Beneath the aurora nd-12 Page 18

  Drinkwater had rehearsed the speech and was watching Dahlgaard carefully. The tiny reactive muscles round the man's eyes betrayed the Dane's understanding. Here before him stood a British captain claiming to be from the frigate he had engaged yesterday. Having extricated his frigate, this man was now back in a small man-of-war cutter, hinting at the presence of an admiral in the offing. The British officer emanated an air of unmistakable confidence. Now he had the effrontery to press Dahlgaard further.

  'Come, sir, what do these men mean to you? What do the French mean to you? They have occupied your country and compelled us to make war upon you. They have forced us to destroy your navy ... would you be known as the officer who lost the last frigate possessed by King Frederick ...?'

  The King's name seemed to rouse Dahlgaard. 'The King of Denmark is good ally of France. I haf my duty, Kaptajn, like you. You have no reason to be in Danske waters. No right to demand I surrender these American ships which are', Dahlgaard waved a hand above his head as though drawing Drinkwater's attention to the swallowtail ensigns at the fort and at the Odin's stern, 'under the protection of my flag.'

  'Please yourself, Captain Dahlgaard,' Drinkwater shrugged, feigning an indifference he did not feel. The Danish commander impressed him as a resolute character, not one to be easily intimidated by Drinkwater's affectation of bombast. He turned to the Americans. 'I shall see you again, gentlemen.'

  'I shouldn't be too sure of that if I were you, Captain,' remarked one.

  'He's bluffing, Dahlgaard,' added the second. 'There ain't no British ships in the offing.'

  Dahlgaard cocked his head, shrewdly weighing up Drinkwater. 'You think no?'

  'No. I'm damn certain of it.'

  Dahlgaard drew himself up. 'You are not welcome, Kaptajn.'

  Aware that his bluff had failed, Drinkwater bowed to Dahlgaard. 'Until we meet again, Captain.' He stared about him, casting his eyes aloft and into the crowded waist. 'A very fine ship, sir. A damn pity to risk losing her.'

  'We'll see about that,' drawled one of the Americans, 'there'll be three of us, you know.'

  Close-hauled, Kestrel beat back down the fiord to meet Andromeda. As ordered, Quilhampton had brought the frigate through the narrows an hour after noon, cleared for action and with her upper studding sails set. A mile short of her, Drinkwater transferred to the gig and left Frey to gill about until he had exchanged places with Quilhampton. With considerable skill, Wells manoeuvred the gig under the bow of the advancing frigate so that Quilhampton had only to haul round and shiver his square sails for the gig to dash alongside.

  Drinkwater met Quilhampton at the rail. 'She's cleared for action, sir,' Quilhampton said. 'Birkbeck has the con.'

  'Did you clap a cable on a bower anchor?'

  'Cables on both bowers, sir. And I've led two light springs outside everything.'

  'Very good, James, I didn't notice them. Thank you. No dice with the Dane, but she's a formidable ship. The Yankees are privateers and spoiling for a fight, so keep out of their range. There's a deal of lumber about their decks, arms and the like, but they'll make as much trouble as they can. Try and sink their boats, but James, for God's sake keep out of trouble. I need you alive, not covered in death and glory!'

  'Don't worry ...' Quilhampton smiled, his eyes sparkling.

  And then he was gone, swung one-handed down into the gig, and Drinkwater was once again absorbed into the business of his own ship.

  'Don't wait for the gig, Mr Birkbeck, Kestrel will tow her. Let's crack on and surprise 'em. Oh, and keep her close inshore.'

  'Aye, aye, sir.'

  'I'm going below to shift my linen.'

  He stared across the water to where the gig was rounding to under Kestrels counter. The white table-cloth was fluttering down from the cutter's bare topsail yardarm. The truce was at an end.

  Captain Drinkwater was back on deck in fifteen minutes. For the second time within two hours, the bluff loomed above him as Birkbeck held the frigate's course close under the rocky prominence. This time the battery opened fire as Andromeda approached. Shot plunged on either bow, pierced the upper sails and parted a brace of ropes, but did no real damage. The rate of fire was slow but steady, a fact Birkbeck remarked upon.

  'I fancy most of the gunners are assisting in transferring cargo out of the Odin into the boats,' Drinkwater observed. The next salvo, fired as they drew ever closer, passed overhead.

