Beneath the Aurora

by Richard Woodman

  Drinkwater’s face was already scabbed, a thick crust which rasped uncomfortably on the pillow. The last thing he saw in his mind’s eye was a spinning epaulette which diminished in size as it faded into the far, far distance.

  ‘Pistols and bayonets,’ Huke whispered, ‘there’s no room for muskets. Cold steel unless he fires, and only shoot if you are sure of hitting him. Take my word he’s not just a mutinous dog, he’s an enemy, a Yankee. He is aboard to make mischief and ensure this ship strikes to either those privateers we saw at anchor or that blasted Dane. So, if you can’t seize him, and he resists . . .’ Huke made an unpleasant, terminal squawk and drew his forefinger across his throat. ‘D’you understand?’

  A murmur of assent went round the little group of marines. They had a comrade to avenge. Four lanterns stood on the deck at their feet, lighting their white shirts and breeches. With their braces over their shoulders in place of cross-belts the pale ghostly figures had appeared in the gloom of the orlop to arouse the curiosity of the lesser officers quartered there. Huke had sent the inquisitive back into their tiny cabins with a sharp word to discourage their interest.

  ‘Very well. You two go with Sar’nt Danks up the larboard side, you and you, with me to starboard.’ Huke nodded and Danks bent to the padlock holding the securing bar over the aftermost grating which led down into the hold. Huke drew his own hanger, laid it on the deck and quickly rid himself of his baldric and coat. Then he recovered his sword, drew a pistol from his belt and, as Danks lifted the grating, led the party down the ladder into the hold.

  On the quarterdeck, Lieutenant Mosse had the watch. He was dog-tired and would be glad to get below at midnight, but he was not insensible to the fact that, even under the easy pressure of the main and fore topsail, and a single jib, the Andromeda had edged closer inshore than he liked. With an effort he bestirred himself, ordered the helm put over and the yards trimmed.

  As the order was passed, he was aware of groans of reluctance, but the watch mustered at their posts, the yards swung in their slings, trusses and parrels, and Andromeda headed out to sea.

  Shortly before the watch below was due to be called, when the minutes dragged and it seemed that the march of time had slowed beyond human endurance, the tired Mosse and his somnolent watch were jerked wide-awake. What sounded like a muffled cry came to them. Its source seemed to be some way away and someone said it sounded as though it had come from the Kestrel, which had last showed the pale shape of her sail two miles to the south-east. Then a jacketless marine arose from the after companion with the shocking speed of a jack-in-the-box.

  ‘Sir! Mr Huke’s hurt! In the hold! There’s bloody hell on down there!’

  As he had raced up from the hold, the distraught soldier had raised the alarm throughout the ship. The curious officers quartered in the orlop, led by Mr Beavis, had not gone quietly to bed, but had remained clustered by the open grating. The sudden cry had stunned them, then there was a brief hiatus and the marines emerged, with Danks throwing the grating down behind him and thrusting the padlock through the hasp on the securing bar. The sudden volley of questions wakened the midshipmen and the other soldiers nearby. One of the marines nursed a badly gashed leg, another was sent into the berth deck to find Kennedy, a third to the quarterdeck. This man raised the alarm at each sentinel post, including the one outside the captain’s cabin, and this sentry, aware only that the frigate was suddenly buzzing with an almost palpable anxiety, called the captain.

  Drinkwater had fallen into the deep sleep of exhaustion from which he was unnaturally wrenched. Instinctively he pulled on his coat and went on deck. After five minutes of total confusion he learned that Huke had taken a party of marines into the hold to ‘deal with Malaburn’.

  With great difficulty he suppressed the oath welling in his throat. He was ready to damn Huke for an interfering fool, to set aside any merit the man might possess, for this contravention of orders, this unwanted display of initiative. His body ached for rest, but his heart had taken flight and hammered in his breast. He silenced the hubbub around him. ‘Mr Mosse, send the off-duty watch below and stop this babble.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but ’tis almost eight bells . . .’

  ‘Very well,’ snapped Drinkwater, ‘have the men relieved in the normal way.’ He turned to the marine. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Private Leslie, sir.’

  ‘Well, Leslie, what happened? Tell us in your own words. You went into the hold to arrest Malaburn. By which hatchway?’

