In Distant Waters (11 page)

‘Mr Hill! Mr Fraser! A moment of your time, if you please . . .'

He was not a moment too soon. So parallel were the courses of the two ships that the angle of bearing for both of them to fire upon the other with any chance of achieving maximum effect, was coincident within a degree or two. Drinkwater had noticed an officer bent over an instrument by the Spaniard's larboard dogvane and made his preparations accordingly.

‘Run out the guns!'

When he had passed his orders he heard the rumble of
Patrician
's 24-pounders as their forward-trained muzzles poked from the heeling frigate's side. His heart was beating, hammering in his chest as, beside him, Fraser sighted along the barrel of one of the quarterdeck eighteens.

‘About two degrees to go, sir . . .'

Drinkwater grunted. There had been some movement on the
Santa Monica
's deck at the appearance of
Patrician
's guns. Would his opponent react?

For a long moment the question seemed to hang, then he saw the officer by the dog-vane bend again. Perhaps they too were waiting in suspense.

Leaning over, the two ships rushed along,
Patrician
ranging slowly up to windward of the Spanish ship, gradually overlapping her larboard quarter close enough to confuse the sea running between them. Above their decks the yards were braced hard-up upon the leeward catharpings, the sails strained against the strength of the wind, driving the foaming hulls relentlessly through the water. From the high-cocked peaks of their spanker gaffs the opposing ensigns of their contending nations snapped viciously, while beneath them the lines of men at their guns, the groups crouching below the rails ready to haul on bowlines and braces, the red-coated marines aiming their muskets from the barricades of the hammock nettings, and the knots of officers on the quarterdecks and at their posts throughout the ships, waited for the orders from the two captains that commanded the destinies of five hundred souls.

‘Infernal machines . . .' Drinkwater heard someone whisper, half-admiringly, and smiled grimly when he realised it was Derrick, caught up in the stirring excitement of this insanity.

‘Bearing coming on sir,' said Fraser matter-of-factly, still bent over the dispart sight of the 18-pounder.

Drinkwater saw the Spanish officer by the
Santa Monica
's larboard dogvane straighten up purposively. Without taking his glass from his eye he gave the order: ‘Fire!'

Gun-locks snapped like the crackle of grass as a squall strikes, then came the immense roar of artillery, the trembling rise of the deck as the ship reacted to the recoil and the sudden burst of activity throughout
Patrician
that followed his order. On the gun-deck below, the heavy 24-pounders belched flame and shot, trundling inboard and snapping their tackles together as their crews swarmed round them, sponging and reloading the monstrous things. On quarterdeck and fo'c's'le the 18-pounders and the brutal 42-pounder carronades swept the deck with powder smoke and the enemy with a hail of iron and langridge.

‘Up helm!'

Behind Drinkwater, Hill was standing by the wheel, shouting through his speaking trumpet while Fraser, released from his duty bent over the dispart sight, was leaping across the deck whence Drinkwater followed him.

‘Smartly there, my lads, stamp and go!'

Patrician
's bow swung towards the
Santa Monica
as the Spaniard's hull disappeared momentarily behind the smoke of her own broadside. The fog of her discharging guns would, for a moment, blind her officers to much of his manoeuvre.

Above his head the braces were easing the yards and then there was a rending crash from forward. Drinkwater felt a slight tremble through the hull, but
Patrician
's turn was unimpeded and then, leaning from the larboard hance, he could see the stern of the
Santa Monica
.

There was a rent in her spanker and her ensign was fluttering down, its halliards having parted as
Patrician
's jib-boom slashed across her deck. Her stern boat was a wreck and hung down from the davits by a single fall.

‘Larbowlines . . . !'

Drinkwater's voice was drowned in the thunder of the larboard guns, fired by their captains as they bore, double shotted and topped with canister they blasted into the starboard quarter
of the Spaniard as
Patrician
sliced obliquely across the
Santa Monica
's stern.

As the smoke cleared Drinkwater caught a glimpse of Comley, the boatswain, wielding an axe on the knightheads, where he fought to free
Patrician
of the obstruction of her smashed jib-boom.

‘Hard on the wind again, Mr Hill!'

‘Aye, aye, sir, full an' bye it is!'

Patrician
turned back to larboard again. She had given ground to the enemy and was now in her lee, but her guns still bore and they were being worked like fury by their crews; flame and smoke roared from her larboard ports as the cannon pointed high. A quick glance aloft showed Drinkwater that barely a shot of the enemy's had told, that their most serious damage had been sustained forward, from their own manoeuvre in crossing the
Santa Monica
's stern to rake her. Drinkwater dismissed that, raising his glass to assess the damage his ruse had effected.

The enemy were hoisting their shot-away ensign into the mizen rigging, and holes were appearing in her sails, but hardly a gun replied to
Patrician
from
Santa Monica
's starboard broadside. Then, as he watched he heard a cheer. Shifting his glass from the enemy's starboard quarter where he could see the splintered remains of her gallery, he caught the toppling maintopmast. For almost a minute it stopped falling, leaning at a drunken angle, held by its rigging to the fore and mizen masts, and then it broke free, crashing downwards and bringing the mizen topgallant with it. The Patricians were whooping about their guns and the officers on the quarterdeck wore broad grins. Drinkwater could see they were rapidly shooting ahead of the Spaniard.

