The Corvette

the improvised rudder could be expected to undergo.

Forward Wickham and Dutfield were hauling their tackles tight under Bourne's direction. As Comley clambered down Drinkwater directed him to set up some additional bracing lines to support the extremities of the mizen topgallant mast and the cross-jack yard. He felt his anxiety subside and rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

'Well done, Mr Bourne, a splendid achievement.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Drinkwater hailed the masthead. Mr Frey looked over the rim of the crow's nest.

'Any sign of the Requin, Mr Frey?'

'No change, sir! East-nor'-east, distant three or four leagues, sir!'

'Very well!' Drinkwater turned to Bourne. 'Heave the ship to, Mr Bourne, then set an anchor watch. Pipe 'Up spirits', all hands to have a double tot and then send 'em below. We'll lie-to, then get under way in four hours. The masthead is to be continually manned. Carry on.'

Drinkwater was cheered for the second time that day, only on this occasion he felt less guilty.

Chapter Sixteen A Providential Refuge

July-August 1803 

'We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead)…'

Obadiah Singleton, the stole of ordained minister of the Church of England about his muffled neck, read the solemn words as Melusine's entire company stood silently in the waist. Drinkwater nodded and the planks lifted. From beneath the bright bunting of the ensigns the hammocks slid over the standing part of the fore-sheet, to plunge into the grey-green sea.

There were fifteen to bury, with the likelihood of a further seven or eight joining them within a day or two. They did not go unmourned. Among Melusine's company, friends grieved the loss of shipmates. For Drinkwater there was always the sense of failure he felt after sustaining heavy losses and among those rigid bundles lay Cawkwell, his servant. He wondered whether he had been wise to have held Melusine's fire for so long, and yet he knew he had inflicted heavy casualties upon the Requin, that her reluctance to renew the action could only in part have been due to the physical damage they had done to her fabric. From what he had seen of her commander the purely commercial nature of privateering would not prevent him from seeking a chance of glory. Drinkwater knew that the ablest of French men were not in the Republic's battle-fleet, rotting in her harbours, penned in by the Royal Navy's weary but endless blockade. France's finest seamen were corsairs, aboard letters-of-marque like the Requin, as intrepid and daring as any young frigate captain in the Royal Navy. They were pursuing that mode of warfare at which they excelled: the war against trade, wounding the British merchants in their purses and thus bringing opposition to the war openly into Parliamentary debate. It was not without reason that First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte described the British as 'a nation of shopkeepers'. Singleton closed the prayerbook as the Melusines mumbled their final 'Amens'.

'On hats!'

Drinkwater turned away for the companionway and his cabin. Already Bourne was piping the hands to stations for getting under way.

Drinkwater looked up at the stump of the mizen mast. They would set no more than the spanker on that, but the wind, although it had swung round to the south, remained light. It had brought with it a slight lessening of the visibility and they had not seen the Requin for three hours.

However, although Drinkwater's anxiety was eased he was still worried about the rudder and had ordered Bourne to hoist only spanker, main topsail and foretopmast staysail to begin with. It was one thing to devise extempore measures and quite another to get them working. But while Bourne brought the ship onto a course for the Greenland coast there was something else Drinkwater had to attend to, an inevitable consequence of death.

'Pass word for Mr Quilhampton,' he said to the marine sentry who came to attention as Drinkwater opened the cabin door. Drinkwater took off his full-dress coat and changed it for the stained undress he wore over the blue guernsey that had become an inseparable, if irregular, part of his uniform clothing. The air had warmed slightly with the onset of the southerly breeze, but it had also become damp again and Drinkwater felt the damp more acutely in his bones and shoulder than the very cold, drier polar airstream of the northerly.

Drinkwater heard the knock at the door. 'Enter!'

'You sent for me, sir?'

'Ah, yes, sit down a moment. Pray do you pour out two glasses there.' He nodded at the decanter nestling between the fiddles on the locker top. Quilhampton did as he was bid while Drinkwater opened a drawer in his desk and removed a paper.

'Far be it from me to rejoice in the death of a colleague, James, but what may be poison to one man, oft proves meat to another.' He handed the sheet to Quilhampton who took it frowning. The young man's brow cleared with understanding.

'Oh… er, thank you, sir.'

'It is only an acting commission, Mr Q, and may not be ratified by their Lordships, and although you have passed your Master's Mate's examination you have not yet sat before a Captains' board to pass for lieutenant… you understand?'

Quilhampton nodded. 'Yes sir, I understand.'

'Very well. You will take Mr Rispin's watch… and good luck to you.' Drinkwater raised his glass and they sipped for a moment in companionable silence. Quilhampton gazed abstractedly through the stern windows, the view was obscured by the spars and lashings of the jury rudder but he was unaware of them. He was thinking of how he could now swagger into Mrs MacEwan's withdrawing-room, to make a leg before the lovely Catriona, and send that damned lubber of a Scottish yeoman to the devil!

'I see,' said Drinkwater turning, 'that you are watching the effects of the ship getting under way upon the rudder.'

'Eh? Oh, oh, yes sir…' Quilhampton focussed his eyes as Drinkwater drained his glass, rose and picked up his hat.

'Well, Mr Q, let us go and see how it answers our purpose…'

It answered their purpose surprisingly well. Kept under easy sail after a little experimenting with balancing the rig, and running tiller lines to the mizen royal yard in a manner which best suited steering the ship, Melusine made west-north-west. There was a thinning of the floes and although the wind remained from the south, it began to get colder. Fog patches closed in and from these circumstances Drinkwater deduced that the coast of Greenland could not be very far distant. There were other indications that this was so; an increase in the number of birds, particularly eider ducks, and a curious attentive attitude on the part of Meetuck who, having hidden during the action with the Requin to the amusement of the Melusines, now hung about the knightheads sniffing the air like a dog.

Then, shortly before eight bells in the morning watch the next day he was observed pointing ahead with excitement. He repeated the same word over and over again.

'Nunataks! Nunataks!'

The hands, with their customary good-natured but contemptuous ignorance, laughed at him, tapping their foreheads and deriving a good deal of fun at the eskimo's expense. Quilhampton had the watch and was unable to see anything unusual. Nevertheless he went forward and had Singleton turned out of his cot to translate.

'What the devil does he mean, Obadiah? Noon attacks, eh?'

Singleton stared ahead, nodding as Meetuck pulled at his arm, his eyes shining with excitement.

'You need to elevate your glass, Mr Quilhampton. Meetuck refers to the light on the peaks of Greenland.' There was an uncharacteristic note of awe in Singleton's voice, but it went unnoticed by the practical