirik, a gap appeared, an area of unsurveyed coastline unknown to the Dutch hydrographers.

'Into uncharted waters,' Drinkwater said ruminatively: a last chance. Morris had played his fish with infinite cunning. Drinkwater had will enough for one last throw.

'Not quite, Captain,' Morris said in a low voice, 'perhaps uncharted, but not quite unknown.'

Beyond Tanjong Sirik there was no mystery. The endless jungle of mangroves dipped south and seemed to disappear in an inlet beyond which it curved north and then eastward as far as the keenest eye at the masthead could discern. They passed small native praus and men fishing, and the smoking fires and atap-roofed huts on stilts which emerged like excrescences of the jungle itself. Small strips of sand with beached dugouts gave indications of firmer ground and the reason for these remote habitations, but of the mighty war-praus, the sea-going assault craft of the Sea-Dyaks called bankongs, there was no sign.

Drinkwater had originally nursed some vague plan of coasting this wasteland in the hope of attracting attack, of appearing sufficiently like an Indiaman to mislead whatever lookout the putative pirates employed. But they were either non­existent or knew full well that Patrician was no Indiaman, but a man-of-war. Not even the subterfuge of hoisting Dutch colours, resorted to two days ago, had made the slightest difference. Apart from the fisherfolk, the coast had remained obdurately uninhabited.

As Patrician stood inshore, coasting slowly to the east of Tanjong Sirik, Drinkwater allowed Morris on the quarterdeck. The sun was westering and the blessed cool of evening was upon them. Morris scanned the line of the shore through his glass, his silk robe fluttering about his obese form.

'Blow-pipe Creek lies to the southward,' Morris remarked.

Drinkwater raised his glass and stared at the impenetrable barrier of the mangroves. He would give the game one last throw of the dice; one last opportunity to see if providence would change his luck. He had nothing to lose by sending the boats away for a final search before he admitted himself beaten. His only satisfaction was the knowledge that Morris, too, had failed.

'You may bring the ship to an anchor here. It is good holding ground, if I recall correctly.'

Drinkwater grunted assent and gave the requisite orders.

Before the last of the daylight was leached out of the sky the launch and both cutters lay alongside, stores aboard and crews told off. The sentinels stood vigilant, their muskets loaded, primed and with fresh flints new-fitted, and the officers had been ordered to maintain a keen-eyed watch. Drinkwater was too old an officer, and too good a fencer, to sleep well with his guard down.

He was very tired, tired beyond what the exertions of the day justified. Perhaps it was age, or the strain of rubbing shoulders with Morris in this quotidian way. Morris had proved an expert pilot for the place and, Drinkwater was reluctantly compelled to admit, appeared to have justified all his claims made at Penang. If only this were the place ...

Drinkwater closed his eyes. The last thing he heard before sleep claimed him was the gentle knock of oars on thole pins as a guard boat rowed watch about the ship.

He slept as he rarely slept, deeply. The near-silence of the anchored ship released his nerves so that nature overcame his seaman's instincts. He did not hear the sudden roar of torrential rain that abruptly opened like the sluice gates of heaven. It drowned the watch, the heavy drops bouncing off the wooden decks so that a ghostly mist seemed to rise a foot from the planking. It pummelled the toiling oarsmen in the guard boat that laboured the small hours through under Midshipman Dutfield's command, beating them into inactivity and forcing them to crouch, dull-witted in the drifting boat.

It stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun. Those on duty gasped with the relief, blew the droplets off their noses and scraped back the hair from their foreheads, shivering in the chill. It was some time after the air cleared before anyone discovered what had happened under the cover of the downpour.

It took Frey a further five full minutes to coax Drinkwater into wakefulness.

'What is it?' Drinkwater was dazed by the depth of his sleep. 'Sir, the boats, the launch and cutters ...' 'What about them?' 'They are missing!'

CHAPTER 15 The Bronze-bound Chests

'What?'

Drinkwater was awake now, scrambling out of his cot and reaching for his breeches. 'Where's the guard boat? How the devil did the boats break adrift?'

'They didn't, sir,' said Frey unhappily, 'they were cut adrift.'

'Cut?' He paused, thinking furiously. There was little doubt but what that meant. 'Turn up the hands, muster the ship's company at once, and pass word for my coxswain!'

Drinkwater finished dressing as Patrician came alive to the shouts and pipings of the duty bosun's mate. Two hours before dawn her people were hustled unceremoniously out of their hammocks.

'Pass word for my coxswain!' Drinkwater roared the command at the bulkhead and heard it taken up by the sentry beyond. He cast angrily about for a lost shoe. Mullender answered the summons.

'I sent for Tregembo, man, not you!'

Mullender's face seemed to tremble in the lantern light. The cares of endless servitude had removed all traces of individuality from its customary mien so that Drinkwater took his distress for a trick of the guttering flame he held up.

'S ... sir ...' Mullender was stuttering, a blob of saliva gleaming wetly on his stubbled chin.

'What the hell is it?' Drinkwater spotted the lost shoe and bent to pull it on.

'Tregembo, sir ...'

Drinkwater stood. The ship was growing quiet again, evidence that her company were standing shivering on deck.

'Well?'

In a moment Frey or Dutfield would come down and report the lower deck cleared.

'He's missing, sir.'

'What d'you mean he's missing? How the devil d'you know?'

Cut boat-painters, deserters, Tregembo missing ... what the deuce did it mean? They were taking a damned long time to count heads. How many had run?

Suddenly he had no more patience to wait the conventional summons. Shoving poor Mullender aside he made for the ladder.

He met Fraser in the act of turning from the last divisional report.

'Ship's company all accounted for, sir, except Mullender and Tregembo.'

'Mullender's in my cabin ...'

The dark pits of Fraser's eyes stared from the pale oval of his face. Was Fraser implying Tregembo had absconded? Slashed the painters of the boats and disappeared? What was it the orientalists called it? Running amok ... had Tregembo run amok?

'Are you certain you have accounted for every man? In this darkness one could answer for another.'

'Certain, sir. I've had the divisional officers check each man individually.'

That accounted for the delay. But Drinkwater was too dumbfounded to accept Tregembo was responsible. He opened his mouth to inveigh against the inefficiency of the guard boat when Fraser pre-empted him.

'He must have gone in the rain, sir. Frey said you couldn't see the hand in front o' your face, and the noise and wind were terrific'

Drinkwater noticed the sodden decks and dripping ropes for the first time. But not Tregembo ...

And then a thought struck him.

'Morris! Has Morris been called?'

'Er ...'

No one had called the passenger, but he could not have failed to have heard the noise, nor have resisted the impulse to see what had provoked it. And even if he had not turned out himself, he would certainly have sent his catamite to spy.

'Mr Frey!'

'Sir?'

'Check the master's cabin. See if Mr Morris is there!'

'Yes, sir.'

Drinkwater paced across the quarterdeck. The entire ship's company waited, the men forward, heaped in a great wide-eyed pile across the booms, indistinguishable as individuals, but potent in their mass. Beside and behind him stood the rigid lines of marines and more casual grouping of the officers. Only Drinkwater moved, measuring his paces with the awful feeling that he was on the brink of something, without quite knowing what it was ...

Frey's returning footsteps pounded on the ladder and Drinkwater already knew he was right in his suspicions.

'Gone, sir ... taken his effects and gone ...'

'What about those chests?'

'Didn't see them, sir, but,' Frey gasped from his exertion, 'I didn't search his cabin properly ...'

'No matter. Mr Mount!'

'Sir?' The marine lieutenant stepped forward. He was in his night-shirt but wore baldric and hanger.

