'Don't like the smell of it, sir.'
'Happen you're right, Sam. What worries me more is what our friends are doing.'
'Sitting in Quiberon (he pronounced it 'Key-ber-ron') hoisting in fresh vittals.'
'I ken the Captain means the French,' put in Lieutenant Fraser joining them and reporting the first reef taken in the topsails. Fraser ignored Rogers's jaundiced look.
Drinkwater levelled his glass at the north point of Oleron. 'I do indeed, gentlemen, and here they are!'
The two officers looked round. Beyond the point of the island the white rectangles of topsails were moving as Missiessy's frigates led his squadron to sea.
'Mr Frey!'
'Sir?'
'Make to Felix, three-seven-zero.'
Drinkwater ignored Rogers's puzzled frown but heard Fraser mutter in his ear, 'Enemy coming out of port.'
A few minutes later the little schooner was scudding to the north-west with the news for Graves, or Campbell, or whoever else would take alarm from the intelligence.
'Heave the ship to, Mr Rogers. Let us see what these fellows are going to do.' He again raised the glass to his eye and intently studied the approaching enemy. The heavy frigates led out first. Bigger than Antigone, though not dissimilar in build, he tried to identify them, calling for Mr Gillespy, his tablet and pencil.
'And clear the ship for action, Mr Rogers. Beat to quarters if you please!'
He ignored the burst of activity, concentrating solely on the enemy. He recognised the Infatigable, so similar in name to Pellew's famous frigate. All three frigates seemed to be holding back, not running down upon the solitary Antigone as Drinkwater had expected. He could afford to hold his station for a little longer. Ah, there were the little brig-corvettes, exact replicas of the Bonaparte.
He counted the gun-ports; yes, eight a side, 16-gun corvettes all right. But then came the battleships, with Missiessy's huge three-decked 120-gun flagship, the Majestueux in the van. He heard the whistles of surprise from the hands now at their action stations and grinned to himself. This was what they had all been waiting for.
Astern of the Majestueux came four 74-gun battleships. All were now making sail as they altered course round the point, and foreshortened towards Antigone. One of the seventy-fours was detaching, moving out of line. He watched intently, sensing that this movement had something to do with himself. As the battleship drew ahead of the others the frigates made sail and within a few minutes all four leading ships were racing towards him, the gale astern of them and great white bones in their teeth. He shut his telescope with a snap and dismissed Gillespy to his action station. Hill and Rogers were staring at him expectantly.
'Hoping to make a prize of us, I believe,' Drinkwater said. 'Put the ship before the wind, Mr Hill.'
The helm came up and Antigone turned away. The braces clicked through the blocks as the yards swung on their parrels about the slushed topmasts and the apparent wind over the deck diminished. As the frigate steadied on her course, Drinkwater raised his glass once more.
Led by the seventy-four, the French ships were overhauling them rapidly. Drinkwater looked carefully at the relative angles between them. He longed to know the names and exact force of each of his antagonists and felt a sudden thrill after all the long months of waiting and worrying. For Drinkwater such circumstances were the mainspring of his being. The high excitement of handling an instrument as complex, as deadly, yet as vulnerable as a ship of war, in a gale of wind and with a superior enemy to windward, placed demands upon him that acted like a drug. For his father and brother the love of horse-flesh and speed had provided the anodyne to the frustrations and disappointments of life; but for him only this spartan and perilous existence would do. This was the austere drudgery of his duty transformed into a dangerous art.
He looked astern once more. Beyond the advancing French division the remaining French ships had disappeared. A great curtain of snow was bearing down upon them, threatening to obscure everything.
Chapter Eleven
The Snowstorm
January-March 1805
Drinkwater stepped forward and held out his hand for Rogers's speaking trumpet. As Antigone scudded before the wind he could make himself understood with little difficulty.
'D'you hear, there! Pay attention to all my orders and execute them promptly. No one shall fire until I order it. All guns are to double shot and load canister on ball. All gun-captains to see their pieces aimed before they fire. I want perfect silence at all times. Any man in breach of this will have a check shirt.' He paused to let his words sink in. An excited cheer or shout might transform his intended audacity into foolhardiness. 'Very well, let us show these shore-squatting Frogs what happens to 'em when they come to sea. Lieutenant Quilhampton!'
