Under False Colours (11 page)

'And Captain Littlewood and his cargo?'

'Captain Littlewood may make arrangements among the mercantile fraternity and repair his ship if he is able to. Browne will give what assistance he can, no doubt. Be a good fellow, Ned, and call Dowling in again. Good day to you, Captain.'

October-November 1809

The weeks that succeeded this unpromising interview were tedious in the extreme. Drinkwater's sole positive act was to write to Dungarth explaining his predicament and whereabouts. Of necessity, his words were terse and he carried round in his head the sentence admitting the failure of his mission:

It is with regret that I inform you that due to the tempestuous weather we have been cast up on the island of Helgoland at so late a season as to render the continuation of the voyage impracticable until the spring ...

Diplomatic affairs, Drinkwater knew, might be entirely upset by so delayed an arrival of his cargo.

Pending word from London, Drinkwater had taken Littlewood into his confidence to the extent of allowing the
Galliwasp
's master to give out that their cargo was intended for a secret service to Sweden. It was an open secret that the situation in that country was unstable and a shipment of military stores would raise no eyebrows, particularly as so many of the other ships in Helgoland Road seemed destined for a similar purpose.

Littlewood agreed to this proposal. He had much on his mind and Drinkwater left him to the supervision of the discharge and storing of
Galliwasp
's cargo and the survey of his damaged ship.

For his own part, Drinkwater was allowed a small room in the former Danish barracks and the freedom of the garrison officers' mess, but he was not a welcome guest. The officers regarded him with a suspicion fostered by Hamilton and confirmed by Dowling, while Nicholas, to whom Drinkwater felt a natural attraction, maintained a polite, uncommunicative distance. Although not exactly a prisoner, Drinkwater felt he was afforded the hospitality of the Royal Veterans in order that they might the better keep an eye on him. He took to walking on the wild western escarpment of the island, losing himself among the rocks and the sparse grass in the company of the wheeling seabirds whose skirling cries seemed to echo the bleakness of his mood.

In the frustration of his situation, Drinkwater felt himself utterly bowed by the overwhelming dead weight of a hostile providence. His lonely, introspective thoughts followed a predictable and gloomy circle that bordered on the obsessive. Intensified by his isolation they threatened to unhinge him and in other circumstances could have led him to succumb to the oblivion of opium or the bottle. From his involvement in Russia to the loss of Quilhampton, the train of his tortured thoughts drove him to seek out the lonely parts of the island, to curse and fulminate and regret in equal measure, only returning to what normality was allowed him during his nightly visits to the bleak mess.

Here he found some mitigation of his misery. Lieutenant McCullock of the Transport Service, an elderly naval officer with a lifetime's service to his credit, was not unfriendly in a gruff way; nor was Mr Thomson, agent of the Victualling Board, and from these men he gleaned a little information about the island and its inhabitants.

Perhaps McCullock was cordial only because it was rumoured that the irritable grey-eyed man with the scarred cheek, the old-fashioned queue and the lopsided shoulders was a post-captain in the Royal Navy. If it was true, it behove McCullock to mind his manners. Mr Browne seemed impervious to such a suggestion, though he was sufficiently expansive to explain that the native Helgolanders subsisted from fishing.

'They long-line for cod and 'addock from open boats in companies of a dozen or so men,' he said, 'and every one is licensed to sell liquor by hancient privilege.' Browne wiped the back of a huge hand across his mouth and grinned. 'Gives our noble Governor a parcel o' trouble.' Browne grinned and nodded in the direction of the two sentinels at the beach guardhouse.

The 8th Battalion of Royal Veterans who, with a handful of Invalid Artillery made up the island's garrison, were largely elderly or pensioned soldiers, re-enlisted for the duration of the war with France and her allies. One or two were younger men considered unfit for service with a regular line battalion in Spain.

'Weak in the arm and weak in the head,' Browne muttered, as they passed the two lounging sentries. ''Hain't worth a musket, rum nor bread,' he intoned. 'It's them young, useless buggers that give the Governor his problems.'

It was clear that Mr Browne considered his own drinking, evident from his complexion and the reek of him, to be beyond gubernatorial judgement.

'Weak 'eads can't 'old their liquor, d'ye see.'