  ‘The after one, sir, in the cockpit . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, sir, we was in two parties, I was wiv Mr Huke, like, and Sar’nt Danks led the other up the larboard chippy’s walk. We ’ad lanterns, like, an’ bayonets and a brace of pistols. Orders was to apprehend, but to shoot if the bugger – beg pardon, sir – if ’e tried anything clever . . .’

  ‘You were going up the starboard carpenter’s walk, is that right?’ Drinkwater tried to visualize the scene. The carpenter’s walks were two passages inside the fabric of the ship’s side enabling the carpenter and his party to get at the frigate’s timbers quickly and plug shot holes. The multifarious stores stowed in the hold were inboard of these narrow walkways. The men would have started outboard of and abaft the cable tiers, then edged forward past barrels of water, beef and pork, and sacks of dried peas and lentils.

  They would have been walking on gratings. Below their feet the lower hold contained barrels of water stowed on shingle ballast, and the shot rooms. It was a hellish hole, inhabited by rats and awash with bilge water, the air thick and mephitic, the lanterns barely burning.

  ‘I was the last man in my file, sir. I could jus’ see Lieutenant ’uke, sir, wiv ’is lantern, like, when ’e gives this God Almighty screech and the light goes out. Then the bloke in front of me shouts out, turns round an’ says, “Christ, Hughie, the bastard’s got me, get out!” He bumps into me an’ I ain’t got no way out but the way I come in, and Sarn’t Danks is shoutin’ out from the uwer side, “What’s wrong?” an’ I don’t know, ’cept Lieutenant ’uke’s copped it, and my mate wot’s pushing me shouts out “Get back in the orlop, Sar’nt!” So out we comes.’

  ‘And Lieutenant Huke is still down there?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir . . .’

  ‘Damn and blast the man!’ Drinkwater muttered, inveighing against the idiocy of the first lieutenant, but now doubting the wisdom of his own passive policy. Private Leslie thought he himself was the object of this damnation.

  ‘I’ll go back, sir, jus’ give us another lantern, an’ I’ll go right back.’

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Drinkwater, ‘you will. Give me a moment to dress. Wait outside my cabin, pass word for Danks to report to me.’

  He dressed quickly, thinking while Danks stood in the darkness of the day cabin and repeated, in less detail, for he had been on the far side of the ship, what Leslie had already related.

  ‘You didn’t think of going to Mr Huke’s assistance?’

  A short silence followed, then Danks said, ‘I wasn’t sure what to do, sir. I didn’t really know what had happened, except that Lieutenant Huke’s dead, sir.’

  ‘Dead? Who said he’s dead?’

  ‘Well, sir, I . . . I don’t know.’ The puzzlement was clear in Danks’s voice. It was not fair to imply Danks was a coward. Huke’s ill-conceived stratagem was too prone to confusion to blame poor humiliated Danks.

  ‘Very well, Sergeant. Have your men remustered, all of them. In the orlop. I’ll be with you directly. Send in a light.’

  When Danks had gone Drinkwater finished dressing. He could do this in the dark, but he wanted light to complete his preparations. Frampton, attired in a long night-shirt, appeared with a lantern.

  ‘Will you be wanting anything else, sir?’

  ‘Not at the moment, Frampton, thank you,’ Drinkwater said. The steady normality of Captain Pardoe’s steward stilled the racing of his own heart. He could never think of Frampton as his own man.


  He went to the stern settee, lifted the seat and drew out the case of pistols. Then he sat down and, placing the case beside him, opened it, lifted out the weapons and checked their flints. Having done that he carefully loaded both weapons. He had had a double-barrelled pistol aboard Patrician, but these were a new pair and he thrust them through his belt. Then he stood for a moment in the centre of the cabin and retied his hair. When he had finished he drew his hanger and passed the door on to the gun deck.

  A garrulous crowd had gathered in the orlop and the appearance of the captain silenced them. ‘This is a damned Dover-court, be off with you! Marines, stand fast. You there, Mr Fisher! Pass word to have the surgeon standing by. Oh, and please to lend me your dirk, young man. Here,’ Drinkwater turned aside to Beavis, ‘be so kind as to look after this for me.’ He handed his hanger to the master’s mate.

