When the interrogation of the prisoners was over, Drinkwater ordered the men taken away and returned to the bilboes. ‘They are to be securely chained for tonight.’
Sergeant Danks took them off with a smart salute and an about-turn. Drinkwater turned to Huke. ‘Well, Tom, here’s a pretty kettle of fish.’
Even in the poor light of the battle lanterns, Huke’s pallor was evident.
‘I had no idea, sir.’
‘And there’s one missing. The ringleader, of course.’
‘Malaburn.’
‘An ominous name, by the sound of it,’ offered Templeton nervously.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Tom,’ said Drinkwater, ignoring the clerk. ‘The truth is, there is a great deal more to this than you know. I blame myself that I didn’t smell a rat the moment I heard Hopkins’s Boston accent. Then, when we had the case of typhus, I should have realized that the infected man came aboard with the draft you pressed out of that merchant ship and that he was also American . . .’
‘It’s the damned war, sir. We’ve such a polyglot mob aboard here, what with Irish, Yankees, Negroes, Arabs, Russians, Finns, Swedes and that Dane, Sommer.’
‘That may well be the case, but you don’t know the whole story. Those Americans had only recently joined that merchantman at Leith because they had just come out of gaol. It was only just now that I recalled typhus ain’t only called ship, low or putrid fever, but is also called gaol fever. You said yourself they offered little resistance. I think the reason they were so compliant was that they wanted to be pressed.’
‘Wanted to be pressed?’ Huke repeated incredulously, ‘I don’t follow; why in God’s name would they want to be pressed?’
‘To get aboard a man-o’-war destined to attempt the seizure of a large arms shipment to America to support an insurrection in Canada.’
Huke whistled. ‘You mean with the intention of thwarting that seizure?’ He frowned and added, ‘Then getting a passage home? Is that your meaning?’
Drinkwater nodded.
‘But how d’you know?’
‘Don’t ask me how, Tom, not now; but I’m damned certain they were sprung from Dartmoor gaol for the purpose.’
‘The devil they were, and how the bloody hell did they spirit themselves from Dartmoor to Leith?’ Huke asked, perplexed.
‘By a carter, it seems, or maybe a whole host of carters. Such men move easily about the country and for all I know belong to some Corresponding Society or seditious, republican fraternity, though I grant the thing appears impossible.’
Huke scratched his head, then shook it. ‘Perhaps not.’ He spoke abstractedly and then looked up sharply, as though the consideration had led him to some pricking anxiety. ‘We still have to take Malaburn.’
‘He will be in the hold, and every exit is barred, is it not?’
‘Aye, Danks has seen to that . . .’
‘Well, let him rot there for a while. At least until we’ve concluded this business.’
‘It’s true he’ll not get out, sir, there’s a sentry on each hatchway, but I don’t like the idea, sir.’
‘Perhaps not, Tom – but leave him, just the same.’
They relapsed into silence for a moment, the constrained silence of disagreement, then Drinkwater said, ‘Poor Walsh. We shall have to bury them all when we get outside.’
And ‘if,’ Huke added privately to himself, while Templeton, an increasingly nervous witness to these proceedings, nursed his own feelings.
‘Look!’
‘What is it?’
By the dim light of the stars the working parties had lowered the wreckage of the main topgallant mast, but unravelling the intricate web of tangled rigging that it had pulled down with it properly required daylight. Then, about four bells in the first watch, about ten o’clock by a landsman’s time-piece, the high mountains to the north-west seemed to loom above them, closer than they remembered, a gigantic theatrical backcloth dragged forward by trolls. It was the second and more disquieting illusion of the day. A milky glow filled the sky above the mountain peaks, an ethereal and pulsing luminescence that made them all stand stock-still in amazement.
‘Aurora borealis,’ explained Birkbeck. ‘Get back to work there! You can see what you’re doing now.’
