The Flying Squadron (8 page)

Moncrieff shook his head. ‘It wouldn't be the same ‚sir.'

‘Perhaps not, but . . .'

‘Thank you, no, sir. It wouldn't be the same.'

‘Very well.'

The first marine stepped forward, raised his musket and fired. The snap of the lock and spurt of powder-smoke at the gun's breech transmitted itself to a short, yellow-tipped cough from the muzzle. They stared upwards at the dangling bottle. It spun from the passing wind of the ball, but it remained infuriatingly intact.

‘Next!' commanded Moncrieff, superseding Hudson in his anxiety to obtain a hit.

Drinkwater was looking up at the third or fourth shot when Metcalfe reappeared on deck. It was only when these failed and he said in a loud and truculent voice, ‘Haven't you succeeded yet?' that Drinkwater saw he was carrying a musket, presumably from the arms rack outside the wardroom.

‘With your permission, sir?' he addressed Drinkwater, his expression arch and vaguely offensive.

‘Do you ask Moncrieff, Mr Metcalfe.'

‘Well, Moncrieff, will you let a fellow have a pot-shot?'

Moncrieff visibly bit off a retort. He had himself been contemplating a shot, but resisted the impulse, for to have missed would have been more irritating and, in any case, the object of the exercise was to train the men. Their shooting had been damned close for Tower muskets with a three-quarter-inch bore and balls whose casting was often more a matter of luck than precision. Let Metcalfe have a shot and damn him. He would be devilish lucky to hit the damned bottle and if he made a fool of himself, then so much the better! He nodded.

Metcalfe walked confidently to the rail, set the musket against his shoulder and raised the barrel. The bottle swung with the wind of the ball's passage and the officers and marines watching let out a hoot of triumph, for he had missed. They were all still laughing at Metcalfe's pride preceding his humiliation, when a second discharge followed. The bottle shattered, its jagged neck left at the boom-end.

Even as a suspicion crossed Drinkwater's mind, the certainty of it had been realized by Moncrieff who was already striding across the deck.

‘Let me see that fire-lock,' he cried.

‘It ain't a Brown Bess, for sure,' Vansittart opined stridently, moving forward with the others to discover by what malpractice Metcalfe had cheated them.

The speed and accuracy of the second shot had raised all their suspicions. Metcalfe was surrounded by the officers and Drinkwater heard the accusations rain on the first lieutenant.

‘It's a damned
rifle
 . . .'

‘That's a Chaumette breech, damn it . . .'

‘Let me see . . . the devil! 'Tis a Ferguson rifle! Where the deuce d'you get this, Metcalfe?' Metcalfe had surrendered the gleaming weapon to their scrutiny and Moncrieff now held it. The question silenced their mild and curious outrage and they stood in a circle, staring at the first lieutenant. A feeling of premonition crept over
Drinkwater as he watched these antics, marking the distastefully smug expression on the face of his second-incommand.

He heard Metcalfe utter the words ‘a gift from Captain Warburton', and the mention of his predecessor confirmed his hunch.

‘Sergeant Hudson,' he called, suddenly bestirring himself, and the crack of his voice stilled the curious officers examining the rifle.

‘Sah!' Hudson was ramrod stiff, his body an admonition to the levity on the quarterdeck.

‘There are a dozen or more bottles yet to be shivered. Another round for each of your men and try again.'

‘Yes, sah!'

Recalled to his duty, Moncrieff gave back the rifle and bustled to muster his men again. The officers broke up, some still admiring the Ferguson rifle in Metcalfe's hands, others waiting and watching the marines, others wearied of the sport now the first bottle had been dispatched.

Drinkwater went below. As he reached his cabin door he growled to the marine sentry, ‘Pass the word for my servant.' A minute later Mullender appeared.

‘Mullender, you recollect when we were in the Pacific I had a gun, a rifle . . .'

Patiently Drinkwater awaited the slow workings of Mullender's memory.

