Beneath the Aurora (18 page)

Captain Drinkwater felt the cold grip of irresolution seize his palpitating heart. Here was the spectre of defeat, of dishonour. Retreat, he knew, merely postponed the inevitable and spawned greater reluctance; honour demanded he fight, if only to defend that of his flag. The white ensign now flew in place of the swallowtail
ruse de guerre
. He considered striking it after a few broadsides in permissible, if disreputable capitulation.

These thoughts coursed through his mind while it was yet clouding with other, more demanding preoccupations, for he saw the approaching enemy not merely as a hostile ship-of-war, but as the manifestation of something more sinister, an agent of fate itself. Here came the punishment for all his self-conceit. Sommer had served not simply his own ends, but also a greater purpose, to accomplish the destruction of Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater and his overweening pride in the obscurity of a remote Norwegian fiord.

How foolish he had been, he thought, to believe in providence as some benign deity which had taken a fancy to himself and which would cosset him personally. Blind faith proved only a blind alley, a trap.

Oh, it had sustained him, to be sure, given him a measure of protection which he, during his brief strutting moment, had transmuted into a gallant confidence, but he had outrun his alloted span, a fact which he now knew with a chilling certainty. He was old and careworn, a dog who had had his day
and was masquerading in a young man's post, seduced by what . . . ?

He found, in a wave of mounting panic, that he did not know. The vaguest notion of duty swept through his perception, to be dismissed as cynical nonsense and replaced by damning self-interest. What did he hope to achieve? This enemy ship approaching them had come, undoubtedly, to transfer the arms and munitions to the waiting Yankees, as Bardolini had foretold. And if providence had, in its cosmic wisdom, decided that Canada should, like America itself, be free of King George's government, it would surely engineer the defeat of so petty a player as Nathaniel Drinkwater.

He silently cursed himself. He could have,
should
have, been at home on his Suffolk acres with Elizabeth, expiating his many sins and wickednesses. His great conceit had been to think that fate had delivered Bardolini into his hands for him to accomplish some grandiloquent design and keep Canada as a dominion of the British kingdom. If fate had wanted that, it would never have condoned the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies.

This simplistic and overwrought, though logical conclusion terminated Drinkwater's nervously self-centred train of thought. Huke, Birkbeck, Mosse and Jameson were looking at him expectantly. The hands, many belonging to the watch below, just stood down from their action stations, milled curiously in the waist. They too stared expectantly aft.

Drinkwater raised his Dollond glass again, a charade he enforced upon himself to compel his wits to return to reality. With slow deliberation he lowered the telescope.

‘We will attempt to break out to seaward,' he said with what he hoped was a quiet authority. ‘Send the hands back to their quarters. Starboard battery to load bar-shot and elevate high. We will exchange broadsides as we pass and do our best to cripple that fellow. Mr Birkbeck, lay me a course to pass, say, seven cables distant from him . . .'

‘The wind will be foul in the narrows, sir.'

‘When the wind comes ahead we will tow through. He is heavier than we are. That is a small advantage, but an advantage, none the less. You have your orders, gentlemen. We have a chance, let us exploit it!'

Drinkwater raised the glass again. Concentrating on the enemy's image occluded the closer world, left him to master himself, conspicuous upon his quarterdeck but mercifully hidden from all.

She was a big ship, a heavy frigate such as had long ago superseded the class to which
Andromeda
belonged, equal to the large American frigates which had so shocked the Royal Navy by a series of brilliant victories over British cruisers at the outbreak of the present war with the United States.

To counter this, the British had reacted by cutting down some smaller line-of-battle ships, producing
razées
, such as the
Patrician
, which Drinkwater himself had lately commanded. Had he had her at his disposal now, he would have been confident of taking on this powerful enemy, for with her he had shot to pieces the Russian seventy-four
Suvorov
. That, he reproached himself bitterly, was a past conceit, and it was for past conceits and victories that he was now to receive due retribution.

