Beneath the Aurora (24 page)

Drinkwater was touched. He managed a wan smile. ‘Perhaps. Anyway it is too late now. I shall never know.' He refilled their glasses. ‘Besides, we have other work to attend to.' They drank and Drinkwater added, ‘I am glad you brought Frey with you.'

‘That was luck. I received a letter from him the very day I left Woodbridge. Catriona brought it to me as I was in the act of strapping my chest. I wrote to him and told him to come at once. It was just as well. The lieutenant in charge of
Kestrel
at Chatham had the energy of a wallowing pig. I had his bags packed too!'

‘Well,' Drinkwater cut in, a hint of impatience in his tone, ‘he'll do splendidly in
Kestrel
. I want you aboard here, in command in my absence.'

‘Your absence, sir?'

‘You are the senior lieutenant and I must have a man here who knows my mind. I'm taking
Kestrel
back into the fiord under a flag of truce . . .'

‘But, sir, I can do that! It's my job!'

‘Of course you can do it, James, but I've already a good idea of what the lie of the land is in the Vikkenfiord, and there's no purpose in your taking risks, what with Catriona and the child . . .'

‘But, sir . . .'

‘But me no buts, James, you've already shaken my confidence in you by admitting you'd have done as Tom Huke did . . .' Drinkwater smiled and Quilhampton shrugged resignedly.

‘If you insist.'

‘I do. It occurs to me that the appearance of
Kestrel
might persuade our friends that we have been reinforced out here. I may be able to wring some advantage out of the situation. At the very least it will provide an opportunity for reconnaissance.'

‘Time spent in which is seldom wasted,' Quilhampton quoted with a grin. ‘I had thought for a while that you intended to withdraw.'

‘I cannot with honour do that. Besides, we have an objective still to achieve, and Tom Huke to avenge.'

‘Welcome aboard, sir!'

Lieutenant Frey touched the forecock of his bicorn hat and grinned broadly as Drinkwater scrambled up on to
Kestrel
's low bulwark.

‘My dear Frey, how good to see you.' Drinkwater clambered stiffly down from the cutter's rail and shook Frey's hand.

‘You damn nearly left without me, sir,' the younger man said lightly, the joke concealing a sense of affront.

‘Not having my own command and occupying a rather difficult position at the Admiralty has left me somewhat bereft of influence,' Drinkwater conceded, and Frey caught a gentle reproach in his voice. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Drinkwater beat him to it. ‘But I've made amends by giving you command for the day. Be so kind as to pass my gig astern under tow and, by the by, d'you have a sheet or a tablecloth on board?'

‘We boast a tablecloth, sir, but why . . . ?'

‘Hoist it at the lee tops'l yardarm and proceed into the Vikkenfiord. A flag of truce,' Drinkwater added by way of explanation at Frey's quizzical frown.

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Frey acknowledged the order and turned away to execute it. Drinkwater stared curiously about him. The cutter had not been new when he joined her at Tilbury in the winter of 1792 and she had undergone radical structural alterations some years later. She bore the marks of age and hurried restoration: scuffed timbers, peeling paintwork, worn ropes, patched sails and dull brass-work.

‘We've been attacking the binnacle with brick-dust and lamp-oil,' Frey said apologetically, ‘but we were waist-deep in water on the passage and it's been a bit difficult . . .'

‘It don't signify,' Drinkwater said pensively, his hand rubbing the edge of the companionway to the after accommodation from which, he noticed standing aside, the officers' table-cloth was being brought on deck by the steward. ‘If you can manoeuvre under sail and fire your cannon at an enemy . . .' He looked at Frey. ‘I commanded her at Camperdown, you know.' He remembered being cold and sodden as they beat about the gatways behind the Haak Sand off the Texel in the days before the battle, while Admiral Duncan's fleet mutinied off Yarmoùth.
*

‘I didn't know that, sir.'

‘It was a long time ago.'

