A private revenge

CHAPTER 19 The Tripod

It seemed to Quilhampton an act of lese-majeste to be thus conferring in Drinkwater's cabin. Behind him, in silent witness, the portraits of Elizabeth and her children seemed pathetic effects. He was too stunned, too mystified to pay much attention to what Fraser and Mount were saying and he stood obedient to whatever decision they made as, with Dutfield, they bent over the chart laid on the table and the scrap of paper the midshipman had brought back. The group monopolised the candles, leaving Quilhampton and a disconsolate Frey in umbral shadow.

'And that is all?' asked Fraser, his sandy features furrowed by concern and confusion, turning the scrap of paper over and over, first looking at one side, then the other.

'Yes, sir, beyond urging me to insist that you adhered to the instruction.'

'Adhere to it! 'Tis little enough to go on ...'

Frey had arrived back at the ship towing his grisly cargo, bringing the news that the captain had penetrated deeper into the jungle. Frey's mood had been brittle, a product of the weight of guilt he bore at not supporting Drinkwater. He now stood silently moody, his eyes downcast.

Dutfield's arrival two hours after dark had plunged the waiting officers into still deeper gloom. The sense of having been abandoned filled Fraser with an unreasonable, petulant, but understandable anger. He knew of no precedent for the captain's conduct and sensed only personal affront. Fraser lacked both imagination and initiative, competent though he was at the routine duties of a first lieutenant.

But to Quilhampton's relief, Mount regarded the matter in a different light. A more thorough professional, none of Mount's considerations were influenced by the possibility, or in this case difficulty, of advancement. It was to Drinkwater that Fraser and the sea-officers looked for the creation of their professional openings and opportunities. Drinkwater's irregular conduct had denied Fraser any discernible advantages, and yet his rank compelled him to undertake responsibilities for which he had little liking and less aptitude.

The marine officer, however, regarded the task in a different light. Perhaps fortunately, it was a military rather than a naval problem. He leaned over and with the most perfunctory 'By y'r leave, Fraser ...' gently removed the scrap of paper from the first lieutenant's dithering hand. Meditatively he read again Drinkwater's scribbled instruction:

Storm the place at dawn. Dutfield knows. Do not fail. N.D.

'Do not fail, Nathaniel Drinkwater,' he said aloud, then turned the thing over, staring at the rough, pencilled sketch-map of the river passage. "Tis a simple enough matter, Fraser. We shall need all the men we've got and, as 'tis now near mid­night, we have not a moment to lose.'

Fraser confined himself to an unhappy grunt.

'And you were not followed?' Mount asked Dutfield.

'I ... I am not certain ... at first I thought we were, but no shot followed us and, after the business of the captain, we pulled like ... like ...'

'Devils?' prompted Mount.

'Yes, sir,' Dutfield hesitated, swallowed and then, foundering under the earnest scrutiny of the anxious faces added, 'though I will not admit to fear, sir, once the captain had gone ...'

'It was as though the witch Nannie was after your horse's tail, eh?' Mount's literary allusion was as much to encourage Fraser as Dutfield. But Fraser did not appear familiar with the obscure poet and Mount let the matter drop. 'Do you tell off the men, Mr Fraser. Small arms, pikes, cutlasses, as many and as much as you can spare from the ship, with water and spirits, aye, and biscuit in the boats ...'

'And food before we go,' put in Quilhampton, stirring at last from his catalepsy.

'We?' said Fraser suddenly in the prevailing mood of coming to. 'You, sir, will stay with the ship ...'

'But ...'

'I command, Mr Quilhampton ... but you may see to the boats by all means. You are to plan the assault, Mount; Frey, you will second Mr Mount ...'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Frey brightened a little.

'Dutfield will be our guide ...'

While Fraser grasped at straws obvious and expedient, Mount bent his attention to details. 'Now, Mr Dutfield, please be seated, help yourself to a glass there, and cast your mind back to the sight of the Dyak fortification. I want you to recollect calmly every little detail of the place ...'

'I wish to God I knew the captain's mind,' said Fraser, voicing his thoughts out loud and earning from Mount a recriminatory glare.

'Now, Dutfield, be a good fellow and think.'

Drinkwater lay on his back and stared at the stars beyond the darkly indistinct shapes of the leaves overhead. Although the stridulations of cicadas rasped incessantly about him, it was the persistent echo of that terrible scream that seemed to fade and swell, fade and swell in his brain.

There was no doubt in his mind but that a man within the precincts of the fortress was undergoing torture, and that that man was Tregembo.

The absolute certainty of this fact seemed enshrined in that provocative gesture of Morris's: Tregembo had been made to scream to Morris's order, made to scream to communicate Morris's power in this terrible place.

As the cutter had been swung short-round amid a furious splashing of tugging and back-watering oars, no shot had splintered them, no sumpitan had spat its venomous darts after their retreat. They had been defeated by that chilling, heart­rending cry, echoed and amplified by their primitive fear.

It had been the conviction of the source of the scream that had thrust into Drinkwater's mind the impetuous notion of remaining. He had had few moments to plan beyond scribbling the urgent need for an attack in force, before ordering Dutfield, ashen-faced over the tiller, to swing the cutter into the bank, trail his oars and allow Drinkwater to leap clear. He had landed among the ferns and grass of that first low clearing they had spotted shortly before the Dyak fortress came into view. He still lay there, waiting to order his thoughts, summon his courage; waiting for the night ...

The night had come now with the swiftness characteristic of the tropical latitudes and still he lay supine, like a dead man, fearful of the predicament his folly had led him into.

But he knew it was not simply impetuosity that had made him jump. It was something far less facile, a complex mixture of obligation, hatred and loathing, wounded pride, a ludicrous sense of justice and, God help him, that raddled whore duty. Stern, inflexible and dutiful, Drinkwater's inner self was capable of excoriating self-criticism. If that leap from the cutter had been the compound product of largely virtuous qualities, he knew inwardly such virtue was a product of deep-seated fear. And that fear now had his heart in its cold clutch, immobilising him on the damp ground.

He recalled Mount's unanswered question: what power did Morris exert over these remote and warlike people? He supposed it must lie rooted in the silver. A Dyak prince's confederation could be purchased, no doubt, and he had learned that silver was the principal currency in these waters. But Morris must have more influence than that, for he had trusted them with thirty thousand sterling! It remained a mystery, though he was no longer in doubt that it had been Morris who had abducted Tregembo, though by what means he had no idea. A message, perhaps, through the boy, a luring to his cabin, the application of a drug ... Guiltily, Drinkwater remembered his own exhaustion that night. He had dismissed Tregembo early ...