They walked down through the village with its neat, brightly painted cottages and fantastically spired church. The helices and finial reminded Drinkwater of those in Copenhagen. Pigs and chickens ran about the cottages, each of which had its own vegetable garden set behind walls of whitewashed stone.

'Then there's the women,' Browne went on. 'Most of 'em are married, and that pastor fellow keeps an eye on 'em when their menfolk are away fishing, but we've got a spot o' bother wiv one or two.'

They watched a buxom, middle-aged woman with flaxen hair and a ruddy face peg a pair of wet breeches on a line of gaily dancing washing. She gave them a shy smile.

'Guten tag
,' said Browne with the proprietorial hauteur of a seigneur.

'Guten tag
, Herr Browne.'

'I observe it is the women who carry the coals to the lighthouse,' remarked Drinkwater.

'It earns 'em a few shillings,' Browne said as they reached the boat landing. Here Browne took his leave and Drinkwater, as had become his daily habit, inspected the progress Littlewood and his party were making on the refitting of the
Galliwasp
.

Emptied of her cargo, they had hauled her down and careened her, exposing the torn sheathing and a hole stove in her planking by a rock. She had escaped serious damage to her keel, though much of her false keel had been torn off in the grounding. They had replaced the damaged planks, doubled them and recaulked her strained seams until, by the end of October, Littlewood had pronounced her hull sound and they set to work on the foreshore, making new spars.

They had been fortunate in finding a quantity of timber on the island, brought by several prudent shipmasters, and they were able to make a number of purchases to facilitate the repair work.

Littlewood daily expressed his satisfaction and Drinkwater acknowledged his report with assumed gratification. In his heart he thought Littlewood would end up the loser, for they daily expected the packet boat with orders from London which would put an end to the Russian mission.

The packet
King George
left Helgoland with Hamilton's letter and Drinkwater's report in mid-October, bound for Harwich. By the end of the month, Hamilton estimated, they should have the instructions that would end Drinkwater's equivocal status, but this proved not to be the case. A breezy October turned into a grey, chill and misty November, when the wind swung east and fell light.

Such conditions, though delaying the mails from England, increased the activity of the smugglers. Fishing boats and
schuyts
of up to thirty tons burthen sailed into Helgoland Road to trade for the luxuries dealt-in by the two dozen merchant houses whose wooden stores crowded the foreshore. They came out from Brunsbuttel and Cuxhaven on the Elbe, Blexen and Geestendorf on the Weser and Hocksiel on the Jahde to smuggle the luxuries Napoleon's Continental System denied the wealthier inhabitants of his reluctant empire. Tea, coffee, spices, Oporto and Madeira wines, silk and cotton, and above all, sugar, were in demand by the new bourgeoisie created by the success of French arms. In small quantities, slipped ashore on lonely landings on the featureless coasts of Kniphausen, Bremen, Oldenburg and South Ditmarsch, these goods found their way across Europe, a reciprocal trade to the brandy, lace and claret which came across the Channel to the English coast.

Frequently the smugglers brought news: either gossip or copies of the Hamburg papers, giving the island its military justification as a 'listening post'. Occasionally they brought intelligence of a graver sort with the arrival of an agent. One such gentleman appeared on an evening in November. Lieutenant Maimburg's arrival coincided with that of His Majesty's gun-brig
Bruizer
which had returned from a patrol along the Danish coast in quest of Danish gun-boats reported to have been sighted off Syllt. The appearance of Lieutenant Smithies of the
Bruizer
and Lieutenant Maimburg of the King's German Legion, was the excuse for a riotous evening in the officers' mess.

Maimburg, whose duties were more that of a spy than a soldier, had brought with him fifteen Hanoverian lads, recruited for the Legion then serving in Spain; he had also brought news of a Turkish victory over the Russians at a place called Siliskia, and a rumour that Napoleon had ordered areas of Hanover ceded to his puppet kingdom of Westphalia, while a matching Eastphalia was to be created as a kingdom for his stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais. Such gossip had the mess buzzing with speculation, and amid the chink of bottle and glass the chatter rose. Sitting quietly, Drinkwater learned also that a week or two earlier, news of peace between France and Austria had been augmented by rumours of joint action by the Emperor of the French and the Austrian Kaiser in support of the Tsar against the Turks.

