A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  After reporting to Griffiths, Drinkwater went in search of rest. The British remained at quarters during the night, snatching what sleep they could beside their cannon as the chill of the desert night cooled them. From time to time a gun was discharged to intimidate the French. Rolling himself in his boat cloak Drink-water settled down under the little poop to sleep. He had barely closed his eyes when someone shook him.

  ‘Zur,’ Tregembo whispered softly, ‘Mr Drinkwater, zur.’

  ‘Eh? What is it, Tregembo?’

  ‘Did you know that bugger Morris was aboard Daed’lus, zur?’

  ‘Of course I did. He commanded her boat in the raid.’ A sudden desire to communicate his fears seized him. There was between the two of them a bond that stretched beyond the bulwarks of the brig to the small Hampshire town of Petersfield. This bond underran the social barriers that divided them. ‘I think he tried to kill me this evening.’

  Drinkwater heard Tregembo whistle. ‘That explains it, zur. We saw Fox’s boat pull towards you when you was attacked. As it passed Daed’lus’s cutter it were turned back. Then the signal for recall was hoisted I heard say, zur. I also heard Mr Dalziell mention he knew the lieutenant just joined Daed’lus, and when I heard him tell Mr Lestock it was a Mr Morris . . . well I guessed, zur.’

  Drinkwater’s mind flew back to a day twenty years earlier when this same man had given a nervous midshipman the courage to challenge Morris.

  ‘If anything happens to you, zur, I’ll swing for the bastard.’

  ‘No Tregembo,’ said Drinkwater sharply. ‘If anything happens to me do you get yourself home to your Susan and tell Lord Dungarth. Appleby’ll help you. That’s an order man.’

  Tregembo hesitated. ‘Damn it Tregembo, I’ll rest easier if I thought he’d die by due process of law.’

  Tregembo sighed. Such niceties were the penalty he paid for his contacts with ‘the quality’. ‘Aye, zur. I will. And I’ll keep a weather eye out for your lady.’

  A wave of pure fear swept over Drinkwater but he suppressed it beneath a rough gratitude for Tregembo’s loyalty. ‘Aye, you do that Tregembo. My thanks to you. The sooner we are away out of this accursed bay the better. We have orders for England once . . .’ he checked himself. He had been about to say ‘once the captain has rid himself of his present obsession.’ But that was too much of a confidence even for Tregembo. The recollection steadied him and Tregembo left, silently swearing to himself that Lieutenant Drinkwater need have no fear if it was left to him.

  But sleep would not now come to Drinkwater. He rose and went below. The scratches of his wounds throbbed and in the gunroom he cleaned them with the remains of a bottle of rum. Above his head a guntruck squealed and the boom of the six-pounder split the night. Mr Rogers was clearly going to let the French know that he was on deck, middle watch or no. Drink-water went forward to look at Quilhampton.

  The apparently indefatigable Catherine Best still ministered to him, washing the small white body with wine and water so that evaporation might cool the boy.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘A little cooler, but still fevered. You have been wounded, sir?’

  ‘It is nothing at all.’

  ‘But it will mortify in this climate.’

  ‘No. I have washed it with rum. I shall survive.’ He took the rag off her and gently pushed her aside. ‘Get some rest. I shall sit with him a while.’

  He eased himself down beside the midshipman and sniffed the bandages on the stump. Thank God there was no offensive taint to it, as yet. Presently his head drooped forward and he slept.

  At five o’clock in the morning the three British cruisers reopened their cannonade on Kosseir. It was to last seven hours.

  At noon when the bombardment halted, anxious gunners reported the serious depletion of their stocks of ammunition and Ball summoned his fellow captains. At four in the afternoon the boats of Daedalus succeeded in burning the two dhows that remained anchored in the inner roadstead.

  As the day drew to a close a swell rolled into Kosseir Bay, setting the boats of the squadron bobbing and grinding one another as they assembled alongside Hellebore. The brig was the most southerly of the three British ships and a convenient starting place for the next phase of Captain Ball’s questionable strategy. All the boats had their carronades mounted, those in the frigate’s launches of eighteen pound calibre. The expedition was to land south of the town. Its object was to destroy the wells used by the French, located in the miserable oasis observed by Drinkwater earlier. About eighty seamen and marines were mustered for this purpose under the command of Captain Stuart of Fox. Seconding him were Lieutenants Morris, Hetherington and Drinkwater.

