The Shadow of the Eagle

by Richard Woodman

  Paine produced a satisfactory definition and Birkbeck nodded. ‘Indeed, the parallel of zero latitude from which other parallels are taken to the northward, or the southward. Now, Mr Dunn, is the equator a great circle?’

  ‘Er, yes sir.’

  ‘Good. And are the other parallels of latitude therefore great circles?’

  Dunn’s forehead creased with the effort of recollection. Birkbeck’s proposition seemed a reasonable enough one. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Dunn. Of all the parallels of latitude only the equator is a great circle. And why is that, pray? Mr Paine?’

  ‘Because a great circle is defined as a circle on the surface of the earth having the same radius as that of the earth.’

  ‘Very good, Mr Paine. Do you understand, Mr Dunn? One might equally have said it should have the same diameter, or that its centre was coincident with that of the earth. Now Mr Dunn, of all the parallels of latitude, only the equator is a great circle, what would you conclude of the meridians?’ Dunn looked even more perplexed. ‘You do know what a meridian is, Mr Dunn, do you not?’

  ‘I am not certain, sir,’ said the boy hopelessly, adding as he saw an unsympathetic gleam in the master’s eye, ‘is it, is it …?’ But the floundering was to no avail and Paine was only too ready to capitalize on his messmate’s humiliation.

  ‘A meridian is a great circle passing through the poles by which longitude is measured …’

  ‘Very good, Mr Paine.’ The midshipmen turned as a body to see Marlowe standing behind them. And how do we determine longitude?’

  ‘By chronometer, sir …’

  ‘By your leave, Mr Birkbeck…’

  ‘By all means, Mr Marlowe…’

  Birkbeck, somewhat discomfited, but in no wise seriously affronted by Marlowe’s assumption of the instructor’s role, took himself off and, having fortified himself with a nip of rum flip in the wardroom, summoned the carpenter and returned to his painstaking and tedious survey of the hold.

  Mr Birkbeck’s lecture on the different areas of the Atlantic Ocean seemed borne out in the following days. His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Andromeda, leaking from her exertions, sailed into sunnier climes. The gale, in its abatement, took with it the uncertain weather of high latitudes and, after almost two days of variable airs, ushered in a north-easterly wind, an unexpected but steady breeze. They were too far north for the trade winds, but the favourable direction augured well for their passage and was no less welcome.

  Andromeda’s yards were squared and she bore away with a fine bone in her teeth, apparently unconcerned with the problems of her antiquity which preoccupied her senior officers. The ship’s company turned the berth-deck inside out, washed clothes and bedding and stummed between decks, sweetening the air. Moreover, the warmer nights and drier weather meant the tarpaulins could be rolled back on the booms, ports opened during the daylight and the entire ship made more habitable. The mood of the people changed in proportion, along with the application of a lick of paint and varnish here and there to brighten up their miserable quarters, no thought having been given to this during the frigate’s recent embellishment.

  As details of Mr Marlowe’s recovery permeated the ends of the ship most distant from the wardroom, they were accompanied by the explanation of illness as causing his temporary loss of control. Alongside this intelligence there went a blasphemous joke that he had been raised from the dead. Lieutenant Ashton’s nickname for the captain of ‘Our Father’ was rather apt in this context and as a consequence the first lieutenant had, quite unbeknown to himself, acquired the soubriquet of Lazarus Marlowe. This, partly generating the changed mood of the ship’s company, was yet as much a product of it. In this mild euphoria only Lieutenant Ashton and Sergeant McCann remained burdened, the one having lost control of his future, the other increasingly obsessed and preoccupied by his past.

  Indeed, in the case of McCann, the improved weather only exacerbated his condition. As is common with many, memories of youth and past happiness were associated with sunny days and blue skies such as now dominated the flying frigate. Moreover, the farther west they ran, the nearer they drew to the United States, and the fact that this diminishing distance did not constitute a closing of the American coast, worked insidiously upon poor McCann.

