A resplendently attired officer was footing a bow at Devaux and proferring his sword. Devaux, impatient at the inactivity of the Spaniards, ignored him. He made signs at the officer who had first secured the heaving line and a party of seamen were soon heaving in the four-inch rope. The moon emerged again and Devaux turned to Drinkwater. He nodded at the insistently bobbing Spaniard.
'For God's sake take it. Then return it — we need their help.'
Nathaniel Drinkwater thus received the surrender of the thirty-eight gun frigate Santa Teresa. He managed a clumsy bow on the plunging deck and as graciously as he knew how, aware of his own gawkiness, he handed the weapon back. The moonlight shone keenly on the straight Toledo blade.
Devaux was shouting again: 'Men! Men! Hombres! Hombres!' The four-inch had arrived on board and the weight of the big hawser was already on it. Gesticulating wildly and miming with his body Devaux urged the defeated Spaniards to strenuous activity. He pointed to leeward. 'Muerto! Muerto!'
They understood.
To windward Hope was tacking Cyclops. It was vital that Devaux secured the tow in seconds. The four-inch snaked in. Then it snagged. The big ten-inch rope coming out of the water had caught on something under Santa Teresa's bow.
'Heave!' screamed Devaux, beside himself with excitement. Cyclops would feel the drag of that rope. She might fail to pay off on the starboard tack…
Suddenly it came aboard with a rush. The floating hemp rose on a wave and swept aboard as Santa Teresa's bow fell into a steep trough.
Drinkwater was astonished. Where she had been rolling wildly the seas had been breaking harmlessly alongside. He sensed something was wrong. That sea had broken over them. He looked around. The sea was white in the moonlight and breaking as on a beach. They were in the breakers of the San Lucar shoal. Above the howl of the wind and the screaming of the Spanish officers the thunder of the Atlantic flinging itself on to the bank was a deep and terrifying rumble.
Devaux sweated over the end of the ten-inch rope. 'Get a gun fired quick!'
Drinkwater pointed to a cannon and mimed a ramming motion. 'Bang!' he shouted.
The sailors understood and a charge was quickly rammed home. Drinkwater grabbed the linstock and jerked it. It fired. He looked anxiously at Cyclops. Several Spaniards were staring fearfully to leeward. 'Dios!' said one, crossing himself. Others did the same.
Slowly Devaux breathed out. Cyclops had tacked successfully. The hemp rose from the water and took the strain. It creaked and Drinkwater looked to where Devaux had passed a turn round Santa Teresa's fore mast and wracked lashings on it. More were being passed by the sailors. The Santa Teresa trembled. Men looked fearfully at each other. Was it the effect of the tow or had she struck the bottom?
Cyclops's stern rose then plunged downwards. The rope was invisible in the darkness which had again engulfed them but it was secured and Santa Teresa began to turn into the wind. Very slowly Cyclops hauled her late adversary to the south-west, clawing a foot to windward for every yard she made to the south.
Devaux turned to the midshipman and clapped him on the back. His face broke into a boyish grin.
'We've done it, cully, by God, we've done it!'
Drinkwater slid slowly to the deck, the complete oblivion of fatigue enveloping him.
Chapter Five
The Evil that Men do…
February — April 1780 Rodney's fleet lay at anchor in Gibraltar Bay licking its wounds with a sense of satisfaction. The evidence of their victory was all about them, the Spanish warships wearing British colours over their own.
The battle had annihilated Don Juan de Langara's squadron. Four battleships had struck by midnight. The Admiral in Fenix surrendered to Rodney but Sandwich had pressed on. At about 2 a.m. on the 17th she overhauled the smaller Monarcha and compelled her to strike her colours with one terrible broadside. By this time, as Cyclops struggled to secure Santa Teresa in tow, both fleets were in shoaling water. Two seventy-gun ships, the San Julian and San Eugenio, ran helplessly aground with terrible loss of life. The remainder, Spanish and British, managed to claw off to windward.
In the confusion of securing the prizes one Spanish battleship escaped as did the other frigate. With the exception of the San Domingo and the escapees, De Langara's squadron had fallen into Rodney's hands. It was a bitter blow to Spanish naval pride, pride that had already suffered humiliation when late the previous year the treasure flota from the Indies had fallen to marauding British cruisers.
Now the great ships lay at anchor. Fenix was to become Gibraltar and others were to be bought into the British service. Their presence boosted the morale of General Elliott's hard pressed garrison and forced the besiegers to stop and think. Behind the fleet the convoy had arrived safely and the military dined their naval colleagues. Midshipmen, however, at least those of Cyclops dined aboard, on hard tack, pease pudding and salt pork.
During her stay at Gibraltar Cyclops became a happy ship. She had come through a fleet action with distinction and the experience had united her crew into a true ship's company. Her casualties had been light, four dead and twenty-one wounded, mostly by splinters or falling wreckage. Every morning as the hands turned up there was not a man among them who did not cast his eyes in the direction of the Santa Teresa. The Spanish frigate was their own, special badge of honour.
The men worked enthusiastically repairing the damage to Cyclops. It was a task that fascinated Drinkwater. The elements of seamanship he already knew were augmented by the higher technicalities of masting and rigging and when Lieutenant Devaux turned his attention to the Santa Teresa his knowledge was further increased. The first lieutenant had taken a liking to Drinkwater after their sojourn together on the captured frigate. Revived from his faint Devaux had found him an eager and intelligent pupil once his stomach had been filled.
Cyclops's crew spared no effort to efface as much of the damage their own cannon had done to the Santa Teresa so that the frigate presented as good an appearance as possible to the prize court. Presided over by Adam Duncan, Rodney's Vice-Admiral, this august body was holding preliminary hearings into the condition of the fleet's prizes before despatching those suitable back to England. Once this intelligence had been passed to the hands they worked with a ferocious energy.
The intensive employment of Cyclops's crew meant that the midshipmen were often absent and rarely all on board at the same time. For the first time Drinkwater felt comparatively free of the influence of Morris. Occupied as they all were there was little opportunity for the senior midshipman to bully his hapless juniors. The anticipation of vast sums of prize money induced a euphoria in all minds and even the twisted Morris felt something of this corporate elevation.
Then, for Drinkwater, all this contentment ended.
Cyclops had lain in Gibraltar Bay for eleven days. The repairs were completed and work was almost finished aboard the Santa Teresa. Her spars were all prepared and it was time to send up her new topmasts. Devaux had taken almost the entire crews of Cyclops over to the Spaniard to make light of the hauling and heaving. Topmen and waisters, marines, gunners, fo'c's'le men were all set to man the carefully arranged tackles and set up the rigging.
Captain Hope was ashore with Lieutenant Keene and only a handful of men under the master kept the deck. The remainder, off-duty men, slept or idled below. A drowsy atmosphere had settled over the frigate exemplified by Mr Blackmore and the surgeon, Appleby, who lounged on the quarterdeck, their energies spent by recent exertions.
