Death of a Chancellor

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There was just one figure on the deck of the ship at four o’clock in the morning. Surely only a madman would venture into the open on such a night, the sky above black as pitch, illuminated by neither moon nor stars, the fierce wind cutting across the decks, a relentless rain slanting down from the invisible sky, the spray from the prow of HMS Fearless, one of the Royal Navy’s newest destroyers, washing and swirling round the madman’s feet, sloshing its erratic way towards the gunwales where it returned to the foaming sea. On the bridge the Captain stared at his instruments and wondered whether he should decrease his speed in case his most eccentric passenger turned into a man overboard.

But Captain William Rawnsley did not alter his course or his speed. One part of his mariner’s brain was permanently, subconsciously, attuned to the beat of the great engines beneath him, the finest and the most modern that the engineers of the Clyde could produce. As long as that heart beat strong and sure he was confident that his ship would do whatever he asked of her. And Captain Rawnsley had made a promise to the madman on the deck in Cape Town at the very start of their journey back to England. He would deliver his passenger on to dry land at Portsmouth at eight o’clock in the morning of Friday the twenty-fifth of January in the year of Our Lord 1901. No earlier, no later. The Captain knew his passenger the madman was anxious to see his wife and family who had been informed of his time of delivery. The Captain himself, as he told the madman, was equally anxious to return to his home. He had a pair of twins waiting for him. And Captain Rawnsley had never seen them since they were born three long months before.

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