  'Good lord, sir, they're firing over us. They can't depress their pieces!'

  'Quite,' said Drinkwater smiling, hoping to heaven his confidence in deep water existing up to the foot of the bluff was correct.

  A glance astern showed Kestrel coming up hand over fist and then they were past the point and the bay was opening up under their lee with the rising pine forest behind, and the muzzles of Andromeda's cannon were pointing at the Odin.

  'When you bear, Mr Mosse,' Drinkwater called as he studied the bearing of the Danish frigate.

  'Fire!'

  And the officers on the gun deck passed on the order.

  The following wind caused Andromeda to carry the smoke of her broadside with her so that it was impossible to gauge the effect of the first shots. The air cleared slowly; glimpses of the enemy's masts and yards were briefly visible in the opening rents, only to be obscured as the larboard battery fired again.

  Beside Drinkwater, Birkbeck was bawling orders to the topmen and waisters detailed to handle the frigate's braces and sheets as he slowed Andromeda, so that her guns might have the maximum effect upon their targets as she swept across the mouth of the bay and her guns emptied themselves first into the Odin, and then successively into the American privateers.

  'Take in the stuns'ls, Mr Birkbeck!'

  Drinkwater's last words were lost in the concussion of another broadside, but this time it was the enemy's and the air was again full of the buzzing of gigantic bees, of a smack and crack as a ball buried itself in the mizen mast above their heads, and the curious sucking of air as another passed close enough to affect their breathing. There was, too, the twang of ropes parting under load, followed by the whirr and thrap of their unreeving and falling across the deck. Somewhere a man screamed, but that first close broadside from the Odin was ragged and their own savage retaliation thundered from Andromeda's side as she swept past and poured her fire into the American ships.

  Above the quarterdeck the studding sails flapped like wounded gulls, were tamed by their ropes and drawn into the tops. A half-mile past the bay Birkbeck looked expectantly at Drinkwater who nodded and the helm was put down.

  'Hands to tack ship! Stand by the braces, there!' Birkbeck shouted, and Andromeda came up into the wind. 'Mains'l haul!'

  It was now that Drinkwater played the only card he held after the empty bluster about an admiral's squadron in the offing.

  He had deduced that the wind which had prevailed from the south-west and died during the previous night, would very likely do the same today. He could, therefore, bear down swiftly on the anchored ships, but once he was past them, as he was now, he had two choices. He could come about on to the starboard tack and stand across the fiord as he had done the previous day, rapidly passing out of range and working slowly to windward before turning and running back again to renew the attack. By then, however, he would have lost the element of surprise.

  His second choice was to come right about on the larboard lack and sail directly into the bay under the guns of an enemy, surrendering all advantages beyond that of hitting all three ships again quickly before they could recover from his first onslaught. But he would risk collision, failure to stay again, and the threat of being raked at pistol shot.

  'Haul all!'

  He now brought Andromeda round on to that potentially fatal tack and bore down into the bay. Despite the hazard of such a move he could cover Kestrel's dash in among the boats by drawing the fire of the Odin and the Americans, and continue to inflict damage on the former as fast as his gunners could serve their pieces, for with three potenti
al enemies, this could be no tip-and-run raid.

  Puffs of smoke along the topsides of all three ships told where resistance was being organized, and columns of water rose up around them as they crabbed down to leeward, gathering way with the yards braced hard against the catharpings.

  Ahead of them, already attracting fire and dividing the concentration of the enemy, Kestrel had danced insolently into the bay in the wake of the frigate and Quilhampton had strewn his heavy carronade shot amongst the boats. Drinkwater could see two of them awash to the gunwhales, the heads of men swimming round them, then one sank, shortly followed by the other. A moment later Kestrel's main boom was swung out and her hull foreshortened as she ran out of the bay towards the approaching Andromeda with enemy shot plunging about her.

  As Andromeda and Kestrel passed on opposite courses, Drinkwater could see the little cruiser's bulwarks beaten in where she had taken punishment, but Quilhampton waved his hat jauntily from the quarter where he stood by the great tiller with its carved falcon's head.

  'Closing fast, sir,' Birkbeck cautioned, and Drinkwater looked round and nodded.

