A Brig of War (16 page)

Lieutenant Drinkwater slowly paced
Hellebore
's tiny quarterdeck. The almost constant southerly wind that blew hot from the Horn of Africa tended to ease at nightfall and Drinkwater, in breeches and shirt, had come to regard his sunset walks as an indispensible highlight to the tedium of these weeks. Now, as the sun sank blood-red and huge, its reflection glowing on the sea, he felt a bitter-sweet sadness familiar to seamen at the close of the day when far from home. He turned aft and strode evenly, measuring the deck. His eyes were caught by the rose-coloured walls and towers of Mocha to the east, a mile distant. The mud brick of the town's buildings also reflected the setting glory of the sun. The slender minaret pointed skywards like a sliver of gold and beside it the dome of the mosque blazed. Behind the town the Tihamah plain stretched eastward, already shadowing and cooling until, like a fantastic backcloth it merged with the crags and fissures of the Yemeni mountains that rose into a sky velvet with approaching night. It was not the first time that the beauty of a tropical night had moved him, provoking thoughts of home and Elizabeth and the worry of her accouchement. Then he chid himself for a fool, reminding himself that although he knew a good deal about the ship beneath his feet he knew precious little about the fundamentals of human life. Elizabeth would have been long since brought to bed. He wondered whether the child had lived and tore his mind from the prospect of having lost Elizabeth.

Mr Brundell approached him and reported the sighting of the captain's boat. Drinkwater hurried below for his coat and hat, then met Griffiths at the entry.

After the exchange of routine remarks Griffiths beckoned Drinkwater into the cabin, throwing his hat onto the settee he indicated the first lieutenant should pour them both a glass of wine. Flinging himself onto his chair the commander covered his face with his hands.

‘No news, sir?' enquired Drinkwater pushing the wine across the table.

‘Aye,
bach
, but of a negative kind, damn it. It
is
Santhonax.
Wrinch is certain of it.' Griffiths's frequent visits ashore to the delightful residence of Mr Strangford Wrinch had almost assumed the character of a holiday, so regular a thing had they become in the last month. But it was not pleasure that drove Griffiths to the table of the British ‘resident'.

Wrinch was a coffee merchant with consular powers, an ‘agent' for British interests, not all of them commercial. Drinkwater had dined with him several times and formed the impression that he was one of those strange expatriate Britons who inhabit remote parts of the world, exercising almost imperial powers and writing the pages of history anonymously. It had become apparent to Griffiths and Drinkwater that the man sat spider-like at the centre of a web that strung its invisible threads beside the old caravan routes of Arabia, extended to the ancient Yemeni dependencies in the Sudan and the uncharted tracks of the dhows that traded and plundered upon the Red Sea.

Griffiths had long been involved with the gleaning of intelligence, had spent the latter part of his life working for greater men whose names history would record as the conductors of foreign policy. Yet it was a war within war that occupied Griffiths and Wrinch, a personal involvement which gave them both their motivation. And for Griffiths the personal element had reached an apogee of urgency. Santhonax had been their old adversary in the Channel and the North Sea in the anxious months before Camperdown. Santhonax had been responsible for the barbaric execution of Major Brown, a fact that stirred all Griffiths's latent Celtic hatred. Griffiths was an old, infirm man. Santhonax's presence in the Red Sea mocked him as a task unfinished.

So Griffiths sat patiently in the cool, whitewashed courtyard, brushing off the flies that plagued the town, and waited for news of Santhonax. What Drinkwater did not share with his commander was the latter's patience.

In the weeks they had swung at anchor Drinkwater had concluded that Admiral Nelson had sent them on a wild goose chase; that Lieutenant Duval's overland journey to Bombay was sufficient. They had strained every sinew to reach the Red Sea only to find Admiral Blankett was not at Mocha, that he had gone in search of the French squadron and might have by now destroyed Santhonax. The admiral had been told by Wrinch that a French force was loose in the area. Wrinch affirmed the accuracy of his intelligence without moving from his rug where he would sit in
his
galabiya
and
fadhl
with his fellow merchants, with the Emirs el Hadj that led the caravans, with the commanders of dhows who swapped news for gold, pearls or hashish, or fondled the pretty boys Wrinch was said to prefer to women.

