Ryazan, scouting ahead of the squadron, sighted Cape Sainte Marie on Madagascar shortly before sunset on December 26th. Rojhestvensky had sent Zakharov ahead in the expectation of meeting the hospital-ship, with whom a rendezvous at this time and place had tentatively been arranged; they should in fact have met her earlier in the day and hadn’t, and with the short range of the German wireless equipment plus darkness and land close at hand it had been sensible to make some sort of reconnaissance. Result: Madagascar was there all right, but the Orel was not: had either pressed on ahead of them or delayed her departure from Cape Town until the gales that had been raging down there had eased off.
The squadron had made the trip from Angra Pequena in much better time than had been allowed for, not so much despite the foul conditions as with their help – a following wind practically all the way – and mercifully few breakdowns. There’d been a bunker fire in Suvarov – extinguished by injecting steam to smother it – and it seemed probable that the poor old Malay had foundered. She’d broken down at the height of the gale on December 21st, when the waves’ height had been estimated as sixty feet and from Ryazan’s bridge Michael at one stage had had an astonishing gull’s-eye view of the Aurora as she climbed a near-vertical wall of sea – stern more or less submerged, ram high out of water pointing at the low-flying clouds: in those seconds her entire plan view had been exposed to him. The day before – 20th – when they’d rounded Cape Agulhas and entered the Indian Ocean, it had been bad enough, but this stronger blow was from the west-southwest, pretty well dead astern, and the pitching was ferocious. At Zakharov’s prompting Burmin had had men shoring bulkheads and rigging strongbacks under hatches that might otherwise have given way to the weight and power of seas crashing down on them; all the ships were dipping bows-under, Ryazan’s screws at times racing as they came up out of water – inviting serious, even irreparable damage to screws, shafts and bearings.
This was when the Malay developed engine trouble and began to fall astern. The squadron’s practice had been to stop while any temporarily immobilized ship put itself to rights, but to stop in these conditions was out of the question, so Zakharov, as tail-end Charlie, took the initiative of standing by her – turned back to circle her, signalling the admiral that he’d keep her company and bring her along when repairs had been completed. The emergency had developed very suddenly, and Michael, who’d had the watch, had moved to the telegraphs when the skipper had taken over. Anyway, Rojhestvensky wasn’t having it, ordered Zakharov to resume his station astern of the other cruisers. With which, of course, he complied – in another hair-raising turn across the full force of the storm. It had been more storm than gale by then. What was likely to remain one of Michael’s lifelong memories was the sight of the old transport, former ocean liner, rolling like a harpooned whale, beam-on to wind and sea, with men crabbing around her canting, wave-swept decks struggling to set small jury sails in the hope of bringing her head down-wind again – knowing that beam-on she wouldn’t last. While the rest of them carried on eastward in their own battering, staggering way – Ryazan from minute to minute with her snout deep in it, shaking like a great black dog with a rat in its jaws. It was dusk by then and one had had the sickening feeling of deserting friends. Envisaging how it might happen when it did – a cargo-hatch smashed in, that hold filling, and – curtains. Zakharov gave orders for a searchlight to be trained astern to flash the stricken ship’s pendant numbers at ten-minute intervals throughout the night.
Not that that would save her. Only provide guidance and maybe encouragement if by her own efforts she did survive, if any of her company were alive to catch glimpses of it even half an hour after that last sight of her. Speculating then – the mind wandering on other levels as it tended to in night watches – as to whether Pavel Derevyenko would have got home to Yalta yet. Visualizing candlelit dinners and cab-rides back from that Oreanda restaurant, for instance. Winter now, but the Yalta climate was mild enough, so they’d all claimed. They’d be wrapped in their furs anyway if it wasn’t. But a war hero and a count, and a family that was obviously well off. Empty sleeve or not, mightn’t he be as good an alternative candidate, in Anna Feodorovna’s calculating mind, as some Englishman on his way to be drowned in the Yellow Sea?
The squadron anchored at eight a.m. on December 29th in the channel between Madagascar and the island of Sainte Marie. Same name but no connection with the cape at Madagascar’s southern extremity; Sainte Marie island was a French-administered penal colony which they used as an overflow from Devil’s Island. As soon as they’d anchored and a boat had been lowered Zakharov had himself rowed over to the flagship, where he failed to see the admiral – who was said to be unwell – but talked with Clapier de Colongue and others, elicited that while the squadron’s intended destination had been Diego Suarez – an excellent, spacious harbour with modern communication facilities, i.e. a telegraph station – British pressure on the French and Paris’s ostensible surrender to it had led to the squadron officially being barred from it, and the General Staff in Petersburg had lacked the guts to argue the point, although the French would almost certainly have turned blind eyes. This had infuriated the admiral who, according to the doctor, Nyedozorov, was suffering mainly from exhaustion. He wasn’t a young man and he’d been on his flagship’s bridge, they said, for ten days and nights without a break. He’d doubtless be back on his feet in a day or two, but for the time being wasn’t seeing anyone except de Colongue and his flag lieutenant, Serebriakov.