  Although they had seen a few ships in the Channel and in the Western Approaches, the wide blue reaches of the Atlantic yielded nothing beyond a pair of Portuguese schooners crossing for the Grand Banks. Captain Drinkwater, sensitive to the mellowing mood of the ship and encouraged by the transformation of Lieutenant Marlowe, ordered several gunnery practices as they romped steadily south and westwards.

  In addition to the fulmars, gulls and gannets, the dark, marauding shapes of hawking skuas were to be seen intimidating even the large solan geese; flying fish now darted from either bow, pursued by albacore and occasionally driven on board where they were quickly tossed into frying pans to make impromptu feasts for lucky messes or the midshipmen’s berth.

  And with the flying fish and the albacore came the bottle-nosed dolphins, lifting easily from Andromeda’s bow waves, racing in with seemingly effortless thrusts of their muscular tails, to ride the pressure wave that advanced unseen yet tangible, ahead of the massive bulk of the frigate’s driving hull. Attempts to catch them usually failed, but occasionally one would succumb to a harpoon or a lure, to end up, poached slowly in Madeira, as steaks on the wardroom table.

  On one such occasion, heady with their success, the officers invited Drinkwater to dinner, and notwithstanding the absence of Lieutenant Ashton on watch, they all enjoyed a jolly evening during which the discussion ranged from the general conduct of the late war and the difficulties of securing the person of Napoleon Bonaparte on a remote island, to the possible causes of Andromeda’s leak and the contribution to literature of the unknown ‘lady’ who had written Pride and Prejudice.

  Watching Marlowe preside over this pleasant evening, Drinkwater concluded his first lieutenant had made a supreme effort and overcome his unhappiness. Furthermore, Drinkwater began to entertain hopes of high endeavour from him, if things fell out as he hoped they would.

  But as the days passed and the reckoning so assiduously calculated by Birkbeck, Marlowe and their coterie of half-willing midshipmen, showed them rapidly closing the Archipelago of the Azores, renewed doubts assailed Drinkwater. And while the pleasant weather drew smiles from his men, he paced the weather side of the quarterdeck for hour after hour, going over and over the interview with Hortense, wondering if he was not a quixotic fool after all, seduced at the last by a face which had haunted him for almost all his adult life. She had sought him out; she knew the role he had played in her husband’s death; they had been enemies for a score or so of years; so why in God’s name should he trust her now?

  He ignored the importance of her news and processed events through the filter of guessed motives, suspicions, old anxieties and even fears. He recalled, with that peculiar insistence that only the lonely can as they chew on introspection, how she had seemed an almost demonic presence at one time; an embodiment of all the restless energies of imperial France. She had loomed in his imagination larger than any metaphor: for she alone had represented the enemy, and her beauty had seemed diabolical in its power. He had felt this influence suffocating him, drowning him as he fell flailing beneath the overwhelming power of Hortense as the white lady, so that in the wake of the dream, when the rational world reasserted itself, there always lurked a hint of his own impending madness. He shied away from this like a frightened horse, clinging at logic to prevent the otherwise inevitable overwhelming by the ‘blue-devils’ of mental depression.

  He forced himself to consider again Hortense’s motives. Why should she do this? Had she not simply been beggared by the damnable war, as she claimed? And what advantage could she gain by casting one ageing fool of a British naval officer on some ludicrous quest amid the billows of the North Atlantic, if the reason for it were not true? He discarded the
morbid, fanciful and faintly ridiculous assumptions of his private thoughts, calming himself with the more rational figurings-out of the ordinary.

  As his mother was once fond of saying with the bitterness of premature bereavement playing around the corners of her mouth, there was no fool like an old fool. But to set against that charge he brought the experience of a lifetime in the sea-service and a familiarity with the machinations of secret diplomacy.

  Nevertheless, there was also the forbidding spectre of their Lordships’ disapprobation, as the stock phrase had it. His departure on his self-appointed quest may well have had the blessing of His Royal Highness, the Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and so on and so forth, but their Lordships would be well aware that he was well aware that the whole Royal Navy of Great Britain was well aware that His Royal Highness, the Prince William Henry, and so on and so forth, was a buffoon, if not an incompetent!

