Baltic Mission (14 page)

Quilhampton hurried up. ‘Come, sir,' he said civilly to the Swede, ‘I know you have a truce with the French, but regrettably we do not. I am sure you understand that we mean no offence to yourself.'

The Swedish officer looked down at his sleeve. The point of the iron hook that this tall, gangling English officer wore in the place of a left hand, had caught in the fabric of his uniform. It was covered in blood.

Shrugging his shoulders he allowed himself to be led away with as much dignity as he could muster. Quilhampton had hardly seen the intruder into his boat than another crisis occurred. On the rampart a sudden shout from Mount brought both the first lieutenant and Quilhampton running across the compound. Flinging themselves down on the earth beside him, they followed the marine officer's pointing finger.

Jogging towards them, their pennons gay in the sunshine, was a squadron of lancers.

‘Jesus Christ!' whispered Rogers and a thrill of pure fear ran through the three men. The thought of being speared by one of those lances was hideous.

‘I think it's time for a tactical withdrawal . . .'

‘Get your men back to the boats to cover us, Mount,' snapped Rogers.

‘I can keep some here and pick a few of those fellows off . . .'

‘Do as you're fucking well told!'

‘Very well.'

‘Mr Q, get the men back in the boats, load up the carronade, tell Fraser . . . where the hell is he?'

‘I don't know but I'll find him.'

Rogers ran across the open space. ‘Hey, Walmsley, get that last powder keg and lay a trail back towards the boats. Make sure no stupid turd runs in it . . .'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Lord Walmsley picked up a keg and knocked out the bung. He bent over and scuttered backwards, spreading a liberal trail across the earth. ‘Mind your confounded feet, damn you!' he shouted at some marines.

‘Into the boats, you men!' Quilhampton was shouting at the seamen. ‘Get to your oars!'

‘They're coming!' Mount was yelling, running back from the rampart. ‘One volley, sergeant,' he called, ‘then tumble into the boats as quick as you can!'

‘Sah!' Sergeant Blixoe lined his men up. ‘Steady now, lads. Take partiklar aim and shoot the lubbers' horses in the chest . . . make ready . . .'

The boats were a confusion of legs and oar looms as men tried to sort themselves out. They were stumbling on the wounded whose shrieks and curses lent a nightmare panic to the scene. Somehow the word had spread that they were about to be ridden down by lancers. Round shot and cutlass slashes were one thing. Lances and horses quite another.

Walmsley's powder trail had stopped several yards short of the quay. Rogers stood over him as he tipped the last of the powder out of the keg. ‘Get to the launch. Back it off the quay and point the carronade ashore. Leave your cutter alongside for me.' Rogers drew a pistol from his waistband and looked quickly round him. He could feel the earth shaking under the advancing hooves of the horses.

‘Get down, Rogers, let me fire over your head,' Mount was shouting at him.

‘Damn you, be silent! Fire and get your men in the boats.'

A wild and magnificent feeling swept over Rogers. He stood alone in the middle of the enclosed space. Behind him the boats were full of men and the edge of the quay was lined with Mount's marines, their muskets pointing at the end of the rampart where the little track wound round the battery's defences. All eyes were on him. The humiliation of his confinement, the long-standing and corrosive effects of disappointment and missed opportunity seemed to coalesce in one moment of sublime defiance. Like the men, action had given Lieutenant Rogers the means of defying the system whose injustices had tormented him in proportion to his rank. He was filled with a hysterical disregard for the danger he was in.

The cavalry swept into the battery. Confined to a narrow front of six or seven horses they spread out, their red and white lance pennons
lowering. They were in green, wearing tall crested brass helmets, and their horses snorted and plunged as they advanced across the compound.

‘Fire!' yelled Mount and then waved his men backwards. A cutter pushed off, so did the barge.

‘Come on, sir!' yelled Quilhampton.

Rogers turned. ‘Fire that boat gun!' he roared as though bawling out the topmen in a gale. The lancers came on, only yards separating them from Rogers. Mount's men had only succeeded in knocking over one horse, so distracted had they been by the defiant spectacle of Lieutenant Rogers.

‘What is the silly bastard
doing?'
agonised Mount as he turned and watched from the safety of a boat.

‘Bein' a fuckin' hero, sir,' a man muttered.

‘Gettin' 'is name fair an' square in the Gazette,' said another, but Mount ignored them.

In the launch the gunner's mate jerked the lanyard of the carro-nade. Full of men aft and backed off from the quay, the gun took better effect than it had when they had made their approach. The canister tore through the cavalry and threw back three lancers who were within feet of Rogers.

‘It's bloody unbelievable,' muttered Mount, half in admiration of the madness being displayed by an apparently fearless Mr Rogers. As if knowing the three men who most nearly threatened his life would be blown away by the shot from the carronade, Rogers bent over the pile of powder, levelled the cocked pistol and pulled the trigger. The spark landed on the powder, grew dim and then suddenly the powder trail took fire. There was a brief searing light but Rogers felt nothing from the burn on his hand. He stood for a second staring at the leaping flame and then seemed aware of the danger round him. He dodged the next lancer who was trying to rein in his horse as he approached the edge of the quay. Rogers ran for the cutter, bending low as the marines stood in the boats and fired over his head. Behind him the powder fired and sputtered and the horses jibbed at the demon under their hooves. There were shouts and plunging horses and then the launch carronade got off another shot. Rogers leapt for the cutter which backed swiftly off the quay.

The cheated cavalrymen were pulling their horses up at the edge of the water. An officer had jumped off his horse and was trying to stamp out the burning train. Some of his men had slung their lances and were levelling their carbines. The little sputter of flame could no
longer be seen. Perhaps it no longer threaded its way over that patch of beaten earth.