'Which of your men was on duty at Morris's door?'

'I ...' Mount drew a step forward and lowered his voice. 'I withdrew the sentry there, sir ... I had not thought him to be necessary after the cordiality you showed Mr Morris and he was removed from the presence of Captain Rakitin. I beg your pardon ...'

'God damn it, Mount, cordiality? God's bones, you had no authority! No orders to ... to do such a thing!' Drinkwater met Mount's confidential tone with his own muted fury. 'You have let me down, sir ...'

'Sir, I beg your pardon ...' The agony of Mount's sincerity twisted the stock phrase. 'I merely thought ...'

Recriminations were of no avail now and in his heart Drinkwater perceived the logic of Mount's misplaced initiative. It was not really the marine officer's fault. How could he have communicated his worst fears when he had not admitted them to himself? In any case the time for dithering was past. He raised his voice: 'Get your men to turn the ship inside out. I want every store and locker thoroughly searched. I want to know if any clue exists as to where the three missing men have gone ...'

He called for the purser and surgeon to get their keys and assist. What he did not say was that he sought the body of his coxswain.

'Mr Frey, get a fresh crew told off for the barge. The minute you can see what you are doing I want you to carry out a search for those boats. Mr Fraser, you will remain here with the people until Mount's search is completed. Then you may pipe 'em below.' He paused, considering addressing the patient multitude that still waited, then thought better of it. Instead he caught sight of Ballantyne's figure in the gloom.

'Mr Ballantyne, you attend me. Do you get a lantern upon the instant.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

He waited for Ballantyne to return, remarking to Fraser, 'Tregembo's a victim, Mr Fraser, not a causative factor in this mystery. Morris is a man of consummate evil. Tregembo and I knew him thirty years ago. We may find Tregembo on board, in which case he will be dead. But we may yet find him alive, for Morris could not have got far in a cutter with only a boy to help him ...'

'I don't understand, sir, are you suggesting ... ?'

But Fraser was denied a word of explanation, for Drinkwater, seeing Ballantyne with a lantern, disappeared below. He led the master to the cabin Ballantyne himself should rightfully have occupied, had the accommodation aboard Patrician not been so disrupted.

'Hold the lantern up.'

Drinkwater examined the louvred door, then pushed it open. There were no signs of struggle. Morris's cot was rumpled, a single sheet thrown aside. The boy's bedroll almost bore the curled, foetal shape of the creature. A robe, a heavy brocaded mantle of crimson silk lay in a crumpled heap, the only sign of hurried departure, but the heavy leather portmanteau with which Morris had come aboard was empty, its lid flung back and its interior void. The smell of opium, which was for Drinkwater the very scent of Morris's corruption, filled the stale air in the tiny cabin.

'Lower,' Drinkwater commanded, bending and wrenching open the lockers built below the cot. The lantern light fell on the dull gleam of brass locks and bronze banding.

'Ahhh ...' Ballantyne could hold his tongue no longer.

'D'you have a pistol, Mr Ballantyne?'

'In my cabin, sir ...'

'Get it,' Drinkwater snapped, adding 'loaded ... here, give me the lantern.'

He set the lantern on the deck as Ballantyne scrambled off excitedly in search of his pistol. Reaching into the locker Drinkwater's hand found the corner of a chest and dragged it out of the locker beside the lantern. It was heavy, very heavy. He struggled with the second and was panting slightly as Ballantyne returned. He had Mount with him.

'I've found nothing, sir,' said the marine officer.

'It's loaded and primed, sir. Shall I?'

Yes.'

Drinkwater drew back into the doorway and felt Mount's breath on his neck. Ballantyne squeezed himself into a corner of the cabin and held the pistol with both hands, arms extended. It was a heavy, double-barrelled weapon. Ballantyne's thumbs cocked the hammers. He braced himself. Drinkwater saw for the first time that the bronze bands on the chests were low reliefs of fantastically writhing dragons. Each lock was shaped in the head of a Chinese lion, their hasps of steel.

Ballantyne squeezed the trigger of the first barrel. The hammer struck the frizzen and the brief flash became a sharp bang that momentarily deafened them in the confined space. The small discharge of smoke cleared to reveal the first lock shattered. Shifting his aim Ballantyne blew the second apart.

'Reload,' commanded Drinkwater. 'Your hanger, Mount.'

Drinkwater took the marine officer's sword and inserted its point under the bent hasp of the lock and twisted it. Mount drew his breath in at the outrageous use of his prized weapon.

Damn Mount! Half of this was his fault!

The lock fell to the deck and Drinkwater attacked the second; it too gave way.

'Ready, sir.' Ballantyne raised the pistol to repeat the process on the second chest.

'Wait!'

Drinkwater gave a final jerk with Mount's sword and passed it backwards without turning. He felt a mean satisfaction at the damage he had inflicted to the perfection of its pointe. Then, with both hands, he lifted the curved lid of the chest. He had expected the glitter of silver or even the soft gleam of gold.

'What the hell ... ?'

Drinkwater ignored the comments of the impatiently watching officers and put out a hand. The dull metallic sheen resolved itself into irregular lumps of mineral. As he lifted one and half turned to show it to Mount and Ballantyne he felt his hand move under a curious impulse.

It was irresistibly drawn towards the blued steel barrels of Ballantyne's pistol.

'Lodestone, gentlemen,' he said, standing and tossing the lump of magnetic ore back where it came from.

CHAPTER 16 Blow-pipe Creek

'It's pointless going any further, Belchambers, put your helm down.' Frey turned aft from his position in the bow of the barge. 'This is a cul-de-sac' He slapped the insect stabbing his cheek and swore as the mosquito buzzed away unharmed. The dry leaves of the mangroves plucked at him, like the claws of hideous succubi in a nightmare.

'Backwater larboard, pull starboard.' Belchambers was having difficulty turning the barge in the root-choked gullet, a green and slimy inlet that wound out of the bay and into the jungle. It was one of the innumerable such creeks that they had attempted to penetrate since dawn.

Already the sun was lifting above the shelter of the over­hanging branches, and the coils of mist that had clung like samite to the water were evaporating. Occasional birds, bright flashes of brilliant hue, whirred across the thin finger of water, shrieking or rasping alarm with a noise that had, at first, frightened them with its raucous suddenness. When they rested upon their oars they could hear the strange burp of trumpet fish coming to them through the planking of the boat and the distant chatter of monkeys was once interrupted by the sullen roar of a tiger cheated of its prey.

'It's no use ... there's nothing here ...'

The heat was filling the air with a weight of its own. The men were sodden with their own sweat and Frey's shirt clung to him like the dress of a Parisian courtesan. The effects of the early breakfast and the Spanish aguardiente with which the boat's crew had broken their fast were wearing off.

'Give way ...'

'Look, sir!'

Belchambers's order, partially obeyed but ignored by two men who had seen the same thing, caused a moment's confusion.

'What is it?' Frey asked sharply, starting round.

'There, sir. Under that branch ...'

Frey and Belchambers stared in the indicated direction. It was almost submerged. Just the upper curve of it, with the notch cut for a sculling oar, showed vermilion above the murky water. It might have been a dead bough but it was the scarlet transom of the red cutter, its stern painted for easy identification at a distance. It was no more than ten yards from them, sunk beneath the overhanging branches of a mangrove bush.

'We'll need kegs to refloat it ... this bottom's so damned soft ...' said Frey, probing with a boat-hook.

'Might work a spar underneath, sir, and jack 'er up on this 'ere root, like ...'

'Damned good idea, Carey,' remarked Belchambers eagerly, 'let's try with the boat-mast, Frey ...'