'Sir?'
'Abandon your guns for the moment, Mr Q. I want you on the fo'c's'le head listening. If you hear anything, indicate with your arm the direction of the noise as you do when signalling the anchor cable coming home.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Drinkwater turned to the sailing master. 'Well, Mr Hill, take a bearing of that French seventy-four and the instant the snow shuts him from view, heave the ship to. In the meantime try and lay us in his track.'
Hill turned away and peered over the taffrail, returning to the binnacle to order an alteration of course to the north. Drinkwater also turned to watch the approaching French. He was only just in time to catch a glimpse of them before they vanished. They were well clear of the land now, catching the full fury of the gale and feeling the effects of carrying too much canvas in their eagerness to overtake Antigone. Then they were gone, hidden behind a white streaked curtain of snow that second by second seemed to cut off the edge of their world in its silent approach.
'Now, Hill! Now!'
'Down helm! Main-braces there! Leggo and haul!' Antigone began to turn back into the wind. As men hauled in on the fore and mizen braces to keep the frigate sailing on a bowline, the main-yards were backed against the wind, opposing the action of the other masts and checking her, so she lay in wait for the oncoming French. Drinkwater turned his attention to Quilhampton who had clambered up into the knightheads and had one ear cocked into the wind. Antigone bucked in the rising sea, her way checked and every man standing silent at his post.
''Tis a wonderful thing, discipline,' he heard Hill mutter to Rogers, and the first lieutenant replied with characteristic enthusiasm, 'Aye, for diabolical purposes!' And then the snow began to fall upon the deck.
'Keep the decks wet with sea-water, Mr Rogers. Get the firemen to attend to it.' He had not thought of the dangers of slush. Men losing their footing would imperil the success of his enterprise and wreak havoc when they opened fire. The snow seemed to deaden all noise so that the ship rose and fell like a ghost as minute succeeded minute. Drinkwater walked forward to the starboard hance. He wondered what the odds were upon them being run down. Even if they were, he consoled himself, mastering the feeling of rising panic that always preceded action, they would seriously jeopardise Missiessy's escape and the Admiralty would approve of that.
'Sir!' Quilhampton's voice hissed with urgent sibilance and he looked up to see the lieutenant's iron hook pointing off to starboard. For an instant Drinkwater hesitated, his mind uncertain. Then he heard shouting, the creak of rigging and the hiss of a bow wave. The shouting was not urgent, they themselves were undetected, but on board the Frenchman petty officers were lambasting an unpractised crew. And then he saw the ship, looking huge and black, the white patches of her sails invisible in the snow.
'Main-braces!' he hissed with violent urgency. 'Up helm!'
Drinkwater had no alternative but to risk being raked by the Frenchman's broadside. If the crew of the enemy battleship were at their guns, a single discharge would cripple the British frigate. But he hoped fervently that they would not see Antigone in so unexpected a place; that the novelty of being at sea would distract their attention inboard where, he knew, a certain amount of confusion
was inevitable after so long a period at anchor. Besides, he could not risk losing control of his ship by attempting to tack from a standing start. Hove-to with no forward motion, Antigone would jib at passing through the wind and probably be caught 'in irons'.
A group of marines were at the spanker brails, hauling in the big after-sail as Antigone turned, gathering way and answering her helm. At the knightheads Quilhampton's raised arm indicated he still had contact with the enemy. They steadied the ship dead before the wind. Drinkwater went forward to stand beside Quilhampton and listen. The frigate was scending in the following sea and Drinkwater knew the wind, already at gale force, had not finished rising. If he was to achieve anything it would have to be soon. He strained his ears to hear. Above the creak of Antigone's fabric and the hiss and surge of her bow-wave he caught the muffled sound of orders, orders passed loudly and with some urgency as though the giver of those instructions was anxious, and the recipients slow to comprehend. There were a few words he recognised: 'Vite! Vite!' and 'Allez!' and the obscenity 'Jean-Foutre!' of some egalitarian officer in the throes of frustration. And then suddenly he saw the flat surface of the huge stern with its twin rows of stern windows looming through the snow. Drinkwater raced aft.