It was as dark as the tomb now but for the stars. He wished he had one of Ballantyne's cheroots to ward off the mosquitoes that sought his flesh in droves. Eventually it was this irritating attack that brought him to himself. He stretched, fighting off the cramp that lying on the damp earth had induced. He had no clear idea of what he was going to do, or even attempt to do. He had vague ideas of reconnoitring the fortress, or attempting a diversion when Fraser launched his attack ...

Or freeing Tregembo.

How could a man survive the pain inherent in that scream?

He rose to his feet. He had a marine's water-bottle, a cartouche box with powder and shot, two pistols and a sword. At the last second of his hurried departure Dutfield had hurled his dirk as enhancement to Drinkwater's armoury. It was of an unfashionable design, round-hilted, a lion's head snarling up the arm of its wielder. Drinkwater picked it up and stuck it into his belt. His eyes were accustomed to the dark now and the river threw off a weird light. Cautiously he took a draught of water, corked and slung the flask. No boats had followed the retreating cutter. Morris was damnably confident ...

He had not gone a hundred yards before he discovered his first obstacle, a secondary creek separating the clearing where he had landed from the rising ground upon which the Dyak stronghold was located. Some trick of the twists of the creeks obscured the point at which he came upon it from the main landing, though he could see clearly the hard line of the parapet set dimly against the velvet sky.

It took him half an hour to work his way slowly and as silently as possible upstream over the tangle of roots, fallen trees and hanging vines that strung themselves like malevolent ropes across his path. The night was filled with the steaming of the rain forest, the stink of rich blooms, of humus and decay, of fungus and the rancidly sharp stench of excrement. Rustlings and sudden, startling flappings marked his disturbance of the unseen denizens of this foliated habitat. He thrust his mind away from thoughts of serpents. Ballantyne had spoken of the hamadryad cobra, of enormous lizards, of bats that drew blood from men ...

But the second scream turned his thoughts to Morris waiting for him on the hill beyond the creek.

He made the crossing at a spot where overhanging branches obscured him from all but an observer opposite. The slime of the muddy banks covered the white linen of his shirt and the calico of his breeches. Taking his shoes from between his teeth and rearranging the parcel of powder and arms he had held above his head, he found his bearings and moved slowly uphill.

In the direction of Morris.

Ever since his boyhood when his father had been thrown from a bolting horse and killed, Nathaniel Drinkwater had believed in fate. His thirty years' service as a sea-officer, subject to the vicissitudes of wind and weather, of action, of orders, of disaster, victory and defeat, had only confirmed his belief. Although paying formal respect to the Established Church and owning a vague acknowledgement of God, he privately considered fate to be the arbiter of men's destinies. Fate was the Almighty's agent, prescribing the interlocking paths which formed the lives of the men and women he had known. These men and women had marked him for better and for worse: the gentle constancy of Elizabeth, the friendship of Quilhampton, the haunting loveliness of the Spanish beauty at San Fran­cisco, the patronage of Lord Dungarth and the devoted loyalty of Tregembo who now endured God knew what horrors on his behalf...

And the enmity of Morris ...

Drinkwater only half acknowledged that it was perverse love that bound him to Morris. The passion, unrequited by himself, had twisted the heartless young Morris into a cruel, vicious and domineering character whose forbidden vice gained greater satisfaction from the infliction of pain upon those who came under his influence. Unresolved emotions, unsatiated lusts, lay like unseen strands of circumstance between them, exerting their own ineluctable influence like lunar gravity upon the sea.

A third scream froze the sweat on Drinkwater's back as he stumbled suddenly into the edge of a small, steeply inclined plantation. It was Tregembo's fate to have drawn these men together.

Drinkwater moved with infinite caution now. Hunger sharpened his awareness and he dug from his body the reserves that the sea-service had laid there. Movement stimulated an irrational, feral thrill, a compound of fear and nervous reaction that acted on his spirit like a drug.

Making his way round the perimeter of the standing crops, he knew himself to be climbing, climbing up the northern or left flank of the stronghold as viewed from the river. It was the shoulder of the hill and he guessed, from the rising vastness of the sky ahead of him, that he was nearing the summit. Somewhere hidden beyond the crops and the shoulder of the hill, the rampart projected. Behind and below him, the dense jungle stretched in a monotonous grey, partly hidden under its nocturnal mantle of mist.

On the hillside a faint breeze stirred, striking his damp body with a chill, and bearing too the bark of a dog, suddenly near, and the sound of men's voices.

The small cultivated patch gave way to a steepening of the gradient where an outcrop of rock thrust through the soil. He edged under its cover and took stock. If there were guards they watched the river, for below him rolled the jungle running north to the sea, south and east interminably, a grey, mist-streaked wilderness under the stars, impassable to all but the Malay Dyaks who were bred to its secrets.

Cautiously he edged round the rock.

The elevation he had achieved surprised him. He had supposed the rampart was constructed on the hill's highest point and knew now that this was incorrect. The rampart was formed on a natural level commanding the river; the summit, hidden from the observation of an attacker, was set back a little.

But there was someone on the rampart below him, a long figure, dark against the lighter tone of the river. The man moved, a leisurely, unhurried gesture like a stretch. Drinkwater considered the wisdom of attempting his murder and decided so positive a proof of his presence would do him little good. Instead he was distracted by laughter, a rising cadence of voices and then again, only much louder now, loud enough for him to hear it start with a series of sobs and end in the terrible gasps of a man fighting for air, came the scream.

Withdrawing behind the summit Drinkwater wriggled backwards then moved to his left, eastwards and upstream so that when he next crossed the skyline he should, he estimated, have a view of the native village, for the scent of wood smoke was strong in his nostrils, mixing with the subtle-sweet reek of humanity.

He had not miscalculated. The flattening of the hill that had formed a narrow terrace behind the rampart before rising to the rocky summit, was here wider and further widened by the artifice of man. Beyond his sight the atap roofs of the huts stepped down the hillside to the landing place he had seen earlier. But immediately below him, on the flattened area, the low wooden istana stood, the palace of the chieftain, thatched with the atap leaves of the nipah palm. Before the istana extended an area of beaten earth illuminated by four blazing fires. Men wearing sarongs hitched like breech clouts squatted around the flames, eating and drinking. Some wore short, red jackets and head-dresses of bright cloth. The flickering light reflected from the sweat on their brown bodies and glanced off the rings they wore in their ears. Outside the gaping entrance of the istana were three chairs. In these sat the leaders of these men: a native chieftain dressed in yellow silk; a lesser Dyak conspicuous, even at fifty yards, by the quantity and size of the rings in the pendant lobes of his ears; and Morris.