'Mister Frey, if you don't mind,' said Frey archly. 'Very well ...'

'Hey, sir ... look!'

They could see the tip of a pair of thole pins just breaking the surface a few yards further into the swamp.

'It's the launch!' Frey and Belchambers chorused simultaneously.

'But why, sir?'

Fraser waved his hands, pacing about the cabin, unable to keep the seat Drinkwater had provided for him. Quilhampton and Mount sat watching, while Drinkwater stood silhouetted against the stern windows, staring moodily at the green curtain of jungle that stretched across their field of view. Ballantyne was supervising the rigging of a spring upon the anchor cable, sounds of which came from beyond the bulkhead.

Drinkwater appeared to ignore Fraser's question. Mount, still smarting from his own idiocy, sat silent. Quilhampton knew better than to speak. He guessed something of what Drinkwater was thinking; he had been aboard Hellebore.

'I don't understand why this man Morris ...' Fraser began again, jerking his hands like a hatter with the shakes. But it was not mercurial poisoning that motivated the first lieutenant, it was the incomprehension of an unimaginative man. This time Drinkwater responded. Turning from the windows, he cut Fraser short.

'I don't understand precisely why this man Morris chooses to act the way he does, Mr Fraser.' He lowered his voice which was strained with a tension that Quilhampton knew to be fear for the life of old Tregembo. 'Sit down, sit down ... you see, gentlemen, I have cause now to believe that this man Morris quite deliberately engineered the separation of Patrician from her station on the night of the storm of thunder and lightning. In short I have been fooled — mightily fooled.' Drinkwater paused, inwardly seething.

'Oh yes,' he went on, looking round at their astonished faces, 'believe me, he is quite capable of such an act, for I knew him many years ago. We were midshipmen together. There is no need for details, except to tell you that we formed a mutual dislike; he affected a grievance against me for some imagined advantage I possessed over him. I was, it is true, briefly preferred before him ...'

Drinkwater broke off. It was impossible to tell these men who stared at him with wrapt attention that Morris had, in his twisted and perverse way, declared a desire for the young Drinkwater. The thought was repulsive to him even now.

But he had to tell them something of the man's character, if only to prepare them for what they were up against.

'He was, is, also a sodomite, a sodomite of a particularly cruel disposition. Mr Q may recall his conduct aboard Hellebore, for we had the misfortune to meet again in ninety-nine. Morris corrupted a midshipman who was later drowned.'

The sceptical Fraser turned to look at Quilhampton who gave a corroborative nod.

'Prior, however, to this, while still aboard Cyclops, Morris was involved in a cabal of similarly inclined men. One of them was later tossed overboard. Tregembo was involved in this rough justice. I don't know whether Morris knew that, I suspect not, but Tregembo knew enough about Morris and was loyal enough to me to have risked his life ...'

Drinkwater paused and drew a hand across his perspiring brow. 'Perhaps Morris simply took him to man a pair of oars ... I don't know ...'

'You say Morris took him, sir,' said Fraser, 'suppose Tregembo took Morris.'

'That is possible, sir,' added Quilhampton hurriedly, 'Tregembo might well have done that. He came to me once, sir, weeks ago ...' he faltered.

'Go on,' snapped Drinkwater, 'you interest me.'

'Well, sir, he came to me,' Quilhampton frowned, trying to recall the circumstances, 'asking if I had recognised Morris when he came aboard at Whampoa. I said yes, and Tregembo reminded me of the character he had assumed aboard the Hellebore. Then he told me something about your earlier association ...'

'Aboard Cyclops?'

'Exactly. He seemed to want to enlist me in some way.'

'Enlist you?'

'Yes. He said he knew Morris would — what was the word? Spavin you.' Quilhampton paused and looked down. 'I'm afraid I told him the whole thing was nonsense. Rather let him down, sir.'

'Was there anything else?' Drinkwater quizzed.

'No, sir, only that I believe words to have passed between Tregembo and Morris. Perhaps Tregembo chose last night to act, to protect you.'

'It makes a kind of sense,' said Mount, speaking for the first time, an edge of sarcasm in his voice, 'but it begs a lot of questions.'

'What questions?' Quilhampton asked defensively.

'Why Tregembo should choose last night; why, if he contemplated some violent act, he had to make off in a boat which he could hardly have handled alone; and why he should cut all the others adrift. It makes no sense for Tregembo to run off into the jungle denying us our boats.'

'But it is exactly what Tregembo would do, Mount, don't you see?' argued Quilhampton. 'Precisely to prevent us from following ...'

'That's too fantastical,' Mount said dismissively, the pragmatic soldier routing the quixotic young lieutenant. They fell silent.

'Is it too fantastical, gentlemen,' said Drinkwater slowly, 'to suggest that Morris separated Patrician from the convoy out of more than mere malice aforethought towards me? Is it too fantastical to suggest that ...'

Drinkwater paused at the knock on the door. 'Enter! Ah, Mr Ballantyne, I trust the spring is now clapped on the cable?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Very well. Please take a seat. I am theorising, please bear with me.' Drinkwater continued. 'As I say, is it not possible that Morris knew of our progress? He was a seaman, remember, and could, knowing our position, detach us from the convoy when he wished.'

'You mean he knew the convoy was to be attacked?' asked an incredulous Fraser.

'I mean he caused it to be attacked.'

'Well done, lads.'

Frey grinned appreciatively at the gasping men. Two hours of furious activity had refloated the red cutter. By dint of hard levering they had got her stem on a mangrove root and, by placing the barge's bottom boards underfoot, managed with much awkwardness, to find a footing themselves sufficient to work the boat so that its entire gunwhale was lapping the surface of the viscid water.

By jamming a thole pin into the empty bung-hole, they had been able to bale and now she floated, not quite empty and low in the water, astern of the barge. Sodden and mud-besplattered, the men tumbled back into the barge and got out their oars.

'Give way, Mr Belchambers, back to the ship for reinforcements, some kegs and lashings, and we'll have that launch up in a trice.'

With renewed hope the seamen bent to their oars.

'I'll see you get a tot for your trouble, lads,' said Frey magnanimously, raising grins of anticipation.

'I never thought I'd say it, sir,' said Carey, the man who had spotted the scuttled boat, 'but I'd rather have a tumbler o' water ...'

A silence greeted Drinkwater's hypothesis. Fraser crossed then recrossed his legs in an unconscious gesture of disbelief. Eventually Mount spoke.

'That's rather unlikely, sir.'

'Is it?' Drinkwater looked at Ballantyne. 'Mr Ballantyne, how familiar were you with Midshipman Chirkov?'

Ballantyne, a little mystified at the direction of the discussion, rose like a fish to a fly. 'Count Chirkov did me the honour of requesting instruction upon navigation, sir.'

'And you discussed such matters as the navigation of the ship?'

'Yes.' Ballantyne's head shook slightly, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

'To the extent of disclosing our position?'

'Well, to the extent of illustrating my talks about the day's work, the traverse and so forth, yes ...' He stared about him. The faces of the other officers were turned towards him, their eyes hardening as he spoke. 'Have I committed some indiscretion?'

'Unwittingly, I think you have. Chirkov, by your own admission, was able to keep Morris informed of our position.

We follow a predictable route, it was only necessary for Morris to detach us near the Natunas for his allies to attack. You see Morris had a most detailed chart of this area. I caught only a glimpse of it, and accepted his assurance that Hennessey's was adequate enough for our navigation.'

'And Chirkov interfered with the compass too?' asked the embarrassed Ballantyne.

