The Corvette (29 page)

‘Very good. Now, listen even more carefully. When you have discharged the windward carronade you are to cross to the other and train it inboard. If you see a number of black-faced savages come over the taffrail you are to sweep the waist ahead of them with shot, even, Mr Frey, even if you appear to be firing into our own men.'

The boy's eyes opened wider. ‘Now that is a very difficult order to obey, Mr Frey. But that is your duty. D'you understand me now?'

The boy swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Very good.' Drinkwater smiled again, as though he had just asked Frey to fetch him an apple, or some other similarly inconsequential task. He went to the forward end of the quarterdeck and called for silence in the waist, where the men were sorting out the small arms, joking at the prospect of a fight.

‘Silence there, my lads.' He waited until he had their attention.
‘When I order you to fire I want you to pour in as much shot across his hammock nettings then hold him from boarding. If he presses us hard you will hear the bosun's whistle. That is the signal to fall back. Seamen forward under Lieutenants Rispin and Gorton. Marines aft under Mr Mount. When Mr Bourne's reserve party appears from aft you will resume the attack and reman your guns as we drive these impertinent Frenchmen into the sea. I shall then call for the fore course to be let fall in order that we may draw off.'

A cheer greeted the end of this highly optimistic speech. He did not say he had no intention of following the enemy and taking their ship. He did not know how many men knew the rudder was damaged, but some things had to be left to chance.

‘Very well. Now you may lie down while he approaches.'

Like an irreverent church congregation they shuffled down and stretched out along the deck, excepting himself and Mount who kept watch from the quarterdeck nettings.

The enemy ship was almost directly to windward of them now and also heaving to. As Drinkwater watched, the side erupted in flame, and shot filled the air, whistling low overhead, like the ripping of a hundred silk shirts.

The second broadside was lower. There were screams from amidships and the ominous clang as one of the guns was hit on the muzzle and a section of bulwark was driven in. A marine grunted and fell dead. Drinkwater nudged Mount. It was Polesworth. Drinkwater felt his coat-tails being tugged. Mr Comley, the bosun, was reporting.

‘I brought my pipe aft, sir.'

‘Very good, Mr Comley. You had better remain with me and Mr Mount.'

‘Aye, sir.'

‘Have you served in many actions, Mr Comley?' asked Drinkwater conversationally.

‘With Black Dick in the
Queen Charlotte
at the Glorious First, sir, with Cap'n Rose in the
Jamaicky
at Copenhagen, when you was in the
Virago
, sir, an' a score o' boat actions and cuttin' outs and what not . . .'

A third broadside thudded home. Aloft rigging parted and the main top gallant mast dangled downwards.

‘You were with the gun brigs then, on the 2nd April?'

‘Aye, sir. An' a precious waste of time they were, an' all. I says to Cap'n Rose that by the time we'd towed 'em damned things across to
Denmark and then half the little barky's got washed ashore here an' there . . .'

But Drinkwater never knew what advice Mr Comley had given Captain Rose in the battle with the Danish fleet. He knew that the
Melusine
could stand little more of the pounding she was taking without fighting back.

‘Open fire!' He yelled and immediately the starboard guns roared out. For perhaps ten whole minutes as the larger ship drove down upon the smaller, the world became a shambles of sights and sounds through which the senses peered dimly, assaulted from every direction by destructive forces. The shot that whistled and ricochetted; the canister that swept a storm of iron balls across the
Melusine
's deck; the musket balls that pinged off iron-work and whined away into the air; the screams; the smoke; the splinters that crackled about, made it seem impossible that a man could live upon the upperdeck and breathe with anything like normality. Even more astonishing was the sudden silence that befell the two ships' companies as they prepared, the one to attack, the other to defend. It lasted perhaps no more than ten seconds, yet the peace seemed somehow endless. Until that is, it too dissolved into a bedlam of shouting and cursing, of whooping and grunting, of killing and dying. Blades and arms jarred together and the deck became slippery with blood. Drinkwater had lost his hat and his single epaulette had been shot from his left shoulder. It was he who had ended the silence, ordering Frey's brass carronade to sweep the enemy waist from its commanding position at the hance. He had pushed the boy roughly aside as he placed his foot on the slide to repel the first Frenchman, a young officer whose zeal placed himself neatly upon the point of Drinkwater's sword.

Simultaneously Drinkwater discharged his pistol into the face of another Frenchman then, disengaging his hanger, cut right, at the cheek of a man lowering a pike at Mount.

‘Obliged, sir,' yelled Mount as he half-turned and shrugged a man off his shoulder who had tried leaping down from the enemy's mizen rigging. The smoke began to clear and Drinkwater was suddenly face to face with a man he knew instinctively was the enemy commander. Drinkwater fell back a step as the small dark bearded figure leapt through the smoke to
Melusine
's deck. It was a stupid, quixotic thing to do. The man did not square up with a sword. He levelled a pistol and Drinkwater half-shielded his face as Tregembo hacked sideways with a tomahawk. The Frenchman was too quick. The pistol jerked round and was fired at Tregembo. Drinkwater saw blood on the old
Cornishman's face and lunged savagely. The French captain jumped back, turned and leapt on the rail. Drinkwater's hanger caught him in the thigh. A marine's bayonet appeared and the French Commander leapt back to his own deck. Drinkwater lost sight of him. He found himself suddenly assailed from the left and looked down into the waist. The defenders were bowed back as a press of Frenchmen poured across.

‘Mr Comley, your whistle!' Drinkwater roared.

He had no idea where Comley was but the whistle's piercing blast cut through the air above the yelling mob and Drinkwater was pleased to see the Melusines give way; he skipped to the skylight.

‘Now, Bourne, now, by God!'

