Beneath the Aurora

by Richard Woodman

  He thrust such considerations aside. He had forfeited all claim upon the smiles of providence when, in a storm of passion, he had lain with the American widow. He had proved himself no better than the next man and could claim no especial privilege. All he could do now was to stake his own life as a tribute to the dead. They left almost unnoticed, clambering down into the boats while Birkbeck supervised Andromeda’s toiling company as they disentangled the shot-away spars, cleared away the raffle of fallen gear and salvaged what could be reused.

  The men who had volunteered for Drinkwater’s forlorn hope took their places at the oars. The looms were wrapped in rags and slushed with tallow or grease where they passed the crutches and thole pins. In every spare space the small barricoes of powder, jars of oil and impregnated rags lay in baskets. In the stern sheets, alongside the boat compasses and in two tinplate boxes in which officers usually kept their best hats, slow matches glowed. The tin boxes bore the names Huke and Mosse.

  ‘Give way.’

  ‘Give way.’

  The boats drew away from the ship, paused while Drinkwater and Frey conferred over their respective compass headings, and then settled down to the rhythmic labours of the oarsmen.

  Drinkwater had no intention of trying to run straight into the anchorage. The vagaries of the compasses, particularly in these high latitudes, and the risks of being detected dissuaded him. He knew this was a last chance, knew too that once Captain Dahlgaard had discharged the remainder of his cargo and the fog had cleared, Odin would set off in pursuit of the British frigate.

  Instead, he had laid off a course which would take them beyond the bay, striking the coast north of the anchorage. This would allow them to drop back along the shore towards the enemy, encountering the American ships first. Dahlgaard, he argued, would be as exhausted as he was himself and preoccupied by completing the transfer of the shipment of arms and equipment, refitting his ship and preparing for sea. At the very least, Drinkwater’s attack of the previous afternoon must have incommoded this plan to a degree. Frey had mentioned the Odin’s loss of her fore and mainmasts, and he himself thought the mizen had been shot away earlier.

  As the boats glided over the still waters of the fiord, these considerations obsessed Drinkwater. Beside him Wells sat attentively, watching the man in the bow who held the end of a length of spun yarn. The other end was held in the hand of a bowman in Frey’s boat, so that, paying out and heaving in, as the boats made small variations from their rhumb-lines, they kept in contact. At first it proved awkward and cumbersome, but after ten minutes or so, the men settled to their strokes and, just in sight of each other most of the time, they pulled along in line abreast.

  Drinkwater had given orders for the strictest silence to be maintained in the boats and after an hour’s hard work, in a brief clearing in the fog, he waved at Frey. Both boats ceased rowing and, with the oars drawn across the gunwhales, they ran alongside, willing hands preventing them from coming into contact. Astern of Drinkwater’s boat the empty gig ran up under their transom and Wells put out a hand to prevent it colliding.

  ‘Rum, I think, Mr Frey,’ Drinkwater murmured in a low voice, and was gratified to see the men grin. Volunteers they might be, but they brought with them no guarantee of success.

  ‘No more than another mile, by my reckoning.’

  Frey nodded, and Drinkwater noted the high colour of his cheeks. It was probably the effect of the damp chill, he concluded, munching on a biscuit and sipping at a small pewter beaker of rum.

  Resting in silence they all heard the noise, a regular knock-knock, as of oars.

  ‘Guard-boat,’ whispered Drinkwater, hoping to Almighty God it was not an expedition bound on a reciprocal mission to their own ships. They listened a little longer. Drinkwater thought he heard background noises of men speaking, and of them labouring at some task, but dismissed them as wishful thinking. They sat still as the sound died away, the men shivering as the fog chilled their sweat-sodden bodies.

  ‘Let’s be getting on, then,’ he ordered quietly, and the boats were shoved apart, the oars pushed out and the first strokes taken. A few minutes later, with the spun-yarn umbilical between them, they had taken up their former stations. Only the chuckle of water under the bows of the three boats and the dip and gentle splash of the oars marked their progress.