The Danish frigate, for he could tell she was such by her ensign, bore down towards them as they in turn, yards braced up, racing through the comparatively still waters of the fiord, rapidly closed the distance. Doubtless the Dane would seek to cripple
Andromeda
and, as the leeward ship, her guns would be pointing much higher. Drinkwater considered edging downwind, to give himself that advantage, but he dismissed the thought. It was just possible that the Danish commander did not know who, or what, they were, that their own ensign was masked by the mizen topsail, and he would think they were one of the American ships bearing down in welcome. No, the sooner they rushed past, the better.

At all events, the Dane stood stolidly on.

Huke came aft, his face grim. ‘All ready, sir.'

‘Very well.'

The first lieutenant contemplated the Danish ship. ‘She's a heavy bugger.'

‘Yes. Must be a new ship. I thought we'd destroyed all their power.'

‘They've had time to build new. We left them numerous gun-vessels for their islands, I suppose they've built this fellow to defend the coast of Norway.'

‘In which case he's doing a damnably good job. You know, once we work ourselves past him, we could blockade those narrows . . .'

‘Let us get out first,' Huke cautioned. ‘Hullo, he's shortening down; the cat's fairly out of the bag now!'

Critically they watched the topgallant yards lowered and the black dots of topmen running aloft.
Andromeda
had been eight or nine miles from the Dane when they first sighted the enemy. Now less than four miles separated the two frigates as they closed at a combined speed of sixteen or seventeen knots. They would be abeam of each other in a quarter of an hour. It seemed an age.

Mr Templeton was as confused about what was happening as he was about his own, private emotions. The ship's company had run to their battle stations and the internal appearance of
Andromeda
had been transformed; bulkheads were folded up under the deckhead, and the officers' quarters on the gun deck seemed suddenly to vanish. It had all been explained to him, but he still found the reality disquieting. Then, on passing the anchorage where, it was plain even to Templeton's untutored eye, two American ships lay, they had turned away and the men had been stood easy. After what seemed to Templeton so long a voyage, with their objective at last in sight, Captain Drinkwater's present action was incomprehensible. Templeton felt a certain relief that the air was not about to be filled with cannon-balls. Some days previously, Greer had picked one out of the garlands and thrown it to him. The sudden dead weight had almost broken his wrists and Greer had explained the crude technicalities of their brutal artillery with a morbid delight.

The very obvious reversal of orders, with the men chattering excitedly as they resumed their positions, now puzzled him and he ventured to ask Lieutenant Mosse what was going on.

‘There's an enemy frigate approaching,' said Mosse obliquely, drawing his hanger with a wicked rasp. ‘I suggest you might go on deck and watch.' Templeton hesitated and Mosse added, ‘Much safer than staying here.'

Only half-believing this lie, Templeton reluctantly made for the forward companionway. Mosse winked at Jameson.

Thus Mr Templeton made to ascend the ladder normally reserved for the crew.

‘Steady there, as she goes, Mr Birkbeck.'

Drinkwater watched the approaching ship. Both frigates ran on almost exactly reciprocal courses. Birkbeck and Ashley stood beside the binnacle where three helmsmen and a quartermaster held
Andromeda
to her track. Along the bulwarks the stubby barrelled carronades of the quarterdeck battery were surrounded by their crews, the gun-captains holding the taut lanyards to the cocked flintlocks. On the forecastle a lesser number of carronades supported the long bow-chasers. Below them, a similar scene was enacted, with the larger gun-crews gathered round the heavy 12-pounders of the main batteries. At key points aboard
Andromeda
the lesser and petty officers mustered groups of men ready to board or repel the enemy, bring ammunition or fire hoses, or work the ship if she was to be manoeuvred. Other groups clustered in the tops, marines among them, to act as sharpshooters, man the light swivel guns or lay out along the yards to shorten sail.

Upon the quarterdeck Huke, the first lieutenant, assisted the captain. A trio of midshipmen waited to act as messengers or attend to signals with the yeoman and his party. Lieutenant Walsh commanded the main detachment of marines who, interspersed with the carronades, laid their long muskets on the hammocks in the nettings and drew beads on the dark heads of the approaching enemy officers.