Morris too wore yellow silk, and sat like the jade and soapstone images of the Buddha Drinkwater had seen offered for sale at Whampoa. So vivid was the firelight and so animated the scene below him that it was some seconds before Drinkwater noticed the three timbers of the tripod that rose above the area, its apex in the dark.

As he directed his attention to this central contrivance, allowing his pupils to adjust, he saw something square hanging from a heavy block. It seemed to sway slightly of its own volition, though the light from below made it hard for his tired eyes to see ...

A wave of excited chatter rose and Drinkwater was distracted from his speculation by a group of women emerging from the istana. Their arrival was accompanied by a sudden drumming and they moved amongst the men in an undisciplined but arousing dance that induced the warriors to stamp their feet in time with the pounding rhythm. One or two leapt to their feet and joined the women, others did the same and a jostling throng of wild and lasciviously abandoned Dyaks was soon dancing to the insistent drum. Cries and whoops came from the mob and Drinkwater was aware that this was no native ritual and that many of the men below him were not Sea-Dyaks, but half-breeds, Tamils and Chinese, Mestizo Spaniards from Manila, miscegenate Portuguese from Macao, bastard Batavians and degenerate Britons from God knew where.

Morris had his own Praetorian guard amongst the sea-pirates of the Borneo coast, deserters, escaped prisoners, drunks and opium-eaters, a rag-bag of riff-raff and scum that the lapping tide of European civilisation had cast up like flotsam on this remote shore. Here were the means to attack Company and Country ships, here were the means to work them, to infiltrate their crews, to rise in coordinated piracy that needed only the Dyaks for cover and the expertise of their skills in handling their praus. The cleverness of the thing astonished Drinkwater; how perfectly they had been fooled, he thought.

His deductions were confirmed by shouts of abuse in recognisable English and Spanish. Several men were arguing over women, and the drum beats died away as, aroused to an erotic frenzy, the purpose of the Bacchanalia reached its climax. Frantic coupling was already in progress, less uninhibited pairs melting into the shadows or seeking privacy in the huts lower down the slopes.

A rustling in the undergrowth below him impelled Drinkwater to retreat, moving sideways into brush and ferns as a libidinous couple burst over the ridge, flinging themselves on to the ground vacated by himself. Within seconds they were engrossed in an urgent and grunting embrace; Drinkwater took advantage of their preoccupation and shifted his position.

When he again looked down on to the beaten earth before the istana he was closer to the seated leaders. They remained after the departure of their men, seemingly impassive to the arousing frenzy of the dance. A few guards stayed in attendance on the triumvirate, who appeared to be puffing on pipes.

Suddenly Morris heaved himself to his feet and, like a crouching familiar, Drinkwater saw the turbanned boy scuttle from the shadow of his robe. In the dying flames of the now neglected fires the yellow silk seemed to shimmer and the guards cringed as Morris shot out an imperative arm. The Dyaks seemed galvanised, moving to the tripod. The dark square was lowered, revealing itself as a small cage of bamboo. A prescient cramp seized Drinkwater's gut, contracting it sharply. His heart thundered in his chest. The Dyaks opened a rickety door and dragged out a bundle which they quickly hitched to the lowered rope.

In a trice they were dancing back, tallying on to the rope and hoisting the bundle up again, leaving the cage dragged to one side.

Drinkwater could see what it was now, though there was something oddly liquid about its movement as it left the ground feet first. Suspended upside down was the naked body of a man. As he rose he emitted a low gurgling moan.

Still standing, Morris shouted: 'Arria-a-ah!'

With the gorge rising uncontrollably in his throat Drinkwater could hear the anticipatory pleasure in those last attenuated syllables. The Dyaks released the rope. The low moan rose to a brief and awful shriek which stopped as the body struck the hard earth beneath the tripod.

It was Tregembo.

CHAPTER 20 A Forlorn Hope

Tregembo, or what had once been Tregembo, lay oddly crumpled and without form. The earlier liquidity of the body was clear to Drinkwater now, clear as the piercing of those agonised shrieks, for the tripod had done its terrible work. Tregembo, though still living, had been broken into pieces, his bones fractured by repeated impact with the ground.

Drinkwater vomited, his empty stomach producing little but the slimy discharge of bodily disgust.

'There, sir!'

Dutfield's arm was outstretched, a pale line of rigidity above the swaying grey shapes of the oarsmen.

'Hold water!' hissed Fraser, and the gentle knock-knock of the rag-muffled oars ceased, the turgid water swirled with dull stirrings of phosphorescence and the boats slewed to a stop.

Dutfield's keen eye had detected the only landmark within the creek, the captain's landing place. They lay on their oars and gathered themselves for the final assault. Mount was aware that they were already late, for the edges of the overhanging trees were darker against the lightening sky. But a canopy of vapour hung above them, cold on their skin and dampening the priming powder in the pans.

'Cold steel,' he whispered, 'if your firelocks fail, cold steel

He heard the words passed along, the sibilant consonant thrilling Mount with its menace. The slide of steel from scabbards, the last tiny clicks and rattles of men turning pistols in their hands and thumbing hammers and frizzens, an occasional grunt, the papist whisper of a prayer, passed like a breeze over dry grass.

'Ready, Mount?' Fraser's voice came low over the flat water that was assuming a faint yellow in response to the dawn sky.

'Aye,' the marine officer replied.

‘Frey?'

'Aye, sir.'

'Pater?'

'Yes ...'

Even the purser, Mount thought, the warrant officer's unusual presence indicative of just how desperate a hope rested with them. Patrician's officers were spread very thinly indeed, and if their assault failed, if it was bloodily repulsed as, Mount privately thought, by all the laws of military science it should be, the ship would inevitably fall.

'Take station then ...'

There was a back-watering, a twisting of the boats' alignments. Oars became briefly entangled in the narrow channel. A man cursed, stung beyond toleration by yet one more mosquito.

'Silence!'

'Vestigia nulla retrorsum,' muttered Mount, 'no retreat from the lion's den,' and in a louder voice, 'Cold steel and a steady arm, my lads ...'

'Stand by!' commanded Fraser, and the oarsmen leaned forward, their blades hovering above the water.

'Give way!'

'Thank the Lord for this mist,' muttered Mount as the stern thwart of the launch pressed his calf with the impetus of acceleration.

Taking station on the launch, the Patrician's boats swept forward to the attack.

Morris passed the pipe to the boy, exhaling the last fumes of the drug. An utter peace descended upon him, his mind swimming in a pool of the most perfect tranquillity. His body seemed to float, satiated as it was by the most exquisite of lusts. No Celestial Emperor had ever enjoyed more perfect a sequence of sensations and now his mind rolled clear of every earthly inhibition, filling with a light more intense than the yellow dawn that flooded the eastern sky. He seemed elevated, lifted to the eminence of a god. Far, far below him lay the broken, used body of Tregembo. After so many years, revenge was infinitely sweet ...

