A King's Cutter

Chapter Ten The Apothecary

Short drew back his well-muscled arm then brought the cat down on the man's back. 'Seven!' called Jessup dispassionately.

The red weals that lay like angry cross hatching over the flesh were suppurating and blood began to ooze from the broken skin.

'Eight!'

Drinkwater could see the man's face in profile from where he stood by the starboard runner. Although he bit hard on the leather pad the victim's eyes glared forward, along the length of the gig across the transom of which he was spreadeagled.

'Nine!'

The inevitable had happened. The offender was the apothecary embarked from the Royal William and named Bolton. Bolton seemed unwilling or unable to make the best of his circumstances. He appeared to be a man penned up within a private hell that left him no rest. Appleby called him 'an human pustule, full of corrupt fluid and ripe for lancing'. He went about heedless of his surroundings to the point of apathy, tough enough to endure Short's abuse and starting without a word or apparent effect. What seemed to Short to be intransigence attracted all the bosun's mate's bullying fury. Short was unused to such stolid indifference and when violence failed he had recourse to crude innuendo. He found his barbs reached their mark. Ransacking every corner of his mind for human failings, he scoured the depths of every depravity, insensitive to the changing look of increasing desperation in Bolton's eyes. Pursued, Bolton ran until at last, flushed from cover, he turned at bay. Short had got there in the end over some clumsiness at gun drill, some trivial thing for which he had been waiting.

'Bolton! You crap-brained child-fucker…' And the rammer had swung round, driven into Short's guts with a screech of mortification from Bolton.

'Twelve!' Short was panting now, the bruise in his midriff paining him. Harris, the second bosun's mate, relieved him, taking the cat and running the tails through his left hand, squeezing out the blood and plasma. Harris spread his legs and drew back his arm.

'Thirteen!'

They were all on deck. Griffiths, Drinkwater and Traveller with their swords, the hands ranged in the waist, their faces dull, expressionless.

'Fourteen!'

Kestrel lay hove-to, her staysail aback. There had been no waiting for the punishment. They had only just secured the guns at which they had been exercising. In a cutter there were no bilboes and Griffiths ordered the flogging immediately.

'Fifteen!'

The sentence had been three dozen lashes. Already the man's back was a red and bloody mess. He was whimpering now. Broken. Drinkwater felt sickened. Although Griffiths was no tyrant and Nathaniel recognised the need to keep order, no amount of flogging would make a seaman out of Bolton. God alone knew what ailed the man, though Drinkwater had heard from the misshapen clerk on the receiving ship he had been sentenced for incest. But whatever madness or torment hounded him he had taken enough now. The punishment should be suspended and Drinkwater found himself staring at Griffiths, willing him to stop it.

'Sixteen!' A low, animal howl came from Bolton which Drinkwater knew would rise to a scream before the man lost consciousness. Whatever guilt lay on the man's soul he expiated it now, slowly succumbing to the rising pain of his opened back.

'Seventeen!'

'Belay there!' Griffiths's voice whipped out. A ripple of relief ran through the assembled people. 'That'll do, cut him down, pipe the watch below, Mr Jessup!'

Drinkwater saw Bolton stiffen as a bucket of sea water was thrown over his back. Then he fainted. Appleby came forward to attend him. Drinkwater turned away.

'Leggo weather staysail sheet, haul taut the lee!'

Was there a perceptible resentment in the way the order was obeyed? 'Lively now! 'Vast and belay!' He walked aft. Or was he too damned sensitive?

'Steer north by east.'

'Nor' by east it is, sir.'

Kestrel steadied on her course and made after the convoy.

She had not been a happy ship since she had left Portsmouth. Her officers were a discordant mixture of abrasive characters. Appleby's pompous superiority which suited the bantering atmosphere of a crack frigate's gunroom was out of place here. Even Drinkwater found him difficult at times, for age and bachelorhood had not moderated his tendency to moralise. Griffiths had withdrawn as Drinkwater had known he would and their former intimacy was in abeyance. Jessup and Traveller, old acquaintances of long standing and great experience, employed their combined talents to prick Appleby's self-esteem, while the two master's mates, Hill and Bulman, both promoted quartermasters, survived by laughing or scowling as occasion seemed to demand.

Drinkwater felt a sense of personal isolation and took refuge in his books and journal, maintaining a friendship with Appleby when the latter was amenable but quietly relieved that his tiny cabin allowed him an oasis of privacy. This disunity of the officers spilled forward to combine with a growing resentment among the men over lack of pay and for whom the small, wet cutter was a form of purgatory.

They had weathered the great gale of mid-November shortly after their arrival in the Downs and barely a fortnight later learned of the mutiny on the Culloden. There had been an exchange of knowing looks round Kestrel's cabin when Appleby had read the newspaper report, but the unreported facts sent a shiver of resentment through the crew.

The news that the authorities had agreed to favour the mutineers' petition without punishment had been followed by information that the law had exacted its terrible penalty. Imagination conjured a picture of the jerking bodies, run aloft by their own shipmates in all the awful guilt-sharing ceremonial of a naval execution while the marine drummers played the rafale and the picket trained their levelled muskets on the seaman. In the atmosphere prevalent aboard the cutter it was an image that lingered unbidden.

Griffiths looked aft over the transom and jolly boat in its stern davits. Above his head the ensign drooped like a rag but the morning, though chill, was fresh. A mood of mild enthusiasm infused Madoc Griffiths and he wondered if it was the effect of the man beside him. Drinkwater spoke with an old lilt in his voice, a tone that had been absent for some time now.

'I've given the matter a deal of thought, sir, and I reckon that it ain't unreasonable to bring Bolton aft as an additional messman. The mess is damned crowded, Merrick could do with some assistance and Short is still plotting against Bolton… pending your approval, of course, sir…'

Griffiths nodded. 'Very well, Mr Drinkwater, see to it. Glad I am that you are mindful of the hands. It is not always possible for a commander since he has other things to concern him, but it should be the prime consideration of his second. Tis a pity more do not follow your example.'

Drinkwater coughed with embarrassment. He was simply determined to do whatever lay in his power to ameliorate the condition of Bolton, the most abused and useless of Kestrel's company. Here the man might be induced to assist Appleby medicinally and give his mind something to work on beyond its own self-consuming preoccupation. And perhaps thereby Drinkwater might stem the rot that he instinctively felt was destroying the cohesion of them all.

'See to that at once, Mr Drinkwater, and when you have done so sway out both gigs, run the larboard broadside out and the starboard in as far as the breechings will permit. It's a grand day for scraping the weed from the waterline and there'll be no wind before nightfall.'

If the mood of his sailing master had lightened his heart Lieutenant Griffiths did not find that of his surgeon so enjoyable. He looked up at Appleby an hour later from a table split by sunny squares let in through the skylight while from overside the rasp of bass brushes attacked the weed.

'He's not yet fit to return to duty,' said Appleby cautiously.

'Who is not fit, Mr Appleby? Bolton is it?'

'Yes sir,' said Appleby, aware that Griffiths was being deliberately obtuse.

'The man I had flogged?'

'Yes sir. He took it badly. At least three of Short's stripes were low, one seems to have damaged the left kidney.' Griffiths's face was expressionless. 'There has been some internal haemorrhaging, passing out with the man's urine, he's weak and the fever persists.'

'So cosset him, doctor, until he's fit again.'

'Yes sir.' Appleby stood his ground.

'Is there something else?'

'Sir, I…' Perspiration stood like pearls on Appleby's forehead as he balanced himself against the increasing list induced by the gun trucks squealing overhead as they prepared to scrape the other side. 'I was sorry that you found it necessary to flog Bolton, sir, his state of mind concerns me. I had thought you a most humane officer…'

'Until now?' asked Griffiths sharply, his eyebrows knitting together in a ferocious expression made more terrifying by the colour mounting to his cheeks. Appleby's courage was tested and, though his chins quivered gently, he lowered his head in silent assent.

With an effort Griffiths mastered himself and rose slowly to his feet, expelling breath in a long, low whistle. He leaned forward resting himself on his hands.

'Mr Appleby, indiscipline is a most serious crime in a man of war, especially when striking a superior is concerned…' He held up a hand to stop Appleby's protest. 'Provocation is no mitigation. That too is in the nature of things. We live in a far from perfect world, Mr Appleby, a fact that you should by now have come to terms with. As commander I am not permitted the luxury of sympathising with the individual.' Griffiths looked significantly at Appleby. 'Even the well-intentioned may sometimes be misguided, Mr Appleby.' He paused, allowing the implication to sink in. The surgeon's mouth opened and then closed again, Griffiths went on.

'There is some deep unhappiness in Bolton. Ah, you are surprised I noticed, eh? Nevertheless I did,' Griffiths smiled wryly. 'And Short tripped the spring of some rare device in his brain. Well Short has a sore belly as a consequence, see, so some justice had been done. I appreciate your concern but, if Bolton is a rotten apple you must see Kestrel as little more than a barrel full of ripe ones.' Griffiths paused and, just as Appleby opened his mouth to speak, added 'I offer this explanation not to justify myself but out of respect for your intelligence.'

Appleby grunted. He knew Bolton's insubordination could not go unpunished but he felt the case justified a court-martial at a later date. Griffiths's summary justice had clashed with his professional opinion. By way of rebuke Griffiths added 'Mr Drinkwater has suggested that Bolton comes aft as an additional messman. I am sorry that the suggestion did not come from you.'

Griffiths watched Appleby leave the cabin. It was strange how two men could take alarm from the same cause and react so differently as a result. Or was it his own reactions that were so disparate? Prejudice and partiality played such a large part in the affairs of men it was impossible to say.

Christmas and the arrival of 1796 passed almost unnoticed by the crew of Kestrel. They had not been long left independent and a peremptory order to join Admiral MacBride in the Downs had put paid to their chasing in the Channel after the mauling they had received from the Étoile du Diable. Although they did not know it at the time the failure of Dungarth's department to locate the mysterious Capitaine Santhonax had brought him into worse odour with their Lordships than his remonstrances over Howe's failure to turn Brown's intelligence reports to good account in 1794. As a consequence Kestrel found herself employed on pedestrian duties. In company with the ship-sloop Atropos the cutter was assigned to convoy work. From the Thames to the Tyne and back again with two score or so of colliers, brigs and barques, all commanded by hard case Geordie masters with independent views was, as Nathaniel had predicted, boring work. It could be humiliating too. When Kestrel was ordered up to Leith Road to escort the crack passenger and mail smack to London with a cargo of gold, the packet master treated the occasion as a race. With a prime crew protected by press exemption and a reputation for smart passages, the smack proved a formidable opponent. She had a fuller hull than her escort and properly should have been beaten by the man o'war cutter. But Kestrel carried her mainsail away off Flamborough Head while the smack drove on and left her hull down astern of the packet. Had not the wind hauled to the south-east and Kestrel not been able to point harder by virtue of her new centre plates, they might never have seen their charge again. As it was they caught her by the Cockle Gatt and stormed through Yarmouth Roads neck and neck with the flood tide under them.

During the summer they had idled round the dispersed herring fleet in the North Sea on fishery protection. Sickened by a diet of herrings, all chance of action seemed to elude them. Only twice did they have to chase off marauders, both Dutch and neither very eager. The expected depredations of French corsairs never materialised and it was confidently asserted that a nation that subsisted on snails and frogs was unlikely to have the sense to favour herrings. In reality French privateers found richer pickings in the Channel.

The war was going badly for Britain. In January Admiral Christian's West Indies expedition was severely mauled by bad weather and dispersed. In February a Dutch squadron got out of the Texel and then, in late summer, Spain went over to the French camp in an uneasy alliance.

At the conclusion of the fishing season Kestrel was ordered to refit before the onset of winter, the weatherly cutters being better ships to keep the sea than larger, more vulnerable units of the fleet. Along with these orders came news that Sir Sydney Smith had been taken prisoner on a boat expedition.

It brought a measure of personal satisfaction to Harry Appleby.

Leaning on the rail Drinkwater stared across the muddy waters of the Medway, over the flat extreme of the Isle of Grain to the Nore lightvessel, a half smile on his face

'What the deuce are you grinning at, Nat?' Drinkwater's reverie was abruptly shattered by the portly bulk of Appleby.

'Nothing Harry, nothing.' He crackled the letter in his pocket.

'Thinking of Elizabeth no doubt.' Appleby looked sideways. 'Ah you are surprised our worthy commander is not the only person capable of divining others' thoughts,' he added with a trace of bitterness, 'and the symptoms of love have long been known. Oh, I know you think I'm good only for sawing off limbs and setting broken bones, but there's little enough of that to occupy me so that I am reduced to observing my fellows.'

'And what have you observed of late then?'

'Why, that you have received a letter from Elizabeth and will be looking for some furlough before we sail.'

'Is that all?' replied Drinkwater with mock disappointment. 'No my friend, I doubt there'll be time for leave, Griffiths is eager to be gone. Ah, but it's a beautiful morning ain't it?' he added, sniffing to windward.

'Nat.' Appleby was suddenly serious.

'Uh?' Drinkwater turned abstractedly, 'what is it?'

'I have also been observing Bolton. What d'ye make of him?'

'Bolton?' Drinkwater frowned. 'He seems well enough content since we brought him aft. Surely you're in a better position to answer your own question since he's been pounding pestle and mortar in your service.'

Appleby shook his head. 'No. I mean the inner man. What d'ye make of the inner man?'

Drinkwater's pleasant introspection following the arrival of Elizabeth's letter was gone beyond recall. He sighed, slightly resentfully.

'For heaven's sake, Harry, come to the point.'

'Do you know what passed between Bolton and Short the afternoon they had their altercation?'

Drinkwater hesitated. He had not mentioned Bolton's crime aboard Kestrel. The relish with which the twisted clerk had mentioned it had sickened Nathaniel. He had had no desire to promulgate such gossip. He shook his head. 'No. Do you?'

Appleby's chins quivered in negation. 'I gather it was some sort of an unpleasant accusation. The point is Nat, and recollect that I spend a great deal of time between decks and am party to much of the rumour that runs about any vessel, the point is that I'd say he was eating himself up.'

'What d'you mean?'

'His mind is close to the precipice of insanity. I've seen it before. He lives in his skull, Nat, a man with a bad conscience.'

Drinkwater considered what Appleby had said. A ship was no place for a man with something on his mind. 'You reckon he's winding himself up, eh?'

Appleby nodded. 'Like a clock spring, Nat…'

Drinkwater stood on the Gun Wharf at Sheerness and shivered, watching the boats coming and going, searching for Kestrel's gig among them. Beside him James Thompson, the purser, stood with the last of his stores. Merrick and Bolton were with him. Drinkwater was anxious to get back on board. The winter afternoon was well advanced and the westerly wind showed every sign of reaching gale force before too long.

Their refit was completed and they were under orders to join Vice-Admiral Duncan at Yarmouth.

'Here's the gig now,' said Thompson and turned to the two mess-men, 'get that lot into the boat smartly now, you two.' Drinkwater watched the boat pull in, Mr Hill at the tiller. As soon as it was secure he passed a bundle of charts, the letters and newspapers to the master's mate. Then he stood back while a brace of partridges, some cheeses, cabbages, an exchanged cask of pork and some other odds and ends were lowered into the boat.

'Bulman completed watering this afternoon, Mr Drinkwater,' volunteered Hill.

Drinkwater nodded. Thompson looked at Drinkwater. 'That's it, then.'

'Very well, James, let's get on board before this lot breaks,' he nodded to the chaos of cloud speedily eclipsing the pale daylight to the west, behind the broken outlines of the old three-deckers that formed the dockyard workers' tenements.

'Come on you two, into the boat…' Merrick descended the steps. 'Come on Bolton!' The man hesitated at the top, then turned on his heel.

'Hey!'

Drinkwater looked at Thompson. 'He's running, James!'

'The devil he is!'

'Mr Hill, take charge! Come on James!'

At the top of the steps Drinkwater saw Bolton running towards the old battleships.

'Hey!'

The wind was sweeping the wharf clear and Bolton pushed between two lieutenants who spun, a swirl of boat cloaks and displaced tricornes. Drinkwater began to run, passing the astonished officers. Already Bolton had reached the shadows in the lane leading to what was called the Old Ships, traversing the dockyard wall and away from the fort at Garrison Point. He knew that Bolton could not pass the sentries at the gates or cross the ditches that surrounded the place. He was making for the Old Ships and a possible way to Blue Town, the growing collection of inns, tradesmen's dwellings and brick built houses that was accumulating outside the limits of the dockyard.

Abruptly he reached a ditch, James Thompson puffing up beside him. At the top of the low rampart a short glacis sloped down to the water. It was slightly overgrown now, elderberry bushes darker patches against the grey-green grass. The pale sky in the west silhouetted a movement: Bolton. Drinkwater began running again. Thompson came after him then tripped and fell, yelling obscenities as he discovered a patch of nettles.

Drinkwater ran on, disturbing a rabbit which bobbed, grey-tailed, ahead of him before turning aside into a burrow. Then he approached the first of the hulks, vaguely aware that behind him shouts indicated where someone had turned out a foot patrol.

The old battleship rose huge above him, its lines made jagged with additions: chimneys, privvies and steps. The rusting chains from her hawse pipes disappeared into the mud and men were trudging aboard, looking at him curiously as he panted past them. The smell of smoke and cooking assailed his dilating nostrils and he drew breath.

