Under False Colours (7 page)

'I fear it is an open secret now, sir. I have several of the old
Patrician
s aboard, Derrick, for instance.'

The news that a few hands from their former ship had been transferred with Quilhampton and Frey did not surprise Drinkwater. Quilhampton went on to explain that the brig had been undermanned, his predecessor being frequently compelled to relinquish hands to frigates and sloops desperate for men and under orders for foreign service. The dry-docking of the old
Patrician
at Plymouth had released her company and Drinkwater was rather pleased that the eccentric Quaker who had served as his own clerk was aboard.

'He's rated servant,' Quilhampton said, 'though I employ him as a purser's clerk.'

'If I ever command again, I should not be sorry to have him back.' Drinkwater smiled at Quilhampton's look of surprise. 'I am not entirely in good odour at the Admiralty, James. I once crossed Mr Barrow. That is why I wanted you to have this command: I cannot guarantee you preferment by your personal attachment to my person.'

'But this special service, sir, surely 'tis important enough to warrant some recognition?'

'It is precisely because it must only be recognized by the intended party that it is unlikely to merit attention elsewhere. It is inimical to secret operations that they should be trumpeted. For your own part an efficient execution of your duty will earn my warmest approbation, and therefore,' Drinkwater was about to say 'Lord Dungarth's', but thought better of it. His Lordship's department was not commonly known about in the sea service. It was sufficient for Quilhampton to know he sailed under secret Admiralty orders.

They were just then interrupted by a knock at the cabin door. Mr Frey's head peered round.

'Beg pardon, sir, but the wind's freshening and the merchantman's jolly boat crew are a trifle anxious about the delay.'

'Don't disparage a merchant seaman, Mr Frey,' said Drinkwater rising cautiously. 'Captain Littlewood would only man his boat on my strictest promise that you would not press any of them.'

Frey grinned. 'The thought did occur to me, sir.'

'I'm sure it did.' Drinkwater picked up his hat and went on deck. The tiny ship with her stumpy carronades ranged along her deck was neat and well ordered, even if she did show all the signs of hard service and lack of fresh paint. Drinkwater had exaggerated Quilhampton's chances of preferment. It was frequently the fate of lieutenants-in-command to discover that being posted into a gun-brig was a cul-de-sac to ambition.

'Why is Captain Drinkwater incognito, sir?' Frey asked Quilhampton, alluding to Drinkwater's plain coat, as they watched their former captain being pulled away from
Tracker
's side in the
Galliwasp
's boat. 'And why is he aboard that barque?'

Quilhampton turned abruptly. 'I'll explain later, Mr Frey. At the moment I would be obliged if you'd lay me a course to intercept that bawley. I've a letter to write.'

From the deck of the
Galliwasp
Drinkwater watched Quilhampton's little brig run down towards a fishing bawley, heave-to and pass the fateful letter. He sighed with relief and hoped the affair, if not settled, would cease to weigh on Quilhampton's mind. As for himself, he felt depressed by the interview with his friend, not so much on account of James Quilhampton's amorous miscarriage, as by the wider implications of their meeting. In the stinking room above Davey's chandlery, fortified by gin and a sense of purpose inculcated by Lord Dungarth, and afterwards — misgivings soothed by Solomon's confident assurance — the mission assumed a vital character. As long as he remained detached from the Service it was possible to maintain this assumption; but the sight of Quilhampton's puny little gun-brig with its dozen bird-scaring carronades made him doubt the wisdom or importance of Dungarth's cherished plan. On the one hand the sight and smells of even so small a man o' war were powerfully nostalgic to a sea-officer, on the other the very size of the brig seemed totally inadequate as an instrument of defiance to the French Empire. Moreover, the sight of his old friends had awakened other, more personal memories; the dark preoccupations he had managed to shake off for a while. Frey's report that he had Drinkwater's personal effects aboard
Galliwasp
for safe-keeping, reminded Drinkwater of the painful reasons why he could not have them conveyed home. The death of Tregembo hung over him like a spectre, and continued to do so in the subsequent days as they headed for the Skaw. The ambivalence of his position aboard the
Galliwasp
confined him to his cabin and denied him the occupations he was used to, though Littlewood was an amiable host and allowed him the freedom of his deck. But at that moment of parting from Quilhampton, as he watched
Tracker
swing and her sails fill as she sought to catch up with her consort, Drinkwater's gaze stretched beyond the filling canvas of the gun-brig, taking in the long shingle spit and the twin lighthouses at Orfordness. It was hereabouts that he had fought the Dutch frigate
Zaandam
whose magazine had been blown up by the intrepidity of James Quilhampton while he himself had given the death wound to Edouard Santhonax. It was odd, if not fateful, the way his path had crossed that of the French officer. Providential, he admitted privately, a manifestation of what he held to be a spiritual truth. It had been a desperate fight as Drinkwater sought to bring out of Russia a state secret, and Santhonax attempted to thwart him.