And there was yet one pleasure to enjoy ...

His hearing, tuned to an unnatural acuity by the opium, detected the approaching boats. Swaying slightly he looked down at the upturned face of his catamite.

'Here they come!' he said, and the boy ran from the istana with the news while Morris waited for the moment of consummation he had first thought of when he saw Nathaniel Drinkwater from the curtained secrecy of his palanquin beside the Pearl River.

Drinkwater woke with a start. He had no idea how long he had passed out, but a lemon yellow light already flooded the eastern sky. With quickening anxiety he lifted his head, half expecting to have been discovered, but the lovers had vanished and he was suddenly cold and lonely. The sharp stink of his spew stung his nostrils and, in a sudden wave of self-recrimination, he recalled the events of the night. It had been no nightmare that he had witnessed, though when he sought Tregembo's smashed body it was no longer there.

As he gathered his thoughts, the hill below him erupted in an explosion of fire and smoke. Hesitating only long enough to gather his arms he was up and running at a low lope, gaining height and flinging himself down in the shelter of the rocky outcrop at the summit of the hill. Here, not daring to look below before he was ready, he drew the charges from his pistols and, with shaking hands, poured fresh powder into the barrels and pans.

He had come here to reconnoitre and create a diversion and what had he done? Thrown up like a greenhorn midshipman and fainted! Now Fraser was launching his attack, Mount would be storming ashore at the head of his boot-necked lobsters in sure and certain faith of some diversion carried out by the ever resourceful Captain Drinkwater — and he was cowering behind a rock ...

Christ, he had even abandoned Tregembo!

The thought brought him to his feet. He drew in a great gulp of air, filling his lungs with the sharpness and scent of the morning. Beyond the rock, on the hillside, the rattle of musketry had augmented the desultory thunder of artillery. Devoid of plans but filled with a desperate determination, Drinkwater emerged from cover.

He stood against the sky looking down upon the scene below. Heavy wraiths of mist lay over the creek and it was clear the gunners had no better a view of the approaching boats than he had, but they were working the six cannon with a regular determination that argued they had predetermined the trajectory of their shots. Drinkwater dropped below the skyline and ran to the right, towards the plantation through which he had laboriously climbed. Before he reached it he dodged down and worked his way round the hill. He had a better view here, although he was slightly below the level of the rampart. Gun-smoke hung in a dense pall over the palisade, but the plumed spouts rose from the mist where the plunging shot fell in the creek.

Below the six-gun battery on the summit the hill was terraced with earthworks, parallels of defence behind which Morris's polyglot army levelled their muskets at the pool before the landing place.

Drinkwater tried to gauge numbers. Perhaps two hundred men, perhaps two hundred and fifty, and they were supported by more cannon, smaller pieces but quite capable of decimating any assault force that stormed the hill.

There was the sudden reverberating bark and flash of a wide-muzzled gun that showed through the low veil of mist. A carronade! Fraser's boat gun, by God! The hot cloud that it belched seemed to burn a hole in the mist, though the small shot it fired did little damage beyond peppering a prau and cutting up the ground around the landing.

To Drinkwater's left came a shout and he looked round. A man, the yellow-robed chieftain, stood on the parapet of the upper battery and drew his gunners' attention to the presence of the launch's gun.

Quickly Drinkwater levelled his pistol. It was a long shot, too long for a man in his condition but ...

He squeezed the trigger, then quickly rolled away beyond the edge of the escarpment, out of sight. He did not wait to reload but climbed quickly, returning to the overhang nearer the stone outcrop of the summit. Here he reloaded, then edged forward. The chieftain appeared unscathed, but he no longer leapt gesticulating on the parapet. Resting his hand on the ground and propping the heavy barrel of the pistol on a stone, Drinkwater laid the weapon on the same man. As the ragged discharge of the battery ripped the morning apart again, he too let fly his fire. At twenty-five yards the ball went home, spinning the Dyak to the ground. Drinkwater ducked down to reload.

He had begun to create a diversion.

Ten yards from the landing the blue cutter struck the stakes of the estacade. Such was the pace of her advance that the bow was stove in by the impact. Frey was equal to the moment.

'Over the bow!' he shouted and leapt from the tiller. Stepping lightly on the thwarts, he touched a toe on the stem and, waving his cutlass, plunged into the water. An outraged sense of having been misunderstood had possessed Frey from the moment he had abandoned Drinkwater. Already privately convinced the captain was dead, Frey sought to expiate his guilt. With a foolish gallantry his men followed him, cutlass-bearing seamen, half a dozen with boarding pikes, few of whom could swim in the deep water. They floundered, found the oars they had so precipitately abandoned and, wrenching them free of their thole-pins, kicked their legs as they supported their bodies on the ash looms.

The mist mercifully covered their confusion. Virtually unopposed, they dragged their way gasping ashore.

Fraser's launch had by good fortune forced the gap left in the estacade. Dutfield, in command of the carronade, wrenched clear the wedges as his crew plied sponge and rammer.

'Fire!'

The boat bucked and the short, smoking black cannon snapped taut its breechings as it recoiled on the greased slide.

'In my wake!' Fraser screamed at the other boats, seeing the fate of Frey's cutter. 'Come on!' He was waving as Mount leaned on the tiller of the red cutter and led Pater's boat past the launch that stood off and pounded the landing. Fraser's men were trailing their oars, making room for Mount and Pater whose boats were almost gunwhale under with their load of armed men. The pale glint of bayonets showed purposefully and then a plunging shot dropped on the launch. The sudden dark swirl of water ran red with the blood of an oarsman whose leg was shattered by the iron ball.

'Cease fire and give way! Don't shoot our fellows in the back!'

Tearing off his hat Fraser thrust it into the hole and then felt the boat's bow rise as it grounded.

The sun emerged above the eastern tree-line, its slanting rays striking through the swirling vapour. Both attackers and defenders had, as yet, no very clear view of the opposition. The upper battery continued to fire, blindly dropping its shot beyond the boats where the plunging balls threw fountains of mud and water harmlessly into the air. As Mount and Frey stumbled gasping ashore, they forced their men into a rough line and peered about them. The hill rose upwards, scarred by the barred lines of the earthworks and palisades, while to their right the higgledy-piggledy gables of the atap-roofed houses tumbled down the hillside.

The brief flashes and eruptions of smoke lining the lower defences marked their objective. The musketry fire struck its first victims and Mount sensed his men waver. He shook his sword and took a deep breath.

'Forward!'

