A Brig of War

himself for a fool, reminding himself that although he knew a good deal about the ship beneath his feet he knew precious little about the fundamentals of human life. Elizabeth would have been long since brought to bed. He wondered whether the child had lived and tore his mind from the prospect of having lost Elizabeth.

Mr Brundell approached him and reported the sighting of the captain's boat. Drinkwater hurried below for his coat and hat, then met Griffiths at the entry.

After the exchange of routine remarks Griffiths beckoned Drinkwater into the cabin; throwing his hat on to the settee he indicated the first lieutenant should pour them both a glass of wine. Flinging himself on to his chair the commander covered his face with his hands.

'No news, sir?' enquired Drinkwater pushing the wine across the table.

'Aye, bach, but of a negative kind, damn it. It is Santhonax. Wrinch is certain of it,' Griffiths's frequent visits ashore to the delightful residence of Mr Strangford Wrinch had almost assumed the character of a holiday, so regular a thing had they become in the last month. But it was not pleasure that drove Griffiths to the table of the British 'resident'.

Wrinch was a coffee merchant with consular powers, an 'agent' for British interests, not all of them commercial. Drinkwater had dined with him several times and formed the impression that he was one of those strange expatriate Britons who inhabit remote parts of the world, exercising almost imperial powers and writing the pages of history anonymously. It had become apparent to Griffiths and Drinkwater that the man sat spider-like at the centre of a web that strung its invisible threads beside the old caravan routes of Arabia, extended to the ancient Yemeni dependencies in the Sudan and the uncharted tracks of the dhows that traded and plundered upon the Red Sea.

Griffiths had long been involved with the gleaning of intelligence, had spent the latter part of his life working for greater men whose names history would record as the conductors of foreign policy. Yet it was a war within war that occupied Griffiths and Wrinch, a personal involvement which gave them both their motivation. And for Griffiths the personal element had reached an apogee of urgency. Santhonax had been their old adversary in the Channel and the North Sea in the anxious months before Camperdown. Santhonax had been responsible for the barbaric execution of Major Brown, a fact that stirred all Griffiths's latent Celtic hatred. Griffiths was an old, infirm man. Santhonax's presence in the Red Sea mocked him as a task unfinished.

So Griffiths sat patiently in the cool, whitewashed courtyard, brushing off the flies that plagued the town, and waited for news of Santhonax. What Drinkwater did not share with his commander was the latter's patience.

In the weeks they had swung at anchor Drinkwater had concluded that Admiral Nelson had sent them on a wild goose chase; that Lieutenant Duval's overland journey to Bombay was sufficient. They had strained every sinew to reach the Red Sea only to find Admiral Blankett was not at Mocha, that he had gone in search of the French squadron and might have by now destroyed Santhonax. The admiral had been told by Wrinch that a French force was loose in the area. Wrinch affirmed the accuracy of his intelligence without moving from his rug where he would sit in his galahiya and fadhl with his fellow merchants, with the Emirs el Hadj that led the caravans, with commanders of dhows who swapped news for gold, pearls or hashish, or fondled the pretty boys Wrinch was said to prefer to women.

Whatever the truth about himself Wrinch was shrewd enough to know when an Arab invoked the one true God to verify his lies, and when he reported facts. And Griffiths was not interested in the moral qualities of his sources; for him the world was as it was.

Blankett too, had taken alarm. Red-faced and damning Wrinch roundly he had set off north while the season of southerly winds lasted. After his departure Lawrence had arrived, only to be chased by one of Santhonax's ships, appearing mysteriously in Blankett's rear. Despite this intelligence Wrinch urged Griffiths not to cruise in search of either party. He should simply wait. For Wrinch, waiting and 'fadhling' were part of the charm of Arab life. For Griffiths they were a tolerable way of passing the time, enduring the heat and sharpening his appetite for revenge. For Drinkwater the delay was intolerable.

'So we continue to wait, sir?'