  Their arrival was less well organized, for the loom of smooth boulders ahead of Frey’s boat caused her coxswain to put his tiller over and she ran aboard her sister with a clatter and an outbreak of muffled invective. Then the towed cutter ran up astern and struck Drinkwater’s boat with a second thud, so that the ensuing confusion took a moment or two to subside.

  Frey’s boat edged ahead and found a second boulder and then a steep shingle beach which rose swiftly to a gloomy forest of pine and fir. They ran the boats aground and Drinkwater ordered them all ashore. While the men relieved themselves, Drinkwater checked the slow matches. The foggy damp and the need for silence had dissuaded him from any ideas of striking flint and steel. Happily, the matches still burned.

  Satisfied that he could do no more, Drinkwater strode off to ease himself. Above the smooth stones of the beach, the ground grew soft with fallen needles and the air smelt deliciously of resin. Outcrops of rock broke through here and there, and were fronded with ferns, but an awesome and sinister stillness pervaded the forest, and he was glad to retreat to the water’s edge, where the men talked in low voices.

  ‘Silence now.’ The babble died down and, when all were reassembled, Drinkwater asked quietly, ‘Any questions?’ There was a general shaking of heads.

  ‘Back into the boats. Line ahead, Mr Frey.’

  Frey’s boat led, out beyond the rocks then turning to starboard, edging along the shoreline. From time to time they had to shorten oars, even trail them, as they glided between the massive boulders that, smoothed by ice and water, had been cast aside as glacial moraine thousands of years before.

  As they worked their way south-west, Drinkwater gradually became aware that he could see the shore and the dark shapes of the trees more and more clearly. Their tops moved languidly in the beginnings of a breeze, no longer grey monotones, but assuming the dark and variegated greens of which he knew them to be composed. The fog was lifting.

  Then, almost it seemed in the sky itself, the topgallant yards of the first ship appeared above them. It was the American privateer anchored closest inshore.

  Ahead of them Frey, whose boat still ghosted through the clammy vapour, had seen this apparition and altered course towards it. With a surge of jubilation, Drinkwater realized that though the fog was dispersing, the shift of wind which caused it had merely altered the relative balance of nature. He had seen sea-smoke in the Arctic years before, and now his boat pulled happily through it as it clung to the surface, rising no more than ten or fifteen feet, exposing the top-hamper of the enemy while concealing their own approach.

  He made a gesture to Wells and the coxswain leaned on the tiller. Drinkwater’s boat pulled out to pass Frey and edge round the enemy, clear of her and obscured by the low fog. They could see the grey loom of the American ship and then lost sight of Frey as his boat dropped alongside and merged with her.

  From on board he could distinctly hear a voice sing out, ‘Lower all, handsomely! Avast! Come up!’ The accent was unmistakably American and Drinkwater was immeasurably encouraged by this, for they were clearly still loading cargo.

  Drinkwater felt his own sleeve being plucked and swung round. Wells was pointing ahead, to where the next ship was looming. Her hull seemed more distinct, the sea-smoke less dense. An empty boat lay under her stern davits, and a rope ladder dangled invitingly down from an open stern window. As they closed it, they could see the boat was picked out in white and blue, with some fancy gold gingerbread work along her quarters. Beneath the windows the privateer’s name was carved, gold letters on a blue background: General Wayne.

  Without a word, the coxswain ran alongside, the bowman caught the painter round
a thwart on the enemy boat and several oarsmen manoeuvred the trailing cutter alongside their own unengaged side.

  A moment later two men were swarming up the ladder, the first signalled the cabin was empty and then there was a general scramble as men clambered aboard, helped to lower lines and hoisted the combustible stores they had brought with them. They lifted the inflammables in through the cabin windows. Drinkwater motioned for the barricoes of powder which would form the explosive mines to be rolled towards him and flung back the rich carpet that was spread across the deck of the cabin to reveal the hatchway to the lazarette below. He was crouched beside it when the cabin door suddenly opened. The American commander Drinkwater had last seen aboard the Odin stood transfixed in the doorway. The look of insolence he had shown on the former occasion was gone, and now he wore an expression of incomprehension which turned rapidly to alarm.