It was as though that strange phenomenon had been produced not merely for their wonder but also for their convenience. Tired though they were, the ship’s company laboured with scarcely a grumble, until, long before midnight, the main was shorn of its upper spar, the broken stump drawn from the doublings and sent down to be split for kindling in the galley stove, and the lines tidied away. By the light of his lantern, the carpenter had declared it was no great thing to fish a new heel on to the old spar, and the men had been stood easy for half an hour, while spirits, biscuit and treacle were issued.
‘Playing the deuce with my stores,’ the purser complained.
‘As you play the devil wiv our’n,’ retorted a seaman within earshot, but he made no further complaint, having heard that Captain Drinkwater was no friend of peculating jobbers. Things had been somewhat different in Captain Pardoe’s day . . .
At midnight the hands were sent to the capstan. The wind had fallen light after dark, though it was still foul for a passage of the narrows. Even a light breeze, funnelled between those rock buttresses, gained strength enough to prevent them making any attempt to work through under sail. The boats were hoisted out and manned. The carpenter had first had to put a tingle on the red cutter, and the launch required more extensive repairs before she could be lowered into the water again.
Ranging up under the bow, a rope was passed down into each and the boat officers, the second and third lieutenants and Beavis, the senior master’s mate, fanned their charges out ahead of the frigate.
There was a faint outward current to carry them seaward, produced by streams and freshets further up the fiord, and they made slow but steady progress. By moonrise they were below the beetling crags of the narrows. After four hours Midshipman Fisher was dispatched in the white cutter with a relief crew for the first boat. Having run alongside Mr Jameson’s boat and transferred his oarsmen, Fisher had the tired men of the third lieutenant’s boat pull ahead, before he swung clear of the others, advancing in line abreast. Then his eye was caught by something irregular etched against the night sky. Under the black loom of the cliffs, no light came from the fading aurora. The sea beyond the gutway was a slightly less dark plane, its presence guessed at, rather than actually perceived. And Fisher was certain, as only the young can be, that something lay upon it.
‘Oars,’ he whispered to his men, though the grunting and straining of the men in the boats behind were plain enough. The oarsmen, eager for food and drink, ceased rowing and leaned on their oar looms. The curious craned round impatiently. ‘What is it young ’un?’ a voice enquired as the boat glided through the still water.
‘There’s a ship out there!’
‘Well, why don’t we just pull over an’ capture it, an’ make your bleedin’ fortune, cully, eh?’ The anonymous voice from forward was weary with sarcasm.
‘Oi ain’t following no little bugger whose bollocks are still up ’is arse,’ another countered.
‘Be quiet! Stand by! Give way together!’
With a knocking of oars, the boat forged ahead again, but Fisher did not put the tiller over.
‘He’s taken your advice, Harry, you stupid sod.’
‘He would, the little turd.’
‘Be quiet, damn you,’ Fisher squeaked, uncertain whether to react to this blatant insubordination or to let it pass, since the men pulled on, seemingly willing enough.
‘E won’t live long enough to be a Hadmiral.’
‘It’s that cutter!’ hissed Fisher excitedly, meaning not another pulling boat but a small, man-of-war cruiser. Older heads in the boat were less eager to share the midshipman’s certainty. Men stopped pulling, missed their stroke and, for a moment or two, the discipline in the boat broke down as
they craned round to see where the headstrong child was taking them.
‘Boat ahoy!’ came to them out of the darkness, the accents unmistakably, imperiously English. ‘Lie to upon the instant or I shall blow you to Kingdom Come!’
‘It’s that one-handed bean-pole . . .’
‘It is the Kestrel!’
‘I told you it was,’ Fisher exclaimed gleefully.
‘Well, tell that bloody lieutenant, before he shoots us!’
‘Boat from Andromeda, permission to come aboard!’
‘Come under my lee!’
They could see the irregular quadrilateral shape of the cutter’s mainsail and the two fore triangles of her jib and staysail as she ghosted in towards the narrows and the Vikkenfiord.
‘Put about, sir,’ called Fisher, ‘Andromeda’s towing out astern of us! There’s a big Danish frigate and all sorts inside . . .’
They were alongside now, a rope snaked out of the cutter’s chains to take their painter, and the next moment they were towing alongside.
‘Come aboard and report.’