Now Drinkwater was going back, and the thought struck him that perhaps he was still bound to Santhonax, even in death, for the moment of his fall from grace at the Admiralty had concerned the preservation of the secret, and its consequences continued to affect him and those close to him. (See
Baltic Mission
)

'Damn this wind!' bellowed Littlewood, clapping a hand over his hat. 'Why don't it back a point, or even fly to the sou'west.'

It was not a question, merely an explosion of frustration as the northerly wind forced them to lay a course to the eastward of their intended track, driving them towards the Bight of Helgoland rather than north east for the Skagerrak. They had already made a long board to avoid the Texel, and reached the latitude of Whitby with every prospect of fetching the Skagerrak, but the wind had veered a point and obliged them to lay a course of east-north-east, directly for the Horns Reef.

'The season for the equinoctials will be upon us soon,' Drinkwater said consolingly, though he no more liked the delay than Littlewood, for both men were worried about the cold northerly wind hastening the formation of ice in the Baltic.

"Tis too much to ask for a fair wind,' Littlewood said irritably, turning to follow Drinkwater's stare. Astern of them
Tracker
buried her bow, then lifted it, the water streaming from her knightheads and the spray tearing to leeward in a cloud.

'She's about as weatherly as my hat!'

Drinkwater grunted agreement. Even in this wind, which was no more than a near gale, conditions on the gun-brig would be appalling. He recalled his own service in a cutter: it had been wet and gruelling, but at least they had had the satisfaction of going to windward like a witch. Poor Quilhampton was going to have to exert himself to the utmost to carry out his orders. The thought made Drinkwater smile grimly.

'You are amused, Captain?' Littlewood asked.

Drinkwater nodded. 'A little,' he admitted. 'The young fellow in command over there had his head filled with romantic notions the other day. I daresay he has other things on his mind just now.'

Littlewood laughed. 'I'll shorten down for him, if you wish; there's no point in outrunning him.'

'I'd be obliged to you, Captain Littlewood,' Drinkwater nodded, acutely conscious that it was the gun-brig that was to afford them protection, rather than the reverse.

'It's bound to back soon,' said Littlewood, turning away to give orders to his crew, 'bound to ...'

But Littlewood's optimism was misplaced. Nightfall found them shortened to triple reefed topsails and the clew of a brailed spanker as the wind increased to gale force.

September 1809

Drinkwater was unable to sleep. Although
Galliwasp
was not his personal responsibility the habits of command were too deeply ingrained to be swept easily aside. Besides, the moral burden for the former West Indiaman and her mission were laid squarely upon his lop-sided shoulders, so at midnight, wrapped in a tarpaulin, he sought Littlewood and found him at his post on deck.

'There are times, Captain Waters, when the temptation to suck on a bottle in one's bunk and leave the deck to one's mates and the devil are well-nigh irresistible,' Littlewood shouted, staggering across his wildly lurching poop to grab a backstay somewhere behind Drinkwater's right shoulder.

'You don't fool me, sir,' Drinkwater shouted back, grinning in the darkness despite his discomfort. Littlewood's black humour suggested he would be a good man in a tight corner. 'Though I imagine a snug anchorage in the Scheldt seems more attractive than our present position.'

Littlewood leaned towards Drinkwater. 'It's getting no better, Captain,' he said, the confidence imparted in a loud voice to sound above the mounting roar of the rising wind. 'By my reckoning we can let her go 'til morning, but at first light we will have to put about ...'

'You'll have to wear ship ...'

'Aye,' Littlewood agreed, 'she'll not tack in this ...'