  ‘Watch this swell upon the beach, bach,’ said Griffiths at parting and Drinkwater nodded. Service in Kestrel and the buoy yachts of Trinity House had rendered him acutely conscious of sea state.

  Night was again falling as they pulled away from the brig. Stuart’s boat led, the others following. At the last moment Drink-water had ordered Tregembo back on board with a message for Lestock. As soon as the Cornishman had disappeared Drinkwater pushed off.

  Already the sun was touching the distant peaks of the Sharqiya, but in the gathering shadows troops could be seen hurrying along the road to the oasis. Drinkwater turned his boat, that captured from the French when the cutter had been lost, in the wake of Stuart’s launch. As they approached the beach they could feel the swell humping up beneath them, see it rolling ahead of them to break in a heavy surf.

  ‘Mr Brundell!’ Drinkwater hailed the master’s mate commanding the gig next astern. ‘There’s a surf. Do you use your anchor from forward, let go abreast of me!’

  He saw Brundell wave acknowledgement. The gig did not mount a gun, was too light for the six-pounders lent to the boats that had no carronades. Thankful that there were old Kestrels in Hellebore’s company who would appreciate the technique, Drink-water watched with misgiving where, ahead of them he saw Stuart’s boat anchor by the stern.

  ‘Forrard there!’ He stood up to command attention. The gunner’s mate looked astern. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You will have time for only a single discharge. Make sure you fire on the upward pitch. Make ready!

  Drinkwater could see the beach, becoming monochromatic in the dusk. Troops were deploying on it, well back from the water’s edge. Drinkwater put the tiller over and cast a single glance astern. The build up of the breakers was very noticeable. He straightened the boat for the beach. ‘Oars!’ The men ceased rowing. ‘Fire!’ The carronade barked. ‘Hold water starboard!’ The boat slewed. ‘Let go!’ The anchor splashed overboard and the boat drifted broadside. ‘Backwater starboard! Backwater all!’ The boat turned and from the corner of his eye he saw Brundell bring the gig round.

  ‘Drinkwater! What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ Morris’s voice cut across the roar of the breakers. Drinkwater ignored it. ‘Check her forrard!’ A twitch on the anchor warp told the anchor held. ‘Backwater all!’ Drinkwater repeated, his back to the beach, watching the boat’s head rise to the surf which increased in sharpness as they drove into shallow water. They were surrounded by tumbling wave crests. He cast a single glance astern. ‘Hold on! Boat Oars!’

  He nodded to the corporal of the marine detachment from Fox. Together the two men led the boat’s crew over the transom. For a minute they floundered, found their footing and scrambled ashore. Drinkwater cast a single glance back at the boat to see the boat-keepers at their stations.

  To right and left the British were coming ashore. Stuart’s men were already deploying, the marines in the centre, but his boat was in trouble, her forefoot pounding on the hard sand, her flat transom presenting a greater impediment to the breakers than the sharp bows of the Hellebore’s.

  The marines had opened fire, a rolling volley designed to pin down any interference from the town while the seamen attacked the wells. The party began to advance up the beach as the last boats came in. Two had followed Drinkwater’s example, the r
emainder had anchored by the stern, their carronades or borrowed long guns theoretically covering the landing. In the event the violence of the surf prevented more than an occasional lucky shot, while the gunners were bounced and shaken by the motion.

  Drinkwater waved his detachment up on the flank of the marines. The men ran forward, their bare feet slapping on the sand, the cutlasses gleaming dully in their brawny hands.

  The buzz of a thousand bees halted them. A company of French infantry occupied low scrub ahead of them, galling them with a furious musket fire. The seamen were in soft sand now. Several fired pistols while the officers cheered them forward. They could hardly see the enemy’s dark uniform blending with the thorn scrub, the flashes of their muskets too brief to lay a pistol on. Men were falling and the forward rush was checked.

