Beneath the Aurora (16 page)

‘Nasty place,' said Huke with the true instinct of the pelagic seaman.

And then, as they watched, far beyond the island, beyond the horizon itself, the sun gleamed briefly on distant mountain peaks floating above cloud. The sight was over in a numinous moment and left them staring with wonder.

‘ “To Noroway, to Noroway, to Noroway, o'er the foam,” ' quoted Huke in a rare and revealing aside.

‘Must be thirty leagues distant,' Birkbeck said.

Drinkwater said nothing. He was reminded of the
nunataks
of Greenland which he had last seen from afar off, remembering the enchantment distance lent them, and the harshness of the landscape in reality. On that occasion he had felt relief, for it had been a moment of departure. This was the opposite, and as the mountain summits faded, he wondered whether they had been revealed as portents and what it was that lay in wait amid their inhospitable fastnesses.

He turned his attention again to Utsira. Gone was any picturesque aspect. It was a rampart of rock, to be avoided at all costs, about which the tide ripped past.

‘Put the ship about, Mr Birkbeck, and shorten down for the night. We will see whether daylight brings us the
Kestrel
.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Birkbeck tucked his glass away and picked up the speaking trumpet from its hook on the binnacle. He began bawling orders to the watch on deck.

‘I wonder how many islands we have passed, Tom, in all our combined travels,' Drinkwater remarked idly as the helm went down and
Andromeda
swung slowly to the west, her high jib-boom raking the sky.

‘The Lord knows. I'm afraid I never kept count.'

‘Nor me . . .' Drinkwater was thinking of the island of Juan Fernandez, with its curious rock formation, a great hole eroded through a small cape. Then he recalled the deserters, and the manhunt, and the fight in a cave below the thunder of a waterfall which had ended in the death of the runaways. One had been a gigantic Irishman, the other his lover, the girl they had all known for months as a young seaman named . . . He had forgotten. Witheredge? Witherspoon? Yes, that was it, Witherspoon.
*

How one forgot, Drinkwater mused sadly, how one forgot. Again the spectre of age rose to haunt him. He shook the queer feeling off. He had remembered the girl's shattered and beautiful body earlier that very morning; it had stimulated the coarse joke that had bound his ship's company together. He felt a mood of awful self-loathing sweep over him. He himself had shot the girl, shot her unknowingly it was true, but had nevertheless been the agent of her death. Something of his personal disquiet must have showed on his face, for he sighed and then looked up to see Huke staring at him.

‘Are you all right, sir?'

Drinkwater smiled ruefully. ‘Well enough, Tom, well enough.' He brightened with an effort. ‘An attack of the megrims, nothing more.' He forced a laugh. ‘Too many damned islands.'

*
See
The Bomb Vessel
and
1805
.

*
See
In Distant Waters
.

The morning bore a different aspect. Drinkwater woke to the short, jerking plunges of the creaking frigate as she butted into a young head sea and knew the worst. Dressing hurriedly, he went on deck to find his apprehensions confirmed. As he ascended to the deck, he noticed the hammock of the sick man swinging in isolation beneath the open waist, slung between the boat-booms. Then, as he emerged on to the quarterdeck, the near gale buffeted him, the howl of it low in the rigging. Under topsails and a rag or two of staysails and jibs,
Andromeda
rode a grey sea studded with paler crests which reflected the monotone of the sky. Curtains of rain swept eastwards some two miles away on the lee bow, and the blurred horizon to windward promised more. The decks were already sodden, and much of the good work of the day before was already undone. Staring about him he saw no sign of Utsira.

‘Morning, sir.' Lieutenant Jameson touched the forecock of his hat which, Drinkwater noted, dripped from earlier rain as he held his head down against the wind. ‘A few squalls ha'e blown through, but she's snug enough under this canvas, sir.'

‘Yes.' Drinkwater wanted to ask if they had seen any sign of the
Kestrel
, but it would only have betrayed the extent of his anxiety, for it was obvious there was no sign of the cutter in the grey welter beyond the safety of
Andromeda
's bulwarks. Instead he asked with almost painful inconsequence, ‘Where are you from, Mr Jameson?'

‘Montrose, sir.'

‘And your family? Do they farm?'

‘My father is an apothecary, sir,' Jameson said, with a hint of defiance, as though he was half ashamed and half daring his commander to scoff at his low birth.

‘A useful calling, Mr Jameson. I wonder what he would have thought of the event of yesterday?'

‘I doubt that he would ha'e seen the amusing side of it, sir.'

‘And you? What did you think?'

‘I, sir . . . well, I . . . I don't know . . .'

‘Come, come, I never knew a lieutenant who had no opinion. I'll warrant you had one in the wardroom last night. Perhaps you did not approve?'

‘No! I mean, I don't think I would ha'e done . . . I mean . . .'

‘You mean you
could
not have done it, I sense. Is that not so?'

‘Well, sir, perhaps,' agreed Jameson, whose chief objection had been having to jump around naked himself, though he had taken his discomfiture out on the embarrassed Walsh.

‘Sometimes, Mr Jameson, it is very necessary to do things which seem, at face value, to be ridiculous. Your joke about the flea party was a good one, for, though you may have considered the proposition ridiculous, I am of the opinion that the ship-fever is caused by that annoying little parasite and that he will hop aft along the gangway and nip you as readily as he will nip those men forrard there.'

‘You are very probably right, sir,' capitulated Jameson resignedly.

‘Well, then, perhaps you are more resolute in what you think we should do today. What would you advise?'

Jameson shrugged. He was not used to having his opinion sought, least of all by the captain. ‘Heave to, I suppose, since we are on the rendezvous.' He paused and looked at Drinkwater who said:

‘Nothing more?'