Michael asked Zakharov over lunch in the wardroom, ‘So what’s our programme now?’
‘There isn’t one. We’re stuck in this highly insalubrious place with damn little shelter. Coaling will start tomorrow – so let’s pray the wind doesn’t get up. Although in some ways I wouldn’t mind a few clean breaths of it, the place stinks of fever, doesn’t it?’ Turning to Dr Baranov: ‘How are your stocks of quinine?’
‘Very little remaining, I’m sorry to say. At Gabon for instance—’
‘Better see where you can cadge some. Orel for instance – can’t be more than a day or so behind us.’ Back to Michael and the others: ‘For the staff the worst is they’ve no news of Felkerzam and his division. But since there’s no telegraph except in Diego Suarez – three hundred miles north, and we aren’t allowed in there anyway – and Tamatave about a hundred south – well, they’re sending the Rus to Tamatave tomorrow – leaving at first light. Your friend Selyeznov’s going in her.’
At four p.m. the hospital-ship arrived, looking as immaculate as ever, and anchored close to the Ryazan. She’d brought despatches, mail and newspapers from the Cape. They’d already sorted the mail, and ships were invited to send their boats for it; Ryazan’s cutter was already at the boom with steam up, and was on its way over within five minutes of that message being received. Being the first there, however, its coxswain was given the honour of delivering the admiral’s despatches, and while they were at it the Suvarov’s mailbags as well. Anxious watchers on Ryazan’s decks were surprised when it set off towards the flagship instead of coming straight back, and by the time it did, word had already flown round – having been picked up from exchanges of semaphore messages between the Orel and other ships – that the First Pacific Squadron had been annihilated in the harbour at Port Arthur.
Michael now had his own despatches, enclosed in a rather bulky letter from Jane and by courtesy of her nephew William. In the same packet was a letter from Tasha which he slid into a pocket to read later.
Jane had written,
William’s come up trumps, as you’ll see from the enclosures. Also, I’m sure far more exciting, a letter from T at last. Do wish I could read Russian! I’ve had one from you meanwhile from darkest Africa and will reply shortly at greater length but it’s only a few days since I wrote and the important thing is to get this off to you prontissimo. Look after yourself! Love
Young William’s contributions included a cutting from the Daily Telegraph listing the ships of this squadron and those under Felkerzam en route via the Red Sea, and ‘third section’ under Admiral Botrovosky – of whom one had never heard – consisting of the cruisers Oleg and Izumrud, eight torpedo boats and ‘several transports’. Felkerzam’s group having split up, presumably – unless the paper was mistaken, and God only knew where this Botrovosky had sprung from.
Next came what read like an essay – perhaps mostly because of the boyish handwriting – in two parts, the first headed ‘Northern Theatre of War’:
The Russians are using all their resources to reinforce and reorganize their army and it would be inviting another defeat were they to attempt to move until their troops were again fully equipped and ready to advance. On the other hand the Japanese have every reason for not making any hasty move. The further they advance north the longer does their line of communications become and the greater the need of caution. It is probable that they have hopes of shortly releasing, by the capture of Port Arthur, a large number of seasoned troops for the reinforcement of Marshal Oyama’s army and are therefore wisely biding their time until they can attack in such numbers that they will be certain of success. In any case the battle when it comes will be unsurpassed in fierceness, and should the Russians, if beaten, be unable to again draw off in the masterly way they have hitherto, it might result in a crushing and completely disorganising defeat for them.
The other piece began:
The Baltic Squadron is making slow though sure progress on its journey out to the Far East. On 28th November the division under Admiral Rojhestvensky had arrived off Swakopmund (wrong, by four hundred miles) and on the 25th the other division consisting of the Sissoy Veliky (etc., ships all listed) entered the Suez Canal. Botrovosky’s squadron was reported in the English Channel on the 28th.