Drinkwater nodded. 'I believe so, he too was capable of such a thing. Then Morris, knowing of my intention to return and search for the Guilford, persuaded me to accept his own offer of assistance ...'

'And led us here?' said Mount, only half-questioningly. 'But why?'

'Because somewhere out there in that wilderness is, if not Guilford, then the fruit of a long matured plan ...'

'I don't understand,' puzzled Fraser.

'Guilford was carrying thirty thousand sterling.'

Whistles of wonder came from his listeners. 'Thirty thousand ...!'

A prodigious sum, you'll allow, and Morris had planned to seize it at a time when the naval command on the East Indies station was changing, when the Selectmen were making such a racket in Macao and Canton that Admiral Drury was distracted and had no spare frigates to escort the small and vulnerable convoy that Morris knew would get out of the Pearl River before the negotiations reached stalemate. That is why the arrangements were made for the specie to travel aboard the Indiaman and not a warship, why Callan was reluctant to admit he had a large sum in case I was jealous and insisted on carrying it for my percentage.'

'Our arrival threatened Morris's plan but my arrival gave him an opportunity for personal vengeance. He knew the point at which the convoy would be attacked, it was only necessary to detach us from it to accomplish both his basic plan and my own professional ruin.' He looked round, watching their faces for acceptance of his theory. And very soon,' he added, 'I expect an attack.'

'Who by, sir? asked Fraser, still unconvinced. 'And who are these allies you speak of?'

'Sea-Dyaks,' snapped Quilhampton with a sharp air of impatience at the first lieutenant's obtuseness.

'As the hoplites,' agreed Mount with greater perception, 'but by what power does this Morris bend them to his will?'

'Sir, look!'

Mount's rhetorical question went unanswered, for Quilhampton was pointing excitedly through the stern windows to which Drinkwater had his back. He turned. Frey was standing in the bow of the barge, waving his arms above his head. Even at that distance they could see his shirt was torn to the waist and the thighs of his breeches were dark with mud. Behind the barge, towing on its painter and still somewhat waterlogged, followed the red cutter.

Drinkwater pulled himself laboriously over the last of the futtock shrouds and into the main-top. He paused for a minute, unseen from the deck, and caught his breath. He was exposed fully to the noonday glare of the sun, and the heat and exertion made him dizzy. The heavy cross timbers of the semi­circular fighting top were warm to the touch, the iron eyebolts and fittings that secured the dark hemp rigging burnt his fingers when he touched them. Across the after side of the platform ran a low barricade terminating in mountings for two small swivel guns. He pulled the telescope from his belt, levelled it along a swivel crutch and painstakingly surveyed the surroundings.

Beyond the indentation of the coast, the sea was vast and empty, reflecting the blue of the sky and rippled here and there by catspaws of wind. To the west the prominence of Tanjong Sirik lay blue on the horizon, its distal point curled upwards as if shrivelling in the heat, a blue tongue shimmering below it — the effect of refraction, a mirage, giving the illusion of the cape being elevated above the horizon.

To the north-east the coast continued, jungle lapping the ocean with its scalloped edge of swamp. To the east and south the horizon was bounded by a spine of hills and mountains above which white coils of cloud drifted lazily upwards. Here and there spurs ran off this distant range, light green and with intervening blue furrows where, Drinkwater presumed, hidden rivers poured from the uplands. These streams with their suggestions of plashing waterfalls and cool, silver torrents sliding over smooth pebbles brought a sudden longing to him. But his shirt stuck clammily to his skin and the rivers vanished below the dark mantle of the jungle. It was not all mangroves. He could see some five miles away the different foliage of higher, more majestic species: banyan, tamarind and peepul trees, and the fronded heads of nipah palms. But in the end the mangrove swallowed everything, obscuring the streams, now become sluggish rivers that capitulated to inlets of the salt sea, to mix in the creeks and islets below Tanjong Sirik in a complex tangle of nature that defied penetration.

But Morris had penetrated it. Somewhere in that green desert Morris waited expectantly with Tregembo as his prisoner. Drinkwater knew with the clarity of absolute certainty that Tregembo had been taken not merely as an oarsman, but as a lure. Morris had cut loose and sunk the boats simply to delay Drinkwater, for he knew Drinkwater's character well enough to depend upon him following, just as he had worked upon old Tregembo with subtle cunning. Drinkwater could not guess with what ploy Morris had tempted Tregembo, but he knew that the Cornishman would have gone with Morris and his catamite, not in fear of Morris's pistol at his brain, but in the foolish conviction that he could save Drinkwater and that he could turn the tables on Morris before Drinkwater himself was lured to his death. But Tregembo could not have known that the rain and the squall would have covered the approach of Morris's Dyak allies and aided their retreat with all the boats so that the presence of an oarsman was barely necessary.

And now Drinkwater scanned the jungle, aware that angry pursuit would be a trap, that his seamen would flounder up every blind alley of a creek, hot, tired, bitten and, in a day or so, utterly demoralised, easy targets for the deadly blow-pipes of the Dyaks.

He was aware of a quickening feeling of panic and forced his mind to concentrate on other matters, matters that might legitimately justify him in sending his boats into that hostile and unfamiliar wilderness. But there was no sign of Guilford. Carefully, fighting down the impatient urge to be impotently active, he rescanned the jungle, systematically working over it. Pausing occasionally to wipe and rest his straining eye, he studied every exposed inch of jungle ...

Nothing ...

He blew out air and settled back against the mast. He used to sit in Cyclops's top like this, learning how to make a carrick bend and a stuns'l sheet bend, and how to whip and point a rope, while Tregembo, a red-faced topman of near thirty summers, good-naturedly corrected his fumbling fingers. This had been his battle station and he had fought his first action from such a place, in Rodney's Moonlight Battle off Cape St Vincent.

January 1780.

It was all so long ago. Tregembo and then Elizabeth ... and then Tregembo and his Susan, waspish Susan who was now cook to the Drinkwater menage ...

God! He had to do something! Something for Susan and something for Elizabeth. He could not sit here and let the sun burn him up, no matter what the odds Morris had stacked against him.

He drew the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead, blinked his eyes and stared again over the undulating plain of tree-tops.

Suddenly he clapped his glass to his eye. Damn! The bloody thing had become unfocused. He twisted the two tubes, muttering at his own ineptitude, his sweaty hands slipping on the warm brass.

'Yes!' He felt the sudden surge of his heart. He had been hoping, hoping for the sight of an ill-concealed mast, or the thin blue column of cooking smoke, but they were too cunning for that!

He felt like laughing, so great was his sensation of relief, but the thought of Tregembo sobered him. He lowered the glass, his head unmoving. Could he see them without the glass ...?

Yes.

He leaned over the edge of the top. 'Mr Dutfield! In my cabin, next to the chronometer you'll find my pocket compass ...'

He waited, fixing his eyes upon the vague and distant shapes, so tiny, so indicative ...

He felt the faint vibration of Dutfield's ascent.

'Here, sir.'

Drinkwater took the offered brass instrument, snapped up the vanes and sighted through the slits. Yes, he could see them quite well now ...

'Beg pardon, sir, may I ask what you have seen?'

Carefully Drinkwater adjusted his head and made sure of the bearing.

'What I can see, Mr Dutfield, is ... is ...' he floundered for a phrase worthy of the occasion. 'What I'd call an intervention of nature, yes, that's it, an avifaunal intervention of nature.'

Dutfield's blank look made him grin as he threw his leg over the edge of the top and sought with his foot for the top futtock shroud.

'Steady ... keep still, Carey ... that's it ... bail some more.'

