Beneath the aurora nd-12 Page 8

  'It is a Danish chart, Tom, incomplete and probably poorly surveyed. It is the best the British Admiralty could come up with. The Hydrographer himself, Captain Hurd, sent it...'

  Huke straightened up and looked Drinkwater squarely in the eye. 'There is something out of the ordinary in this business, then,' he said quietly.

  Drinkwater nodded. 'Yes, very. Is it only the chart that has made you think this?'

  'And the manner of your arrival, sir.'

  'Ah. In what way?'

  'I had heard of you, sir. Your name is not unfamiliar.'

  'I had no idea,' Drinkwater said, genuinely surprised.

  'You mentioned the Melusine and a Greenland voyage. And did you not take a Russian seventy-four in the Pacific?' There was a strained tone of bitterness in Huke's words.

  'Luck has a great deal to do with success, Tom…'

  'As does a lack of it with what others are pleased to call failure.'

  'Indeed, but look, see that little fellow doing a dido on the quarter?' They stared across the mile of grey, windswept wilderness that separated the diminutive cutter Kestrel from her larger consort. 'Her commander is a mere lieutenant, like yourself, an élève of mine, God help him, a bold and brave fellow who lost a hand when a mere midshipman before the fortress of Kosseir on the Red Sea. [See A Brig of War.] I have been striving to get a swab for him for years, so do not conceive great expectations; by which I do not mean I will not strive to advance any officer worth his salt.'

  'I shall concede him the precedence,' Huke said, adding, 'he has independent command in any case.'

  'I shall do my best for both of you, but James Quilhampton is a good fellow.'

  'I have not yet met him…'

  'No, had we had more time, I should have dined all of you. I hope that we shall yet have that pleasure, but for now rest assured that if we are successful in our enterprise, then I will move heaven and earth to have those officers who distinguish themselves given a step in rank.' 'And what is this enterprise?'

  'Blowin' great guns, sir!'

  Lieutenant Mosse was a dark blur in the blackness.

  'Indeed it is.' Drinkwater put a hand to his hat and felt the wind tear at his cloak as he leaned into it, seeking the vertical on the wildly gyrating deck. Above his head the wind shrieked in the rigging, its note subtly changing to a booming roar in the gusts which had the almost painful though short-lived effect of applying pressure on the ears. The ship seemed to stagger under these periodic onslaughts, and around them the hiss and thunder of tumbling seas broke in looming chaos beyond the safety of the wooden bulwarks.

  As he struggled past the wheel and peeped momentarily into the dimly lit binnacle, the quartermaster shouted, 'Course dead nor' east, sir.'

  He tried looking upwards at the tell-tales in the thrumming shrouds but he could see nothing but the pale blur of a scrap of canvas somewhere forward.

  'Wind's sou' by east, sir, more or less, been backing an' filling a bit, but tending to veer all the time.'

  'Thank you. What's your name?'

  'Collier, sir.'

  'Very well, Collier, and thank you.'

  He passed from the feeble light of the binnacle into the manic darkness. The moving deck beneath his feet dropped, leaving him weightless. He felt the wild thrust of the storm as Andromeda dipped her stern and a sea ran beneath her. Then the next wave was upon them, hissing and roaring at them, its crest tumbling in a pale, sub-luminous glow that lay above the line of the taffrail. The frigate felt the uplifting buoyancy of its front, she pressed her decks insistently against the soles of Drinkwater's shoes and he was saved from blowing overboard. He reached for and grasped the lanyard of an after mizen backstay, pulling himself into the security of the pinrail where he looped a bight of downhaul round his waist and settled his cloak in a warm cocoon, feeling still the forces of nature through the vibrating rigging.

  He had not forgotten the knack, though he had certainly lost his sea-legs in his months ashore. It was preferable to be up here than cooped in his cabin, for he could not sleep. He was loo restless, his mind too active to compose himself, and even lying in the cot had failed to lull him. The ship was noisy as she strained under the onslaught of the sea. Her complex fabric groaned whilst she alternately hogged and sagged as the following waves lifted her and thrust her forward, then passed under her and she fell back off each crest, into the succeeding trough.

