The Bomb Vessel nd-4

by Ричард Вудмен

  Chapter Twelve

  A Turbot Bright

  29-23 March 1801

  The cabin filled with a silence only emphasised by the creak of Virago's fabric as she worked in the seaway. The rudder stock ground in the trunking that ran up the centre of the transom between the windows and stern chasers.

  Drinkwater crossed his arms to conceal the shaking of his hands and leaned back in his chair, still staring down at the newspaper on the table. Its contents exposed the whole matter and Jex, of all people, knew everything. He looked up at Jex and was made suddenly angry by the smug look of satisfaction on the purser's pig-like features. His resentment at having been forced into such a false position by both Edward and this unpleasant little man before him combined with his weariness at trying to argue a way out of an untenable position. His anger boiled over, made worse by his awareness of the need to bluff.

  'God damn it, sir, you are drunk! What the devil d'you think you are about, making such outrageous suggestions? Eh? Come, what are these allegations again?'

  'The man Waters is your brother…'

  'For God's sake, Mr Jex, what on earth makes you think that?'

  'I saw you together in the Blue Fox, a house in which I have an interest.'

  A piece of the jig-saw as to how Jex had discovered his deception was now revealed to Drinkwater. Even as he strove to think of some way out of the mess he continued to attack the purser's certainty. He barked a short, humourless and forced laugh.

  'Hah! And d'you think I'd turn my brother forward, eh? To be started by Matchett and his mates?'

  'If he had committed murder.' Jex nodded to the paper that lay between them.

  Drinkwater leaned forward and put both hands on the Yarmouth Courier. 'Mr Jex,' he said with an air of apparent patience, 'there is no possible connection you can make between a man who claimed to be my brother whom you saw in a tavern in Chatham, the perpetrator of this murder and a pathetic landsman who volunteered at Yarmouth.'

  'But the similarity of names…'

  'A coincidence Mr Jex.' The eyes of the two men met as each searched for a weakness. Drinkwater saw doubt in the other man's face, saw it break through the alcohol-induced confidence. Jex was no longer on the offensive. Drinkwater pressed his advantage.

  'I will be frank with you, Mr Jex, for your misconstruction is highly seditious and under the Articles of War,' he paused, seeing a dawning realisation cross Jex's mind. 'I see you understand. But I will be frank as far as I can be. There is a little mystery hereabouts,' he was deliberately vague and could see a frown on Jex's brow now. 'I do not have to tell you that the liberal Corresponding Societies of England, Mr Jex, those organisations that Mr Chauvelin tried to enlist in ninety-one to foment revolution here while he was French ambassador, are still very active. They are full of French spies and you can rest assured that a fleet as big as ours in Yarmouth has been observed by many eyes including some hostile eyes that have doubtless watched our movements with interest…'

  Drinkwater smiled to himself. Jex was a false patriot, a Tory of the worst kind. A place-seeking jobber, jealous of privilege, anxious to maintain the status quo and feather his own nest, even as he aspired to social advancement. To men of Jex's odious type fear of revolution was greater than fear of the pox.

  'I cannot say more, Mr Jex, but I have had some experience in these matters… you may verify the facts with the quartermaster Tregembo, if you cannot take the word of a gentleman,' he added.

  Jex was silent, his mind hunting for any advantage he might have gained from the web of words that Drinkwater was spinning. He was not sure where the area of mystery lay; with the man in the Blue Fox, the landsman Waters or the murder with its strange, coincidental surname. The rum was confusing him and he could not quite grasp where the ascendancy he had felt a few minutes earlier had now gone. He had meant to press Drinkwater for a return of his money, or at least establish some hold over his captain that he might turn to his own advantage. He had been certain of his arguments as he had rehearsed them in the spirit room half an hour ago. Now he was dimly aware of a mystery he did not understand but which was vaguely dangerous to him, of Drinkwater's real authority and the awesome power of the Articles of War which even a pip-squeak lieutenant might invoke against him. Jex's intelligence had let him down. Only his cunning could extricate him.

  'I am not…'

  'Mr Jex,' said Drinkwater brusquely, suddenly sick of the whole charade, 'you are the worse for drink. I have already confided in you more than I should and I would caution you to be circumspect with what I have told you. I am unhappy about both your motive and your manner in drawing this whole matter to my attention.' He stood up, 'Good night Mr Jex.'

