The Flying Squadron (29 page)

‘
Hasty
?'

‘One of 'em perhaps, sir.'

The old sensation of excitement and anxiety wormed in Drinkwater's gut. They had nothing much to fear from the brig, he thought, any more than the brig had to fear from the schooner she was so trustingly running down towards. Unmistakably Yankee in design, the American ensign at her peak and approaching from the direction of Baltimore, the
Sprite
could be nothing other than a privateer putting to sea. He looked along the waist. The gunners crouched at their pieces, waiting.

‘We've forgotten something,' Drinkwater said sharply. ‘Have your men drop the fore topm'st stays'l. Contrive to have it hang over the starboard rail and cover our trail boards. Have the men fuss about up there, as though dissatisfied with something. Those men yonder may smell a rat if they know there's no
sprite
out of Baltimore or the Chesapeake.'

With a sharp intake of breath, Sundercombe hurried off. He had large yellow teeth, like an old horse, thought Drinkwater. He suddenly craved the catharsis of action,
knowing that in a few moments he would open fire on the defenceless ship. What else was there for him to do? He was a King's officer, bound by his duty. They were all shackled, one way or another, making a nonsense of notions of liberty.

How could a man be free? He was tied to a trade, to a master, to his family, to his land, to his throne if one chased the argument to its summit. Even poor Thurston, exponent of freedom though he was, had been chained to his beliefs, governed to excess by his obsession with democracy. Everything everywhere was either passive in equilibrium, or else active in collision, in the process of transition ending in balance and inertia. In that state of grace men called natural order, equilibrium reigned; the affairs of men were otherwise and ran, for the most part, contrary to natural order. Shocking though it had been at the hand of a maniac, Thurston's murder was comprehensible if seen as a drawing upon himself, the libertarian extremist, the pistol ball of an extreme agent of repression.

In such a world what was a reasonable man to do? What he was doing now, Drinkwater concluded as he watched an officer mount the brig's quarter rail, clinging to the larboard gaff vang. He must hasten the end of this long, wearisome war. Duty ruled his existence and providence decided the outcome of his acts.

And what of Christian charity? What of compassion, his conscience whispered? He provided for his family; he was not unkind to his friends; he had done his best in those circumstances where his decisions impinged upon the lives of others; he had taken in those lame ducks whose existence depended upon his charity . . .

‘Schooner, 'hoy!'

There was a flurry of activity on the deck of the brig as she drew rapidly closer. Sundercombe came aft again, wandering with a studied casualness and impressing Drinkwater with his coolness. Forward, the staysail flapped over the
Sprite
's name.

‘Schooner 'hoy? What ship?'

Drinkwater drew himself up, doffed his hat and waved. ‘Tender to the United States ship
Stingray
, out of the
Washington Navy Yard,' he hailed.

The brig was a cable distant, trimming her yards as she braced round to run parallel with the schooner.

‘Have you had word? There's a British frigate cruising off the capes.'

‘Must be
Hasty,'
a perplexed Sundercombe murmured.

‘No,' Drinkwater called back. What the devil had induced Tyrell to douse French colours? ‘When was she last sighted?'

‘Day before yesterday. He took a Norfolk ship prize.'

‘The hell he did!' Drinkwater shouted back with unfeigned surprise. ‘He can't have seen those two sails to the south,' he muttered in an aside to Sundercombe.

‘He's too big for you to take on, Cap'n,' the American continued as the two vessels surged alongside, their crews staring at one another, the
Sprite's
gunners still crouching out of sight.

‘Where are you bound?' Drinkwater pressed.

‘The Delaware.'

‘I could give you an escort. We could divert the Britisher, hold him off while you got out. I heard there were some French ships in the offing,' Drinkwater drawled.

Drinkwater watched the American officer throw a remark behind him then he nodded. ‘I calculate you're correct, Cap'n, and we'd be mightily obliged.'

‘I'll take station on your starboard quarter then. Can you make a little more sail?'

‘Sure, and thanks.'

‘My pleasure.' Drinkwater turned his attention inboard. ‘I think we've hooked him, Mr Sundercombe. Keep your gunners well down. Let him draw ahead and then have us range up on his weather side.'