A shadow moved out from the far hulk, a running man stooped along the tideline and Drinkwater wished he had a pistol. Bolton was making for a ramshackle wooden bridge that lay over the fosse, an unofficial short cut from the Old Ships to Blue Town. It was getting quite dark now. He clattered across the black planking over mud and a silver thread of water. The violent tug of the rising wind at his cloak slowed him and the breath was rasping in his throat at the unaccustomed exercise. To his right the flat expanse of salt marsh gave way to the Medway, palely bending away to Blackstakes and Chatham. To the left the huddle that was Blue Town.

It was almost dark when he entered the first narrow street. He passed an inn and halted. Bolton had evaded him. He must draw breath and wait for that foot patrol to come up, then they must conduct a house-to-house search.

'Shit!' Exasperation exploded within him. They had been at Sheerness for weeks. Why had Bolton chosen now to desert? He turned to the inn to make a start in the search. In the violence of his temper he flung open the door and was utterly unprepared for the disturbingly familiar face that confronted him.

The two men gaped in mutual astonishment, each trying to identify the other. For Edouard Santhonax recognition and capture were instinctively things to avoid. His reaction was swift the instant he saw doubt cloud Drinkwater's eyes. For Nathaniel, breathless in pursuit of Bolton, the appearance of Santhonax was perplexing and unreal. As his brain reacted to the change of quarry Santhonax turned to escape through a rear exit.

He attempted to shout 'Stop! In the King's name', but the ineffective croak that he emitted was drowned in the buzz of conversation from the artisans and seamen in the taproom. He pushed past several men who seemed to want to delay him. Eventually he struggled outside where he ran into the foot patrol. A sergeant helped him up.

'This way,' wheezed Drinkwater, and they pounded down an alleyway, no one noticing Bolton crouched beneath a hand cart in the inn yard, his heart bursting with effort, the scarred and knotted muscles of his back paining him from the need to draw deep gulps of air into his heaving lungs.

The sergeant spread his men out and they began to search the surrounding buildings. Drinkwater paused to collect his thoughts, realising they were now hunting two men, though the soldiers did not yet know it. He thought Santhonax might have doubled on him. It was quite dark and Drinkwater was alone. He could hear the sergeant and his men calling to each other further down the lane. Then the rasp of a sword being drawn sounded behind him.

He spun round.

Santhonax stood in the alleyway, a grey shadowy figure with a faint gleam of steel barring the passage. Drinkwater hauled out his hanger.

They shuffled cautiously forward and Drinkwater felt the blades engage. He could hear a voice in his head urging him not to delay, to attack simply and immediately; that Santhonax was quite probably a most proficient swordsman. Now!

Barely beating the blade and lunging low, Drinkwater extended. But Santhonax was too quick and leapt back, riposting swiftly though off balance. Drinkwater's parry was clumsy but effective.

They re-engaged. Drinkwater was blown after his run. Already his hanger felt heavy on his arm. He felt Santhonax seize the initiative as his blade was beaten, then, with an infinite slowness, the rasp of steel on steel, he quailed before the extension. He clumsily fell back, half turning and losing his balance and falling against the wall. He felt the sharp prick of the point in his shoulder but the turn had saved him, he was aware of Santhonax's breath hot in his face, instinctively knew the man's belly was unguarded and turned his point.

'Merde!' spat the Frenchman leaping back and retracting his sword. Drinkwater's feeble counter attack expended his remaining energy on thin air. Then he was aware of the swish of the molinello, the downward scything of the slashing blade. He felt the white fire in his right shoulder and arm and knew he was beaten.

He had been precipitate. He had broken his promise of circumspection to Elizabeth. As he awkwardly sought to parry his death thrust, the hanger weighing a ton in his hand, he felt Santhonax hesitate; was aware of running feet pounding up the alleyway from his rear, of something warm and sticky trickling over his wrist. Then he was falling, falling while running, shouting men were passing over him and above them the wind howled in the alleyway and made a terrible rushing noise in his ears. He could run no more.

Chapter Eleven A Time of Trial

'Hold still!'

'Damn it Harry…' Drinkwater bit his lip as Kestrel slammed into a wave that sent a shudder through her fabric.

'There!' Appleby completed the dressing.

'Well?'

'Well what?'

'What effect is it going to have? My arm's damned stiff. Will I fence again?'

Appleby shrugged. 'The bicep was severely lacerated and will be stiff for some time, only constant exercise will prevent the fibres from knotting. The wound is healing well, though you will have a scar to add to your collection.' He indicated the thin line of pale tissue that ran down Nathaniel's cheek.

'And?'

'Oh, mayhap an ache or two from time to time,' he paused, 'but I'd say you will be butchering again soon.'

Drinkwater's relief turned to invective as Kestrel butted into another sea and sent him sprawling across Appleby's tiny cabin, one arm in and one arm out of his coat. In the lobby he struggled into his tarpaulin while Appleby heaved himself on to his cot, extended one leg to brace himself against the door jamb, and reached for his book. Drinkwater went on deck.

Eight bells struck as he cleared the companionway. The wind howled a high-pitched whine in the rigging, a cold, hard northerly wind that kicked up huge seas, grey monsters with curling crests which broke in rolling avalanches of white water that thundered down their advancing breasts with a noise like murder, flattening and dissipating in streaks of spindrift.

Spume filled the air and it was necessary to turn away from the wind to speak. As he relieved Jessup a monstrous wave towered over the cutter, its crest roaring over, marbled green and white, rolling down on them as Kestrel mounted the advancing sea.

'Hold hard there! Meet her!' Men grabbed hold-fasts and the relieving tackles on the tiller were bar taut. Drinkwater tugged the companionway cover over as the roar of water displaced the howl of wind and he winced with the pain of his arm as he clung on.

Kestrel staggered under the tremendous blow and then the sea was all about them, tearing at them, sucking at their legs and waists, driving in through wrist bands, down necks and up legs, striving to pluck them like autumn leaves from their stations. A man went past Drinkwater on his back, fetching up against number 10 gun with a crunch of ribs. Water poured off the cutter as she rode sluggishly over the next wave, her stout, buoyant hull straining at every strap and scarph. Men were securing coils of rope torn from belaying pins and relashing the gigs amidships. Shaking the water from his hair Drinkwater realised, with a pang of anger that fed on the ache in his bicep, that he would be cold and wet for the next four hours. And the pain in his arm was abominable.

The winter weather seemed to match some savage feeling in Drinkwater's guts. The encounter with Capitaine Santhonax had left a conviction that their fates were inextricably entwined. The ache of this wound added a personal motive to this feeling that lodged like an oyster's irritant somewhere in his soul. What had been a vague product of imagination following the affair off Beaubigny had coalesced into certainty after the encounter at Sheerness.

I cannot escape, Nathaniel wrote in his journal, a growing sense of apprehension which is both irrational and defies the precepts of reason, but it is in accord with some basic instincts that are, I suppose, primaeval. He laid his goosequill down. No one but himself had realised his assailant was not Bolton for they had found the wretch in the inn yard, cramped in the stable straw and he had been taken defending himself with a knife. The sergeant had drawn his own conclusions. Lugged unconscious aboard Kestrel, Drinkwater had been powerless to prevent the foot patrol from beating up Bolton before throwing him into a cell. In the confusion Santhonax had vanished.

Drinkwater sighed. Poor Bolton had been found hanged in his cell the next morning and Drinkwater regretted he had never cleared the man of his own wounding. But Kestrel was at sea when he recovered his senses and even then it was some time before the dreams of his delirium separated from the recollection of events.

Drinkwater kept the news of the presence of Santhonax to himself with the growing conviction that they would meet again. Santhonax's presence at Sheerness seemed part of some diabolical design made more sinister by the occurrence of an old dream which had confused the restless sleep of his recovery. The clanking nightmare of drowning beneath a white clad lady had been lent especial terror by the medusa head that stared down at his supine body. Her face had the malevolent joy of a jubilant Hortense Montholon, the auburn hair writhed to entangle him and his ears were assailed by the cursing voice of Edouard Santhonax. But now, when he awoke from the dream, there was no comforting clanking from Cyclops's pumps to chide him for foolish imaginings. Instead he was left with the sense of foreboding.

His wound healed well, though the need to keep active caused many a spasm of pain as the weather continued bad. In a perverse way the prevailing gales were good for Kestrel, preventing any grievances becoming too great, submerging individual hatreds in the common misery of unremitting labour. The cold, wet and exhaustion that became part of their lives seemed to blur the edges of perception so that the common experience drove men together and all struggled for the survival of the ship. Kestrel was now on blockade duty, that stern and rigorous test of men and ships. Duncan's cutters were his eyes, stationed as close to the Texel as they dared, watching the Dutch naval arsenal of Den Helder just beyond the gap between Noord Holland to the south and the island of Texel to the north.

The channel that lay between the two land masses split into three as it opened into the North Sea, like a trident pointing west. To the north, exit from the haven was by the Molen Gat, due west by the West Gat and southwards, hugging the Holland shore past the fishing village, signal station and battery of Kijkduin, lay the Schulpen Gat.

These three channels pierced the immense danger of the Haak Sand, the Haakagronden that surfaced at low water and upon whose windward edges a terrible surf beat in bad weather. Fierce tides surged through the gattways and, when wind opposed tide, a steep, vicious breaking sea ran in them.

Duncan's cutters lay off the Haakagronden in bad weather, working up the channels when it eased and occasionally entering the shaft of the trident, the Zeegat van Texel, to reconnoitre the enemy. Drinkwater's eyebrows were rimed with salt as he took cross bearings of the mills and church towers that lined the low, grass-fringed dunes of Noord Holland and Texel, a coastline that sometimes seemed to smoke as it seethed behind the spume of the breakers beating upon the pale yellow beach. It was a dreary, dismal coast, possessed of shallows and sandbanks, channels and false leads. The charts were useless and they came to rely on their own experience. Once again Drinkwater became immersed in his profession and, as a result of their situation, the old intimacy with Griffiths revived. Even the ship's company, still restless over their lack of pay, seemed more settled and Griffiths seemed justified in his suggestion that Bolton might have been a corrupting influence.

Even Appleby had ceased to be so abrasive and was more the jolly, easily pricked surgeon of former times. He and Nathaniel resumed their former relationship and if Griffiths still occasionally appeared remote in the worries of his command and harassed by senior officers safe at anchor in their line-of-battleships, the surgeon was more able to make allowances.

Drinkwater was surprised that in the foul weather and the stale-ness of the accommodation Griffiths did not succumb to his fever but the continuous demands made upon him did not affect his health.

'It is often the way,' pronounced Appleby when Drinkwater mentioned it. 'While the body is under stress it seems able to stand innumerable shocks, as witness men's behaviour in action. But when that stimulus is withdrawn, perhaps I should say eased, the tension in the system, being elastic and at its greatest extension, retracts, drawing in its wake the noxious humours and germs of disease.'

'You may be right, Harry,' said Drinkwater, amused at the pompous expression on the surgeon's face.

'May, sirrah? Of course I am right! I was right about Bolton, was I not? I questioned his mental stability and, poof! Suddenly he's off and then, when he's taken he becomes a suicide.' Appleby flicked his fingers.

Drinkwater nodded. 'Aye Harry, but even you doubted your own prognosis when he did not run earlier. He did leave it to the last minute, even you must admit that.'

'Nat, my boy,' gloated Appleby the gleam of intellectual triumph in his eyes, 'one always has to leave suicide until the last minute!'

'You're just good at guess-work, you damned rogue,' he said, wondering what Appleby would make of his own suspicions and convictions.

'Oh ho! Is that so?' said Appleby rolling his eyes in mock outrage, his chins quivering. 'Well my strutting bantam cock, listen to old Harry, there's more that I can tell you…' He was suddenly serious, with that comic pedagoguish expression that betokened, in Appleby, complete sincerity.

'I'll back my instinct over trouble in the fleet…' Drinkwater looked up sharply.

'Go on,' he said, content to let Appleby have his head for once.

'Look, Nat, this cutter's an exception, small ships usually are, but you are well aware to what I refer, the denial of liberty, the shameful arrears of pay, the refusal of many captains to sanction the purchase of fresh food even in port and the general abuses of a significant proportion of our brother officers, these can only have a most undesirable effect.

'Take the current rate of pay for an able seaman, Nathaniel. It is twenty-four shillings, twelve florins for risking scurvy, pox, typhus, gangrene, not to mention death itself at the hands of the enemy… d'you realise that sum was fixed in the days of the Commonwealth…' Appleby's indignation was justly righteous. To be truthful Drinkwater did not know that, but he had no time to acknowledge his ignorance before Appleby continued his grim catalogue of grievances.

'To this you must add the vast disparity of prize money, the short measure given by so many pursers that has added the purser's pound of fourteen ounces to the avoirdupois scale; you must add the abatement of pay when a man is sick or unfit for duty, even if the injury was sustained in the line of that duty; you must add deductions to pay for a chaplain when one is borne on the books, the deductions for Greenwich Hospital and the Chatham Chest…' Appleby was becoming more and more strident, counting the items off on his fingers, his chins quivering with passion.

'And if that were not enough when a man is gricomed by the whores that are the only women he is permitted to lie with, according to usage and custom, he must pay me to cure him whilst losing his pay through being unfit!

'The families of seamen starve in the gutters while their menfolk are incarcerated on board ship, frequently unpaid for years and when they do return home they are as like to be turned over to a ship newly commissioning as occasion demands.

'I tell you, Nathaniel, these are not facts that lie comfortably with the usual canting notions of English liberty and, mark me well, if this war is protracted there will be trouble in the fleet. You cannot fight a spirited enemy who is proclaiming Liberty, Equality and Fraternity with a navy manned by slaves.'

Drinkwater sighed. Appleby was right. There was worse too. As the prime seamen were pressed out of homeward merchant ships the Lord Mayor's men and the quota men filled the Press Tenders, bringing into the fleet not hardened seamen, but the misfits of society, men without luck but not without intelligence; demagogues, lower deck lawyers; men who saw in the example of France a way to power, to overturn vested interest in the stirring name of the people. With a pot so near the boil, was the purpose and presence of Capitaine Santhonax at Sheerness to stir it a little? The proximity of Sheerness to Tunbridge occurred to him. A feeling of alarm, of duty imperfectly performed, swept over him.

'Aye, Harry. Happen you are right, though I hope not. It might be a bloody business…'

'Of course, Nat! When it comes, not "if"! When it comes it could be most bloody, and the authorities behave with crass stupidity. See how they handled that Culloden business,' Drinkwater nodded at the recollection but Appleby was still in full flood.

'Half the admirals are blind. Look how they ridiculed John Clerk of Eldin because he was able to point out how to win battles. Now they all scrabble to fight on his principles. Look how the powdered physicians of the fleet ignored Lind's anti-scorbutic theories, how difficult it was for Douglas to get his cartridges taken seriously. Remember Patrick Ferguson's rifle? Oh, the list of thinking men pointing out the obvious to the establishment is endless… what the deuce are you laughing at?'

'Your inconsistent consistency,' grinned Nathaniel.

'What the devil d'you mean?'

'Well you are right, Harry, of course, these things are always the same, the prophet unrecognised in his own land.'

'So, I'm correct. I know that. What's so damned amusing?'

'But you yourself objected to Sir Sydney Smith meddling in your sick bay, and Sir Sydney has a reputation for an original mind. You are therefore inconsistent with your principles in your own behaviour, whilst being comfortingly consistent with the rest of us mortal men.'

'Why you damned impertinent puppy!'

Drinkwater dodged the empty tankard that sailed towards his head.

Thus it was that they rubbed along together while things went from bad to worse for British arms. Sir John Jervis evacuated the Mediterranean while Admiral Morard de Galles sailed from Brest with an army embarked for Ireland. That he was frustrated in landing General Hoche and his seasoned troops was a piece of luck undeserved by the British. The south-westerly gale that ruined the enterprise over Christmas 1796 seemed to the Irish patriot, Wolfe Tone, to deny the existence of a just God, while in the British fleet the gross mismanagement of Lord Bridport and Sir John Colpoys only reduced the morale of the officers and increased the disaffection of the men.

Again only the frigates had restored a little glitter to tarnished British laurels. And that at a heavy price. Pellew, now in the razée Indefatigable, in company with Amazon off Brest, sighted and chased the Droits de I'Homme returning from Ireland. In a gale on a lee shore Pellew forced the French battleship ashore where she was wrecked. Indefatigable only escaped by superlative seamanship while Amazon failed to claw off and was also wrecked.

In the North Sea, action of even this Pyrrhic kind was denied Admiral Duncan's squadron. Maintaining his headquarters in Yarmouth Roads, where he was in telegraphic communication with London, Duncan kept his inshore frigates off the Texel and his cutters in the gattways through the Haakagronden, as close as his lieutenant-commanders dared be. Duncan's fleet was an exiguous collection of old ships, many of sixty-four guns and none larger than a third rate. The admiral flew his flag in the aptly named Venerable.

The Dutch, under Vice-Admiral de Winter, were an unknown force. Memories of Dutch ferocity from King Charles's day lingered still, forgotten the humiliation of losing their fleet to a brigade of French cavalry galloping over the ice in which they were frozen. For like the Spanish they were now the allies of France, but unlike them their country was a proclaimed republic. Republicanism had crossed the Rhine, as Drinkwater had predicted, and the combination of a Franco-Dutch fleet to make another attempt on Ireland was a frightening prospect, given the uneasy state of that unhappy coun-try.

Then, as the wintry weather gave way to milder, springlike days, news of a different kind came. The victory of St Valentine's Day it was called at first, then later the Battle of Cape St Vincent. Jervis had been made an earl and the remarkable, erratic Captain Nelson, having left the line of battle to cut off the Spanish van from escape, had received a knighthood.