‘No . . . well, yes, I suppose it would be best to run back towards the island, we ha'e hauled out to the nor' west during the night.'

Drinkwater nodded. ‘See to it then,' he ordered curtly and
turned away, to begin pacing the deck along the line of the starboard carronades.

‘Strange old cove,' Jameson muttered to himself, raising the speaking trumpet to his mouth. ‘Stand by the braces, there!' he called, then lowering the trumpet towards the men at the helm, ‘Larboard wheel if you please . . .'

In the cabin Drinkwater was studying the spread charts with Birkbeck when Huke knocked and entered.

‘Fishing boats in sight, sir. I thought at first it was the cutter. I've told Mosse to drop down towards them.'

‘What good will that do, Tom? To maintain the fiction of being Danish we would need to speak . . .'

‘We've a Dane on board, sir,' Huke interrupted, ‘I meant to tell you earlier. His name is Sommer. I have instructed him to lay aft.'

‘Well done. Bring him below.'

Huke disappeared and returned a few moments later with an elderly man who, from his sandy eyebrows, might once have been blond, but whose head was now devoid of hair.

‘You are Sommer?'

‘Yah. I am Per Sommer.'

‘How long have you been in this ship?'

‘Oh, long time, Captain. In
Agamemnon
before, and
Ruby
and some other ships. In King George's service long time.'

‘You have no wish to go home to Denmark?'

Sommer shrugged. ‘I have no family. My mother died when I was born, my father soon after. He was fisherman. I become fisherman. Then one day we have big storm, off the Hoorn's Rev. Later we see ship and I become British seaman. Now
Andromeda
my home. Not go back to Denmark. Too old.'

Drinkwater looked blankly at the elderly man. For a moment or two he was lost in contemplation at the sad biography, moved at the surrender to providence. Had fate compelled Sommer to this comfortless existence just to provide him, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater, with an interpreter at a crucial moment?

‘Lucky for us, sir,' prompted Birkbeck.

‘What? Oh, yes. D'you know why we are flying the Danish flag?'

Sommer shrugged. ‘Not worry very much about flags.'

‘Very well. We want you to speak to the fishing boats ahead, Sommer. I want to ask them if they have seen any strange ships, big ships. American ships, in fact, Sommer. D'you understand?'

‘American ships, yah, I understand.'

‘What about . . . ?' began Huke, but Drinkwater had already considered the matter.

‘I want you to put on my hat and cloak when you speak to them, Sommer, to look like an officer.'

‘An officer . . . ?' Sommer grinned, not unwilling to enter the little conspiracy. ‘Yah, I can be captain.'

And they bowed him out of the cabin with almost as much ceremony as if he were.

The two fishing boats, their grey sails almost indistinguishable against the sea, lay to leeward as the mainyards were swung aback and Sommer hoisted himself up on to the rail. There followed an exchange which, by its very nature, raised Drinkwater's spirits, for it was obvious from the Dane's question and the pointing gestures that followed that it had been positively answered.

‘Give them this,' Drinkwater commanded, holding up a knotted handkerchief. Sommer took the small bundle and tossed it into the nearer boat as it wallowed below them. There were expressions of thanks and Sommer dropped down on deck, taking off the captain's cloak and hat. Drinkwater took them and, in doing so, thrust a guinea into Sommer's rough hand.

‘Thank you, Sommer. What did they say?'

‘Two American ships, sir, sailed into Vikkenfiord three days ago.'

‘Very good. If we take them I shall rate you a quartermaster for prize money.'

‘Thank you, Captain.' The Dane knuckled his forehead and shuffled forward.

‘Haul the mainyards, Mr Mosse! Mr Birkbeck, the chart . . .'

They had located the Vikkenfiord as a long inlet which once, in primeval times, had been formed by the erosion of a mighty
glacier. It appeared like a long finger reaching, with a slight crook in it, into the mountainous interior. Its entrance was very narrow.

‘For a moment I thought it was not going to be on our chart,' Drinkwater confided.

‘ 'Twould have to be well enough known for the Americans to find, sir,' replied Birkbeck.

‘Yes,' Drinkwater agreed, feeling a little foolish, for that was an obvious point and the entire ship knew by now that they were seeking Yankee privateers. ‘We could do with better visibility before closing the coast, but I fear we are more likely to encounter fog.'

‘Aye, I was thinking much the same. This can be a damnable spot . . .'

‘Well, there is no point in dwelling on the matter. Lay us a course to Utsira. We can afford a little further delay and if the Americans were anchored three days ago, it seems unlikely they have left already . . .'

‘They could have slipped out yesterday,' said Birkbeck.

‘True.' Drinkwater could not tell the master why he was certain they had not left, but his own heart quickened, for he was sure they lay within the fastness of the fiord. The weather they had endured would not have encouraged the passage of a ship from Denmark with French arms, having been contrary for a passage out of the Skagerrak, for whereas the Norwegian coast north of Utsira was fissured with sheltered inland passages, the area to the south was not.

‘We will pass another night on the rendezvous,' Drinkwater said firmly, ‘and then, if the weather serves, we will run into this Vikkenfiord and take a look.'

Drinkwater slept well that night and woke in optimistic mood. To his unutterable joy the wind had hauled south-east and Utsira was dead astern, no more than three or four leagues distant. Such a wind shift seemed like an augury of good luck. He shaved, dressed and hurried on deck. The change in the weather had encouraged more of the local fisherfolk to venture forth, and Drinkwater saw this as additional proof of providential approval.

He had not expected to find
Kestrel
in the offing but such
was his mood that he would not have been surprised had she been in sight, and he privately dared to hope that she and her company were safe.

Although it was not his watch, the master was on deck, taking bearings and hurrying below to lay them off on the chart. When he returned to the deck he approached Drinkwater.