‘Aye, sir, I do. You fetched it back one day from the Californio shore,' Mullender said slowly, his brow furrowed with concentration.

‘Yes, exactly. What did we do with it?'

‘Well, sir,' Mullender began, stepping forward and wiping his hands on his apron, ‘we stowed it in the settee locker, but . . .'

Drinkwater had the squabbed cushion beneath the stern windows off in a trice, long before Mullender could complete his explanation.

‘But after you left the ship, sir, in a hurry like you did, sir, and we heard you wasn't to be coming back, sir, well, that's what we was told at the time and then Captain Warburton and his own man came and I was sent forward, sir . . .'

The stern locker was empty, at least of the oiled cloth package Drinkwater now clearly remembered laying there for safe-keeping. He had forgotten all about the rifle, assuming it was lost along with his journals and the polar bearskin he had left in Mr Quilhampton's safe-keeping. When Quilhampton had lost the gun-brig
Tracker
 . . .

Above their heads the bangs of the marines' discharges were suddenly followed by a cheer: a second bottle had been hit!

‘It was in here, wasn't it, Mullender? You don't recall it being removed when Mr Quilhampton took my personal effects ashore?'

‘No, sir,' Mullender hung his head miserably. ‘I forgot it, sir, when I packed, like, 'twas in such a hurry and Mr Quilhampton was bursting to get ashore . . .'

‘It doesn't matter, Mullender,' Drinkwater said, leaving the puzzled steward staring after him as he took the quarterdeck ladder two at a time. Metcalfe was still on deck, the Ferguson rifle held in the crook of his arm. Drinkwater crossed the deck and confronted Metcalfe.

‘That was a capital shot, Mr Metcalfe,' Drinkwater said, ‘may I see your gun?'

He knew instantly he had seen the rifle before. It had once belonged to a bearded American mountain-man, a man who spent his life wandering across the vast spaces of North America and who had been shot dead at Drinkwater's feet. ‘Captain Mack', he had been called, and the long-barrelled Ferguson rifle had been in his possession since he had captured it from a British officer at the Battle of King's Mountain when the gun's inventor himself suffered defeat at the hands of the American rebels. Odd how things turned out.

‘If you turn the trigger guard . . .'

‘Yes, I know.' Drinkwater dropped the guard, exposing the breech opening that facilitated the quick loading which had so impressed them all.

‘The rifling makes the shot fly true,' Metcalfe tried again, and again Drinkwater quietly said, ‘Yes, I know.' In addition to the rifle, Captain Mack had left half a dozen gold nuggets and with the proceeds of their sale, Captain
Drinkwater had purchased Gantley Hall.
*

‘I did not know you were so good a shot, Mr Metcalfe,' he said, handing back the rifle. ‘It's a fine piece.'

Metcalfe grinned complacently. ‘That is why Captain Warburton kindly presented me with it,' he explained.

‘And where did Captain Warburton obtain it?' Drinkwater asked.

‘I believe he inherited it, sir.'

‘Did he now?'

Above their heads there was the sound of shattering glass and a thin cheer went up from the marines still at their target practice.

*
See
In Distant Waters
.

The last of the daylight faded in the west; ahead the sky seemed pallid with foreboding, Drinkwater thought, drawing his cloak the tighter around him and shifting his attention to the upper yards. There would be a strengthening of the wind before morning.

‘Very well, Mr Gordon. You may shorten down. Clew up the main course and let us have the t'garn's off her!'

‘Main clew garnets, there! Look lively! Stand by to raise main tacks and sheets!'

A bank of clouds gathered darkly against the vanishing day. The twilight of sunset was always the most poignant hour of the seaman's day and, just as the small hours of the middle watch endowed trivial matters with a terrible gravity, this crepuscular hour invested thoughts with sombre shadows.

