Beneath the Aurora (12 page)

‘Damn stupid thing to do,' Drinkwater managed, gradually mastering himself as the pain eased. ‘How's the ship?'

‘When I heard you had been up all night I came to report. I've had a look round. She's tight enough, four feet of water in the well, but the watch are dealing with that now. One seaman sprained an ankle, but he'll mend.'

‘Is the surgeon competent?' Drinkwater asked.

‘It would appear so, by all accounts. He's a young fellow, by the name of Kennedy. Scuttlebutt has it that he had to leave Bath in a hurry. Something about a jealous husband. He's full of fashionable cant and thinks himself the equal of a physician, but he does well enough. At least Bath taught him plenty about clap and the lues.' Huke dismissed the world of the
ton
with contempt. Drinkwater liked him the more. He began to pace the deck, Huke falling in alongside of him. Every moment the light grew stronger.

‘Odd, ain't it, that hurricane last night knocked the sea down so fast, there'll be little swell today if the wind continues to drop.'

‘Did you look at the glass this morning?' Drinkwater asked.

‘Steadied up.'

‘Good. I'm concerned about the
Kestrel
.'

‘She'll fetch the rendezvous at Utsira. We're almost certainly bound to be there before her.'

‘Yes, you are very probably right.' There was a reassuring
conviction in Huke's words. ‘Yes, you're right. Nevertheless . . .'

‘Don't concern yourself, sir. I'll have the t'gallant masts sent up again after breakfast and a lookout posted aloft.'

‘Very well.' They walked on a little. Then Drinkwater remarked, ‘She's a lot easier now.'

It was relative, of course. The ship still scended and the dying sea surged alongside her hurrying hull.

‘Shall I let fall the forecourse and set the tops'ls?'

‘No, let us wait for full daylight and assure ourselves that
Kestrel
ain't in sight before we crack on sail.'

Drinkwater felt much better with a bellyful of burgoo and a pot of hot coffee inside him. Huke, he had learned during their morning walk, prescribed hot chocolate for the wardroom, said it gave the young layabouts a ‘fizzing start to the day'. Apparently the idea originated with Kennedy, but Huke had tried it and endorsed it, to the disgust of several of the younger officers. Drinkwater had promised he would try it himself, but not this morning. After so miserable and worrying a night, he wanted the comfort of the familiar and had, in any case, brought a quantity of good coffee aboard in his otherwise meagre and hastily purchased cabin stores.

Mr Templeton joined him for a cup as he finished breakfast. The poor man looked terrible and stared unhappily at the rapid rise and fall of the sea astern, visible now that Drinkwater had had the shutters lowered. Templeton had been prostrated by sea-sickness before they passed the Isle of May, and last night had reduced him to a shadow.

‘If it is any consolation, Mr Templeton,' Drinkwater said, waving him to a chair, ‘the storm last night was one of the most severe I have experienced, certainly for the violence of the wind.'

‘I scarcely feel much better for the news, sir, but thank you for your encouragement.' And, seeing Drinkwater smile, he added, ‘I never imagined . . . never imagined . . .'

‘Well, buck up,' Drinkwater said with a cheeriness he did not truly feel. ‘We have lost contact with the
Kestrel
, but perhaps we shall have news of her before nightfall. Just thank your lucky stars that it was over so soon; I've known weather like that last
for a week. Today promises to be different.' Drinkwater grabbed the table as
Andromeda
heeled to leeward and drove her bowsprit at the sea-bed.

‘You mean
this
is a moderation?'

‘Oh my goodness, yes! Why, you should have been in the old
Patrician
with me when we fell foul of a typhoon in the China Sea . . .'

But Drinkwater's consoling reminiscence was cut short by a short, sharp rumble that was itself terminated by a shuddering crash.

Drinkwater knew instantly what the noise was, for it was followed by a further rumbling and crash as
Andromeda
rolled easily back to starboard. He was out of his chair and halfway to the door before Templeton had recovered from this further shock.