  On the other hand, what point would there be in him dashing off into the Atlantic on his own initiative if he had no good motive? Everyone knew that although the war in Europe was over, the war in North America was not, and it remained perfectly possible for Bonaparte to cause mayhem in Canada. While that much was possible, if not probable, there was another factor Drinkwater now had to consider. Andromeda was officially unfit for further active service; she should have been laid up preparatory to passing to the breakers’ yard, and her crew, drafted especially for the Royal Escort duty to France, would almost certainly be dispersed to man more sea-worthy ships refitting for the augmentation of the blockade of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Indeed, at that very moment some of those ships might be eagerly awaiting their draft, and thus delayed by Andromeda’s absence.

  Amid all his considerations of grand strategy, it was this doubt that remained the most disturbing. Try how he might, Drinkwater was unable to argue his way out of this almost certain error of judgement!

  Up and down he paced; not seeing the work of the ship passing all about him, scarcely hearing the bells striking the half-hour, the watch-words of the lookouts or the occasional order passed along. He was oblivious to the break-up of the daily navigation class, made so convenient while the solution to the problem of Andromeda’s day’s work was so easily reconciled in the north-east wind by the simple application of a plane traverse; nor did he notice the daily quarterdeck parade of Hyde’s lobsters, nor remark upon Sergeant McCann’s uncharacteristically less-than-perfect turnout. Nor indeed, did Captain Drinkwater observe either the energy of the first lieutenant, or the complementary disinterest of the third. Instead he revolved his wretched arguments in a tediously endless mental circumambulation, locked into the introversion of isolation and independent command.

  But whatever these private anxieties might constitute, and whatever paramountcy they might assume in any commander’s thoughts, the cares of his ship will always intrude, and on this occasion they took the form of Mr Midshipman ‘Tom’ Paine over whom the preoccupied Drinkwater almost fell as the youngster dodged about in front of him to attract his attention.

  ‘God’s bones! What in heaven’s name is the matter?’ Drinkwater finally acknowledged the jumping jack trying to waylay him. ‘Why Mr Paine, what the devil d’you want?’

  Paine was not a whit discomfited by the difficulties he had experienced in accomplishing his simple errand. Jokes about Old Nat were legion in the cockpit.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Mr Marlowe’s compliments, and he wishes me to inform you that we shall require an alteration of course to make our landfall.’

  Drinkwater looked over the boy’s shoulder. Marlowe and Birkbeck were exchanging a word or two on the far side of the binnacle.

  ‘An alteration of course, eh? Well sir, to what?’

  ‘Ten degrees to port, sir.’

  ‘To port, eh?’ He was about to say that in his day it would have been ‘to larboard’ but such pedantry would be laughable to the young imp. ‘Very well, Mr Paine, kindly see to it.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The lad touched his fore-cock and made to be off when Drinkwater called him back.

  ‘And when you have attended to the matter and adjusted the yards, pray show me your reckoning of the day’s work.’

  Paine’s face fell. His ‘Aye, aye, sir’ was less enthusiastic.

  Laughing inwardly, Drinkwater crossed the deck and stood on the weather side of the helm while Andromeda’s head was swung through ten degrees of arc and settled on her new course. There was a general tweaking of braces, but neither the motion nor the speed of the ship seemed affected and the ageing hull drove forwards through the blue seas with the white wave crests running up almost astern. It seemed quite impossible that this charming scene could ever be otherwise; that the light, straining canvas above their heads could ever turn a rain and spray-sodden grey, as hard on the horniest hands as rawhide, or that the great bulk of the hurrying ship could be laid over on her beam ends, or tossed about like a cork.

  ‘So, gentlemen,’ he said to Marlowe and Birkbeck, who had both been watching the adjusting of the main yards, ‘when do you anticipate sighting our landfall?’

  ‘Shortly after first light tomorrow, sir,’ Marlowe answered.