The air of triumph even permeated Kestrel's crowded little cabin as Griffiths read aloud the creased copy of the Gazette that eventually reached the cutter on her station in the Schulpen Gat. Drinkwater received an unexpected letter.

My Dear Nathaniel, he read,

I expect you will have heard the news of Old Oak's action of St Valentine's Day but you will be surprised to hear your old friend was involved. We beat up the Dons thoroughly, though I saw very little, commanding a battery of 32's on Victory, into which ship I exchanged last November. You should have been here, Nat. Lord, but what a glorious thing is a fleet action. How I envied you Rodney's action here in '80 and how you must envy us ours! Our fellows were so cool and we raked Salvador del Mundo wickedly. The Dons fought better than I thought them capable of and it was tolerably warm work…

Drinkwater was envious. Envious and not a little amused in a bitter kind of way at Richard White's mixture of boyish enthusiasm and sober naval formality. There was a good deal more of it, including the significant phrase Sir John was pleased to take notice of my conduct. Drinkwater checked himself. He was pleased for White, pleased too that his old friend, now clearly on the path to success, still considered the friendship of an obscure master's mate in an even more obscure cutter worth the trouble of an informative letter. So Drinkwater shared vicariously in the euphoria induced by the victory. The tide, it seemed, had turned in favour of British arms and the Royal Navy reminded her old antagonists that though the lion lay down, it was not yet dead.

Then one morning in April Kestrel rounded the Scroby Sands and stood into Yarmouth Road with the signal for despatches at her masthead. Coming to her anchor close to Venerable her chase guns saluted the blue flag at the flagship's main masthead. A moment or so later her boat pulled across the water with Lieutenant Griffiths in the stern.

When Griffiths returned from delivering his message from the frigates off the Texel he called all the cutter's officers into the cabin.

Drinkwater was the last to arrive, late from supervising the hoisting of the boat. He closed the lobby door behind him, aware of an air of tense expectancy. As he sat down he realised it was generated by the frigid gleam in Griffiths's eyes.

'Gentlemen,' he said in his deep, clear voice. 'Gentlemen, the Channel Fleet at Spithead is in a state of mutiny!'

Chapter Twelve A Flood of Mutiny

'Listen to the bastards!' said Jessup as Kestrel's crew paused in their work to stare round the crowded anchorage. The cheering appeared to come from Lion and a ripple of excitement ran through the hands forward, several staring defiantly aft where Jessup, Drinkwater and Traveller stood.

Yarmouth Roads had been buzzing as news, rumour, claim and counter-claim sped between the ships anchored there. The red flag, it was said had been hoisted at the Nore and Duncan's ships vacillated between loyalty to their much respected admiral and their desire to support what were felt to be the just demands of the rest of the fleet.

The cheering was enough to bring others on deck. Amidships the cook emerged from his galley and the knot of officers was joined by Appleby and Thompson. 'Thank God we're anchored close to the flagship,' muttered the surgeon. His apprehensions of mutiny now having been confirmed, Appleby feared the possibility of being murdered in his bed.

Kestrel lay anchored a short cannon shot from Venerable. The battleship's guns were run out and the sudden boom of a cannon echoed flatly across the anchorage. A string of knotted bunting rose up her signal halliards to jerk out brightly in the light breeze of a May morning.

'Call away my gig, Mr Drinkwater,' growled Griffiths emerging from the companionway. Admiral Duncan was signalling for his captains and when Griffiths returned from the conference his expression was weary. 'Call the people aft!'

Jessup piped the hands into the waist and they swarmed eagerly over the remaining boat on the hatch. 'Gentlemen,' said Griffiths to his officers, 'take post behind me.'

The officers shuffled into a semi-circle as ordered, regarding the faces of the men. Some open, some curious, some defiant or truculent and all aware that unusual events were taking place.

'Now hark you all to this, do you understand that the fleets at Spithead and the Nore are in defiant mutiny of their officers…' He looked round at them, giving them no ground, despite his inner sympathy. 'But if any man disputes my right to command this cutter or proposes disobeying my orders or those of one of my officers,' he gestured behind him, 'let him speak now.'

Griffiths's powerful voice with its rich Welsh accent seemed to come from a pulpit. His powerful old body and sober features with their air of patriarchy exerted an almost tangible influence upon his men. He appeared to be reasoning with them like a firm father, opposing their fractiousness with the sure hand of experience. 'Look at me,' he seemed to say, 'you cannot rebel against me, whatever the rest of the fleet does.'

Drinkwater's palms were damp and beside him Appleby was shaking with apprehension. Then they saw resolution ebb as a sort of collective sigh came from the men. Griffiths sent them forward again.

'Get forrard and do your duty. Mr Jessup, man the windlass and inform me when the cable's up and down.'

It was the season for variable or easterly winds in the North Sea and Duncan's preoccupation was that the Dutch fleet would leave the Texel, taking advantage of the favourable winds and the state of the British squadrons. The meeting to which Griffiths had been summoned had been to determine the mood of the ships in Duncan's fleet. The small force still off the Texel was quite inadequate to contain De Winter if he chose to emerge and it was now even more important to keep him bottled up. There was a strong possibility that the mutinous ships at the Nore might attempt a defection and this was more likely to be to the protestant Dutch than the catholic French, for all the republican renunciation of formal religion. A demonstration by De Winter to cover the Nore Squadron's exit from the Thames would be all that was necessary to facilitate this and strengthen any wavering among the mutineers. It was already known at Yarmouth that most of the officers had been removed from the warships with the significant exception of the sailing masters. They were held aboard the Sandwich, the 'flagship' of the self-styled admiral, Richard Parker.

For a few days Kestrel remained at anchor while Duncan, who had personally remonstrated with the Admiralty for redress of many of the men's grievances and regarded the mutiny as a chastisement and warning to the Admiralty to mend its ways, waited on events.

The anonymous good sense that had characterised the affair at Spithead was largely responsible for its swift and satisfactory conclusion. Admiral Howe was given special powers to treat with the delegates who knew they had 'Black Dick's' sympathy. By mid-May, amid general rejoicing, fireworks and banquets the Channel Fleet, pardoned by the King, returned to duty.

There was no evidence that foreign sedition had had anything to do with it. The tars had had a case. Their cause had been just, their conduct exemplary, their self-administered justice impeccable. They had sent representatives to their brethren at the Nore and it would only be a matter of days before they too saw sense.

But it was not so. The Nore mutiny was an uglier business, its style aggressive and less reasonable. By blockading trade in the Thames its leaders rapidly lost the sympathy of the liberal middle-class traders of London and as the Government became intransigent, Parker's desperation increased. The tide in favour of the fleet turned, and as the supplies of food, fuel and merchandise to the capital dwindled, troops flooded in to Sheerness and the ships flying the red flag at the Nore felt a growing sense of isolation.

At the end of May there arrived in Yarmouth an Admiralty envoy in the person of Captain William Bligh, turned out of the Director by his crew and sent by the authorities to persuade Duncan to use his ships against Parker's. He also brought news that four delegates from the Nore had seized the cutter Cygnet and were on their way to Yarmouth to incite the seamen there to mutiny.

Duncan considered the intelligence together with the mooted possibility of Parker defecting with the entire fleet to Holland or France. In due course he ordered the frigate Vestal, the lugger Hope and the cutter Rose to cruise to the southward to intercept the visitors. If Parker sailed for the Texel or Dunquerque then, and only then, would the old admiral consider using his own ships against the mutineers. In the meantime he sent Kestrel south into the Thames to guard the channels to Holland and to learn immediately of any defection.

'By the mark five.'

Drinkwater discarded the idea of the sweeps. Despite the fog there was just sufficient wind to keep steerage on the cutter and every stitch of canvas that could be hoisted was responding to it.

'I'll go below for a little, Mr Drinkwater.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Their passage from Yarmouth had been slow and Griffiths had not left the deck for fear the men would react, but they were too tired now and his own exhaustion was obvious. Grey and lined, his face wore the symptoms of the onset of his fever and it seemed that the elasticity of his constitution had reached its greatest extension. Drinkwater was glad to see him go below.

Since the news of the Spithead settlement the hands had been calmer, but orders to proceed into the Thames had revived the tension. In the way that these things happen, word had got out that their lordships were contemplating using the North Sea squadron against the mutineers at the Nore, and Bligh was too notorious a figure to temper speculation on the issue.

The chant of the leadsman was monotonous so that, distracted by larger events and the personal certainty that the Nore mutiny was made the more hideous by the presence of Capitaine Santhonax, Drinkwater had to force himself to concentrate upon the soundings. They were well into the estuary now and should fetch the Nubb buoy in about three hours as the ebb eased.

'By the deep four.'

'Sommat ahead, sir!' The sudden cry from the lookout forward.

'What is it?' He went forward, peering into the damp grey murk.

'Dunno sir… buoy?' If it was then their reckoning was way out.

'There sir! See it?'

'No… yes!' Almost right ahead, slightly to starboard. They would pass very close, close enough to identify it.

''s a boat, sir!'

It was a warship's launch, coming out of a dense mist a bowsprit's length ahead of them. It had eight men in it and he heard quite distinctly a voice say, 'It's another bleeding buoy yacht…', and a contradictory: 'No, it's a man o'war cutter…'

Mutually surprised, the two craft passed. The launch's men lay on their oars, the blades so close to Kestrel's side that the water drops from their ends fell into the rippling along the cutter's waterline. Curiously the Kestrels stared at the men in the boat who glared defiantly back. There was a sudden startled gasp, a quick movement, a flash and a bang. A pistol ball tore the hat from Drinkwater's head and made a neat hole in the mainsail. There was a howl of frustration and the mutineers were plying their oars as the launch vanished in the fog astern.

'God's bones!' roared Drinkwater suddenly spinning round. The men were still gaping at him and the vanished boat. 'Let go stuns'l halliards! Let go squares'l halliards! Down helm! Lively now! Lively God damn it!'

The men could not obey fast enough to satisfy Drinkwater's racing mind. He found himself beating his thighs with clenched fists as the cutter turned slowly.

'Come on you bitch, come on,' he muttered, and then he felt the deck move beneath him, ever so slightly upsetting his sense of balance, and another fact struck him.

He had run Kestrel aground.

Kestrel lay at an alarming angle and her sailing master was still writhing with mortification. Used as he had been to the estuary while in the buoy yachts of the Trinity House the situation was profoundly humiliating.

Lieutenant Griffiths had said nothing beyond wearily directing the securing of the cutter against an ingress of water when the tide made. It was fortunate that they had been running before what little wind there was and their centre plates had been housed. The consequences might have been more serious otherwise. An inspection revealed that Kestrel had suffered no damage beyond a dent in the pride of her navigator.

Below, Griffiths had regarded him in silence for some moments after listening to Drinkwater's explanation of events. As the colour mounted to Drinkwater's cheeks a tired smile curled Griffiths's lips.

'Come, come, Nathaniel, pass a bottle from the locker… it was no more than an error of judgement and the consequences are not terrible.' Griffiths threw off his fatigue with a visible effort. 'One error scarcely condemns you, bach.'

Drinkwater found himself shaking with relief as he thrust the sercial across the table. 'But shouldn't we have pursued sir? I mean it was Santhonax, sir. I'm damned sure of that.' In his insistence to make amends, not only for grounding the cutter but for his failure earlier to report the presence of the French agent, the present circumstances gave him his opportunity. For a second he recollected that Griffiths might ask him how he was so 'damned sure'. But the lieutenant was not concerned and pushed a full glass across the table. He shook his head.

'Putting a boat away in this fog would likely have embroiled us in a worse tangle. Who ambushes whom in this weather is largely a matter of who spots whom first,' he paused to sip the rich dark wine.

'The important thing is what the devil is Santhonax doing in a warship's launch going east on an ebb tide with a crew of British ne'er-do-wells?'

The two men sat in silence while about them Kestrel creaked as the first of the incoming tide began to lift her bilge. Was Santhonax a delegate from the Nore on his way to Yarmouth? If he was he would surely have used the Swin. Their own passage through the Prince's Channel had been ordered to stop up the gap not covered by Vestal, Rose or Hope. And it was most unlikely that a French agent would undertake such a task.

If Santhonax's task was to help suborn the British fleet he had already achieved his object by the open and defiant mutiny. So what was he doing in a boat? Escaping? Was the mutiny collapsing? Or was his passage east a deliberate choice? Of course! Santhonax had attempted to kill Drinkwater. Nathaniel was the only man whose observation of Santhonax might prejudice the Frenchman's plans!

'There would seem to be only one logical conclusion, sir…'

'Oh?' said Griffiths, 'and what might that be?'

'Santhonax must be going to bring aid to the Nore mutineers…' He outlined his reasons for presuming this and Griffiths nodded slowly.

'If he intends bringing a fleet to support the mutiny or to cover its defection does he make for France or Holland?'

'The Texel shelters the largest fleet in the area, sir. Given a fair wind from the east which they'd need to get up the Thames with a fair certainty of a westerly soon afterwards to get 'em all out together… yes, I'll put my money on the Texel, anything from Brest or the west'll have the Channel to contend with.'

'Yes, by damn!' snapped Griffiths suddenly, leaning urgently forward. 'And our fellows will co-operate with a fleet of protestant Dutch and welcome their republican comrades! By heaven Nathaniel, this Santhonax is a cunning devil! Cythral! I'll lay gold on the Texel…'

The two of them were half out of their chairs, leaning across the table like men in heated argument. Then Griffiths slumped down as Kestrel lurched a little nearer the upright.

'But our orders do not allow me discretion. Santhonax has escaped, in the meantime we must do our duty' He paused, rubbing his chin while Drinkwater remained standing. 'But,' he said slowly, 'if we could discover the precise state of the mutiny… if, for instance there were signs that they were moving out from the Nore, then, by God, we'd know for sure.'

Drinkwater nodded. He was not certain how they could discover this without running their heads into a noose, but he could not now tell Griffiths of the encounter in Sheerness and the premonitions that were consuming him at that very moment. For the time being he must rest content.

Two hours later they were under way again. The breeze had come up, although the fog had become a mist and the warmth of the sun could be felt as Kestrel resumed her westward passage. It was late afternoon when a cry from forward caught the attention of all on deck.

'Sir!'

'What is it?' Drinkwater scrambled forward.

'Sort of smashing sound,' the man said, cocking one ear. They listened and Drinkwater heard a muffled bang followed by crashes and the splintering of timber. He frowned. 'Swivel gun?' He turned aft. 'Call all hands! Pass word for the captain! Clear for action!' He was damned if he was going to be caught a second time.

In a few moments the lashings were cast off the guns and the men were at their stations. Griffiths emerged from the companion-way pale and drawn. Drinkwater launched into an explanation of what they had heard when suddenly the fog lifted, swept aside like a curtain, and bright sunshine dappled the water.

'What the devil…?' Griffiths pointed and Drinkwater turned sharply, then grinned with relief.

'It's all right, sir, I recognise her.'

Ahead of them, a cable distant, lay an ornate, cutter-rigged yacht, decorated aft like a first rate, with a beak head forward supporting a lion guardant. Alongside the yacht the painted bulk of the Nubb buoy was being systematically smashed by axes and one-pound swivel shot.

'Trinity Yacht ahoy!' Faces looked up and Drinkwater saw her master, Jonathan Poulter, direct men aft to where she carried carronades. He saw the gunports lift and the muzzles emerge.

'Hold your fire, damn your eyes! We're a King's cutter,' then in a lower voice as they closed the yacht, 'Heave to, Mr Drinkwater, while we speak him.'

The two cutters closed, their crews regarding each other curiously. 'Do you have news of the Nore fleet, is there any sign of them moving?'

A man in a blue coat stood beside Poulter and Drinkwater recognised Captain Calvert, an Elder Brother of Trinity House.

'No, sir,' Calvert called, 'and they'll find it impossible when we've finished. All the beacons are coming down and most of the buoys are already sunk. Another night's work will see the matter concluded… is that Mr Drinkwater alongside of you?'

Drinkwater stood on the rail. 'Aye sir, we had hopes that you might have news.'

'They had a frigate down at the Middle flying the red flag yesterday to mark the bank and the fear is they'll try treason… they've gone too far now for anything else… my guess is they'll try for France or Holland. Are you from Duncan?'

'Aye,' it was Griffiths who spoke now. 'Are you sure of your facts, sir?'

'Aye, sir. We left Broadstairs yesterday. The intelligence about the frigate we learned from the buoy yacht Argus from Harwich; I myself called on Admiral Buckner at Sheerness on my way from London.'

Griffiths reflected a moment. 'And you think they'll try and break out?'

'It's that or starve and swing.'

Griffiths eyed the pendant. 'Starboard tack, Mr Drinkwater,' then in a louder voice as Kestrel turned away, 'Much obliged to you, sir, God speed.'

The two cutters parted, Kestrel standing seawards again. Griffiths came aft to where Drinkwater was setting the new course.

'Black Deep, sir?'

'Aye if she'll hold the course.' Griffiths shivered and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

'She'll hold it, sir, with the centre plates down. I take it we're for Yarmouth?'

Griffiths nodded. 'Mr Drinkwater…' He jerked his head sideways and walked to the rail, staring astern to where, alongside the Trinity Yacht, the Nubb buoy was sinking. In a low voice he said, 'It seems we have our proof, Nathaniel…' His white eyebrows shot up in two arches.

'Aye sir. I'd come to pretty much the same conclusion.'

After Kestrel the admiral's cabin aboard Venerable seemed vast, but Admiral Duncan was a big man with a broad Scots face and, even seated, he dominated it. There was a story that he had subdued Adamant's crew by picking up one of her more vociferous seamen and holding him, one armed, over the side with the sarcastic comments that the fellow dared deprive him of command of the fleet. The general laughter that followed this spectacle had ensured Adamant's loyalty.