Half a page followed about untrained men and the coaling problem that faced Rojhestvensky: all true, but it doesn’t tell us anything, William. Except that if the British press know that much about us, so do the Japanese. Skipping, therefore, and picking it up again lower down:
Should Port Arthur fall before the spring, as seems probable, the Japanese fleet will be at once relieved from its blockade duties and with luck may have time before the Baltic fleet reaches eastern waters for some, at any rate, of the Japanese ships to undergo refit, although it is probable that many of them have already been sent home for that purpose and are even now ready to engage the Russians once more, whose ships will most certainly be in want of refitting after so long a voyage under such disadvantageous conditions.
Damn right, William. Except for that unfortunate ‘with luck’. Stand in the corner for half an hour, boy, for that… But now the last item: a Telegraph cutting with no date on it:
The officers of a French steamer report having sighted the Mikasa near Sasebo and the Asahi forty miles south of the Shan Tung promontory, both battleships looking as if they had been refitted. Reuter reports in connection with this that the refitting and repair of the Japanese fleet has been progressing secretly since August last.
None of it was exactly reassuring: certainly not stuff that the collapsed and – according to Baranov (who’d got it from Nyedozorov) – mentally as well as physically overwrought Rojhestvensky would want to hear. Michael, re-assembling the package, saw Radzianko looking flummoxed or at any rate less suave than usual, having had no mail himself in this delivery. Arkoleyev was ribbing him about it but most of them were poring over their own letters. Michael went up on deck and found peace and solitude in the after control position in which to read Tasha’s letter, but paused to fill and light a pipe first, to keep the mosquitoes off. Zakharov was probably right, one could imagine malarial infection being rife here – whole clouds of the damn things, not quite as big as sparrows but a lot more dangerous.
Ridiculous, really. Humid air – humidity not far short of say ninety per cent – and tobacco so dry it crackled.
Michael, my precious darling, it’s only a few days since I wrote, but here I go again. I’m frightened for you – because of all we’re hearing and reading – and what’s tormenting me especially is that you’re where you are, obviously facing great danger very soon if not already, only because of me. Well – my father – but that is because of me. I want to ask you – beg you – when you’re stopping at some place to embark coal, couldn’t you find some ship that’s leaving for Europe and come home on it? You’re not in the Russian navy, Michael, you’ve really no business to be there at all! Some are saying the squadron will have to turn back – and that would be all right – but others who are in the know say Admiral Rojhestvensky is the sort of man who’d never turn back – even if he knows full well that he and his ships and all those thousands of men are heading for certain destruction he’d still press on regardless! But Michael darling – if a disastrous outcome is certain or so probable that people are talking and writing in newspapers the way they are – darling, even if Rojhestvensky and others see glory in it there’s none at all for you, it’s not your war or business, there’s no reason you should link your fate with theirs – with Z’s for instance. Especially with Z’s! Do you understand what I’m telling you, my love? Do I deserve to lose you? Can that be the judgement of Fate? You who are not only my lover but my life. Even if your own life is of so little value to yourself, save it for me – leave them, get back here to me somehow. To England, or Paris – as you said before, isn’t it the answer not only to this present danger but to all our recent prayers?
The dry tobacco was burning his tongue. Might dampen it with a sprinkling of brandy this evening, he thought. In the real navy one would have used rum. It was quite plain what Tasha was getting at: let Zakharov drown, if that was what was in store for him, but why on earth drown with him?
Or taking it one stage of the concept further: with luck he’ll drown, so leave him to it.
So much for Pavel Derevyenko, anyway. Or any others, for that matter. Shaming what separation, isolation, could do to you. On the other hand, if it didn’t how cold-blooded – or arrogant – would that make you? What would the passionate love amount to?
At four p.m., to the delight of the entire squadron, the Malay came limping into the anchorage and dropped her hook among the other transports. Ships’ crews massed on their upper decks to cheer her, sirens hooted, Rojhestvensky semaphored congratulations, and a pinnace which Michael suspected might have had Narumov in it chuffed over to her from the Suvarov. After so much bad news it was a fine display of high spirits by the ships’ companies – of which there was a further indication that evening by Shikhin, Michael’s sailor-servant. As he was intending to sleep on deck West African style, mosquitoes or no mosquitoes, Shikhin was taking his mattress up, part of the job being to beat the coal-dust out of it in the open air; he paused in the companionway to ask, ‘Permission to ask your honour a question?’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Does your honour believe we’ll have much chance of beating the Japs when we come up against ’em?’
‘I’d say a very good chance. Why shouldn’t we?’
‘Hah!’ Nodding with what looked like a calm certainty, and approval. ‘That’s what a lot of ’em’s saying now. Me too, your honour! With our man Admiral Rojhestvensky leading us – that’s what counts with the likes of me!’
‘Think well of him, do you?’