Whatever the truth of the gossip about himself Wrinch was shrewd enough to know when an Arab invoked the one true God to verify his lies, and when he reported facts. And Griffiths was not interested in the moral qualities of his sources; for him the world was as it was.

Blankett too, had taken alarm. Red-faced and damning Wrinch roundly he had set off north while the season of southerly winds lasted. After his departure Lawrence had arrived, only to be chased by one of Santhonax's ships, appearing mysteriously in Blankett's rear. Despite this intelligence Wrinch urged Griffiths not to cruise in search of either party. He should simply wait. For Wrinch, waiting and ‘fadhling' were part of the charm of Arab life. For Griffiths they were a tolerable way of passing the time, enduring the heat and sharpening his appetite for revenge. For Drinkwater the delay was intolerable.

‘So we continue to wait, sir?'

Griffiths nodded. ‘I know,
bach
, idleness is bad for the people forrard but,
du
, we have no choice. Wrinch is right,' Griffiths soothed, brushing the flies away from his face. ‘Damned flies have the impertinence of Arabs . . . No, Mocha Road is the rendezvous.' His white-haired head sank in thought. ‘Hmmm,
Yr Aifft
 . . .'

‘Sir?'

‘Egypt, Nathaniel, Egypt. There is great activity in Egypt. Bonaparte has made himself master of Cairo. A general named Desaix is blazing a trail through Upper Egypt with the assistance of a Copt called Moallem Jacob.' He paused. ‘I think Nelson may be right and with that devil Santhonax to reckon with . . .' He raised his white eyebrows and clamped his mouth tight shut. Then he blew out his cheeks. ‘I wish to God you'd shot him.'

Inaction, like the heat, seemed to have settled permanently upon the brig. The pitch bubbled in the seams and Drinkwater had the duty watch keep the decks wet during daylight. They listed the ship with the guns and scrubbed the waterline, they overhauled the rigging and painted ship. Griffiths forbade exercising the guns with powder and a silent ritual was meaningless to the men.
To divert them Drinkwater sent Lestock, his mates and the midshipmen off in the boats to survey the road. Although this stimulated a competitiveness among the junior officers and promoted a certain amount of professional interest, once again highlighting Mr Quilhampton's potential talents, it was limited in its appeal to the hands and soon became unpopular as the boats roamed further afield. Lethargy began to spread its tentacles through the brig, bearing out Appleby's maxim that war was mostly a waste of time, a waste of money and a waste of energy.

As week succeeded week Drinkwater's frustration mounted. He was tormented by worry over Elizabeth, worry that could not easily be set aside in favour of more pressing duties because there were none to demand his attention beyond the routine of daily life at anchor. The myriads of flies that visited them drove them to distraction and the lack of shore leave for the hands exacerbated their own cramped lives.

Strangford Wrinch passed them alarming intelligence, gathered from a certain Hadji Yusuf ben Ibrahim, commander of a
sambuk
. In December of the old year a French division under General Bon had occupied Suez. Bonaparte himself had accepted tribute from the Arabs of Tor in Sinai and reached an accommodation with the monks of the mysterious monastery of St Catherine at the southern extremity of that peninsula. General Desaix was scattering the mamelukes to the four winds in an energetic sweep up the Nile Valley. Egypt had become a province of France and it was clear that, despite Nelson's victory at Aboukir and the subsequent blockade of the Mediterranean coast under Sir Samuel Hood, the French were far from beaten. They might yet move further east and in the absence of Blankett
Hellebore
would be no more than a straw under the hooves of the conqueror.

At the end of January Griffiths ordered them to sea. For a fortnight they cruised between Perim and Jabal Zuqar, exercising the guns and sails. Then they returned to Mocha Road and the shallow bight of its bay, to the heat and flies and the deceptive, fairy-tale wonder of its minaret. Again Griffiths departed daily, smilingly ordering them to submit to the will of Allah, to learn to
keyf
, to sit in suspended animation after the manner of the Arabs.

‘Holy Jesus Christ,' blasphemed the intemperate Rogers in sweating exasperation, ‘the stupid old bastard has gone senile.'
‘Mr Drinkwater!' The knocking at the door was violently urgent. The face of Quilhampton peered round it, white with worry. ‘Mr Drinkwater!'