The launch just floated. The slop of water in it made its motion sluggish under the influence of free-surface effect and occasionally it lurched so that water poured back in over the gunwhale. The quick righting moment exerted by the nimble Carey corrected this, restabilising the thing, and, as it rolled the other way, Carey steadied it, feet spread apart, arms out­stretched, like a circus rope-walker.

Men floundered alongside, half swimming, half walking in the soft, insubstantial ooze, working the rope net beneath the launch's keel as it stirred itself an inch off the bottom.

'Pull it tight!' Frey held a corner and waved to the barge, lying ten yards away. 'Let's have those kegs, and lively, before we're stuck in this shit!'

They lashed the kegs, already haltered, as low as they could force them, fighting their buoyancy until at last the thing was done. The waterlogged launch lay within the net which in turn was buoyed up by the hard-bunged kegs.

'Right. All aboard!'

They floundered back to the barge where they clambered in over the transom. Frey was last aboard. He took the launch's painter from his teeth and handed it to Belchambers. The midshipman took a turn round the barge's after thwart.

'Very well ... give way!'

It was a hard slog. The weight of the launch was terrific and, unless they maintained a steady drag, the water in the launch slopped into her stern, reducing her after freeboard.

Leaves brushed them, dead branches tore at them as they dragged their burden out into the wider stream. Already the sun was dropping fast.

'Back by sunset, lads, come on,' Frey urged. 'A steady pull.'

There was a sudden clatter forward. Frey leant over the side and tried to grab the oar that slid past them.

'Carey! What the fucking hell ... ?'

'He's dead, sir! Got a fuckin' arrer stuck in 'im!'

But only Belchambers saw the gleam of brown flesh as an arm was withdrawn, and a sudden fear chilled him to silence.

CHAPTER 17 The Gates of the Fortress

'Yes, I know what it is ... do not touch the point, it may still bear poison. It is a dart from a sumpitan, a blow-pipe.'

'Thank you, Mr Ballantyne,' said Drinkwater.

'It is very effective, sir, and dangerous. The Dyaks use them. This man Carey was killed by Dyaks. They also carry the parang, a sword with which they are able to inflict a terrible wound, and they are famed for their skill with the kris, a knife with an undulating blade.'

'Have you fought them before, Mr Ballantyne?'

'In a hand-to-hand action only once, though I have been attacked by them more often. They will not press an attack if met with resolution, but resort to cover and strategies.'

'Stratagems, Mr Ballantyne,' corrected Mount with military punctiliousness.

'Stratagems then,' said Ballantyne, petulant at this humiliation.

'We are indebted to you, Mr Ballantyne,' Drinkwater soothed. He looked down at the chart spread before him and the pencilled line of his bearing: it petered out in a vast blank area. 'Now oblige me by listening carefully ...'

It was that period of the crepuscular hour that nautical astronomists call 'nautical twilight', when the sun is twelve degrees below the horizon, rising to 'civil twilight' at six degrees and the full splendour of the dawn. Already the world had lost its monotones, the first shades of green were emerging from the variant greys, dull as slate still, but discernible to the acutely trained sailor's eye. Drinkwater reached the main-top.

'Morning, sir.' Belchambers greeted him with a whisper and his damp party stirred, three seamen and four marines who had slept at their action stations.

'Mornin', Mr Belchambers. Pray let me rest my glass ...'

The whole ship's company had slept on their arms. Below, the boats were hoisted out of the water, though ready provisioned and prepared after their adventure of the previous day. Boarding nettings stretched upwards from the rail triced out to the yard-arms ready to catch any attempts to sneak aboard Patrician while the ship herself, her guns loaded though withdrawn behind closed ports, lay with her broadside facing the land, a spring tensioned upon her anchor cable.

Drinkwater peered southwards in the direction of his bearing. The landscape was shrouded by thin veils of mist that lay more densely in long, pale tendrils, winding across the lower parts of the swamps. In this light they seemed to stretch into infinity. Somewhere in the jungle a tribe of monkeys stirred with a sudden chattering.

'Morning, Belchambers.' Frey clambered up after Drinkwater who was already busy with his compass. Frey produced his drawing block and conferred with the captain. Drinkwater pointed out the wider streaks of fog that lay in definite lines over the mangroves.

'Those fog-banks,' Drinkwater explained, 'lie most densely over the channels of the waterways through this morass. See there,' he pointed, 'how that one leads south, then swings slightly east, bends sharply and runs to ... here, look ...'

Frey bent to stare through the vanes of the pocket compass.

'Runs to intersect with a bearing of south-east a-quarter south ...'

'Got it, sir.'

'Then sketch it!'

Only the scratch of Frey's pencil could be heard. Drinkwater, holding the compass so that Frey could see it, put out his free hand to lean on the mast. Where yesterday the iron-work had burned his hand, it was now cold with condensation.

'Sir...'

'Pray be quiet, Mr Belchambers, and allow ...' Drinkwater broke off and followed Belchambers's pointing hand. He could see the dark shapes detach from the jungle, see the faint white rings along their sides where the Dyaks plied their paddles.

'Ill go, sir!' The topman had reached out for the backstay even before Drinkwater had opened his mouth. Silently he lowered himself hand-over-hand to the deck. Looking down, Drinkwater saw him alert Fraser and the news galvanised the first lieutenant. He saw men radiate outwards to warn the ship, heard the low, urgent voice of the Scotsman and someone below shush another into silence.

'In the event of an alarm I want absolute silence preserved,' Drinkwater had ordered. He wondered how much of his own idle chatter the Dyaks had heard, for sound carried for miles over still water.

As if to echo his thoughts another burst of chattering came from the distant jungle. More Dyaks, or the cries of wakening monkeys?

'Finished, sir ...'

Frey straightened up. Drinkwater shut his compass with an over-loud snap. He pointed at the approaching praus. Frey nodded and Drinkwater jerked his head. Frey swung himself over the edge of the top.

'Good luck, Mr Belchambers,' Drinkwater hissed, and followed Frey.

'Thank you, sir,' replied the boy. He was thinking of Carey slumped forward in the barge and the smooth muscled flesh of the brown arm that had dealt the stealthy blow.

Drinkwater reached the deck and turned. He was almost certain his movements would have been seen and had been conscious, in his descent, that his body offered a target for the deadly sumpitan.

'Here, sir ...'

Mullender held out sword and pistols.

'Thank you,' he muttered; it had been Tregembo's duty. The thought filled him with a fierce desire for action. He joined Fraser by the hammock nettings.

All along the barricade the dull white shapes of men in breeches and shirts told where Mount's marines stood to, their loaded muskets presented. They were to fire the fusillade that gave the signal for fire at will.

'Your privilege, Mount,' Drinkwater hissed.

'Sir ... they seem to be hesitating ...' Mount's head was raised, watching the boats as they stilled and gathered together. Then Drinkwater saw the sudden flurry of energy. White whirled along their sides as, after a brief pause, the Dyaks dug their paddles into the water and their boats seemed to leap forward.

At the same moment there burst forth an ululating chant as each man wailed simultaneously, the sharp exhalation adding power to his effort. In addition to this outburst of noise, shrieks and the crashing reverberations of gongs disturbed the tranquillity of the anchorage. The air was filled too with brief whirring sounds and the clatter of darts as a battery of blow-pipes were employed. Most struck the rigging and fell harmlessly to the deck with a rattle.

'Fire!'

Mount's voice exploded with pent-up force. The spluttering crackle of musketry illuminated the rail. Above their heads the vicious roar of the swivel guns in the tops spat langridge at the attackers and then the wildly aimed, depressed muzzles of Patrician's main batteries trundled out through their ports and added their smoke and fire and iron to the horrendous noise.

