Beneath the aurora nd-12 Page 19

  The butcher's bill was appalling. Andromeda lay at anchor on the far side of the Vikkenfiord, not far from where Malaburn had tried to deliver her to the Odin the day, or was it a lifetime, before. Kennedy, the surgeon, stood before Drinkwater and read from a crumpled sheet of paper.

  'Messrs Mosse and Beavis; Greer, boatswain's mate; Wilson, corporal of marines ...' Kennedy read on, thirty-seven seamen and thirteen marines dead and the list of the wounded twice as bad, many mortal.

  The reproach in Kennedy's eyes was insubordinate. 'Thank you, Mr Kennedy.'

  'I did my best, sir, but I cannot work miracles ...'

  'No, of course not. I don't expect that.'

  'You expected it of the ship's company.' Kennedy's voice rasped harshly as he made his accusation.

  Exhaustion and failure made Drinkwater lose his temper.

  He turned upon his tormentor. 'I shared their exposure, damn you!'

  'You've the consolation of doing your duty to your king, I suppose,' conceded Kennedy, equally angry.

  'Mind your tongue, and keep your Jacobite sympathies to yourself!'

  Both men stared at each other. Drinkwater was faint with hunger and exertion. He had had nothing to eat all day and Kennedy was haggard from his foul labours over the operating table. He would, he had confided to his mates, rather have tended the most corrupted fistulae at Bath than hack off the limbs or probe for shards of shell carcass, splinters of wood or grapeshot in the bodies of healthy men.

  Abruptly the surgeon turned on his heel and left the cabin. Drinkwater sank into the single chair he had had brought up from the hold. Apart from dropping the cabin bulkhead, the ship remained ready for action. A bitter chill filled the cabin from the breeze that blew in, unimpeded, through the wreck of the starboard quarter gallery, battered into splinters by several cannon shot from the Yankee privateers. Drinkwater drew his cloak closer round him. His head ached and waves of blackness seemed to wash up to him, then recede again. He wanted to sleep but the cloak could no more keep out memories than the cold. He had an overwhelming desire to weep and felt a first shuddering heave.

  A knock came at the door and Fisher's smoke-blackened face appeared. It momentarily crossed Drinkwater's over-stimulated imagination that this was no mortal visitor but an imp of Satan.

  'Beg pardon, sir, but Kestrel’s just come alongside.' Such had been the decimation among the officers that the midshipman was keeping the anchor watch.

  'Oh, yes.' Drinkwater reproached himself for having momentarily forgotten about the cutter. With an effort he pulled himself together. 'Be so kind as to ask her commander to report aboard.' His voice cracked and he hoped the boy could not see in the gloom the tears filling his eyes.

  Aye, aye, sir ...'

  'By the way, what's the wind doing?'

  'Flat calm, sir.'

  'Good. Very well, cut along.'

  After Kennedy, it would be good to talk to Quilhampton. James understood the brutal and unavoidable priorities of a sea-officer's duty. A few minutes later there was a second knock.

  'Come in, James.'

  But it was Frey who came into the bare cabin.

  CHAPTER 13

  Failure

  November 1813

  Drinkwater knew the worst from Frey's expression. The young lieutenant was grimy from powder smoke, his cheeks smeared and pale, his eyes wild.

  'How did it happen? Tell me from the beginning.'

  Drinkwater hauled himself out of his chair and went to the settee placed below the stern windows. The shutters were pulled and a single battle lantern lit the unfurnished space. Lifting one of the padded settee seats he rummaged and withdrew a half-full bottle. Extracting the cork, he handed the bottle to Frey and gestured to the settee.

  'The glasses are all stowed. Please, sit down ...'

  Frey took the bottle and swigged greedily, sat and offered it to Drinkwater who shook his head. Frey took a second draught and then cradled the bottle on his lap.

  'We followed you directly into the bay and threw several shots among the boats with some success.' Drinkwater nodded; he remembered seeing this and then Kestrel running out towards them as Andromeda bore down into the bay to anchor and bombard the enemy ships.

