A Brig of War

department. 'My dear fellow,' said Drinkwater summoning Merrick from the pantry with some blackstrap, 'you have always fancied your chances as a philosopher, now you have the most literate department in the ship. You will be able to plead the benefit of clergy for all of 'em. Now do be a good fellow and allow me to compute this longitude before Lestock comes below.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'No I didn't.'

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

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

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

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

'Good night, Mr Drinkwater.'

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

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

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

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

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

'I think it were Mr Quilhampton, sir.'

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

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

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

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

'Who was telling the tale then?'

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

'But who was telling it?'

'Why Mr Rogers, sir.'

'No wind, Mr Lestock.'