The ragged line of sodden men began to advance: seamen in the centre with boarding pikes in their hands, cutlasses swinging on their hips from canvas baldrics; on the flanks the steadying influence of Mount's marines, stripped of their red coats, but in close order. Bayonets and cutlasses caught the rays of sunlight and gleamed wickedly as, with every foot of elevation, the attackers came clear of the clinging river-mist.

Above, Drinkwater saw them clearly, recognised Mount and Frey, caught the evil sparkle of the light on the weapons. Directly below him two of the gunners were bent over the wounded chieftain. They did not seem to have considered the possibility that the shot had come from behind them, for the noise of gongs and the war-shrieks of the Dyaks, the heavy powder smoke and their own high excitement dulled their wits to this unlikely event. Despite the fact that their shot was now useless, the boats having passed the fixed line of its fall, they continued to load and fire, unable to depress their guns to command the slope of the hill. Emboldened, Drinkwater struck two of them with pistol balls, rolling backwards to reload.

The sunlight cleared his head of the cataleptic horrors seen in the night. His nerve was sharply steady, his brain functioned with that cool clarity that operated beyond the threshold of fear, when desperation summoned up the most primitive of instincts, that of the aggressive survivor.

When he looked at the battery again, he was aware of some confusion; a debate seemed to be in progress, some of the gunners favouring joining their brethren in the defences below, two pointing to their right, clearly considering some attack was coming up from the plantation. They had not yet realised that those shots had come directly from their rear. He saw the gunners split their forces. Suddenly the battery was empty!

Drinkwater hesitated only long enough to see that the wavering line of the attackers seemed to have reached the first line of earthworks, then he was bounding down the hill, his sword bouncing on his hip, Dutfield's dirk digging into the small of his back.

At the rear of the gun platform lay half a dozen powder kegs. An astonished man, a Portuguese or Spaniard by the look of him, sat quietly filling cartridges with a scoop, hidden from view by the angle of the slope above him. Drinkwater was no more than three yards from him, and only the indrawn breath of surprise alerted Drinkwater to the man's existence. For a split second the two stared at each other, then Drinkwater discharged the pistol in his right hand. The impact of the ball smashed the man's skull hard against the rock behind him. Copper scoop and cotton cartridge bag fell with a surreal slowness from his grip. Powder cascaded in a tiny stream off the man's saronged lap.

Grabbing an already filled bag, Drinkwater split it and continued the trail, scuffling backwards and drawing the grey line in the direction of the plantation. Running back to the sagging body of the cartridge-filler he overturned the broached powder cask with his foot, then ran to the battery. Piles of shot lay by the guns. Bending, he lobbed them, bowl-like, back under the overhang, aiming them at the stack of powder kegs.

Picking up a linstock carelessly thrown down by the departing gunners, he blew on the foot of slow match that smouldered in its end, walking smartly to the end of his powder trail and stepping over the body of the chieftain.

He was about to touch the slow match to the powder when he heard voices, the shouts of the searching gunners returning from the plantation. Somewhere below the rampart the gongs rose to a crescendo and shouts, screams and cheers told of savage hand-to-hand fighting. Drinkwater touched the slow match to the powder and flung himself into the upright crops in the plantation.

The voices were quite near, raised in some urgent expectation. Had they seen him? Had they seen the powder train sputtering away? He lifted his head. Someone crashed through the stems a yard away, turned and saw the prone Drinkwater. The pistol misfired, too hurriedly loaded ... The gunner shouted something and raised a parang. Drinkwater gathered his legs, tossed the useless pistol aside and drew Dutfield's dirk. The parang swung, biting earth, its owner staggered back with the dirk buried in his loin, Drinkwater's shoulder thrust into his chest. They crashed into the gunner's confederate, the three of them falling. Drinkwater struggled to withdraw the dirk; his sword hilt dug painfully into his side, both the men were on top of him now, one vomiting blood and bile, the other yelling with rage, recovering himself and preparing to retaliate.

There was a sudden roar, blasting hot air out of the hillside in a hellish, roasting exhalation. Drinkwater heard, or fancied he heard, the crinkle of frizzing hair and skin as the gunner's yell turned to an agonised shriek. The searing force of the explosion rolled over them, pounding them with shards of rock and gobbets of earth. Only their position in the plantation saved them from the falling shot and the landslip as the rampart exploded outwards, cascading rock, stones, earth, cannon shot and two dislodged guns over the parapet on to the third defensive line immediately below it.

Badly shaken, quivering like a wounded animal, Drinkwater dragged himself from beneath the two gunners. Both were near death and he turned his head sharply from the horror of the sight. To his right as he stood facing uphill, a dense cloud of dust still hung over the site of the explosion, but a great scar of exposed earth and rock was gradually emerging beneath it.

The muscles in his thighs still shuddering, Drinkwater moved forward.

Shot, debris, rock and, quite recognisable, a man's leg, fell on the launch in which Fraser and his oarsmen, and Dutfield and his carronade crew, were theoretically covering the landing. Fraser's main preoccupation had been in stemming the leak with something more effective than his hat and, at the moment of the explosion, he had just succeeded. His coat, stretched underneath the boat by its arms and tails on light ropes, had reduced the inflow. Further insertions of shirts made it possible to reduce the amount to a trickle. As the launch crew found themselves afloat amid widening circles of disturbed water, they looked up at the brown cloud still hanging over the hillside.

'Sir!' shouted Dutfield, pointing excitedly, 'It's the captain!'

He stood at the edge of the great scar, staring down on the brief hiatus in the savage fight below. Then he turned and vanished from their sight.

'Thank God ...' breathed Fraser with a heartfelt blasphemy.

Mount caught a sight of Drinkwater while he fought to keep his footing. As the explosion had rolled rock, cannon shot and earth down on them Mount had roared his anger, meeting a parang thrust and riposting before turning on a second assailant. The indiscriminate avalanche bore down on them, though the wild trajectory of the heavier debris flew over their heads. Mount was already aware of losing many of his men. Muskets the enemy might possess, but they did not disdain the deadly sumpitan. The struggle uphill had cost them dear, for forty of the hundred and twenty men committed to it were lying behind them killed or wounded.

But the sliding earth had caused more havoc to the defenders, unnerving them, shaking their already fragile discipline and raining debris on their backs, filling their entrenchments. The hardened Patricians recovered first. Waving his sword Mount thrust forward, shouting a manic encouragement to his men.

On the flank Frey was also rallying the attack. He had not seen the captain, and the strength of the fortification and the determination of the enemy had surprised him. His sense of having betrayed Drinkwater lay heavily upon him and he fought with a sullen, dogged and careless energy.