  Drinkwater looked at Birkbeck. ‘Are you two in agreement?’

  ‘Harmoniously so, sir,’ Birkbeck replied with a hint of irony.

  ‘Good. I’m decidedly glad to hear it.’ Drinkwater smiled at the two men. Marlowe was a transformed figure. ‘Well now, we must consider our best course of action when we arrive.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. How far offshore will you cruise?’ Marlowe asked.

  Drinkwater rubbed his chin and raised an eyebrow. ‘Three or four leagues; sufficiently far to be clear of danger, yet not out of sight of the land. According to my reckoning, our friends will come down on the island from the north-north-east.’ He waved out on the starboard quarter, as though their sails might appear at any moment.

  ‘D’you think Bonaparte is already there, sir?’ asked Birkbeck.

  ‘We shall send a boat in to find out. Do you prepare the launch, stock it for two days and have Frey’ Drinkwater hesitated, ‘no, have Ashton command it. Send in half a dozen marines under the sergeant.’ Drinkwater paused as Marlowe nodded. ‘But to answer your question about Boney, I consider it unlikely, though not impossible, for him to have reached the island yet. I have no knowledge of when he left Paris, nor of his port of embarkation, but he must have been despatched by the time King Louis landed, I’d have thought, and conveyed by express to the west coast; to Brest, or La Rochelle or L’Orient. A fast frigate might, I suppose, have reached the archipelago a little before us.’

  ‘A British frigate?’ asked Marlowe.

  Drinkwater shrugged. ‘I imagine a British frigate or perhaps a small squadron such as we were lately attached to, would accompany him. As for himself, I suppose his dignity as the elected Emperor of the French would be unsupportable in anything but a French man-o’-war.’

  ‘Not if it was the allies’ purpose to humiliate him,’ put in Marlowe.

  ‘I think a small island humiliation enough after the domination of Europe,’ countered Drinkwater. ‘Remember what Nelson wrote: “In victory, let the chief characteristic be magnanimity.”’

  A very Christian sentiment sir,’ responded Birkbeck, ‘but not one which I would expect his most serene and culminated, high and God almighty majesty the Tsar of all the Russias to subscribe to where Napoleon Bonaparte is concerned.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Drinkwater grinning, ‘though you talk like a canting leveller, Mr Birkbeck. I thought your nimble scholar Tom Paine the republican among us.’

  And they all laughed companionably, standing in the sunshine enjoying the fellowship of like minds.

  PART TWO

  A WILD-GOOSE CHASE?

  ‘Well, that’s the end of it all, though it’s throwing the game away with all the trump cards in one’s hand.’

  Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento

  CHAPTER 10

&nbs
p; The Rock

  May 1814

  Shortly before dawn Drinkwater woke with a start. Lying in the darkness he listened intently, but could discern no noise; not even the clanking of the pumps disturbed the night, silent but for the laboured creaking of the ship and above his head the faint, measured tread of one of the watch-keepers. Then his cabin was suddenly lit up, as though someone shone a powerful light in through the stern windows. The spectral illumination startled him. His heart thumped with alarm and he was on his feet in a trice, to stare out through the stern windows. An instant later he had an explanation as the ship drove through bio-luminescence and the pale green gleam again lit up the night.

  He was unable to sleep after this weird though natural phenomenon, and drew on breeches, shoes and stockings. Winding his boat-cloak about himself he went on deck. The pacing footsteps revealed themselves to be those of Lieutenant Frey. They exchanged courtesies and Drinkwater asked the routine question.

  ‘All well?’

  ‘Aye, sir. I have a good man stationed aloft in the foretop, though I doubt we’ll sight anything before daylight.’

  “Tis as well to be on our guard.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘The wind is holding fair,’ Drinkwater observed. ‘One might almost believe we had run into the trades, but our latitude is too high so we must be prepared for our run of luck to end.’

  There was a brief pause, then Frey said, ‘I believe you’re sending the launch ashore, sir.’