As Griffiths, unwell and sweating profusely, strove to explain the significance of their news, Drinkwater examined the other occupants of the cabin in whose august company he now found himself. There was Captain Fairfax, Duncan's flag-captain, and Captain William Bligh. Drinkwater regarded 'Bounty' Bligh with ill-concealed curiosity. The captain had a handsome head, with a blue jaw and firm chin. The forehead was high, the hairline balding and his grey hair drawn back into a queue. Bligh's eyes were penetrating and hazel, reminding Drinkwater of Dungarth's, the nose straight and flanked with fine nostrils. Only the mouth showed anything in the face that was ignoble, a petulance confirmed by his voice which had a quality of almost continuous exasperation. The remaining person was Major Brown, summoned by telegraph from London and still eating the chicken leg offered him on his arrival.

'Now I'm not quite clear about the significance of this Santhonax,' frowned the admiral, 'if I'm losing my ships do I really have to bother about one man?'

'If he's the man we think, sir,' put in Bligh in his high-toned voice, 'I consider him to be most dangerous. If he is the man said to have been seen aboard several of the ships at the Nore as this gentleman,' Bligh indicated Brown, 'seems to think, then I'd rate him as the most seditious rascal among the clutch of gallowsbirds. They deserve to swing, the whole festering nest of them.'

'Thank ye, captain,' said Duncan, with just a touch of irony. 'Major Brown?'

The major always seemed to be called on for explanations in the middle of a mouthful, thought Drinkwater as he pricked up his ears to hear what news Brown had brought.

'It seems certain, gentlemen, that this man was indeed Capitaine Santhonax, a French agent whose current duty seems to be to suborn the Nore fleet. There were reports of him in connection with the Culloden affair. One of the sailing masters held aboard Sandwich recognised him as a Frenchman and smuggled word ashore by a bumboat. Apparently they had fought hand to hand off Trincomalee in the last war,' he explained, 'and a number of other reports,' here he paused and inclined his head slightly towards Drinkwater and Griffiths, 'have led us to take an interest in him… it would appear he has been the eminence grise behind Richard Parker.'

Bligh nodded sharply, 'And behind the removal of myself and my officers from my ship!'

'But he has escaped us now,' soothed Duncan, 'so where's all this leading us?'

Brown shrugged, 'Captain Fairfax tells me you captured the Nore delegates on their way here.'

'Aye, Major, Rose took Cygnet off Orfordness so our friend is not coming here.'

Drinkwater looked desperately round the circle of faces. Did none of them see what was obvious to him? He looked at Griffiths but the lieutenant had drifted into a doze.

'Excuse me sir.' Drinkwater could hold his tongue no longer.

'Yes, what is it Mr, er, Drinkwater?' Duncan looked up.

'With respect, sir, may I submit that I believe Santhonax was in the boat on passage to Holland…' he paused, faltering before the gold lace that appeared to take heed of him for the first time.

'Go on, Mr Drinkwater,' encouraged Brown, leaning forward a half-smile on his face.

'Well sir,' Drinkwater doggedly addressed the admiral, 'I believe from all the facts I know, including the news from the Trinity Yacht relative to the movements of the Nore ships, that a defection of the fleet was ripe. Santhonax was bound for Holland to bring out Dutch ships…'

'To cover the defection of the Nore squadron, by heaven!' Fairfax finished the sentence.

'Exactly, sir,' Drinkwater nodded.

'But that smacks of conspiracy, gentlemen, of collusion with a foreign power. Och, I don't believe it, man.' The admiral looked for support to Fairfax who, with the discretionary latitude of a flag-captain said gently, 'Your good-nature, sir, does you credit but I fear Mr Drinkwater may be right. Jack Tar is not always the easy-going lion the populace likes to imagine him…' They all looked at the old admiral until Brown's voice cut in.

'We have a woman in Maidstone Gaol that would support Mr Drinkwater's theory, sir.'

'A woman, sir! What in God's name has a woman to do with a fleet mutiny?'

Drinkwater's pulse had quickened as he realised Brown knew more than he had so far admitted. He was eager to ask the woman's identity but he already knew it.

'That, Admiral Duncan, is something we'd very much like to know.'

'Well has the woman told ye anything?'

Brown smiled. 'She is not the type to go in for confessions, sir.'

'But she is not beyond sustaining a conspiracy, sir,' put in Drinkwater with a sudden vehemence.

'So you ken the woman, Mr Drinkwater?' The admiral's brows showed signs of anger. 'There seems to be a deal about this matter that is known to the masters of cutters and denied to commanders-in-chief. Now, sir,' he rounded on Brown, 'd'ye tell me exactly who and what this woman is, what her connection is with our French agent and what it's all to do with my fleet.'

'Kestrel brought Mlle Montholon, the woman now in custody, out of France, sir…' Brown went on to outline the incidents that had involved the cutter. Drinkwater only half listened. So Hortense was in prison now. His suspicions had been confirmed after all. He wondered if Santhonax knew and doubted it would have much effect on him if he did. Hortense would not have confessed, but he guessed her pride had made her defiant and she had let slip enough. He wondered how Brown's men had eventually taken her and was satisfied in his curiosity as the major concluded: '… and so it seemed necessary to examine the young woman more closely. A theft of jewellery was, er, traced to a footman attending the Dowager Comtesse De Tocqueville and in the resulting search of her house a number of interesting documents and a considerable sum of gold was discovered.' He paused to sip from a glass of wine and ended with that curiously Gallic shrug. 'And so we had her.'

When he had finished Duncan shook his head. 'It's all most remarkable, most remarkable. She must be a she-devil…'

Beside Drinkwater Griffiths stirred and growled in Welsh, 'Hwyl, sir… she has hwyl, the power to stir men's bowels.'

'But it is not the woman that concerns us now, Admiral Duncan,' said Brown. 'The man Santhonax is the real danger. Mr Drinkwater is right and we are certain he intends to bring out the Dutch. He has been in close consultation with Parker and if the mutiny is wavering De Winter must come out at the first opportunity or be more securely shut up in the Texel. If, on the other hand, he emerges to cover the Thames and the Nore ships join him, I leave the consequences to your imagination. Such a force on the doorstep of London would draw the Channel fleet east uncovering Brest, leaving the road clear for Ireland, the West Indies, India. Whichever way you look at it to have the Dutch at sea, mutiny or not, would put us in a most dangerous situation. Add the complication of an undefended east coast and a force of republican mutineers in the Thames, then,' Brown spread his hands and shrugged again in that now familiar gesture that was a legacy of his sojourns amongst the Canadians and the French. But it was supremely eloquent for the occasion.

Duncan nodded. 'Those very facts have been my constant companions for the past weeks. I begin to perceive this Santhonax is something of a red hot shot.'

'What is the state of your own ships, Admiral?' asked Brown.

'That, Major, is a deuced canny question.'

Admiral Duncan's fleet deserted him piecemeal in the next few days. Off the Texel Captain Trollope in the Russell, 74, with a handful of cutters, luggers and a frigate or two, maintained the illusion of blockade. Five of his battleships left for the Nore.

On the 29th May Duncan threw out the signal to weigh. His remaining ships stood clear of Yarmouth Roads until, one by one, they turned south-west, towards the Thames. Three hours after sailing only Venerable, 74, Adamant, 50 and the smaller Trent and Circe, together with Kestrel, remained loyal to their admiral.

The passage across the North Sea was a dismal one. In a way Drinkwater was relieved they were returning to the Texel. Wearying though blockade duty was, he felt instinctively that that was where they should be, no matter to what straits they were reduced. Brown thought so too, for after sending a cipher by the telegraph to the Admiralty, he had joined the cutter with Lord Dungarth's blessing.

'I think, Mr Drinkwater,' he had said, 'that you may take the credit for having set a portfire to the train now and we must wait patiently upon events.'

And patiently they did wait, for the first days of June the wind was in the east. De Winter's fleet of fourteen sail of the line, eight frigates and seventy-three transports and storeships were kept in the Texel by the two British battleships, a few frigates and small fry who made constant signals to one another in a ruse to persuade the watching Dutch that a great fleet lay in the offing of which this was but the inshore squadron.

But would such a deception work?

Chapter Thirteen No Glory but the Gale

The splash of a cannon shot showed briefly in the water off Kestrel's starboard bow where she lay in the yeasty waters of the Schulpen Gat, close to the beach at Kijkduin.

'They have brought horse artillery today, Mr Drinkwater,' said Major Brown from the side of his mouth as both men stared through their telescopes.

Drinkwater could see the knot of officers watching them. One was dismounted and kneeling on the ground, a huge field glass on the shoulder of an orderly grovelling in front of him. 'That one in the brown coat, d'you know who he is?' Drinkwater swung his glass. He could see a man in a brown drab coat, but it was not in the least familiar. 'No sir.'

'That,' said Brown with significant emphasis, 'is Wolfe Tone…' Drinkwater looked again. There was nothing remarkable about the man portrayed as a traitor to his country. Kestrel bucked inshore and Drinkwater turned to order her laid off a point more. 'I'll give them the usual salute then.'

'Yes — no! Wait! Look at the man next but one to Tone.' Brown was excited and Drinkwater put up his glass again to see a tall figure emerge from behind a horse. Even at that distance Drinkwater knew the man was Santhonax, a Santhonax resplendent in the blue and gold of naval uniform, and it seemed to Drinkwater that across that tumbling quarter mile of breakers and sea-washed sand that Santhonax stared back at him. He lowered the glass and looked at Brown. 'Santhonax.' Brown nodded.

'You were right, Mr Drinkwater. Now give 'em the usual.' Drinkwater waved forward and saw Traveller stand back from the gun. The four-pounder roared and the men cheered when the ball ricochetted amongst the officers. Their horses reared in fright and one fell screaming on broken legs.

'Stand by heads'l sheets there! Weather runner! Stand by to gybe! Mind your head, Major!' Drinkwater called to Brown who had hoisted himself on to Number 11 gun to witness the fall of shot. 'Up helm… mainsheet now, watch there! Watch!'

Kestrel turned away from the shore as the field-gun barked again. The shot ripped through the bulwarks on the quarter and passed between the two helmsmen. The wind of its passage sent them gasping to the deck and Drinkwater jumped for the big tiller. Then the cutter was stern to the beach and rolling over in a thunderous clatter of gybing spars and canvas. 'Larboard runner!' Men tramped aft with the fall of the big double burton and belayed it, the sheets were trimmed and Kestrel steadied on her course out of the Schulpen Gat to work her way round the Haakagronden to where Duncan awaited her report.

The admiral was on Venerable's quarterdeck when Drinkwater went up the side. He saluted and made his report to Duncan. The admiral nodded and asked, 'And how is Lieutenant Griffiths today?'

Drinkwater shook his head. 'The surgeon's been up with him all night, sir, but there appears to be no improvement. This is the worst I've known him, sir.'

Duncan nodded. 'He's still adamant he doesn't want a relief?'

'Aye sir.'

'Very well, Mr Drinkwater. Return to your station.'

The strange situation that Duncan found himself in of an admiral almost without ships, compelled him to tread circumspectly. He did not wish to transfer officers or disrupt the delicate loyalties of his pitifully small squadron. Griffiths was known to him and had indicated the professional worth of Kestrel's sailing master. The admiral, astute in the matter of personal evaluation, had formed his own favourable impression of Drinkwater's abilities.

As the week of easterly winds ended, when the period of greatest danger seemed to be over, Duncan received reinforcements. Sir Roger Curtis arrived with some units of the Channel Fleet. Glatton, the curious ex-Indiaman armed only with carronades, had mutinied, gone to the Downs and cooled her heels. There her people resolved not to desert their admiral and returned to station. Other odd ships arrived including a Russian squadron under Admiral Hanikov. Then, at the end of June, the Nore mutiny had collapsed and Duncan's ships returned to him. At full strength the North Sea squadron maintained the blockade through the next spell of easterly winds at the beginning of July.

Kestrel made her daily patrols while Griffiths lay sweating in his cot, Appleby a fretful shadow over him. They saw no more of Santhonax and still the Dutch did not come out. Major Brown became increasingly irritated by the turn of events. Santhonax had shot his bolt. The Nore mutiny had collapsed and the French captain had failed, just as he had failed on the Culloden. Now, if he was still at the Texel, Santhonax had failed to coerce De Winter.

'A man of action, Mr Drinkwater, cannot sit on his arse for long. This business of naval blockade is the very essence of tedium.'

Drinkwater smiled over his coffee. 'I doubt you would be of that opinion, sir, if the conduct of the ships were yours. For us it is a wearing occupation, requiring constant vigilance.'

'Oh I daresay,' put in Brown crossly, 'but I've a feeling that De Winter won't shift. When we next report to the admiral I shall transfer to the flagship and take the first despatch vessel to Yarmouth. No, Mr Drinkwater, that train of powder has gone out.'

'Well sir,' answered Drinkwater rising from the table and reaching for his hat, 'perhaps it was a little longer than you expected.'

Major Brown stared after the younger man, trying to decide if he had been the victim of impertinence or perception. Certainly he bridled at Drinkwater's apparent lack of respect for a major in His Majesty's Life Guards, but he knew Nathaniel was no fool, no fool at all. Brown remembered the dinner at the Fountain and Drinkwater's insistence that the presence of the uniforms, charts and money indicated the Citoyenne Janine held a secret. He also remembered that he had been less than frank about what he had discovered at Tunbridge Wells.

It was true, as he had said to Lord Dungarth, that he had not found anything. But where the wolf has slept the grass remains rank. That much he had learned from the Iroquois, and he was no longer in doubt that Santhonax lay frequently at Tunbridge, in enviable circumstances too. A refuge in Hortense's arms was typically Gallic, and if Santhonax had not persuaded her to flee from France in the first place he had turned that fortuitous exit to his own advantage.

But Brown could not admit as much to Dungarth before Kestrel's officers. He had lain a trap and until Santhonax sprung it the hunter remained silent. He had learned that too from the painted men of the Six Nations.

Whether Dungarth had guessed as much when he had ordered surveillance of the Dowager Comtesse's household mattered little. Santhonax had eluded Brown just as Brown had escaped from Santhonax in Paris.

The major bit his lip over the recollection. Had the girl detected him? As he had seen her on the arm of her handsome naval lover in Paris, had she perhaps seen Brown himself some time during the negotiations with Barrallier and De Tocqueville? That would have revealed his true allegiance, and Etienne Montholon had been a party to the arrangements. He tried to recollect if she might have discovered him with Santhonax during his spell as a clerk in the Ministry of Marine. Then he shrugged, 'It's possible…'

Santhonax had reached the coast before him, had nearly cut off Kestrel but for Madoc's skill and young Drinkwater's timely rescue. It brought him full circle. Was Drinkwater right and Santhonax still trying to bully Jan De Winter into sailing? Brown knew Santhonax to be ruthless. He was certain the man had had De Tocqueville assassinated in London, the more so as it removed a threat to his occupancy of Hortense's bed. And the officer commanding the naval forces at Roscoff had been shot for his prudence in strengthening a convoy escort by the addition of the Citoyenne janine. His mistake was in requisitioning Santhonax's own lugger. Brown's reflection that that meant one less Frenchman to worry about begged the pressing question. It pecked at his present frustration, counselling caution, caution.

Was Santhonax still at the Texel? Was Drinkwater right? Did the train of powder still sputter here, off the Haakagronden? Was De Winter under French pressure?

'It's possible,' he repeated to himself, 'and there is only one way to find out.'

And he shuddered, the old image of geese over a grave springing unbidden into his mind.

Drinkwater was very tired. The regular swing of the oarsmen had a soporific effect now that they had run into the smoother water of the Zeegat van Texel. Astern of them in the darkness the curve of sand dunes and marram grass curled round to Kijkduin and the Schulpen Gat, where Kestrel lay at anchor. It was late before full darkness had come and they had little time to execute their task. Drinkwater pulled the tiller slightly to larboard, following the coast round to the east. He steadied it again, feeling the bulk of the man next to him.

Major Brown, wrapped in a cloak under which he concealed a small bag of provisions, had insisted that he be landed. From his bunk Griffiths had been powerless to prevent what he felt to be a hopeless task. He did not doubt Brown's abilities but the gleaning of news of De Winter's intentions was a desperate throw. Griffiths had therefore instructed Drinkwater to land the agent himself. Johnson, the carpenter, had contrived a pair of clogs and they had been carefully scuffed and dirtied as Brown prepared himself in the seamen's cast-offs as a grubby and suitably malodorous fisherman.

Drinkwater turned the boat inshore and whispered 'Oars'. The men ceased pulling and a few moments later the bow of the gig grounded with a gentle lift. Brown shrugged off the cloak and scrambled forward between the pairs of oarsmen. Drinkwater followed him on to the beach and walked up it with him to discover a landmark by which they might both return to the spot. They found some fishing stakes which were sufficient to answer their purpose.

'I'll be off then, Mr Drinkwater.' Brown shouldered his bag and a dimly perceived hand was thrust uncertainly out in an uncharacteristic gesture. 'Until two days hence then. Wish me luck… I don't speak Dutch.'

As he turned away Drinkwater noticed the carriage of confidence was missing, the step unsure. Then he jeered at his qualms. Walking in clogs was bad enough. Doing it in soft sand damned near impossible.

On the afternoon of the day on which they were due to recover Major Brown, Kestrel sailed into the Schulpen Gat, taking the tide along the coast on her routine patrol. When the masts of the Dutch fleet had been counted over the intervening sand dunes and attempts made to divine whether De Winter had advanced his preparations to sail, which all except Drinkwater were now beginning to doubt, she would retire seawards until her midnight rendezvous with the agent.

