The Corvette

began to lean over as she turned, the starboard guns poured ball and canister into the whaler's quarter. Drinkwater fought his way aft, through the sweating gun crews and the badly maimed who had been hit by the langridge from Ellerby's cannon. A man bumped into him. He was holding his head and moaning surprisingly softly seeing that several assorted pieces of iron rubbish protruded from his skull. Drinkwater regained the quarterdeck and looked astern. Nimrod continued apparently unscathed on an easterly course.

'Put her on the wind, Mr Hill, and then lay her on the starboard tack!'

Hill began to give orders as the waist was cleared of the dead and wounded, the guns reloaded and run out again. The days of practice began to pay off. Each man attending to his allotted task, each midshipman and mate supervising his half-division or special party, each acting-lieutenant marking his subordinates, attending to the readiness of his battery while Hill, quietly professional on the quarterdeck, directed the trimming of the yards and the sheets to get the best out of the ship.

Melusine turned into the wind, then swung her bowsprit back towards the Nimrod, gathering speed as she paid off the starboard tack. Beyond the whaler, Drinkwater could see the Requin and was seized by a sudden feeling of intense excitement. He might, just might, be able to pull off a neat manoeuvre as Requin and Nimrod passed each other on opposite courses. He pointed the opening out to Hill.

'She'll do it, sir,' Hill said, after a moment's assessment.

'Let's hope so, Mr Hill.'

'Never a doubt, sir.'

Drinkwater grinned, aware that Melusine with her jury rudder and ice-scuffed hull was no longer the yacht-like 'corvette' that had danced down the Humber in the early summer.

They crossed Nimrod's stern at a distance of four cables. Not close enough for the six-pounder balls to have much effect on the whaler's massive scantlings. But there was no response from the Nimrod's carronades and Drinkwater transferred his attention to the Requin, whose bearing was opening up on the sloop's starboard bow.

'He's not going to let us do it, Mr Hill…' They had hoped to cross the Requin's stern too, and pour the starboard broadside into her but the privateer captain was no fool and was already turning his ship, to pass the British sloop on a reciprocal course. They would exchange broadsides as before…

'Up helm! Up helm!' Drinkwater shouted. 'Starbowlines, hold your fire!'

'Stand by the lee braces, there!' Hill bawled at his sail-trimmers, suddenly grasping Drinkwater's intention.

'Pick off the officers!' Drinkwater yelled at the midshipmen and marines in the tops. Melusine was already turning, an ominous creaking coming from the rudimentary steering gear as a terrific load came on it. Requin's guns roared as the Melusine's stern swung away from the arc of her fire, and although a shower of splinters flew from the taffrail the rudder stock and supporting timbers and spars were untouched.

'Steady her and then bring her round onto the larboard tack. So far so good.'

Drinkwater felt the exhilaration of having called the tune during the last half hour, despite the losses Melusine incurred. He was aware of a mood of high elation along the deck where the men joked and relived the last few moments with an outbreak of skylarking equally uncaring in the heady excitement for those below undergoing the agonies of Singleton's knife.

Melusine clawed back to windward while her two enemies came round in pursuit again. Already they were a mile away to the northwest and Drinkwater thought he could keep them tacking in his wake for an hour or two yet while he sought a new opening.

'That lugger's out of the running, sir,' offered Hill, pointing to the chassé marée half a mile away. Her crew had sweeps out and were pulling her desperately out of the path of the approaching British sloop which seemed to be bearing down upon them with the intention of administering the coup de grâce. In fact Drinkwater had long since forgotten about the lugger, although it had been no more than forty or fifty minutes since they had fired into her.

He nodded at Gorton with the good-natured condescension of a school-master allowing his pupils an indulgent catapult shot at sparrows. The larboard guns fired as they passed and several balls struck home, causing evident panic among the lugger's crew.

Drinkwater was seized by a sudden feeling that things had been too easy and recalled the dead and wounded. He turned and called sharply to the midshipman who was in attendance to the quarterdeck and whose obvious pleasure at still being alive had induced a certain foolish garrulousness with the adjacent gun crews.

'Mr Frey!'

'S… Sir?'

'Pray direct your attention to the surgeon, present him with my compliments and ascertain the extent of our losses. I am particularly concerned about Mr Bourne.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

After Frey had departed Drinkwater called for reports of damage and the carpenter informed him that they had a shot between wind and water, but that otherwise most of the enemy's fire had been levelled at personnel on the upper deck.

Pacing up and down Drinkwater tried to assess the state of his enemies. He had not succeeded in forcing Nimrod to surrender and his chances of annihilating the Requin were slight. But the whaler had failed to take advantage of a clear shot at Melusine''s stern. Did that argue her untrained crew had simply missed an opportunity or that, having fired into a King's ship they might have taken heed of Drinkwater's earlier hail?

Discipline was not so tight on a merchantman and a crew might be seduced from its nominal allegiance to their master by the threat of the gallows. Drinkwater considered the point. Did it also signify that Requin's fire had been at Melusine's deck, not at her rigging? In the place of the privateer Captain Drinkwater thought he might have wanted the naval vessel disabled from a distance, without material damage to the Requin herself.

Unless, argued Drinkwater, Requin's superiority was overestimated. Perhaps her crew were less numerous than he supposed and therefore to decimate the British had become a priority with Requin's commander.

'Wind's veering, sir.' Hill interrupted his train of thought.

'Eh?'

'Hauling southerly, sir.'

It was true. The wind had dropped abruptly and was chopping three, no, four points and freshening from the south-east. Drinkwater stared to the south, there was a further shift coming. In ten minutes or so the wind would be blowing directly off the mountain peaks to the southward. All the ships in the fiord would be able to reach with equal facility. It altered everything.

'That puts a different complexion on things, Mr Hill.'

Hill turned from directing a trimming of the yards and nodded his agreement. For a few moments Drinkwater continued pacing up and down. Then he came to a decision.

'Put the ship on an easterly course, Mr Hill. I want her laid alongside the Nimrod without further delay.'

It was a decision that spoke more of honour than commonsense, yet Drinkwater was put in an invidious position by his orders. It was doubtful if St Vincent could have foreseen the extent of the French presence in the Arctic, or of the treachery of Ellerby and, presumably, Waller. Yet Drinkwater's orders were explicit in terms of preventing any French ascendancy in the area. The red rag of honour was raised in encouragement; not to use his utmost endeavour was to court a firing squad as Byng had done fifty years before.

Requin's shot stove in the gunwhale amidships, dismounted a gun and wiped out two gun crews. The maintopmast was shot through and went by the board and the big privateer bore up under Melusine's stern. The single report of a specially laid gun appeared to annihilate the four men steering by the clumsy tiller.

Then Drinkwater realised that the rudder stock had been shot to pieces and the tiller merely fallen to the