Beneath the Aurora (30 page)

They had been under weigh within moments of Drinkwater's appearance on deck and now the two frigates were running neck and neck,
Andromeda
drawing slightly ahead.

‘That'll change when we fall under her lee,' Drinkwater muttered to himself.

‘What will? Our speed?'

He looked round to find Frey beside him. The young lieutenant had been at some pains to repair the ravages of battle to his uniform.

‘I heard there was to be an action, sir.'

‘Yes, but you are not fit . . . What about your wound? Your fever?'

‘I'm as fit as you, sir,' Frey said quietly. He looked astern. ‘What happened to
Kestrel
?'

Drinkwater regarded his young colleague and their eyes met. There was the glitter of resolution in Frey's and Drinkwater sighed, then smiled.

‘A master's mate named Ashley volunteered to bring her in with a prize crew. He's on our larboard beam.'

Frey craned round and saw the man-of-war cutter. ‘Ah, yes. I wonder what their chances are?'

‘Less than fifty-fifty.'

Drinkwater did not say that he would never have let Ashley go had not the odds against their own survival been considerably shorter. Ashley carried a hurriedly written report of proceedings and a secret, enciphered dispatch. Both had been prepared by Templeton at Drinkwater's dictation while he had dressed.

Drinkwater looked at Frey. ‘Very well. Do you keep an eye on things here. I'm going to take a turn below.

He descended to the gloom of the gun deck. The gunners were, to a man, gathered about their cannon, staring at the enemy through the open ports. Behind the guns the powder-monkeys crouched, trying to see between the men. Standing at the bottom of the ladder, Drinkwater was struck by the lack of numbers. The larboard guns were almost unmanned. Shackled amidships were the chained American prisoners. Drinkwater had quite forgotten them. His memory seemed, these days, to be fickle in the extreme.

Further forward, beside the mainmast, Lieutenant Jameson was studying the enemy and haranguing his men.

‘He's going to open fire any moment, my lads. When he does I want him to feel the weight of our metal in one blow.'

A murmur of appreciation greeted this speech. Someone forward, in the eyes of the ship, cracked a joke, and Drinkwater heard the expressions of mirth roll aft.

‘Make 'em eat shit, Jamie!' another called, and a good-natured laugh broke out again.

‘No, no,' Jameson called, never taking his eyes off the enemy. ‘ 'Tis too soft.'

The filthy jests went on, bolstering their courage. This was a Jameson Drinkwater had never met, but would be glad of in the coming hour. He abandoned any thought of addressing these men and made to return to the quarterdeck. The sudden movement attracted attention. Midshipman Fisher saw him and touched the brim of his ridiculous hat. Others caught sight of their captain and the whisper of his presence passed along the line of guns like a gust of wind through the tops of fir trees. Jameson became aware of it and straightened up.

‘Don't let me distract you, Mr Jameson, I merely came to satisfy myself that you were ready,' he called.

‘We're ready, sir, aren't we, my lads?'

‘Aye, we're ready!' They broke out into a cheer. It was foolish; it was utterly beyond reason and it was pitifully affecting. Drinkwater stood stupid with emotion and, although stoop-shouldered beneath the beams, he raised his damaged hat in solemn salutation. Then he turned and ascended into sunshine as the cheers of the gunners below followed him.

The noise was taken up on the upper deck. The men at the forecastle guns, those mustered at the mast and pinrails and stationed on the quarterdeck at the carronades and the wheel, began to cheer.

He let them be, let their enthusiasm subside naturally and, walking to the ship's side, wiped the moisture from his eyes as unobtrusively as possible. He was a damned ninny to be seduced by such stupidity, but he could not prevent himself from feeling moved.

Sniffing, he looked again at the enemy; she was much closer now.

The line of the
Odin
's opened gun-ports suddenly sparkled, then faded from view, obscured by the smoke from her broadside. Shot whined overhead, fell short or thudded into their side before the sound rolled down upon them.

He heard Jameson's order and
Andromeda
shook to the simultaneous discharge of her own battery. Plumes of spray rose up along
Odin
's waterline and a cannonade which was to last for twenty long minutes began.