As she stood inshore towards the battery at Kijkduin, Drinkwater scanned the beach. The usual officer and orderly were observing their progress. He slewed the telescope and caught in its dancing circle the rampart of the battery. Then he saw something that turned his blood cold.

A new structure had been erected above the gun embrasures, gaunt against the blue of heaven and terrifying in its sinister outline. And from the gibbet, unmistakable in the faded blue of Kestrel's slops, swung the body of Major Brown.

Drinkwater lowered the glass and called for Jessup. The bosun came up immediately aware of the cold gleam in Drinkwater's grey eyes. 'Sir?'

'See if Lieutenant Griffiths is fit enough to come on deck.' Drinkwater's voice was strangely controlled, like a man compelled to speak when he would rather weep.

'Nat, what the deuce is this…?' Appleby came protesting out of the companionway.

'Vast that, Harry!' snapped Drinkwater, seeing Griffiths following the surgeon on deck, the flutter of his nightgown beneath his coat.

Without a word Drinkwater handed the telescope to Griffiths and pointed at the battery. Even as he watched the lieutenant for a sign of emotion Drinkwater heard the dull concussion of the first cannon shot roll over the sea. He did not see the fall of shot, only the whitening of the already pallid Welshman and when he lowered the glass Griffiths, too, spoke as though choking.

'Our friend Santhonax did that, Mr Drinkwater, put the vessel about upon the instant.' Griffiths paused. 'That devil's spawn is here then,' he muttered, turning aft.

Drinkwater gave orders and watched Griffiths stagger back to the companionway, a man who looked his years, sick and frail. The battery fired again, shot rained about them and they were hulled once. Running south with the wind free and his back to the gibbet, Drinkwater imagined he could hear the creaking of the contraption and the laughter of the gunners as they toiled beneath their grim trophy.

The death of Major Brown had a desolating effect on Kestrel. The enigmatic army officer had become almost one of themselves and the cramped cabin was a sad place without him. For Madoc Griffiths the loss was more personal, their friendship one of long standing. In the twilit world of their professions strange and powerful bonds drew men together.

'Brown was not his real name,' Griffiths had muttered, and it was all the epitaph the Major ever had.

It seemed that his death extinguished the powder train whose extent he had been so eager to determine. Whatever Santhonax's achievements in the apprehension of spies it was apparent to the watching British that he had failed to persuade De Winter to sail.

Yet Duncan, and in a lesser way Nathaniel Drinkwater too, persisted in their belief that the Dutch might yet sally; or at least must be prevented from so doing. As the summer waned and turned to autumn the routine blockade wore down men and ships. Much of the time the line of battleships lay anchored, weighing and standing offshore, even sheltering in Yarmouth Road when the weather became too boisterous. Hovering on the western margins of the Haakagronden the inshore squadron, the frigates Beaulieu and Circe and the sloop Martin, maintained the visual link between the admiral and those in close contact with the enemy, the lieutenants in command of the little flotilla of cutters and luggers working inside the Haak Sand.

The cutters Rose, King George, Diligent, Active and Kestrel kept their stations through the long weeks, assisted by the luggers Black Joke and Speculator. The last two named provided endless witticisms as to predicting whether the Dutch would, or would not, emerge. When Speculator was on an advanced station the chances were said to be better than when the sardonically named Black Joke was inshore.

These small fry fell into a routine of patrolling the gatways, acting as fleet tenders and advice boats. It was exhausting work that seemed to be endless. Scouting through the approaches to the channels, counting the mastheads of the enemy, determining which had their topmasts up and yards across, constantly worrying about the shoals, the state of the tide and whether a change of wind might not bottle them up in range of a field-gun or battery.

Griffiths's health improved and he reassumed effective command of Kestrel. But the Dutch did not come out. As week succeeded week, expectancy turned to irritation and then to grumbling frustration. In the fleet, officers, still suspicious after the mutiny, watched for signs of further trouble as the quality of rations deteriorated with the passing of time. Imperceptibly at first, but with mounting emphasis, discipline was tightened and a return 'to the old days' feared on every lower deck. Among the men the triumph of the mutiny was lost in petty squabblings and resentments. Men remembered that executions had followed the suppression of the Nore affair, that they still had had no liberty, that the pursers were not noticeably more generous or their pay more readily available.

Then the weather worsened with the onset of September and the admiral, taking stock of the condition of his fleet, decided that he must return to Yarmouth to refit, replenish stores and land his sick. For scurvy had broken out and no admiral as considerate of his men as Adam Duncan could keep the sea under those circumstances. Yet, in the leaking cabin of Venerable he still fretted as to whether the Dutch, supine for so long, might not still take advantage of his absence.

Drinkwater peered into the screaming darkness, holding on to the weather shrouds and bracing himself against the force of the westerly gale. Kestrel, hard reefed with her centre plates down, stood north-west, beating out of the Molen Gat, clawing to windward for sea-room and safety. Somewhere to the south of her, across the roaring fury of the breakers on the Haakagronden, Diligent would be thrashing out of the Schulpen Gat while Rose should have quitted the West Gat long since.

Drinkwater rubbed his eyes, but the salt spray inflamed them and the fury of the wind made staring directly to windward impossible. He had hoped to see a lantern from Circe but he had difficulty seeing further than the next wave as it rose out of the darkness to larboard, its rolling crest already being torn to shreds by the violence of the wind.

Kestrel's bow thumped into it, the long line of her bowsprit disappearing. Water squirted inboard round the lips of her gunports and a line of white foam rose to her rail but she did not ship any green water. Drinkwater was seized with a sudden savage satisfaction in the noble way the cutter behaved. In the tense moments when they could do nothing but hang on, trusting to the art of the Wivenhoe shipwrights who had built her, she never failed them.

He turned and cautiously moved aft, his tarpaulin flapping round him. When he had checked the course, he secured himself by the larboard running backstay, passing a turn of its tail around his waist.

Tregembo approached, a pale blur in the darkness. 'You sent for me sir?'

'Aye, Tregembo. An occasional cast of the lead if you can manage it.' He sensed rather than saw the Cornishman grin.

They must not go aground tonight.

Drinkwater adjusted himself against the big stay's downhaul. He could feel the trembling of the top-hamper transmitted down to the hull as a gentle vibration that transferred itself to his body, so that he felt a part of the fabric of the cutter. It was a very satisfying feeling he concluded, a warm glow within him defying the hideous howl of the gale. For a time the image of Brown in his gibbet was dimmed.

Drinkwater noted the helm relieved, the two men leaving the tiller, flexing their arms with relief and seeking shelter beneath the lee gig. A sea crashed against the hull and foamed brutally over the rail, sluicing the deck white and breaking in eddies round the deck fittings. They would be clearing the Molen Gat now, leaving the comparative shelter of the Haakagronden.

Again he peered to windward seeking a light from the frigate. Nothing.

The Dutch would never come out in weather like this, thought Drinkwater. It was going to be a long, dirty night for the British blockaders and there was little glory in such a gale.

They reached the admiral at ten in the morning. The gale was at its height, a low scud drifting malignantly across the sky reducing the visibility to a monotonous circle of grey breaking waves, streaked with white spindrift that merged at its margins with the lowering clouds. In and out of this pall the pale squares of reefed topsails and the dark shapes of hulls streaming with water were all that could be seen of the blockading battleships. Even the patches of the blue ensigns of Duncan's squadron seemed leeched to the surrounding drab.

Kestrel had come up under Venerable's lee quarter like a leaping cork, or so it seemed to the officers on the flagship's quarterdeck, and the admiral had had his orders sealed in a keg and thrown into the sea.

With great skill Griffiths had manoeuvred in the flagship's wake to recover the keg. 'Orders for the fleet, Mr Drinkwater, excepting for Russell, Adamant, Beaulieu, Circe, Martin and two cutters, ah, and Black Joke, the fleet's for Yarmouth Road.'

'And we're to tell 'em?'

Griffiths nodded. 'Very good, sir, we'll bear away directly.'

Dipping her ensign in acknowledgement of her instructions Kestrel turned away.

As she steadied on her course Drinkwater returned to Griffiths's side. 'What about us, sir?'

'Active and Diligent to remain, the rest of us for Yarmouth.'

Drinkwater nodded. The nagging notion that they had unfinished business off the Texel caused him to catch Griffiths's eye. Griffiths held his gaze but said nothing. Both of them were thinking of the shrivelling body of their friend.

They were running downwind now, closing Vice-Admiral Onslow in the Monarch. Passing their message they reached down the line of Onslow's division, watching the lumbering third rates, Powerful, Montagu and Russell, the smaller sixty-fours Veteran and Agincourt with Bligh's Director. Next they passed word to the obsolete old Adamant, she that so gallantly supported Duncan's deception off the Texel. They found Circe and Beaulieu and both the luggers hanging on to the frigates like children round their mother's skirts. It was dark before they returned to Venerable and sent up a damply fizzing blue rocket as a signal to the admiral.

Drinkwater scrambled below, jamming himself into a corner of the cabin and gratefully accepted a bowl from Merrick. The skilly-golee was all that could be heated on the galley stove but it tasted excellent laced with molasses and he wolfed it, aware that Appleby was hovering in the doorway.

'D'you want me, Harry?' Drinkwater asked, nodding to Traveller who was groping his way into the cabin, bracing himself against the violence of the cutter's motion, also in search of something to eat.

Appleby nodded too. 'A word, Nat, if you've a moment…' He plucked at Drinkwater's sleeve and drew him towards his own cabin.

'By God, that skilly was good… Hey! Merrick! D'you have any more?' Fresh from the deck and very hungry Drinkwater found Appleby irritated him.

'Nat, for heaven's sake, a moment of your time. Listen, while you and Griffiths have been busy on deck I have been increasingly aware of unrest in the ship… nothing I can pin down, but this miserable blockade duty at a season of the year when no self-respecting Dutchman is going to emerge into the North Sea when he has a bed ashore, is playing the devil with the men. No, don't dismiss me as a meddling old fool. I have observed glances, mutterings, listened to remarks dropped near me. Damn it, Nat, you know the kind of thing…'

'Oh come now Harry, I doubt now that we're going back to Yarmouth that anything will materialise,' Drinkwater bit off a jibe at Appleby's increasing preoccupation with mutiny. Blockade duty in such a small vessel was playing on all their nerves, even those of the men, and it was doubtless this irritation had manifested itself to Appleby. 'What seaman doesn't grumble, Harry? You are worrying for nothing, forget it…'

There was a thumping crash and the bulkhead behind them trembled. From the lobby outside a torrent of Welsh oaths mixed with Anglo-Saxon expletives ended the conversation. Appleby threw open the door to reveal Lieutenant Griffiths lying awkwardly at the foot of the ladder. His face contorted with pain.

'My leg, doctor… By damn, I've broken my leg!'

Chapter Fourteen A Private Insurrection

'Can you manage the cutter, Mr Drinkwater?'

Drinkwater looked at the admiral. Duncan's eyes were tired from a multitude of responsibilities. He nodded. 'I believe so, sir.'

'Very well. I will have an acting commission made out immediately. You have been acting before, have you not?'

'Yes sir. Twice.'

Duncan nodded. 'Good. If you discharge your duty to my satisfaction I shall see that it is confirmed without further ado… now sit down a moment.' Duncan rang a bell and his servant entered the cabin. 'Sir?'

'My secretary, Knapton, and my compliments to Captain Fairfax and will he bring in his lordship,' he turned to Drinkwater. 'It'll not hurt you to know what's in the wind, Mr Drinkwater, as you are to occupy an advanced station. Were you not part of the prize crew that brought in Santa Teresa to Gibraltar in '80?'

'Yes sir. She was commanded by Lieutenant Devaux, Lord Dungarth as is now, sir.'

'Aye, I remember your name now, and here is his lordship,' Duncan rose stooping under the deckhead to motion Lord Dungarth and Captain Fairfax to chairs.

Drinkwater covered his astonishment at the earl's sudden appearance with a bow. He remained standing until the admiral motioned him to sit again.

'Now gentlemen, Mr Drinkwater is to remain. Under the circumstances he ought properly to be informed of our deliberations and can convey their substance to Trollope. I have given him an acting commission. Now, my Lord, what have you to tell us?'

'You could not have made a better choice, Admiral,' put in Dungarth, smiling at Drinkwater. 'Now when are you able to sail?'

The old admiral passed a hand over his face. 'I must have a few more days to recruit the fleet. Yes what is it?' Duncan paused at the knock on the door. A large man with a saturnine face entered. He was in admiral's uniform. 'Ah, Richard, come in, you know Fairfax of course, this is Lord Dungarth, from the Admiralty…' Onslow's eyebrows lifted, '…and this is Lieutenant Drinkwater of Kestrel.'

Drinkwater rose and bowed. 'Your servant, sir.'

'What happened to Griffiths?'

Duncan said, 'Broke his leg and I've promoted Drinkwater, he kens the crew and I'm not one to be fussing about with officers on other ships with the situation as delicate as it is now…' He looked significantly at Onslow who nodded his agreement. Drinkwater realised there were doubtless a score of passed midshipmen who might regard their claim on the first available commission as better than his own.

'Congratulations, Mr Drinkwater,' said Onslow. 'Are you familiar with Psalm 75? No? "Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, but God is the judge; he pulleth down one and setteth up another.'"

The little group chuckled. Onslow was well-known for his Biblical references so that signals midshipmen had to keep a copy of the Bible alongside Kempenfelt's code.

'Most apposite. But to business. My Lord?'

'Well, gentlemen, since the regretted loss of Major Brown,' Dungarth paused and there was a deferential murmur as death passed his grim shadow across their council, 'I have learned from our people in Paris that Capitaine Santhonax has been seen there. However, his stay was not long and he was seen in The Hague last month. It is confidently expected that he is now back at the Texel breathing down De Winter's neck. We were under the impression that enthusiasm for another attempt upon Ireland has dwindled since the death of General Hoche. But Austria has reached an accommodation with this new General Bonaparte at Leoben and it seems likely that troops will be available for other enterprises.' He paused and accepted a glass of wine from Knapton who appeared with silent ease, bearing tall glasses on a silver salver.

'Most of you will know of the Director's raid last February on Fishguard. It was American led…' a murmur of anger went round the listeners. 'Although it was an ignominious failure the Directory learned that it was perfectly possible to land on our soil.

'Whether the target is Ireland or the mainland we do not know. However it seems certain that the Directory, in the person of Santhonax, will exert great pressure upon De Winter to sail. If he prevaricates he will be superseded and possibly more will be struck down than his flag. Jan De Winter is a convinced republican but a soldier by training. I think Santhonax is at his elbow to overcome his misgivings. So you see, gentlemen, De Winter must come out and you must stop him. A junction with the Brest squadrons would be disastrous for us on all fronts.'

There was an awkward shuffling of feet as Dungarth finished. The collection of ships that made up the North Sea squadron was far from the crack units of the Channel fleet, the Grand Fleet as it was commonly called.

'I must have a few more days,' said Duncan, looking anxiously at Onslow for support.

'I agree Adam. You'll have to inform Government, my Lord, we must have time, this squadron is cranky enough. Look, even its commander-in-chief has to endure this sort of thing…' Onslow pointed to the strategically located buckets in Duncan's cabin that had been placed to catch water from the leaks in the deckhead.

Drinkwater listened to the deliberations of his seniors with one ear and turned over Dungarth's news in his mind. So, his instinct had been right. They were not yet finished with the Texel. And he was not yet finished with Santhonax. He began to see that Ireland was probably the key. At least the paralysis of the British Fleet and combination of the republican navies for some expedition had been the mainspring of Santhonax's actions. And Brown had taken an interest in Wolfe Tone on the beach at Kijkduin. Yes, Santhonax's actions were clear now: the suborning of the British Fleet that had so nearly succeeded, the urgency to get Dutch support before the collapse of Parker's resolve. When that failed a last thrust from Brest with the combined fleets to force aside a Royal Navy weakened by mutiny, and then a descent on the naked coasts of Britain by a French army under this new general, said to be more brilliant than Hoche or Moreau, this General Bonaparte…

'Mr Drinkwater?… Mr Drinkwater!'

He came to with a start. 'I beg your pardon, sir. I, er, I was just digesting the implications of Lord Dungarth's…' he tailed off flushing scarlet.

'Yes, yes,' said Duncan testily, 'I will have written orders within the hour, please make yourself at home in the wardroom. You will convey my despatches to Trollope then station yourself as close to Kijkduin as ye can. I want to know the moment the Dutch move. D'ye understand, man?'

Drinkwater rose. 'Aye sir. Thank you for taking me into your confidence. Your servant gentlemen.' He bowed and made his way back on deck.

'You two are in collusion, damn you both,' Griffiths muttered, sweat standing out on his pale forehead, his pupils contracted by the opiate administered by Appleby.

'No sir,' said Drinkwater gently, 'that is really not the case at all. Admiral Duncan's orders, sir. If you will permit us we will have you ashore directly and into the hospital.' He motioned Short and a seaman into the cabin to lift Griffiths on to the stretcher. As they struggled through the door Appleby mopped his forehead.

'Phew! He took it from you like a lamb, Nat my boy. He's been tearing the seat out of my breeches this hour past.'

'Poor old fellow,' said Drinkwater, 'will his leg mend?'

Appleby nodded. 'Yes, if he keeps off it for a while, his constitution is remarkable considering the Gambia fever.'