Both men stared to windward thinking the same thoughts simultaneously. The
Galliwasp
heeled under the wind's weight, rolling further to starboard as grey seas reared out of the darkness to larboard and bore down upon her. Some broke to windward and the spray from their collapsing crests streamed across their exposed deck with a sibilant hiss. Some she rode over, groaning and creaking in protest as the roaring gale plucked new, higher pitched notes from the Strained weather stays and a curious resonant vibration from the slacker, leeward rigging. Others broke on board, sluicing with a roar across the deck and filling the scuppers and waterways of the starboard waist, while some broke against the hull with Titanic hammer blows that shook the
Galliwasp
from keel to truck. Then the thwarted wave threw itself into the air where, level with the rail, the wind caught it and drove it downwind with the force of buckshot; an icy assault that struck exposed cheeks with a painful impact and left the wet skin to the worse agony of the wind-ache that followed.

The duty watch huddled from the hazard in odd corners, only the mate on watch and the helmsmen weathering it behind a scrap of canvas dodger. Even Drinkwater and the bare-headed Littlewood could not avoid the stinging, lancing spume bursting upon them out of the black and howling darkness.

Ineffectively dodging one such explosion, Drinkwater recovered his balance and dashed the streaming water from his eyes, to stare astern and to leeward.

'What the devil's that?' he asked.

'Bengal fire?' queried Littlewood beside him.

The thrust of the wind sent both men down the deck to leeward. They cannoned into the lee rail, aware that the deep red flare had gone, either extinguished or obscured by an intervening wave crest.

'There's another!' Littlewood pointed, though Drinkwater had already marked the sudden glow.

'Signal of distress from the brig, sir.' The
Galliwasp
's second mate staggered from handhold to handhold to make his report.

'We see it, Mr Munsden, thank you.'

'It'll be the brig, sir.'

'So we apprehend,' replied Littlewood, turning to Drinkwater. 'That young fellow in command, the lovesick one, what stamp of man is he, Captain?'

'Not one to prove craven,' snapped Drinkwater with mounting anxiety. Straining his eyes into the impenetrable darkness that followed the dousing of the second flare, his brain raced as he thought of Quilhampton and Frey struggling, perhaps for their very lives, less than a mile away.

'Captain Littlewood! You'd oblige me if you'd put up your helm and wear ship now, sir! We should fall off sufficiently to catch a sight of the
Tracker
and you've enough men on deck to see to it.'

Drinkwater sensed Littlewood hesitated, then with relief saw his white head nod agreement and heard his shout. 'Mr Munsden ...!'

But from above their heads came a thunderous crack and then the whole ship shook violently as the main topsail blew out.

Littlewood spun round and with a bull-roar galvanized his crew. 'Away aloft there you lubbers, and secure that raffle! Call all hands, Mr Munsden!'

Drinkwater swore with frustration, turning from the flogging canvas to stare again into the darkness on the starboard quarter, praying that on the beleaguered deck of the
Tracker
they would light another Bengal fire. But there was no sign of the flare of red orpiment and Drinkwater succumbed to a sensation of blazing anger as another stinging deluge swept the
Galliwasp
's deck.

'By your leave, sir,' he shouted at Littlewood, shoving past the captain and climbing into the main shrouds, suddenly glad to do something, even if the work in hand was not what was expected of a post-captain in His Majesty's Navy.

He reached the futtock shrouds before he felt the folly of his action come with a shortness of breath and a weakness in the knotted muscles of his mangled shoulder. The power of the wind aloft was frightening. Gritting his teeth, the tail of his tarpaulin blowing halfway up his back, he struggled into the top. Here, he found himself face to face with one of the
Galliwasp
's men who recognized him and made no secret of his astonishment.

'Jesus, what the bloody hell ...?'

'Up ... you ... go ... man,' Drinkwater gasped, 'there's work to be done.'

The mast trembled and the flailing of the torn canvas lashed about them. The air was filled with the taste of salt spray and the noise of the wind was deafening, a terrifying howl that was compounded of shrieks and roars as the gale played on the differing thickness of standing and running rigging, plucking from them notes that varied according to their tension. Each responded with its own beat, whipping and thrumming, tattooing the mast timbers and their ironwork in sympathy, while the indisciplined, random thunder of the rent canvas beat about them.