1805

broadside of light guns, taken upwards of sixty prisoners and thereby satisfied those objectives set in launching the attack at dawn. Yet the cost has been fearful. Lieutenant Gorton's wound is mortal and nineteen other men have died, or are likely to die, as a result of the various actions that are, in the eyes of the public, virtually un- noteworthy. Had we let the enemy slip away, the newspapers would not have understood why a frigate of Antigone's force could not have destroyed a handful of boats and a little brig. It was clear the enemy had prepared for the possibility of attack, that the brig was to bear its brunt while the bateaux escaped, and, that, at the end, we were nearly overwhelmed by a ruse de guerre that might have made prisoners of the best elements aboard this ship, to say nothing of extinguishing forever the career of myself. Even now I shudder at the possible consequences of their counter-attack succeeding.

He laid his pen down and stared at the page where the wet gleam of the ink slowly faded. But all he could see was the apparition of the French giant and remember again how hollow his legs had felt.

Chapter Six The Secret Agent

 April-May 1804

As April turned into a glorious May, Lieutenant Rogers continued to smart from Drinkwater's rebuke. It galled him that even the news that the Bonaparte had been condemned as a prize and purchased into the Royal Navy—thus making him several hundred pounds richer failed to raise his spirits. There were few areas in which Rogers evinced any sensitivity, but one was in his good opinion of himself, and it struck him that he had come to rely upon his commander's reinforcement of this. Such hitherto uncharacteristic reliance upon another further annoyed him, and to it he began to add other causes for grievance. Drinkwater's report had said little, certainly nothing that would elevate his first lieutenant and place him on the quarterdeck of the prize as a commander. In fact Drinkwater had sent the prize into Portsmouth with the wounded under the master's mate Tyrrell, so, apart from his prize money, Rogers had dismissed the notion that he could expect anything further from the capture. In addition to this it seemed that the impetus to Antigone's cruise had gone, that no further chance of glory, advancement, or simply resuming his normal relationship with Drinkwater would offer itself to him. He took refuge in the only action left to him as first lieutenant; he harried the crew. Antigone's people were employed constantly in a relentless series of drills. They shifted sails, exercised at small-arms and cutlasses, and sent down the topgallant and topmasts. To kill any residual boredom they even got the heavy lower yards across the rails aportlast. When Drinkwater drily expressed satisfaction, Rogers demurred respectfully and repeated the evolution until it was accomplished to his own satisfaction.

For his part, Drinkwater accepted this propitiation as evidence of Rogers's contrition, and his own better nature responded so that the difference between them gradually diminished. Besides, news of Gorton's slow death at Haslar Hospital seemed to conclude the incident.

Towards the end of April they had spoken to the 18-gun brigsloop Vincejo on her way to the westward, with orders to destroy the coastal trade off south Brittany. Her commander had come aboard and closeted himself with Drinkwater for half an hour. Their discussion was routine and friendly. After Wright's departure Drinkwater was able to confirm the speculations of the officers and explain that their late visitor was indeed the John Wesley Wright who, as a lieutenant, had escaped from French custody in Paris with Captain Sir Sydney Smith. He also mentioned that Wright was far from pleased with the condition of his ship, its armament, or its manning, and this seemed to divert the officers into a discussion about the 'Vincey Joe', an old Spanish prize, held to be cranky and highly unsuitable for its present task.

Drinkwater kept to himself the orders Wright had passed him and the knowledge that Wright, like himself twelve years earlier, had been employed by Lord Dungarth's department in the landing and recovery of British agents on the coast of France. The orders Wright had brought emanated from Lord Dungarth via Admiral Keith, and prompted Drinkwater to increase his officers' vigilance in the interception and seizure of French fishing boats. Hitherto fishermen had been largely left alone. They were, as D'Auvergne had pointed out, the chief source of claret and cognac in England, and were not averse to parting with information of interest to the captains of British cruisers. But their knowledge of the English coast and its more obscure landing places, the suitability of their boats to carry troops and their general usefulness in forwarding the grand design of invasion had prompted an Admiralty order to detain them and destroy their craft. In this way Antigone passed the first weeks of a beautiful summer.

It was from their captures, and from the dispatch luggers and cutters with which Lord Keith kept in touch with his scattered cruisers, that Drinkwater and his officers learned of the consequences of the attempt made by discontented elements in France to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte. The Pichegru-Cadoudal conspiracy had implicated both wings of French politics and been exposed in the closing weeks of the previous year. It had taken some time to round up the conspirators and had culminated in the astounding news that Bonaparte's gendarmes had illegally entered the neighbouring state of Baden and abducted the young Due D'Enghien. The duke had been given a drum-head court-martial which implicated the Bourbons in the plot against Bonaparte, and summarily shot in a ditch at Vincennes. Drinkwater's reaction to the execution of D'Enghien combined with the orders he had received from Wright to extend Antigone's cruising ground further east towards Pointe d'Ailly.

'Standing close inshore like this,' Drinkwater overheard Rogers grumbling to Hill as he sat reading with his skylight open, 'we're not going to capture a damn thing. We're more like a bloody whore trailing her skirt up and down the street than a damned frigate. I wish we were in the West Indies. Even a fool of a Frenchman isn't going to put to sea with us sitting here for all to see.'

'No,' said Hill reflectively, and Drinkwater put down his book to hear what he had to say in reply. 'But it could be that that is just what the Old Man wants.'

'What? To be seen?'

'Yes. When I was in the Kestrel, cutter, back in ninety-two we used to do just this waiting to pick up a spy.'

'Wasn't our Nathaniel aboard Kestrel then?'

'Yes,' said Hill, 'and that cove Wright has been doing something similar more recently.'

'Good God! Why didn't you mention it before?'

Drinkwater heard Hill laugh. 'I never thought of it.'

In the end it was the fishing boat that found them as Drinkwater intended. She came swooping over the waves, a brown lugsail reefed down and hauled taut against the fresh westerly that set white wave-caps sparkling in the low sunshine of early morning. Drinkwater answered the summons to the quarterdeck to find Quilhampton backing the main-topsail and heaving the ship to. He levelled his glass on the approaching boat but could make nothing of her beyond the curve of her dark sail, apart from an occasional face that peered ahead and shouted at the helmsman. A minute or two later the boat was alongside and a man in riding clothes was bawling in imperious English for a chair at a yardarm whip. The men at the rail looked aft at Drinkwater.

He nodded: 'Do as he asks, Mr Q.'

As soon as the stranger's feet touched the deck he dextrously extricated himself from the bosun's chair, moved swiftly to the rail and whipped a pistol from his belt.

'What the devil are you about, sir?' shouted Drinkwater seeing the barrel levelled at the men in the boat.

'Shootin' the damned Frogs, Captain, and saving you your duty!' The hammer clicked impotently on a misfire and the stranger turned angrily. 'Has anyone a pistol handy?'

Drinkwater strode across the deck. 'Put up that gun, sir, d'you hear me!' He was outraged. That the stranger should escape from an enemy country and then shoot the men who had risked everything to bring him off to Antigone seemed a piece of quite unnecessary brutality.

'Here, take this.' Drinkwater turned to see Walmsley offering the stranger a loaded pistol.

'Good God! What, you here, Walmsley! Thank you…'

'Put up that gun, sir!' Drinkwater closed the gap between him and the spy and knocked up the weapon. The man spun round. His face was suffused with rage.