  'This will do very well,' he said, staring at the height of the bluff ahead of them and the hard edge of the fort's rampart against the sky. A ball thumped into Andromeda's hull and another whined overhead. 'I think we should be safe from the fort hereabouts,' he called to the master, 'bring her round now.'

  'Down helm,' ordered Birkbeck, picking up his speaking trumpet. 'Hands to the braces!' he roared. Again Andromeda came up into the wind like a reined horse, exposing her starboard battery to the enemy.

  'Fire!' bellowed Mosse.

  'Stand by the larboard cat stopper!' shouted Birkbeck. 'Rise tacks and sheets! Let go!'

  The starboard battery now bore on the enemy and its cannon belched fire and smoke at the Odin as Andromeda's backed yards checked her headway and overcame it, slowly driving her astern. Her anchor bit the sand and dragged the cable out of the ship, just as Malaburn had done the previous day. But now the act was deliberate, placing the British ship not at a supine disadvantage, but with her guns commanding the enemy and strewing the anchorage with her own shot.

  'Clew up! Clew up!'

  On Andromeda's gun deck the men of the larboard guns now moved over to assist their mates on the opposite side, and the warm cannon poured broadside after relentless broadside into the enemy ships.

  But the Danish gunners had overcome their surprise and, with the two vessels now stationary, parallel and head to wind, the odds were rapidly reversed. Nor were the American ships inert and, though slightly less advantageously stationed, with lighter guns and lacking the rigid discipline of regular naval crews, their guns found the range and began punishing the Andromeda for her effrontery. The crash and explosion of splinters as enemy balls buried themselves in the British frigate's fabric became regular, and musket shot buzzed dangerously about.

  Drinkwater was aware of men falling at their guns, of their being flung back, or thrown aside like dolls in the very act of tending their pieces. He looked up at the fort again. The guns were quiet there and he wondered if the ramparts were pierced for artillery on this side. Whether or not they were, he felt they were again too close under the bluff for carriage guns to depress. Hardly had this satisfactory thought crossed his mind than he found Midshipman Fisher at his side. The boy was shouting and Drinkwater realized that the noise of the action had deafened him. He bent to hear what Fisher had to say.

  'Mr Jameson says to tell you that Mr Beavis has been killed, sir. A shot came in through the ship's side ...' Fisher's voice was distant and Drinkwater had to stare at his mouth to understand him. He could see the tears in the boy's eyes.

  'Is it bad below, Mr Fisher?'

  'Terrible, sir. Collingwood's dead, sir ...' The boy's lower lip trembled.

  'Collingwood?' Drinkwater said uncertainly.

  'The ... the cockpit cat, sir.'

  'Ah, Collingwood, yes ... I'm sorry. Do you go and give Mr Jameson my compliments and tell him we're giving the enemy a pounding.'

  'Giving the enemy a pounding. Aye, aye, sir.'

  Drinkwater looked about him through the smoke. 'Mr Birkbeck?'

  'Sir!'

  'What d'you make of the Odin? We've shot away her mizen ...'

  The words were hardly uttered when there came the fatal crack of chain shot aloft. Drinkwater peered upwards and saw the whole of the main topmast tottering.

  'Not again,' an anguished Birkbeck called despairingly. Aloft the falling main topgallant brought the fore topgallant with it, and then Drinkwater heard something far more serious. A deep boom came from somewhere to starboard.

  'God's bones!' he swore. 'Mortar fire!'

  Amid the falling shot, the smoke and confusion, it was impossible to know where that first shell had fallen. It failed to explode, so Drinkwater concluded it had fallen into the sea before its fuse had burnt down, but he knew it had come from the fort.

  The second, when it came, proved lethal, exploding twenty feet above the waist, showering the entire upper deck, the tops and even those exposed in the gun deck beneath the boat-booms with shards of splintered iron.

  "Tis too hot, sir!' Birkbeck exclaimed, wiping blood from his face.

  'Brace the topsails sharp up, starboard tack. And set the sprits'l!'

  The fore and mizen topsails, though riddled with shot-holes, were still under the command of their braces. Birkbeck ran forward among the wreckage of fallen spars and ragged sails, dragging men away from the upper-deck guns and thrusting them into line at the braces. Greer was frantically using his starter as they dragged the resisting yards round. Aloft they were encumbered by the dependent mass of the upper spars and broken mast.

