Then Drinkwater realised that the rudder stock had been shot to pieces and the tiller merely fallen to the deck, taking the men with it. They picked themselves up unhurt, but Drinkwater's eyes met those of Hill and both men knew Melusine was immobilised. Two minutes later she bore off before the wind and with a jarring crash that made her entire fabric judder she struck Nimrod amidships.
'Boarders awa-a-way!' Mad with frustration and anger Drinkwater lugged out his borrowed sword and grabbed a pistol from his waistband and ran forward. Men left the guns and grabbed pikes from the racks by the masts and cutlasses gleamed in the sunshine that beat hot upon their backs as they crowded over the fo'c's'le and scrambled down onto the whaler's deck.
Quilhampton was ahead of Drinkwater and had reached the Nimrod's poop where Ellerby stood aiming his great brass harpoon gun into the Nimrod's waist as Drinkwater led his boarders aft. A cluster of men had gathered round him but the majority of his crew, over twenty men, were dodging backwards into whatever shelter the deck of the whaler offered, making gestures of surrender and calling for quarter.
'Mr Q! Stand aside, damn it!' Drinkwater called, his voice icy with suppressed fury. He saw Ellerby raise the huge gun, saw its barrel foreshorten as the piece was aimed at his own breast and heard the big Yorkshireman yell:
'Stand fast, Cap'n Drinkwater! D'you hear me! Stand fast!'
But Drinkwater was moving aft and saw the smoke from the gun. He felt the rush of air past his cheek as the harpoon narrowly missed him and a second later he was shoving Quilhampton aside.
Somebody had passed Ellerby a whale-lance and its long shaft kept Drinkwater at a distance. 'You traitorous bastard, Ellerby. Put that thing down, or by God, I'll see you swing…'
Drinkwater was forced backwards, stumbled and fell over as Ellerby, his face a mask of hatred, stabbed forward with the razor-sharp lance. Suddenly Ellerby had descended the short ladder from Nimrod's poop and stood over Drinkwater.
Aware of the quivering lance and the fanatical light in Ellerby's pale blue eyes Drinkwater could think only of the pistol he had half fallen on. Even as Ellerby stabbed downward Drinkwater rolled over, his thumb pulling the hammer back to full cock and his finger squeezing the trigger.
He felt the lance head cut him, felt the cleanness of the keen edge with a kind of detachment that told him that it was not fatal, that the lance had merely skidded round his abdomen, through the thin layer of muscles over his right ribs. He stood up, bleeding through the rent in his coat.
Ellerby was leaning drunkenly on the lance that, having wounded Drinkwater, had stuck in the deck. The beginnings of a roar of pain were welling up from him and streaming through his beard in a shower of spittle. Drinkwater could not see where the ball had entered EUerby's body, but as he crashed forward onto the deck its point of egress was bloodily conspicuous. His spine was shattered in the small of his back and the roar of impotence and pain faded to a wheezing respiration.
Drinkwater pressed his hand to his own flank and looked down into his fallen foe. EUerby's wound was mortal and, as the realisation spread men began to move again. The whale-ship crew threw down their weapons and James Quilhampton, casting a single look at Drinkwater, gave orders to take possession of the Nimrod.
Drinkwater turned, aware of blood warm on his hand. Before him little Mr Frey was trying to attract attention.
'Yes, Mr Frey? What is it?'
Frey pointed back across Melusine's deck to where the Requin could be seen looming out of the smoke.
'B… beg pardon, sir, but Mr Hill's compliments and the Requin is bearing up to windward.'
As if to lend emphasis to the urgency of Frey's message the multiple concussion of Requin's broadside filled the air, while at Drinkwater's feet Ellerby gave up the ghost.
Chapter Nineteen
The Plagues of Egypt
August 1803
Drinkwater felt the relief of the broad bandage securing the thick pledget to his side. He stared through the smoke trying to ignore Skeete who was tugging his shirt down after completing the dressing.
'That'll do, damn it!' he shouted above the noise of the guns.
'Aye, aye, sir.' Skeete grinned maliciously through his rotten teeth and Drinkwater tucked his shirt tails impatiently into his waistband still trying to divine the intentions of Requin's commander.