He had known Frey for ten years; the lieutenant had been a midshipman aboard the sloop
Melusine
when he had last ventured north. The boy was a man now, growing grizzled in the sea service as this long war rumbled interminably on.

‘She still sails well?'

‘She leaks like a sieve. She had her keel and kelson pierced for centre-plates which make her claw up to windward like a witch, but the boxes let in water and she needs regular pumping.'

‘I recall them being fitted,' Drinkwater mused, then asked, ‘Did you bring your paint-box?'

‘Never go anywhere without it, sir,' Frey said, waving an enthusiastic hand about him. On either side the steep, dark sides of the gorge closed about them, and beyond, its surface pale and cold, the fiord lay bordered by the dark forest. ‘Imagine being here, amid this splendour, without the means to record it.'

‘I cannot', said Drinkwater ruefully, ‘imagine what it must be like.'

And he grinned as the shadow of the gorge fell across the deck, and they entered the Vikkenfiord.

*
See
A King's Cutter
.

The twelve-gun cutter
Kestrel
ran up the Vikkenfiord with a quartering wind, her huge main boom guyed out to larboard, obscuring the lie of the land and the bluff upon which lay the guns of the Danish fort. Though the British ensign flew from the peak of her gaff, the white tablecloth flapped languidly in the eddies emptying from the leeward leech of the square topsail set above the hounds. Astern, Drinkwater's gig towed in their wake.

The rain had passed and, though the threat of more lay banked up in engorged clouds beyond the mountains to the south and west, the sun blazed upon the blue waters of the fiord and the breeze set white-capped waves dancing across its surface. The low, black-hulled cutter raced downwind. She still sported two long 4-pounders forward, but her ten pop-gun 3-pounders had long ago been replaced by carronades. Frey had had these cleared away and now ordered the square topsail clewed up and furled.
Kestrel
would neither stay nor wear quickly with it still set, and Drinkwater wanted the little cruiser to be as handy as skill and artifice could make her, in case his enterprise collapsed.

Leaving the management of the cutter to Frey, he walked forward and levelled his glass at the bluff, steadying it against a forward shroud. Above the embrasures of the fort, the colours of Denmark proclaimed Norway to be a possession of the Danish crown. Drinkwater could already see the masts of the American and Danish ships, lying at their anchors in the small
bay beyond the bluff and under the protection of the fort's guns.

As they drew closer, Drinkwater watched and waited for a response from these cannon. At two miles he saw nothing to indicate the sentries had seen the approaching cutter, then they were within cannon shot.

‘Any signs, sir?' asked Frey, coming forward and screwing up his eyes.

‘Not a damned thing,' Drinkwater muttered, his glass remaining to his eye. ‘Ah, wait . . .'

For a moment he had thought the brief flash to have been the discharge of a cannon, but then the white of an extempore flag like their own appeared to hang down from a gun-embrasure, pressed by the wind against the grey stonework of the rampart.

Drinkwater lowered his glass. ‘I think we may stand on with a measure of confidence, Mr Frey.'

‘I'll heave to just off the point then.'

‘Yes, and get the boat alongside and the crew into it as fast as possible. I don't want them coming to us.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater raised his glass again and swept the adjacent coast with care. ‘Time spent in reconnaissance', he muttered to himself, quoting Quilhampton, ‘is seldom wasted.'

So engrossed was he in this task that the sudden righting of
Kestrel
's heeling deck and the shift of its motion to a gentle upward and downward undulation as she came head to wind took him by surprise. The headsails shook for a moment and then the jib was sheeted down hard and the staysail sheet was carried to windward as Frey hove his charge to on the starboard tack. The bluff, with its granite coping and the dark gun-embrasures, loomed above the cutter's curved taffrail, and on her port quarter where the gig was being quickly brought alongside, the bay beyond was filled with the three ships and its sheltered waters dotted with the oared boats Drinkwater had been so assiduously studying.

