Beneath the Aurora

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Don’t concern yourself, sir. I’ll have the t’gallant masts sent up again after breakfast and a lookout posted aloft.’

  ‘Very well.’ They walked on a little. Then Drinkwater remarked, ‘She’s a lot easier now.’

  It was relative, of course. The ship still scended and the dying sea surged alongside her hurrying hull.

  ‘Shall I let fall the forecourse and set the tops’ls?’

  ‘No, let us wait for full daylight and assure ourselves that Kestrel ain’t in sight before we crack on sail.’

  Drinkwater felt much better with a bellyful of burgoo and a pot of hot coffee inside him. Huke, he had learned during their morning walk, prescribed hot chocolate for the wardroom, said it gave the young layabouts a ‘fizzing start to the day’. Apparently the idea originated with Kennedy, but Huke had tried it and endorsed it, to the disgust of several of the younger officers. Drinkwater had promised he would try it himself, but not this morning. After so miserable and worrying a night, he wanted the comfort of the familiar and had, in any case, brought a quantity of good coffee aboard in his otherwise meagre and hastily purchased cabin stores.

  Mr Templeton joined him for a cup as he finished breakfast. The poor man looked terrible and stared unhappily at the rapid rise and fall of the sea astern, visible now that Drinkwater had had the shutters lowered. Templeton had been prostrated by sea-sickness before they passed the Isle of May, and last night had reduced him to a shadow.

  ‘If it is any consolation, Mr Templeton,’ Drinkwater said, waving him to a chair, ‘the storm last night was one of the most severe I have experienced, certainly for the violence of the wind.’

  ‘I scarcely feel much better for the news, sir, but thank you for your encouragement.’ And, seeing Drinkwater smile, he added, ‘I never imagined . . . never imagined . . .’

  ‘Well, buck up,’ Drinkwater said with a cheeriness he did not truly feel. ‘We have lost contact with the Kestrel, but perhaps we shall have news of her before nightfall. Just thank your lucky stars that it was over so soon; I’ve known weather like that last for a week. Today promises to be different.’ Drinkwater grabbed the table as Andromeda heeled to leeward and drove her bowsprit at the sea-bed.

  ‘You mean this is a moderation?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, yes! Why, you should have been in the old Patrician with me when we fell foul of a typhoon in the China Sea . . .’

  But Drinkwater’s consoling reminiscence was cut short by a short, sharp rumble that was itself terminated by a shuddering crash.

  Drinkwater knew instantly what the noise was, for it was followed by a further rumbling and crash as Andromeda rolled easily back to starboard. He was out of his chair and halfway to the door before Templeton had recovered from this further shock.

  ‘Gun adrift!’ snapped Drinkwater by way of explanation as he flung open the cabin door and the noise of turmoil flooded in further to assault the already affronted Templeton. Rising unsteadily, he followed the captain, but waited on the cabin threshold. Beside him the marine sentry fidgeted uncomfortably.

  ‘Number seven gun,’ he muttered confidentially to the captain’s clerk. The significance of the remark, if it had any, was lost on Templeton. He did not know that the guns in the starboard battery were, by convention, numbered oddly. Moreover, the perspective of the gun deck allowed him to see little. The receding twin rows of bulky black cannon breeches, with their accompanying ropework, blocks, shot garlands and overhead rammers, worms and sponges, looked much as normal. It was always a crowded space, and if there were more men loitering about than usual, a cause was not obvious. His view, it was true, was obscured by the masts, the capstans, stanchions, and so forth, but the marine’s confident assertion meant nothing to him and gave him no clue.

  And then the tableau before him dissolved. The frigate’s lazy counter-roll scattered the group of men. With shouts and cries they spread asunder, leaping clear of something which, Templeton could see now, was indeed a loose cannon. The lashings which normally held it tight, with its muzzle elevated and lodged against the lintel of its gun-port, seemed to have given way and parted.

  This had caused the gun to roll inboard, as though recoiling beyond the constraints of its breechings. It had fetched up against one of the stanchions, a heavy vertical timber supporting the deck above. Here it had slewed, perhaps due to one of its training tackles fouling, but this had caused it to swing from right angles to the ship’s fore and aft axis, thus giving it greater range to trundle threateningly up and down. Its two tons of avoirdupois had already destroyed a lifted grating, splintered half a dozen mess kids, buckets and benches, and split the heavy vertical timber of the after bitts.