  Then the French charged and a stumbling fight ensued, the seamen hacking with their clumsy weapons, glad of the proximity of their enemy, shaken by the earlier fire they had received on the open beach. Drinkwater thought they had a chance. He looked round hoping to find Morris’s men coming up behind them. Morris and his men had halted seventy yards away. To his left Stuart was equally hard pressed. Hetherington’s men seemed to be in support of the marines. Drinkwater’s eye was caught by a movement at the water’s edge. The stern line of one of the boats had parted. He saw her broach and roll over in the surf, saw her split like a melon. The moment’s inattention was paid for as a Frenchman drove his musket butt into Drinkwater’s guts. He gasped and retched, vaguely aware that Brundell’s pistol butt caught the man’s face, then he was on his knees fighting for breath.

  He did not hear Stuart’s order to retreat. A kind of obscurity was clouding his mind. He was not even aware that he was half crouched in a kind of stumbling run, with Brundell on one side of him and a seaman on the other. He did not feel the seaman fall, a musket ball in his heart, did not feel another’s arm bear him up, nor hear the shouted instruction from Morris.

  ‘I have him, Mister, he’s an old friend. You take charge of the brig’s detachment now.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Brundell turned uncertainly away. There was nasty gossip in the squadron about Lieutenant Morris.

  Everywhere men ran to the boats, the seamen first to man the oars and haul in the anchors. In a wavering line the marines retreated, holding the advancing French just far enough away to permit the embarkation of the British.

  It was as well the French garrison was both sickly and small. The commandant, Adjutant Donzelot, could not afford to lose men. To drive the British back to their boats and to preserve his wells was enough. Desert war had taught him not to attempt the impossible.

  In the dark confusion of the embarkation Morris found it a matter of ease to spin the semi-conscious Drinkwater round as they waded into the water, to bring his knee up into Drinkwater’s groin and to drop him as though shot. Morris spared a single glance at his enemy. In falling Drinkwater had cut his leg upon the blade of the sword that had all the while dangled on its martingale from his wrist.

  Morris was smiling as he scrambled over the bow of his boat. In the final surge of the sea as it washed the beach of Kosseir Bay lay the body of Nathaniel Drinkwater.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Stink of Fish

  August 1799

  Adjutant Donzelot’s caution did not prevent him allowing his men to bayonet the wounded and dying British. Those that did not die during the night would be killed the following morning by Arabs and eaten by the yellow-necked vultures that wheeled above the town. That Drinkwater was not one of these unfortunates was the merest whim of fortune. He was washed all a-tumble among the wreckage of the smashed boat, one more black hummock upon the pale sand beneath the stars. Those of Donzelot’s men who ventured to the edge of the sea were content to find the groaning body of an eighteen-year-old boy, an ordinary seaman from Fox whose task of tending the launch’s anchor warp had resulted in his being rolled on by the heavy boat. The bayonets of the infantrymen only added to the perforations in the boy’s lungs.

  Drinkwater knew nothing of this. He came to long after the French had returned to their billets, long after the young seaman was dead. He was already missed by Griffiths and Appleby, already being revenged in the mind of Tregembo. And while Brundell puzzled over his disappearance, Morris was already half-drunk over it. Even aboard Hellebore it had its element of satisfaction. To Lestock it justified a certain mean pleasure that ‘Mr Drinkwater was too clever for his own good,’ while Rogers’s career could only benefit from Nathaniel’s death.

  Whatever agency ensured his survival, be it fortune, the Providence he believed in, or the prayer Elizabeth daily offered for his preservation, it was pain not life that he was first aware of.

  Waves of it spread upwards from the bruises in his lower abdomen where his legs terminated in huge, unnatural swellings. It was an hour before the pain had subsided sufficiently for him to command his faculties. An hour before his mind, registering facts from casual observation, gave them the meaning of cause and effect. It penetrated his mind that it was the hog of a boat that blotted out his vision of the stars, that he lay on sand shivering and soaking wet, an occasional wave still washing up around him. Fear of a terrible loneliness slowly replaced that of death. And that comparative condition was the first awakening of his mental will to live. He became aware that he was sheltered from observation by the boat’s wreckage, that he could not move his right arm only because its wrist was fast to the martingale of the sword upon which the inert weight of his body lay. He moved, this time by conscious effort, fighting the pain from his swollen testicles. The pain in his gut he could account for, that in his loins was a mystery.