Shot smacked home, the faint trembling of the hull betraying a ball burying itself in the frigate's stout oak sides; ropes parted aloft; more holes appeared in the already tattered sails with an odd, sucking plop; explosions of splinters lanced the deck and the hot breath of cannon shot made them gasp. The business of dying began again; men screamed and were taken below.

‘I believe you're boarding, sir.'

‘What?' Distracted, Drinkwater looked round to see Templeton beside him.

‘I understand it is your intention to board the
Odin
.'

‘Yes.'

‘It is my intention to accompany you.'

‘The devil it is . . .'

Drinkwater looked at the clerk. Was he pot-valiant? Drinkwater could smell no liquor on his breath, and Templeton winced as the starboard battery fired again. Templeton had not occupied much of Drinkwater's time or attention during the last fortnight. He had been summoned when required, which had not proved often, and for the most part had been left to his own devices and desires. He looked somehow strange, different from the man who had stood in his room in the Admiralty, but then Quilhampton was dead and Frey was a changed man; so, he supposed, was he. If Templeton wished to prove himself it was his own affair, and who was Drinkwater to judge him for taking a nip to fortify his nerves.

‘Very well, Mr Templeton, if that is what you wish. I should have sent you with Ashley in the
Kestrel
, but I shall be glad of all the support I can get.'

‘Thank you.' Templeton moved away and stood by the mizen mast, selecting a boarding pike from the rack. Six feet away a ball from the
Odin
crashed into the bulwark between
two larboard carronades and a spray of musketry spattered aboard, killing a marine and wounding a gunner. Drinkwater saw Templeton jerk with involuntary reaction.

The distance between the two ships was closing rapidly now. It must have been obvious to Dahlgaard what Drinkwater intended, but the Danish captain made no attempt to draw off and pound his weaker opponent.

‘Edge closer, Mr Birkbeck, then go at her with a run, we're falling under her lee!'

Shot thumped into
Andromeda
's planking and the enemy's upperdeck cannon belched langridge at them. The iron hail swept whistling aboard, taking Drinkwater's second hat from his head. He drew his hanger. He was conscious now of only one burning desire, to end this madness in the catharsis of a greater insanity.

‘Now, Birkbeck! Now!'

Andromeda
was losing ground quickly as the
Odin
masked her from the wind, but Birkbeck had the measure of the situation and put the helm up the instant the guns had fired a broadside. The British ship swung to starboard with a slow and magnificent grace. Her bowsprit rode over the Dane's waist and the dolphin striker lodged itself in the
Odin
's main chains. The impetus of the
Odin
caught the lighter ship and drew her alongside, so the first impact of the collision was followed by a slewing of the deck; then the two ships ground together, locked in mortal combat, a tangle of yards and hooked braces aloft, their guns muzzle to muzzle below.

From the corner of his eye Drinkwater caught a glimpse of a grapnel snaking out as he clambered up on the rail and stepped over the hammock netting. Other men were gathering, anticipating his order:

‘Boarders away!'

He could never afterwards remember those few vulnerable seconds as he scrambled aboard the
Odin
, beyond realizing that the Danish frigate had two feet more freeboard than her adversary and he had to climb upwards. It was always something of a mystery as to why the defenders of a ship did not find it easy to repel attackers coming aboard in so haphazard a manner. A mystery, that is, until one considered the encumbrance
of the hammock netting which was designed to form a breastwork behind which sharpshooters could be stationed, but which almost perfectly masked an attack made up the ship's side.

Sometimes a ship would hoist boarding nettings, but neither had done so, perhaps each to facilitate their own attacks. Astride the
Odin
's hammock netting Drinkwater discharged his pistol into the face of a Danish marine, then leaned down and thrust his hanger at a gunner waving a pike. The pike ripped his sleeve and, gripping the hammocks with his leg as though on horseback, he jabbed the discharged pistol barrel into the man's eye. As his victim fell back, Drinkwater stood, swung both legs over the netting and, grabbing a mizen shroud with his left hand, slashed a swathe with his sword and jumped down on to the
Odin
's deck in the space thus provided.

Other men tumbled all about him, a ‘veritable cascade of seamen and marines', he afterwards wrote in his full report of proceedings, Templeton among them, keening in a curious, high-pitched squeal as he cut dangerously left and right with his sword.