  As Andromeda heaved over a sea, the malevolent mass began to move aft, gaining a steady momentum that caused Templeton, well out of its line of advance, to flinch involuntarily. As the deck rocked, this slowed and then went into reverse, but by now the forces of order were mustered. Templeton could see Captain Drinkwater and Lieutenant Huke (a dour but competent soul, Templeton thought), the marine sergeant and Greer, an active boatswain’s mate who had befriended Templeton in an odd kind of way and seemed willing to answer any of Templeton’s technical questions. He had asked them at first of Mosse, but that dapper young officer did not conceive his duty to be the instructing of a mere clerk. Greer had overheard the exchange, made in Leith Road before the onset of sea-sickness, and volunteered himself as a ‘sea-daddy.’

  Templeton watched fascinated as ropes appeared, sinuous lines of seamen running to keep them clear of fouling as, in a moment of temporary equilibrium, someone shouted:

  ‘Now!’

  And the errant gun was miraculously and suddenly overwhelmed. A knot of officers remained round the gun, Drinkwater among them. Templeton was childishly gleeful. He felt less queasy, slightly happier with his lot. The swift, corporate response had impressed him. Men drew back grinning with satisfaction, and although the 12-pounder stared the length of the gun deck, it was held unmoving in a web of rope, even when Andromeda tested the skill of her company by kicking her stern in the air and then plunging it into the abyss.

  ‘Like Gulliver upon the Lilliputian beach,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘Like ’oo, sir?’ the marine beside him asked.

  ‘Like Gulliver . . .’ he repeated, before seeing the ludicrous waste of the remark.

  From behind him came the crash of crockery. He turned and looked back into the cabin. Coffee pot, cups and saucers lay smashed on the chequer-painted canvas saveall.

  ‘Cap’n’s china, sir,’ said the marine unnecessarily.

  ‘Oh dear . . .’

  Templeton retreated into the cabin and stood irresolute above the slopping mess, then Frampton, the captain’s servant, with much clucking of his tongue, appeared with a cloth.

  ‘I don’t know what Cap’n Pardoe’ll say. We’ve only the pewter pot left,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Get out!’ Templeton swung round to find Drinkwater in the doorway. The captain’s face was strangely set. He shut the door and strode aft, putting his right hand on the aftermost beam, resting his head on his arm and staring astern. The servant swiftly vanished and Templeton himself hesitated; but it was clear the captain did not mean him. Templeton averted his eyes from the heave and suck of the wake and turned his gaze inboard. He admired again the rather fine painting of Mrs Drinkwater which the captain had hung the previous afternoon. He felt a return of his nausea and fought to occupy his mind with something else.

  ‘Is . . . is something the matter, sir? I, um, thought the taming of the gun accomplished most expertly, sir.’

  Drinkwater remained unmoving, braced against the ship’s motion. ‘Did you now; how very condescending of you.’ Templeton considered the captain might have been speaking through clenched teeth. Was this another sea-mystery? Was the captain himself suffering from mal de mer?

  Templeton had reached this fascinating conclusion when the door opened once more and Huke strode in. He was carrying a shor
t length of thick brown rope.

  ‘Well?’ Drinkwater turned. ‘What d’you think?’

  Huke held the rope out. ‘There’s no doubt, sir. Cut two-thirds through and the rest left to nature. Thank God it didn’t part six hours earlier.’

  And it slowly dawned upon Mr Templeton that the breaking adrift of the cannon had been no accident, but a deliberate act of sabotage.

  ‘That is’, he said, intruding into the exchange of looks of his two superiors, ‘a most prejudicial circumstance, is it not?’

  * See The Corvette.

  * See A Brig of War.

  * See A King’s Cutter.

  † See Under False Colours.

