While Napoleon languished on his rock, Drinkwater completed his journals and enjoyed his quiet excursions under sail. Occasionally he and Frey would undertake a little surveying of the bar of the River Ore, or Drinkwater would submit a report on some matter of minor hydrographical detail. These, finding their way to the Court of Trinity House, in due course resulted in his being invited to become a Younger Brother of the Corporation and this, in turn, led him to accompany a party of Elder Brethren in the Corporation's yacht on an inspection of the lights in the Dover Strait. Thus, one night in the summer of 1820, anchored in The Downs close to the Severn, a fifty-gun guardship attached to the Sentinel Service, Drinkwater found himself at dinner with a Captain McCullough, commander of the Severn, who had been invited to join the Brethren at dinner.
The after cabin of the Trinity yacht was as sumptuous as it was small, boasting the miniature appointments of a first-rate. The meal began with the customary stilted exchanges of men with an unfamiliar guest in their midst. McCullough, who had joined Drinkwater and the two embarked Elder Brethren, Captain Isaac Robinson and Captain James Moring, by way of his own gig, was quizzed about his naval career and his present service.
'I made the mistake', he admitted, smiling ironically, 'of suggesting that the revival of smuggling might be countered by several detachments of naval officers and men posted along the coasts most exposed to the evil. Their Lordships took me at my word and offered me the appointment of organizing the task. The command of Severn came, as it were, as a by-blow of their decision, for she acts as storeship and headquarters of the force.'
'And as a visible deterrent, I daresay,' observed Captain Moring, who had recendy relinquished command of an East Indiaman.
'I believe that to be the case, yes.'
'How many men do you command?' asked Captain Robinson.
'The whole force amounts to only about eighty men who occupy the old Martello towers along the shore. Each division, of which there are three in Kent, is commanded by a lieutenant, with midshipmen and master's mates in charge of the local detachments. A similar arrangement pertains to the westward in Sussex. Each post has a pulling galley at its disposal, so we are an amphibious force.'
'You take your posts at night, I imagine,' Drinkwater said, 'and enjoy some success thereby.'
'As an active counter-action to the nefarious doings of the free-trading fraternity, we have enjoyed a certain advantage, yes, though this has not been achieved without loss.'
'You suffer deaths and injuries then?' Drinkwater asked.
'Oh yes, severely on occasion. The smugglers are a ruthless lot and will stop at nothing in their attempts to run their damnable cargoes.'
'Well, I confess that the odd bottle of contraband brandy has passed my lips in the past, but with the peace and the present difficulties the country faces, the losses to the revenue must be stopped,' Captain Moring put in.
'Indeed,' went on McCullough, nodding, 'and the problem lies in the widespread condonation that exists, partly due to the laxities practised during the late war, but also due to the material advantage accruing to the individual in avoiding duty'
There was a brief and awkward silence, then Captain Robinson raised his glass and remarked, 'Well, sir, I give you the Sentinel Service ...' and they drank a toast to McCullough's brainchild.
'Perhaps,' Drinkwater added, 'one might consign the magistracy to some minor purgatory. I gather that when the Preventive Waterguard were formed, what, twenty years ago now, they often threw out of court actions brought against well-known smugglers.'
'That is true,' went on McCullough, warming to his subject with the enthusiasm of the zealot, 'for the justices were usually the chief beneficiaries and how else does a man get rich in England but by cheating the revenue? But they are less able to try the trick on naval men, and besides, there was some mitigation during the war when continental trade was made difficult and it was in our interest to encourage it. The paradox no longer exists, therefore the matter is simpler in its argument. Its resolution, however, remains as difficult as ever.'
'The risks are high for those caught,' said Moring.
'Indeed. I should not wish to face transportation or the gallows, but the profits are encouraging enough and the risks of apprehension, despite our best efforts, are probably not so terrifying.'
'No,' put in Drinkwater. 'And it is not entirely to be wondered at that fellows made bold by the experiences of war and who find no employment in peace, yet see about them evidence of wealth and luxury, should turn to such methods to support their families.'
'That is true, sir,' replied McCullough, 'and there is a certain irony in seeing victims of the press remaining at sea for their private gain...'
'That is not so very ironic, McCullough,' Drinkwater responded, 'when you take into account the fact that the men who oppose you and the revenue officers are by birth and situation bred to the sea and find it the only way to earn their daily crust. I am certainly not sympathetic to their law-breaking, merely to their situation. It seems to me that an amelioration of their circumstances would remove many of the motives that drive them to break the law.'
'You mean measures should be taken by government', Robinson asked incredulously, 'to regulate society?'
'I think that is a necessary function of good government, yes.'
'Government regulation gave us the confounded income tax,' protested Moring.
'Well,' said Drinkwater, 'I think the present government can give us little...'
'You are a reformer, sir!' said Moring accusingly.
Drinkwater smiled. 'Perhaps, yes. There can be very little wrong in promoting the welfare of others. I seem to recall something of the sort in the gospels...'
'Damned dangerous notions...'
'Revolutionary...'
'Come, gentlemen, keep a sense of proportion,' argued Drinkwater. 'We cannot entirely ignore events either over the strait or, for that matter, on the other side of the Atlantic...'