'Look out, sir!' He heard Corporal Grice's warning and turned, his cutlass half-raised to parry, but Grice had spotted a new movement by the enemy. To their right, along the lower slope from the direction of the village, red jackets bright and the light gleaming on their parangs and blow-pipes, advanced a column of Dyaks.

'Right face, Corporal!'

But Fraser had seen them from the launch.

'Mr Dutfield ...' Fraser pointed at the ragged column threatening Frey's flank. Dutfield nodded his comprehension and busied himself round the carronade.

'Hold water starboard, one stroke larboard.' Fraser swung the launch. 'Hold water all ... a short pull larboard bow.' The bow oarsman dabbed at the water and Dutfield, sighting along the stubby barrel, held up his hand, then stood back and jerked his lanyard. The carronade roared and a swathe of langridge cut into the Dyaks, sending them reeling. The counterattack broke and fled.

Looking again at the hill, Fraser was aware that the resistance was crumbling. His men were everywhere triumphant, putting to death the last fragmented pockets of opposition.

'By heaven,' he said, his voice almost reverential, 'I believe we've done it!'

CHAPTER 21 A Private Revenge

Drinkwater left the struggle for the hill in the balance. Whatever the outcome he had unfinished business to attend to and he wanted it over with, even if afterwards he had to tumble ignominiously into a retreating boat.

Half sliding, half scrambling, he descended to the area before the istana. The high framework of the tripod dominated the place and the smell of ashes mixed here with the tang of powder smoke. Despite the raucous noise of battle, it was deserted, the Dyaks involved in their attack on Frey's men. Pausing only to check his weapons, Drinkwater ran up the steps into the wooden istana.

It was dark inside and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. The entrance chamber was floored with intricately woven matting, and hung with bright-coloured cloth. Beyond, a partition with a door led to the inner balai, or audience hall. A pale shape lay in the centre of the matting and Drinkwater knelt beside it.

'Tregembo ... Tregembo, forgive me ... I was too late ...'

There was the faintest respiration in the thing, for it was no longer a body, but a shapeless mass, blotched with pale areas from which the broken blood vessels had emptied themselves, and dark with suggilations where, like some foul and swollen bladder, it spread upon the flooring. Uncontrolled, the bowels wept.

Shaking with disgust and rage, Drinkwater pressed the barrel of his pistol against Tregembo's skull and pulled the trigger. The swollen body subsided as a red and white mass fanned out across the matting.

'Goodbye, old friend ...'

'What a touching sight ...'

His eyes blurred with tears, Drinkwater looked up. Morris stood before him, a pair of heavy pistols in his hands.

'The faithful retainer ...'

'Hold your tongue, you bastard.' Drinkwater made to rise.

'Stay where you are!' Morris commanded sharply. 'Your kneeling posture is, how shall we say, most appropriate, eh?'

'You do not approve of the pursuit of pleasure, my dear Nathaniel, do you? You cannot understand it, can you? You and your ridiculous preference for duty!' Morris spat the word contemptuously. 'You are a fool, a willing tool of your masters, an instrument of policy, hiding yourself under your epaulettes and trumpery nonsense, knowing nothing!'

'Damn you ...'

'Oh, damnation, my dear Nathaniel, is a condition figuring largely in your calendar. There is nothing after death and in life we are free to pursue pleasure. It is a more acceptable way of employing power than your own and I imagine I have caused less deaths than you ...'

'You ...'

'Disarm yourself ...' Morris jerked his head and the turbanned catamite emerged from the inner chamber. 'Don't lecture me on the perversity of my philosophy, Nathaniel, surrender your weapons to Budrudeen.' Morris moved the pistols, emphasising Drinkwater's weakness.

Drinkwater threw his own on the matting, pulled the second from his waist and dropped that, the boy skipping as the heavy pistol skidded towards his bare toes. Budrudeen bent to recover them and Drinkwater jerked the sword free from his scabbard and offered the hilt to him.

Budrudeen took it. The red stub of his tongue clacked in his wet mouth. Drinkwater felt the comforting hardness of

Dutfield's dirk nestling in the small of his back. Budrudeen retreated with his trophies.

'No, don't lecture me ... I have waited a long time for this moment. Ever since you took a dislike to me ...'

'Damn you, Morris, you wanted buggery ...'

'Among other things, yes. Do you know a Sikh fortune-teller in Calcutta told me I was blessed among men, that I should have everything I desired and when he asked what was it I desired most, he put his hands upon my head then wrote your name on a paper.' Morris smiled. 'Most remarkable, eh?' He chuckled. The noise of gongs had ceased and screams and shouts came from somewhere below them.

'I had planned to take the specie, of course. That had long been in my mind, but seeing you in that foolish demonstration at Canton ...'

The noise of retreat was now obvious. Morris's composure began to waver.

'Stand up!'

Drinkwater obeyed.

'Precede me into the inner chamber ...'

Drinkwater met Morris's eyes and as the other made way he stepped forward, gauging the distance ...

'No tricks.'

Throwing his full weight behind his left shoulder, Drinkwater charged.

'Dog's turd!'

Morris fired. A searing heat burnt across Drinkwater's left forearm, the ball grazed his thigh and struck harmlessly into the wooden floor. The other shot went wide as Morris fell back, stumbling on his robe, his mind still under the residual effect of opium, his reactions slowed. He crashed into the partition and made to jab one pistol into his assailant's ribs. Drinkwater's fist had already closed round the hilt of Dutfield's dirk. He slashed Morris's wrist.

In a reflex of pain, Morris dropped both weapons. Drinkwater drove the foot-long blade hard into Morris's gut.

'Bastard!' he roared, wrenching the blade upwards so that his wounded muscles cracked.

Morris crashed to his knees as Drinkwater withdrew the blade. He was red to the wrist. Morris looked down, his hands going to his belly. Something blue and shiny slipped through his fumbling fingers.

'Drinkwater ...' Morris looked up, his voice reaching a crescendo of agony, his mouth twisting, his veiled eyes now wide with disbelief.

Drinkwater stood back horrified. Morris fell forward, caught his weight on his right hand. His eviscerated entrails slithered on to the matting. A faintly offensive smell rose from them on waves of vapour. Morris raised his slashed wrist in a terrible gesture of supplication.

'Nathaniel ... !'

Drinkwater felt a terrible pity rising like vomit in his throat.

'Nathaniel …'

'Christ damn you!' Drinkwater screamed, slashing the dirk across Morris's face. His frenzy ebbing, Drinkwater stepped backwards, gasping. Morris remained supported by one hand. His lower jaw and cheek showed white through the fallen flesh, but his eyes remained on Drinkwater. Then suddenly a dark hole appeared in his forehead. It was a small hole, Drinkwater noted, though the impact of it threw Morris rearing backwards. Drinkwater had not heard the pistol and it was only gradually that he turned his head and saw the smoking muzzle in the hands of the boy Budrudeen.

