1805

revealing a sight of confusion such as their own cannon could not achieve. They were less than two miles from Boulogne now, and under the cliffs and along the breakwaters of the harbour more than a dozen of the invasion barges lay wrecked with the sea breaking over them. Their shattered masts had fallen over their sides and men could be seen in the water around them.

They had a brief glimpse into the harbour as they crossed the entrance, a brief glimpse of chaos. It seemed as though soldiers were everywhere, moving like ants across the landscape. Yet, as Antigone crossed the narrow opening the guns of Boulogne were briefly silent, their servers witnesses of the drowning of over a thousand of their comrades. In this hiatus Antigone passed by, her own men standing at their guns, staring at the waves breaking viciously over rocking and overloaded craft, at men catching their balance, falling and drowning.

'I think there's the reason for the activity, sir,' said Fraser pointing above the town. 'I'll wager that's the Emperor himself.'

Drinkwater swung his glass and levelled it where Fraser pointed. Into the circle of the lens came an unforgettable image of a man in a grey coat, sitting on a white horse and wearing a large black tricorne hat. The man had a glass to his eye and was staring directly at the British frigate as it swept past him. As he lowered his own glass, Drinkwater could just make out the blur of Napoleon's face turning to one of his suite behind him.

'Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor o' the French,' muttered Fraser beside him. 'He looks a wee bit like Don Quixote… Don Quixote de la Manche…'

Fraser's pun was lost in the roar of the batteries of Boulogne as they reopened their fire upon the insolent British frigate. Shot screamed all round them. Hill was demanding they haul further offshore and Rogers was asking for permission to re-engage. He nodded at both officers.

'Very well, gentlemen, if you would be so kind.' He turned for a final look at the man on the white horse, but he had vanished, obscured by the glittering train of his staff as they galloped away. 'The gale has done our work for us,' he muttered to himself, 'for the time being.'

Chapter Eight Stalemate

July-August 1804 

'Will you damned lubbers put your backs into it and pull,'

Midshipman Lord Walmsley surveyed the launch's crew with amiable contempt and waved a scented handkerchief under his nose. He stood in the stern sheets of the big boat in breeches and shirt, trying to combat the airless heat of the day and urge his oarsmen to more strenuous efforts. Out on either beam Midshipmen Dutfield and Wickham each had one of the quarterboats and all three were tethered to the Antigone. At the ends of their towropes the boats slewed and splashed, each oarsman dipping his oar into the ripples of his last stroke, so that their efforts seemed utterly pointless. The enemy lugger after which they were struggling lay on the distant horizon.

Walmsley regarded his companion with a superior amusement. Sitting with his little hand on the big tiller was Gillespy, supposedly under Walmsley's tutoring and utterly unable to exhort the men.

'It is essential, Gillespy, to encourage greater effort from these fellows,' his lordship lectured, indicating the sun-burnt faces that puffed and grunted, two to a thwart along the length of the launch. 'You can't do it by squeaking at 'em and you can't do it by asking them. You have to bellow at the damned knaves. Call 'em poxy laggards, lazy land-lubbing scum; then they get so God-damned angry that they pull those bloody oar looms harder. Don't you see? Eh?'

'Yes… my Lord,' replied the unfortunate Gillespy who was quite under Walmsley's thumb, isolated as he was in the launch.

The lesson in leadership was greeted with a few weary grins from the men at the oars, but few liked Mr Walmsley and those that were not utterly uncaring from the monotony of their task and being constantly abused by the senior midshipman of their division, resented his arrogance. Of all the men in the boat there was one upon whom Walmsley's arrogant sarcasm acted like a spark upon powder.

At stroke oar William Waller laboured as an able seaman. A year earlier he had been master of the Greenland whale-ship Conqueror, a member of the Trinity House of Kingston-upon-Hull and engaged in a profitable trade in whale-oil, whale-bone and the smuggling of furs from Greenland to France where they were used to embellish the gaudy uniforms of the soldiers they had so recently been cannonading upon the cliffs of Boulogne. It had been this illicit trade that had reduced him to his present circumstances. He had been caught red-handed engaged in a treasonable trade with a French outpost on the coast of Greenland by Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater.

Although well aware that he could have been hanged for what he had done, Waller was a weak and cunning character. That he had escaped with his life due to Drinkwater's clemency had at first seemed fortunate, but as time passed his present humiliations contrasted unfavourably with his former status. His guilt began to diminish in his own eyes as he transferred responsibility for it to his partner who had been architect of the scheme and had died for it. The greater blame lay with the dead man and Waller was, in his own mind, increasingly a victim of regrettable circumstances. When he had been turned among them, many of Melusine's hands had been aware of his activities. They had shunned him and despised him, but Waller had held his peace and survived, being a first-rate seaman. But he had kept his own counsel, a loner among the gregarious seamen of his mess, and long silences had made him morose, driven him to despair at times. He had been saved by the transfer to the Antigone and a bigger ship's company. Among the pressed and drafted men who had increased the size of the ship's company to form the complement of a frigate, there had been those who knew nothing of his past. He had taught a few ignorant landsmen the rudiments of seamanship and there were those among the frigate's company that called him friend. He had drawn renewed confidence from this change in his circumstances. He let it be known among his new companions that he was well-acquainted with the business of navigation and that many of Antigone's junior officers were wholly without knowledge of their trade. In particular Lord Walmsley's studied contempt for the men combined with his rank and ignorance to make him an object of the most acute detestation to Waller.

On this particular morning, as Waller hauled wearily at the heavy loom of the stroke oar, his hatred of Walmsley reached its crisis. He muttered under his breath loudly enough for Walmsley and Gillespy to hear.

'Did you say something, Waller?'

Waller watched the blade of his oar swing forward, ignoring his lordship's question.

'I asked you what you said, Waller, damn you!'

Waller continued to pull steadily, gazing vaguely at the horizon.

'He didn't say nothing, sir,' the man occupying the same thwart said.

'I didn't ask you,' snapped Walmsley, fixing his eyes on Waller. 'This lubber, Mr Gillespy, needs watching. He was formerly the skipper of a damned whale-boat…' Walmsley laid a disparaging emphasis on the two words, 'a bloody merchant master who thought he could defy the King. And now God damn him he thinks he can defy you and I…'

Waller stopped rowing. The man behind him bumped into his stationary back and there was confusion in the boat.

'Give way, damn you!' Walmsley ordered, his voice low. Beside him little Gillespy was trembling. The oarsmen stopped rowing and the launch lost way.

'Go to the devil, you poxed young whoreson!' Waller snarled through clenched teeth. A murmur of approval at Waller's defiance ran through the boat's crew.

'Why you God-damn bastard!' Walmsley shoved Gillespy aside and pulled the heavy tiller from the rudder stock. In a single swipe he brought the piece of ash crashing into the side of Waller's skull, knocking him senseless, his grip on the oar-loom weakened and it swept up and struck him under the chin as he slumped into the bottom of the boat.

The expression on the faces of the launch's crew were of disbelief. Astern of them the towline drooped slackly in the water.