  CHAPTER 6

  October 1813

  Typhus

  ‘We must not make our concern too obvious,’ Drinkwater said, after a pause during which Templeton blushed in acknowledgement that he had spoken out of turn. ‘If the sabotage was merely malicious, a detestation at having been sent so abruptly on foreign service, or some such, vigilance may be all that is necessary. Do you, Mr Huke, have a discreet word with all of the other officers on those lines.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir. You want any other construction played down, I assume.’ Huke looked significantly at the captain’s secretary.

  ‘Templeton is party to everything, Mr Huke. He was lately a cipher clerk at the Admiralty.’

  ‘I see,’ said Huke, who did nothing of the kind.

  ‘But yes, play it down, just the same,’ Drinkwater said, and Huke nodded. ‘And I think I will let the marine officer know exactly what is going on. Is he a sound man, Mr Huke?’

  ‘Mr Walsh is reliable enough, but unimaginative and not given to using his initiative. He is somewhat talkative but steady under fire.’ Huke paused. ‘If I might presume to advise you, sir . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. You think him liable to be indiscreet?’

  Huke nodded again. ‘I should tell him only that we are bound upon a special service. It is not necessary to say more. He will be as vigilant as Old Harry if he thinks there’s the merest whiff of mutiny attached to this business.’

  ‘So be it.’ Drinkwater looked from one to the other. ‘Are there any questions?’

  ‘Do you think it is possible to identify the culprits?’

  Drinkwater and Huke stared incredulously at the clerk who, for the third time that morning, wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  ‘These things are managed by men who take every precaution to ensure no officer ever gets to hear how they happen,’ Drinkwater explained. ‘These men are not stupid, Mr Templeton, even when they lack the advantages of knowledge or education.’

  ‘And one or two’, added Huke with heavy emphasis, ‘are not wanting in either.’

  Drinkwater spoke to Lieutenant Walsh shortly afterwards. ‘The gun that broke loose was partially cut adrift, Mr Walsh. Have you had much of this sort of thing in the ship before?’

  Walsh whistled through his teeth at the intelligence, then shook his head. He was a thick-set, middle-aged man whose prospects looked exceedingly dim. He should have reached the rank of major long before, and have been commanding the marine detachment aboard a flagship. He had a high colour, and Drinkwater suspected his loquacity might be proportional to his intake of black-strap.

  ‘Nothing, sir, of much significance. The odd outbreak of thievery and so forth, but nothing organized.’

  ‘Well, I want you to keep your eyes open – and your mouth shut if you find anything out. I want to be the first to know anything, any scuttlebutt, any evidence of combinations, any mutterings in odd corners. D’you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But I don’t want a hornet’s nest stirred up. I don’t want your men ferreting and fossicking through the ship so that even a blind fiddler can see we’re concerned.’ Walsh frowned. ‘The point is, Mr Walsh, and this is strictly confidential, we are engaged upon a special service and delay of any kind would be most unfortunate. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘You want me to keep my eyes and ears open, sir, but not to let on too much, and to let you know immediately if I get wind of anything.’

  ‘You have it in a nutshell.’

  Drinkwater went on deck after terminating his interview with the red-coated marine. The topgallant masts were already aloft again, the order to refid them having just been given. Drinkwater paced the quarterdeck, watching the men as they set up the rigging. From time to time he fished in his tail pocket and levelled his glass at the horizon, sweeping it in arcs, hoping to see the angular peak of Kestrel’s mainsail breaking its uniformity.

  The wind was down to a stiff breeze from the south-east and Andromeda bowled along, her topsail yards braced round to catch it, the deep-cut sails straining in their bolt-ropes.

  As they went about their tasks under the supervision of Mr Birkbeck, the boatswain and his mates, the men frequently cast their eyes in Drinkwater’s direction. If he caught their glance they swiftly looked away. This was no admission of guilt, or even caginess. Their curiosity would have been natural enough in any circumstances, given his recent arrival on board, for the captain of a man-of-war held autocratic powers over his unfortunate crew. Indeed, Drinkwater recalled incidents of flogging for ‘dumb insolence’ if a man so much as stared fixedly at his commander, so he attached no importance to this phenomenon. There would be no one on the frigate who did not know by now of the incident of the cannon, for it remained where it had been lashed. How their new captain reacted was of general interest. If his restless scourings of the horizon with his glass conveyed the impression of a greater anxiety for Quilhampton’s Kestrel, it would not have been far from the truth.