Drinkwater swam stickily into consciousness. ‘Eh? What is it?'

‘Two ships standing in from the south, sir!'

Drinkwater was instantly awake. ‘Inform the captain! General Quarters and clear for action!'

The midshipman fled and Drinkwater heard the brig come alive, heard the boy's treble taken up by the duty bosun's mate piping at the hatchways. He reached for his breeches, buckled on his sword and snatched up the loaded pistol he habitually kept ready. He rushed on deck.

It was just light and the waist was all confusion with the slap of two hundred bare feet and the whispered exertions of five score of sleep-befuddled seamen driven by training and fear to their stations.

Drinkwater picked up the night glass from its box and did the required mental gymnastics with its inverted image. He swept the horizon and steadied it on the two shapes standing into the road. The larger vessel might be a frigate. Some of the new French frigates were big vessels, yet she seemed too high and not long enough to be a French thoroughbred. The smaller ship was clearly a brig of their own size.

Griffiths appeared. ‘Hoist the private signal, Mr Drinkwater!'

Rogers reported the batteries cleared for action. ‘Very well, Mr Rogers. Man the starboard. Mr Drinkwater, set tight the spring. Traverse three points to larboard!'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Drinkwater cast a final glance at Quilhampton's party hoisting the private signal to the lee foretopsail yardarm where the wind spread it for the approaching ships to see. ‘Mr Grey, waisters to the capstan!'

Hellebore
trembled slightly as the spring came tight and she turned off the wind, bringing her starboard broadside to bear upon the strangers. Drinkwater watched apprehensively. There was no reply to the private signal.

‘Starboard battery made ready, sir,' Rogers reported. All activity had ceased now, the gun crews squatting expectantly around their pieces, the captains kneeling off to one side of the recoil tracks, the lanyards tight in their hands.

Hellebore
was a sitting duck, silhouetted against the sunrise while the newcomers approached out of the night shadows.

‘Mr Rogers! Fire Number One gun astern of her if you please.'

Drinkwater raised his glass and watched the bigger of the two ships. Forward the gun barked. Daylight grew rapidly, distinct rays from the rising sun fanned out from behind the crags of the Yemeni mountains. As the muezzin called the faithful to prayer from the distant minaret of Mocha, Drinkwater saw the British ensign hoisted to the peak of the approaching ships and an answering puff of smoke from the off-bow of the bigger one.

‘British ensign, sir.'

‘Then answer at the dip.'

An hour later he was anxiously waiting for Griffiths to return from the fifty gun
Centurion
, commanded by Captain Rainier.

Drinkwater ran a surreptitious finger round the inside of his stock. He could not understand why, in the heat of the Red Sea, the Royal Navy could not relax its formality sufficiently to allow officers to remove their broadcloth coats when dining with their seniors. After all, this moment, when the humidor of cheroots followed the decanter of port round the table, was tacitly licensed for informality.

They were listening to an anecdote concerning the social life of Bombay told by
Centurion's
first lieutenant. It was an irreverent story and concerned a general officer in the East India Company's service whose appetite for women was preserved within strictly formal bounds: ‘. . . and then, sir, when the nautch-girl threw her legs round him and displayed a certain amount of enthusiasm for the old boy, d'you see, he ceased his exertions and glared down at her; “any more of this familiarity,” the old bastard said, “and this coupling's off'!'

The easy laughter of
Centurion
's officers was joined by that of the young commander of the eighteen-gun brig
Albatross
, a man more than ten years Drinkwater's junior. It seemed that all these officers from the India station led a life of voluptuous ease and licence. It suddenly rankled Nathaniel that their partners with Duncan in the grey North Sea, with St Vincent off Cadiz and with Nelson in the Mediterranean led a different life. He thought of the rock off Ushant and of the storm-lashed squadron that kept a ceaseless watch on Brest and, in the smoky heat of Captain Rainier's cabin, had a sudden poignant urge to be part of that windy scene, where the rain squalls swept like curtains across the sky, obscuring the reefs that waited impassively to leeward of the
lumbering divisions of British watchdogs. This effete bunch of well-laundered, red-faced hedonists made Drinkwater feel uncomfortable, offended his puritan sensibilities. It was as if overlong exposure to the heady tropical beauty of Indian nights had affected them with moon-madness.