‘Stand by to tack ship!'

But Drinkwater had no need to range up to windward, subjecting the
Santa Monica
to a further raking broadside from ahead. As he watched, he saw the red and gold lowered from the mizen rigging in token of submission.

‘She strikes, sir!'

The news was reported from a score of mouths and more wild cheering broke out from the exhilarated crew of the
Patrician
. All
the pent-up frustration of the past months, all the ill-feeling and resentment, the hopelessness of pressed men, the self-pity of dispirited lovers and the petty hatreds of men confined together for weeks on end, seemed burst like an abcess by the violent catharsis of action.

His eyes met those of the sailing master. ‘I think our sailing was of sufficient superiority on this occasion, Mr Hill,' Drinkwater remarked, repressing his sudden triumphant burst of exuberance.

‘For a Spaniard, sir . . .' replied Hill cautiously and Drinkwater felt the reproach in the older man's tone. He nodded.

‘Yes. You are right; for a Spaniard . . .'

They did not board the prize until the following morning, for the wind threw up too rough a sea for them to launch a boat safely. And when they were successful they discovered their triumph to be short-lived.

Their first broadside had been fired from the starboard guns on a lee-roll. The iron shot had hulled the
Santa Monica
, and damaged her so badly that by the following noon it was clear that her pumps were unable to stem the inrush of water. She began to founder under the feet of her prize crew. Lieutenant Quilhampton, sent aboard the Spanish frigate as prize-master, sent this news back to the
Patrician
by Midshipman Frey.

Reluctantly Drinkwater ordered the prize abandoned and by that evening found himself host to two hundred unwilling and darkly threatening prisoners. They consisted of Spaniards, mission-educated Indians and a large proportion of
mestizos
, a lean and hard-bitten lot led by a tall, gaunt officer who wore the epaulettes of a captain in the Royal Navy of Spain.

‘I am Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater,
Señor
, and I compliment you on the gallantry of your defence. I regret the loss of your ship.' He bowed formally and took his opponent's offered sword.

He met the Spaniard's eyes and found in them more than resignation at the fortunes of war. The deep-set expression of anger and hatred seemed to burn out from the very soul of the man, and Drinkwater recognised in the lined and swarthy face
the man who had bent over the
Santa Monica
's rail and whose order to fire Drinkwater had pre-empted by a split-second.

‘Don Jorge Méliton Rubalcava . . .' The Spanish commander broke off. Drinkwater had no idea whether Rubalcava understood English from this bald announcement.

‘Have I your word that you will not raise a revolt, Captain Rubalcava?' Drinkwater asked, turning the sword-hilt and offering it back to its owner. Rubalcava hesitated and swung to an accompanying officer whom Drinkwater assumed to be his second-in-command. But the other seemed only to be awaiting the completion of the formalities of surrender, before declaring himself a greater man than Rubalcava.

‘He was throwing papers overboard, sir,' Quilhampton volunteered, ‘a fellow of some consequence.'

Drinkwater was watching the two Spaniards. They seemed to be in some disagreement and Rubalcava's anger was suppressed with difficulty. His companion, however, turned to Drinkwater with an unruffled expression, and addressed him in strongly accented and broken English.

‘
Capitán
, Don Jorge he give you his parole and express for him the honour of you give his sword.
Gracias
.' The sentence was terminated by a low bow which Drinkwater awkwardly returned.

‘You speak excellent English,
señor
, perhaps you could tell me whom I have the honour of addressing?'

‘I . . . Don Alejo Joaquin Arguello de Salas, aide-de-camp to His Excellence, Don José Henrique Martin Arguello de Salas,
Commandante
for San Francisco . . .'

Again there was an exchange of bows.

‘Perhaps gentlemen,' Drinkwater invited, ‘you would do me the honour of dining with me and my officers this evening.'

‘
Gracias
 . . . what is it you think to do,
Capitán
?

‘We can discuss that matter later, gentlemen. And now, if you will excuse me, I have much to attend to in seeing to the comfortable accommodation of your men.'

There was a further mutual acknowledgement and Drinkwater found himself favouring the simple directness of Derrick's mode of address above this extravagant over-worked charade of
elaborate bows. He ordered the incredulous Quaker to see the Spanish officers quartered below and turned to Mount to issue orders for the confinement of their seamen.

Mount concealed his grin with difficulty. The bobbing head and sweeping gestures of the quarterdeck had provoked an outburst of merriment along the deck as ill-concealed as the hostility of Captain Rubalcava.

‘Your allies . . . they make for you good wine . . .' Arguello raised his glass and held it so that the candles shone through the rich, dark Portuguese
bual
. Drinkwater had a few dozen bottles of the Madeira, his only really decent wine, bought from the commander of an East Indiaman which had been lying at the Nore. Its broaching was the culmination of a satisfying meal the main course of which had consisted of the last pig from Juan Fernandez. The unfortunate animal had lived on scraps in the manger forward of the ship's breakwater and been slaughtered before they went into action.

‘
Gracias
, Don Alejo . . . you have the same name as the
Commandante
 . . .' Drinkwater phrased it as a question.