'Stand by larbowlines! Give her the main course!'
Then they could all see the enemy as a sudden rent in the snow opened up a tiny circle of sea. The gun-captains were frantically spiking their guns round to aim on the bow and Drinkwater looked up to see an officer on the battleship's quarter. He was waving his hat at them and shouting something.
'By God, he thinks we're one of his own frigates come too close!'
Drinkwater watched the relative angles between the two ships. There was a great flogging and rattle of blocks as the main clew-garnets were let run and the waisters hauled down the tacks and sheets of the main-course. The relative angle began to open and someone on the French battleship realised his mistake.
He heard someone scream 'Merde!' and ordered Antigone's course altered to starboard. Standing by the larboard hance he screwed up one eye.
'Fire!'
The blast and roar of the guns rolled over them, the thunderous climax of Drinkwater's mad enterprise. The yellow flashes from the cannon muzzles were unnaturally bright in the gloom as the snow closed round them once again. He caught a glimpse of the enemy's name in large gilt roman script across her stern: Magnanime.
The smoke from the guns hung in the air, drifting forward slowly then suddenly gone, whipped away. The gunners were swabbing, reloading and hauling out, holding up their hands when they were ready. The sound of enemy guns barked out of the obscurity and they were alone again, shut into their own tiny world, and the snow was falling thicker than ever.
'Fire!' yelled Rogers and the second broadside was discharged into the swirling wraiths of white. Antigone's deck took a sudden cant as her stern lifted and she drove violently forward. Down went her bow, burying itself to the knightheads, a great cushion of white water foaming up around her.
'Too much canvas, sir!' yelled Hill. Drinkwater nodded.
'Secure the guns and shorten down!'
It took the combined efforts of fifty men to furl the mainsail. The huge, unreefed sail, set to carry them alongside the Magnanime, threatened to throw them off the yard as they struggled. In the end Lieutenant Fraser went aloft and the great sail was tamed and the process repeated with the fore-course. At the end of an hour's labour Antigone had hauled her yards round and lay on the starboard tack, her topsails hard reefed and her topgallant masts sent down as the gale became a storm and Drinkwater edged her north to report the break-out of Missiessy and the fact that he had lost contact with the enemy in the snow and violent weather.
Antigone was able to hold her new course for less than an hour. Laughing and chaffing each other, the watch below had been piped down when they were called again. Drinkwater regained the deck to find the wind chopping rapidly round, throwing up a high, breaking and confused sea that threw the ship over and broke on board in solid green water. For perhaps fifteen minutes the wind dropped, almost to a calm while the snow continued to fall. The ship failed to answer her helm as she lost way. The men milled about in the waist and the officers stood apprehensive as they tried to gauge the new direction from which the wind would blow. A few drops of rain fell, mingled with wet snow flakes.
'Sou'wester!' Hill and Drinkwater shouted together. 'Stand by! Man the braces!'
It came with the unimaginable violence that only seamen experience. The squall hit Antigone like a gigantic fist, laying her sails aback, tearing the fore-topsail clean from its bolt ropes and away to leeward like a lost handkerchief. The frigate lay over under the air pressure in her top-hamper and water bubbled in through her closed gun-ports. From below came the crash and clatter of the mess kids and coppers on the galley stove, together with a ripe torrent of abuse hurled at the elements by the cook and his suddenly eloquent mates.
'Lee braces, there! Look lively my lads! Aloft and secure that raffle!'
With a thunderous crack and a tremble that could be felt throughout the ship the main-topmast sprang at the instant the main-topsail also blew out of its bolt ropes, and then the first violent spasm of the squall was past and the wind steadied, blowing at a screaming pitch as they struggled to bring the bucking ship under control again.
