Free In Distant Waters by Richard Woodman Page A

good while.’
    â€˜Like the captain’s.’
    â€˜Aye, like the captain’s.’
    â€˜But he’s over the worst of the fever?’
    Lallo nodded and a silence fell as they considered the events on the island. In the days that had followed their departure from Juan Fernandez the echoes of the affair had petered out except when conversation aimlessly disturbed it. Among the people it had lit another portfire of discontent, for two-thirds of the ship’scompany had not enjoyed the liberty of that first watch-ashore. Nevertheless, the nature of the incident had had less lasting impact on the men than upon the officers. The hands had preoccupations other than sentimental considerations over a pair of love-lorn deserters. In the collective wisdom of the crew there was an easier acceptance of the vagaries of human nature. Their lives were publicly lived, crude in their exposure and therefore the revelation of Witherspoon’s sex came as less of a shock than the vague realisation that they had, perhaps, been made fools of.
    Among the officers the reaction had been different. It was to them truly shocking that a woman, even a woman of the lowest social order which it was manifestly obvious that Witherspoon was not, should be driven to the extremity of resorting to concealment on a man-o’-war. Many and various were the theories advanced to explain her action. None was provable and therefore none was satisfactory. To some extent it was this inexplicable nature of the affair that made it most irritating. Unlike the people, the living conditions of the officers were such that they could function as individuals. The solitude of their tiny cabins enabled them to think in privacy and in privacy thoughts invaded unbidden. Of them all James Quilhampton had been most deeply stirred.
    It had been Quilhampton who had climbed back up the dark valley and found Mount and Drinkwater, and the dead bodies. It had been Quilhampton who had organised the burial party and stood beside the chaplain as he performed his first real duty since recovering from the sea-sickness induced by the doubling of Cape Horn. The two lovers had been buried that night and the sky above the lantern-lit burial-party had been studded by stars. This involvement had revived thoughts of his own hopeless love affair, left far behind on the shores of the Firth of Forth and long-since repudiated when the news that
Patrician
was bound for the distant Pacific had plunged him into extreme and private depression.
    Now he rose from his cot, disturbed by the squabble in the adjacent wardroom, and emerged from his cabin into the silence that had followed it.
    â€˜You make as much noise as a Dover-court,’ he muttered sleepily, slumping down in his chair and staring at the table cloth before him, his nose wrinkling to the smell of roast pork.
    â€˜You shouldn’t be sleeping James, my boy, when you can be drinking,’ said Mount, pushing an empty glass towards him and beckoning King.
    â€˜Fill Mr Q’s glass, King.’
    â€˜Yes sah . . . Missah Q?’
    â€˜Oh, very well . . . have you shrub there, King? Good man . . .’
    â€˜I was just saying, James, that it’s damned odd we aren’t attacking the Dons on the Isthmus . . .’
    â€˜Oh, for God’s sake don’t start that again . . .’
    â€˜Hold on, Fraser, it’s a perfectly logical military consideration, isn’t it James?’
    Quilhampton shrugged.
    â€˜He’s still dreaming of the lovely Catriona MacEwan,’ jibed Fraser grinning.
    â€˜Well, he’s precious little to complain of since he was the last of us to have a woman in his arms,’ agreed Mount.
    â€˜Except Hogan,’ said Quilhampton.
    â€˜Ah, you see, he
was
thinking of the fair sex . . . an inadvisable preoccupation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. What you should be considering is what the devil