The shadow of the eagle

'What for?'

'He was feeling generous... Frey' Ashton went on, 'you know Our Father, don't you. What's he like, personally, I mean?'

Frey sighed, scratched his head and came out of his cabin in his stockinged feet. Sitting at the table he stretched. 'I'm not sure I can tell you, beyond saying that I have the deepest admiration for him.'

'They say he's an unlucky man to be around,' Ashton remarked. 'Didn't his last first lieutenant get killed, along with that fellow you were with, what was his name?'

'Quilhampton? Yes, James was killed, so was Lieutenant Huke...'

'Well?'

'Well what?'

'Well 'tis said we're bound out to the westward in chase of two French ships that have escaped from Antwerp,' expostulated Ashton.

'If that is the scuttlebutt, then it must be true,' said Frey drily, taking a biscuit from the barrel.

'I had it from Marlowe who saw the captain this morning and then heard all about our gallant commander from old Birkbeck.'

'Well then, you know more about it than I do.'

'Oh, Frey, don't be such a confounded dullard ...'

Andromeda lay down even further to leeward and ran for some moments with her starboard ports awash. Hyde's novel slid across the table and fell on the painted canvas deck covering. Frey bent down, picked it up and gave it a cursory glance.

'Here, put it on the stern settee,' said Ashton. Frey threw it to Ashton who caught it neatly and glanced at the title on the spine. 'Pride and Prejudice; huh! What a damned apt title for...' He looked up quickly at the watching Frey, flushed slightly and pulled the corners of his mouth down. 'Odd cove, Hyde,' he remarked.

Frey stood up; he was about to retire to his cabin and dress for his watch, but paused and said, 'You seem to think most of us are odd, in one way or another.'

Ashton casually spun Miss Austen's novel into a corner of the buttoned settee that ran across the after end of the gloomy wardroom. He stared back at Frey, seemed to consider a moment, then said, 'Do I? Well I never.'

Frey was galled by the evasion. 'What d'you think of Marlowe?'

'Known him for years.' Ashton's tone was dismissive.

'That's not what I asked,' persisted Frey. There was a hardness in his tone which Ashton had not heard before.

'Oh, he's all right.'

'That is what I told the captain,' Frey remarked, watching Ashton, 'though I am not certain I am right.'

'You told the captain?' Ashton frowned, 'and what gives you the right to give him your opinion, or to presume to doubt Mr Marlowe's good name, eh?'

'Something called friendship, Ashton,' Frey retorted.

'Oh yes, old shipmates,' Ashton said sarcastically, 'as if I could forget.'

There was a knock at the wardroom door and Midshipman Dunn's face appeared. 'One bell, Mr Frey,' he said.

'Thank you, Mr Dunn.' Frey shut his cabin door and reached for his neck-linen. There was something indefinably odious about Josiah Ashton and Frey could not put his finger on it. He was too damned thick with Marlowe, Frey concluded, and Marlowe was something of a fool. But it irritated Frey that he could not quite place the source of a profound unease.

As Frey went on deck he passed Hyde's marines parading on the heeling gun deck. They stood like a wavering fence, the instant before it was blown down by a gale. Lieutenant Hyde had almost completed his inspection prior to changing sentries. He caught Frey's eye and winked. For all his intolerable indolence, Frey could not help liking Hyde. One could like a fellow, Frey thought as he grasped the man-ropes to the upper deck, without either admiring or approving of him.

On deck the watch were shortening sail. The topgallants had already been furled and now the topsails were being reefed. Clapping his hand to his hat and drawing it down hard on his head, Frey stared aloft. The main topsail yard had been clewed down and the slack upper portion of the sail drawn up to the yard-arms by the reefing tackles. The windward topman was astride the extremity of the yard, hauling the second reef earing up as hard as he could, while his fellow yard-men strove to assist by hauling on the reef points as the big sail flogged and billowed.

Lieutenant Marlowe stood forward of the binnacle with a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

'Jump to it, you lubbers!' he was shrieking, though it was clear the men were working as rapidly as was possible. The unnecessary nature of Marlowe's intervention confirmed Frey's revised opinion of the first lieutenant.

Since Frey had last been on deck the weather had taken a turn for the worse. A quick glance over the starboard bow showed the white buttress of the Isle of Wight lying athwart their hawse with a menacing proximity as the backing wind drove them into the bight of Sandown Bay. The reason for Marlowe's anxiety was now clear: he had left the reefing too late, giving insufficient time for the men to complete their task before they must tack the ship. To the north-west, several ships lay at anchor in St Helen's road, while in the distance beyond, a dense clutter of masts and yards showed where the bulk of the Channel Fleet, withdrawn from blockade duties off Ushant, lay once more in the safe anchorage of Spithead. It would be a fine thing, Frey thought, for Andromeda to pile herself up at the foot of Culver Cliff within sight of such company!

Frey strode aft, took a quick look at the compass, gauged the wind from the tell-tale streaming above the windward hammock irons, and then stared at the land. Dunnose Head was stretching out on the larboard bow, and Culver Cliff loomed ever closer above the starboard fore chains, its unchanged bearing an ominous and certain precursor of disaster.

Beside Frey the quartermaster and helmsmen were muttering apprehensively and Frey's own pulse began to race. The seamen coming on deck to take over the watch were milling in the waist. The experienced among them quickly sensed something was wrong. The wind note rose suddenly and to windward the sea turned a silver-white as the squall screamed down upon the ship. For a split second Frey's artistic sensibilities compelled him to watch the phenomenon which looked like nothing so much as the devil's claw-marks raking the surface of the sea.

Midshipman Dunn came running up to Marlowe. 'Captain's just coming on deck, sir.'

Marlowe ignored the boy and continued shouting at the men aloft who were now struggling hard to tame the main topsail. Frey could not see the fore-topsail, but presumed the worst. Frey heard Marlowe's next order with disbelief.

'Aloft there! Leggo those pendants! Let fly the reef-tackles! Standby the yard lifts! Haul away those lifts!' The men stationed at the lifts hesitated and Marlowe leaned forward and screamed at them: 'Haul away, you idle buggers! Haul!' Then the first lieutenant, a curious, pleading expression on his face, turned towards Frey and the men at the wheels, as though explaining his action. 'We'll reef after we've tacked.'

But he received no consoling approval. Aloft they had no such appreciation of Marlowe's intentions. The men at the lifts jerked the yards and they began to slew in the wind. The men on the footropes rocked and three at the bunt of the sail let their reef points go, while someone else started the weather reef-tackle so that the topsail shivered in the squall.

The violent movement of yard and sail was sufficient to unbalance the man astride the larboard main yard- arm. He lost his grip of the reef pendant, which streamed almost horizontally away to leeward; then he slipped sideways and fell. He made a futile grab at the loose pendant, but the wind snatched it from him. The next man on the yard tried to seize him, but it was too late. With a cry, the unfortunate seaman fell with a sickening thud at the feet of Captain Drinkwater as he came on deck.

Frey saw the whole thing happen: saw the topman slip and fall, saw Marlowe seek justification for his action and saw him fail to realize what was happening until the body fell to the deck. He saw, too, the look of horror that passed over Drinkwater's face as he came on deck, then saw the captain suddenly galvanized into action, cross the