A King's Cutter

damned fool ideas about medicine. Thought he could physic the sick better than I… used to call me a barber, confounded insolence and me a warrant surgeon before he was a midshipmite. Ouch! This coffee's damned hot.'

Drinkwater laughed again. 'Ah, I recollect you don't like intruders, no more than we do here, Harry,' he said pointedly. For a minute Appleby looked darkly at his friend, stung by the implied rebuke. Then Drinkwater went on and he forgot his wounded pride. 'By the way, d'you remember that fellow we brought ashore wounded at Plymouth?'

Appleby frowned, 'Er, no… yes, a Frenchman wasn't he? You brought a whole gang of 'em out, including a woman if I recollect correctly.'

'That's right,' Drinkwater paused, but Appleby brushed aside the memory of Hortense.

'I take it from your self-conceit the patient survived?'

'Eh? Oh, yes, but he succumbed to assault in the streets of London.'

'Tch, tch, now you will appreciate my own despair when I exhaust myself patching you firebrands up, only to have you repeatedly skewering yourselves.'

They sipped their coffee companionably but it was not difficult to see that poor Appleby had become a most prickly shipmate.

'And what is our commander like?' growled Appleby.

'Excellent, Harry, truly excellent. I hope you like him.' Appleby grunted and Drinkwater went on wryly, 'It is only fair to warn you that he is quite capable of probing for a splinter or a ball.'

Appleby gave a sigh of resignation then wisely changed the subject.

'And you, I mean we, no longer poach virgins off the French coast, I assume? That seemed to be the opinion current in the squadron when this cutter cropped up in conversation.'

Drinkwater laughed again. 'Lord no! It'll be all routine stuff now. We're fleet tender to Admiral MacBride's North Sea Fleet. It'll be convoys and cabbages, messages, tittle-tattle and perhaps, if we're very lucky, a look into Boulogne or somewhere. All damned boring I shouldn't wonder.'

Appleby did not need to know about Dungarth's special instructions. After all he had only just joined. He was not yet one of the Kestrels.

'Your standing at Trinity House must be high, Mr Drinkwater,' said Griffiths, 'they have approved the issue of a warrant without recourse to further examination. The Navy Board have acted with uncommon speed too,' he added with a significant glance at Drinkwater implying Kestrel should not suffer further delay. 'Now Mr Appleby?'

'These new men are infested, sir,' complained the surgeon, referring to the draft received from the Royal William. Griffiths looked wearily back at the man.

'Aye, Mr Appleby and that won't be all they've got. What d'you suggest we do, send 'em back, is it?'

'No sir, we'll douse them in salt water, ditch their clothing and issue slops…' He trailed off.

'Now Mr Appleby, do you attend to your business and I'll attend to mine. Your sense of outrage does your conscience credit but is a disservice to your professional reputation.'

Drinkwater watched Appleby sag like a pricked balloon. No, he thought, he is not yet one of us.

The keen clean Channel breeze came over the bow as they stood down past the guardship at the Warner and on through the anchored warships at St Helen's, their ensign dipping in salute and the spray playing over the weather rail and hissing merrily off to leeward. Apart from an ache in his heart at leaving Elizabeth, Drinkwater was glad to have left Portsmouth, very glad.

'Very well, Mr Drinkwater…' It was Jeremiah Traveller, a mirror image of Jessup, who, as gunner took a deck watch releasing Nathaniel from the repressive regime of four hours on deck and four below which he and Jessup had hitherto endured. They called the hands aft as eight bells struck and then, the watch changed, he slid below.

In his cabin he took out his journal, turning the pages of notes and sketches made in Portsmouth, a myriad of dockyard details, all carefully noted for future reference. He stared at his drawing of the centre plates. Beating out of Portsmouth they had already felt the benefit of those. Opening his inkwell he picked up the new steel pen that he had bought at Morgan's. Kestrel was already a different ship. With a cabin full of officers at meal times the old intimacy was gone. And Appleby had driven a wedge between Drinkwater and Griffiths, not intentionally, but his very presence seemed to turn Griffiths in upon himself and the greater number of officers increased the isolation of the commander.

Drinkwater sighed. The halcyon days were over and he regretted their passing.

Autumn gave way to the fogs of November and the first frosts, these periods of still weather were linked by a dreary succession of westerly gales that scudded up Channel to force them to reef hard and run for cover.

They had no luck with Dungarth's commission though they stopped and searched many coastal craft and chased others. Drinkwater began to doubt his earlier convictions as ridiculous imaginings. The wily Santhonax had disappeared, or so it seemed. From time to time Griffiths went ashore and although he shared fewer confidences with Nathaniel now, he did not omit to convey the news. A brief shake of the head was all that Drinkwater needed to know the quarry had gone to earth.

Then, during the tail of a blow from south-west, as the wind veered into the north-west and the sky cleared to patchy sunshine, as Drinkwater dozed the afternoon watch away in his cot, the cabin door flew open.

'Zur!' It was Tregembo.

'Eh? What is it?' he sat up blinking.

'Zur, cap'n compliments, an' we've a lugger in sight, zur. She's a big 'un an' Lieutenant Griffiths says to tell 'ee that if you're interested, zur, she's got a black swallowtail pendant at her masthead…'

'The devil she has,' said Drinkwater throwing his legs over the cot and feeling for his shoes. Sleep left him instantly and he was aware of Tregembo grinning broadly.

Chapter Nine The Star of the Devil

December 1795 

Drinkwater rushed on deck. Griffiths was standing by the starboard rail, white hair streaming in the wind, his face a hawk-like mask of concentration on the chase, the personification of the cutter's name. Bracing himself against the scend of the vessel Drinkwater levelled his glass to starboard.

Both lugger and cutter were running free with Kestrel cracking on sail in hot pursuit. Drinkwater watched the altering aspect of the lugger, saw her grow just perceptibly larger as Kestrel slowly ate up the yards that separated them. Almost without conscious thought his brain was resolving a succession of vectors while his feet, planted wide on the planking, felt Kestrel's response to the straining canvas aloft.

Drinkwater could see a bustle on the stern of the lugger and was trying to make it out when Griffiths spoke from the corner of his mouth.

'D'you still have that black pendant on board?'

'Yes sir, it's in the flag locker.'

'Then hoist it…'

Drinkwater did as he was bid, mystified as to the significance of his actions and the importance of Brown's bit of 'Celtic nonsense'. But to Griffiths the black flag of the Breton held a challenge to his heart, it was he or Santhonax and he acknowledged the encounter in single combat.

There was a sound like tearing calico. A well-pointed ball passed close down the starboard side and Drinkwater could see the reason for the bustle aft. The lugger's people had a stern chaser pointing astern. Through his glass he could see her gun crew reloading and a tall man in a blue coat staring at them through a telescope. As he lowered the glass to address an officer next to him Drinkwater saw the face in profile. The dark, handsome features and the streaming curls, even at a distance, were unmistakably those of Santhonax.

Beside him Griffiths breathed a sigh of confirmation.

'Now Mr Traveller,' he said to the gunner, let us see whether having you on board improves our