With the assistance of the boy, Drinkwater found a lamp and spilled its oil, setting it on fire with powder and a spark. It caught quickly, flames racing across the dry matting of the istana. Still dazed, Drinkwater backed out into the sunshine. Within the istana the flames were already licking up the columns, curling the cloth hangings. He caught a last glimpse of Morris stretched under his robe of yellow silk in a pool of gore. He lay beside Tregembo's poor bruised and bloated corpse. Then thick coils of smoke and the racing flames hid them from his view. The boy was tugging at him, clacking urgently and indicating that they should run. Something in his face set Drinkwater in motion, releasing him from his archarnement.

He began to run, to run and run, leaving the foul place far behind him in a blind panic. The hot blast of the explosion thrust him in the back. He fell skidding forward, aware of earth and filth in his mouth and the tumbling form of the boy whirling through the air, some trick of the blast tossing him high. A force seemed to squeeze behind Drinkwater's eyeballs; all he could see was a lake of blood.

And then it was raining!

The silvery droplets fell about him. He looked round for Elizabeth and the children. They would get wet, for the rain was heavy, beating down, striking his bare flesh.

'Sir? Sir? Can you hear me, sir? Are you all right, sir?'

'Elizabeth ... ?'

'It's Frey, sir ... Frey ... It's all over, sir ...'

And he opened his eyes to see silver coins falling from the sky.

CHAPTER 22 Penang

It was ironic that he should have been saved by the boy Budrudeen. In that final confrontation with Morris the boy might have saved his master instead, but mutilation and degradation had, in the end, turned him against his persecutor. The shot was probably the only act Budrudeen had performed uncoerced in his short life. It was, too, a refutation of Morris's appalling creed.

The boy had not survived long, expiring soon after they brought his abused body back to Patrician in the flotilla of boats pulled by exhausted oarsmen. The losses they had sustained had been fearful and they had burnt the kampong as an act of corporate vengeance while the Dyaks melted into the jungle. And yet they returned with an air of triumph, for they had discovered a hoard of silver, much of it picked up on the hillside by men induced to be honest on the promise of legitimate reward, though there were undoubtedly private sums hidden about Patrician. Over forty thousand pounds worth, by the best calculations, the proceeds of years of depradations against the merchant trade in the South China Sea. Some of this booty had been held near the powder magazine below the istana and so had been blown spectacularly into the air.

But even this justification, satisfactory though it seemed to the profit-mesmerised survivors, failed to gratify Drinkwater. He was seized by the most profound doubts about his conduct, plunged into the blackest of depressions as Patrician, under the easy sail manageable by her depleted company, rounded Tumasek Island and headed north-west into the Strait of Malacca.

'All men murder their own innocence, sir,' said Derrick as he sat, pen poised, awaiting the captain's dictation. Drinkwater looked at the Quaker; it was the first time Derrick had called him 'sir'.

'Why do you say that?' he asked guiltily, as though caught in a culpable act.

'It is part of the human condition.'

'That is damned cold comfort.'

'The truth is rarely comfortable, especially when it touches ourselves.'

Drinkwater opened his mouth to damn the canting and sanctimonious prattler, but acknowledged the other as an equal. 'Does your creed prohibit you rendering assistance?'

'My creed tells me to be guided by the inner spirit ...'

'I had no time for such deep considerations,' said Drinkwater with a hint of returning spirit. 'A course of events initiated and guided by an amoral hand will find little to inhibit it. The most outrageous evil can be perpetrated with bewildering ease, especially if directed by a cool mind ...' And Morris had possessed that, he thought morosely. He stared fixedly at Derrick who lowered his eyes to the paper.

'It has not been my lot, sir, to come face to face with such things.'

The ghost of a smile crept across Drinkwater's mouth. 'No; you have been fortunate,' he hesitated, 'or wise ...'

Had he had innocence left to murder? Yet something had died in him as he slashed Morris in his frenzy, and the realisation robbed him of all sense of having avenged Tregembo.

'Perhaps that is why the Almighty reserved the right to vengeance,' said Derrick with disarming prescience.

'Damn it, don't preach at me,' snapped Drinkwater, 'bend your attention to my report,' and he began to dictate.

'Penang, sir.'

Quilhampton was smiling as Drinkwater came on deck and they exchanged salutes. The high-peaked island was still distant, still remote and blue. Beyond it and stretching away on the starboard beam lay the line of the Malay coast.

'We shall be at anchor by noon, sir.'

'Yes.'

'How is the wound, sir?'

'The wound is nothing, James. Lallo's curettage removed the morbid tissue and there is no inflamation. I assure you I am quite well. It is not yet time for you to step into my shoes.'

'Sir, I never ...'

'No, of course you didn't. You are certainly more cheerful than you have been, no, hear me out. It was a bloody business, James, not an affair of much honour. To be candid I did not expect to survive it and, damn me,' considered you owed me obligation enough to attend to Elizabeth and the children ...'

'Sir, of course ...'

'Well, sir, enough said about the matter then. I apprehend,' went on Drinkwater, diverting the conversation with an obvious hand, 'you will be disappointed again today.'

'Why so, sir?'

'Your high spirits are evidence of expectations, ain't they?'

'Er, well, I, er ...'

'You will receive no word from Mistress MacEwan, James, because, despite the foolish inventions of your imaginations, no one in England knows where we are, beyond the fact that we were last ordered to the Pacific'

'But we are homeward bound, sir, are we not?'

Drinkwater turned, lifted his glass and scrutinised the island as it loomed over the horizon.

'God and Admiral Sir Ed'd Pellew permitting.'

'Captain Drinkwater, pray take a seat ... a glass, sir?'

Your servant, Sir Ed'd.'

'I collect we've met before, sir?'

'In ninety-four, sir, a night action on the French coast with the flying squadron. I was in Kestrel ...'

'Ah, yes, the cutter ... a gallant scrap, eh?'

'Indeed, sir.'

'May I present Captain Frederick Torrington of the Polyphemus, the latest teak frigate from the Parsee yard at Bombay.'

Drinkwater recalled the elegant, over-painted thirty-six-gun cruiser his boat had passed pulling to the flagship.

'Sir. A fine-looking ship, a credit to the Service ...'

Drinkwater nodded to the thin-lipped boy who wore the single epaulette of a junior post-captain, then turned again to the pock-marked, balding admiral whose tall frame still seemed to possess the energy of a young man.

'Sir, my report ...' he handed over the papers. 'May I enquire, Sir Ed'd, if those two ships in the roads are from Canton or Calcutta?'