  Before scuttling off on his mission, Fisher had darted to his mess and taken his dirk from its nail in the deck-beam above his sleeping place. It was a small, straight and handy weapon.

  ‘Here, sir.’ He held the toy weapon out; its short blade gleamed dully in the lantern light. Drinkwater’s fist more than encompassed the hilt.

  ‘Right, Danks,’ Drinkwater dropped his voice, beckoning the marines to draw closer. ‘This is what I intend to do.’

  CHAPTER 11

  November 1813

  The Enemy Within

  Drinkwater led them below. At the bottom of the ladder he moved aside and let the marines file silently down into the hold. Then he directed Sergeant Danks and his senior corporal, Wilson, to lift the after gratings and descend into the lower hold, and as they did so the foul stench of bilge rose up to assail them. Both Wilson and Danks were armed with muskets. Behind them went two other marines, each with a lantern, followed by two men armed with bayonets. When Danks had moved out to the larboard wing, and Wilson to the starboard, Drinkwater gestured to the remaining men to fan out. Then he called:

  ‘Malaburn! This is the captain. We know you are down here and you have until I have counted to ten to give yourself up. If you hail at that time you will be given a fair trial. If not I regard you as beyond the law, and the safety of my ship demands that I exert myself to take you at any cost. That may well be your own life.’ He paused, then began to count.

  ‘One. Two. Three . . .’

  In the silence between each number he heard nothing beyond the laboured breathing of the marines still behind him.

  ‘Five. Six. Seven . . .’

  He turned. Holding a third lantern, Private Leslie was ready behind him with another marine in support, and Corporal Smyth made to take his two men up the larboard carpenter’s walk to flush Malaburn from his hiding place. Drinkwater now had four groups of marines ready to move forward, two at the level of the carpenter’s walk, two below, floundering their way over the shingle ballast and the casks of water in the lower hold, for Drinkwater was convinced Malaburn had taken refuge in that most evil and remote part of the ship.

  ‘Eight. Nine. Ten. Proceed!’

  Drinkwater had enjoined Smyth, advancing on the higher larboard level, not to move faster than Danks’s party below him who would have far more trouble moving over the shingle ballast than those above walking on the level gratings of the carpenter’s walk. Both upper and lower parties had to search each stow of stores inboard of them as they edged forward and it was five long minutes before those with Drinkwater, creeping up the starboard side, discovered the bloodstains marking the place whose Huke had been wounded. The absence of Huke was both a hopeful and a desperately worrying sign. Malaburn had done exactly what Drinkwater would have done in his place: he had dragged the first lieutenant off as a hostage.

  ‘Smyth, Danks! Mr Huke’s been taken hostage!’ he called, to let those on the far side of the ship know what had happened.

  ‘Aye, sir, understood!’ Danks’s voice came back from beyond a large stow of sacked and dried peas.

  They shuffled forward again. The shadows thrown by the lantern behind Drinkwater projected his own form in grotesque silhouette on the uneven surfaces of futtocks and foot-waling. He held the little dirk in his outsize hand. It was a pathetic and inadequate weapon, but he had brought it in place of his hanger which, he had realized, would have been an encumbrance in the restricted space of this narrow catwalk.

  ‘Nothin’ yet!’ shouted Smyth, and Wilson and Danks echoed the call. The stink of effluvia, bilge, dried stores, rot, fungus, rust and God knew what beside made breathing difficult. The lanterns guttered yellow, their flames sinking as they moved forward. The whining squeak of rats accompanied their scuttering retreat from this unwonted incursion into their private domain and added a quickening to the tired, low groans of the ship as she rolled on the swell.

  Drinkwater’s heart hammered painfully. He saw a score of phantasmagorical Malaburns, the swinging, hand-held lantern light throwing maddening shadows which moved as they did. Sweat poured off him, and he stopped to wipe it from his brow.

  And then, quite suddenly, without any violent reaction of either party, he found himself staring at Malaburn. In a recess, where a large stow of barrels gave way to more sacks and these fell back, showing signs of recent removal, the American lay at bay, holding the pale form of Huke hostage. Drinkwater stopped and, without taking his eyes off the white mask of Malaburn’s face, beckoned behind him with the dirk. Leslie thrust the lantern over his shoulder.

