Beneath the aurora nd-12 Page 11

  As for the poor fellow who had caused all this to-do, he was brought on deck in a hammock and set in the pale sunshine that finally triumphed over the cloud. By mid-morning a light breeze had sprung up from the west and above the already stuffed hammock nettings, spread in the ratlines and along light lines rigged for the purpose, breeches and trousers, shirts and vests and pantaloons, cravats and neckties, scarves and bandanas, socks and stockings, aprons and breeches fluttered in the breeze.

  Amid this gay and unwarlike decoration, Drinkwater paced the deck in deep confabulation with Kennedy.

  'Well, sir, we have done what we can...'

  'I'm told it is very efficacious, that the contagion is spread by the flea and that only extreme cleanliness will extirpate it.'

  Kennedy frowned. "Tis true, sir, that the putrid fever is common to poor conditions, but to attribute it to the flea is somewhat far-fetched.' Kennedy had wanted to say 'preposterous', but in view of the captain's age and rank he forbore. Nevertheless he pressed his argument.

  'If your hypothesis was right, sir, then the disease would be as prevalent among people of the better classes as among the poor; but it is the poor who are most afflicted. The flea is common to both, but dirt and misery are not.'

  'Quod erat demonstrandum, eh, Mr Kennedy?' asked Drinkwater wryly. He was in better humour, glad that matters had passed off as well as they had and that, apart from the surplus bunting, order was now restored to the ship.

  'Exactly so, sir.'

  'I shall not argue the point with you. I only know what I have observed, or heard others speak of. Not all were ancient tarry-breeks.' Drinkwater smiled at his young colleague. 'Keep that fellow in a fever out of the berth deck and we may yet save others. Ah, Tom, are you better for your bath?'

  'I have to say, sir, that for a moment or two, I seriously doubted the wisdom of what you were doing, but', he shrugged and looked about him, 'there seems little sign of ill-effect, beyond the adornments aloft, that is.'

  They all laughed at the first lieutenant's allusion to the fluttering disorder about them.

  'There'll be none, Tom,' Drinkwater said reassuringly. 'It was all taken humorously and most of 'em will know by now that it was for their own good. As for the officers, it was for their benefit too; besides, 'twas a case of noblesse oblige.'

  'Perhaps you are right. I certainly feel better now the gunpowder is all doused. Seems a damned dangerous thing to do, to stum the ship like that.'

  'But you have to dry her through, Tom; you know how oak sweats and she'd been closed down during the storm. After we've exercised the guns I want the bilges pumped dry and then have salt sprinkled into the wells...'

  'Aye, aye, sir,' said Huke, with just a faint trace of resignation in his tone to amuse Drinkwater.

  More officers joined them, and it occurred to Drinkwater that each felt a compulsion to reappear upon the quarterdeck fully accoutred, to reassert their individual status. Whatever the darker motives, they laughed and smiled, exchanging grins with the men at the wheel.

  'Have you heard Jameson's joke, sir?' drawled Mosse.

  'No, pray share it, Mr Jameson.'

  The third lieutenant blushed, made a face at Mosse and shook his head.

  'Come, Roger, or I shall steal it...'

  'Do as you please, damn you, Stephen.'

  Mosse turned insouciantly to Drinkwater and Huke. 'Jameson has some crack-pot notion that we were ridding ourselves of fleas, sir, and, having due regard to the naked disorder so recently upon our decks, likened it to an event of history, sir.'

  'And what was that, Mr Mosse? As I am sure you about to tell us.'

  'Why, the Boston flea party, sir!'

  Despite the misgivings of his officers, Drinkwater had known very well what he was doing. By following the mass drenching with a gunnery exercise he achieved that unity in a crew which, with a less active commander, might otherwise have taken months. He had been lucky in Huke, capitalizing on that diligent officer's hard work, but he was pleased that afternoon, notwithstanding the ridiculous washing that still blew about above their heads, they had loosed three broadsides from each battery, and shot at a dahn-buoy until their ears rang with the concussions of the guns.

  To crown the events of the day Drinkwater cleared the lower deck and summoned the ship's company aft.