The air was filled with the sharp smell of powder and white columns of water rose a short distance off the ship, but Drinkwater was aware that the boats still came on. He could see details clearly now in the swiftly growing light; the red jackets of the warriors, the men at the paddles and the faces of men with blow-pipes to their mouths. Others stood, whirling slings about their heads, and he was assailed by a foul, acrid stench as the stink-pots flew aboard. They were lobbed over the rail and came to rest, giving off choking fumes of dense, sulphureous gases which stung eyes and skin.

The praus were closing in now and the marines were standing, leaning outboard to fire down into them.

'Drop shot into 'em!' roared Drinkwater, hefting heavy carronade balls out of the adjacent garlands and hoping to sink the praus as their occupants sought a foothold on Patrician's side.

Won't press an attack, eh?' Mount called, turning to snap orders at Corporal Grice. A marine fell back with a dart protruding from his throat. The poor man's hand tried to tear it free but its venom acted quickly and he fell, twitching on the deck. 'Don't expose your men, Grice,' Mount bellowed above the shrieks and gongs. 'You too, Blixoe.'

A fire party ran aft attempting to deal with the noxious stink-pots; a second marine fell back, crashing into Drinkwater. He caught the man, then laid him gently on the deck. A short spear protruded from his chest. Drinkwater took up the man's musket and tried, through the smoke, to take stock of the situation.

Below, their cannon now useless, the Patricians stabbed at the Dyaks with boarding pikes, rammers and worms. One by one Quilhampton got his guns inboard and the ports closed. But something was wrong.

'Mr Ballantyne!'

'Sir?'

The master's eyes were wild with excitement, the whites contrasting vividly with his dusky skin.

'We're swinging. They've cut the spring. And look!'

The Dyaks were swarming over the bow, where the ship was easiest to board.

'Reinforce the fo'c's'le!'

'I understand, sir!'

God! Did the man have to be prolix at a moment like this? Drinkwater tugged at Mount's shoulder, but Mount was already swinging some men into line and Fraser had seen them too.

Drinkwater was still holding the dead marine's musket. The thing was unloaded, but its weight and the wickedly gleaming bayonet recommended it. He ran forward.

'Come on!'

The party defending the fo'c's'le had been beaten back. They were in disarray and retiring along the gangways. Drinkwater, Fraser and Mount rushed forward yelling, as though the noise itself formed some counter-attack to the awful hubbub of the Dyaks.

Their enemy were lithe and strong, men with short, powerful limbs and gracefully muscled bodies who swung their terrible parangs to deadly effect. This was no fencing match but a hacking, stabbing game and Drinkwater was grateful for the heavy musket as he leaned forward, stamping his leading foot and lunging.

There was blood on his arm from somewhere and he felt a blow strike his shoulder, but the glimpse of a bared chest received the full power of his driving body and he felt the terrible jar as the bayonet struck bone, scraped downwards and entered the Dyak's belly. Drinkwater wrenched free with the prescribed twist, stamped back, swung half right and thrust again. This time the musket met the heavy weight of a long parang. The sword struck it a second time and forced it down. Drinkwater had a sudden glimpse of the parang withdrawn, pulled back over the assailant's head as the man prepared for a mighty cut, a curving slash ...

Drinkwater slewed to the left, following the fall of the musket. But his right arm straightened, the twisted muscles in his shoulder cracking with the speed and strain of the effort. The butt of the musket rose as its muzzle dropped, the heavy wooden club flying up to catch the Dyak's elbow as he cut, forcing the bent arm into its owner's face and crushing the delicate articulation of the joint. The Dyak retreated a little, and Drinkwater swung, swivelling his body as fast as he could, withdrawing his arms parallel to his right flank and then driving the musket forward again. The bayonet entered' beneath the Dyak's ribs so that it pierced the heart at its junction with the aorta.

Drinkwater was snarling now, howling with the awful savagery of the business. He stepped forward. He wanted more of this, more to assuage the guilt he felt at Tregembo's disappearance, more to vent the pent-up anger of months, more to remove the obloquy of humiliation he had felt at losing two ships, more to cleanse his soul of the taint of Morris ...

'They're in full flight now!' It was Ballantyne's voice, Ballantyne covered in blood, his sword-arm sodden with red gore, his face streaked with it where he had wiped his forehead.

Drinkwater leaned on the breech of a chase gun and panted. Turning, he could see the praus paddling away from them. A few Dyaks swam, shouting after them. Looking back along Patrician's deck he could see his own dead. Already the wounded were being carried below.

Only on the fo'c's'le had the enemy lodged a footing and now they had gone. He wanted a drink badly.

'You're going to follow 'em, aren't you, sir?' Mount came running up. 'Fraser's already getting the boats down.'

'Yes, of course, Mount. No victory's complete without pursuit.'

They grinned at each other and Mount blew his cheeks out. 'Quite, sir.'

'Very well, Mr Fraser, you know what to do.'

'Aye, sir, but I still think ...'

'I know you do, and I appreciate it, but I am resolved. We would not be here had not a personal element been involved. Good luck.'

'And you, sir.'

'James ...' He nodded farewell to Quilhampton who was even more furious than Fraser at being left behind. But with Tregembo gone and he himself thrusting his impetuous head into the lion's den there had to be someone to go home to Hampshire.

'Sir.'

He slid down the man-ropes, found the launch's gunwhale with his feet and made his way aft. Acting Lieutenant Frey looked expectantly from the barge.

'Lead the way!'

The two boats lowered their vertical oars and gave chase after the blue cutter. Drinkwater settled the tiller under his arm and sat back against the transom. Fraser had every right to complain; as first lieutenant any detached operation was his by right to command. It provided him with a chance to distinguish himself, to obtain that step in rank to master and commander and then, if he were lucky, to post-captain. Well, Drinkwater had denied him that right and this was not going to be one of those glorious events that made the pages of the Gazette glow with refulgent patriotism. It was going to be a nasty, bloody assault and Drinkwater knew he would be damned lucky to get back at all, let alone unscathed.

That was why he had also left Quilhampton behind. Quilhampton would have followed him and risked himself unnecessarily just as Tregembo had done. If he was killed Drinkwater wanted James Quilhampton to stand protector to Elizabeth and his children, not to mention Susan Tregembo and the legless boy Billy who also formed a part of his private establishment. Besides, Fraser needed adequate support in case he was attacked separately.

In any case Ballantyne seemed eager enough for glory. Let the coxcomb bear the brunt of the attack. Drinkwater stared ahead; it was too soon to see the stern of Ballantyne's cutter, but he did not want the master rushing ahead on his own. He had sent Ballantyne on to try and keep contact with the Dyaks, delaying only long enough to get the boat carronade rigged on its slide in the bow of the launch. Midshipman Dutfield was sorting out cartridges for it at that moment.

Drinkwater tried to calculate how many men he had with him. He had left Mount in support of the ship, but a handful of marines in each boat, their oarsmen and the carronade crew ...

Perhaps fifty, at the most. He would be limited to a reconnaissance ... a reconnaissance in force.

The mangroves had closed round them now and he had lost sight of the ship. Ahead of him the barrier of jungle seemed impenetrable. They passed the spot where Frey had recovered the lost boats. Branches snapped astern. The men struggled at the oars as the channel petered out, then they were through. A large white-painted tree reared a huge and twisted bole at an angle out of the ooze. A block hung from it, through which a rope, old and festooned with slimy growth, sagged into the water and lay across perhaps three fathoms of its surface like a snake, then fastened itself to the branches through which they had just forced their way. A cunningly hidden contrivance, thought Drinkwater.