‘You may fire when your guns bear!' Drinkwater's voice rang out, clear and crisp. The moment of fearful anticipation had passed and he was as cold and as purposeful as a sword-blade. Matters would fall out as they would, come what may.

‘Pass word to the lieutenants on the gun deck, Mr Fisher,' Huke said, relaying Drinkwater's instruction. The boy ran off unobserved as every man concentrated upon the enemy ship. She was much closer than the seven cables Drinkwater had intended, but Mosse had drawn all the quoins and was sanguine that his guns would elevate. Periodically Drinkwater would quiz the gun-captain at the nearest carronade whose breech-screw fulfilled the same function.

‘How is she now?'

‘She'll do, sir . . .'

There was a last expectant hiatus which all knew would be broken by the eruption of the first gun, the starboard bow-chaser whose position commanded a field of fire closer aligned to the
Andromeda
's line of advance than any other. The air was filled with the subdued hiss of the sea as it curled back from
Andromeda
's apple-bow, the steady thrum of wind in the rigging, the creak of the ship, of her hemp and canvas, of the long tiller ropes, the straining sheets and tacks, the lifts, halliards and braces that converted the energy of the wind into the advance of the frigate and her iron armament.

Then came the report of the bow-chaser, the bright flash from its muzzle and the puff of cloudy smoke which hung for a second under the lee bow before being shredded by the wind. A second report, that of the enemy's reply, coincided with the flat echo, followed by the general reverberations of a furious exchange of shots. Drinkwater marked the quickening succession of flashes rolling aft towards him as each gun bore.

Then something went terribly awry. Instead of the bearing of the enemy opening with inexorable precision as the two frigates passed each other on reciprocal courses, there was a sudden, inexplicable acceleration. The Danish ship drew aft with miraculous speed and the British guns threw their shot not at the enemy, but at the empty sea on their own starboard beam.

‘What in the devil's name . . . ?'

‘What the hell . . . ?'

A dozen fouler exclamatory questions stabbed the air. Drinkwater spun round, momentarily confounded and utterly confused. All he knew was that from passing the beam, the enemy was now, against all reason, crossing their stern.

‘Oh, my God!'

‘For what we are about to receive . . .'

Inexplicably,
Andromeda
lay in the ideal position to be raked.

Mr Templeton saw exactly what happened, though he did not understand it at the time. He was, however, aware that the sudden movement of a group of seamen a few moments earlier had nothing to do with the business in hand, for he had heard
no orders to stimulate men who, throughout the ship, were so manifestly poised but immobile with expectation. He was ascending the forward companionway as the two ships made their final approach and before the sudden and disorientating event which so perplexed all but a few on the upper deck, when he was abruptly shoved aside. As he spun round, expecting some jibe from Mosse, he caught sight of both lieutenants bent and staring out of gun-ports at the enemy, as were most of the men clustered about the guns, oblivious to this sudden rush of others to the upper deck.

Templeton had forgotten what Greer had told him, that when the ship cleared for action, marine sentries were posted at each of the companionways throughout the ship to prevent any man from leaving his post. Thus dissuading cowardice, these sentinels let only approved persons pass them: the ship's boys, the powder-monkeys, with cartridges for the cannon, midshipmen acting as messengers, officers, stretcher parties and the walking wounded.

Now he was reminded of that rude instruction, for the marine sentry at the forward companionway had fallen almost at his feet, stretched upon the ladder, the handle of a long butcher's knife protruding from his chest. Templeton saw the man's face white with shock, his hands pulling futilely at the yellow horn handle even as death took possession of him.

So quickly and silently had the thing happened that the sentry's musket had not clattered to the deck, but had been seized and taken by one of the men running past him. Templeton was no man of action, yet he felt shock and outrage at what had happened, knew it was impermissible, rebellious, contrary to those draconian Articles of War he had read abstractedly at the Admiralty and heard uttered by Captain Drinkwater on a windswept Sunday a few days earlier. It was this outraged impropriety, this affront to established order that propelled him upwards, after the running men; this and a horrified dread of the marine who twitched his last and had just attracted the notice of the crew of an adjacent gun.