Fisher scrambled up and over the cutter’s side. ‘Midshipman Richard Fisher, sir, from the frigate Andromeda, Nathaniel Drinkwater commanding.’
‘He’s right enough, Mr Quil’ampton, there’s a frigate comin’ up ahead.’
‘Put her about, Mr Frey . . .’
‘What’s all that noise there?’ The voice of Lieutenant Huke boomed into their deliberations as he shouted from Andromeda’s knightheads, his voice amplified by a speaking trumpet and echoing about in the stillness.
Quilhampton cupped his good hand about his mouth: ‘Cutter Kestrel, Lieutenant Quilhampton commanding!’
‘Follow me out, Mr Q, and come aboard for orders.’
‘That’s Captain Drinkwater’s voice,’ advised Fisher.
‘I know that.’
‘We lay to under the trys’l, and when the weather moderated we made a good stellar observation and laid a course for the rendezvous. I guessed you couldn’t afford to linger and that you had pressed on when we saw a man-o’-war’s t’gallants away to the eastward, so we cracked on, thinking it was you.’
‘That must have been the Odin,’ observed Huke.
‘Yes. Well, anyway, it was lucky we saw her, for it was just a question of watching her vanish. Frey, my first luff,’ he explained for Huke’s benefit, ‘took a bearing. We ran down it and here we are. I thought we were heading for a wall of rock and was just about to put about when your young midshipmite hove out of the darkness.’
‘Well, I am damnably glad to see you, James. Forgive my lack of hospitality, but we’ve been cleared for action for some time now. To be truthful, I didn’t expect to see you again, first on your own account, and then on ours. We’ve just taken a drubbing.’
Drinkwater explained the day’s events.
‘So we’ve the goods, the Dane who brought them, and the Yankees who are going to tranship them to North America all boxed up in the Vikkenfiord, eh?’ Quilhampton said with an air of satisfaction, when Drinkwater had finished.
‘That’s certainly an optimistic view of the tactical situation,’ remarked Drinkwater drily.
‘Well, they might think they’ve the measure of you, but they don’t know I’m here yet.’ Quilhampton grinned enthusiastically.
‘True, James, true.’
‘It’s certainly food for thought,’ said Huke. ‘Will you be able to beat out behind us?’
‘Yes. She ghosts in light airs and she’s fitted with centre-plates. She can point much closer to the wind than you.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Drinkwater, ‘we will lie to now, until daylight. Recover the boats, Mr Huke, as soon as we are clear of danger. Then let us get an hour or two’s sleep. Tomorrow we will see what we can accomplish. It will be the first of the month, I believe.’
‘ ’Tis already that, sir.’
Lieutenant Huke had conceived a liking for his odd and unorthodox captain. During the crazy interlude of the great dousing Huke had noticed, as had many others, that in addition to the faint facial scar and the powder burns on one eyelid, Captain Drinkwater was disfigured by a lop-sided right shoulder and a mass of scar tissue which ran down his right arm. These were the legacy of two wounds, one acquired in a dark alleyway in the year 1797, at the time of the great mutiny, the other the result of an enemy shell-burst off Boulogne, four years later. Such marks earned their bearer a measure of respect, irrespective of rank. In a post-captain they bespoke a seasoned man.
But, on that night and for the first time, Thomas Huke considered Captain Drinkwater’s conduct to be, if not reprehensible, at the very least most unwise, an error of judgement. The first lieutenant felt that the matter of Malaburn could not be left until the morning.
He excused the captain on the grounds that Drinkwater did not know the man, despite the claims he had made about their escape from gaol and extraordinary migration north. Drinkwater had not had his suspicions aroused as had Huke. As an experienced first lieutenant Huke had acquired an instinct for trouble-makers, sea-lawyers and the disobedient. There were attitudes such men struck, inflections they used when spoken to, places in which they appeared unaccountably and times when they were late in mustering. A man might do such things once or twice in all innocence, but persistent offenders were almost always revealed as falling into one or other of these troublesome categories. Malaburn had been one such, conspicuous from the first day he had come aboard at Leith.
