Ebb tide

the scuppers.

'Are you all right, sir?' Frey asked as Drinkwater almost fell over Kestrel's  low gunwale on to the deck, while a last carbine ball whined overhead.

'Yes, yes.' He looked down at Edward. The eyes were already glazed, opaque. 'Poor fellow', he sighed, as he bent down and closed the lids. Then he stood and looked at Frey. 'Do you get under weigh now, Mr Frey.'

'Those devils have given up now,' Frey said matter-of-factly, jerking his head at the shore. Drinkwater turned to see the hussars tugging their mounts' heads round and turning away. Several of the horses had bodies slung over their saddles. One, that of the Cossack nicknamed Khudoznik, lay exposed by the retreating tide.

'You need to dry yourself, sir,' Frey advised, 'you look blue with cold.'

'What's that? Oh... oh, yes, I suppose I am a trifle...' Drinkwater realized he was chilled to the marrow and quite done in. He stared again at Edward's body, reluctant to leave it. 'We'll take him home and bury him,' he said to Frey, as he moved on shaky legs towards the companionway.

'It's a long way from Russia,' Frey remarked. 'Yes. But perhaps that does not matter too much.'

CHAPTER 13 The Chase

April 1815

'Out of the frying pan, Mr Frey,' Drinkwater said, lowering the glass. Astern of them, the sharply angled sail of a lugger broke the line of the horizon with a jagged irregularity as the French chasse marée came up, carrying the wind with her. Seven miles further north Kestrel experienced nothing more than a light breeze. 'Almost the only circumstances', Drinkwater muttered angrily, 'which could place us at a real disadvantage.'

Frey turned from his place by the tiller as Drinkwater looked aloft, but they had every stitch of canvas set and no amount of tweaking at the sheets would improve their speed. Drinkwater cast about him. 'They must have slipped past Adder. At any other time we might have expected a British cruiser in the offing but all we have in sight at the moment are a couple of fishermen...'

He raised his glass again. It was damnably uncanny. The lugger was carrying the wind with her, sweeping up from the south, and would be quite close before they felt the benefit of it themselves. He looked at Frey. A brief glance was enough to tell him that he was seething at their ill-fortune. He would be dog-tired now after a sleepless night, as were the rest of them, Drinkwater himself included. Poor Frey, Kestrel was a pathetic enough command; to lose her to the enemy like this would be a worse blow to his pride than the loss of the yacht to Drinkwater!

Perhaps there was something they might do, though. 'I'm going below for a few moments, Mr Frey.' 'Aye, aye, sir.'

In the cabin the Baroness and her daughter were fast asleep, wrapped in blankets while their outer garments dried in the rigging above. The boy Charles lay on the settee awake, his face pale with seasickness, his eyes huge and tired. Drinkwater smiled, trying to convey reassurance to the young lad. He smiled wanly back at him. 'That's the spirit,' Drinkwater said, helping himself to some cheese, biscuits and wine as he drew out a chart and studied it. 'Help yourself,' he offered, indicating the wine and biscuits and hoping the lad would remain below and not get wind of their pursuer.

After about ten minutes of plying dividers and rules, Drinkwater stuffed the chart away, pulled his hat down over his head and went up on deck. Striding aft he relieved Frey.

'Go and try to get some sleep, there's a good fellow. You need it and we may have work to do in an hour or two.'

'I don't give much for our chances, sir. At the very least he'll have twice our numbers, and we made enough of a display of ourselves outside Calais to call down the vengeance of heaven. I don't suppose the deaths of half a dozen cavalrymen endeared us to them either.'

'Very well put, Mr Frey. Now do as I ask while I try and devise a stratagem.'

'Do you think...?'

'Don't ask me.'

Reluctantly Frey handed over the tiller and the course. Drinkwater leaned his weight against the heavy wooden bar. 'I'm going to alter a little to the westwards. Now do you go below for an hour. I shall call you well before things get too lively. Stand half the men down too.'

Frey went forward and some of the men on deck drifted below. Kestrel was just feeling the wind picking up and began to slip through the water with increasing speed, as though she felt a tremor of fear at the approach of the large, three-masted lugger coming up astern.

Drinkwater steadied the cutter on her new course and settled himself to concentrate upon his task. The satisfactions in steering were profound. The sense of being in control of something almost living struck him and he recalled that he had forgotten so much of what had once been familiar as he had risen to the lonely peak of command. He made a resolution not to look astern for half an hour. It was difficult at first, but the glances of the others on deck, increasing in frequency and length, told him the lugger was gaining on them so that, when the thirty minutes had passed, he turned, expecting to see the lugger's bowsprit almost over their stern. Though she was still some way off, two miles distant perhaps, she was no longer alone.

Now he could see a second lugger behind her, five miles away or maybe more, but close enough to spell disaster if his half-germinated plan miscarried. He resolved to wait twenty minutes before he looked again and set himself to reworking the hurried and imperfect calculations he had made below.

He now discovered a greater anxiety, that of wishing to see the chart, to re-measure the distances and make the tidal estimates again. It was easy enough to make a silly error, to rely upon a misunderstanding only to find that the stratagem, which was shaky enough as it was, would misfire and carry them to disaster. And then, with a forceful irony, a thought struck him. Kestrel was his own property and he might do with her as he pleased. He would not have to answer at his peril and so was free of one constraint at least, thank heavens!

He began to stare ahead and study the surface of the sea, to try and discern the almost invisible signs of the shoals, where the tide ran in a different direction and at a slower speed. The mewing gulls had a good view of these natural seamarks and he looked up to see the herring gulls gliding alongside, their cruel yellow beaks and beady eyes evidence of their predatory instincts. But they were lazy hunters; he was looking for more active birds fishing on the edge of the bank ahead.

He saw the first tern almost immediately, flying along with a sprat or some small fry silver in its red beak, and then another diving to starboard of them, under the foot of the mainsail. He craned his neck and stared intently over the port bow. As he did so a man forward rose and peered ahead, aware of Drinkwater's concern. A moment later more terns could be seen and then his experienced eye made out the troubled water along the submarine ledge.

'Sommat ahead, sir, looks like a bank...'

'It's the Longsand! Take a cast of the lead.'

Alongside the rushing hull the sea ran dark and grey, dulled by the cloud sweeping up and over the blue of the sky. The sounding lead yielded seven fathoms and then suddenly it was only three and they passed through a strip of white foam, dead in the water like the cast from a mill race seen some few hundred yards downstream. As suddenly as it had appeared, the white filigree was gone and the water was brown and smooth, as though whale oil had been cast upon it. Drinkwater knew they were running over the Longsand Head. He counted the seconds as Kestrel raced on, her pace seemingly swifter through the dead water on top of the bank.

'By the mark, two!'

Drinkwater felt the keen thrill of exhilaration, his heart fluttering, the adrenalin pouring into his bloodstream. At any moment their keel might strike the sand, and at this speed the impact must toss the mast overboard, but he held on, pitching the risk against the result, until the man in the chains called out 'Three... By the deep four... By the