'I doubt our present Master', remarked Moring, referring to the Corporation's senior officer who, as Lord Liverpool, was also the Prime Minister, 'would agree with you.'
'I hope, sir,' said Drinkwater, with an edge to his voice, 'that you are not implying disloyalty on my part by my expressing my free and candid opinion? One may surely disagree with the opinions of another without the risk of retribution? After all, it is a hallmark of civilization.'
There was a moment's awkward silence, then McCullough said, 'The present state of the country is a matter for concern, I admit, but this should not condone law-breaking.'
'I do not condone law-breaking, Captain McCullough. I have already said so. The present woes of our country, with trouble in our unrepresented industrial towns, unemployment in our countryside and difficulties in trade, are matters close to all our hearts,' Drinkwater persisted. 'My case is simply that the solution lies either with government or in revolution, for there are limits to the toleration of even the most passive and compliant people. I have spent my life in fighting to contain the latter and see that the wise solution must therefore lie with the former. Was Lord Liverpool here this evening, I am certain he would agree with me that something must be done. But the problem seems to lie in what exactly one does to ameliorate dissatisfactions. One can hope something will turn up, but this seems to me damned foolish and most unreliable. The unhappy experience of France is that one cannot throw over the cart without losing the contents and that to do so runs the risk of bringing down a tyranny greater than the one formerly endured. On the other hand simply to obstruct all progress upon the principle of exclusion seems to me to be both dangerous and foolish.'
'What policy of what you are pleased to call improvement, sneered Moring, 'do you advocate then, Drinkwater?'
'Since you ask,' Drinkwater replied, smiling wryly, 'a policy of slow but steady reform, a policy which would be perceptible to men of every condition, but which would allow due controls to be exerted. It is my experience that neither coercion nor bribery p
roduce loyalty, though both may produce results, whereas some moderating policy would be wiser than sending in light dragoons to cut up political meetings that can have no voice other than in open fields.'
'Well, I ain't so damned sure,' said Moring, motioning the steward to refill his glass as he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.
'Of course you're not,' Drinkwater said quickly, 'for it is your certainties you must sacrifice ...'
'Gamble with, more like,' put in Robinson.
'Indeed. But you have spent your professional life gambling, Captain Robinson, pitting your wits against wind and sea, bringing your cargoes safely home against considerable odds, wouldn't you say?'
Robinson nodded with lugubrious acquiescence, apparently defeated by this line of argument.
Moring was less easily subdued. 'But that doesn't alter the fact that by conferring liberties upon the masses, disorder and chaos might result,' he persisted.
'True, but so they might if we leave Parliament unreformed and half the veterans from the Peninsula wandering our streets as beggars, and half the pressed seamen returned to common lands they find enclosed, or consigned to those stinking factories that are no better than the worst men-of-war commissioned under Lord Sandwich's regime in the American War. God forbid that the English disease of snobbery should set a real revolution alight! Imagine what the men who raped and pillaged their way through Badajoz might do to London!'
'But Drinkwater, to enable a government to function in the way you so passionately advocate, it must needs garner its revenue,' argued McCullough, a note of vexed desperation in his voice.
'Unquestionably, McCullough. Gentlemen, I apologize for ruining your evening,' said Drinkwater, temporizing, 'I am in no wise opposed to Captain McCullough's Sentinel Service and had we not drunk to it already I should have proposed a toast to it now...'
But Drinkwater was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door and the sudden appearance of the yacht's second mate.
'Begging your pardon, gentlemen, but there's a message come for Captain McCullough. Your tender's just arrived, sir, with word of a movement along the coast, and they're awaiting orders.'
McCullough rose, a somewhat relieved expression crossing his face. 'I'll be up directly,' he said to the second mate and, turning to the others, apologized. 'Gentlemen, forgive me. It has been a most stimulating evening, but I must leave at once. My tender, the Flying Fish, was not expected to return until tomorrow, so this news means something considerable is under weigh ...'
Robinson waved aside McCullough's explanation. 'Now, Drinkwater, here's an opportunity for us all to do our duty! Will you accept our services as volunteers, McCullough? You will? Good man! Gentlemen, to our duty...'
And with that Robinson rose and went to his small cabin, muttering about priming pistols. 'Will you have us, sir?' Drinkwater asked, rising slowly to his feet. Antique and libertarian as we may seem, we are not wholly without experience in these matters.'
McCullough shrugged. 'Your reputation is solid, sir, but I am not so certain how strong a trade-wind blows ...'
'Come, sir,' Moring snapped as he leapt to his feet, 'that remark is of dubious propriety. Let us show you how strong a trade-wind may blow, damn it!'
And so the uncongenial occasion broke up in petty rivalry, and Drinkwater went reluctantly to shift his coat and shoes, and buckle on his hanger.