‘Ease the foresheet, there,' Sundercombe growled, clearly not trusting himself to imitate an American accent like Drinkwater. The big gaff sail flogged and the schooner lost some way as the brig's crew raced aloft to impress the navy men and shook out their royals. Sundercombe went aft and lent his weight to the helmsman.
sprite
luffed under the brig's stern and then, with the foresheet retrimmed, slowly overhauled her victim on her starboard side.

‘Get your larboard guns ready,' Drinkwater said, aware
the Americans could not hear him but anxious lest they might realize they had been deceived.

He thought he detected some such appreciation, someone pointing at them and drawing the attention of the officer he had seen on the brig's rail to something. He realized with a spurt of irritation that he had forgotten their name exposed on the larboard bow.

The
Sprite
was fast overhauling the brig and Drinkwater knew he dared delay no longer if, as the inconvenient discomfort of his conscience prompted, he was to avoid excessive bloodshed.

‘Ensign, Caldecott! Run out your guns, Mr Sunder-combe!

They could not fail to see now. The jerky lowering of the American colours and the hand-over-hand ascent of the white ensign brought a howl of rage from the brig, a howl quite audible above the trundle of the 6-pounder carriages over the
Sprite's
pine decks.

‘Strike, sir, or I'll open fire!' Drinkwater hailed.

‘God damn you to hell!' came a defiant roar and Drinkwater nodded. The three 6-pounders barked in a ragged broadside. It was point-blank range; even at the maximum elevation originally intended to cripple the brig's rigging and with the schooner heeling to the breeze, the trajectories of the shot could not avoid hitting the brig's rail. What appeared like a burst of lethal splinters exploded over the brig's deck. A moment later, as the gun-captains' hands went up in signal of their readiness to fire again, the American flag came down.

An hour later the brig
Louise
of Norfolk, Virginia, Captain Samuel Bethnal, Master, had been fired. Bethnal and his people hoisted the lugsail of the red cutter lately belonging to His Britannic Majesty's frigate
Patrician
and miserably set course to the south-west and the coast of Virginia. To the east the horizon was broken only by the grey smudges of a pair of British frigates, and the twin jags of a schooner's sails as she slipped over the rim of the world and left the coast of America astern.

‘I don't see the sense in it myself,' said Wyatt, burying his nose in a tankard and bracing himself as the
Patrician
shouldered her way through a swell. ‘It ain't logical,' he added, surfacing briefly to deliver his final opinion on Captain Drinkwater's conduct in the dank haven of the wardroom.

‘I suppose the Commodore has his reasons,' offered Pym with a detached and largely disinterested loyalty.

‘I'm sure he has,' Simpson, the chaplain, said cautiously, then affirming, ‘of course he has,' with an air of conviction, before destroying the effect by appending in a far from certain tone of voice: ‘in fact I'm certain of it.'

Slowly Wyatt raised his face from the tankard. Rum ran from his slack mouth, adding gloss to an already greasy complexion. ‘You don't know what you're talking about,' he mouthed with utter contempt.

‘Nevertheless, Mr Wyatt,' the hitherto silent Frey piped up, ‘I agree with Simpson and the surgeon.'

Wyatt turned his red eyes on the junior lieutenant. ‘An' you know bugger all,' he said offensively.

Frey was about to leap to his feet when he felt Simpson's restraining hand on his sleeve. ‘Hold hard, young man, he doesn't know what he's saying.'

‘Don't know what I'm saying, d'you say? Is that what you said, you God-bothering bastard?' Wyatt rose unsteadily to his feet, instinctively bracing himself against
Patrician's
motion. ‘With hundreds of bloody privateers shipping out of every creek and runnel on the coast of North America, we, we,' Wyatt slammed his now empty tankard on the table top with a dull, emphatic thud, ‘we go waltzing off into the wide Atlantic with the strongest frigate squadron south of Halifax . . .'

‘We're going to rendezvous with the homeward Indiamen . . .' Frey began, but was choked in mid-sentence.

‘Indiamen be buggered. If we were going to do that why did we go all the way to America?'

‘Why
did
we go to America then, Wyatt?' Pym asked provocatively.

Wyatt swung a pitying look on Pym. ‘So he', Wyatt gestured a thumb at the deck above, ‘could lay with his lady love again.'

‘Mr Wyatt, hold your tongue!' Frey snapped, leaping to his feet and this time avoiding Simpson's tardy hand.

