The Bomb Vessel (22 page)

The sudden activity of the fleet and the disencumbering of Edward had coincided to throw off Drinkwater's depression. He suddenly felt ridiculously buoyant, a feeling shared by the impish Tumilty whose smile threatened to disappear into his ears.

‘ 'Twill be a fine music we'll be playing to these damned knaves, Mr Rogers, so it will, a fine
basso profundo
with the occasional crescendo to make 'em jump about like eejits.'

‘Let's hope we're not too late, Mr Tumilty,' said Rogers who had not yet forgiven Drinkwater for his mysterious behaviour over Waters.

‘Beg pardon, zur, but Mr Trussel sent me down with more orders just come, zur.'

‘Thank you Tregembo.' Drinkwater took the packet and broke the wafer.

‘Beg pardon, zur, but may I speak, zur?'

‘What is it?'

‘ 'Tis well-known about the ship that the man we landed yesterday was a spy, zur.'

Drinkwater looked at the Cornishman. They both understood.

‘Mr Jex approached me some days ago, zur. It cost him two plugs of tobacco to learn you ain't got no brother, zur.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Now, with your permission, zur, I'll see to your sword and pistols, zur.'

‘They are all right, thank you Tregembo, I have not used them since last you attended to them.'

‘I'll look at them, just the same.'

Drinkwater bent over the new orders. It was a general instruction to the bomb vessels to place themselves under the orders of Captain Murray of the
Edgar
. It was anticipated that they would be used against the fortress at Cronbourg. A note was included from Martin. The commander's crabbed script drew Drinkwater's attention to the fact that it was suspected that
Zebra
had suffered some damage on the Zeeland's Reef and he might yet be able to render Drinkwater a service. Drinkwater fancied he could read the unwritten thought that lay behind that fatuous phrase, that he, Nathaniel Drinkwater, was an intimate of Lord Dungarth. Drinkwater wondered what Martin would do if he knew that the lieutenant, with whom he was currently currying favour, had just assisted a murderer to escape the noose.

Late in the afternoon the brig
Cruizer
was ordered forward to send in a boat to make a final demand of Governor Stricker at Cronbourg as to his intentions if the British fleet attempted to pass The Sound. It revealed to all, including the Danish commander, that Parker was still vacillating.

The following morning, Saturday March 28th, the wind hauled westerly and the temperature rose. The sun shone and the fleet weighed, setting all sail to the royals in an attempt to enter and pass The Sound. But the wind fell light and the contrary current held up the lumbering battleships so that Parker, learning from Brisbane of the
Cruizer
that Stricker had laughed in his face, could not risk his ships drifting under the heavy guns of the fortress. Once again the fleet anchored and in
Virago's
cabin that night they debated how long it took to wear an anchor ring through the shank.

“It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.”

NELSON, COPENHAGEN
, 2 April, 1801

‘Two guns from the flagship, sir.'

‘Very well, what o'clock is it?'

‘It wants a few minutes of midnight, sir; wind's freshened a little from the west.'

Drinkwater struggled into his greygoe and hurried on deck. He looked up at the masthead pendant and nodded his approval as Rogers reported the hands mustering to weigh.

‘Sheet home the topsails, Mr Rogers, and have headsails ready for hoisting. Mr Easton!'

‘Sir?'

‘Have you a man for the chains?'

‘All ready.'

‘Very well.'

‘One thing we
can
do is weigh the bloody anchor in the middle of the night,' offered Rogers in a stage whisper.

‘
Virago
'hoy!'

‘Hullo?' Drinkwater strode to the rail to see the dim shape of a master's mate standing in the stern of a gig.

‘Captain Murray desires that you move closer inshore towards Cronbourg Castle, sir. The bombs are to prepare to bombard at daylight!'

‘Thank you.' Drinkwater turned inboard again. ‘Can you make out
Edgar
in this mist?'

‘Aye, sir, just, she's hoisted lanterns.'

Drinkwater saw the flare of red orpiment from the
Edgar's
stern.

‘Bengal light, sir, signal to weigh.'

‘Very well. Mr Matchett!'

‘Sir?'

‘Heave away!'

Virago
filled her topsails as the anchor came a-trip and the water began to chuckle under her round bow. Keeping a careful watch to avoid collision Drinkwater conned the old ship southeastwards in the wake of the
Edgar
. On either beam dark shapes with the pale gleam of topsails above indicated the other bombs creeping forward ready to throw their fire at the intransigent
Danes. Then, barely an hour after they had got under way, the wind shifted, backing remorselessly and beginning to head them.

‘Topsail's a-shiver, zur,'

‘Brace her hard up, Mr Easton, God damn it!'

‘Hard up, sir, aye, aye . . . it's no good sir, wind's drawing ahead.'

The concussion of guns from the darkness ahead and the dark rose glow of twin Bengal lights together with a blue rocket signalled the inevitable.

‘Main braces, Mr Easton, down helm and stand by to anchor!'

Once again the anchor splashed overboard, once again
Virago
's cable rumbled through the hawse pipe and once again her crew clambered aloft to stow the topsails, certain in the knowledge that tomorrow they would have to heave the cable in again. They were nowhere near close enough to bombard as Murray intended.