  The purser turned away as Virago sat her stern heavily in a trough. Jex stumbled and grabbed for the edge of the table.

  Drinkwater suddenly grinned. 'Take your time, Mr Jex, and be careful how you go. After all if Waters is a murderer you may find yourself eased overboard one dark night. I've known it happen.' Drinkwater, who knew nothing of the purser's cowardice, had touched the single raw nerve that Jex possessed. The possibility of being killed or maimed had never occurred to him when he had solicited the post of purser aboard the Virago. Indeed there seemed little likelihood of the ship ever putting to sea again. Now, since witnessing the horribly wounded Mason die in agony, he thought often of death as he lay in the lonely coffin-like box of his cot.

  Drinkwater watched the purser lurch from the cabin. He felt like a fencer who had achieved a lucky parry, turned aside a blade that had seemed to have penetrated his guard, yet had allowed his opponent to recover.

  He did not know if Jex had approached Edward, and could only hope that Tregembo's explanation, which he was sure Jex would seek in due course, would not betray him. But it was the only alibi he had. He found his hands were trembling again now that he was alone. From the forward bulkhead the portraits of Elizabeth and Charlotte Amelia watched impassively and brought the sweat to his brow at the enormity of what he had done. He wondered how successfully he had concealed the matter behind the smokescreen of duty. What was it Lettsom had said about concealing inadequacy that way? He shrugged off the recollection. Such philosophical niceties were irrelevant. There was no way to go but forwards and of one thing he was now sure. He had no alternative but to carry out his bluff. There was no time to wait for a reply to his letter to Lord Dungarth.

  He would have to land Edward very soon.

  The following morning dawned fine and clear. The wind had hauled north westerly and the fleet made sail to the eastward. The little gun-brigs were taken in tow by the battleships. Soon after dawn the whole vast mass of ships, making six or seven knots, observed to starboard the low line of the Danish coast. First blue-grey, it hardened to pale green with a fringe of white breakers. At nine o'clock on the morning of March 19th the fleet began to pass the lighthouse on The Skaw and turned south east, into the Kattegat. The Danes had extinguished the lighthouse by night, but in the pale morning sunshine it formed a conspicuous mark for the ships as each hauled her yards for the new course. At one o'clock Parker ordered the frigate Blanche to proceed ahead and gain news of the progress of Nicholas Vansittart. He had left Harwich a fortnight earlier in the Hamburg packet with a final offer to Count Bernstorff, the Danish Minister.

  After the hardships of the last few days the sunshine felt warm and cheering. First lieutenants throughout the fleet ordered their men to wash clothes and hammocks. The nettings and lower rigging of the ships were soon bright with fluttering shirts and trousers. The sight of the enemy coast to starboard brought smiles and jokes to the raw faces of the men. Officers studied its monotonous line through their glasses as though they might discern their fates thereby.

  The sense of corporate pride that could animate British seamen, hitherto absent from Parker's fleet, seemed not dead but merely dormant, called forth by the vernal quality of the day. This reanimation of spirit was best demonstrated by Nelson himself, ever a man attuned to the morale
of his men. As the wind fell light in the late afternoon he called away his barge and an inquisitive fleet watched him pulled over to the mighty London. One of his seamen had caught a huge turbot and presented it as a gift to the little one-armed admiral.

  In a characteristically impetuous gesture beneath which might be discerned an inflexible sense of purpose, Nelson personally conveyed the fish to his superior. It broke the ice between the two men. When the story got about the fleet by the mysterious telegraphy that transmitted such news, Lettsom composed his now expected verse:

  'Nelson's prepared to grow thinner

  And give Parker a turbot bright,

  If Parker will only eat dinner,

  And let Lord Nelson fight.'

  But Mr Jex had not shared the general euphoria as they passed the Skaw. He had slept badly and woke with a rum-induced hangover that left his head throbbing painfully. He had lost track of the cogent arguments that had seemed to deliver Lieutenant Drinkwater into his hands the previous evening. His mind was aware only that he had been thwarted. To Jex it was like dishonour.