  'We sustained some damage from the Americans and lost three men killed and two wounded before we extricated ourselves. Then we tacked in your wake and came back astern of you. From what we saw you achieved complete surprise. The Danes seemed uncharacteristically irresolute.'

  'Their decks were cluttered with armaments they were transhipping to the Americans and they had many of their men away in the boats.'

  'Yes. By the time you had come to your anchor the boats had retreated to their respective ships and I had no specific targets. As we bore down, I went aft to obtain fresh orders. The smoke from your guns drifted into the anchorage and made it difficult to see what was going on. To round your stern would have put us uncomfortably close under the guns of the Americans, so James tacked offshore a little, intending to beat back into the bay across your bow and see if anything advantageous offered.

  'We managed to lay a course that not only took us across Andromeda's bow, but also carried us athwart the hawse of the Odin. All the recovered boats were lashed alongside her starboard waist in the security of her unengaged side. It was also fair to assume the gunners on that side would be helping their mates on the other, for she was by then putting forth a furious fire.

  ' "We will cut those boats up, tack and get out before they know what has happened," James ordered, and in we went. I depressed our carronades and James took her in like a yacht. I had time to prime my gun captains and we swept in with terrific effect!

  'I'm not certain how many of those boats we smashed but their big launch was definitely sunk, along with two cutters and possibly a third. As soon as we were past, James put the helm over. We could do nothing else and . . .' Frey's voice faltered.

  'You put your stern to the enemy.'

  Frey nodded. 'They had woken to our presence and we received fire from their quarterdeck cannon. Langridge swept the length of the deck; James, both helmsmen and a dozen others fell. The boat in the stern davits, the binnacle and after companionway — all shot to pieces. The boom's bespattered with the damned stuff and the foot of the mains'l in tatters.'

  Frey paused and shuddered at the recollection. He took another swallow from the bottle. 'We missed stays…'

  Drinkwater could imagine the confusion. With no hand on the tiller, Kestrels rudder would have swung amidships and the turning moment applied to the cutter would have ceased. She would have sat, a perfect target, at something less than pistol shot, off the Odin's starboard quarter.

  'I went aft and put the helm over to make a stern board and we backed the jib, but we were too close under the land to get a true wind and she blew towards the Odin and paid off to starboard again, back on our former tack. We took another storm of raking fire . . .'

  It was a marvel that Frey had not been hit, Drinkwater thought, watching him take a fourth swig from the nearly emptied bottle.

  "Then your shot from Andromeda brought down the Odin's fore and main topmasts and her fire slackened perceptibly. Anyway, Kestrel paid off fast to starboard and we cleared the Odin's stern, thank God! My next problem was the Americans. The Yankees were doing their best, though their fire was nothing compared to the Odin's. They soon saw us though, coming out of the smoke on the Odin's starboard quarter, and quickly laid their guns upon us. I couldn't risk running under their lee, so I gybed and got her on to a broad, starboard reach…'

  'You sailed across the bows of the Americans and across their field of fire?'

  Frey tensed, nodding unhappily. 'I wanted only to get out of that accursed bay, damn it!'

  'I am not judging you, my dear fellow,' Drinkwater said with a gentle resignation.

  Frey relaxed visibly. 'We returned fire,' he said with a shred of pride, 'but lost our topmast and were badly hulled...'

  'And the butcher's bill?'


  'Almost half the ship's company killed or wounded, sir.'

  'God's bones,' Drinkwater whispered, rubbing his hand across his face. He looked at Frey. 'And what of James?'

  'It must have been instant, sir. He was quite shot to pieces

  A heavy silence lay between the two men as they mourned their mutual friend. The bottle dropped from Frey's hand with a thud, recalling Drinkwater to the present. Frey drooped sideways, fast asleep. Drinkwater rose and lifted his legs out along the settee, settling him down. Then he took his cloak and laid it over Frey, tucking it in to prevent him from rolling off the narrow settee. As he took his hands away they were sticky with blood.

  Drinkwater paced the quarterdeck. With his officers decimated and his ship requiring a thorough overhaul and reorganization, he had enough on his mind without grief and the presence of an enemy immeasurably stronger than himself not four miles away.

  After he had sailed clear of the bay, he had brought Andromeda back across the fiord and found the shallows upon which Malaburn had so treacherously anchored the frigate only a day before. Here the ship and her company drew breath beneath the northern stars. A rudimentary anchor watch kept the deck, and most men slept, exhausted by the day's exertions.

  Drinkwater walked up and down, up and down. The extreme lethargy that had seized him earlier, that had driven all thought of Kestrel and James Quilhampton from his brain, had left him. He felt almost weightless, as though he derived energy from the workings of his mind. He did not question or marvel at this manic activity; it did not occur to him that the news of Quilhampton's death compounded the weight of accuracy of Surgeon Kennedy's insubordinate accusation. This fateful personalization of so terrible a truth drove like a blade into his soul, and his unquiet spirit teetered on the brink of reason.

  Up and down, up and down he paced, so that the men on duty, huddled in the warmest corners they could find beneath the wrecked masts, formed their own opinions as they watched the figure of their strange captain. His body was dark against the sky, the relentless scissoring of his white-breeched legs pale against the bulwarks.

  'You know he pinched the fuse out of a shell,' a seaman whose battle station had been at a forecasde carronade whispered to a shivering watchmate. 'Bill Whitman told me he was as cool as a cucumber. Just looked at it for a bit, then bent over and squeezed the fuse. Then he dug the bloody thing up with his sword and dropped it over the side.'

  'Christ, he's a hard bastard!'

  'Makes old Pardoe look like a fart in a colander.'

  'Anyway, bugger Drinkwater. I could do with a drink.'

  'Couldn't we all...'

  'He'll have had one.'

  'Or two.'

  They dozed into envious silence as Drinkwater's restless pacing soothed the fury of his thoughts, ordered their priority and saved him from the descent into insanity.

  'Two watches,' he muttered to himself, 'Jameson and Birkbeck. First to clear the rest of the wreckage, then rig topmasts. Birkbeck will accomplish that, if we are left alone. If...'

  He turned his mind to the problem of the enemy. He was compelled to accept the fact that yesterday's action had been a defeat. He drew no morsel of comfort from anything which Frey had reported. It was perhaps a cold consolation that the Odin's fire had been furious, but Dahlgaard's countrymen had twice before impressed British seamen with their valour and this was mere corroboration. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, to have come so close, to the point of actually observing the very muskets and sabres which would be used to ravage the peaceful settlements of Canada being lifted from the Odin, and to be powerless to stop their transhipment.

  Had he been able to fire at the American ships, he might at the very least have reduced them to a state which no prudent commander would take across the Atlantic in winter. But the presence of the Odin had transformed the situation, and cost Drinkwater any tactical advantage he might otherwise have possessed.

  The irony of it burned into his self-esteem. He shuddered, as much with self-loathing as with cold.

  Faced with such reproach how could there be any satisfaction in knowing he had done his duty? He had spent a lifetime doing his duty and what had it availed? The war ground interminably on, the men he had befriended and then led had died beside him. His friendship seemed accursed, a poisoned chalice. He wished he had been wounded himself, killed even ...

  He drew back from the thought. What would Birkbeck do now if he was dead? The thought struck him like a pistol ball, stopping him in his mad pacing. What was he to do? He felt bankrupt of ideas, beyond the obvious one of slipping unobtrusively out of the Vikkenfiord. Instinctively he sniffed the air. There was something odd ...

  He had not noticed the creeping chill of dampening air. Now sodden ropes dripped on a deck perceptibly dark with moisture. The fog had come down with a startling suddenness, though its symptoms had encroached gradually.

  Fog!

  Even in the darkness he could see the pallid wraiths steal in over the bulwarks, wafted by the light breeze that blew the cold air from the distant peaks down over the warmer waters of the fiord.

  Fog!