  Huke lay oddly, his feet no more than a yard from Drinkwater, his legs splayed slightly apart so that Drinkwater could see, amid the pitch-black shadows, the dark trail of blood that smeared the white knee-breeches and revealed the deep thrust of the wound in Huke’s groin. Malaburn had been in the lower hold, the head of a pike through a hole in a grating waiting for the advance of the impetuous lieutenant. The wound was hideous, the pain must have been excruciating and the bleeding Huke was insensible, his face averted, lolled backwards as he lay in Malaburn’s malevolent embrace.

  The American had one arm across Huke’s chest but the first lieutenant still breathed in shallow rasping gasps. Malaburn’s other hand held a long-bladed knife at Huke’s throat. In the sharp contrast of the lantern-light, Drinkwater could see the taught tendons in Huke’s neck standing out like rope. Beneath them lay the vulnerable carotid artery and the jugular vein.

  Drinkwater said in a low voice, ‘Put your knife down.’

  The blade wavered, a faint reflection of lantern-light revealing Malaburn’s hesitation.

  ‘Put your knife down, Malaburn.’

  ‘No. I will let the first lieutenant go only if you give me your word that you will put me aboard one of those Yankee ships.’

  ‘You know that is impossible . . .’

  ‘You could do it, if you wanted to, Captain Drinkwater. If you gave me your word and called your men off. I trust you, d’you see.’

  ‘Malaburn, Lieutenant Huke is bleeding to death,’ Drinkwater began, trying to sound reasonable, knowing that a move of his left hand which held a pistol would cause Malaburn to react with his knife. But Malaburn was unmoved by Drinkwater’s logic.

  ‘Your word, Captain Drinkwater,’ he hissed urgently, ‘your word!’

  A dark suspicion crossed Drinkwater’s mind. Malaburn’s presumption was no quixotic plea, there was too much certainty in the man’s voice. He knew Drinkwater could not give his word, dare not give it.

  ‘Who the devil are you, Malaburn?’

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Danks’s voice, muffled by the contents of the hold, reminded Drinkwater of the other men. Beneath his own feet, Drinkwater realized now, Wilson had stopped, aware of something happening above him.

  ‘Stay where you are, Danks, you lobster-backed bastard,’ shouted Malaburn, ‘and you others, wherever you . . . !’

  He never finished his threat. There was a flash of light and, when Drinkwater’s retinae had adjusted themselves, Malaburn’s face had vanished. The long-bladed knife was lowered almost gently on to Huke’s chest by the nerveless
hand, and the sacks which had cradled Malaburn’s head as he awaited his hunters were stained with its shattered remains.

  The explosion of the musket deafened them momentarily, and the brilliance of its flash blinded them. Stunned, Drinkwater was uncertain where the shot had come from, or who had fired it. He thought himself shouting with anger, though no one seemed to hear him, and he suddenly heard Sergeant Danks’s voice, no longer muffled, say with savage satisfaction:

  ‘Got the bugger!’

  Danks’s disembodied face appeared above Huke’s. He was casting aside sacks as he fought his way through from the far side of the ship, the long barrel of his still smoking musket visible beside him.

  ‘I gave no orders . . .’ Drinkwater began, but the words did not seem to be heard and he thought afterwards that he had only imagined them. Leslie was gently squeezing past him with a ‘Beg pardon, sir . . .’

  And then Drinkwater heard his own voice astonishingly loud, uttering the fact before he had apparently absorbed it. ‘It’s too late. He’s already dead.’

  He must have seen the shallow respirations cease, known when he saw that terrible, gaping wound, that Huke was dying. The vicious pike thrust was mortal, not the work of a man acting in self-defence, but the cold act of a murderer. And Drinkwater knew that it was not Danks he was angry with for so precipitately killing Malaburn, but himself, for not having dispatched him for killing a man whom Drinkwater counted a friend.

  ‘Bring both of them out,’ he ordered, desperate for fresh air and afraid he might vomit at any moment. He turned and thrust back past the other marine. ‘Give ’em a hand,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

  As he approached the foot of the ladder to the orlop deck he paused. He could see someone at the bottom peering forward and waving a lantern, hear a babble of curious men pressed about the coaming of the hatchway. He wiped his face and drew several slow and deliberate breaths. Then he strode out of the darkness.