  Added to this ceaseless cycle of stresses was the resonance produced in the hull by the deep boom of the storm in the spars and rigging, that terrible noise that lay above the adolescent howl of a mere gale and sounded like nothing so much as the great guns of Mosse's phrase. And for Drinkwater and the officers quartered in the stern of the ship, there was the grind of the rudder stock, the clink of chains, and the curious noise made by the stretching of white hemp under extreme tension as the tiller ropes flexed from the heavy tiller through their sheaves to the wheel above, where Collier and his four helmsmen struggled to keep Andromeda on her course.

  Secure and familiar now with the pattern of the ship's motion, Drinkwater took stock. They had struck the topgallant masts before sunset, and sent the upper yards down. Only the small triangle of the fore topmast staysail and the clews of the heavy forecourse remained set above the forecastle, yet even this small area of sail, combined as it was with the mighty thrust of the wind in the standing masts, spars and rigging, sent Andromeda down wind at a spanking six or seven knots.

  This, Drinkwater consoled himself, was what frigates of her class were renowned for, this seaworthiness which, provided everything was done in due and proper form, engendered a sense of security. Then a thought struck him with as much violence as the storm.

  'Mr Mosse!' he bellowed, 'Mr Mosse!' He began to unravel himself, but then the lieutenant appeared at his elbow.

  'Sir?'

  'The lantern! Did I not leave orders for the lantern to be left burning for Kestrel to keep station by?'

  'Aye, sir. But it has proved impossible to keep it alight. I sent young Pearce below to set a new wick in it. He should be back soon.'

  'When did you last see the cutter?'

  'I haven't seen her at all, sir, not this watch.' Mosse continued to stand expectantly, waiting for Drinkwater to speak, but there was nothing he could say.

  'Very well, Mr Mosse, chase the midshipman up.'

  A few minutes later Drinkwater was aware of figures going aft with a gunner's lantern to transfer the light. They knelt in the lee of the taffrail and struggled for a quarter of an hour before, with a muffled cheer, Pearce succeeded in coaxing the flame to burn from the new wick and the stern lantern was shut with a triumphant snap.

  Its dim glow, masked forward, threw just enough light for Drinkwater to see the muffled figure of the marine sentry posted by the lifebuoy at the starboard quarter. Neither vigilant sentry nor lifebuoy would do any poor devil the least good if he fell overboard tonight, Drinkwater thought, feeling for poor Quilhampton in his unfamiliar and tiny little ship.

  No, that was ridiculous, James was as pleased as punch with his toy command and had made a brilliant passage from the Chapman light to Leith Road in four days, comparable to the best of the Leith packets and certainly faster then the passage Drinkwater had himself made with Captain McCrindle.

  'She's a damned sight handier than the old Tracker,' Quilhampton had crowed, as he entertained Drinkwater to dinner in the cabin of the cutter aboard which Drinkwater himself had once served. He had proudly related how he had over­hauled one of the packets off the Dudgeon light vessel. [See A King's Cutter.]

  The recollection alarmed Drinkwater. He had so often witnessed pride coming before a fall, and, moreover, he was acutely aware that history had a humiliating habit of repeating itself. He recalled a storm off Helgoland when he had lost contact with his friend aboard the gun-brig Tracker. He had later been overwhelmed by Danish gun-boats, wounded and compelled to surrender, and the ship in which Drinkwater sailed had been wrecked upon the reefs off Helg
oland itself. [See Under False Colours.]

  He discarded the unpleasant memory, choking off the train of reminiscence as it threatened to overwhelm him. The past was past and could not, in truth, be reproduced or resurrected. He stared out into the hideously noisy darkness, aware that the motion of the ship had changed. The sea no longer roared up astern in precipitous and tumbling ridges from which Andromeda flew headlong. Now the crests had gone and, as he craned his head round, he felt the stinging impact of sodden air, the dissolution of those very wavetops into an aqueous vapour that filled the air they breathed.

  Looking up he saw the night was not so dark: a pallid, spectral mist flew about them, streaming down wind with the velocity of a pistol shot, it seemed, so that the masts and rigging were discernibly black again, yet limned in with a faint and tenuous chiaroscuro. For a moment he thought it was St Elmo's fire, but there was no luminosity in it — it was merely the effect of salt water torn from the surface of the sea and carried along by the extreme violence of the wind.