A retreating marine knocked into him. The man's eyes were dulled with madness. Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy had the larboard carronade lanyard in his hand.

‘Fire, Mr Frey!' The boy obeyed.

Drinkwater saw at least one Melusine taken in the back, but there seemed a hiatus in the waist. Most of his men had disengaged and skipped back two or three paces. The marines were drawn up in a rough line through which Bourne's black-faced party suddenly appeared, passing through the intervals, each armed with pike or tomahawk. Bourne at their head held a boarding axe and a pistol. The hiatus was over. The bewildered Frenchmen were suddenly hard-pressed. Drinkwater turned to Comley.

‘Let fall the fore course, Mr Comley!'

The bosun staggered forward. ‘Mr Frey!'

‘Sir?'

‘Reload that thing and get a shot into the enemy waist from there.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Slowly the Melusines were recovering their guns. There were dead and wounded men everywhere and the decks were red with their blood. Drinkwater followed Bourne down into the waist, joining Mount's marines as they bayoneted retreating Frenchmen. The quarterdeck was naked. If the French took advantage of that they might yet lose the ship. Drinkwater turned back. Two or three of the enemy were preparing to leap across. He shot one with his second pistol and the other two were suddenly confronting him. They looked like officers and both had drawn swords. They attacked at once.

Drinkwater parried crudely and felt a prick in his right leg. He felt that his hour had come but smote hard upon the blade that threatened his life. Both his and his assailant's blades snapped in the
cold air and they stood, suddenly foolish. Drinkwater's second attacker had been beaten back by a whooping Quilhampton who had shipped his hook, caught the man's sword with it and twisted it from his grip. With his right he was hacking down at the man's raised arm as he endeavoured to protect his head. The tomahawk bit repeatedly into the officer's elbow.

‘Quarter, give quarter, Mr Q!'

Drinkwater's own opponent was proffering his broken sword, hilt first as Tregembo, his cheek, hanging down like a bloody spaniel's ear, the teeth in his lower jaw bared to the molars, pinned him against the rail.

Drinkwater was aware of the hull of the enemy drawing slowly astern as the foresail pulled
Melusine
clear. The French began to retreat to orders screamed from her deck and the two ships drifted apart. As they did so the enemy swung her stern towards the retiring
Melusine
. Drinkwater could see his opponent's name:
Requin
, he read.

Drinkwater bent over the table and pointed at the sketch he had drawn. The cabin was crowded. With the exception of Mr Rispin, who had been wounded, and Mr Gorton, who had the deck, every officer, commissioned and warrant, was in the room, listening to Drinkwater's intentions, offering advice on technical points and assisting in the planning of the rigging of a jury rudder.

For eight hours
Melusine
had run dead before the wind under a squared fore course which was occasionally clewed up to avoid too heavy a crash as she drove helplessly through the ice. There was no way they could avoid this treatment to the ship. His own cuts and scratches he had dressed himself, the wound in his thigh no more than an ugly gash. Since the action Drinkwater had had Singleton question Meetuck. It had been a long process which Singleton, exhausted after four hours of surgery, appalled by the carnage after the fighting and strongly disapproving of the whole profession of arms, had accomplished only with difficulty. But he had turned at last to Drinkwater with the information he wanted.

‘Yes, he says there are places from which the ice has departed at this season and which our big
kayak
can come close to.'

But Drinkwater could not hope to close a strange coast without a rudder. In order to refit his ship with a rudder capable of standing the strain of a passage back to Britain he had to have one capable of allowing him to close the coast of Greenland. It was this paradox that he was engaged in resolving.

He straightened up from the table. ‘Very well, gentlemen. If there are no further questions we will begin. Mr Hill, would you have the fore course taken in and we will unrig the mizen topmast without delay.'

There was a buzz of conversation as the officers filed out of the cabin. Drinkwater watched them go then leaned again over the plan. How long would it take them? Six hours? Ten? Twelve? And still the masthead lookout reported the
Requin
in sight to the east-north-east. He wondered what damage they had really inflicted on her. How seriously had her commander been wounded? Would his wound deter him, or goad him to resume the pursuit? The action had ceased by a kind of mutual consent. Each party had inflicted upon the other a measure of damage. He was certain the
Requin
was a letter-of-marque. It would be an enormous feather in the cap of a corsair captain to bring in a sloop of the Royal Navy, particularly one that was a former French corvette. First Consul Bonaparte might be expected to find high praise and honours for so successful a practitioner of
la guerre de course
. But his owners might not be pleased if it was at the expense of extensive damage to their ship, or too heavy a loss amongst their men. Privateering was essentially a profit-making enterprise. The
Requin
had clearly been built on frigate lines intended to deceive unwary merchantmen entering the Soundings. Certainly, ruminated Drinkwater, it argued that her owners had not spared expense in her fitting-out.

He sighed, hearing overhead the first thumps and shouts where the men began the task of rigging the jury rudder.

Sending down the mizen topmast was a matter of comparative simplicity. A standard task which the men might be relied upon to carry out in a routine manner.
Melusine
lay stationary, rolling easily upon a sea dotted with floes, but comparatively open. After an hour's labour the topmast lay fore and aft on the quarterdeck and was being stripped of its unwanted fittings. The topgallant mast was removed from it, but the cross-trees were left and the upper end of the topmast itself was rested on the taffrail. It was lashed there until the carpenter's mate had adzed a notch in the handsome carving. Meanwhile the carpenter had begun to build up a rudder blade by raising a vertical plane on the after side of the mast, coach-bolting each baulk of timber to its neighbour. In the waist the forge was hoisted up and a number of boarding pikes heated up to be beaten into bars with which to bind the rudder blade.