A King's Cutter

because there is a possibility of command devolving upon you, perhaps in adverse circumstances or at an inconvenient time…' Drinkwater frowned. This was more alarming than the previous half-expected revelations. 'Many years ago on the Gambian coast I contracted a fever. From time to time I am afflicted by seizures.'

'But if you are unwell, sir, a, er…'

'A replacement?' Griffiths raised an indignant eyebrow then waved aside Drinkwater's apology. 'Look you, I have lived ashore for less than two years in half a century. I am not likely to take root there now.' Drinkwater absorbed the fact as Griffiths's face became suddenly wistful, an old man lost in reminiscence. He finished his glass and stood up, leaving the commander sitting alone with his wine, and quietly left the cabin.

Overhead the white ensign cracked in the strong breeze as the big cutter drove to windward under a hard reefed mainsail. Her topsail yard was lowered to the cap and the lower yard cockbilled clear of the straining staysail. Halfway along her heavy bowsprit the spitfire jib was like a board, wet with spray and still gleaming faintly from the daylight fading behind inky rolls of cumulus to the westward. The wind drove against the ebb tide to whip up a short steep sea, grey-white in the dusk as it seethed alongside and tugged at the boat towing close astern. The cutter bucked her round bow and sent streaks of spray driving over the weather rail.

Acting Lieutenant Nathaniel Drinkwater huddled in his tarpaulin as the spume whipped aft, catching his face and agonising his cheek muscles in the wind-ache that followed.

He ran over the projected passage in his mind yet again, vaguely aware that an error now would blight any chances of his hoped-for promotion. Then he dismissed the thought to concentrate on the matter in hand. From Dover to their destination was sixty-five miles, parallel with the French coast, a coast made terrible by tales of bloody revolution. In the present conditions they would make their landfall at low water. That, Drinkwater had been impressed, was of the utmost importance. He was mystified by the insistence laid upon the point by Lieutenant Griffiths. Although the south-westerly wind allowed them to make good a direct course Griffiths had put her on the larboard tack an hour earlier to deceive any observers on Gris Nez. The cape was now disappearing astern into the murk of a wintry night.

Drinkwater shivered again, as much with apprehension as with cold; he walked over to the binnacle. In the yellow lamplight the gently oscillating card showed a mean heading of north-west by west. Allowing for the variation of the magnetic and true meridians that was a course of west by north. He nodded with satisfaction, ignoring the subdued sound of conversation and the chink of glasses coming up the companionway. The behaviour of his enigmatic commander and their equally mysterious 'passenger' failed to shake his self-confidence.

He walked back to the binnacle and called forward, summoning the hands to tack ship. A faint sound of laughter came up from below. After his interview, Griffiths had withdrawn, giving the minimum of orders, apparently watching his new subordinate. At first Drinkwater thought he was being snubbed, but swiftly realised it was simply characteristic of the lieutenant And the man who had boarded at Deal had not looked like a spy. Round, red faced and jolly he was clearly well-known to Griffiths and released from the Welshman an unexpected jocularity. Drinkwater could not imagine what they had to laugh about.

'Ready sir!'

From forward Jessup's cry was faintly condescending and Drinkwater smiled into the darkness.

'Down helm!' he called.

Kestrel came up into the wind, her mainsail thundering. Drinkwater felt her tremble when the jib flogged, vibrating the bowsprit. Then she spun as the wind filled the backed headsails, thrusting her round.

'Heads'l sheets!'

The jib and staysail cracked until tamed by the seamen sweating tight the lee sheets.

'Steadeeee… steer full and bye.'

'Full an' bye, sir.' The two helmsmen leaned on the big tiller as Kestrel drove on, the luff of her mainsail just trembling.

'How's her head?'

'Sou' by west, sir.'

That was south by east true, allowing two points for westerly variation. 'Very well, make it so.'

'Sou' by west it is, sir.'