‘Ah, be buggered,' Wyatt sneered, ‘Caldecott saw the woman; half naked she was, in her shift . . .'

‘Are you drunk again, Mr Wyatt?'

Quilhampton stood just inside the doorway, his one hand grasping a stanchion. The creaking of the ship and the gloom of the day had allowed him to enter unobserved. Wyatt swung ponderously on his accuser as the other officers heaved a sigh of collective relief. As the frigate lurched and rolled to leeward, the master lost his already unsteady balance and reached for the back of his chair which he only succeeded in knocking over. The motion of the frigate accelerated their fall and Wyatt stretched full length on the deck. He made no move to recover himself and for a long, expectant moment no one in the wardroom moved. Then a snore broke what passed for silence between decks.

‘I see you are,' said Quilhampton drily. Looking round the table, he continued, ‘Let us avoid complete dishonour, gentlemen, and get the old soak into his cot without the benefit of the messman.'

They rallied round the one-armed lieutenant and, shuffling awkwardly with the dead weight of the big man between them, squeezed into his cabin and manhandled Wyatt into his swinging cot.

Catching their breath they regarded their late burden for a moment.

‘Sad when you see drink consume an otherwise able man, ain't it?' Quilhampton asked in a general way. ‘I presume he was running the Captain down again.'

‘Yes,' Frey said, ‘like Metcalfe used to, and in a particularly personal manner, too.'

‘It was disgraceful,' said Simpson.

‘This story about the woman again, was it?' asked Quilhampton.

‘Indeed it was, Mr Q,' said Simpson.

‘Well, gentlemen, let me tell you something,' Quilhampton said, herding them back into the common area of the wardroom where they resumed their places at the battered table. ‘I have been acquainted with Captain Drink-water for many years and in that time I have not known him to act improperly. Moreover, I do know him to have
the confidence of government, and that if he claims this mysterious woman was an agent, or a spy, then that is very likely what she was. Now I think we can cease speculatin' on the matter and assume the Captain knows what he is doin', eh?' Quilhampton looked round the table as Moncrieff came in.

‘Don't you think, Mr Q,' Simpson said, his neat, rosebud mouth pursed primly, ‘that you should properly refer to Drinkwater as the Commodore?'

‘I daresay I should, Mr Simpson,' Quilhampton said laconically, helping himself to a biscuit, ‘what is it, Moncrieff?'

‘I am a messenger, James. The Captain, I beg your pardon, Mr Simpson, the Commodore,' Moncrieff said, with ironic emphasis, desires a word with you.'

Quilhampton brushed his coat, rose and bowed to the company. ‘Gentlemen, excuse me . . .'

‘I suppose they think I'm mad in the wardroom?' Drink-water said flatly, not expecting contradiction. He remained bent over the chart as Quilhampton replied, ‘Something like that, sir.'

Drinkwater looked up at his first lieutenant. ‘You're damnably cheerful.'

‘The weather's to my taste, sir.'

‘You're perverse, James.'

‘My wife says something similar, sir.' They grinned at each other.

‘What is it they say?' Drinkwater asked, now he had Quilhampton's full attention. He saw Quilhampton drop his eyes, saw the evasive, non-committal shrug and listened to the half-truth.

‘Oh, that damned fool Wyatt thinks we should stay on the American coast. I've tried to explain, but . . .'

Again the shrug and then Quilhampton looked up and caught a bleak look of utter loneliness on Drinkwater's face, a look which vanished as Drinkwater recovered himself, cast adrift his abstracted train of thought and fixed his eyes upon his friend.

‘I'll admit to it being a long shot, James; perhaps a
very
long shot, and certainly a risky one. I appreciate too, that
twenty-two days out of the Chesapeake with nothing to our account beyond a fired brig don't amount to much but . . .'

Quilhampton watched now, saw the inward glance take ignition from the conviction lurking somewhere inside this man he respected and loved, but could never understand.

‘You have explained to me, sir, at least in part, but may I presume?'

‘Of course.'

‘We are on the defensive now. Even our blockading squadrons keep watch and ward off the French ports as the first line of defence against invasion. To some extent I share Wyatt's misgivings. We are a long way from home. Our present passage to the South Atlantic exposes our rear when every ship should be sealing home waters against the enemy. That is where, I have heard you yourself say, American privateers struck hardest during the last war. I fear, sir, for what may happen if you have miscalculated . . .'