The gale blew for several days. The rain gave way to mist and the mist, on the morning of the 15th, eventually cleared. On the horizon to the north Drinkwater and Hill recognised the outline of the Ile d'Yeu and debated their next move. Felix must by now have communicated the news of Missiessy's break-out to Graves, in which case Graves would have withdrawn towards Cornwallis off Ushant. But supposing something had happened to Bourne and the Felix? After such an easterly wind Graves would be worried that Missiessy had gone, and gone at a moment when, through sheer necessity, his own back had been turned. Graves would have returned to Rochefort and might be waiting there now, unable to get close inshore to see into the Basque Road, for fear of the continuing gale catching him on a lee shore.
'He'd be locking the stable door after the horse had gone,' said Hill reflectively.
'Quite so,' replied Drinkwater. 'And we could fetch the Ile de Ré on one tack under close-reefed topsails to clarify the situation. If Graves is not there we will have lost but a day in getting to Cornwallis. Very well,' Drinkwater made up his mind, clapped his hand over his hat and fought to keep his footing on the tilting deck. 'Course south-east, let us look into the Basque Road and see if Graves has regained station.'
On the morning of the 16th they found Graves off the Ile d'Oléron having just been informed by the Felix of Missiessy's departure. In his search for the admiral, Bourne had also run across the French squadron heading north. During a long morning of interminable flag hoists it was established that this encounter had occurred after Drinkwater's brush with the enemy and therefore established that Missiessy's task was probably to cause trouble in Ireland. This theory was lent particular force by Drinkwater's report that troops were embarked. It was a tried strategy of the French government and the signalling system was not capable of conveying Drinkwater's theory about the West Indies. In truth, on that particular morning, with the practical difficulties in handling the ship and attending to the admiral, Drinkwater himself was not overconfident that he was right. Besides, there was other news that permeated the squadron during that blustery morning, news more closely touching themselves. In getting into Quiberon Bay to warn Graves, the Don's had found the admiral already gone. Struggling seawards again, Doris had struck a rock and, after great exertions by Campbell and his people, had foundered. Felix had taken off her crew and all were safe, but the loss of so fine a frigate and the escape of Missiessy cast a shadow over the morale of the squadron. Afterwards Drinkwater was to remember that morning as the first of weeks of professional frustration; when it seemed that providence had awarded its laurels to the Imperial eagle of France, that despite the best endeavours of the Royal Nav
y, the weeks of weary and remorseless blockade, the personal hardships of every man-jack and boy in the British fleet, their efforts were to come to naught.
But for the time being Graves's squadron had problems of its own. The morning of signalling had thrown them to leeward and in the afternoon they were unable to beat out of the bay and compelled to anchor. When at last the weather moderated, Graves reported to Cornwallis, only to find Sir William in ailing health, having himself been driven from his station to shelter in Torbay. For a while the ships exchanged news and gossip. Cornwallis was said to have requested replacement, while it was known that Admiral Latouche-Tréville had died at Toulon and been replaced by Admiral Villeneuve, the only French flag-officer to have escaped from Nelson's devastating attack in Aboukir Bay. Of what had happened to Missiessy no one was quite sure, but it was certain that he had not gone to Ireland. A few weeks later it was common knowledge that he had arrived at Martinique in the West Indies.
Chapter Twelve
The Look-Out Frigate
April-May 1805
'Well, Mr Gillespy, you seem to be making some progress.' Drinkwater closed the boy's journal. 'Your aunt would be pleased, I'm sure,' he added wryly, thinking of the garrulous Mistress MacEwan. 'I have some hopes of you making a sea-officer.'
'Thank you, sir.' The boy looked pleased. He had come out of his shell since the departure of Walmsley, and Drinkwater knew that Frey had done much to protect him from the unimaginative and over-bearing Glencross. He also knew that James Quilhampton kept a close eye on the boy, ever mindful of Gillespy's relationship with Catriona MacEwan; while Lieutenant Fraser lost no opportunity to encourage a fellow Scot among the bear-pit of Sassenachs that made up the bulk of the midshipmen's berth. He was aware that he had been staring at the boy for too long and smiled.
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