  A man could not face this onslaught, for it excoriated the skin and stung even squinting eyes. It not only made manifest the frigate's top-hamper, it also carried moisture into every corner. Running before even so severe a storm, Andromeda's decks had remained dry. Hardly a patter of spray had hissed over the rail, but now, in the back eddies and arabesque fantasies of air rushing over the irregularities of her upper-works and deck fittings, the sodden air flew everywhere. In minutes Drinkwater's cloak was soaked, as though he had been deluged with a green sea; and while hitherto the wind had not seemed excessively cold, there now struck a numbing chill.

  He tried to imagine what it would be like for Quilhampton aboard Kestrel. The cutter's low freeboard and counter-stern would have made her prey to a pooping sea. If she still swam out there somewhere astern, Quilhampton would have hove her to, he was sure of that. She hove to fairly comfortably, Drinkwater remembered.

  Somewhere, distant in the booming night, the ship's bell tolled the passing hours. The incongruity of the faultless practice of naval routine in such primeval conditions struck no one on the deck of the labouring British frigate. Such routine formed their lifeline to sanity, to the world of order and purpose, of politics and war, and so it went on in its own inexorable way as did the watch changes. The blear-eyed, shivering men emerged on to the wet deck to relieve their soaked and tired shipmates who slid below in the futile hope that some small comfort awaited them in their hammocks. Watch change followed watch change as the routine plodded through the appalling night and, in the end, triumphed.

  For dawn brought respite, and a steady easing of the wind, and found Drinkwater asleep, unrested, half severed by the downhaul. He staggered and gasped as he woke and Huke gave him his hand.

  'God's bones!' he groaned. The furrow caused by the lashing had bruised his ribs and he gasped as he drew breath.

  'Are you able to stand, sir?' Huke's expression of concern was clear in the dawn's light. Even as returning circulation caused him a slow agony and brought tears to Drinkwater's eyes, he found some satisfaction in the knowledge. He had won Huke over.

  'Damn stupid thing to do,' Drinkwater managed, gradually mastering himself as the pain eased. 'How's the ship?'

  'When I heard you had been up all night I came to report. I've had a look round. She's tight enough, four feet of water in the well, but the watch are dealing with that now. One seaman sprained an ankle, but he'll mend.'

  'Is the surgeon competent?' Drinkwater asked.

  'It would appear so, by all accounts. He's a young fellow, by the name of Kennedy. Scutdebutt has it that he had to leave Bath in a hurry. Something about a jealous husband. He's full of fashionable cant and thinks himself the equal of a physician, but he does well enough. At least Bath taught him plenty about clap and the lues.' Huke dismissed the world of the ton with contempt. Drinkwater liked him the more. He began to pace the deck, Huke falling in alongside of him. Every moment the light grew stronger.

  'Odd, ain't it, that hurricane last night knocked the sea down so fast, there'll be little swell today if the wind continues to drop.'

  'Did you look at the glass this morning?' Drinkwater asked.

  'Steadied up.'

  'Good. I'm concerned about the Kestrel.'

  'She'll fetch the rendezvous at Utsira. We're almost certainly bound to be there before her.'

  'Yes, you are very probably right.' There was a reassuring conviction in Huke's words. 'Yes, you're right. Nevertheless…’

  'Don’t concern yourself, sir. I'll have the t'gallant masts sent up again after breakfast and a lookout posted aloft.'

  Very well.' They walked on a little. Then Drinkwater remarked, 'She's a lot easier now.'

  It was relative, of course. The ship still scended and the dying sea surged alongside her hurrying hull.

  'Shall I let fall the forecourse and set the tops'ls?'

  'No, let us wait for full daylight and assure ourselves that Kestrel ain't in sight before we crack on sail.'

  Drinkwater felt much better with a bellyful of burgoo and a pot of hot coffee inside him. Huke, he had learned during their morning walk, prescribed hot chocolate for the wardroom, said it gave the young layabouts a 'fizzing start to the day'. Apparently the idea originated with Kennedy, but Huke had tried it and endorsed it, to the disgust of several of the younger officers. Drinkwater had promised he would try it himself, but not this morning. After so miserable and worrying a night, he wanted the comfort of the familiar and had, in any case, brought a quantity of good coffee aboard in his otherwise meagre and hastily purchased cabin stores.