'He'll miss his bottle in hospital.' They followed the stretcher up on deck where Jessup was preparing to lower the lieutenant into the waiting boat.

'Mr Drinkwater,' croaked Griffiths, trying to raise his head.

'Sir?' Drinkwater took the extended hand.

'Good luck to you Nathaniel bach, this may be your opportunity, see. Be vigilant and success will be within your grasp. Good luck now. Lower away you lubbers and handsomely, handsomely.'

Drinkwater saw the old man, wrapped in his wood and canvas shroud, pulled away from the cutter. He watched the gig curve away for the shore and found his eyes misting. He dismissed sentiment from his mind and turned his attention inboard.

'Mr Jessup!'

'Sir?'

'Pipe the hands aft.'

His heart beat with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. His elevation to command might only be that of an officer 'acting', unsubstantive and very temporary, but for as long as it lasted he held power over the men who crowded round the remaining gig amidships, and was accountable for every movement of the cutter, the duty and mistakes of his subordinates. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the roll of paper.

When silence fell he began to read himself in.

At the conclusion of the solemnly formal words he added a sentence of his own. 'I trust you will do your duty for me as you did for Lieutenant Griffiths. Very well Mr Jessup, we will weigh directly the boat returns, you may heave short now.' Jessup shouted and the men turned away to make preparations. Drinkwater called to Hill. 'Mr Hill! Mr Hill, I am rating you master, do you take the first watch in my place.'

While the cutter's sails were cast loose he slipped below. Merrick, fussing like an old hen, was lugging the last of Drinkwater's gear out of the little cabin and settling it in the lieutenant commander's. It was a trifle larger than his own but in the rack for glass and carafe, Drinkwater wryly noted, the two objects were in place. As he hung the little watercolour he thought of Elizabeth. They had been separated for eighteen months now. It was a pity he had had no time to let her know of his promotion and Duncan's promise. A knock on the door interrupted his privacy. It was Appleby.

'Nat, er, sir,' Appleby rubbed a large, pudgy hand across his several chins.

'What is it?' asked Drinkwater, settling his books.

'I'm damned glad to see you promoted, Nat… sir… but believe me it is imperative you are circumspect with the men. They are still in an ugly mood. Orders for the Texel will do nothing to ameliorate that. It's nothing specific,' Appleby hurried on before Drinkwater could interrupt, 'but I anticipate that they will try you now Griffiths is gone, that's all…'

'You seem,' said Drinkwater passing a lashing round his quadrant box, 'to have let sedition, mutiny and all manner of lower deck bogeys infect your otherwise good sense, Harry.'

'For God's sake, Nat, damn it, sir, take my warning lightly and you do so at your peril.'

Drinkwater felt anger rising in him. To be thwarted now filled him with horror and Appleby's defeatism galled him. He mastered himself with difficulty.

'Look Harry, we have been weeks on this tedious blockading, we are all worn with it, sick of it, but it is our duty and now, more than ever, there exists a need for cruisers off the Texel. D'you cease this damned cant at once.'

'For God's sake man, this command nonsense has gone to your head!'

'Have a care Harry,' said Drinkwater with low and furious menace in his voice. He pushed past the surgeon in search of the fresh air of the deck.

Bulman met him at the companionway. 'Mr Hill's compliments, Mr Drinkwater, and the anchor's underfoot and the gig approaching.'

Drinkwater nodded and strode to the rail, grasping it with trembling hands. Damn Appleby and his pusillanimous soul. He wanted to clear his mind of such gloomy thoughts to concentrate on his duty.

They recovered the gig and weighed, heading south east for St Nicholas Gat and the passage south of the Scroby Sands.

Forward the last lashings were being passed over the gig, the last coils of the halliards turned on to their pins and the taut sheets belayed. Hill had the cat stoppers clapped on and was passing the shank painter to secure the anchor against its billboard. Already two men had buckets over the side and were sluicing the mud of Yarmouth Road off the planking. Traveller was walking round the guns, checking their breechings. All was reassuringly normal. He relaxed and checked the course. Ahead of him lay the challenge of the Texel.

At midnight Appleby's apprehensions were fulfilled. When Hill turned the deck over to Jessup the men demanded to be paid. It was an odd and impossible request but had ranked as a grievance for many months. It was now that those who influenced the grumblings of the fo'c's'le chose to make it manifest itself. Kestrel's complement had not been paid for over a twelvemonth. Their recent period at anchor had been marred by a refusal of further credit by James Thompson, the purser, largely because that gentleman had himself run out of ready cash. This denial had led to the men being unable to make purchases from the bumboats of Yarmouth. The consequent lack of small comforts exacerbated the already strong resentment of the hands. By an irony several bottles of liquor had found their way on board and the consumption of these in the first watch had led to the midnight revolt.

Drinkwater was called and sleepily tumbled from his cot. But his dreams were quickly displaced by anger at the news Jessup brought him. For a minute, as he dressed while Jessup spoke he fulminated against the men, but he forced himself to acknowledge their grievance and that his own anger was unlikely to get him anywhere. But to pay them was not merely out of the question, it was impossible.

'Who's behind this, then, Mr Jessup, come on, there must be a ring-leader?'

Jessup shrugged. 'Not that I know of… here I'll do one of those.' He took one of the pistols that Drinkwater had taken out of their case. They belonged to Griffiths and Drinkwater thought furiously as he slipped the little ramrod back into its socket. 'Can I count on you Mr Jessup?'

'O' course, sir,' said Jessup indignantly.

'Very well, you keep that pistol then. Where are the men now?'

'On deck waiting for you.'

'Call all the other officers.'

'I did that on my way to you, ah, here's Mr Appleby…'

Appleby pushed into the cabin. 'I told you, Nat, I warned you…' His face was grey with worry and his nightgown increased his girth where it protruded from hastily drawn on breeches.

'To the devil with your premonitions, Harry. Are you armed?'

'Of course,' he held up a brace of heavy pistols. 'I've had these loaded and ready for a month.'

'Have you checked the primings then,' snapped Jessup and Appleby withered him at a glance.

'Right gentlemen. Let's go!' Traveller joined them in the lobby and they went on deck.

It was a clear night with a quartering wind and sea driving them east at a spanking rate. Patches of cloud obscured the stars. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could see Bulman had the helm and a blur of faces amidships showed where the hands waited to see what he would make of their action. Drinkwater knew that he must act with resolution and he turned briefly to the officers behind him.

'I expect your support. To the utmost if need be.'

Then he turned forward until he was no more than a yard from the waiting men. A cold and desperate feeling had settled on him. He would not be diverted from his orders now, nor from the one chance providence had so parsimoniously offered him. Instinctively he felt no man would offer him bodily harm. He was less sure of his own restraint.

He drew his hanger with a rasping flourish and noted the involuntary rearward movement, heard the sharp intake of breath.

'Now my lads, I know your grievance but this is not the time to air it. We are on urgent service and you'll all do your duty.' He let the words sink in.

'Bollocks,' came a voice from the rear of the crowd and he saw grins in the darkness.

He whipped the pistol from his belt and held it suddenly and terribly against the skull of the nearest seaman.

'Mr Jessup! Mr Appleby! Your weapons here upon the instant!'

Again he felt the will of the men waver: resolution from the rear, weakening from those in front. 'I will shoot this man if you do not disperse at once. I beg you not to force me to this extremity…' The man's eyes were enlarged with fear, the whites clear in the gloom.

'Jesus mates,' he whispered.

'Get fucked, Mr Drinkwater, you can't bluff us, we want our money.' A murmur of supporting approval greeted this sentiment.

With a click Drinkwater pulled the pistol hammer back to full cock. 'I'm not bluffing.' He ranged his eyes over the men. Behind him Appleby spoke, 'Mr Drinkwater has a reputation for courage, lads, I most earnestly recommend you not to strain his patience…'

'Aye, lads, Mr Appleby's right, remember that Froggy lugger…' It was Tregembo's voice and Drinkwater held his tongue, aware of the deadly little melodrama being played out. He did not know of the grisly reputation he had acquired for hand to hand fighting, of how it was said that he cleared the deck of the Citoyenne Janine, of how, in the American War, Mr Drinkwater killed the French officer of La Creole and still carried the dead man's sword to prove it.

Drinkwater felt the tide turn. 'I will count to five. If the watch below isn't off the deck by then I'll shoot. Otherwise we'll let the matter drop and I'll personally apply to the admiral for your pay. One… two…' The man beside him was trembling uncontrollably. Drinkwater brought the muzzle up. 'Three.'

A rearward surge went through the men. 'Four.'

Murmuring to themselves they went forward.

Drinkwater lowered his pistol. 'Carry on,' he said quietly to the frightened man beside him who trembled with reaction.

The mutiny was over. It was just one bell in the middle watch.

'Time for bed, gentlemen,' said Drinkwater in a tone taken for coolness by those who heard, but redolent with relief to his beating heart.

'Four bells, sir.'

Drinkwater stirred, swimming upwards from the depths of sleep to find Merrick bent over him and the aroma of coffee in his nostrils. Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot he took the mug while Merrick put a glim to his lantern. Drinkwater shivered in the predawn chill and felt a dull ache in his right arm. The pain reminded him of the events of the night and he was suddenly wide awake.

Merrick turned from adjusting the lantern. 'Mr Traveller said to tell you 'e expects to sight the squadron at first light, sir.'

'Then why didn't you say so when you called me?' Drinkwater felt a peevish irritation rising in him, together with a flood of loneliness that combined with the bitter realisation that in addition to a heavy responsibility to Duncan, he had to contend with a disobedient crew. He did not listen to Merrick's mumbling excuse and experienced a mean delight when the man fled.

While he shaved he calmed himself, shaking off resentment as the coffee scoured his mouth and cleared his head. Duncan's task was not impossible. Griffiths had been right, this could be his opportunity and he was damned if he was going to lose it now. Wiping the lather from his face he completed dressing and went on deck.

Exchanging courtesies with Traveller he walked to the weather rail. The north westerly breeze had held during the night and the eastern horizon was becoming more clearly defined against the coming daylight. For a moment he drank in the cold air of the morning then called to Traveller.

'Mr Drinkwater?'

'All quiet?'

'Not a peep. Begging your pardon, Mr Drinkwater, but I'd say as how you'll have no more trouble with this lot.' Drinkwater looked at the gunner.

'Let us hope you are right, Mr Traveller,' he replied as coolly as he could.

'We should sight the squadron very soon, sir. She was making nine knots at four bells.'

Drinkwater nodded and walked forward as far as the boats. Surreptitiously he shot a glance at the two helmsmen. They were intent on the compass. He had cowed them, it seemed, and with an effort he stopped twisting his hands nervously behind his back. He set his mind to preparing what he would say to Trollope in an hour or two.

'Wind's dying,' Hill said. They were well up into the Schulpen Gat, the battery at Kijkduin broad on the bow, just out of cannon shot. Mercifully the gibbet was no longer there. Against the south going tide they were making no headway and Drinkwater gave the order to anchor. Already the sun was westering and the night's chill could be felt in the air. Drinkwater looked at the sky. The cloud was clearing, the dunes, mills and churches of the Dutch coast had a sharpness that owed more to a drying of the air than the sinking of the sun.

'A shift of wind to the east, I think, Mr Hill.'

'Aye sir, happen you are right.'

Drinkwater waited until the hands had the sails down and stowed. Then he ordered a spring clapped on the cable, the charges drawn and the guns reloaded. While the men bustled round he ascended the rigging to the hounds. Securing himself he levelled his glass to the eastward.

He recalled the words of William Burroughs, first lieutenant of Russell, who had entertained him while Trollope digested his orders. 'I envy you that cutter, so will a number more, I don't wonder, once they hear old Griffiths is laid up. At least you set eyes on the squareheads, all I've seen is a few mastheads over the dunes. Trying to make an intelligent guess at the number of ships they represent is like… is like,' Burroughs had searched for a simile and failed with a shrug. 'Well you know it's damned impossible. Yes, I do envy you that. It gets deuced boring out here week after week, it's not the Mediterranean, don't you know, no blue seas and snow-capped sierras to moon over, just acres and acres of dung coloured water and a lot of squareheaded Dutchmen sitting on their arses laughing at us, eh?' It was a sentiment commonly expressed in the fleet. But Burroughs's farewell had been less flippant. 'Good fortune, m'dear fellow, we will all be relying most heavily upon you.'

Well, he must do better than Burroughs. Wiping his eye on his sleeve he replaced the glass and concentrated.

The dreary coast extended far to the south in wave after wave of dunes and marram grass. Here and there the cluster of habitations huddled round the conspicuous spires of churches. Shreds of smoke rose into the tranquil air. In the circle of the glass he picked up a lone horseman riding along the tideline keeping an eye on them. He swung left to where the parapet of the battery fronted the cottages of Kijkduin. The Dutch tricolour hung limply above the dun coloured rampart and here too he could see men, the flash of light on a bayonet or telescope. Beyond Kijkduin the coast trended away into the anchorage where the black masts of ships could be seen. He felt his heart skip as he realised that most of the ships had their yards crossed. Preparations for sailing were well advanced. Lord Dungarth was right! He counted twenty ships at the least. He swept the glass to the north. On the far side of the Zeegat van Texel the island of Texel faded into the far distance. A Dutch yacht lay in the channel. De Winter's eyes, as he was Duncan's.

Northwards in the Molen Gat he could see a little dark shape that was Diligent while to the westwards the three masts of Black Joke, one time advice boat to Earl Howe, lay anchored in the West Gat.

Between them a flat expanse of sand, fringed with the curl of shallow breakers, the Haakagronden, covering as the tide rose. To the west the sun sank redly, the sea a jade green except where the sun laid a golden bar upon its rippled surface.

He returned to the deck, prepared the signal 'Enemy has yards crossed,' hoisted it and fired a gun. As the sun set Black Joke acknowledged it and Drinkwater could just see where she repeated it to Trollope's innermost ship, the sloop Martin. Drinkwater smiled to himself with self-satisfaction. Elizabeth would think him very pompous just at the moment.

'Did you see the way Mr Drinkwater smiled just now,' muttered Tregembo to another seaman leaning on the rail beside him, 'I reckons as how us'll be seeing some action afore long, my handsome.'

The light airs had died completely by midnight and a glassy calm fell on the black water; the rudder creaked and the tiller kicked gently in the tackles.

'Good tide running now, we'll get under way with the centre plates down and sweep her up to the north a little, Mr Jessup. Call the hands.'

Drinkwater had no desire to work the men unnecessarily but one mile to the north they would command a much better view of the Dutch fleet at anchor, still out of dangerous gunshot of the battery. The centre plates would give them ample warning of going around on such a quiet night and the labour at the sweeps would keep the men busy, giving them little time to reflect on their grievances, imagined or otherwise.

The steady clunk of pawls tripping on whelps told where the windlass was manned, while down the cutter's side the carpenter and his mate were knocking the poppets out of the sweep rowlocks. A muffled thudding in the darkness amidships indicated the hands were getting the ungainly lengths of the sweeps from their stowage between the gigs into position. Two men came aft and cast off the tiller lashings. They stood ready to execute Drinkwater's orders.

From forward came the low cry, 'Up and down,' and after a little, 'Anchor's a weigh.'

'Hard a-starboard.' The two men pushed the tiller over. 'Give way together, Mr Jessup.'

The sweeps came to life, swinging awkwardly across the deck, splashing alongside while the men got into their stride and Jessup belaboured them with rhythmic obscenities, curiously inflected with emphatic syllables so that they gradually came into unison. Kestrel gathered way, turning to bring the tide under her while Jessup intoned his meaningless invective in the ingenuous way of the British seaman. Drinkwater steadied the cutter on course and half an hour later they re-anchored.

'Get a spring on the cable, Mr Jessup, then send the watch below. We'll clear for action at dawn just in case that Dutch yacht has moved.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Jessup moved off giving orders. Drinkwater was pleased with himself. The centre plates had not touched once. They should be in the position he wanted. Wrapping himself in his cloak and kicking off his shoes he threw himself on to his cot and was soon asleep.

He was called at six. Five minutes later he was on deck. The wind was sharp and from the east. At five bells he called all hands and the men tumbled up to draw and reload the guns. Alternate lashings were cast off the mainsail and the halliards prepared for rapid hoisting, their falls faked out along the deck in case daylight revealed them too close to the battery. Daylight came with a mist.

An hour later Drinkwater stood the men down and went below to shave and break his fast. The skillygolee and molasses warmed him and only his new found dignity as commander prevented him from chaffing Appleby who was making a half-hearted protest that the creaking of the sweeps had kept him awake. The fact that the wind was from the east had set Drinkwater in a state of tension that would not let him relax.

He returned to pacing the deck while he waited for the mist over the land to lift. If they had anchored in the wrong place they might have to cut and run before being caught in the cross fire of the yacht and the heavier guns at Kijkduin. He tried to calm himself, to stay the prickling sweat between his shoulder blades and forget the fine, fire-eating phrase that kept leaping unbidden into his mind: morituri te salutant…

'Mist's clearing, Mr Drinkwater.' It was Traveller, anxious to fire his precious guns.

'Thank you Mr Traveller.' Drinkwater went forward and began climbing the mast. From his perch he could see the mast trucks of the Dutch fleet rising from the white shroud that enveloped the town of Den Helder. In the foreground the land was already clear and the solitary boom of a gun echoed seawards where the battery ranged them. The Dutch yacht still lay in the fairway, some eight cables away, and beyond her, now emerging dramatically from the evaporating vapour, lay the Dutch fleet.

