A Brig of War

French thoroughbred. The smaller ship was clearly a brig of their own size.

Griffiths appeared. 'Hoist the private signal, Mr Drinkwater!'

Rogers reported the batteries cleared for action. 'Very well, Mr Rogers. Man the starboard. Mr Drinkwater, set tight the spring. Traverse three points to larboard!'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Drinkwater cast a final glance at Quilhampton's party hoisting the private signal to the lee foretopsail yardarm where the wind spread it for the approaching ships to see. 'Mr Grey, waisters to the capstan!'

Hellebore trembled slightly as the spring came tight and she turned off the wind, bringing her starboard broadside to bear upon the strangers. Drinkwater watched apprehensively. There was no reply to the private signal.

'Starboard battery made ready, sir,' Rogers reported. All activity had ceased now, the gun crews squatting expectantly around their pieces, the captains kneeling off to one side of the recoil tracks, the lanyards tight in their hands.

Hellebore was a sitting duck, silhouetted against the sunrise while the newcomers approached out of the night shadows.

'Mr Rogers! Fire Number One gun astern of her if you please.'

Drinkwater raised his glass and watched the bigger of the two ships. Forward the gun barked. Daylight grew rapidly, distinct rays from the rising sun fanned out from behind the crags of the Yemeni mountains. As the Muezzin called the faithful to prayer from the distant minaret of Mocha, Drinkwater saw the British ensign hoisted to the peak of the approaching ships and an answering puff of smoke from the off-bow of the bigger one.

'British ensign, sir.'

'Then answer at the dip.'

An hour later he was anxiously waiting for Griffiths to return from the fifty-gun Centurion, commanded by Captain Rainier.

Drinkwater ran a surreptitious finger round the inside of his stock. He could not understand why, in the heat of the Red Sea, the Royal Navy could not relax its formality sufficiently to allow officers to remove their broadcloth coats when dining with their seniors. After all, this moment, when the humidor of cheroots followed the decanter of port round the table, was tacitly licensed for informality. They were listening to an anecdote concerning the social life of Bombay told by Centurion's first lieutenant. It was an irreverent story and concerned a general officer in the East India Company's service whose appetite for women was preserved within strictly formal bounds: '…and then, sir, when the nautch-girl threw her legs round him and displayed a certain amount of enthusiasm for the old boy, d'you see, he ceased his exertions and glared down at her; 'any more of this familiarity,' the old bastard said, 'and this coupling's off'!'

The easy laughter of Centurion's officers was joined by that of the young commander of the eighteen-gun brig Albatross, a man more than ten years Drinkwater's junior. It seemed that all these officers from the India station led a life of voluptuous ease and licence. It suddenly rankled Nathaniel that their partners with Duncan in the grey North Sea, with St Vincent off Cadiz and with Nelson in the Mediterranean led a different life. He thought of the rock off Ushant and of the storm-lashed squadron that kept a ceaseless watch on Brest and, in the smoky heat of Captain Rainier's cabin, had a sudden poignant urge to be part of that windy scene, where the rain squalls swept like curtains across the sky, obscuring the reefs that waited impassively to leeward of the lumbering divisions of British watchdogs. This effete bunch of well-laundered, red-faced hedonists made Drinkwater feel uncomfortable, offended his puritan sensibilities. It was as if over-long exposure to the heady tropical beauty of Indian nights had affected them with moon-madness.

Neither had Griffiths forgotten his duty, as the slight edge of sarcasm in his voice implied.

'Duw, sir, 'tis a wonder you sallied so far from home with such delights to keep you at Bombay. May one enquire of your intentions?'

'Of course, Captain,' said Rainier, a large fleshy man with an expansive manner who appeared like an Indian Buddha surrounded by blue cheroot smoke. 'The news we had from Nelson, both from Duval and yourself, is what brings me to carry out the present reconnaissance of the Red Sea.'

'And effecting a junction with Admiral Blankett, sir?'

The captain shrugged. He did not seem eager to combine his force with Blankett's. Yet if he did the Red Sea squadron would almost certainly be sufficient to bottle up the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, locate and destroy whatever ship Santhonax had at his command.

'Blankett's whereabouts are somewhat unknown. My own instructions are clear. I am to determine the extent of French military action in Egypt relative to a descent upon India. That is all.' It was clear to Drinkwater that the nautch-girls of Bombay sang a sweeter song than the sirens lurking on the imperfectly known reefs of the Red Sea.

Rainier exhaled elaborately, indolently watching the three concentric smoke rings waft slowly towards the deckhead with obvious satisfaction.

'Oh bravo, sir,' breathed Adams sycophantically, giving Drinkwater a clue to his early promotion. Rainier raised his fingers in a gesture of unconcern that seemed not to warrant a shrug of the shoulders. 'I think the matter of little moment, 'tis but in the nature of an excursion.' He caught sight of Griffiths's frown. 'Oh, I know, Captain Griffiths, you come panting from the battlefields of Europe, lathered with the sweat of your own efforts, your energy is not the plague, you know. It is not contagious. We have our own way of attending to the King's business out here. We are not unaware that Tippoo Sahib, the Sultan of Mysore,' he added for the benefit of the new arrivals from England, 'is raising rebellion against us. We even have information that Bonaparte himself has been in contact with him. But I am not of the opinion any great risk attends the matter.'

Rainier drew heavily upon the cheroot and a comfortable little ripple of self-satisfaction went round the table amongst the officers of the two ships.

'I wish I shared your confidence, sir,' Griffiths said.

'Oh, come, sir,' put in Adams, 'the French are not here in force. Why, how many ships does Blankett have, eh?' Adams turned to the only non-uniformed figure at the table, strange in civilian clothing a decade out of fashion.

'He has three sixty-fours,' said Wrinch, 'America, Stately and Ruby. The two first named were due home, the third on a cruise. He has two frigates, Daedalus and Fox with the sloop Echo. She too is due home.'

'You see, Griffiths,' said Adams, 'that is a sizeable squadron.'

'If it is all together,' growled Griffiths unconvinced.

Rainier seemed to want to terminate the argument.

'Come Griffiths, it is not as though we are up against Suffren, is it?' The captain muttered through his fist as he picked at a sliver of mutton lodged irritatingly in his molars. 'Eh?'

'The French commander is a pupil of Suffren, sir. He is well-known to my first lieutenant and myself, sir. A true corsair, cunning as a fox, dangerous and resourceful. Not a man to underestimate.' Griffith's voice was low and penetrating.

'How come that you know him, sir?' enquired Centurion's captain of marines.

Griffiths outlined the tasks assigned to the twelve-gun cutter Kestrel during her special service on the coasts of France and Holland. He spoke of how they had come into conflict with the machinations of Capitaine Edouard Santhonax, how they had tracked him from the coves of France to the sandy beaches of Noord Holland and how Drinkwater had finally captured him during the bloody afternoon of Camperdown. He told them of the brutal murder of the British agent, Major Brown, taken in civilian clothing and strung up on a gibbet above the battery at Kijkduin in full view of the blockading squadron. As his voice rose and fell, assembling the sentences of his account he compelled them all to listen, straightening the supercilious mouth of Commander Charles Adams. '… And so gentlemen, Santhonax contrived to escape, devil take him, by what means I do not know, and if this French army in Egypt is as powerful and as dangerous as Admiral Nelson seemed to think, then myndiawl, you should be cautioned against this man.' A silence followed broken at last by Rainier.

'That was bardic, captain, truly bardic,' said Rainier dismissively, taking snuff.

'Captain Griffiths is right, sir,' put in Wrinch at a moment when Drinkwater sensed Rainier wished to conclude