But these social occasions were infrequent. The life of the colony beat to the slow, intermittent rhythm of news from the Continent and news from England. The delay to the Harwich packet was reflected in the irritability of the garrison officers. For Drinkwater, the long wait became a purgatory.

Hamilton's continuing dislike and Nicholas's cautious indifference made his situation profoundly depressing. He could assume the character of a merchant shipmaster in the line of duty, but to be cast out into a limbo of suspicion was almost more than he could bear.

One afternoon, inspecting the decayed grate of the lighthouse, he caught sight of a sail to the westward. The Harwich packet doubled the buoy marking the Steen Rock and fetched an anchorage in the road. Too agitated to rush down to the barracks, Drinkwater maintained a stoic isolation on the western bluff, where Dowling, thundering up on Hamilton's charger, found him.

Hope leapt into Drinkwater's heart as he watched Dowling coax the beautiful dun hunter over the tussocked grass. The charger was the only horse on the island and the news must have been important for Hamilton to have allowed Dowling the use of it.

'The Governor summons your presence upon the instant, sir,' Dowling called, reining in his mount twenty yards short of Drinkwater. 'Upon the instant, d'you hear?' he added, then wheeling the horse, cantered away.

Drinkwater watched him go; there had been too much of a smirk on Dowling's chops to augur well. He made his way to the barracks as near instantly as his legs would allow and was ushered in to Hamilton's presence. Nicholas was already there.

'Sit down, Captain,' Nicholas said smoothly. Hamilton rose and stood staring out of the window on to the parade ground. It was clear that he was leaving matters to the younger man.

'I'll stand, if you've no objection,' said Drinkwater coldly.

'None whatsoever.' Nicholas picked up a letter which lay before him on Hamilton's desk. 'I'm afraid, Captain, that it appears your situation is more confused than ever. Lord Dungarth has not favoured us with a reply.'

'Not replied?' Drinkwater was taken aback. 'I don't understand ...'

'It seems,' Nicholas went on, 'that there has been a duel in the Government. Lord Castlereagh and Mr Canning have been at pistol-point on Putney Heath.'

'Go on, sir,' said Drinkwater incredulously.

'Mr Canning has, we understand, been wounded, though not mortally. The incident has brought down the Government ...'

'But Lord Dungarth,' Drinkwater began, only to be interrupted by Hamilton turning from the window.

'Has not written, Mr Whatever-your-name-is.'

Drinkwater met the Governor's triumphant gaze with an expression of continuing disbelief.

'I have already spoken with Captain Littlewood,' Hamilton continued, 'he reports his ship will be ready to reload in a day or two. He will return to England as soon as he is able. As for yourself, you will embark in the
King George
and are free to leave aboard her. She will depart in a couple of days. Was I not waiting for a courier from Hamburg, I should order her master to leave at once.'

The implication in Hamilton's words was clear: his disdain, surely unmerited no matter what the misunderstanding that had arisen on their first acquaintance, had developed into a passion. The shock of realization struck Drinkwater with sudden force. It dislodged him angrily from his long wallow in despair. Hamilton's overt prejudice goaded him to a reaction from which all his subsequent actions sprang.

'Sir,' he said, 'I hope fervently to meet you again in circumstances which accord me greater satisfaction.' Then, not trusting himself further, he stalked from the room.

He did not stop walking until he had regained the lonely bluff on the western extremity of Helgoland. Hamilton's perverse attitude, rooted in God-knew-what pettiness, had sent his mind into a spin. There was undoubtedly a good reason why Dungarth had not written. Whatever it was — and it most certainly had nothing to do with the duel fought between Castlereagh and Canning — it was inconceivable that it should result in Dungarth abandoning Drinkwater or his own position at the head of the Admiralty's Secret Department.

Drinkwater wished now he had been more explicit in his letter, at least intimated that Governor Hamilton did not believe he was a naval officer. If Dungarth knew he was at Helgoland, he doubtless assumed Drinkwater would make the best of a bad job. But if he did not ...

Drinkwater recalled Dungarth's own warning that trouble was brewing between Canning and Castlereagh. The consequent ructions, he had guessed, would affect British foreign policy.