  Soon after the change of watch at eight in the morning as the curious on deck were staring at the lighthouse on the Skaw, Jex waylaid Tregembo and offered him a quid of tobacco.

  'Thank 'ee, zur,' he said, regarding the purser with suspicion.

  'Tregembo isn't it?'

  'Aye, zur.' Tregembo bit a lump off the quid and began to chew it.

  'You have known Lieutenant Drinkwater a long time, eh, Tregembo?' The quartermaster nodded. 'How long?'

  'I first met Mr Drinkwater when he were a midshipman, aboard the Cyclops, frigate, Cap'n Henry Hope… during the American War.'

  'And you've known him since?'

  'No zur, I next met him when I was drafted aboard the Kestrel cutter, zur, we was employed on special service.'

  'Special service, eh?'

  'Aye zur, very special… on the French coast afore the outbreak of the present war.' A sly look had entered the Cornishman's eyes. 'I'm in Mr Drinkwater's employ, zur…'

  'Ah yes, of course, then perhaps you can tell me if Mr Drinkwater has a brother, eh?' Tregembo regarded the fat, peculating officer and remembered what Drinkwater had said about Waters and what he had learned at Petersfield. He rolled the quid over his tongue:

  'Brother? No zur, the lieutenant has no brother, Mr Jex zur.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'I been with him constant these past nine years and I don't know that he ever had a brother.'

  'And this special service…'

  'Aye zur, we was employed on the Hellebore, brig, under Lord Nelson's orders.' Tregembo remembered what Drinkwater had said to him and now that he had seen what Jex was driving at he was less forthcoming.

  'Under Lord Nelson, eh, well, well… so Mr Drinkwater's highly thought of in certain quarters then?'

  'Aye zur, he's well acquainted with Lord Dungarth.' Tregembo was as proud of Drinkwater's connection with the peer as Jex was impressed.

  'It is surprising then Tregembo, that he is no more than a lieutenant.'

  'Beggin' your pardon but 'tis a fucking disgrace… It's a long story, zur, but Mr Drinkwater thrashed a bugger on the Cyclops and the bastard got even with him in the matter of a commission…' A smile crossed Tregembo's face. 'Leastaways he thought he'd bested him, but he ended in the hospital at the Cape, zur.' He leaned forward, his jaw rotating the quid as he spoke. 'Men don't cross the lieutenant too successfully, zur, leastaways not sensible men.'

  'Bloody wind's still freshening, sir, and I don't like the look of it.' Rogers held his hat on, his tarpaulin flapping round him as he stared to windward. The white streaks of sleet blew across the deck, showing faintly in the binnacle lamplight. Both the officers staggered as Virago snubbed round to her anchor, sheering in the wind, jerking the hull and straining the cable.

  'Rouse out another cable, Sam,' Drinkwater shouted in Rogers's ear, 'we'll veer away more scope.'

  The good weather had not lasted the day. Hardly had the fleet come to an anchor in Vinga Bay than the treacherous wind had backed and strengthened. Now, at midnight, a full gale was blowing from the west south west, catching them on a lee shore and threatening to wreck them on the Swedish coast.

  Drinkwater watched the grey and black shapes of the hands as they moved about the deck. He was glad he had been able to provide them with warm clothing. Tonight none of them would get much sleep and it was the least he could do for them. They were half-way through bringing up the second cable when they saw the first rocket. It reminded them that out in the howling blackness, beyond the circumscribed limit of their visible horizon, other men in other ships were toiling like themselves. The arc of sputtering sparks terminated in a baleful blue glare that hung in the sky and shone faintly, illuminating the lower masts and spars of the Virago before dying.

  'Someone in distress,' shouted Easton.

  'Mind it ain't us, Mr Easton, get a lead over the side to see if we are dragging!'

  Suddenly from forward an anonymous voice screamed: 'Starb'd bow! 'Ware Starb'd bow!'

  Drinkwater looked up to see a pyramid of masts and spars and the faint gleam of a half-set topsail above a black mass of darkness: the interposition of a huge hull between himself and the tumbling wavetops that had been visible there a moment earlier.