Leaving Lord Walmsley in command of Nimrod Drinkwater and the boarding party had returned to Melusine although the whaler and sloop still lay locked together. Requin lay just to windward, firing into the British ship with her heavier guns. At every discharge of her cannon they were swept by an iron storm. There were dead and dying men lying on the gratings where their mates had dragged them to be clear of the guns and from where the surgeon's party selected those worthy to be carried below to undergo the horrors of amputation, curettage or probing. The superficially wounded dressed themselves from the bandage boxes slotted into the bar-holes in the ship's capstans, and held against such an eventuality. Drinkwater saw that stained bandages had sprouted everywhere, that the larboard six-pounders were being served by men from both batteries and that Gorton was wounded.
The noise was deafening as the Melusines fired their cannon as fast as each gun could be sponged, charged and laid. Ropes and splinters rained down from aloft and below the mainmast three bodies lay where they had fallen from the top. Only the foremast stood intact, the foretopsail still filled with wind.
The stink of powder smoke, the noise and the confusion and above all the unbelievably hot sun combined with the sharp pain in his flank to exhaust Drinkwater. It crossed his mind to strike, if only to end the killing of his men and the intolerable noise.
Something of this must have been evident in his face, for Hill was looking at him.
'Are you all right, sir?' Hill shouted.
Drinkwater nodded grimly.
'Here sir…' Hill held out a flask and Drinkwater lifted it to his lips. The fiery rum stirred him as it hit the pit of his stomach.
'Obliged to you, Mr Hill…' He looked up at the spanker. It was too full of holes to be very effective, but an idea occurred to him.
'Chapel that spanker, Mr Hill, haul it up against the wind. Let us swing the stern round and try and put Nimrod between us and that bloody bastard to windward!'
A shower of splinters were struck from the adjacent rail and Drinkwater and Hill staggered from the wind of the passing ball, gasping for breath. But Hill recovered and bawled at the afterguard. Drinkwater turned. He must buy time to think. He saw Mount's scarlet coat approaching after posting his sentries over the prisoners aboard Nimrod.
'Mr Mount!'
'Sir?'
'Mr Mount, muster your men aft here…'
The katabatic squall hit them with sudden violence, screaming down from the heights to the south of them, streaking the water with spray and curling the seas into sharp, vicious waves in the time it takes to draw breath. The air at sea level in the fiord had been warmed for hours by the unclouded sun. Rising in an increasing mass, this air was replaced by cold air sliding down from its contact with the ice and snow of the mountain tops to spread out over the water as a squall, catching the ships unprepared.
Melusine's fore topgallant mast, already weighed down by the wreckage of the main topmast and its spars, carried away and crashed to leeward. But the chapelled spanker, hauled to windward by Hill's men, spun the sloop and her prize, while Nimrod's sails filled and tended to drive both ships forward so that their range increased from their tormentor.
But it was a momentary advantage for, hove to, the Requin increased her leeway until the strain on her own tophamper proved too much. Already damaged by Melusine's gunfire, her wounded foremast went by the board. Dragged head to wind and with her backed main yards now assisting her leeward drift, Requin presented her stern to Drinkwater and he was not slow to appreciate his change of fortune. A quick glance at Nimrod's sails and he saw immediately that he might swiftly reverse their turning movement and bring Melusine's battered
larboard broadside to bear on that exposed stern.
'Belay that Hill!' He indicated the spanker. 'Brail up the spanker! Forrard there! Mr Comley! Foretopmast staysail sheets to windward…' His voice cracked with shouting but he hailed Nimrod.
'Nimrod! Nimrod 'hoy! Back your main and mizen tops'ls, Mr Walmsley, those whalemen that help you to be pardoned…' It was a crazy, desperate idea and relied for its success on a swifter reaction than the Requin's captain could command. Drinkwater waited in anxious impatience, his temper becoming worse by the second. He raised his glass several times and studied the Requin, each time expecting to see something different but all he could distinguish with certainty was that the big privateer was drifting down on them. And then Melusine and her prize began to turn again, swinging slowly round, rolling and grinding together as the continuing wind built up the sea.