  At one point he thought he saw her. A blurred image swam past the telescope’s lenses. Unaccountably the cutter had somehow worked ahead of them. He moved smartly forward, along the gangway on to the forecastle. Here, the boatswain, Mr Hardy, was about to sway up the fore topgallant yard.

  ‘Carry on, Mr Hardy,’ he said as the petty officer touched his hat.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Reaching the foremast shrouds, Drinkwater levelled his glass. He carefully traversed the horizon. It was blank. He worked carefully backwards from right to left. Again, nothing.

  ‘T’garn yardmen to the top!’ Hardy bawled almost in his ear as he conned the horizon yet again, convinced that he had seen something and waiting for the ship to lift to a wave on each small sector again.

  ‘Send down the yard ropes!’

  The yard, its sail furled along it, rose from the boat booms and began its journey aloft.

  ‘High enough! Rig the yardarms!’

  The men on the forecastle waited for their colleagues aloft to finish their preparatory work.

  ‘Taking their bloody time . . .’ a man grumbled quietly.

  ‘Shut up, Hopkins, the cap’n’s over there . . .’

  ‘Hold your blethering tongues!’ Hardy said as he stared aloft, where some difficulty was being experienced. Drinkwater barely noticed these sotto voce remarks. He was concentrating on the business of seeking a second glimpse of that distant sail.

  Hardy and the men aloft held a brief exchange. A call came down that all was now well. ‘Sway higher . . . avast! Tend lifts and braces!’ Men shuffled across the deck, more ropes were cast off belaying pins, their coils flung out for quick running and tailed on to by the seamen, chivvied by Greer.

  ‘That’s well there. Stand by! Now . . . sway across!’

  Hitched properly the topgallant yard left the vertical and assumed its more natural horizontal position. ‘Bend the gear!’

  It was secured in its parrel and the mast slushed. Those on deck cleared up, recoiling the ropes and preparing to move aft to the mainmast. If the south-easterly wind continued to fall away, they would be setting those sails before they were piped to dinner.

  ‘Lay down from aloft!’

  The topmen swarmed down the backstays, hand over hand, saw the captain and ceased their chaffing with hissed cautions. Drink
water shut his glass with a snap and walked aft. He must have been mistaken. There was no sign of Kestrel.

  Halfway along the gangway a thought struck him with such force that he stopped beside the men now mustering round the mainmast. The man who had been called Hopkins caught his eye.

  ‘You there!’ he called. ‘That man, Mr Hardy, beside the larboard pinrail, d’you know his name?’

  The boatswain looked round. ‘That’s Hopkins, sir.’

  ‘Hopkins, come here.’

  The men had stopped work. Lieutenant Huke and the master, Mr Birkbeck, came towards him, uncertain of what was happening. With obvious reluctance the man identified as Hopkins approached and stood before Drinkwater.

  ‘Have I sailed with you before, Hopkins?’ Drinkwater asked. His tone of voice was pleasant, deliberately relaxed, as though wanting to make an impression by this mock familiarity.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’m certain we’ve sailed together before. D’you have a twin?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You were on the Antigone, or was it the Patrician?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Where are you from, Hopkins, eh?’ Drinkwater went on, probing for something longer than these monosyllabic words. Watching his quarry, Drinkwater saw the eyes flicker uncertainly. ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘London, sir.’

  ‘What part of London?’

  Hopkins shrugged. ‘Just London, sir.’

  ‘And you say you’ve never sailed with me before?’ Sweat was standing out on Hopkins’s brow.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well stap me, Hopkins, I’d have laid money on the fact!’ Drinkwater smiled. ‘Very well, then, carry on. Carry on, Mr Hardy, let’s have the men at it again. I want those t’gallants set.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Hopkins turned and escaped. Odd looks were exchanged between officers and men alike as they went back to their tasks. Drinkwater continued aft, with Huke and Birkbeck staring after him.

  ‘Odd cove,’ remarked the master, looking at Drinkwater who had continued to the taffrail and stood staring astern, his hands clasping the brass tube of the Dollond glass behind his back.