Under false colours

Davey took the money reluctantly and Drinkwater had turned for the door when a scruffy boy burst into the shop with a jangle of the bell, thrust a piece of paper on the counter and ran out again, being gathered up by a gang of ne'er-do-wells who promptly ran off. Davey caught the paper from fluttering to the floor, cast an eye over it and handed it to Drinkwater.

Mr Gorman regrets he is unable to raise the necessary funds for the transaction with Capn. Waters, but begs the Capn. leave his deposit with Mr Davey.

'I thought as much,' Drinkwater said, adding Fagan's guineas to the money laid out for Zenobia. 'There Mr Davey, you are become a banker and a philanthropist in a single forenoon.'

Drinkwater had no difficulty hailing a waterman's boat at Wapping Stairs and having himself pulled off to the barque Galliwasp, whose name Solomon had given him. He noted as the waterman's skiff rounded her stern that she was pierced for eighteen guns. He wondered how many she actually mounted. More gratifying, given the frustrating week of delay he had suffered, was the fact that her topsails and courses hung ready in their buntlines, lifting and billowing in the westerly breeze. A young ebb bubbled around her creaking rudder stock and, as he looked upward before seizing the manropes and ascending her rounded side, he sighted a welcoming party that gave every appearance of wishing to be away.

'Captain Littlewood at your service, sir ...' The master was a small, rubicund man with a mop of white hair tied under his cocked hat in an unruly queue. He had, despite a regal paunch, a restless energy that soon became apparent the moment the formalities of welcome were over. 'I had word from Solomon and Dyer that you would want to leave the moment the ebb was away; my boy will see you below,' and he turned, speaking trumpet to his mouth, bellowing to let the topsails fall and to sheet home. Drinkwater was hardly below before, through the stern windows, he saw the distant prospect of London bridge receding as they slipped downstream. Mr Solomon had arranged things to a most efficient nicety.

'Built for the West India trade, sir,' Littlewood explained when Drinkwater joined him on the deck. 'Gives her the look of a sloop o' war. Hellum down a point ... 'midships ... meet her ... steady ... steer so ... Mind you she don't mount so many guns ... Lee braces there, look lively now! Only a dozen carronades ... Haul taut that fore- tack, Mister, God! What's the matter with you? Had your brains dished up in a whore's bedpan? You'll have us spliced to the King's Yard at Deptford and the whole damned crew of you pressed before you can say 'Lucifer', deuce take you! Mind you we've a quaker or two to fill the empty ports ...'

Drinkwater noticed the dummy gun barrels just then being dismounted and rolled out of the way.

'... And she's been doubled round her cut-water, though I apprehend the ice will be late in the Baltic this year. Stand by the braces! Make a show of it passing their Lordships' palace now. Let 'em see what fine jacks the press missed ... Easy larboard wheel now ...'

They slid past Greenwich Hospital and Littlewood kept up the commentary, goading and cajoling his crew, dodging sprit-sailed barges, a post office packet and a large East Indiaman off Gravesend. His crew, few in number compared to a naval complement, seemed agile and able enough. Drinkwater was content to relax for the first time in weeks. He realized, as someone else accepted the responsibility for a ship's navigation, that he enjoyed the freedom of merely overseeing which, with a man of Littlewood's stamp to hand, would be an easy task. He realized, too, that the mental fencing with Fagan and Solomon had driven all thoughts of his obsessive guilt from his mind.

He watched a red kite wheel back over the marshes below Tilbury, and a flight of avocets stream in to settle on the emerging mudflats of the Lower Hope. Soon, he thought, staring down river, the pelagic gannets would glide past them, for already the air was sharp with the salt tang of open water.

'Captain Littlewood ...'

'Captain Waters.'

'A word with you, sir.'

Littlewood took a look at the set of the sails and crossed the slightly heeling deck. 'I don't know what orders your charter party gave you, Captain, but are you aware we have to rendezvous with a naval escort?' Drinkwater asked.

'I was instructed, sir, to wait upon your pleasure and that you would acquaint me with such instructions as were necessary.'

Dungarth or Solomon had done their work well. It was damnably unusual to find a master in the merchant service so willing to relinquish his much cherished independence.

'I was told you were a seafaring man, Captain Waters,' Littlewood went on, partially explaining his acquiescence, 'and that our cargo is for Riga. I command, but under your direction as the charter party's supercargo.'

'Quite so, Captain Littlewood; you seem to understand the situation thoroughly. I trust that you are satisfied with your own remuneration?'

Littlewood laughed. 'Tolerably well,' he admitted. 'The ship had been taken up for the Walcheren business but, thank the Lord, this other matter came up ...'

'Ah, yes,' Drinkwater hedged, wondering how much Littlewood already knew, and trying to recall what Solomon had told him. It was probable, he concluded, that having been requisitioned by the Transport Board, Littlewood guessed the authorities were behind the present charter. When he better knew the man, Drinkwater resolved, he would be frank with him, but not yet.

'Don't worry, Captain Waters,' Littlewood said as if divining Drinkwater's train of thought, 'honest men never profit. Who am I to query one transport engaged in a little trading on the side, eh? In the last war I was once master's mate and I know there ain't an admiral, nor a post-captain neither, that don't keep a few widows' men on his books to feather his own nest! Why, love a duck, what's one old barque missing from two or three hundred sail o' transports, eh?' Littlewood grinned and edged closer to Drinkwater who was wondering whether the allusion to naval graft was a sly reference to himself. 'Lord love you, Captain,' Littlewood added with a nudge and a wink, 'tis to most Englishmen's inclination to sacrifice their principles to profit, and, when a lord tosses the purse, why damn me, sir, 'tis a command!'

CHAPTER 4 The Gun-brig

August-September 1809

'Pray mind your head, sir. Take a seat ... perhaps a glass?'

Bent double under the deck beams in the cramped cabin, Drinkwater eased himself into a rickety chair. Opposite him, across the table, Lieutenant James Quilhampton seated his tall, spare frame on to a second chair, splayed his legs and propelled himself dextrously across the cabin to a side shelf where a trio of glasses and a chipped decanter nestled in fiddles.

The small, one-hundred-ton vessel lifted easily to a low swell rolling down from the northward. With just sufficient wind to give them steerage, James Quilhampton's twelve-gun command in company with the Galliwasp, stemmed the flood tide sweeping south round Orfordness.

'Welcome to His Britannic Majesty's gun-brig Tracker, sir,' Quilhampton said as he poured two glasses of blackstrap with his sound hand. 'My predecessor was a tall fellow. He had this chair fitted with castors.' He swivelled round and propelled himself back towards the table whose once-polished top bore the stains of ancient wine rings, assorted blemishes and idly carved notches in its rim. 'A becket allows me half a fathom traverse centrical upon the ring bolt below.'

Quilhampton leaned forward with a full glass held in his wooden fist. Drinkwater disengaged it from the painted fingers, conscious that the young man's awkwardness was due to more than his old disability.

Drinkwater raised the glass of what looked like a villainous concoction. 'Your good health, my dear James,