‘Provoked me,’ Mr Beavis had reported back in Leith Road. The master’s mate had been in charge of one of the ship’s three press-gangs sent to comb the ale-houses and brothels of Leith and Granton for extra hands a few days before Huke struck ‘lucky’ and obtained what he wanted from the merchantman. ‘Almost dared me to take him,’ Beavis had expanded, ‘but, like most braggarts, gave in the moment we got a-hold of him.’
There seemed little enough in the remark at the time, except to draw Lieutenant Huke’s attention to the man as he was sworn in. And although Malaburn had overplayed his hand a trifle in his eagerness to get himself aboard His Majesty’s frigate Andromeda, he had succeeded in fooling them all. Until, that is, Captain Drinkwater made his mysterious revelation, alluding to the curious desire of the Americans to be pressed. The assertion fitted not just the group lifted from the merchantman, but also Malaburn.
Thus it was that Lieutenant Thomas Huke decided not to allow Malaburn to elude his just deserts an hour longer and why he passed word to Sergeant Danks to muster half a dozen of his men at the main capstan.
Drinkwater had not wished to raise a hue and cry for the one member of the ship’s company unaccounted for after the action with the Odin for a number of reasons. The first was that, as far as he could determine, few people as yet realized that the letting go of the anchor had been a deliberate act, rather than an accidental misfortune. The anchor had been cleared away ready for use as they closed the land, a cable bent and seized on to it. It was possible that a chance shot had carried away the lashing and it had fallen from the fore-chains. Old seamen could tell countless tales of odder circumstances; of balls hitting cannon muzzles with such exactitude that they opened them like the petals of flowers; of a shot which had destroyed the single remaining live pig being fattened for an unpopular captain, and so forth.
More important, the conspicuous arrest of the handful of men hiding on the heads had looked like the rounding up of a group of yellow-bellies, an untruth given credibility by the fact that the men were newcomers who had kept themselves to themselves and failed to court popularity with their shipmates. Their reason for doing so was now apparent to those in the know, but had not yet permeated through the ship. Doubtless the truth would get out in due course, but Drinkwater wanted his men rested, not seething with vengeful discontent that the men now clapped in the bilboes as cowards had tried to deliver them all into the hands of the enemy.
From what he could glean, his prisoners, having done what they could to incommode the British frigate,
were to have escaped to the American ships in the fiord. When the Danish ship appeared, Malaburn had changed the plan, seeing a greater chance of success in the overwhelming of the Andromeda by the Odin. Drinkwater also wondered whether Malaburn had thought the British ship was retreating, that she had given up hope of cutting out the Yankees from under the Danish guns in the fort, and that the sudden appearance of the Odin gave him an opportunity both to destroy the British ship and to secure the escape of himself and his fellow conspirators before it was too late. It was, after all, a risky and uncertain business, being pressed into the service of King George.
If that was how Malaburn’s mind had construed the day’s events, he had demonstrated a commendable adaptability. Once the Andromeda had been brought to her anchor, confusion reigned upon her decks and her officers were distracted with the business of resisting the attack of the Odin. Drinkwater imagined Malaburn’s party were hoping they could soon escape by getting aboard the Danish ship as she dropped alongside to board, and giving themselves up.
Whatever their expectations, and fear of a return to incarceration in Dartmoor must have been a powerful motive, their leader had been a man of determination, and if Drinkwater did not wish to stir his ship up that night, he did not wish to lose her either. What he feared most was an incendiary attack. A lone man with flint and steel could set fire to the frigate. For all her mildewed damp, there were combustibles enough to set Andromeda ablaze like a torch. Drinkwater had seen the fearful sight of ships burning and exploding and the thought made him shudder.
Malaburn, languishing in the dark recesses of the hold, was unlikely to cut his own throat with two of his countrymens’ privateers in the offing. Why else had he preserved himself? In the morning they would winkle him out. With that thought, Drinkwater heaved himself into his cot and pulled the sheet and blankets over his shoulders. Let Malaburn stew in his own juice, believing, perhaps, that no one had noticed his absence.
Beneath the Aurora Page 15