Now he went aft, watched as a boathook adorned with a table-napkin was passed to the bowman and, gathering up his sword, eased a foot over the rail, stood awkwardly on the rubbing band, chose his moment and tumbled into the boat.

Barking his shins he stumbled aft with considerable loss of dignity to take his seat beside Captain Pardoe's coxswain, Wells.

‘Carry on, cox'n. Make for the Danish ship!'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

They pulled away from the cutter and were soon in the comparatively calmer waters of the bay. Drinkwater coughed to catch the attention of the labouring boat's crew. ‘Keep your eyes in the boat, men. No remarks to any enemy boats that may come near and', he turned to the coxswain, ‘lie off a little while I am aboard.'

‘Aye, sir.'

As they approached the
Odin
, Drinkwater threw back his boat-cloak to reveal the remaining perfect epaulette on his left shoulder. He wore the undress uniform he had worn in the action of the day before. The bullion on his right shoulder was wrecked beyond repair, though Frampton had done his best when he swabbed the blood from the coat. Drinkwater stared woodenly ahead, but allowed his eyes to rove over the scene. The Danes had made good most of the ravages of the action, reinstating the foremast just as Quilhampton was doing at that moment aboard
Andromeda
beyond the entrance to the fiord.

Inshore of the Danish frigate the two American ships lay at anchor. They looked slightly less formidable upon closer inspection: privateers rather than frigates, though well armed. Between them and the Dane all the boats of the combined ships seemed to be waterborne, industriously plying to and fro. Many had stopped, their crews lying on their oars as they watched the bold approach of the enemy. They were quite obviously engaged in the business of transferring stands of arms, barrels of powder and the product of Continental arsenals destined for North America.

‘Boat 'hoy!'

‘Oars, cox'n.'

‘Oars!' ordered Wells and the gig's crew stopped pulling, holding their oar-looms horizontally as the gig gradually lost way some fifty or sixty yards from the bulk of the
Odin
's dark hull. Officers lined the quarterdeck while the faces of many curious onlookers, Danish sailors and marines, stared down at the approaching gig. Drinkwater stood up and doffed his hat.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. Do I have your permission to come aboard?'

There was a brief consultation between the blue and gold figures. English, it appeared, was understood, but the matter seemed to be uncertain, so Drinkwater called out, ‘I know you are transferring arms from your ship to the American vessels, gentlemen. I know also they came from France and travelled via Hamburg to Denmark. I think it will be to your advantage if I speak to your captain.'

‘One of these boats coming close, sir,' growled Wells, sitting beside him.

‘Take no notice,' Drinkwater muttered.

The officers above them came to a conclusion. ‘
Ja
. You come aboard!'

‘Lay her alongside.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater ascended the frigate's tumblehome, reached the level of the rail, threw his leg over and descended to the deck. With no boats on her booms the frigate's waist was wide open and the contents of her gundeck and berth deck were exposed. The bundles of sabres and muskets, boxes, bales and barrels that she carried could not be disguised. They were being hoisted out and lowered over the farther side where the boats of the combined ships were obviously loading them. His appearance had stopped the labour but, at a command, the watching men returned to work.

A tall man with a blue, red-faced coat and cocked hat stepped forward. He wore hessian boots whose gold tassels caught the sunshine, and dragged what looked like a cavalry sabre on the deck behind him.

‘Kaptajn Dahlgaard of de Danske ship
Odin
. We haf met in battle,
ja
? I see you haf a wound.' Dahlgaard gestured to the large, dark scab on Drinkwater's cheek.

‘Indeed, sir, a scratch. I am Captain Drinkwater of His Britannic Majesty's frigate
Andromeda
, at your service.' Drinkwater shot a glance at the officers behind Dahlgaard. Most were wearing the blue and red of the Danish sea service. Two were not. They were wearing blue broadcloth and insolent grins. He knew them for Americans. ‘And these gentlemen are from the United States, are they not?' he added,
side-stepping Dahlgaard and executing an ironic half-bow at the American commanders. He was gratified to see them lose a little of their composure.