It was a moonless night of pitchy darkness and a light but steady southerly wind, a night made for the running of tubs on to the beaches of Dungeness, and the Flying Fish slipped south-westwards under a press of canvas. The comparison with Kestrel, thought Drinkwater, as he squatted on one of the tender's six carronade slides, ended with the similarity of the tender's rig. Thereafter all was different, for Flying Fish was stuffed with men, and the dull and sinister gleam of cutlasses being made ready was accompanied by the snick of pistol frizzens as the men prepared for action. What precise intelligence initiated this purposeful response, Drinkwater had only the haziest notion. Treachery and envy loosened tongues the world over, and word of mouth was a deadly weapon when employed deliberately. But patient observation, infiltration and careful analysis of facts could, as Drinkwater well knew from his brief tenure of command of the Admiralty's Secret Department, yield strong inferences of intended doings.
In truth his curiosity was little aroused by the matter; he felt he had exhausted his own interest in such affairs years ago. It was, like the command of Kestrel, something he was quite content to give up to a younger and more eager man. Every dog had his day, ran the old saw, and he had had his. If the evening's evidence was anything to go by, he was out of step with the temper of the times. Younger men, men like Moring, Robinson and McCullough, had made their own world and he was too rooted in the past to do more than offer his unwanted comments upon it. Nevertheless, it seemed that with the past something good had been lost. He supposed his perception was inevitable and that the hard-won experience and wisdom of existence was perpetually squandered as part of the excessive bounty of nature. These men would learn in their turn, but it seemed an odd way for providence to proceed.
Such considerations were terminated by McCullough summoning them all aft. Stiffly Drinkwater rose and joined the others about the tiller. A master's mate had gone forward to brief the hands, and Drinkwater stood listening to McCullough while watching the pale, bubbling line of the wake draw out from under the Flying Fish's low counter, creating a dull gleam of phosphorescence at the cutwater of the boat towing astern.
'Two of our pulling galleys reported a long-boat from Rye run across to France a couple of nights ago,' McCullough was saying. 'Information has reached us that the contraband cargo will be transferred to three fishing-boats which will return independently to their home ports. The long-boat will come in empty; apart, I expect, from a few fish.
'The rendezvous is to be made on the Varne Bank, near the buoy of the Varne. It is my intention that we shall interrupt this. I want prisoners and I want evidence. From you, gentlemen,' McCullough said, turning to his three volunteers, 'I want witnesses, not heroics.'
As Moring spluttered his protest, Drinkwater smiled in the darkness. At least Elizabeth would approve of him being a witness; he was otherwise less certain of her enthusiasm for his joining this mad jape.
'And now, gentlemen,' McCullough concluded, 'I must insist upon the most perfect silence.'
For another hour they squatted about the deck, wrapped in their cloaks against the night's damp. The low cloud was breaking a little, but a veil persisted over the upper atmosphere, blurring the few stars visible and preserving the darkness.
But it was never entirely dark at sea; the eyes could always discern something, and intelligence filled in details, so that it was possible, while one remained awake, to half-see, half-sense what was going on. The quiet shuffling between bow and helm, accompanied as it was by whispers, told of the transmission of information from the lookouts, and in due course McCullough himself, discernible from the shape of his cocked hat and a tiny gleam on the brass of his night glass, went forward himself and remained there for some time. Drinkwater had, in fact, almost dozed off when something like a voltaic shock ran along the deck as men touched their neighbours' shoulders and the company rose to its feet.
After the long wait, the speed with which events now accelerated was astonishing. The preservation of surprise had compelled McCullough to keep his hand hidden until the last moment and now he demonstrated the skill of both his interception and his seamanship, for though their course had been altered several times in the final moments, it seemed that Flying Fish suddenly ran in among several craft to the accompaniment of shouts of alarm and bumps of her intruding hull.
The drilling of her company was impeccable. On a single order, her mainsail was scandalized and the gaff dropped, the staysail fluttered to the deck with the thrum of hanks on the stay, and men seemed to drop over the side as they invaded the rafted boats which, until that moment, had been busy with the transfer of casks and b
undles of contraband.
For a brief moment, it seemed to the observing Drinkwater that the deterrent waving of dimly perceived cutlass blades would subdue the smugglers, but suddenly riot broke out. Cries of surprise rose in reactive alarm, the clash of blade meeting blade filled the night, and the grunt of effort and the flash and report of the first pistol opened an action of primitive ferocity. Beside Drinkwater, Moring was jumping about the deck with the undignified and frustrated enthusiasm of a schoolboy witnessing his first prize-fight, while all about them the scene of struggle had a contrived, almost theatrical appearance, for the pistol flashes threw up sharp images in the darkness and these stayed on the retina, accompanied by a more general perception of men stumbling about in the surrounding boats, grappling and hacking at each other in a grim and terrible struggle for mastery.
This state of affairs had been going on for no more than two or three minutes with neither side apparently prevailing, though shouts of execration filled the air along with the cries of the hurt and the occasional bellowed order or demand for surrender. Suddenly matters took a turn for the worse.
The ship-keeper, left at the helm of the Flying Fish, added his own voice to the general uproar. 'To me! Help! Astern here!'
Drinkwater turned to see the flash of a pistol and the ship-keeper fall dead. A moment later a group of smugglers came over the Flying Fish's stern and rushed the deck. He lugged out his hanger just in time, shouting the alarm to Moring and Robinson, and struck with a swift cut at the nearest attacker.
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