  'Cut that cable!' he shouted with all the power in his lungs. Forward a quick-witted man took up an axe from under the fo'c's'le. Drinkwater waited only long enough to see the order understood before shouting again:

  'Foretopmast stays'l halliards there! Cast loose and haul away! Sheet to starboard!' There was a second's suspense then the grinding crunch and trembling as the strange ship drove across their bow, carrying away the bowsprit. She was a huge ship and there was shouting and confusion upon her decks.

  'Christ! It's the fucking London!' shouted Rogers who had caught a glimpse of a dark flag at her mainmasthead. All Drinkwater was aware of were the three pale stripes of her gun decks and the fact that in her passing she was pulling Virago round to larboard. There was more shouting including the unmistakably patrician accents of a flagship lieutenant demanding through his speaking trumpet what the devil they were doing there.

  'Trying to remain at anchor, you stupid blockhead!' Rogers bawled back as a final rendering from forward told where Virago had torn her bowsprit free of London's main chains. The unknown axeman succeeded in cutting the final strands of her cable.

  'We're under way, Easton, keep that God damn lead going.'

  Easton had a lantern in the chains in a flash and Quilhampton ran aft reporting the foretopmast staysail aloft.

  'Sheet's still a-weather, sir…'

  'Cast it loose and haul aft the lee sheet.'

  'Aye, aye…'

  Virago's head had been cast off the wind, thanks to London. Now Drinkwater had to drive her to windward, clear of the shallows under their lee.

  'Spanker, Rogers, get the bloody spanker on her otherwise her head'll pay off too much…' Rogers shouted for men and Drinkwater jumped down into the waist. He wished to God he had a cutter like the old Kestrel that could claw to windward like a knife's edge. Suddenly Virago's weatherly, sea-kindly bluff bows were a death trap.

  'Mr Matchett! Will she take a jib or is the bowsprit too far gone?'

  'Reckon I c'd set summat forrad…'

  'See to it,' snapped Drinkwater. 'Hey! You men there, a hand with these staysails!' He attacked the rope stoppings on the mizen staysail and after two men had come to his aid he moved forward to the foot of the foremast where the main staysail was stowed. His hands felt effeminately soft but he grunted at the freezing knots until more men, seeing what he was about, came to his assistance.

  'Halliards there lads! Hoist away… up she goes, lively there! Now we'll sail her out like a yacht!' He turned aft. 'Belay that main topsail, Graham, she'll point closer under this canvas…'

  'Aye, aye, sir.'

  'Cap'n, cap'n, zur.'

  'Yes? Here Tregembo, I'm here!' />
  'Master says she's shoaling…'

  'God's bones!' He hurried aft to where Easton was leaning outboard, gleaming wetly in the lamplight from where a wave had sluiced him and the leadsman. Drinkwater grabbed his shoulder and Easton looked up from the leadline. He shook his head. 'Shoaling, sir.'

  'Shit!' he tried to think and peered over the side. The faint circle of light emitted by the lantern showed the sea at one second ten feet beneath them, next almost up to the chains. But the streaks of air bubbles streaming down-wind from the tumbling wave-caps were moving astern: Virago had headway. He recalled the chart, a shoaling of the bay towards its southward end. He patted Easton's shoulder. 'Keep it goin', Mr Easton.' Then he jumped inboard and made for the poop.

  'Steer full and bye!'

  Out to starboard another blue rocket soared into the air and he was aware that the sleet had stopped. He could see dark shapes of other ships, tossing and plunging with here and there the gleam of a sail as some fought their way to windward while others tried to hold onto their anchors. He remembered his advice to Quilhampton on the subject of anchors. He had lost one now, and although he had not lost the ship, neither had he yet saved her.

  A moment later another sleet squall enveloped them. He looked up at the masthead pendant. Virago was heading at least a point higher without square sails and Matchett had succeeded in getting a jib up on what was left of the bowsprit. He wondered how much leeway they were making and tried looking astern at the wake but he could see nothing. He wondered what had become of the London and what old Parker was making of the night. Perhaps 'Batter Pudding' would be a widow before dawn. Parker would not be the first admiral to go down with his ship. He did not know whether Admiral Totty had survived the wreck of the Invincible, but Balchen had been lost with Victory on the Caskets fifty years earlier, and Shovell had died on the beach in the Scillies after the wreck of the Association. But poor Parker might end ignominiously, a prisoner of the Swedes.