  Mr Templeton joined him for a cup as he finished breakfast. The poor man looked terrible and stared unhappily at the rapid rise and fall of the sea astern, visible now that Drinkwater had had the shutters lowered. Templeton had been prostrated by sea-sickness before they passed the Isle of May, and last night had reduced him to a shadow.

  'If it is any consolation, Mr Templeton,' Drinkwater said, waving him to a chair, 'the storm last night was one of the most severe I have experienced, certainly for the violence of the wind.'

  'I scarcely feel much better for the news, sir, but thank you for your encouragement.' And, seeing Drinkwater smile, he added, 'I never imagined ... never imagined…'

  'Well, buck up,' Drinkwater said with a cheeriness he did not truly feel. 'We have lost contact with the Kestrel, but perhaps we shall have news of her before nightfall. Just thank your lucky stars that it was over so soon; I've known weather like that last for a week. Today promises to be different.' Drinkwater grabbed the table as Andromeda heeled to leeward and drove her bowsprit at the sea-bed.

  'You mean this is a moderation?'

  'Oh my goodness, yes! Why, you should have been in the old Patrician with me when we fell foul of a typhoon in the China Sea ...'

  But Drinkwater's consoling reminiscence was cut short by a short, sharp rumble that was itself terminated by a shuddering crash.

  Drinkwater knew instantly what the noise was, for it was followed by a further rumbling and crash as Andromeda rolled easily back to starboard. He was out of his chair and halfway to the door before Templeton had recovered from this further shock.

  'Gun adrift!' snapped Drinkwater by way of explanation as he flung open the cabin door and the noise of turmoil flooded in further to assault the already affronted Templeton. Rising unsteadily, he followed the captain, but waited on the cabin threshold. Beside him the marine sentry fidgeted uncomfortably.

  'Number seven gun,' he muttered confidentially to the captain's clerk. The significance of the remark, if it had any, was lost on Templeton. He did not know that the guns in the starboard battery were, by convention, numbered oddly. Moreover, the perspective of the gun deck allowed him to see little. The receding twin rows of bulky black cannon breeches, with their accompanying ropework, blocks, shot garlands and over­head rammers, worms and sponges, looked much as normal. It was always a crowded space, and if there were more men loitering about than usual,
a cause was not obvious. His view, it was true, was obscured by the masts, the capstans, stanchions, and so forth, but the marine's confident assertion meant nothing to him and gave him no clue.

  And then the tableau before him dissolved. The frigate's lazy counter-roll scattered the group of men. With shouts and cries they spread asunder, leaping clear of something which, Templeton could see now, was indeed a loose cannon. The lashings which normally held it tight, with its muzzle elevated and lodged against the lintel of its gun-port, seemed to have given way and parted.

  This had caused the gun to roll inboard, as though recoiling beyond the constraints of its breechings. It had fetched up against one of the stanchions, a heavy vertical timber supporting the deck above. Here it had slewed, perhaps due to one of its training tackles fouling, but this had caused it to swing from right angles to the ship's fore and aft axis, thus giving it greater range to trundle threateningly up and down. Its two tons of avoirdupois had already destroyed a lifted grating, splintered half a dozen mess kids, buckets and benches, and split the heavy vertical timber of the after bitts.

  As Andromeda heaved over a sea, the malevolent mass began to move aft, gaining a steady momentum that caused Templeton, well out of its line of advance, to flinch involuntarily. As the deck rocked, this slowed and then went into reverse, but by now the forces of order were mustered. Templeton could see Captain Drinkwater and Lieutenant Huke (a dour but competent soul, Templeton thought), the marine sergeant and Greer, an active boatswain's mate who had befriended Templeton in an odd kind of way and seemed willing to answer any of Templeton's technical questions. He had asked them at first of Mosse, but that dapper young officer did not conceive his duty to be the instructing of a mere clerk. Greer had overheard the exchange, made in Leith Road before the onset of sea-sickness, and volunteered himself as a 'sea-daddy.'

  Templeton watched fascinated as ropes appeared, sinuous lines of seamen running to keep them clear of fouling as, in a moment of temporary equilibrium, someone shouted: