Under false colours

Quilhampton while he himself had given the death wound to Edouard Santhonax. It was odd, if not fateful, the way his path had crossed that of the French officer. Providential, he admitted privately, a manifestation of what he held to be a spiritual truth. It had been a desperate fight as Drinkwater sought to bring out of Russia a state secret, and Santhonax attempted to thwart him.

Now Drinkwater was going back, and the thought struck him that perhaps he was still bound to Santhonax, even in death, for the moment of his fall from grace at the Admiralty had concerned the preservation of the secret, and its consequences continued to affect him and those close to him. (See Baltic Mission)

'Damn this wind!' bellowed Littlewood, clapping a hand over his hat. 'Why don't it back a point, or even fly to the sou'west.'

It was not a question, merely an explosion of frustration as the northerly wind forced them to lay a course to the eastward of their intended track, driving them towards the Bight of Helgoland rather than north east for the Skagerrak. They had already made a long board to avoid the Texel, and reached the latitude of Whitby with every prospect of fetching the Skagerrak, but the wind had veered a point and obliged them to lay a course of east- north-east, directly for the Horns Reef.

'The season for the equinoctials will be upon us soon,' Drinkwater said consolingly, though he no more liked the delay than Littlewood, for both men were worried about the cold northerly wind hastening the formation of ice in the Baltic.

'Tis too much to ask for a fair wind,' Littlewood said irritably, turning to follow Drinkwater's stare. Astern of them Tracker buried her bow, then lifted it, the water streaming from her knightheads and the spray tearing to leeward in a cloud.

'She's about as weatherly as my hat!'

Drinkwater grunted agreement. Even in this wind, which was no more than a near gale, conditions on the gun-brig would be appalling. He recalled his own service in a cutter: it had been wet and gruelling, but at least they had had the satisfaction of going to windward like a witch. Poor Quilhampton was going to have to exert himself to the utmost to carry out his orders. The thought made Drinkwater smile grimly.

'You are amused, Captain?' Littlewood asked.

Drinkwater nodded. 'A little,' he admitted. 'The young fellow in command over there had his head filled with romantic notions the other day. I daresay he has other things on his mind just now.'

Littlewood laughed. 'I'll shorten down for him, if you wish; there's no point in outrunning him.'

'I'd be obliged to you, Captain Littlewood,' Drinkwater nodded, acutely conscious that it was the gun-brig that was to afford them protection, rather than the reverse.

'It's bound to back soon,' said Littlewood, turning away to give orders to his crew, 'bound to ...'

But Littlewood's optimism was misplaced. Nightfall found them shortened to triple reefed topsails and the clew of a brailed spanker as the wind increased to gale force.

CHAPTER 5 The Storm

September 1809

Drinkwater was unable to sleep. Although Galliwasp was not his personal responsibility the habits of command were too deeply ingrained to be swept easily aside. Besides, the moral burden for the former West Indiaman and her mission were laid squarely upon his lop-sided shoulders, so at midnight, wrapped in a tarpaulin, he sought Littlewood and found him at his post on deck.

'There are times, Captain Waters, when the temptation to suck on a bottle in one's bunk and leave the deck to one's mates and the devil are well-nigh irresistible,' Littlewood shouted, staggering across his wildly lurching poop to grab a backstay somewhere behind Drinkwater's right shoulder.

'You don't fool me, sir,' Drinkwater shouted back, grinning in the darkness despite his discomfort. Littlewood's black humour suggested he would be a good man in a tight corner. 'Though I imagine a snug anchorage in the Scheldt seems more attractive than our present position.'

Littlewood leaned towards Drinkwater. 'It's getting no better, Captain,' he said, the confidence imparted in a loud voice to sound above the mounting roar of the rising wind. 'By my reckoning we can let her go 'til morning, but at first light we will have to put about ...'

'You'll have to wear ship ...'

'Aye,' Littlewood agreed, 'she'll not tack in this ...'

Both men stared to windward thinking the same thoughts simultaneously. The Galliwasp heeled under the wind's weight, rolling further to starboard as grey seas reared out of the darkness to larboard and bore down upon her. Some broke to windward and the spray from their collapsing crests streamed across their exposed deck with a sibilant hiss. Some she rode over, groaning and creaking in protest as the roaring gale plucked new, higher pitched notes from the Strained weather stays and a curious resonant vibration from the slacker, lee­ward rigging. Others broke on board, sluicing with a roar across the deck and filling the scuppers and waterways of the starboard waist, while some broke against the hull with Titanic hammer blows that shook the Galliwasp from keel to truck. Then the thwarted wave threw itself into the air where, level with the rail, the wind caught it and drove it downwind with the force of buckshot; an icy assault that struck exposed cheeks with a painful impact and left the wet skin to the worse agony of the wind-ache that followed.

The duty watch huddled from the hazard in odd corners, only the mate on watch and the helmsmen weathering it behind a scrap of canvas dodger. Even Drinkwater and the bare-headed Littlewood could not avoid the stinging, lancing spume bursting upon them out of the black and howling darkness.

Ineffectively dodging one such explosion, Drinkwater recovered his balance and dashed the streaming water from his eyes, to stare astern and to leeward.

'What the devil's that?' he asked.

'Bengal fire?' queried Littlewood beside him.

The thrust of the wind sent both men down the deck to leeward. They cannoned into the lee rail, aware that the deep red flare had gone, either extinguished or obscured by an intervening wave crest.

'There's another!' Littlewood pointed, though Drinkwater had already marked the sudden glow.

'Signal of distress from the brig, sir.' The Galliwasp's second mate staggered from handhold to handhold to make his report.

'We see it, Mr Munsden, thank you.'

'It'll be the brig, sir.'

'So we apprehend,' replied Littlewood, turning to Drinkwater. 'That young fellow in command, the lovesick one, what stamp of man is he, Captain?'

'Not one to prove craven,' snapped Drinkwater with mounting anxiety. Straining his eyes into the impenetrable darkness that followed the dousing of the second flare, his brain raced as he thought of Quilhampton and Frey struggling, perhaps for their very lives, less than a mile away.

'Captain Littlewood! You'd oblige me if you'd put up your helm and wear ship now, sir! We should fall off sufficiently to catch a sight of the Tracker and you've enough men on deck to see to it.'

Drinkwater sensed Littlewood hesitated, then with relief saw his white head nod agreement and heard his shout. 'Mr Munsden ...!'

But from above their heads came a thunderous crack and then the whole ship shook violently as the main topsail blew out.

Littlewood spun round and with a bull-roar galvanized his crew. 'Away aloft there you lubbers, and secure that raffle! Call all hands, Mr Munsden!'