  He muttered a string of meaningless filth as he drew his knees up and tried to rise. Just as the distraction of the smashing boat had caused his incapacity yet saved his body, now the cold numbed him and revived him to make an effort. The North Sea had taught him the dangers of succumbing to cold. Cold was an enemy and the thought of it brought him unsteadily to his feet.

  As he stood panting with shallow respirations, waiting for the nausea to wane, the necessity of a plan presented itself to him. He remembered where he was. Slowly he turned his head. The occasional flame and thump from seaward showed where the squadron fired its minute guns as it had the night before. Less than two miles away was all he held sacred. His career, the talisman of his love, his duty; the brig Hellebore. Like a vision of the Holy City beckoning Pilgrim on, that gunfire cauterised his despair.

  Aware that the moving chiaroscuro of the sea’s edge facilitated his own movement he began to crawl north, along the curve of the bay towards Kosseir itself.

  At first it was easy. He developed a simian lope that accommodated his hurt, but as he approached the town his senses urged caution and progress slowed. He had no idea where the French posted their vedettes. They must have someone watching the beach. He rested in the protection of a small fishing boat drawn up above the high water line. The sharp stink of fish assailed him and from its offensive odour he had an idea. Wriggling round the boat he discovered a net lying nearby. Carefully, trying to prevent the slightest gleam of starlight on its blade, he used the hanger to cut off a section the size of a blanket, pulling it round his shoulders like a cloak. If a sentry should challenge he could pull it round him, humping his body so that in the darkness he might look like an old pile of net such as may be found on any beach in the world used by fishermen.

  Encouraged he continued his painful and patient advance towards the little harbour that lay behind the mole. He could not risk swimming to the squadron. The presence of sharks made that a suicidal choice. But he could steal a boat. He came to the first building and heard the dull clink of accoutrements. Upon the flat roof a sentry yawned, the smell of his tobacco mingling with the stink that filled Drinkwater’s offended nostrils as he struggled beneath his net.

  It was after midnight when the prospect of the harbour was exposed to him. He was warm with exertion and his pain had subsided to i
nhabit only those parts of him that were worst affected. Hope had given him the courage to make the journey, now success this far spurred him on. He sat and caught his breath. The occasional crash told where the balls from the British guns landed. Once he heard a scream and shouts. The scream was a woman’s and the shouts unmistakably French oaths.

  The harbour presented a fantastic sight. It was crammed with native craft of all sizes. In the centre the large hulls of a group of baghalas were to be dimly perceived, rising above the lower decks of sambuks and fishing dhows. It was a testimony to the energy of Edouard Santhonax. But it was also a testimony to British sea-power. For though it seemed to observers on board the squadron off-shore that Kosseir was capable of absorbing an infinity of round-shot, Drinkwater’s seaman’s eye saw immediately the irregularities in that close-packed wedge of ships. The broken masts, the jagged lines of their rails, the dark holes in their decks and the lower ones, already resting on the bottom, spoke of the results of cannon fire.

  Drinkwater moved forward, sure that somewhere a dinghy or small boat existed to carry him back to Hellebore.

  That hope was nearly his undoing. From nowhere a dog appeared. Both parties shared surprise but the dog barked, not once, but with the persistent yapping of the pariah. Above him Drinkwater heard an oath and curled like a woodlouse. The dog snuffled round him, its hunger almost audible. Then it began to bark again. The stone hit the ground an inch from his head and the dog yelped and ran off. Drinkwater froze, imagining the sentry looking down. Had he scanned the ground earlier? Would the presence of an old net excite his suspicion? For as long as his nerves could stand it Drinkwater remained immobile. Then he began to move forward, eager to reach a downward slope onto the crumbling quay that ran along the inside of the harbour. He made it without mishap, moving swiftly across the open quay when he heard a fortuitous disturbance within the town.