  'Well, my lads, it has been an eventful day,' he said, pausing long enough to hear a groundswell of good-natured agreement, 'and it is likely to be succeeded by a number of such eventful days. We are not far from the coast of Norway, and we are here to flush out a few privateers who have been reported lurking hereabouts. In a moment or two I am ordering the hoisting of Danish colours and we shall enter Danish waters. Next time you hear the drum beat to quarters the only surprise will be the one we will give to the enemy! Now, Mr Huke, we have disrupted the ship's routine sufficiently for one day and delayed long enough. Be so kind as to pipe up spirits!'

  Drinkwater went below to a cheer; if there was opportunism, even sycophancy in it, he was undeceived. He had other matters to concern him. Quilhampton was still missing, and the men who had half-severed the gun-breech were among the mob happily awaiting their daily ration of rum.

  'Sir!'

  Drinkwater stirred and saw Midshipman Fisher's head peering round the door. 'What is it?'

  'Mr Birkbeck's compliments, sir, and we've sighted Utsira.'

  'What time is it?'

  'Almost six bells, sir.'

  'Very well.' The boy vanished. Drinkwater roused himself, swivelled in his chair and stared through the stern windows. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and he must have dozed for over an hour.

  'I am growing old,' he muttered to himself. There were not many hours of daylight left and the horizon was depressingly empty. He remembered James Quilhampton's Kestrel with a pang of conscience. 'Old and forgetful.' The thought, too, was depressing.

  Rising stiffly, he went into his night-cabin, opened the top of his chest and poured some water into the bowl recessed there. He threw water into his face, ran the new-fangled toothbrush round his mouth and stared at himself in the mirror. He was sure there was more of his forehead visible than when he had last looked, then chid himself for a fool, for he had done his hair immediately after the morning's dousing.

  On deck he became brisk and eager for a sight of the island. 'Where away, Mr Birkbeck?'

  Birkbeck was standing with one of his mates, a man named Ashley. Both men lowered their glasses. 'Two points to star­board, sir.'

  'Here, sir.' Ashley offered his telescope.

  'Thank you, Mr Ashley.'

  Drinkwater focused the lenses upon the low island that appeared blue and insubstantial, then swept the sea around it in the vain hope that the grey-white peak of Kestrels mainsail would break the bleakness of the scene.

  'Not a landfall to stumble across in the dark, or the kind of weather we laboured in the other night,' remarked Birkbeck.

  'No, indeed ...' Drinkwater lowered the telescope and handed it back to the master's mate. 'Obliged, Mr Ashley.' He looked up at the spanker gaff, where the unfamiliar red swallowtail ensign with its white cross flapped bravely in the breeze.

  'Handsome flag, ain't it? Last time I saw it fly in anger was at Copenhagen,' Birkbeck said.

  'Which ship were you in?' Drinkwater asked attentively.

  'I was with Captain Puget in Goliath.''

  'I don't recall...'

  'In Gambier's attack, sir, not Nelson's.'

  'Ah, yes ...'

  'You were in the earlier action then?'

  'Yes. I had the bomb Virago.'

  They reminisced happily, staring at the distant island as, almost imperceptibly, it took form. Drinkwater forbore from telling Birkbeck the clandestine part he had himself played in the events that led up to the appearance of Dismal Jimmy Gambier's fleet before the spires of the Danish capital in 1807. Instead, Birkbeck wanted to know of his brief meetings with Lord Nelson, which led to the inevitable revelation that Captain Dri
nkwater had not only been a witness to the battle of Copenhagen in 1801, but had also, 'somewhat ignominiously', been a prisoner aboard the enemy flagship Bucentaure at Trafalgar. [See The Bomb Vessel and 1805.]

  'I had no idea, sir,' said Birkbeck admiringly.

  'It was not a post to which much glory accrued,' Drinkwater replied ruefully. 'Fate plays some odd tricks ... I cannot begin to describe the carnage...'

  The blue smudge hardened, grew darker and sharper, its outline more defined. Presently Huke joined them as Utsira revealed itself as a rocky, steep-sided, low island, with the surge and suck of a heavy groundswell washing its grim shoreline. Then, as the sun westered, it threw the rough and weathered surface into hostile relief.

  '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. [See In Distant Waters.]

  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.'

  CHAPTER 8

  A Bird of Ill-omen

  October 1813

  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 lo
ng 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.