‘Gun adrift!' snapped Drinkwater by way of explanation as he flung open the cabin door and the noise of turmoil flooded in further to assault the already affronted Templeton. Rising unsteadily, he followed the captain, but waited on the cabin threshold. Beside him the marine sentry fidgeted uncomfortably.

‘Number seven gun,' he muttered confidentially to the captain's clerk. The significance of the remark, if it had any, was lost on Templeton. He did not know that the guns in the starboard battery were, by convention, numbered oddly. Moreover, the perspective of the gun deck allowed him to see little. The receding twin rows of bulky black cannon breeches, with their accompanying ropework, blocks, shot garlands and overhead rammers, worms and sponges, looked much as normal. It was always a crowded space, and if there were more men loitering about than usual, a cause was not obvious. His view, it was true, was obscured by the masts, the capstans, stanchions, and so forth, but the marine's confident assertion meant nothing to him and gave him no clue.

And then the tableau before him dissolved. The frigate's lazy counter-roll scattered the group of men. With shouts and cries they spread asunder, leaping clear of something which, Templeton could see now, was indeed a loose cannon. The lashings which normally held it tight, with its muzzle elevated and
lodged against the lintel of its gun-port, seemed to have given way and parted.

This had caused the gun to roll inboard, as though recoiling beyond the constraints of its breechings. It had fetched up against one of the stanchions, a heavy vertical timber supporting the deck above. Here it had slewed, perhaps due to one of its training tackles fouling, but this had caused it to swing from right angles to the ship's fore and aft axis, thus giving it greater range to trundle threateningly up and down. Its two tons of avoirdupois had already destroyed a lifted grating, splintered half a dozen mess kids, buckets and benches, and split the heavy vertical timber of the after bitts.

As
Andromeda
heaved over a sea, the malevolent mass began to move aft, gaining a steady momentum that caused Templeton, well out of its line of advance, to flinch involuntarily. As the deck rocked, this slowed and then went into reverse, but by now the forces of order were mustered. Templeton could see Captain Drinkwater and Lieutenant Huke (a dour but competent soul, Templeton thought), the marine sergeant and Greer, an active boatswain's mate who had befriended Templeton in an odd kind of way and seemed willing to answer any of Templeton's technical questions. He had asked them at first of Mosse, but that dapper young officer did not conceive his duty to be the instructing of a mere clerk. Greer had overheard the exchange, made in Leith Road before the onset of sea-sickness, and volunteered himself as a ‘sea-daddy.'

Templeton watched fascinated as ropes appeared, sinuous lines of seamen running to keep them clear of fouling as, in a moment of temporary equilibrium, someone shouted:

‘Now!'

And the errant gun was miraculously and suddenly overwhelmed. A knot of officers remained round the gun, Drinkwater among them. Templeton was childishly gleeful. He felt less queasy, slightly happier with his lot. The swift, corporate response had impressed him. Men drew back grinning with satisfaction, and although the 12-pounder stared the length of the gun deck, it was held unmoving in a web of rope, even when
Andromeda
tested the skill of her company by kicking her stern in the air and then plunging it into the abyss.

‘Like Gulliver upon the Lilliputian beach,' he muttered to himself.

‘Like 'oo, sir?' the marine beside him asked.

‘Like Gulliver . . .' he repeated, before seeing the ludicrous waste of the remark.

From behind him came the crash of crockery. He turned and looked back into the cabin. Coffee pot, cups and saucers lay smashed on the chequer-painted canvas saveall.

‘Cap'n's china, sir,' said the marine unnecessarily.

‘Oh dear . . .'

Templeton retreated into the cabin and stood irresolute above the slopping mess, then Frampton, the captain's servant, with much clucking of his tongue, appeared with a cloth.

‘I don't know what Cap'n Pardoe'll say. We've only the pewter pot left,' he grumbled.