  Realizing that to wait many moments more would result in the destruction of his ship, Drinkwater ran forward and slipped over the rail on to the fore-chains. Here he quickly found the end of the spring Quilhampton had had prepared and, gathering up a forecasde gun's crew, sent two of them below to the hawse, to draw in the spring and secure it to the cable. Somewhere above and behind him a third shell burst with a dull thump. Drinkwater could hear men screaming, despite his impaired hearing.

  Coming aft again he found the wheel shattered, the four helmsmen either dead or dying. Lieutenant Mosse lay across a quarterdeck carronade, his long and elegant legs doing a last feeble dido.

  'God's bones!' Drinkwater blasphemed again, desperately casting about him. It seemed in the smoke that he was the only man alive, and then Birkbeck loomed up to report the yards braced.

  'Get below and veer cable! I've a spring clapped on it and as soon as the ship's head is cast off the wind, I'll send word to you to cut it!'

  Birkbeck vanished. Drinkwater could only hope the master reached the cable tier without being killed or wounded. He waited, looking up. He could see blue sky above, and the dim geometric pattern of mast, yards and rigging through the smoke. He had to force himself to think, before he worked out it would be the Odin.

  Behind the Danish man-of-war, the outline of the bluff and the ramparts was visible as though through a swirling fog. A foreshortened faint grey arc rose slowly and gracefully above it. The mathematical precision of the thing struck Drinkwater. He could clearly see the shell that caused it, a black dot, like a meteorite in daylight. The little black sphere grew bigger with an accelerating rapidity that astonished him. He drew back cravenly, behind the insubstantial shelter of the mizen mast. Closing his eyes he rested his forehead against the thick wooden tree. Beneath his feet the ship trembled as the gun carriages recoiled inboard, were serviced and hauled, rumbling, out again. The thunder of the broadsides had broken down now. Every gun was served by its crew individually, the men possessed by the demons of blood lust, slaves to their hot and ravening artillery.

  Amid the noise there was a dull thud that Drinkwater felt through the soles of his shoes, and he was aware of a faint susurration. He opened his eyes. The Danish bombardier officer cut his fuses far too erratically. The unexplo
ded mortar shell lay at Drinkwater's feet, half-buried in the decking, its quick-match fizzing and sparking inexorably towards the funnel that carried its contagious fire into the mass of powder packed into its hollow carcases.

  Perhaps a quarter of an inch had yet to burn. It puzzled Drinkwater that the unknown artilleryman had made such a mistake. Perhaps the saltpetre with which the fuse was impregnated was of inferior quality. Perhaps ...

  He regarded the thing with a detached curiosity, quite unafraid. He recalled he was supposed to be doing something; that he had initiated a course of action which had had something to do with Birkbeck.

  Then smoke blew into his face as Birkbeck veered cable, and he looked up. He could see the mizen topsail above his head filling with wind as Andromeda altered her heading, slowly swinging as Birkbeck veered the cable and the weight of the frigate was shared by the spring. Then the wind came over the starboard bow and the ship gathered way, moving ahead.

  He felt a sense of overwhelming relief as he remembered what it was he had dispatched the master to attend to. The ship would be all right; she would sail out of danger now. He could die having done his duty. 'Cut!' he yelled, aware that Birkbeck, far below, could not hear him. 'Cut!' he shouted again, and he thought he heard someone below take up the cry, but was not sure. He could do no more.

  He looked at the shell again, at the rapidly shortening fuse, waiting for the explosion: then it occurred to him that he might douse it. Bending forward he pinched the hot and spluttering end between thumb and forefinger. He felt the heat sear him and transferred his hand to his mouth. He tasted bitterness, but the thing was extinguished. He bent and, with his sword blade and considerable effort, levered the shell from the splintered and cracked deck planking. Only a heavy deck beam below had prevented it from passing through and blowing up in the crowded confines of the gun deck.

  He lifted the black iron sphere and, walking to the rail, put a foot on the slide of a carronade. It had ceased firing and its crew had fallen about it in positions of abandon. Some were obviously dead, their bodies mutilated by the impact of shell fragments. Others looked asleep. He heaved himself up, leant upon the hammock netting and dropped the shell carcass overboard. Then he hung there, hooked by his armpits on the cranes. He longed to shut his eyes and sleep, but he watched the plume of water raised by the splash draw astern as Andromeda stood out of the bay.