What was it, Drinkwater thought, that so troubled him? Did this daily marking of time punctuate the passage of his life? Or was it a gale he feared, rolling towards them from the vicinity of Cape Hatteras, the disaffected mood of his officers, or the poor quality of his crew? Once he would have striven with every fibre of his being to lick them into shape; this evening he felt the task beyond him. He was tired, too old for this young man's game. He should not have come back to sea, but quietly farmed his hundred acres, visited the Woodbridge horse fair and sought a pocket borough.

Damn it, he was not old! He could ascend the rigging
with the agility of the topmen now running up to douse the flogging topgallants as they thundered in their buntlines. There were men up there far older than himself!

No, he was disturbed by the vague shadow of a new war, for he sensed it as inevitable as much as it was incomprehensible. No matter the
pros
and
contras
of diplomacy adduced by Vansittart; no matter the crude claims and counter-claims advanced by his fire-brand officers, the fact of a war between the United States and Great Britain being in the interests of neither country was obvious. Only Napoleon Bonaparte could profit. Much might be laid at the door of
his
agents in fomenting the suspicion existing between London and Washington.

Despite these considerations, it piqued him to think he had been placed back in command of
Patrician
precisely because he was ageing. The Ministry wanted no hothead frigate captain with only a score of summers to his credit hanging off the Virginia capes, landing a diplomatic messenger on the one hand and impressing American seamen from American ships on the other. He ought to be flattered, he thought, an ironic and private smile twitching the corners of his mouth. He detested the new breed of sea-officer nurtured on victory and assumptions of invincibility. They had never tasted the bitterness of bloody defeat any more than many of them had participated in a victorious action. This current presumption of superiority was a dangerous delusion, but he had heard it expressed enough while he had been ashore in Plymouth. Thank heaven his own officers seemed relatively free of it.

Shortened down, the frigate rode easier, still standing doggedly to windward. Eight bells struck as the watch changed, and in the gathering darkness Drinkwater saw Gordon hand over to Frey. He caught the simultaneous glance of both their heads and the faint blur of their faces as they looked in his direction. He remembered so well the compound of fear and respect he had felt for most of his own commanders, all of them men with feet of clay; old Hope of the
Cyclops
, Griffiths of the
Kestrel
and the
Hellebore
.

Christ, he was morbid! Was this an onset of the blue devils? It was time to go below. Vansittart had sensibly
taken to his cot the moment the weather livened up, now he would do the same. The gale would arrive by dawn, time enough to worry then. For the nonce he could drown his megrims in sleep.

And yet he lingered on, his shoulder braced against the black hemp shrouds that rose to the mizen top, feeling the faint vibration of their tension as
Patrician
harnessed the power of the wind and drove her twelve hundred tons into its teeth.

What an odd thing a ship was, he thought, curious in its component parts: fifteen hundred oaks, several score of pine and spruce trees, tons of iron and copper, miles of hemp and coir, tar, flax and cotton. Full of water and stores to support its living muscles and brains which now in part huddled about the deck and in part slung their hammocks in the corporate misery of the berth deck. Men dreaming of homes, of wives, lovers, children; young men dreaming of prize money, old men dreaming of death. Men troubled by lust or infirmities, men scheming or men hating. Men confined by the power confided by Almighty God in the Sovereign Prince King George III, mad by reputation, puissant by the force of the twin batteries of cannon
Patrician
and a thousand ships like her bore on every ocean of the globe.

And he, Nathaniel Drinkwater, post-captain in His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy, directed this arm of policy, and took Henry St John Vansittart to
pow-wow
in the lodges of the Yankees in the vain hope of averting a war! Would His Majesty's ministers concede the real point of American objection and lift the ordinances against American trade? Or would the greater preoccupations, the maintaining of a naval blockade of Europe and the supply of a British, a Portuguese
and
a Spanish army in the Iberian peninsula, blind them to the dangers inherent in failing to appease the Americans. And if they did comply with Washington's demands, would the Americans be content to the extent of suppressing their desire for Canada?