  Hated though it was as a restriction on safe navigation, the enfolding vapour was a shroud, hiding them from the enemy. Could he spirit his ship to sea, clear of the gorge? He thought not; the fear of losing her filled his heart with dread.

  Fog!

  Then, as the fog enveloped them completely, the idea struck Drinkwater. Fate tugged at the cord of his despair and wakened hope.

  Templeton had never before experienced so terrible an event as the action in the bay. When he learned that they had anchored to engage the Odin he could not understand so deliberate and foolhardy a decision, until Kennedy, up to his elbows in reeking blood, explained that it was expected of a man-of-war that she be carried into battle against all odds and that to shirk such a duty laid her commander open to charges of dereliction of duty and cowardice.

  'And they wouldn't scruple to charge him either,' Kennedy said, as he completed the last suture and motioned his patient aside and the table swabbed for the next.

  Templeton knew of such things in the abstract, had read a thousand reports in the copy room, but the reality had never struck him with all its terrible implications as the torn and mangled wrecks of what had, shortly before, been men were dragged on to the surgeon's extempore operating table. Convention demanded that a captain's secretary share the risks of the quarterdeck with his commander, but Drinkwater, unused to such an encumbrance, had made it known to his clerk that he expected no such quixotism.

  'Besides,' Drinkwater had said, 'only you and I are privy to the exact details of this matter and, if anything happens to me, you will be best able to advise my successor. Stay below, you may be able to assist Mr Kennedy in his duties.'

  Thus it was that Templeton found himself in the cockpit, among the gleaming scalpels, saws, clamps, catlings and curettes of Surgeon Kennedy's trade when the wounded began to pour below in ever-increasing numbers.

  Tempelton's experience of the previous day's action had, if not inured, at least accustomed him to expect the conventional brutalities of naval war. And the unaccustomed harshness of his existence since joining the frigate, the miseries of sea-sickness and the violence of the ocean had begun the ineluctable process of eroding his sensibilities. But the action in the bay produced so severe a drain upon Kennedy's resources that Templeton found himself inexorably drawn into the actual business of assisting.

  Whereas on the previous day he had merely tied bandages, passed words of consolation along with a bottle among the men, and taken and recorded their names and their divisions, today he had actively helped Kennedy and his tiring loblolly 'boys' in the gruesome business of amputation, excision and debriding. He found, after a while, assisted by rum, a savagery that matched the speed of Kennedy's actions.

  But nothing had prepared him for the horror of discovering Greer's white and mutilated body stretched upon the sheet spread on the midshipmen's chests, of
seeing the mangled stump of Greer's right arm whose hand had so lately transported him; or the shock of the apparent callousness of Kennedy's cursory examination.

  'Nothing to be done. Move him over.'

  Templeton was incapable, in that awful moment, of understanding that Greer's multiple wounds were mortal, his loss of blood excessive, and that no skill on earth could staunch the haemorrhage or close those dreadful wounds.

  'But he's alive!' he protested, staring in outrage at the indifferent Kennedy.

  'His wound is mortal.' Kennedy's tone was brutally honest. 'I don't possess the cunning to prevent death.'

  And Templeton looked again and saw the blue tint to the lips and the pallor of the formerly weathered features.

  'Here.' Kennedy picked up a bottle he kept at his feet and held it out across the body. The loblolly boys dragged Greer from beneath Kennedy's outstretched arm. 'Come, bear up,' Kennedy growled, 'pull yourself together, or men will say you were fond of him!'

  Templeton grabbed the bottle and averted his eyes from Kennedy. The accusation implicit in Kennedy's remark did not strike Templeton until later when, he realized, lying awake while the exhausted ship slept around him, none would make any distinction in the nature of his 'crime' as proscribed by the Articles of War. The thought added immeasurably to his burden of guilt.

  'What is the time?'

  Full daylight glowed through the nacreous fog as Drinkwater woke suddenly from a deep sleep. He was sat against a quarterdeck carronade, sodden from the fog, agonized by a spasm of cramp as he tried to move.

  'Eight bells, sir, morning watch just turning out, I took the liberty of mustering all hands and telling them off in two watches.'