‘Brought us this far, hasn’t he? And he’ll have a trick or two yet up his sleeve, is my guess. Like they was saying down for’ard this evening – wouldn’t bring us half round the world for nothing, would he?’
Awake soon after dawn, woken by the whine of mosquitoes in his ears, Michael saw the Rus leave on her mission to Tamatave. December 30th, this. Colliers were supposed to arrive today. Lying back again with the sheet over his head, wondering whether Radzianko would be taking his early-morning swim. In the wardroom last night they’d been encouraging him to do so – Galikovsky, Murayev, Skalinin, Lyalin – the latter insisting straight-facedly that although there certainly were sharks in these waters, they congregated mainly on the other side, in the Mocambique Channel.
Burmin had growled, ‘What are you trying to do, get him killed?’
‘Lord, no, Pyotr Fedor’ich.’ Galikovsky winked at the others. ‘Thinking of his own best interests, really. If he got just a bit of a nip, he might wind up on board the Orel – in all manner of comfort! Eh, Viktor?’
‘Depends on what the shark bit off, surely!’ Murayev had mimed it, leaping up, clasping himself and uttering a loud scream. Radzianko had smirked while the others guffawed, and said airily that he’d think about it; Michael wondered whether he might not actually have meant it, whether he wasn’t so concerned to build a reputation as a daredevil – molodyets – that he might be crazy enough to risk it.
As it turned out, he didn’t: and sharks were sighted on and off throughout the day; through the clear water they were easy to see from the upper deck and even easier from the superstructure. Coaling started during the forenoon. In the Ural – auxiliary cruiser, another former German liner – it was brought to a halt that evening when the traveller of a Temperley carried away and smashed into the two young officers who were operating it: one had his chest crushed and spine snapped, dying instantly, and the other was stunned by a blow on the head; the latest news of him, from the Orel, was that it was hoped he might pull through.
Ryazan finished her coaling by noon on the 31st, and was washing-down when the Rus came chugging into the anchorage, back from Tamatave, bringing the news that Admiral Felkerzam’s division was lying at anchor at Nossi-Bé, a large indentation in the coast in Madagascar’s extreme north-west – near the top of the Mocambique Channel, in fact – and that most of the colliers who were here to serve the squadron were in Diego Suarez. It was a muddled situation which perhaps nobody but Rojhestvensky fully understood – if in fact even he did. Zakharov, who’d talked with the staff, told Michael it looked as if St Petersburg had been sending instructions direct to Felkerzam, Rojhestvensky’s subordinate, instead of through Rojhestvensky himself as commander-in-chief: which would account for the latter’s almost unbridled fury, which he was said to be venting on everyone right, left and centre, not least on poor Clapier de Colongue.
The Rus was despatched to Tamatave again, and Admiral Enqvist with the Nachimov, Donskoi and Aurora was sent to escort a group of colliers to Nossi-Bée and to transmit to Felkerzam, when in wireless range of him, orders to join Rojhestvensky in this Sainte Marie anchorage forthwith: actually not at Sainte Marie, but in Tan-Tan Bay just three miles further north where they were now moving because there was better shelter there.
Enqvist sailed on January 5th at five a.m., but at noon a collier from Diego Suarez arrived bringing a report from Felkerzam to the effect that (1) he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of the cruisers Oleg and Izumrud and two destroyers who’d been with them – under the command, Michael guessed, remembering young William’s despatches, of the mysterious Admiral Botrovsky – and (2) he, Felkerzam, had indeed been ordered by the General Staff in Petersburg to lie-up at Nossi-Bée and put in hand as complete a refit of all his ships as could be managed or improvised with the limited facilities at his disposal. All his ships had therefore been ‘opened up’ and would be incapable of moving for at least a fortnight. It was almost unbelievable that St Petersburg could have acted in this way, and apparently Rojhestvensky, still in poor health, was literally shaking and screaming with rage.
Anyway on the evening of the 5th – Rojhestvensky on the principle of Mahommed going to the mountain having given orders for the squadron to sail next day, the Russian Christmas Eve, for Nossi-Bé – Zakharov invited Michael to join him for a drink in his sea-cabin – his day-cabin down aft being full of coal again – to tell him about these and certain other developments which he didn’t, at this stage, want to discuss in front of others. He could talk to Michael, he’d explained, who was at one and the same time an outsider and ‘almost family’, as he couldn’t to anyone else; and Michael being his guest on board it was only right and proper for them to have a vodka or two together, from time to time.