'I think we have just forced the gates of the fortress,' Drinkwater said for the benefit of his toiling boat's crew.

CHAPTER 18 Pursuit

Drinkwater tried to calculate the distance they were travelling, but found it difficult. Though he had a compass he had no watch and therefore, though his men pulled with a steady stroke, no accurate means of charting the seemingly endless corridors of smooth water which led deeper into the jungle. At a rough estimate, he guessed, they must be some four or five miles from Patrician, and should be overhauling Ballantyne's boat.

He was increasingly concerned about the master, a feeling that was heightened by the sense of entrapment caused by the surrounding jungle. The white-painted tree and the concealed entrance told him they were on the right trail, confirming, if he glanced at his compass, his observations from the main-top. But the oppressive silence of the vegetation, the increasing density of the mangroves and the brazen heat which increased as the sun climbed into the sky, weighed on him.

Only once had he seen a sign of life. A bright-eyed monkey had peered suddenly and shockingly at him and his cry of alarm was only stifled by the chattering retreat made by the animal. Instead he coughed, to cover his confusion.

Occasionally he stood, peering ahead and seeking evidence of Ballantyne, but the oily water ran on through the overhanging foliage, trailing creepers and burping gently from the unseen activities of the trumpet fish. The sense of oppression, of being watched, was omnipresent. The men pulled obediently, but their eyes were downcast or stared apprehensively at the passing blur of leaves and shadows. If their eyes met Drinkwater's they looked quickly away. He knew they were as nervous as kittens. In a little while they would rest on their oars and he would stoke up their courage from the spirits keg.

Drinkwater was certain now that he would not find Guilford or Hindoostan hidden here. They had probably been burnt and were lying beneath the waters of the anchorage, stripped of whatever this nest of devils could find useful. He did not like to contemplate what reserves of powder and shot the Dyaks might have accrued by such means. The question was, did they need it for their attacks, for the manufacture of stink-pots and so on, or had they fortified their stronghold? And if they had access to powder, they also had access to firearms, for Guilford had had an arms chest and all her officers had had sporting guns. The sense of being lured into the mangrove jungle fastened more firmly on Drinkwater's imagination. The morning's attack, though it might have succeeded and delivered him a prisoner to Morris, was a feint, a further stratagem designed to draw Drinkwater in pursuit.

Should he go on?

He could not now abandon Ballantyne.

'Is your gun loaded, Mr Dutfield?' he asked, breaking the almost intolerable silence at last.

'Yes, sir. Langridge shot.'

'Very well, pull a little harder, my lads, I want to come up with the other boat.'

Frey saw his intention, pulled to one side and rested his men at their oars. Drinkwater's launch drew alongside, and as both crews refreshed themselves and the two boats glided onwards under their own momentum, he and Frey conferred.

'He's got a long way ahead, sir.'

'My own thoughts exactly. I think we may have lost him ...'

'I've seen no other channels, sir ...'

'No; I don't mean in that way, Mr Frey ...' Drinkwater left the sentence unfinished. Frey grasped his meaning and nodded glumly. But they could not abandon the master, although Drinkwater's instincts told him to return to the ship, to work out a better strategy and recruit his strength. He looked at the sky. He could see what he was looking for now in the almost white heat above the jungle.

'We'll continue a little further, Mr Frey. Give way.'

Grunting and sullen, the boats' crews pushed out their oars and bent once more to their task. Fifteen minutes later they discovered Ballantyne.

The creek had opened out into a wide pool into which three other inlets appeared to debouch. Ballantyne's cutter was at the far end, adrift, its oars oddly disposed, some trailing, others sticking upwards, as though their looms were jammed in the bottom boards.

The oarsmen appeared exhausted, slumped over their bristling oars while Ballantyne sat upright in the stern. As the barge and launch came into line abreast, spreading over the greater width of the pool, Drinkwater and Frey both urged their men to greater efforts. Something about the attitude of the cutter's crew combined with the oppressive silence of their surroundings to restrain joyous shouts of recognition. That, and the realisation that it was pointless.

The cutter's crew were dead, dead from a volley of air-blown darts that had silently struck them in their pursuit. Ballantyne's body had endured the added mutilation of throat-slitting; a distinction reserved for the officer whose implication was not lost on Drinkwater.

Horror-struck, the gasping crews of barge and launch lay across their own oar looms, white-faced. Someone threw up, the yellow vomit coiling viscously in the water. For a long moment Drinkwater too fought down the gall rising in his throat, a bilious reaction compounded of revulsion and fear.

'We can't go on, sir,' said Frey, with a sense of relief, 'we don't know which channel to take.' He nodded at the three creeks that wound out of the pool and lost themselves in a tangle of trailing vegetation.

Drinkwater looked up. He could still see that fortuitous manifestation he had first spotted from Patrician. It was less than a long cannon shot away and it was not difficult to guess which creek led to it.

'I wonder how long they towed Ballantyne's boat after they ambushed it?' he said. 'A long way ... long enough to lure us here, and then they released it when we were confronted with a confusing choice ...'

'Yes, sir,' Frey agreed hastily, staring round, wondering how many unseen eyes were watching them, waiting to employ their deadly blow-pipes. His eagerness to be off was obvious, as was that of all the others.

With what he knew would be infuriating deliberation, Drinkwater picked up his glass and, focusing it, raked the shadows beneath the overhanging trees for any sign of an enemy. He did not expect to see very much, but a hidden boat or canoe would signal extreme danger. The silence of the jungle remained impenetrable. He closed the glass with a click.

'I believe we are supposed to be scared off, Mr Frey ... but that channel there', he pointed to a gap in the grey-green tangle of leaves, 'leads to ...'

To what?

He did not know, had no means of knowing beyond the simple and obvious deduction that somewhere beyond that opening in the dense vegetation lay the answer to the riddle of Morris and the whereabouts of Tregembo.

'To the bastards that did this!'

His vehemence raised a grunting response from a few of the more impetuous men.

'How d'you know, sir?'

Frey was ashen-faced, aware that he was, for the first time in his life, confronting authority. Fear had made him suddenly bold, fear and the revelation that Captain Drinkwater was not here the gold-laced and puissant figure whose will directed the Patrician and her company. To his keen and artistically responsive intelligence, Drinkwater's sharp, vehement outburst only underlined the captain's weakness. To young Frey, Drinkwater at that moment was a rather pathetic man driven on by guilt at the loss of a faithful servant and an obsession with their peculiar passenger. He had learned about Morris from Quilhampton and, as he challenged Drinkwater, he fancied the captain's wounded shoulder sagged more than usual, as though, divested of coat and bullion epaulettes, it was unequal to the weight it bore.

Just as Drinkwater's outburst had stirred a response, so too did Frey's, a buzz of agreement from men who could see no point in going on. Drinkwater's eyes met those of his lieutenant. He knew Frey was no coward, but he also knew that Frey's confrontation was deliberate. For a moment he sat in an almost detached contemplation, his eyes remaining locked on to those of his subordinate. Frey was sweating, the sheen of it curiously obvious on his pale face. Drinkwater grinned suddenly and he was gratified at Frey's astonishment.

'How do I know, Mr Frey? Look!' Drinkwater pointed at the sky. 'An intervention of nature,' he said, deliberately self-mocking.

'Those ... birds?' The crews of both boats were staring after Drinkwater's pointing arm and Drinkwater could sense the incredulity in all their minds, voiced for them by Acting Lieutenant Frey.

'Yes, Mr Frey, those birds ... D'you perceive what they are, sir? Eh?' There were nine of them, large, dark birds with wide wings that terminated in splayed pinions and broad, forked tails. They wheeled effortlessly round and round so limited an axis that they betrayed the Dyak stronghold, even from the distance of Patrician's anchorage.

