The shadow of the eagle

Frey's battery fired into the Arbeille. Drinkwater could see the boats smashed on her booms and the wreck of her main topgallant and her mizen topmast; he saw men toiling on her deck to free her from the encumbrance while the brilliant tunics of her complement of soldiers fired small arms, augmenting her main armament of 8-pounders. It puzzled Drinkwater that shots from Andromeda had flown high enough to knock down so much top-hamper, but they were soon past the Arbeille and preparing to engage L'Aigle.

'Mr Ashton! Now's your chance! Fire into the frigate, sir!'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

'Stand by to tack ship!'

Then Ashton's port battery crashed out in a concussive broadside, only to be answered by the guns of L'Aigle. Within a few moments, Drinkwater knew he had met an opponent worthy of his steel. Whatever the history of Contre-Amiral Lejeune, here was no half-sailor who had spent the greater part of the last decade mewed up in Brest Road, living ashore and only occasionally venturing out beyond the Black Rocks. Nor had his crew found the greatest test of their seamanship to be the hoisting and lowering of topgallant masts while their ship rotted at her moorings. Lejeune and his men had been active in French cruisers, national frigates which had made a nuisance of themselves by harrying British trade.

As they passed each other and exchanged broadsides, both commanders attempted to swing under their opponent's sterns and rake. L'Aigle, by wearing, retained the greater speed while Andromeda, turning into and through the wind to tack, slowed perceptibly. The guns were now firing at will, leaping eagerly in their trucks as they recoiled, their barrels heated to a nicety, their crews not yet exhausted, but caught up in the manic exertions of men attending a dangerous business upon which they must expend an absolute concentration, or perish.

Aboard both frigates the enemy shot wreaked havoc and although the smoke from the action did not linger, but was wafted away to leeward by the persistent breeze, to shroud the Arbeille as she too drifted to the south-eastward, it concealed much of the damage each was inflicting upon the other.

Having tacked, and having not yet lost any spars, Drinkwater temporarily broke off the action by holding his course to the southward in an attempt to draw Lejeune away from Rakov, who still stood northwards but who had, significantly, reduced sail. Lejeune bore round without hesitation.

'He's damned confident,' said Marlowe, studying L'Aigle through his telescope.

'Of reinforcement by the Russian?' mooted Drinkwater, levelling his own glass with his single right hand, then giving up the attempt.

'Are we to resume the action, sir?' asked Birkbeck.

'Very definitely, Mr Birkbeck. Now we are going to lay board to board on the same tack. That will decide the issue, and we have at least reduced the opposition to one.'

'For the time being, sir,' Birkbeck said, looking askance at Drinkwater.

'I am not insensible to the facts, Mr Birkbeck,' Drinkwater said brusquely, 'but if we can but cripple L'Aigle, she will not be in a fit state to take Bonaparte to the United States, and if we can but take her, well the matter's closed.'

'You are considering isolating and boarding her then, sir?' asked Marlowe.

'I am considering it, Mr Marlowe, yes. Please shorten down, Mr Birkbeck. We will allow this fellow to catch up.'

'Very well, sir.' Birkbeck turned away.

'The master ain't happy, Marlowe,' Drinkwater remarked, raising his glass again.

'I think,' Marlowe said slowly, 'he is not insensible to the fact that you have taken an opiate, sir.'

Drinkwater looked hard at the first lieutenant. 'He thinks I am foolhardy, does he?'

'He wishes to survive to take up that dockyard post you promised him.'

'I had forgotten that. And what of you, Mr Marlowe? Do you think me foolhardy?'

Drinkwater saw the jump of Marlowe's Adam's apple. 'No sir. I think you are merely doing your duty as you see it.'

'Which is not as you see it, eh?'

'I did not say so, sir.'

'No. Thank you, Mr Marlowe.' Then a thought occurred to Drinkwater. 'By the bye, Mr Marlowe, pipe up spirits.'

The helmsmen heard the order and Drinkwater was aware of a shuffling anticipation of pleasure among them. It would do no harm. 'Sauce for the goose', he muttered to himself, 'is sauce for the gander.'

The respite thus gained lasted for only some twenty minutes. The forenoon was almost over, but the day was unchanged, the sea sparkled in the sunshine and the steady breeze came out of the northwest quarter. The four ships were spread out over a large right-angled triangle upon the ocean. At the northern end of the hypotenuse lay the Gremyashchi, now hove-to; at the point of the right-angle, the battered Arbeille continued to lick her wounds and drift slowly down to leeward. Both vessels were awaiting the outcome of events at the far end of the hypotenuse, where Andromeda lay, and astern of her, swiftly catching her up, L'Aigle followed.

Despite the scepticism of his sailing master, Drinkwater was confident of having almost achieved his objective. If the Arbeille was commanded by an officer of similar resolution to that of L'Aigle, and it seemed impossible that he should not be, the fact the corvette had dropped out of the action suggested she had sustained a disabling proportion of damage. He clung on to these thoughts, arguing them slowly, interspersed with waves of pain from his arm which gradually became more assertive as the effect of the laudanum wore off.

Under her topsails, Andromeda stood on and her crew awaited the enemy. As L'Aigle approached, Drinkwater skilfully maintained the weather gauge by edging Andromeda to starboard every time he observed Lejeune attempt the same manoeuvre with L'Aigle. On the upper-deck the marines and the gunners relaxed in the sunshine, going off a pair at a time to receive their rum ration on the gun-deck. This hiatus was soon over.

His head throbbing with the beat of his pulse, Drinkwater strode forward and bellowed down into the waist, 'Stand-to, my lads. The Frenchman is closing us fast; there's hot work yet to do.'

Lieutenant Ashton had not given a second thought to Sergeant McCann after the marine had departed from the gun-deck. His baiting was the vice of a man who habitually used a horse roughly, sawed at the reins and galled his mount with a crop, a man who was given to mindless and petty acts of cruelty simply because fate had placed him in a station which nurtured such weaknesses. Since his schooldays, Ashton had learned that small facts gleaned about others could be put to entertaining use, and McCann had been a trivial source of such amusement. Yet he was not a truly vicious man, merely a thoughtless and unimaginative one. His solicitude for Marlowe, expressed in his question to young Paine, had been out of concern more for his sister and her unborn child than for the actual well-being of the man responsible for impregnating her. Blood-ties, if they were inevitable, should not be reprehensible, and it mattered much to Josiah Ashton that Marlowe acquitted himself well, perhaps more than to Frederic Marlowe himself. It would not have mattered much to Ashton had Marlowe been killed, provided only that his death was honourable, or appeared so, even if some stain upon his sister's good character was then unavoidable.

As he waited in the gun-deck for the action to resume, Ashton, having dispensed with Marlowe, was calculating his chances of advancement if matters fell out to his advantage. Down below he was relatively safe, unless they were boarded, and even then he was confident that his own skill with a small sword and a pistol would keep him out of real trouble. Marlowe, he judged, might attempt some quixotic act and was as likely to get his come-uppance in a fight, assuming he survived the next hour. Word had already come down to the gun-deck that Captain Drinkwater had a shattered arm. If he did not fall it was quite likely that gangrene would carry him off later. On the other hand, perhaps some opportunity for Ashton to distinguish himself would emerge during the forthcoming hours.