  Drinkwater had had his back to the door as he inspected the hatch. Fitted with a bar and hasp, this would have been padlocked under normal circumstances. But the ship had been in action and the padlock had not been replaced. The carpet, however, had been roughly pulled back over the hatchway with its loose bar and Drinkwater had been in the act of lifting the bar clear when the American had appeared.

  Even as the Yankee commander opened his mouth, Drinkwater struck. Twisting with all his strength he straightened his legs, swinging upwards from his crouching position, the bar in his hand. The blunt edge struck the American violently, winding him so that he buckled forward. One of the seamen grabbed him, drew him into the cabin and shut the door.

  For a moment not a man moved, but no alarm was raised outside and Drinkwater had his hanger at the man’s throat as he gasped for breath.

  ‘Get on with it!’ Drinkwater hissed, and the tableau dissolved, the men tearing off the lazarette hatchway and stuffing it and the cabin full with the mines, powder and oil-soaked rags.

  Drinkwater bent to the American. ‘I’m going to save your life and I’m going to gag you, then you go down into my boat. One false move and you are dead. Do you understand?’

  The American commander was still gasping for his breath, but he nodded and Drinkwater grabbed a passing seaman. ‘Give me your kerchief. Now, you are to take this man back to the boat . . .’

  From somewhere beyond the window a dull thud sounded: Frey’s party had either been discovered or had begun their work of destruction.

  ‘Out, you men!’

  They seemed to take an interminable time to scramble back through the open stern window. Drinkwater could hear cries of alarm on deck and the pad-pad of running feet. Any moment now and there would be someone reporting to the privateer’s commander.

  ‘Ready, sir.’ Wells had the hat-box open and the slow-match in his hand. Drinkwater nodded and the match was touched to the first of the three mines. When its fuse was alight, Drinkwater dropped it into the lazarette. ‘Get out!’ he ordered. ‘Get back to the boat!’

  The shouting on deck had increased. He took the slow-match and touched it to the protruding fuse of the second mine and rolled it into a mass of rags. The third he had just ignited when the door opened for the second time:

  ‘Cap’n Hughes . . . what the hell . . . ?’

  Drinkwater’s pistol ball smashed into the man’s chest, flinging him backwards, his breastbone broken. Drinkwater threw the weapon after it and made for the window. Below him the men were tumbling into the boat and beyond them there was an orange glow which leached through the last of the fog and grew as he watched. Frey’s party had been successful and the American privateer astern of the General Wayne was well ablaze.

  ‘Hey! Look!’

  The voice came from above, where the General Wayne’s people had run aft to see what had happened to their consort and who now, staring down, saw the British seamen climbing out of their own ship and into the strange boats trailing astern.

  ‘The bastards have been aboard of us!’ The voices were outraged, surprised and affronted.

  ‘They’ve been in the bloody cabin!’

  ‘Here, get me a rifle!’ Above Drinkwater’s head the urgent sound of hurrying footsteps passed to and fro.

  ‘Pass some muskets, quick!’

  Drinkwater could see the men settle at their thwarts and Wells looked up at him, his face anxious and expectant. Drinkwater waved his boat away, unwilling to shout and betray his own presence. The coxswain looked nonplussed and Drinkwater made violent, swimming motions. Wells understood; the initial oar strokes of the boat’s crew coincided with the report of a musket from the quarterdeck above.

  ‘Another shot and your cap’n’s a dead duck!’ Wells roared defiantly, his arm round the wild-eyed figure gagged beside him.

  ‘Christ! They’ve got the cap’n!’ an American voice warned.

  This last confusion gave Drinkwater the momentary respite he needed. He glanced back into the cabin. The fuses on the mines sizzled, that on the first he had lit must almost have burned through. The last thing he noticed, as he turned back to the window, was the tin hat-box and the name Thos. Huke executed in white upon its black-japanned surface.

  Climbing on to the window ledge, he dived into the sea.

  The water was shockingly, numbingly cold. He surfaced, gasping, and drew a great, reflexive breath. A ball smacked into the water close by, and he struck out wildly. Another raised a short, vicious spurt of water alongside his head and he felt a sharp blow to his arm, but no pain as he plunged on.

