Ebb tide

It was almost dark now and they had turned back towards the house. He felt Elizabeth's hand dissolve from his own and she moved on ahead of him. He wanted to ask her the answers to these terrible questions. She would know and it no longer mattered what she would think of him for having forgotten. Elizabeth would help him, he felt sure, but she was walking away from him and growing smaller and smaller with the distance that seemed to grow inexorably between them...

He tried to call her name ...

'There is no need for you to be on the bridge, Mr Quier,' Poulter said as the Second Officer appeared, wrapped in warm blankets. He was deathly pale and still shaking with cold. 'You should go below; you will catch your death of cold, sir!'

'I'm all right, sir, it's Sir Nathaniel, sir...'

'What about him?'

'We were together, sir. Right up to the end.'

Poulter frowned. 'Mr Quier, while we lay alongside you getting you inboard, I searched the surrounding sea meticulously. I could see nothing.'

'But he gave me the oar, sir. Insisted I had it, though he was clinging to it first. He saved my life, sir.'

'Mr Quier,' Poulter said kindly, 'you are still feeling the effects of your ordeal. You had been in the water for well over an hour. Pray go below and remain there until later. I do assure you we shall continue to look for him, but I fear we are already too late. Console yourself. In due time you will simply recall Sir Nathaniel's last act as one of great selflessness.'

'I thought perhaps the gulls might have found him and have given us a clue,' Poulter said, 'but the wind is getting up again and we will have a full gale by the end of the afternoon.' He raised his voice. 'Hard a-starboard and steady on sou' sou' west.'

Vestal rolled heavily as she turned and the three men on the bridge wing steadied themselves by grasping the rail, their faces stung by a light shower that skittered across the sea.

'I think, Captain Poulter, that we must regretfully conclude that Sir Nathaniel has drowned.' Captain Drew turned and looked aft, raising his eyes to the ensign. 'We had better half-mast the colours.'

'I'll see to it, sir,' Forester said, and he crossed the bridge to where one of the lookouts still stared out over the heaving grey waste of the Atlantic Ocean.

'I shall give it another hour, sir,' Poulter said firmly.

'You are wasting your time. Stand the additional lookouts down now, Captain Poulter,' Drew said, watching Forester dispatch the able-seaman aft to tend the ensign halliards. 'I think we have done all that we can.'

'I command the ship, Captain Drew, and I ran the boat down, God forgive me. The responsibility is mine ...'

'Forester told me the telegraph chain parted. It is what is to be expected from so newfangled a contraption. It was not your fault and I shall not say that it was, if that is what is concerning you.' Drew's tone was testy. 'He was an old man, Captain Poulter. Infirm. Rheumaticky. The shock of immersion has killed him long since. Quier's notions of the passage of time have been distorted by his ordeal. Sir Nathaniel could not possibly have survived for very long.'

'That is probable, Captain Drew, but it would have been better if, after so many distinguished years' service, he had died in his bed.'

Drew gave Poulter a long look, sensing the reproach in his voice. 'You do not think we should have attempted the landing, eh? Is that it?'

Poulter sighed. 'I have observed that such so-called misfortunes often follow a single mistake or misjudgement. The fault seems compounded by fate. An error swiftly becomes a disaster.'

'And you think', Drew persisted, 'that we should not have made the attempt?'

'I shall always regret that I did not dissuade you, sir, yes.'

'And you therefore blame me?' Drew asked indignantly.

'I said, sir,' Poulter replied quietly, 'that I shall always regret that I failed to dissuade you from leaving the ship and making the attempt.'

'That verges on the insolent, Captain Poulter,' Drew said, stiffening.

'As you wish, Captain Drew ...'

For a moment Drew seemed about to leave the bridge, then he hesitated and thought better of it. Poulter turned away and stared about him again, dismissing Drew from his mind. There would inevitably be some unpleasantness in the aftermath of this unfortunate affair, but no good would come of moping over it while there was still a task to be done, no matter how hopeless. There was a definite bite to the wind now and the rain came again in a longer squall that hissed across the sea. The day was dissolving in a monotonous grey that belied the high summer of the season. He had almost forgotten Captain Drew when the Elder Brother cleared his throat, reclaiming Poulter's attention.

'Let us say no more of the matter now, Captain Poulter,' Drew said. 'Sir Nathaniel died doing his duty and he was a sea-officer of impeccable rectitude.'

'Indeed he was, sir,' Poulter said coolly. 'Let us hope his widow finds that a sufficient consolation.'

Two miles away Nathaniel Drinkwater gave up the ghost. The faults and follies of his life, the joys and sorrows, finally faded from his consciousness. In his last moments he felt an overwhelming panic, but then the pain ebbed from his body and he became subsumed by a light of such blinding intensity that it seemed he must cry out for fear of it, and yet it did not seem uncomfortable, nor the end so very terrible.

CHAPTER 17 The Yellow Admiral

20 July 1843

The arrival of mail at Gantley Hall was sufficiently unusual to arouse a certain curiosity upon the morning of 20 July 1843. The post-boy was met by Billy Cue who had heard the horse and skidded out on his board to see if his services were required. The legless Billy had acquired his name from the line-of-battle ship Belliqueux, aboard which he had been conceived, but he had long since converted himself from the sea-urchin he had been born to a general handyman in the Drinkwater household. Susan Tregembo had originally put him to work scrubbing the flags in her kitchen, a task for which she felt him fitted, but Billy's good nature was undaunted by this practical approach and, by degrees, he made himself indispensable. He had grown into a good-looking man and was said to cut a dash among the more soft-hearted of the local farm girls, so that, upon the death of her husband, it was rumoured that Susan Tregembo allowed Billy into more than her kitchen.

He made up for his lack of mobility by skating about on a board fitted with castors, driven by his powerful arms which wielded a short pair of crutches. With these contrivances, he was able to get around with remarkable agility. He had also acquired a considerable skill as a carpenter, working on a bench set one foot above the level of his workshop floor. Here he had made a number of stools, steps and low tables, and these permitted him to carry out a multitude of tasks, the most remarkable of which was the care and grooming of Drinkwater's horses. Though Drinkwater was no lover of horse-flesh, the demands of household and farm had required the maintenance of four or five patient beasts who could pull a small carriage or trap, or act as hack when their master or mistress required a mount. Thus, while he might black boots, scrub floors and polish silver, it was in the stables of Gantley Hall that Billy Cue reigned as king.

'You are an ingenious fellow, Billy,' Captain Drinkwater had said when he had first seen the arrangement his protégé had made in one of the stalls to enable him to curry-comb the horses.

'Got the notion from the graving dock in Portsmouth, sir. A set of catwalks at shoulder height lets me get right up to the beasts,' Billy had said from his elevated station.

'Are you fond of horses then, Billy?' Drinkwater had asked.