The katabatic squall had steadied to a near gale and swept the smoke away. The sun still shone from a cloudless sky although its setting could not be far distant. The altered attitude of the ships had silenced their gunfire and the air was filled now with the scream of wind in rigging and the groaning of the locked ships.
Drinkwater shook his head to clear it of the persistent ringing that the recent concussion of the guns had induced and raised his speaking trumpet again.
'Larboard guns! Gun captains to lay their pieces at the centre window of the enemy's stern. Load canister on ball. Fire on the command and then independently!'
He saw Quilhampton in the waist acknowledge and wondered what had become of Gorton. He raised his glass, aware that Mount was still beside him awaiting the instructions he was in the process of giving when the squall hit them.
'Any orders, sir?' Mount prompted.
Drinkwater did not hear him. He was watching Melusine's swing and waiting for the raised arms that told him his cannon were ready. The last gun captain raised his hand. He waited a little longer. A quick glance along the gun breeches showed them at level elevation. They traversed with infinite slowness as Nimrod and Melusine cartwheeled… Now, by God!
'Fire!'
Noise, smoke and fire spewed from the ten six-pounders as sixty pounds of iron and ten pounds of small ball hit Requin's stern. Drinkwater was engulfed in the huge cloud of smoke which was as quickly rent aside by the wind. Then the six-pounders began independent fire, each captain laying his gun with care. Requin's stern began to cave in, beaten into a gaping wound, her carved gingerbread-work exploding in splinters.
'Sir! Sir!' Mr Frey was dancing up and down beside him.
'What the devil is it, Mr Frey?' Drinkwater suddenly felt anxious for the boy whose presence on the quarterdeck he had quite forgotten.
'She strikes, sir! She strikes!'
Drinkwater elevated his glance. The tricolour was descending from the gaff in hasty jerks.
'Upon my soul, Mr Frey, you're right!'
'Any orders, sir,' repeated the hopeful Mount.
'Indeed, Mr Mount. You and Frey take possession!'
Drinkwater jerked himself awake with a start. The short Arctic night was already over. His wound, pronounced superficial by an exhausted Singleton, throbbed painfully and his whole body ached in the chill of dawn. He rose and stared through the stern windows. Melusine and her assorted prizes lay at anchor in Nagtoralik Bay, the battered British sloop to seaward, a spring on her cable, covering any signs of trouble in the other ships. He had prize crews aboard the lugger Aurore, the Requin and the Nimrod, although the Nimrod had assumed the character of consort, having towed the helpless Melusine into the anchorage.
They had been met by boats from the whalers Conqueror and Faithful as the last of the daylight faded from the sky and the wounded ships had come to their anchors. It was clear from the expression of Captain Waller of the Conqueror that he had put an entirely different interpretation on the sight of Melusine towing in astern of Nimrod than was the case. His false effusions of congratulation had been cut short by Drinkwater arresting him and having him placed in the bilboes.
'Thou hast done right, Friend,' said Sawyers, holding out his hand. But Drinkwater gently dismissed the Quaker, pleading tiredness and military expediency for his bad manners. There would be time enough for explanations later, for the while it was enough that Faithful was recaptured and Requin a prize.
Drinkwater turned from the stern windows and slumped back in his chair. The low candle-flame in the lantern fell upon the muster book. In the two actions with the Requin he had lost a third of his ship's company. They were terrible losses and he mourned Lieutenant Bourne who had died of head wounds shortly after the Requin surrendered.
Hardly a man had not collected a scratch or a splinter wound. Little Frey had received a sword cut on his forearm which he had bravely bandaged until Singleton spotted the filthy linen and ordered the boy below. Tregembo had been knocked senseless and of the quarterdeck officers only Mount and Hill were unscathed.
He blew the sand off the muster book and closed it. Amid all the tasks that awaited him this morning he must bury the dead. His eyelids dropped. On deck Mr Quilhampton paced up and down, the watch ready at the guns. Mount was aboard Requin with a strong detachment of marines; Lord Walmsley commanded Nimrod and the Honourable Alexander Glencross the Conqueror.
He could allow himself an hour's sleep. He was aware that providence had chastened him but that luck had saved him. His head fell forward onto his breast and his ears ceased to ring from the concussion of guns.