  Then his tormentors stopped, blown upwards as the first powder-packed barrico exploded and counter-mined the others with a terrific roar, setting the whole after part of the General Wayne ablaze. Dully, he realized what had happened and rolled over on to his back.

  The stern of the American privateer appeared in black silhouette against the blaze. He could see the apertures of the stern windows within which the fire rapidly became an inferno. The mines had blown the decks upwards and flames shot skywards, licking hungrily at the mizen rigging, taking hold, then racing aloft. Around the stern dark objects of debris, animate and inanimate, fell into the cold and crystal waters of the fiord.

  He turned away. To his left the other privateer was on fire, sparks and cinders rising rapidly from her as the flames, little yellow flickers at first, grew redder in their intensity as they rose up her rigging. It was like some over-blown and monstrous firework display. The neat and ordered lines of the rigging were displayed to perfection by the racing flames, holding their accustomed pattern for one brilliant, incandescent instant, and then falling away in ashen dissolution.

  He no longer felt cold. Somewhere to his right he could hear English voices. One of them called his name. He shouted back.

  It was with considerable difficulty that they dragged him shivering into the boat.

  He was still shuddering so badly three hours later that he could not level his glass at the burning ships, but fumbled and dropped the telescope. The cold water had struck deep into his body. The damaged muscles of his old shoulder wound ached with breath-taking pain, the scab on his cheek had softened and partly sloughed off. As he warmed through, the enlarging capillaries began to bleed again. Oddly, he felt nothing of the slight flesh wound, where the Yankee musket-ball had galled his arm.

  It was almost dark and the fog had gone, but he needed no lens to watch as the two privateers blazed against the sombre background of the forest behind them. He derived no satisfaction from the sight; only a loathing for what he had accomplished.

  ‘You must go below, sir,’ Kennedy insisted, almost manhandling Drinkwater from his position by the mizen rigging. ‘Frey has a rare fever from his wound, and if you don’t take care of yourself upon the instant, I cannot answer for the consequences.’

  Drinkwater submitted, and allowed himself to be led off.

  ‘We have neither the men nor the boats to tow out through the narrows,’ he heard Birkbeck saying as he stumbled below, leaning on Kennedy’s shoulder.

  And the words mocked his success as Kennedy and Templeton
wrapped him in warmed blankets and plied him with hot molasses.

  CHAPTER 15

  November 1813

  The Fortune of War

  Drinkwater had no idea how long he slept, only that when he was woken he regretted it, that Jameson’s face was strange to him, and he wished to be left alone. He closed his eyes, seeking again the oblivion of sleep.

  ‘Sir, you must wake up! Sir!’

  Jameson shook the cot. It made Drinkwater’s head ache and with the acknowledgement of pain came memory. He shook off the luxury of oblivion.

  ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘The Danish frigate, sir, the Odin, she is under weigh!’

  Drinkwater frowned. ‘Where is the wind?’

  ‘In the north, sir.’

  ‘The north!’ Drinkwater flung his legs over the edge of the cot and realized he was completely naked. Jameson averted his eyes.

  ‘What o’clock is it?’

  ‘Four bells, morning watch.’

  Ten in the morning! He had slept the clock round and more! Why had they not woken him? What had they been doing? ‘Pass word for my servant and then you had better beat to quarters. We shall have a battle this morning.’

  But Jameson had gone and he was talking to himself.

  The two frigates presented an odd sight as they stood down the fiord, both heading for the narrows and the open sea beyond. But this was a deceit, for neither could leave the other behind; the honour of their respective flags denied them this escape, so their almost parallel courses converged slightly, to a point of intersection some half a mile before the gorge, where the matter between them must be decided.

  Their unusual aspect was caused by the mutual damage they had suffered and inflicted. It was some consolation to the watching Drinkwater that he had cut up his opponent so badly, for she bore no mizen topsail, her aftermost mast supporting a much-reduced and extemporized spanker, and although her main and foremasts bore topsails, that on the foremost was a diminutive, a former topgallant. Clearly the Odin possessed insufficient spars to replace all her losses. Drinkwater shut his glass with a decisive snap and summoned Jameson and Birkbeck. They conferred in a huddle beside the starboard hance.