The ebb ran fair down the coast here and the westing they had made beating offshore ought to put them up-tide and to windward of the landing place by the time they reached it, leaving them room to make the location even if the wind backed. Or so Drinkwater hoped, otherwise his commission would be as remote as ever.

Towards midnight the wind did back and eased a little. The reefs were shaken out and Kestrel drove southwards, her larboard rail awash. Drinkwater was tired now. He had been on deck for nine hours and Griffiths did not seem anxious to relieve him.

Kestrel was thrashing in for the shore. Drinkwater could sense rather than see the land somewhere in the darkness ahead. It must be very near low water now. Drinkwater bit his lip with mounting concern. With a backing wind they would get some lee from the cliffs that rose sheer between Le Treport and Dieppe and it would be this that gave them the first inkling of their proximity. That and the smell perhaps.

In the darkness and at this speed Kestrel could be in among the breakers before there was time to go about. Anxiously he strode forward to hail the lookout at the crosstrees. 'Who's aloft?'

'Tregembo, zur.' The Cornishman's burr was reassuring. Tregembo had turned up like a bad penny, one of the draft of six men from the Nore guardship that had completed Kestrel's complement. Drinkwater had known Tregembo on the frigate Cyclops where the man had been committed for smuggling. He was still serving out the sentence of a court that had hanged his father for offering revenue officers armed resistance. To mitigate the widow's grief her son was drafted into the navy. That he had appeared on the deck of Kestrel was another link in the chain of coincidences that Drinkwater found difficult to dismiss as merely random.

'Keep a damned good lookout, Tregembo!'

'Aye, aye, zur.'

Drinkwater went aft and luffed the cutter while a cast of the lead was taken. 'By the mark, five.' Kestrel filled and drove on. There was a tension on deck now and Drinkwater felt himself the centre of it. Jessup hovered solicitously close. Why the devil did Griffiths not come on deck? Five fathoms was shoal water, but it was shoal water hereabouts for miles. They might be anywhere off the Somme estuary. He suppressed a surge of panic and made up his mind. He would let her run for a mile or two and sound again.

'Breakers, zur! Fine on the lee bow!'

Drinkwater rushed forward and leapt into the sagging larboard shrouds. He stared ahead and could see nothing. Then he saw them, a patch of greyness, lighter than the surrounding sea. His heart beat violently as he cudgelled his memory. Then he had it, Les Ridins du Treport, an isolated patch with little water over it at this state of the tide. He was beginning to see the logic of a landfall at low water. He made a minor adjustment to the course, judging the east-going stream already away close in with the coast. They had about three miles to go.

'Pass word for the captain.' He kept the relief from his voice.

The seas diminished a mile and a half offshore and almost immediately they could see the dark line of the land. Going forward again and peering through the Dollond glass he saw what he hardly dared hope. The cliffs on the left fell away to a narrow river valley, then rose steeply to the west to a height named Mont Jolibois. The faint scent of woodsmoke came to him from the village of Criel that sheltered behind the hill, astride the river crossing of the road from Treport and Eu to Dieppe.

'Da iawn, Mr Drinkwater, well done.' Griffiths's voice was warm and congratulatory. Drinkwater relaxed with relief: it seemed he had passed a test. Griffiths quietly gave orders. The mainsail was scandalised and the staysail backed. The boat towing astern was hauled alongside and two men tumbled in to bale it out. Beside Drinkwater the cloaked figure of the British agent stood staring ashore.

'Your glass, sir, lend me your glass.' The tone was peremptory, commanding, all trace of jollity absent.

'Yes, yes, of course, sir.' He fished it out of his coat pocket and handed it to the man. After scrutinising the beach it was silently returned. Griffiths came up.

'Take the boat in, Mr Drinkwater, and land our guest.'

It took a second to realise his labours were not yet over. Men were piling into the gig alongside. There was the dull gleam of metal where Jessup issued sidearms. 'Pistol and cutlass, sir.' There was an encouraging warmth in Jessup's voice now. Drinkwater took the pistol and stuck it into his waistband. He refused the cutlass. Slipping