‘Get out!' Templeton swung round to find Drinkwater in the doorway. The captain's face was strangely set. He shut the door and strode aft, putting his right hand on the aftermost beam, resting his head on his arm and staring astern. The servant swiftly vanished and Templeton himself hesitated; but it was clear the captain did not mean him. Templeton averted his eyes from the heave and suck of the wake and turned his gaze inboard. He admired again the rather fine painting of Mrs Drinkwater which the captain had hung the previous afternoon. He felt a return of his nausea and fought to occupy his mind with something else.

‘Is . . . is something the matter, sir? I, um, thought the taming of the gun accomplished most expertly, sir.'

Drinkwater remained unmoving, braced against the ship's motion. ‘Did you now; how very condescending of you.' Templeton considered the captain might have been speaking through clenched teeth. Was this another sea-mystery? Was the captain himself suffering from
mal de mer
?

Templeton had reached this fascinating conclusion when the door opened once more and Huke strode in. He was carrying a short length of thick brown rope.

‘Well?' Drinkwater turned. ‘What d'you think?'

Huke held the rope out. ‘There's no doubt, sir. Cut two-thirds through and the rest left to nature. Thank God it didn't part six hours earlier.'

And it slowly dawned upon Mr Templeton that the breaking adrift of the cannon had been no accident, but a deliberate act of sabotage.

‘That is', he said, intruding into the exchange of looks of his two superiors, ‘a most prejudicial circumstance, is it not?'

*
See
The Corvette
.

*
See
A Brig of War
.

*
See
A King's Cutter
.

†
See
Under False Colours
.

‘We must not make our concern too obvious,' Drinkwater said, after a pause during which Templeton blushed in acknowledgement that he had spoken out of turn. ‘If the sabotage was merely malicious, a detestation at having been sent so abruptly on foreign service, or some such, vigilance may be all that is necessary. Do you, Mr Huke, have a discreet word with all of the other officers on those lines.'

‘Aye, aye, sir. You want any other construction played down, I assume.' Huke looked significantly at the captain's secretary.

‘Templeton is party to everything, Mr Huke. He was lately a cipher clerk at the Admiralty.'

‘I see,' said Huke, who did nothing of the kind.

‘But yes, play it down, just the same,' Drinkwater said, and Huke nodded. ‘And I think I will let the marine officer know exactly what is going on. Is he a sound man, Mr Huke?'

‘Mr Walsh is reliable enough, but unimaginative and not given to using his initiative. He is somewhat talkative but steady under fire.' Huke paused. ‘If I might presume to advise you, sir . . .'

‘Yes, of course. You think him liable to be indiscreet?'

Huke nodded again. ‘I should tell him only that we are bound upon a special service. It is not necessary to say more. He will be as vigilant as Old Harry if he thinks there's the merest whiff of mutiny attached to this business.'

‘So be it.' Drinkwater looked from one to the other. ‘Are there any questions?'

‘Do you think it is possible to identify the culprits?'

Drinkwater and Huke stared incredulously at the clerk who, for the third time that morning, wished he had kept his mouth shut.

‘These things are managed by men who take every precaution to ensure no officer ever gets to hear how they happen,' Drinkwater explained. ‘These men are not stupid, Mr Templeton, even when they lack the advantages of knowledge or education.'

‘And one or two', added Huke with heavy emphasis, ‘are not wanting in either.'

Drinkwater spoke to Lieutenant Walsh shortly afterwards. ‘The gun that broke loose was partially cut adrift, Mr Walsh. Have you had much of this sort of thing in the ship before?'

Walsh whistled through his teeth at the intelligence, then shook his head. He was a thick-set, middle-aged man whose prospects looked exceedingly dim. He should have reached the rank of major long before, and have been commanding the marine detachment aboard a flagship. He had a high colour, and Drinkwater suspected his loquacity might be proportional to his intake of black-strap.