'Will you receive the deputation now, sir?' Drinkwater nodded at Mr Frey's figure standing in the cabin doorway. It was frightening how fast the maturing process could work. Frey stood aside and half a dozen whale-men came awkwardly into the cabin under the escort of Mount's sergeant and two private marines.
'Well,' said Drinkwater coldly, 'who is to speak for you?'
A man was pushed forward and turned a greasy sealskin hat nervously in his hands. Addressing the deck he began to speak, prompted by shamefaced shipmates.
'B… beg pardon, yer honour…'
'What is your name?'
The man looked about him, as if afraid to confess to an identity that separated him from the anonymous group of whale-men.
'Give an answer to the captain!' Frey snapped with a sudden, surprising venom.
'…Jack Love, sir, beggin' yer pardon. Carpenter of the Nimrod, sir…'
'Go on, Love. Tell me what you have to say.'
'Well sir, we went along of Cap'n Ellerby, sir…'
'An' of Cap'n Waller, sir…' another piped up to a shuffling chorus of agreement.
'Pray go on.'
'Well sir, there was a fair profit to be made, sir, during the peace like…' He trailed off, implying that trade with the French under those circumstances was not illegal.
'In what did you trade, Love? Be so good as to tell me.'
'We brought out necessaries, sir… comestibles and took home furs…'
'Furs?'
'Aye, sir,' an impatient voice said and a small man shoved forward. 'Furs, sir, furs for the Frog army what Ellerby could sell at a profit…'
Drinkwater digested the news and a thought occurred to him.
'Do you know anything about two Hull whale ships that went missing last winter?' He looked round the half-circle of faces. Love's hand rubbed anxiously across his mouth and he shook his head, avoiding Drinkwater's eyes.
'We don't want no traitorous doin's, sir. We was coerced, like…' He fell silent. The word had been rehearsed, fed him by some sea-lawyer and he was lying, although Drinkwater knew there was not a shred of evidence to prove it. They would have profited under Ellerby, war or peace, so long as no supercilious naval officer stuck his interfering nose into their business.
Love seemed to have mustered his defences, prodded on by some murmuring behind him.
'When we realised what Ellerby was doing, sir, we wasn't 'aving none of it. We didn't obey 'im sir…' Drinkwater remembered Nimrod's failure to take full advantage of her position during the action.
'And Conqueror's people. How are they circumstanced?'
'We were coerced too, sir. Cap'n Waller threatened to withhold our proper pay unless we co-operated…'
Drinkwater stared at them. He felt a mixture of contempt and pity. He could imagine them under the malign influence of Ellerby and he remembered the ice-cold fanaticism in his eyes. The men began to shuffle awkwardly under his silent scrutiny. They were victims of their own weakness and yet they had caused the death of his men by their treachery.
'Would you wish to prove your loyalty to King and Country, then?' he asked, rising to his feet, the picture of a patriotic naval officer. Their eagerness to please, to fall in with his suggestion, verged on the disgusting.
'Very well. You will find work enough refitting the ships under the direction of my officers. You may go now. Return to your ships; but I warn you, the first man that fails to show absolute loyalty will swing.'
Their delight was manifest. It was the kind of thing they had hardly dared hope for. They nodded their thanks and shambled out.
'You may discharge the guard, sergeant,' Drinkwater addressed Mr Frey. 'Do you go to the two whale ships, Mr Frey, and ransack the cabins of Captain Ellerby and Captain Waller. I want the press-exemptions of every man-jack of those whale-men.'
Drinkwater regarded Waller with distaste. Without Ellerby he was pathetic and Drinkwater was conscious that, as a King's officer, he represented the noose to Waller. Somehow hanging was too just an end for the man. He had tried a brief, unconvincing and abject attempt at blustered justification which Drinkwater had speedily ended.
'It is useless to prevaricate, Captain Waller. Ellerby fired into a British man-o'-war wearing British colours and I am well aware, from information laid before me by men from Nimrod and Conqueror, that you and he were in traitorous intercourse with the enemy for the purposes of profit. That fact alone put you in breach of your oath not to engage in any other practice other than the pursuance of whale-fishing. What I wish to know, is to what precise purpose did you trade here and with whom?'
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