'They're kites, sir,' answered Frey with dawning comprehension.

'Yes, Mr Frey, that's exactly what they are, kites giving away the position of our enemy.' The silence that followed was filled only with the hum of flies that were already blackening the bodies in the adjacent cutter.

'We've got our own, sir,' said one of the launch crew. They looked directly above their heads.

A single kite soared in a tightening spiral, seeing and scenting the mortifying carrion in the drifting cutter.

'Very well,' said Drinkwater with sudden resolution. 'I want six volunteers to take the oars; five marines, also volunteers, with ten muskets. I will exchange these men into the cutter as being handier upstream. You, Mr Frey, will take the launch and tow the barge back to the ship. You will put the bodies of our shipmates into the barge. Mr Dutfield, I'd be obliged of your company, but I want only volunteers.'

'Of course, sir, I'll come.'

'Obliged. Now, the rest of you. Who's with me?'

'I'll come with you, sir!'

They lashed the three boats together and, rocking madly, gunwhale banging against gunwhale, effected the transfers. When they had sorted themselves out and he had disposed the marines as he wanted them in the cutter, each with two muskets and a double supply of powder and shot, Drinkwater looked at Frey.

'Well, Mr Frey, we've left you a little water, and you take our best wishes back to the ship. Be off with you.'

Frey seemed to hesitate. 'I'll exchange with Dutfield, sir,' he said.

'No you won't,' replied Drinkwater, 'give way, lads.'

'And then he disappeared?' Quilhampton asked.

'Leaving no orders?' added Fraser.

Frey nodded unhappily at Quilhampton and answered the first lieutenant upon whom the imminent burden of command was settling like a sentence of death. 'No, none.'

'Bluidy hell!' Fraser ran the fingers of his right hand through his sandy hair with a gesture of despair. 'Has the man taken leave of his senses?' He sought consolation in the faces of Frey, Quilhampton and the silent Mount. 'This is taking a vendetta too bluidy far ...'

'No,' Mount broke in sharply, his tone cautionary and his eye catching that of Fraser. 'No. I understand your feelings, Fraser, but Captain Drinkwater is not a fool. There is the matter of two captured ships and thirty thousand sterling.'

'And Tregembo,' said Quilhampton.

The four officers were silent for a moment, then Mount went on. 'If Captain Drinkwater issued no orders, then he wants nothing done. Nothing, that is, beyond maintaining our vigilance here.'

Drinkwater stirred and sat up. He was stiff and bruised from the hard thwarts, aware that he had dozed off. His movement rocked the boat and other men stirred, groaning faintly.

'Shhh ...'

Those awake pressed their shipmates into silence and Drinkwater looked enquiringly at Dutfield. The midshipman, left with half the cutter's crew on watch, shook his head. Both 'halves' of the volunteer crew had dossed down in the boat as best they could for an hour or so each. Now the afternoon was far advanced and Drinkwater meditated taking them back into the stream, out of the cover of the mangroves that hung close overhead. They had heard and seen nothing in the period they had rested.

'Splice the mainbrace,' Drinkwater whispered. The raw spirits animated the men and he watched them as they drank or impatiently awaited their turn. Most of the men were members of his own barge crew, strong hefty fellows with some sense of identification with himself. He was glad to see, too, Corporal Grice among the marines. Grice had a wife and family to whom he was said to be devoted and Drinkwater had not expected him to volunteer. He smiled bitterly to himself; he also had a wife and family. Not for the first time he thought that war made fools of men ...

'Muffle your oars now ... perfect silence from now on ...'

They pulled out into the stream. The kites had gone, forsaking their aerial vantage point as the air cooled a little. Or perhaps they had settled themselves on whatever it was that attracted them.

The narrow corridor of green seemed interminable. From time to time the foliage met overhead, shutting out the sky and filtering the increasingly slanting sunlight so that well-defined shafts of it formed illuminated patches, contrasting with the shadowed gloom of the leafy tunnel.

There was a difference in the vegetation now, Drinkwater noticed. No longer was the mangrove ubiquitous; there were an increasing number of nipah palms and heavy trunked trees like beeches, he thought, suggesting a firmer foundation for their roots. His theory found confirmation almost immediately as a low clearing came into view, a semi-circle of ferns and grass that surrounded a low slab of rock. He noticed, too, that about the broken branches that lay in the shallows, the creek ran with a perceptible stream, indicating a faster current than lower down. This was not merely an indented coast, it was indeed, as he had guessed from his masthead observations, fed by rivers. He strained his eyes ahead. Judging by his last sighting of the kites they could not have far to go now. His heart beat crazily in his chest. They had seen no sign, no indication of hostility, of being watched, if one discounted the creeping feeling along the spine.

A bend lay ahead. There was a break in the trees ...

'Oars!' he hissed urgently. The blades rose dripping from the water and waited motionless, the men craned anxiously round. In the bow, muskets ready, two marines nervously fingered their triggers.

Through the break in the trees, brief though it was, he could just see, not more trees as he had expected, but a rising green bluff and the grey, sunlit outcrops of rock. What appeared to be too straight a line for nature ran across the summit of the eminence. This line was nicked by small gaps: an embrasured rampart, its guns commanding the creek up which they now glided.

Had they been seen?

He thought he detected a man's head above the line of the parapet. Then he was sure of it. As the boat silently advanced out of the shadows with the setting sun behind it, the light fell upon the stronghold of the Sea-Dyaks.

Above a wooden jetty, alongside which a number of the heavy praus were moored, numerous huts dotted the hillside and stretched higher upstream in a veritable township. More huts stood out over the river on stilts with another group of praus tied to stakes and smaller dugouts bobbing alongside them. Men and, he guessed, women moved about, the colours of their sarongs a brilliant contrast to the unrelieved green of the jungle. Here and there he spotted the scarlet jackets that he had observed on the attackers of that dawn. The lazy blue of cooking smoke rose from a single fire and a low, mellifluous song was being sung somewhere.

The whole scene was one of tranquil and arresting beauty. The still evening air was now filled with the stridulations of cicadas and the faint scent of roasting meat came to them, stirring the pangs of hunger in their empty, deprived bellies.

'Hold water!'

Jerked from meditation the oars bit the water, arresting the gentle forward motion of the cutter. It slowed to a stop under the last overhanging branches of a gigantic peepul tree, concealed in the growing pool of shadow. Drinkwater could see the place was cunningly fortified. Several batteries of cannon covered the approach, and a palisade of stakes seemed to be arranged in some way that protected the hill itself. Off the river bank he could see the water streaming past the pointed spikes of an estacade. He would need more than a boat gun to force a landing, unless he could take the place by subterfuge.

As he stood making his reconnaissance he was aware of the dull mutters of men being eaten by insects, and the sudden flutter of a giant fruit-bat made him jerk involuntarily. For a moment the boat rocked and Drinkwater expected a shout and the roar of a cannon to signal they had been seen, but nothing happened. He raked the parapet with his telescope and then stopped, feeling his heart leap with shock.

A yellow-robed figure stood against the sky staring through a glass directly at him. They were observed!

For a moment he seemed paralysed, the realisation that the man was Morris slowly dawning on him. As he lowered his glass Drinkwater saw Morris turn and move an arm, giving an obvious signal.

Drinkwater's guts contracted, expecting the well-aimed shot to smash the boat and end his life in a sudden bone-crushing impact. But instead there came a scream, a scream of such intense agony that it made their flesh creep and their very blood run cold.