A Brig of War

down. 'Let me see after you,' said Appleby. 'Damn your eyes, it's my bloody glass.' Lestock snatched it peevishly from Rogers's eye.

'You can see for yourself, Harry,' said Drinkwater suppressing laughter.

They were closing the apparition fast now. The supposition that it was a galleon had made a fantasy of distance. In fact it was quite close and as they passed it there was a surge backwards from the rails, cries of revulsion as the stink of the dead whale assailed their noses.

'Well it stinks like hell for sure!' There was the laughter of relief up and down the deck as they realised what huge fools they had been.

The decomposing whale had swelled up and glowed from the millions of tiny organisms that fed upon it. Shrieking and screaming above it a thousand seabirds enjoyed the funeral feast of the enormous mammal while the water about it was thrashed to a frenzy by a score of sharks.

They watched it fade astern. Laughing at themselves the men drifted below. It seemed the atmosphere about the ship had been washed clean by that appalling smell. Drinkwater wished his companions good night when a party was seen coming from forward. Four men were carrying the inert white-shirted and breeched body of a midshipman. 'Is that Mr Q?'

'Lord no, sir. I'm here.'

'It's Mr Dalziell, zur,' said Tregembo, lowering the midshipman. 'Fainted he did, zur, in a swoon.'

'Well, well, well,' said Drinkwater ironically, 'it seems that vengeance is still the Lord's.'

Chapter Eight A John Company Man

 November-December 1798

Drinkwater was bent over his books, alarmed at the high expenditure of cordage due to the loss of the foreyard, when he heard the cry from the masthead.

'Deck there! Sail ho! A point of starboard!' He gratefully accepted the excuse to rush on deck, feeling the welcome breeze ruffling his open shirt. They had sighted the high land of Ras Hafun three days earlier and doubled Cape Guardafui under the strong katabatic winds that blew down from the Somali plateau. Now they romped westward into the Gulf of Aden carrying sail to the mastheads. It was the forenoon and the watches below were preparing for dinner so that at the cry most of her hands crowded Hellebore's waist. They were eagerly awaiting a sight of the stranger from the deck. Drinkwater saw Quilhampton at the rail.

'Up you go, Mr Q, and see what you make of her.' The boy grabbed a glass and leapt into the rigging. The sight of anything would be welcome. They had seen several dhows inshore of them as they closed the coast but the stranger might be a square-rigged ship, a friend or, just possibly, an enemy.

Hellebore had had her fill of the wonders of the Indian Ocean. Flying fish, whales and dolphins had been seen in abundance, turtles and birds of many descriptions, petrels, long-tailed tropic birds and the brown boobies that reminded them of the immature gannets of Europe. Little sketches filled the margins of Drinkwater's journal together with a description of a milk sea, an eruption of foaming phosphorescence of ethereal beauty. This phenomenon had prompted Quilhampton to essay his hand at poetry. The scorn of Mr Dalziell ended the endeavour, though Mr Quilhampton was quick to refute the assertion that poets were milksops by pointing out they were not the only persons to be sent into a swoon at the sight of the world's natural wonders. But none of these observations thrilled them as much as the two white topgallants that were soon visible from the deck.

'She's a brig sir, like us… or she might be a snow, sir,' reported Quilhampton with uncertain precision.

'Colours?'

'Not showing 'em, sir,' he answered, unconsciously aping Mr Drinkwater's abbreviated style.

'No colours, eh?' said Griffiths hobbling up on his swollen foot.

'No, sir.'

'Waiting for us to declare ourselves, eh? Clear for action Mr Drinkwater, Mr Lestock! Take the't'gallants off her, square away to intercept this fellow.'

The pipes squealed at the hatchways and the men lost their dinner as the cook doused his stove. All was hurrying urgency. They had improved their gunnery coming up from the south, shot at casks with the 'great guns' and shattered bottles at the yardarms from the tops. Their grog had long ago been reinstated and Catherine Best had assumed the demeanour of a nun. Never was a meal more cheerfully forgotten. This was no lurking French cruiser of overwhelming force. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing and the shadows of the sails and rigging were sharp across the deck as it was sprinkled with sand.

'Cleared for action, sir.'

The two ships were three miles apart when the chase freed off, altering to the north so that she presented her broadside to them. 'She's a snow,' muttered Quilhampton pacing up and down the starboard battery in the wake of Lieutenant Rogers.

'She's an odd looking craft,' said Drinkwater. She was like a small sloop but with a long poop, painted green with enormous gun ports in it.

'Hoist the colours!'

'Or the god-damned topgallants, you bloody old goat,' muttered Rogers who thought the chase would escape his eager gunners.

Hellebore's ensign snapped out and jerked to the spanker peak, streaming out on the starboard beam. Griffiths watched the snow respond, heaving to with her main topsail against the mast. At her peak flew the horizontally striped ensign of the Honourable East India Company.

'A John Company ship,' said Griffiths relaxing. Hellebore foamed up to the stranger and came to the wind as the snow lowered a boat.

'He's all for co-operation,' said Griffiths to Drinkwater.

'Well, I'm damned… those ain't gunports, they're slatted blinds.'

'Jalousies, Mr Drinkwater, she's a dispatch vessel for the Company, a country ship they use for conveying their officials about and carrying dispatches. I'll wager it's that he wishes to see us about.'

Griffiths proved right. While the Hellebores, relaxing from action stations and eagerly salving what remained of their lukewarm dinner, chaffed incomprehensibly with the grinning lascars in the boat, a handsome sun-bronzed officer in the crisp well-laundered uniform of the Company's Bombay Marine told them the news.

'Lieutenant Lawrence, gentlemen, at your service.' They exchanged formal greetings and withdrew to Griffiths's cabin.

'Lieutenant Thomas Duval of His Majesty's ship Zealous arrived at Bombay on 21st October, sir, with the news from Admiral Nelson.' Griffiths and Drinkwater exchanged glances. Hellebore had been at the Cape then. 'Please go on, Lieutenant.'

'It seems that on 1st August last the British fleet under Rear-Admiral Nelson annihilated the French at Aboukir Bay. The attack was made at sunset while the French fleet lay at anchor. I understand that, despite the shoaling of the bay and the grounding of Culloden, the British engaged the French on both sides and the victory was a most complete one. The flagship, L'Orient, blew up.' He finished with a smile as though the disintegration of a thousand humans was a matter for personal satisfaction.

'Do you have sercial in Bombay, Lieutenant?' asked Griffiths ironically, motioning Drinkwater to open a bottle. He called through into the pantry for Merrick to bring in some glasses.

'We do not want for much in Bombay,' said Lawrence, 'but I have not tasted such excellent Madeira for a good while.' From his appearance Lawrence wanted for absolutely nothing. They toasted the victory.

'And where are you from now, Lieutenant, what is your purpose?'

'I am from Mocha, sir, where we left dispatches for Commodore Blankett. Captain Ball of Daedalus was daily expected. The Red Sea Squadron uses Mocha as a watering place, sir. Mr Wrinch is the agent there,' he paused, then added, 'a man of considerable parts, sir, you would find calling upon him most profitable.' Lawrence's eyes fell to Griffiths's gouty foot, then he rattled on, 'unfortunately we could not delay as the north-east monsoon in the Arabian Sea makes a lengthy passage for us back to Bombay.'