Ebb tide

listening to McCullough while watching the pale, bubbling line of the wake draw out from under the Flying Fish's low counter, creating a dull gleam of phosphorescence at the cutwater of the boat towing astern.

'Two of our pulling galleys reported a long-boat from Rye run across to France a couple of nights ago,' McCullough was saying. 'Information has reached us that the contraband cargo will be transferred to three fishing- boats which will return independently to their home ports. The long-boat will come in empty; apart, I expect, from a few fish.

'The rendezvous is to be made on the Varne Bank, near the buoy of the Varne. It is my intention that we shall interrupt this. I want prisoners and I want evidence. From you, gentlemen,' McCullough said, turning to his three volunteers, 'I want witnesses, not heroics.'

As Moring spluttered his protest, Drinkwater smiled in the darkness. At least Elizabeth would approve of him being a witness; he was otherwise less certain of her enthusiasm for his joining this mad jape.

'And now, gentlemen,' McCullough concluded, 'I must insist upon the most perfect silence.'

For another hour they squatted about the deck, wrapped in their cloaks against the night's damp. The low cloud was breaking a little, but a veil persisted over the upper atmosphere, blurring the few stars visible and preserving the darkness.

But it was never entirely dark at sea; the eyes could always discern something, and intelligence filled in details, so that it was possible, while one remained awake, to half-see, half-sense what was going on. The quiet shuffling between bow and helm, accompanied as it was by whispers, told of the transmission of information from the lookouts, and in due course McCullough himself, discernible from the shape of his cocked hat and a tiny gleam on the brass of his night glass, went forward himself and remained there for some time. Drinkwater had, in fact, almost dozed off when something like a voltaic shock ran along the deck as men touched their neighbours' shoulders and the company rose to its feet.

After the long wait, the speed with which events now accelerated was astonishing. The preservation of surprise had compelled McCullough to keep his hand hidden until the last moment and now he demonstrated the skill of both his interception and his seamanship, for though their course had been altered several times in the final moments, it seemed that Flying Fish suddenly ran in among several craft to the accompaniment of shouts of alarm and bumps of her intruding hull.

The drilling of her company was impeccable. On a single order, her mainsail was scandalized and the gaff dropped, the staysail fluttered to the deck with the thrum of hanks on the stay, and men seemed to drop over the side as they invaded the rafted boats which, until that moment, had been busy with the transfer of casks and bundles of contraband.

For a brief moment, it seemed to the observing Drinkwater that the deterrent waving of dimly perceived cutlass blades would subdue the smugglers, but suddenly riot broke out. Cries of surprise rose in reactive alarm, the clash of blade meeting blade filled the night, and the grunt of effort and the flash and report of the first pistol opened an action of primitive ferocity. Beside Drinkwater, Moring was jumping about the deck with the undignified and frustrated enthusiasm of a schoolboy witnessing his first prize-fight, while all about them the scene of struggle had a contrived, almost theatrical appearance, for the pistol flashes threw up sharp images in the darkness and these stayed on the retina, accompanied by a more general perception of men stumbling about in the surrounding boats, grappling and hacking at each other in a grim and terrible struggle for mastery.

This state of affairs had been going on for no more than two or three minutes with neither side apparently prevailing, though shouts of execration filled the air along with the cries of the hurt and the  occasional bellowed order or demand for surrender. Suddenly matters took a turn for the worse.

The ship-keeper, left at the helm of the Flying Fish, added his own voice to the general uproar. 'To me! Help! Astern here!'

Drinkwater turned to see the flash of a pistol and the ship-keeper fall dead. A moment later a group of smugglers came over the Flying Fish's stern and rushed the deck. He lugged out his hanger just in time, shouting the alarm to Moring and Robinson, and struck with a swift cut at the nearest attacker.

He felt the sword-blade bite and slashed at a face. It pulled back and, in the gloom, the pale oval passed briefly across the dim light from the Flying Fish's shrouded binnacle. For a moment, Drinkwater thought he recognized the man but he swiftly dismissed the thought as a figure loomed to his left and he thrust hard, driving his very fist into another man's belly as his sword-blade ran his victim through.

Drinkwater felt something strike his own shoulder as he twisted his wrist to wrench the sword-blade clear and half staggered, barking his shin painfully against a carronade slide as he broke free of his dying assailant. After the first moment of shock and the reactive thunder of his accelerating heart, he found the cool analytical anodyne to this horrible work. He seemed to be able to see better, despite the darkness, and he breathed with a violent and stertorous effort, snorting through distorted nostrils as he hacked at the invaders, slashing with a terrible effect, and twisting his wrist with a savage energy that tore at the very tendons with its violence. He was a butcher of such ferocity that he had cleared the deck and fought his way to the very stern over which the last of his opponents jumped, when he heard Robinson cry out, 'Turn, sir! Turn!'

It was the smuggler he had first seen and whom he thought he had struck down, the man whose face had been briefly illuminated by the binnacle light. Now he recognized him, and by some strange telepathy, he himself was recognized.

'Jago!'

'Stand aside, Captain, or I'll not answer...'

'You damned fool!'

'Stand aside, I say!'

For a moment they confronted each other in silence as Drinkwater raised his sword. His madness cooled and then, through teeth clenched ready for reaction, he muttered, 'Go over the side, man, or I must strike you ... Go!'

But Jago did not jump. Instead, the sword of another ran him through from the rear and he stood transfixed, staring at Drinkwater as he fell, first to his knees and then full length, snapping the sword-blade and revealing his executioner as Captain Moring, a broken sword in his hand.

'That, sir,' Moring said, his eyes agleam, 'is how strong a trade-wind may blow!'

CHAPTER 15 The Knight Commander

1830

Drinkwater drew off his gloves, threw them on to the table and took the glass stopper from the decanter.

'There are some strange ironies in life, are there not, my dear?' he asked, pouring two glasses and handing one to Elizabeth. 'To be thus honoured as an act of spite against a foreign power for something done years ago seems too ridiculous.'

Accepting the glass, Elizabeth sank into a chair, kicked off her shoes and wriggled her toes ecstatically. 'Thank you, Sir Nathaniel,' she said, smiling up at him.

'I hope that is a jest and does not become a custom,' Drinkwater replied, sitting opposite and raising his glass in a silent toast to his wife.

'Is that a command, Sir Nathaniel?'

'It most decidedly is, my dear, or else I shall have to call you Milady and refer to you as Her Ladyship...'

'Leddyship, surely, my dear.'

'Well at least we agree about that being fatuous.'

'I was referred to in that way sufficiently today to last me the remainder of my life. But tell me', Elizabeth said, after sipping her wine, 'what you mean by annoying foreign powers. It all sounds rather serious and sinister,