Movement was clearly discernible. There were men aloft and he started to count as the ships began to warp themselves clear of the buoys. At noon Black Joke, beating skilfully up through the West Gat, came alongside. By agreement it was she that ran out to Trollope during the afternoon of the 7th October to inform him that the Dutch were on the move. There was every prospect that if the wind held east, Admiral De Winter would sail.

Late afternoon came and still the breeze was steady. Drinkwater kept the deck, not trusting himself to go below. The weary months of blockage duty had screwed him to a pitch that cried out for the release of action. What was true of him was true of all of Kestrel's people. He looked round the deck. Men lingered half hoping, half dreading that the Dutch would come out. He looked away to the east. The yacht remained at her anchor, like a dog at the door of his master's hall, and beyond…

Drinkwater reached for his glass. One of the ships had sail set and a bone in her teeth. He hastened forward and levelled the glass, steadying it against a stay.

It was a frigate, coming down the fairway under topsails. Would she re-anchor or was she leading the fleet to sea? Drinkwater's mouth was dry, his back damp and his heart hammered. The frigate was still heading seawards. He stared at her for perhaps ten minutes then relaxed. He saw her topsails shiver and her hull lengthen as she turned into the wind to anchor. She was to act as guardship then, weighing first and sweeping the puny opposition outside from the path of De Winter's armada. Drinkwater found himself shaking with relief. He was about to turn aft when a movement beside the frigate caught his eye. A boat had put off from her side and was being pulled seawards, towards the yacht.

As the sun dropped Kestrel made the signal 'Enemy in an advanced state of preparation' to Black Joke five miles to the west.

They saw her repeat it and a few minutes later received a reply from Trollope. It was a distance signal of three square flags and a black ball and it meant 'I am unsupported.'

Duncan had not arrived.

Drinkwater turned east once more. They would have to run before the enemy then. The boat had left the yacht and was pulling back for the frigate. He wondered what orders the commander of the yacht had received. Positive sailing instructions, he concluded. And then he noticed something else. Something that made the muscles of his stomach contract and his whole body tense.

The Dutch yacht had hoisted a flag to her masthead.

A black, swallowtailed pendant.

Chapter Fifteen Camperdown

Sleep eluded Nathaniel Drinkwater that night. When he heard four bells struck in the middle watch he rose and entered the cabin, opening the locker where Griffiths kept his liquor. His hands closed round the neck of the first bottle and he drew it out, pulling the cork and pouring cognac into his throat. The smell of it reminded him of the night off Beaubigny and the eyes of Hortense Montholon. He had a strong sensation of events coming full circle. 'This is witchery,' he muttered to himself, and drew again at the bottle, shuddering from the effect of the raw spirit. He shifted his mind to Elizabeth, deliberately invoking her image to replace that of Hortense as a man touching a talisman; as he had done years ago in the swamps of South Carolina. But Elizabeth was distant now, beyond the immense hurdle of the coming hours, obscured by the responsibilities of command. Somehow his old promise of circumspection to Elizabeth now seemed as pompously ridiculous as that of doing his duty to Duncan.

He hurled the bottle from him and it shivered to pieces against the far bulkhead.

'Damned witchery,' he repeated, heading for the companionway. Up and down he strode, between the taffrail and the gigs, the anchor watch withdrawing from his path. From time to time he paused to look in the direction of Kijkduin. Santhonax had to be at Kijkduin. Had to be, to feed the cold ruthlessness that was spreading through him. If his chance lay in the coming hours he must not lack the resolution to grasp it.

Vice-Admiral De Winter ordered his fleet to sail on the morning of 8th October. The frigate that Drinkwater had watched the previous afternoon stood seawards at first light, catching up the yacht in her wake. Kestrel weighed too, standing seawards down the West Gat, firing her chasers and flying the signal for an enemy to windward. Black Joke caught the alarm, wore round and stood in her grain, hoisting the same signal.

For an hour Kestrel ran ahead of the Dutch fleet as ship after ship rounded the battery at Kijkduin, turning south for the Schulpen Gat. The cutter, diverging towards Trollope, observed them, her commander making notes upon a tablet.

They rejoined the squadron at noon, closing the commodore for their orders.

'What d'you make of them?' Trollope called through his speaking trumpet.

'Twenty-one ships, sir, including some ship-sloops and frigates, say about fifteen of the line. There are also four brigs and two yachts… I'd say his whole force excepting the transports…'

'So Ireland's out.'

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No sir, they could come out next tide or wait until he's dealt with us, sir.' He saw Trollope nod.

'Take station on my lee beam. I'm forming line, continue to repeat my signals. Good luck!'

'And you sir.' He exchanged a wave with Burroughs, then turned to Hill.

'Mr Hill, our station is the commodore's lee beam. Do you see to it.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'You may adjust sail to maintain station and watch for any signals either general to the squadron for repeating, or particular to us.'

Drinkwater felt a great burden lifted from his shoulders. It was good to be in company again, good to see the huge bulk of Russell a cannon shot to windward. He suddenly felt very tired but there was one thing yet to do. 'Mr Jessup!'

'Sir?'

'Call the hands aft!'

'Now my lads,' began Drinkwater, leaping up on to the breech of one of the three pounders when they had assembled. 'I'm not one to bear a grudge, and neither are you. We are now in the presence of an enemy force and disobedience to an order carries the penalty of death. I therefore rely absolutely upon your loyalty. Give me that and I promise I will move heaven and earth to have you paid the instant we return to Sheerness.' He paused and was pleased to find a murmur of approval run through the men.

'Carry on, Mr Jessup, and pipe up spirits now…'

Drinkwater jumped down from the gun. 'Mr Hill, you have the deck. Call me if you need me.' He went gratefully below, passing through the cabin where light through the skylight had exorcised the spectres of the preceding night.

'Spirit ration, Mr Thompson,' said Jessup to the purser. James Thompson nodded and indicated the guns of Russell half a mile to windward. They were a dumb but powerful incentive to obedience.

'He chooses his moments for exhortatory speeches, don't he, Mr Jessup?'

Jessup had only the vaguest idea of what an exhortatory speech was, but the significance of Russell, surging along, sail set to the topgallants as she stood south to maintain station with De Winter, was not lost on him.

'Aye, Mr Thompson, he's a cool and calculating bastard,' muttered Jessup, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice.

Captain Trollope formed his squadron into line with the sloop Martin ahead and to larboard, keeping De Winter in sight as he edged south along the coast. Then, as the day wore on and his rear cleared the Schulpen Gat De Winter altered more to the west.

Trollope's main body consisted of the Beaulieu, a frigate of forty guns, following by the faithful fifty Adamant and his own Russell. In her wake came the smaller frigate Circe of twenty-eight guns. Kestrel and Active, cutters, lay to leeward of the line and Black Joke had long since been sent to Duncan to inform him the enemy was out.

Towards evening the wind fell away then backed round to the south-west. De Winter tacked in pursuit of Trollope who drew off, while the Dutch, unable to catch the British, stood south again, confirming Drinkwater's theory that they intended to force the Straits of Dover.

During the following two days the wind hauled more steadily into the west and De Winter's fleet began to beat to windward, closing the English coast in the vicinity of Lowestoft with Trollope just ahead, covering his communications with Yarmouth.

'What d'you make of it, Nat?' asked Appleby confidentially at dinner. 'D'you still hold to your idea that they're bound for Brest, then Ireland?'

Drinkwater nodded, wiping his mouth with the crumpled napkin. 'He's covering Duncan while the troopships and storeships get out of the Texel. They'll get south under the cover of the French coast and then De Winter'll follow 'em down Channel.'

Appleby nodded in uncharacteristic silence. 'It seems we've been wasting our time then,' he said.

On the morning of the 10th October Trollope despatched Active to find Duncan with the latest news of De Winter. At this time De Winter had learned from a Dutch merchant ship that Duncan had left Yarmouth and had been seen standing east. Alarmed for his rear De Winter turned away and, with the wind at north-west stood for the Dutch coast in the vicinity of Kampenduin.

Meanwhile Duncan, having left Yarmouth in great haste on seeing Black Joke making furious signals for an enemy at sea while still to seaward of the Scroby Sands, had indeed headed east for the Texel.

Trollope, though inferior in force, had hung on to the windward position chiefly because the shallow draughted Dutch ships were unable to weather him. He was still there on the morning of the 11th when officers in the Dutch fleet saw his ships throw out signals from which they rightly concluded Duncan was in sight of the main body of the British fleet. De Winter headed directly for the coast where he could collect his most leeward ships into line of battle and stand north for the Texel in the shallow water beloved by his own pilots. About twelve miles off the coast De Winter formed his line heading north under easy sail and awaited the British.

Admiral Duncan, having first reconnoitred the Texel and discovered the troop and storeships were still at their moorings, collected Diligent and turned south in search of his enemy. During the forenoon Trollope's detachment rejoined their admiral. Duncan's ships were indifferent sailors and he had neither time nor inclination to form line. De Winter's fleet was dropping to leeward into shoal water by the minute and the old admiral accepted their formal challenge with alacrity. Duncan hoisted the signal for 'general chase' and the British, grouped together into two loose divisions, Duncan's to the north and Onslow's slightly advanced to the south, bore down on the Dutch.

The increase in the westerly wind with its damp air had brought about a thickening of the atmosphere and the battle that was now inevitable seemed to be marred by disorder amongst the British ships. Just before noon Duncan signalled that his intention was to pass through the enemy line and engage from leeward, thus denying the Dutch escape and ensuring all the windward batteries of the British ships could be used. The signal was repeated by the frigates and cutters. At noon they hoisted that for close action.

Thirty minutes later Onslow's Monarch opened the action by cutting off De Winter's rear between the Jupiter and Harlem, ranging up alongside the former, raked by the heavy frigate Monikendaam and the brig Atalanta forming a secondary line to leeward of the Dutch battleships. Amid a thunder of guns the battle of Camperdown had begun.

Kestrel, in common with the other cutters as a repeating vessel, was not a target. Stray shot might hit her but in general the conventions of a fleet action were observed. The British cutters and Dutch yachts were expected to render assistance to the wounded where they could be found clinging to fallen spars and continue to repeat their admirals' signals. Kestrel had formed part of Onslow's division and Drinkwater found himself in a confusing world of screaming shot, choppy seas and a strong wind. Smoke and mist enveloped the combatants as gun flashes began to eclipse the dull daylight.

Within minutes Drinkwater had lost sight of Monarch behind the Dutch line and he altered to the north to maintain contact with Russell, but Trollope, too, cut through the line and Kestrel found herself passing under the stern of the Dutch seventy-four Brutus, bearing the flag of a rear-admiral at her mizen.

Through the rolling clouds of smoke a brig was seen to leeward and her commander did not extend the courtesy or disdain of his bigger consorts. Shot whistled about Kestrel and a shower of lancing splinters from the starboard rail sent one man hopping bloodily below in agony to where Appleby had his gruesome instruments laid out on the cabin table.

'Down helm!' roared Drinkwater, his eyes gleaming with concentration now the final, cathartic moment of action had arrived. 'Haul the sheets there!' the cutter bore away from her overlarge opponent and headed north, passing Brutus as the latter turned to assist De Winter ahead, now being pressed by several British ships tearing pell-mell into battle.

Suddenly ahead of them loomed a Dutch sixty-four, fallen out of line with her colours struck. For a moment Drinkwater contemplated putting a prize crew on board for it seemed unlikely that her antagonist, Triumph, engaged to larboard by a frigate and the seventy-four Staten General, had had the opportunity. But a sudden crash shook the cutter. One of the crew of Number 12 gun fell dead, cut clean in half by a ball that destroyed the jolly boat and the handsome taffrail. The brig which had fired on them had set her topgallants and was coming up fast in pursuit.

Drinkwater looked wildly round him. 'Down helm! Harden in those sheets there, put her on the wind, full and bye! Down centre plates! And throw that,' he indicated the faintly twitching lumps that a moment before had been a living man, 'overboard, for God's sake!'

Kestrel pointed up into the wind, escaping as she had done off Ushant, heeling to the hardening of her sails. Spray whipped over the rail and tore aft. Drinkwater looked astern.

'Well I'm damned,' he said aloud and beside him Hill whistled. The brig, unable to continue the chase so close to the wind, had come up with her consort, the surrendered sixty-four Wassanaer. Seeing her shameful plight the brig opened fire into her. In a few moments the Dutch tricolour jerked aloft again and snapped out in the wind.

'This ain't like fighting the Frogs, Mr Drinkwater. Look, there's hardly a mast down, these bloody squareheads know how to fight by Jesus… The bastards are hulling us. Christ! There'll be a butcher's bill after this lot…'

Russell loomed up ahead and Kestrel wore round in her wake.

'Ahead of you, sir,' Drinkwater bellowed through the speaking trumpet, 'a seventy-four. Yours for the taking…' He saw Trollope wave acknowledgement.

For a moment or two they kept pace with the battleship, huge, majestic and deadly, as she ran down her quarry. Her sides were already scarred by shot, several of which could be clearly seen embedded in her strakes. Seamen grinned at them from a jagged hole where adjacent gunports had been amalgamated. Thin streaks of blood ran down her sides.

'Spill some wind, Mr Hill. We'll drop astern.' Russell drew ahead, driving off the brig with one, apocalyptic broadside. Wassanaer surrendered again.

Kestrel crossed Russell's wake. To larboard two or three ships lay rolling, locked in a death struggle. One was the Staten General.

Suddenly, from behind the hard-pressed Dutchman, leapt a small but familiar vessel. Her bowsprit stabbed at the sky as her helm was put over and her course steadied to intercept the British cutter. At her masthead flew the black swallowtail pendant.

Drinkwater had no idea how Santhonax had persuaded De Winter to allow him the use of the yacht. She flew the Dutch tricolour from her peak but there was no mistaking the significance of that sinister weft at the masthead. Drinkwater thought of the corpse of Major Brown, of the hanged mutineers of the Culloden, of the scapegoats of the Nore and of the collusion between Capitaine Santhonax and the red-haired witch now in Maidstone Gaol. He was filled with a cold and ruthless anger.

'Larboard battery make ready!'

The yacht was on the larboard bow, broad-reaching to the northeast and closing them. For a few minutes they both ran on, lessening the range.

'Ease her off a point,' then in a louder voice, 'fire when you bear, Mr Bulman!'

Almost immediately the first report came from forward and Number 2 gun recoiled inboard, its crew fussing about it reloading. A ragged cheer broke from the Kestrels as they opened a rolling fire. Holes appeared in the yacht's sails. She was trying to cross Kestrel's bow to rake and Drinkwater had a sudden idea.

'Down helm! Headsail sheets! Hard on the wind!' Kestrel turned, presenting her bow for the raking broadside but at a time of her own choosing and too quickly for Santhonax to take full advantage. Only two balls from his broadside came near and they struck harmless splinters from the starboard gig. 'Starboard guns! Starboard guns!'

Traveller held his hand up in acknowledgement, as if coolly assuring his commander that no last minute manoeuvre would rob Jeremy Traveller of his moment. He had all the quoins out and the guns at full elevation as they made to cross the yacht's stern.

But Santhonax rose to the occasion. The yacht turned now, spinning to starboard so that the two vessels passed on opposite courses at a combined speed of nearly twenty knots. Doggedly they fired gun for gun, time permitting them one shot from each as they raced past. Drinkwater saw huge sections of the yacht's rail shivered into splinters. Jeremy Traveller had double shotted his guns.

Then the whine of shot, the impact, thumps and screams of the yacht's fire turned Kestrel's deck into a shambles of wounded and dead men who fell back from their cannon. Aft, Drinkwater laid his pistol at a tall man near the yacht's tiller and squeezed the trigger. The ball missed its mark and the fellow coolly raised his hat and smiled. Drinkwater swore but he was cold as ice now, lifted on to a terrible, calculating plane that was beyond fear. He had surrendered to providence now, was a hostage to the capricious fortune of war and had long forgotten his earnest promises to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was of another world that had no part in this dull and terrible October afternoon. For this was not the Nathaniel known to Elizabeth, this was a man who had taken the French lugger and quelled incipient mutiny. This was an intelligent man butchering his fellows, and doing it with consummate ability.

'Up helm! Stand by to gybe!'

There was a scrambling about the decks as Jessup, aware of Drinkwater's intentions, whipped the shocked men to their stations. He had not yet felt the pain of the splinter in his own leg. Kestrel swung round in pursuit of the yacht, heeling violently as her huge boom, barely restrained by its sheet, flew across the deck. The unsecured guns of the starboard battery rolled inboard to the extent of their breechings and those of the larboard thumped against the rail, their outboard wheels in the water that drove in through the open gunports. They steadied after the yacht. Across her stern they could see her name: Draaken. Shot holes peppered her sails as they did their own, and frayed ropes' ends streamed to leeward from her masthead.

Drinkwater never removed his eyes from his quarry, gauging the distance. It was closing, the yacht with her leeboards sagging down to leeward as Kestrel came up on her larboard quarter. He was aware of, rather than saw, Jessup clapping a set of deadeyes on a weather shroud, wounded in the action, that had parted under the sudden strain of that impetuous gybe. And beneath his feet there was a sluggishness that told of water in the hold. Even as his subconscious mind identified it he heard too the clanking of the pumps where Johnson was attending to his duty.

'Mr Traveller!' There was no answer, then Jessup called 'Jem's bought it, sir…' There was a pause, eloquent of eulogy for a friend. 'I'll do duty if it's the starboard guns you'll be wanting…' There was a high, strained quality of exaggerated emphasis in Jessup's voice, also present in his own. He knew it for the voice of blood-lust, a quality that made men's words memorable at such moments of heightened perception.