The situation by and large was verging on the impossible, he admitted, after the first four-fingers shot of vodka had been poured, tumblers clinked, a toast proposed to the health of the Tsar and the liquor tossed back in a single gulp – do dnya, ‘to the bottom’. Certainly unprecedented – the conduct of the General Staff and of Felkerzam, the appalling condition of the ships and incompetence of their officers and crews, and the desperate situation of Port Arthur – as well as a number of lesser factors, or symptoms, maybe. There’d been mutinous outbreaks for instance amongst the civilian crews of some of the transports – several, all the way from Gabon southward. Better not to talk about this elsewhere – one had to guard against such infections spreading, especially in view of the poor quality of the ironclads’ crews and the revolutionary element among them. ‘This is the point – I can talk to you, Mikhail Ivan’ich, in the certainty my confidence will be respected. We know each other well enough by now, and you’re a good man, you’ve been pulling your weight as I hoped you would – and on top of that you’re a free agent, you can speak your mind to me – in private – on any subject you choose…’ Those mutinies had been quelled, he added, by Rojhestvensky signalling to the ships’ captains that men who refused to obey orders were to be put into ships’ boats and set adrift. Preferably at night, so that no one would see it happening. A chuckle, a shake of the head: ‘They caved in, all right. It’s well known that Zenovy Petrovich doesn’t issue threats unless he’s ready to carry them out. Although as I was saying, when I saw him yesterday I was horrified. In a month he’s aged twenty years. Keeps it all to himself, you see, doesn’t share any of the strain. And there’s worse to come now. Look, you’re closer to that bottle, Mikhail – put a fair wind behind it, will you?’
The vodka bottle was on the writing table. Michael was sitting on the only chair, Zakharov perched on the foot end of his bunk. Reaching for the bottle, Michael had a close-up of a framed portrait which he’d seen before but which had previously lain flat, was now propped upright. Portrait of a female – not bad looking, but no raving beauty, thirty or thirty-five perhaps. Rather dressy.
An actress, possibly.
‘Help yourself, then pass it over.’
‘You’re an excellent host, Nikolai Timofey’ich.’ He’d half- filled his tumbler, passed the bottle up uncorked. ‘I mean it, you’ve been extremely hospitable right from the start. Considering that I was wished on you by Prince Igor – very decent, much appreciated. But you said a minute ago – worse to come?’
‘D’you know who I mean by Klado?’
‘Klado.’ He remembered. On Suvarov’s bridge during the action against the fishing boats: that tall, rather stupid-looking captain of the second rank, who’d been swearing that the Aurora, at whom they’d been shooting at the time, was Japanese; and what Sollogub had said about him afterwards. The man who’d wanted to encumber Rojhestvensky with even more ancient ships than they’d lumbered him with already, and who’d been landed at Vigo to attend the Dogger Bank inquiry, Rojhestvensky grabbing at the chance to get rid of him. Michael nodded. ‘Writes articles on naval matters, doesn’t he? I was told he commands the respect of the General Staff, even of the Tsar.’
‘Incredibly enough, that is the case. Respects himself even more, though – regards himself as an equivalent of the Americans’ Captain Mahan. Which he certainly is not – he’s a fool and a poseur. Compared to Mahan – well, he does not compare. But now it seems he’s won. They’re putting together something they’re calling the Third Squadron – old coastal defence vessels, anything they can find that floats – and sending it out to us under the command of a rear-admiral by name of Nyebogatov. I don’t know him but Selyeznov tells me he’s a short, tubby man, very easy-going so he’s quite well liked. But you see, it’s lunacy…’
‘Will we wait for them here?’
‘At Nossi-Bé, you mean. Not if our admiral can help it. He’s planning to sail east on January fourteenth. That’s giving Felkerzam the fortnight he says he needs, d’you see. If Zenovy Petrovich can get away then, leaving Nyebogatov and lame ducks behind, he will.’
‘But with Port Arthur likely to have gone by then, and Vladivostok iced-up—’
‘Hole-up somewhere on the Indo-China coast maybe, then make a dash for it when Togo isn’t looking. Or fight him. God knows – I’m only repeating what the staff are guessing. Let’s have another?’
‘No – thank you, but—’
‘Drink to Zenovy Petrovich outwitting those fat swine in Petersburg and the monkeys?’
‘Oh. Well…’
‘You’re impressed by Irina, I notice.’
‘Irina?’
‘A very old friend.’ Nodding towards the photograph in its silver frame. ‘Don’t worry – I told you I wouldn’t let Natasha Igorovna down, and I won’t. They won’t cross each other’s paths, I’ll see to it they don’t.’
In the small hours of the morning the Rus got back from her second visit to Tamatave, bringing the news that General Stossel had surrendered Port Arthur to the Japanese.