A Brig of War

'Very well, Mr Pierce, let us be off.'

Watching from forward Tregembo muttered his 'good luck', aware that his own future was allied to Drinkwater's. Further aft Mr Quilhampton saw him go. The midshipman had watched the furious pacing of the last hour, knew the Antigone's open secret and shared his shipmates' hatred of their commander. He had also once taken a most ungentlemanly look at Mr Drinkwater's journals. He too muttered his good wishes which mingled with a quixotic vision of shooting Morris dead in a duel if anything happened to Mr Drinkwater.

Captain George Losack, commodore of the naval forces then at the Cape, leaned back in his chair and looked up at Captain White. The cabin of Jupiter had an air of relief in it, as though something unpleasant had just occurred and both men wished to re-establish normality as quickly as possible; to divert their minds from contemplating the recently vacated chair and the papers surrounding it. Commander Morris's hat still lay on the side table where he had laid it earlier.

'Well, by God, what d'you make of that?'

'He did not want me here, sir,' replied White, 'it was clear he considered I prejudiced his case.'

'Because you are an acquaintance of this fellow Drinkwater?'

'That sir, and the fact that the baser side of his nature is known to me…'

Losack looked up sharply. 'Be advised and drop that, Richard. A court-martial under that Article would be politically risky for us both. Though Jemmy Twitcher no longer rules the Admiralty and addresses blasphemous sermons to a congregation of cats he is still powerful. To antagonise the brother of his lordship's mistress would not only move the earl's malice it might invite the enmity of his whore.'

White shut his mouth. He did not subscribe to the older man's fear of the Earl of Sandwich. Petticoat interference in the affairs of the navy had affected men of his generation deeply. The disasters of the American War could in part be attributed to this form of malign influence. 'Nevertheless,' he said, 'Morris terrorised the cockpit and lower deck of the Cyclops in the last war. Sometimes a man is called to account for that.'

'Rarely,' replied Losack drily, ringing the bell on his deck 'though 'tis a fine, pious thought.' His man appeared. 'Wine, Jacklin, directly if you please.'

White watched Losack as the commodore once again scanned the papers before him. The allegations that Morris had made against Drinkwater looked serious for the lieutenant. But the circumstances that had followed White's own questions had thrown a doubt over the whole and Losack was too diligent an officer to take refuge in his isolation from London and dismiss the affair. And the matter of Morris's influence could not be ignored. It behove Losack to tread carefully. He had seen something of one party. What of the other?

'You say Drinkwater had a commission years ago?'

'He had a commission as acting lieutenant back in eighty-one. I It-passed over Morris.'

'Ah. Then Morris was appointed over him at Mocha, eh? The first action turns his head, the second overturns his senses. The consequence is bad blood…' Losack paused as the wine arrived. Jacklin placed the salver and decanters. He turned to White.

'Mr Mole's compliments sir, and I was to give you this at once.' White took the letter Losack went on: 'There would be a case to answer if I was sure…' he stopped indecisively, worried about Morris's wild allegations.

'I do not think Drinkwater was greatly disappointed in eighty-one, sir. His commission dates from ninety- seven…'

'Well what manner of man is he, White?' snapped Losack exasperated. 'You seem damned eager to befriend him.'

'Damn it, sir,' said White flushing with anger, ''tis a devilish difficult business serving under a… a…' he recovered himself. 'Drinkwater, sir, is a thoroughly professional officer. He commands little or no influence. I doubt he gave Morris grounds for his allegations beyond an excess of zeal and surely it has not come to an officer suffering for that?'

Losack stood and turned to stare through the cabin windows, his hands clasped behind his back. He found his command at the Cape a tiresome business. His force was inadequate to police the converging trade routes that made this post so important and such a rich hunting ground for French corsairs. The parochial problems of passing ships were a confounded nuisance. The present one was no exception; bad feeling between the officers of a prize, a woman convict mixed up in some unholy cabal. He felt irritated by the demands of his rank, envying White who sat on the table edge, his leg swinging while he read the letter Jacklin had brought in.

'It was the remark you made about the striking of the flag that caused our late visitor to fly into a passion. What was behind that, eh?'

White looked up from the letter. 'May I suggest you ask Drinkwater, sir. I have here a letter from him. It would appear that at Mocha some error was committed. Morris's commission should have gone to him!'

'Good God!' Losack looked up sharply. 'An excess of zeal, d'you say? By God, it looks to me more like bloody-minded madness! 'Quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat'.'

'I do not think for a moment that he is mad, sir. Overwrought, perhaps. Angry even. As Horace has it, 'Ira furor brevis est'.'

'Hmmm. Let us send for this friend of yours.'

Appleby too had been summoned. He sat on a bench in the bare anteroom of the hospital and looked down at the chequered Dutch floor tiles. Despite the cool of the room he was sweating profusely, his mind a confusion of counteracting thoughts in which his professional detachment was knocked all awry by the depth of his feeling for Catherine Best. 'They have sent for me,' he had told her shakily. 'I am too old to dissemble, Catherine, I am fearful there may be consequences…'

She had been silent, having said all she had to say days before.

Now her opportunist nature waited upon events. She was not a maker of circumstances, simply a manipulator of their outcome. But she kissed him as he left, puffing up the ladders, fat, ungainly, ageing and kind. Now he sweated like a man under sentence .

'You seem to be suffering from diaphoresis yourself, Mr Appleby,' said the physician, surprising him. Appleby rose to his feet. 'Shall we take a turn in the garden, my dear sir?'

Mr Macphadden was a dry, bent little Scot who exuded an air of erudition; the garden was a cloistered square of trimmed lawn suitable for the exchange of medical confidences. 'From the message that ran ahead of the patient I fully expected to find I had a derangement on my hands. Indeed I had effected the precaution of preparing a jacket for the fellow. But I was misinformed. The ravings were no more than those of a drunk far gone in his cups and overcome by an exaggeration of the choleric humour, so my anticipation was a little out of kilter with the facts.' The doctor chuckled wheezily to himself while Appleby held his breath. 'The effects of rum are well-known. I don't doubt but that you know Haslar is full of men for whom rum has been a consolation, men for whom responsibility is too great, whose expectations have been disappointed, whose abilities are inadequate. Why the chemical effect of rum upon the brain itself…'

'But his sickness, doctor. The diaphoresis, the purging and vomiting…' Appleby could restrain himself no longer, though he checked himself sufficiently to adopt a tone of deference, not daring to suggest a diagnosis lest such presumption invited contradiction.

'Oh, you are worried about his wild allegations about being poisoned, eh? Well he is, in a manner of speaking, but I think we may consider that he is effecting his own ruin. No, he has chronic gastric inflammation, undoubtedly due to a peptic ulcer of some inveteracy. You see, my dear sir, his temperament seems to vacillate between the choleric and the melancholic humours. The man who depends upon drink hides both an acknowledged weakness and an inability to accept his own culpability for self-destruction. The consequence of such a vicious spiral can have but one result. That of the unhappy man now lying in his bed yonder.'

Macphadden turned and they began pacing back to the white walled hospital. A flood of relief began to wash over Appleby and he nodded at the physician's words: 'I doubt you will want a commanding officer in the throes of a delirium tremens.'

Drinkwater returned to Antigone after the frustrations of an hour-long interview with Losack. It was clear from the manner of the commodore's questions that the contents of his letter to White had been made known. A sense of betrayal that the information had been made available to Losack was heightened by White's silence during Drinkwater's ordeal. The letter had been a private document between friends. Now it seemed a court-martial might be pending against him.