'You refer to the Indiaman and the Country-wallah?' drawled Torrington.

'I do, yes ...' Drinkwater was aware of an amused glance passing between Pellew and Torrington.

'Why do you ask, Captain Drinkwater?'

'The Indiaman seemed familiar, sir ...'

'She should do, sir, she was part of your convoy.' It was Torrington who spoke, the tone of his voice impertinent, even insolent.

'Is she Guilford?'

'Yes ... I took her ...'

'Torrington had the good fortune, Captain Drinkwater, to be sent on a cruise by myself ...'

'Hoisted Dutch colours and lay to in the Gaspar Strait. Took those two fellows two days later ... damndest piece of luck. Taken by pirates don't you know; got 'em back without a shot being fired.'

'Damndest luck, sir. I congratulate you. Captain Callan is in health?'

'Positively so, sir, absolument ...'

'Leadenhall Street will be most gratified, Captain Torrington. I had despaired of ever finding them again.'

'Nil desperandum, Captain Drinkwater.'

'It is difficult to avoid it sometimes, sir,' said Drinkwater ruefully, 'but doubtless the experience will affect you one day ...'

Pellew coughed, a trifle pointedly. 'I expect Captain Torrington will be rewarded by the Court of Directors with a present of plate,' he said.

'I do most assuredly hope so, Sir Ed'd,' Drinkwater stood.

'Sit down, sit down. Captain Torrington was just leaving ...'

There was a twinkle in Pellew's eyes as the door closed behind Torrington. 'Forgive him, Drinkwater, he's a bear cub.'

'That is the trouble, sir.' Drinkwater stopped, thinking he had gone too far with such a shameless nepotist as Pellew, for all his reputation as the finest seaman of his age.

'Now tell me, when will Drury be back? Did you see my son Fleetwood? I am damnably weary of this station and long to follow you home.'

'Sir?' Drinkwater looked sharply at the admiral.

'You are a person of some standing, Captain Drinkwater, though I admit the fact is not known to Captain Torrington.'

'How so, sir?'

Pellew shuffled his papers on his desk, failed to find what he was looking for and tinkled a hand-bell. While they waited for his secretary he added, 'I have received specific instructions about you if, as the Admiralty has it, you "appear in these seas", a quaint turn of phrase, you'll allow.'

'Indeed, sir.' Drinkwater suppressed his revivifying curiosity. Somehow it was enormously stimulating to find that life went on.

'His Lordship requires you in England.'

'His Lordship?'

'Lord Dungarth who, as we both know, attends to matters of some delicacy.'

'He is not dead, Sir Ed'd?'

'I think, sir, it was intended that his enemies should think he was.'

'It deceived his friends ... then he is quite well?'

'He is hulled, but serviceable. He lost a leg, but his reasoning parts are unaffected.'

'I am sorry for his leg, but that is good news.'

'Now your report ... the matter of the silver is serious.'

Pellew dropped his avuncular attitude and was, remorselessly, the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies Station. 'Those damned traders in Calcutta have a powerful lobby ...'

'The silver is safe, sir. I recovered it. And a little more besides.'

'Ahhh, that is good news ...' And Pellew's well-known cupidity was interrupted by the arrival of his secretary. 'Have the goodness to find the Admiralty's instructions regarding Captain Drinkwater, if you please.'

'And so, sir, after consultations with Sir Edward's physician I am persuaded they offer no threat and that my regime of salt-bathing has been efficacious. I apprehend that there will be no further outbreaks of button-scurvy, sir.'

Drinkwater nodded at the surgeon indulgently. 'Ah, Mr Lallo, I am delighted to hear it. Your remedy', he said, with a touch of irony, 'does you credit.'

'Thank you, sir. I also learned from Sir Edward's man that Captain Rakitin lately succumbed to a quotidian fever induced by a carcinoma.'

'I am sorry to hear that, Mr Lallo, indeed I am. I do not believe the Russians will long bear arms against us.'

'Let us hope you are right, sir. We have few friends in the world.' Lallo rose to take his leave, then seemed to hesitate.

'There is something else, Mr Lallo?'

'Sir ... there is wild talk of a duel, sir.'

'A duel?' snapped Drinkwater incredulously. 'By God, is the appetite for blood insatiable? Between whom pray?'

'Between young Midshipman Chirkov who is still here in Penang and ...'

'Go on, sir, go on, I demand to know!'

'Frey, sir.'

'God's bones, has the young jackanapes lost his reason, send for him upon the instant.'

Drinkwater sat immobilised while he waited for Frey. What the deuce was the matter with the lad?

'You sent for me, sir?'

'Indeed, Mr Frey, I did. I hear you are engaged to meet Midshipman Chirkov upon a matter of ... of ...'

'Honour, sir.'

'Have you any explanation to offer me? You know the practice to be forbidden, a rule I most strictly enforce.'

'You forbid me to meet Midshipman Chirkov, sir, even in our capacities as private gentlemen?' Frey's manner was prickly.

'I most certainly do, Mr Frey.'

'But my honour, sir?'

'Damn your honour, sir! You will oblige me by your obedience.'

'Sir, I protest!'

'Hold your tongue, sir! I have just obtained for you ratification of your commission as lieutenant from the Commander-in-Chief! I have just persuaded Admiral Pellew that it is unnecessary for you to take the formal examination. I have just descanted upon your abilities, praised your steadiness, recommended your proficiency as a watercolourist, as being an officer ideally fitted for surveying. I have, in short, Mr Frey, enlarged on every segment of your character that I might adduce in your favour to procure this preferment. You will therefore attend to my own orders in preference to your foolish notion to demand satisfaction.'

'Sir,' said Frey unhappily, 'I had no idea of your high opinion.'

'Mr Frey,' said Drinkwater grimly, 'I have lost too many friends to allow you to put your life to the hazard for a trifling notion of honour.'

'But, sir ...'

'I forbid it!'

Drinkwater's voice cracked with anger. He paused, then added in a quieter tone, 'Your talk of honour and the compulsive need for satisfaction are foolish principles ...' The captain lapsed into an introspective silence. An awkwardness hung in the air, broken in the end by Frey.

'Very well, sir, I submit. And thank you for your efforts on my behalf.'

'Eh? Oh, yes ... yes, very well.' Drinkwater recovered himself, coughing to clear his throat. 'You will be glad to know', he seated himself, 'that we are ordered home. The rigours of your duty will demand more courage than facing Mr Chirkov's pistols, a thing quickly done, but it's courage of a different sort, Mr Frey.'

Frey left the cabin. For a moment Drinkwater stared after the young man, then he buried his head in his hands.