The shouts and popping of carbine and musket were suddenly eclipsed by the deafening roar which broke into several subsidiary explosions as limbers and carcases and powder kegs took fire. The redoubt was suddenly transformed into a lethal rocketing of wood, iron and flame among which horses reared in terror and men fell amid the stamping of hooves. Heavy axle-trees, wheels and spokes, even the massive barrels of the cannon themselves were hurled into the air. Pieces of shell-case whistled into the blue sky, then the boats were being showered by black debris which fell into the water alongside them with a hiss.

The boats were swinging into the channel now, the men settling into the rhythm of the long pull back to the ship. They swept past the Swedish gunsloop and Rogers stood and raised his hat in a gesture of arrogant and exaggerated courtesy.

‘Bye the bye,' he said to no one in particular as he sat down again, ‘did any of you fellows catch a glimpse of Stralsund?'

Drinkwater sat in his cabin in a happier frame of mind than he had enjoyed for weeks. Although the butcher's bill for the boat action was heavier than anticipated, there was no doubt that the attack had been a success. The real damage to Marshal Mortier's Army Corps was not great, but the unexpected destruction of a battery showed the long arm of the British Admiralty, and could not fail to have its effect upon the general morale of the French corps.

There had been a little necessary diplomacy at the protest they had received from a Swedish officer who had come on board as
Antigone
entered Sassnitz Bay; but it had been passed off easily enough with a glass or two. Most important to Drinkwater was the effect the action had had upon Rogers and the people. He had heard several versions of the affair and gathered that a sneaking admiration had been aroused for Rogers, on account of his coolness under attack. It was undoubtedly only a temporary lull in the hostility between the lower deck and the first lieutenant, but it was a lull nevertheless, and Drinkwater was relieved to see that Rogers himself seemed to have recovered some of his old self-possession.

But it was not merely the raising of the morale of his own ship's company that occasioned Drinkwater his present good humour. On their return to Sassnitz Bay and the Swedish fleet, they had found a flying squadron of British frigates. Supposing at first that he was to place himself under the orders of the senior captain, Drinkwater found to his delight that special orders awaited him. Taking the opportunity to send mails home, including a highly laudatory report on the affair before Stralsund, he had hurried back to
Antigone
to digest the import of his written instructions. It was clear that Horne of the
Pegasus
was somewhat jealous of Drinkwater's independence and had wished to include
Antigone
in his flying squadron.

‘You seem to enjoy a kind of privilege,' Horne had lisped. ‘I have to give you written orders of your own.' Reluctance was written plain on
the man's face and even discernible in the way he handed over the sealed package.

‘The forward berth ain't always the most pleasant,' Drinkwater replied, happy to escape from the constraints of serving under someone young enough to be his son. Horne would be a rear-admiral by the time he reached Drinkwater's age, but that was not Drink-water's concern at the moment; he was more interested in the other news newly arrived at Sassnitz Bay.

‘I heard one of your officers mention Dantzig when I came aboard,' he prompted.

‘Dantzig? Oh, damn me yes, the place has fallen to the French.'

It seemed inevitable that, failing a major Russian victory, the French would mop up the resistance in their rear. Making his excuses as early as he could, Drinkwater had returned to
Antigone
, set a course to the eastward and retired to his cabin to open the package Horne had given him. Slitting the fouled anchor seal of the Admiralty Office, he unfolded the papers and began to read.

His instructions from Mr Barrow, Second Secretary at the Admiralty, were a mere repeat of those he had left the Nore with. The same stock phrases:
You are requested and required to cruise against the enemy . . . to examine all vessels and in particular those of neutral nations . . . detaining those whose cargo is of advantage to the enemy
 . . . and so on. In short, there was nothing to suggest that he had earned Horne's envy or that his ‘independence' had much advantage to it. But appended to Mr Barrow's formal instructions was another letter, similarly sealed but not signed by the Admiralty's civil administrator; this document bore the scrawled and familiar name of the Director of the Secret Department. It was brief and undated, typical of the writer's economy of style when using plain English.

My dear Drinkwater
,

Until you are able to ascertain the outcome of military operations in East Prussia, you are to cruise to the eastward of the Gulf of Dantzig and inform London the instant you learn anything of significance. You should afford any assistance required by persons operating on the instructions of this Department
.

Yours &c
Dungarth

Drinkwater laid the letter down and turned his chair to stare through the stern windows and watch
Antigone
's furrowing wake, where the sea swirled green and white from under the frigate's stern.
He saw nothing of the gulls dipping in the marbled water; his mind was turned inwards, contemplating the full implication behind Dungarth's instruction, and it seemed that his independence was no coincidence. That last sentence, that he should afford assistance to persons operating on the instructions of Lord Dungarth's Secret Department, was a clear order. And both Dungarth and Drinkwater knew that one of those ‘persons' was Drinkwater's own brother, Edward. Drinkwater's frigate was cruising independently for reasons beyond the arbitrary processes of normal Admiralty planning. Dungarth knew that Drinkwater was the one post-captain on the Navy List who would take more than a passing interest in ‘persons operating on the instructions of this Department' in East Prussia, where the Tsar's armies were in the field.

Drinkwater sighed. Surely this was only a partial truth, and one that was engendered by his own long-held guilt over the whole affair of his brother. Colonel Wilson, whose presence in the area would be well known to Lord Dungarth, had given him almost identical advice, mentioning in particular a certain Mackenzie. Nevertheless that strange and fleeting feeling of presentiment could not be denied. Brief and passing though it was, it had the reality of one of those glimpses of the hungry gulls quartering their wake.