‘ 'Ere, watch it, Mr Templeton,' somebody sung out, clear above the howls of rage and the screams of the dying.

Drinkwater engaged a second Danish marine, cut at the man's forearm and winged him, advanced a half step and grasped the musket's muzzle, ducking under the bayonet and jabbing his hanger at the soldier's stomach. The man cried out, though his voice was lost in the general bedlam and Drinkwater was conscious only of the gape of his mouth. The musket dropped between them, Drinkwater withdrew and slashed down at the marine's shoulder as he fell, parried a pike and felt the flat of a cutlass across his back.

He half-turned as the weapon was thrust again, flicked his own hanger and pricked the seaman's hand as he lunged with the clumsy cutlass. The severed tendons cost the man his grip. Drinkwater grunted with the speed of his response, raised his sword-point and, as though with a foil, extended and withdrew. Blood ran down the hapless sailor's face and his breath whistled through his perforated cheek as he fell back.

A musket or pistol was discharged close to him. Drinkwater felt the fierce heat from its muzzle and a stinging sensation in
his ear. He cut right, parried a sword thrust and bound the blade; bellowed as he thrust it aside and slid forward, driving his sword home to the hilt in the soft abdomen of a man he had barely seen in the press of bodies.

He was conscious of an officer, of two officers, threatening him from the front in defiant postures. He was running short of wind, but Templeton was on his right and he shrieked, ‘Here, Templeton, to me!'

Drinkwater engaged, crossed swords and felt the Danish officer press his blade. Drinkwater disengaged with a smart cutover, but was thwarted as the Danish officer changed his guard. Drinkwater dropped his point and reverted to his original line, extending without lunging. The Dane grinned as he parried high and extended himself. Drinkwater was drawing his breath with difficulty now, he ducked clumsily and fell back, expecting a swift
reprise
, but the Dane would not be drawn and stood grinning at the panting Drinkwater.

Drinkwater's puzzlement was brief. On his flank Templeton was whirring his blade with such fanatic energy that his opponent was confused, or would not be drawn, and maintained a defensive position.

Then, in the hubbub and confusion, Drinkwater realized, drawing breath in the brief and timely lull, that the two officers were defending a man seated behind them in a chair.

It was Dahlgaard and he was pale as death, a pair of pistols in his lap.

‘Captain Dahlgaard!' Drinkwater shouted, ‘I see you are wounded! You can do no more! Surrender, sir! Strike your flag and stop this madness!'

‘No!'

The officer from whom Drinkwater had just escaped howled his commander's defiance.

Drinkwater fell back a step. Templeton had drawn off and suddenly pulled a pistol from his belt. He fired at the officer he had been fighting and, as the Danish lieutenant fell, he stepped quickly forward and thrust savagely at Dahlgaard.

The officer who had defied Drinkwater's call to surrender, seeing what was happening, made to strike Templeton but lost his balance.

Drinkwater was on him, lunging forward with such speed
that he, too, lost his footing and slammed into the Dane, his hanger blade snapping as he drove it home.

As Drinkwater fell to his knees something struck him on the shoulder. The blow was not hard. He sat back on his haunches and looked up into Dahlgaard's face. The Danish captain's eyes were cloudy with pain, his face wet with perspiration. Blood ran from the new wound Templeton had inflicted in his upper arm. Between these two men, instigators of the carnage all about them, Dahlgaard's young lieutenant was pinioned to the deck by Drinkwater's broken sword-blade.

Breathing in gulps, Drinkwater realized the injured Dahlgaard had struck him with one of his pistols. It had already been fired.

‘I strike my flag,' Dahlgaard called, his voice rasping with agony.

‘You surrender?' Drinkwater gasped, uncertain.

Dahlgaard nodded. ‘
Ja, ja
, I strike.' The Dane closed his eyes.

‘They strike!' shrieked Templeton. ‘They strike! They strike!' And heady with victory Templeton ran aft to cut the halliard of the Danish ensign.

Wearily Drinkwater heaved himself to his feet. He felt the madness ebb, heard the cheering as though it came from a great way away. He was sodden with sweat and breathing with difficulty. Lightly he placed his hand on Dahlgaard's shoulder.