All morning Drinkwater waited for the order to weigh as the light wind backed a little. During the afternoon the rest of the ships worked closer inshore and by the evening the whole fleet had brought to their anchors four miles to the north west of Cronbourg castle. Drinkwater surveyed the shore. The dark bulk of the fortress was indistinct but the coast of Zeeland was more heavily wooded than at Gilleleje. The villages of Hellebaek and Hornbaek were visible, the latter with a conspicuous church steeple looking toylike as the sun westered to produce a flaming sunset. It picked out not only the villages of Denmark but small points of metallic fire and the pink planes of sunlit stone where the guns of the Swedish fortress at Helsingborg on the opposite side of The Sound peered from their embrasures.

Men lingered on deck in silence watching the Danish shore where figures could be seen on foot and horseback. Here and there a carriage was observed as the population of Elsinore came out to look at this curiosity, the heavy hulls of the British ships, the tracery of their masts and yards silhouetted against the blood red sunset. It seemed another omen, and to the Danes a favourable one. The image of those ships reeking in their own blood-red element was not lost on Drinkwater who wrote of it in his journal before turning again to the stained notebook he had consulted when the fleet had made for the Great Belt.

The book was one of several left him after the death of Mr Blackmore, the old sailing master of the
Cyclops
. Drinkwater had been his brightest pupil on the frigate and the old man had left
both his notebooks and his quadrant to the young midshipman. The notebooks had been meticulously kept and inspired Drinkwater to keep his own journal in considerable detail. Blackmore had carried out several surveys and copied foreign charts, particularly of the Baltic, an area with which he had been familiar, having commanded a ship in the Scandinavian trade.

Drinkwater looked at the chartlet of The Sound. The ramparts of Cronbourg were clearly marked together with the arcs of fire of the batteries and a note that their range was no more than one and a half miles. The Sound was two and a half miles wide and the fleet could not hope to pass unscathed if they received fire from both Helsingborg and Cronbourg.

Drinkwater was familiar with the current. It had frustrated them already, usually running to the north but influenced by the wind with little tidal effect. The Disken shoal formed a middle ground but should not present any problem to the fleet. It was the guns of Cronbourg that would do the damage, those and the Swedish cannon on the opposite shore.

Drinkwater went on deck before turning in. It was bitterly cold again with a thin layer of high cloud. Trussel was on deck.

‘All quiet, Mr Trussel?'

‘Aye sir, like the grave.'

‘Moonrise is about two-fifteen and the almanac indicates an eclipse.'

‘Ah, I'd better warn the people, there's plenty of them as still believes in witchcraft and the like.'

‘As you like, Mr Trussel.' Drinkwater thought of his own obsession with Hortense Santhonax and wondered if there were not something in old wives' tales. There were times when a lonely man might consider himself under a spell. He thought, too, of Edward, and where he might be this night. Trussel recalled him.

‘To speak the truth, Mr Drinkwater, I'd believe any omen if it meant making some progress. This is an interminable business, wouldn't you say?'

‘Aye, Mr Trussel, and the Danes have been well able to observe every one of our manoeuvres.'

‘And doubtless form a poor opinion of 'em, what with all the shilly shallying. I've never seen so much coming and going even when the Grand Fleet lay at St Helen's. Why your little boat-trip t'other morning went unremarked by anyone.'

The point of Trussel's chat emerged and Drinkwater smiled.

‘Indeed, Mr Trussel, that was the point of it.'

‘The point of it, sir . . .?' said Trussell vaguely.

‘Come, what is the rumour in the ship, eh? Ain't it that the mysterious fellow we took aboard at Yarmouth is, in truth a spy?'

‘Aye, sir. That's what scuttlebutt says, but I don't always hold that scuttlebutt's accurate.'

‘But in this case it is, Mr Trussel, in this case it most certainly is. Good night to you . . .'

In his coffin-like cot Mr Jex lay unsleeping. He felt a growing sense of unease at the quickening pace of events. The fruitless comings and goings of the last week, the weary handling of ground tackle and sails had scarcely affected him since he did no special duty at such times. True the bad weather had confined him sick and miserable in his cabin but he had at least a measure of satisfaction in abusing and belabouring his steward, a miserable, cowed man who was loved by no-one. But even Jex had overcome his sickness eventually and the prolonged periods at anchor had pacified his internal disquiet. Like his Commanderin-Chief, Jex did not wish to pass the fortress at Cronbourg, but whereas Parker was merely excessively cautious, Jex was a coward. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate upon his columns of figures, even when they showed a rise in the fortunes of Hector Jex to the extent of yet wiping out the amount extorted by Lieutenant Drinkwater. Instead he found unbidden images of mutilated bodies entering his mind; of bloody decks strewn with limbless corpses, of the surgeon's tubs filled with arms and legs.

Lieutenant Rogers's bloodthirsty yarns lost nothing in the telling and Jex's disgrace in the action with the luggers had left him a prey to the cruel and merciless wit of his brother officers. Rogers's lack of either tact or compassion only fuelled the constant references to Jex's cowardice so that the purser conceived a hatred for the first lieutenant that began to exceed that he already felt for his commander.

As for the latter, Jex had felt a hopelessness at having been out-manoeuvred yet again by Mr Drinkwater. The ostentatious departure of Waters from the ship had seemed to him to prove the accuracy of Drinkwater's assertions about the mysterious landsman. All Jex could do was hope to determine whether or not a real murder had taken place at Newmarket, and whether or not the Marquis de la Roche-Jagu really existed. He could not himself
conceive that it would have been reported without it being known in Newmarket whether or not the event had actually taken place. And it was this desire to live long enough to prove the arrogant Mr Drinkwater wrong that was constantly undermined by the growing horror of premature death.