Griffiths nodded. 'I know, bach, idleness is bad for the people for-rard but, duw, we have no choice. Wrinch is right,'

Griffiths soothed, brushing the flies away from his face. 'Damned flies have the impertinence of Arabs… No, Mocha Road is the rendezvous.' His white-haired head sank in thought. 'Hmmm, Yr Aifft…'

'Sir?'

'Egypt, Nathaniel, Egypt. There is great activity in Egypt. Bonaparte has made himself master of Cairo. A general named Desaix is blazing a trail through Upper Egypt with the assistance of a Copt called Moallem Jacob.' He paused. 'I think Nelson may be right and with that devil Santhonax to reckon with…' He raised his white eyebrows and clamped his mouth tight shut. Then he blew out his cheeks. 'I wish to God you'd shot him.'

Inaction, like the heat, seemed to have settled permanently upon the brig. The pitch bubbled in the seams and Drinkwater had the duty watch keep the decks wet during daylight. They listed the ship with the guns and scrubbed the waterline, they overhauled the rigging and painted ship. Griffiths forbade exercising the guns with powder and a silent ritual was meaningless to the men. To divert them Drinkwater sent Lestock, his mates and the midshipman off in the boats to survey the road. Although this stimulated a competitiveness among the junior officers and promoted a certain amount of professional interest, once again high-lighting Mr Quilhampton's potential talents, it was limited in its appeal to the hands and soon became unpopular as the boats roamed further afield. Lethargy began to spread its tentacles through the brig, bearing out Appleby's maxim that war was mostly a waste of time, a waste of money and a waste of energy.

As week succeeded week Drinkwater's frustration mounted. He was tormented by worry over Elizabeth, worry that could not easily be set aside in favour of more pressing duties because there were none to demand his attention beyond the routine of daily life at anchor. The myriad flies that visited them drove them to distraction and the lack of shore leave for the hands exacerbated their own cramped lives.

Strangford Wrinch passed them alarming intelligence, gathered from a certain Hadji Yusuf ben Ibrahim, commander of a sambuk. In December of the old year a French division under General Bon had occupied Suez. Bonaparte himself had accepted tribute from the Arabs of Tor in Sinai and reached an accommodation with the monks of the mysterious monastery of St Catherine at the southern extremity of that peninsula. General Desaix was scattering the mamelukes to the four winds in an energetic sweep up the Nile Valley. Egypt had become a province of France and it was clear that, despite Nelson's victory at Aboukir and the subsequent blockade of the Mediterranean coast under Sir Samuel Hood, the French were far from beaten. They might yet move further east and in the absence of Blankett Hellebore would be no more than a straw under the hooves of the conqueror.

At the end of January Griffiths ordered them to sea. For a fortnight they cruised between Perim and Jabal Zugar, exercising the guns and sails. Then they returned to Mocha Road and the shallow bight of its bay, to the heat and flies and the deceptive, fairy-tale wonder of its minaret. Again Griffiths departed daily, smilingly ordering them to submit to the will of Allah, to learn to keyf, to sit in suspended animation after the manner of the Arabs.

'Holy Jesus Christ,' blasphemed the intemperate Rogers in sweating exasperation, 'the stupid old bastard has gone senile.'

'Mr Drinkwater!' The knocking at the door was violently urgent. The face of Quilhampton peered round it, white with worry. 'Mr Drinkwater!'

Drinkwater swam stickily into consciousness. 'Eh? What is it?'

'Two ships standing in from the south, sir!'

Drinkwater was instantly awake. 'Inform the captain! General Quarters and clear for action!'

The midshipman fled and Drinkwater heard the brig come alive, heard the boy's treble taken up by the duty bosun's mate piping at the hatchways. He reached for his breeches, buckled on his sword and snatched up the loaded pistol he habitually kept ready. He rushed on deck.

It was just light and the waist was all confusion with the slap of two hundred bare feet and the whispered exertions of five score of sleep-befuddled seamen driven by training and fear to their stations.

Drinkwater picked up the night glass from its box and did the required mental gymnastics with its inverted image. He swept the horizon and steadied it on the two shapes standing into the road. The larger vessel might be a frigate. Some of the new French frigates were big vessels, yet she seemed too high and not long enough to be a