'It's the starboard battery I want, right enough Mr Jessup,' he confirmed, and it seemed that a steadying influence ran along Kestrel's deck. The wounded had been pulled clear of the guns from where Merrick and his bearers could drag the worst of them below, to Appleby.

The surrounding battle had ceased to exist for Drinkwater. His whole being was concentrated on overhauling the Draaken, attempting to divine Santhonax's next move. Jessup came up to him.

'I've loaded canister on top o'ball, sir, in the starboard guns, an' the larbowlines will be ready to board.'

With an effort Drinkwater directed his attention to the man beside him. There was the efficiency he had first noted about Jessup, paying dividends at last. He must remember that in his report. If he lived to write it.

'Thank you, Mr Jessup.' His eye ran past the boatswain. Forward he could see James Thompson checking the priming in a pistol and taking a cutlass from Short. Short, a kerchief round his grimy head, was lovingly caressing a boarding pike. By the companionway Tregembo was thumbing the edge of another pike and glancing anxiously aft at Drinkwater. All along the starboard side the starbowlines knelt by their guns as if at gun drill. He could see the red beard of Poll pointed at the enemy.

A wave of emotion seized Drinkwater for a terrible moment. It seemed the cutter and all her people were in the grip of some coalescing of forces that stemmed from his own desire for vengeance. They could not have caught the same madness that led Drinkwater in hot pursuit of Santhonax, nor all be victims of the witchcraft of Hortense Montholon.

He shook his head to clear it of such disturbing thoughts. It was merely the result of discipline, he reassured himself. Then he cast all aside as ahead of them Draaken luffed.

Unable to escape, she would stand her ground while she had a lead, lie athwart Kestrel's bow, rake her and run north, delivering a second broadside as she did so.

'Lie down!' Drinkwater commanded, lending his own weight to the tiller and turning Kestrel a quarter point to starboard, heading directly for the yacht.

The cutter staggered under the impact of Draaken's broadside. The peak halliard was shot through and the mainsail sagged down. Splinters rose in showers from the forward rails and a resonating clang told where at least one ball had ricochetted off a bow chaser. Someone screamed and one of the helmsmen dropped into eternity without a sound, falling against Drinkwater's legs. Then Draaken completed her turn and began to pass the cutter on the opposite tack, no more than twenty yards to windward.

'Now Jessup! Now!' Scrambling up from their prone positions the men gathered round the starboard guns.

Draaken drew abeam. 'Fire!'

Drinkwater saw the bulwarks fly as smoke from the yacht's own fire rolled down over Kestrel. As it cleared he saw her sails flogging uncontrolled. Santhonax had let fly his sheets and Draaken was dropping to leeward. With her shallow draught she would drive down on top of the cutter as Kestrel lost way, her mainsail hanging in impotent folds, the gaffshot through and her jib blowing out of the bolt ropes through shot holes.

'Let fly all sheets! Boarders stand by!'

All along her side Kestrel's gunners poured shot after shot into the yacht as fast as they were able. It was murder and the cracking sails added to the screams of wounded men and the roar of the cannon. Then, in the smoke and confusion, Draaken was on top of them, her mast level with Kestrel's tiller.

'Boarders aft here!' Drinkwater roared, lugging a pistol from his belt and drawing his hanger. Through the smoke he saw Tregembo and Short and James Thompson and half a dozen other faces familiar as old friends.

Kestrel shook as Draaken ground into her and the Dutchmen passed lashings over anything prominent. The wind whipped the last shreds of smoke from the now silent guns and as it cleared they saw their enemy.

They were poised to board, round red faces hedged with the deadly spikes of cutlass, axe and pike. Drinkwater sought vainly for Santhonax and then forgot him as the Dutchmen poured over the rail. The Kestrels were flung back, swept from their own deck as far as the gigs in a slithering, sliding mêlée of hacking stabbing and murdering. Drinkwater thrust, twisted and thrust with Tregembo grunting and swearing on his right hand and James Thompson on his left. He felt himself step on a body that still writhed. He dared not look down as he parried a clumsy lunge from a blond boy with the desperate look of reckless terror in his eyes. The boy stabbed again, inaccurately but swiftly in short defensive reflexes. Drinkwater hacked savagely down at the too-extended forearm. The boy fell back, unarmed and whimpering.

Briefly Drinkwater paused. He sensed the Dutch attack falter as the British, buttressed by the solid transoms of the gigs, found their defence was effective.

'Come on the Kestrels!' Drinkwater's scream cracked into a croak but about him there was a hefting of pikes, a re-gripping of cutlasses and then they were surging forward, driving the Dutch before them. Over a larboard gun leapt Short, a maniacal laugh erupting from him as he pitched a man overboard then drove two more before him into the larboard quarter. They were disarmed and with his pike Short tossed them both over the shattered transom like stooks on to a rick.

Drinkwater swung himself left, across to the starboard quarter where the enemy were in retreat. 'Board the bastard, James, board the bastard!' he yelled, and next to him Thompson grinned.

'I'm with 'ee, Mr Drinkwater!' Tregembo's voice was still there and here was Hill, and Bulman with the chasers' crews, having fought their way down the starboard side. Then they were up on the rail and leaping down on to Draaken's deck, their impetus carrying them forward, men made hard and ruthless by months of blockade carried with them a more vicious motivation than the Dutch, torn from comfortable moorings and doing the bidding of foreign masters.

Opposition fragmented, lost its edge and above it all Drinkwater could hear the furious oaths in a fairer tongue than the guttural grunts of dying Dutchmen.

With careless swathes of the hanger Drinkwater slashed aft. A Dutch officer came on guard in front of him and instinct made him pause and come into the same pose but he was passed by Short, his face a contorted mask of insane delight, his pike levelled at the officer. A pistol ball entered Short's eye and took the back of his skull off. Still the boatswain's mate lunged and the Dutch lieutenant crashed to the deck, pierced by the terrible weapon with Short's twitching corpse on top of him.

Drinkwater stepped aside and faced the man who had fired the pistol.

It was Edouard Santhonax.

The Frenchman dropped the pistol and swiped downwards with his sword in the molinello he had used at Sheerness. Drinkwater put up his hanger in a horizontal parry above his head and the blades crashed together. Then Tregembo was beside him his pike extended at Santhonax's exposed stomach.

'Alive, Tregembo! Take him alive!' and on the last word, with a final effort Drinkwater twisted his wrist, disengaged and drew his blade under Santhonax's uncovered forearm.

Santhonax, attacked by two men, took greater terror from the levelled pike and tried to push it aside even as Tregembo obeyed Drinkwater and brought it up. The vicious point entered the Frenchman's face and ripped his cheek in a bloody, disfiguring wound and he fell back, covered in blood.

Drinkwater turned to see the deck of Draaken like a butcher's shambles. Lolling on the yacht's companionway James Thompson was holding his entrails, staring with disbelief. Drinkwater turned away, appalled. A kind of hush fell on them all, the moaning of the wind rising above the groans of the wounded. Then Hill said, 'Flag's signalling, sir… Acts 27 verse 28…'

'For Christ's sake…'

All along the line of ships the smoke had cleared away. Admiral De Winter had surrendered and those of Onslow's commanders still with men on their quarterdecks able to open bibles obeyed their chief. They sounded and found, not fifteen fathoms, but nine. In great peril the British fleet secured their prizes.

Among them, her decks cluttered with corpses, her gear wounded, her bulwarks riven by shot, plunged the King's cutter Kestrel.

Chapter Sixteen Aftermath

'How is he, Mr Appleby?' In the swaying lamplight Kestrel's cabin had the appearance of an abattoir and Appleby, grey-faced with exhaustion, was stained by blood, his apron stiff with it. They stared down at the shrunken body of James Thompson, the purser, his waist swathed in bloody bandages.

'Sinking fast, sir,' said the surgeon, his clipped formality proper in such grim circumstances. 'The livid colour of the lips, the contraction of the nostrils and eyebrows an indication of approaching death… besides he has lost much blood.'

'Yes.' Drinkwater felt light-headed, aware of a thousand calls on his time, unable to tear himself away from the groans and stench of the cabin as though by remaining there he could expiate himself for the murder they had been doing a few hours earlier. 'Yes,' he repeated, 'I am told he supported rne most gallantly in boarding.'

Appleby ignored the remark.

'You are giving him an opiate?' Appleby lacked the energy to be indignant. He nodded.

'He is laced with laudanum, Mr Drinkwater, and will go to his maker in that state.' There was reproach in his voice.

Drinkwater left the cabin and returned on deck, passing the cabin, his own former hutch, where Santhonax lay, sutured and waxen, his hands bound. The rising wind had reached gale force and the British fleet clawed offshore, each ship fending for itself. In the howling blackness, lurching up and down the plunging deck, Drinkwater calmed himself before he could lie down and submit to the sleep his body demanded.

Rain came with the wind, driving over the wavecaps with a greater persistence than the sheets of spray that lashed the watch.

Out in the night an occasional lantern showed where one of the battleships struggled to windward and twice he heard Bulman caution the lookouts to exert themselves.

Drinkwater knew he had not escaped the brutalising of his spirit that had begun so many years ago in the cockpit of Cyclops, nor escaped the effects of the events in the swamps of Carolina. The savagery he displayed in battle was a primaeval quality that those events had dragged out of the primitive part of him. But such ferocity could not be sustained against the earlier influence of a gentle home and in reaction he veered towards sentiment, like so many of his contemporaries.

He took refuge in the satisfaction of a duty acquitted and an increased belief in providence. As fatigue tamed the feelings raging in him since the battle, numbing his recollections, he felt better able to trust himself to write his report.

…the vessels were laid board and board, Drinkwater wrote carefully, and after a sharp engagement the Draaken, despatch vessel, was carried.

I have to inform you that the enemy defended themselves with great gallantry and inflicted severe losses on the boarders. All of the latter, however, conducted themselves as befitted British seamen and in particular James Thompson, Purser, Edward Jessup, Boatswain, and Jeremiah Traveller, Gunner, who died in the action or of mortal wounds sustained therein.

He paused, reflecting on the stilted formality of the phraseology. One final piece of information needed to be included before this list of dead and wounded.

He began to write again. Among those captured was a French naval officer, Capitaine de frégate Edouard Santhonax, known to your Honour to have been an agent of the French Government. Among his papers were found the enclosed documents relative to a proposed descent upon Ireland. Drinkwater carefully inscribed his signature.

When he had appended the butcher's bill he went on deck. The frightful casualties inflicted on their number could not damp the morale of the crew. The Kestrels shared a common sense of relief at being spared, and a corporate pride in the possession of the Draaken, following astern under the command of Mr Hill, whose gashed arm seemed not to trouble him.

Drinkwater could not be offended at the mood of the crew. Of all the Kestrels he knew he and Appleby were alone in their sense of moral oppression. It was not callousness the men displayed, only a wonderful appreciation of the transient nature of the world. Drinkwater found he envied them that, and he called them aft to thank them formally, for their conduct. It all sounded unbelievably pompous but the men listened with silent attention. It would have amused Elizabeth, he thought, as he watched the cautiously smiling seamen. He felt better for those smiles, better for thinking of Elizabeth again, aware that he had not dared contemplate a future since the Dutch showed signs of emerging from the Texel. The grey windy morning was suddenly less gloomy and the sight of Adamant out of the corner of his eye was strangely moving.

He completed his speech and a thin cheer ran through the men. Drinkwater turned to the grey bundles between the guns. There were thirteen of them.

He had murdered and harangued and now he must bury his dead in an apparently meaningless succession of contradictory rituals.

From the torn pocket of his grubby coat he took the leather prayer book that had once belonged to his father-in-law and began to read, 'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord…' and overhead the bright bunting snapped in the wind.

Duncan's fleet anchored at the Nore to the Plaudits of Parliament and the gratitude of the nation. At first the strategic consequences of the battle were of secondary importance to the relief of ministers. Despite the mutiny the North Sea fleet was unimpaired in efficiency. The seamen had vindicated themselves and the Government had been justified in its intransigence. Vicarious glory was reflected on all parties, euphoria was the predominating emotion and honours were heaped upon the victors. Admiral Duncan's earlier ambition of quiet retirement with an Irish peerage was eclipsed by his being made a baron and viscount of Great Britain, Onslow was made a baronet, Trollope and Fairfax knights and all the first lieutenants of the line of battleships were promoted to commander. Medals were struck, swords presented and the thanks of both Houses of Parliament voted unanimously to the fleet. The latter was held to be, as Tregembo succinctly put it, of less use than his own nipples. Before reporting to Duncan, Drinkwater interviewed Santhonax.

The Frenchman could only mutter with difficulty, his lacerated mouth painfully bruised round the crude join Appleby had made of his cheek. He had given his name after prompting, using English, but Drinkwater had troubled him little after that, too preoccupied with managing the damaged cutter with half his crew dead or wounded.

But on the morning they anchored at the Nore, Santhonax was a little better and asked to see Drinkwater.

'Who are you?' he asked, through clenched teeth but in an accent little disfigured by foreign intonation.

'My name, sir, is Drinkwater.'

Santhonax nodded and muttered 'Boireleau…' as if committing it to memory then, in a louder voice, 'you are not the commander of this vessel?'

'I am now.'

'And the old man… Griffiths?'

'You know him?' Drinkwater was surprised and lost his chill formality. Santhonax began to smile but broke off, wincing.

'The quarry always knows the hunter… your boat is well named, La Crécerelle.'

'Why did you hang Brown?'

'He was a spy, he knew too much… he was an enemy of the Revolution and of France.'

'And you?'

'I am a prisoner of war, M'sieur Boireleau…' This time Santhonax crinkled the skin about his eyes. Stung, Drinkwater retorted, 'We have evidence to hang you. We have Hortense Montholon in custody.'

Santhonax's sneer was cut short. He looked like a man unexpectedly whipped. What colour he had, drained from his face.

'Take him away,' snapped Drinkwater to Hill, standing edgily behind the prisoner, 'and then have my gig made ready.'

'Drinkwater, good to see you, my word but what a drubbing we gave 'em and what a thundering good fight they put up, eh?' Burroughs met him at Venerable's entry port, bubbling with good spirits and new rank. He gestured round the fleet, 'hardly a spark knocked down among the lot of us but hulls like colanders… by heaven but I'm glad we did for 'em, damned if I'd like another taste of that… not a single prize that's worth taking into service… except perhaps yours, eh?'

'Aye, sir, but it's already cost a lot.'

Burroughs became serious. 'Aye, indeed. Our losses were fearful, over a thousand killed and wounded… but come, the admiral wants a word with you, I was about to send a midshipman to fetch you.'

Drinkwater followed Burroughs under the poop and was swept past the marine sentry. 'Mr Drinkwater, my Lord.' Burroughs winked at him and left. Drinkwater advanced to where Duncan was writing at his desk, its baize cloth lost under sheaves of paper.

'Sit down,' said the admiral wearily, without looking up, and Drinkwater gingerly lowered himself on to an upright chair, still stiff from the bruises and cuts of Camperdown. He felt the chair had suffered the repose of many backsides in the last twenty-four hours.

At last Duncan raised his head. 'Ah, Mr Drinkwater, I believe we have some unfinished business to attend to, eh?'

Drinkwater's heart missed a beat. He felt suddenly that he had made some terrible mistake, failed to execute his orders, to repeat signals. He swallowed and held out a packet. 'My report, my Lord…'

Duncan took it and slit the seal. Rubbing tired eyes he read while Drinkwater sat silently listening to the pounding of his own heart. The white paintwork of the great cabin was cracked and flaking where Dutch shot had impacted the Venerable's side and in one area planks had been hastily nailed in place. A chill draught ran through the cabin and a faint residual stain on the scrubbed deck showed where one of Venerable's men had bled.

He heard Duncan sigh. 'So you've taken a prisoner, Mr Drinkwater?'

'Yes, my Lord.'

'You'd better have him transferred over here immediately. I'll have a marine detachment sent back with you.'

'Thank you, my Lord.'

'The conduct of Captain Trollope's squadron, of which you were a part, was most gratifying and I have here a paper for you.' He held out a document and Drinkwater stood to take it. It was a commission as lieutenant.

'Thank you, my Lord, thank you very much.'

Duncan had already bent to his papers again and he said, without looking up, 'It's no more than you deserve, Mr Drinkwater.'

Drinkwater had his hand on the door handle when he recollected something. He turned. Duncan was immersed in the details of his fleet. There was talk of a court-martial on Williams of the Agincourt. Drinkwater coughed.

'My Lord?'

'Uh?' Duncan continued writing.

'My people are long overdue for their pay, my Lord, might I ask you for an order to that effect?'

Duncan laid his pen down and looked up. The admiral was too experienced a sea-officer not to know something lay behind the request. He smiled faintly at the earnest young man. 'See my clerk, Mr Drinkwater, see my clerk,' and the old admiral bent once again to his work.

Kestrel lay a week in Saltpan Reach while they did what they could to patch her up. Drinkwater was confirmed in command until they decommissioned for extensive repairs and he gave a dinner for those of his officers still alive. It was a modest affair at which they were served by Merrick and Tregembo who volunteered for the task and accomplished it with surprising adroitness. Afterwards he sought out Drinkwater.

'Begging your pardon, zur;' he began awkwardly, shuffling from one foot to the other and finally swallowing his diffidence. 'Ar damnation, zur, I ain't one for beating about, zur, but seeing as how you're promoted I'd like to volunteer for your cox'n, zur.'

Drinkwater smiled at the Cornishman. 'I'm only promoted lieutenant, Tregembo, that ain't quite post-captain, you know.'

'We've been shipmates a year or two now, zur…'

Drinkwater nodded, he felt very flattered. 'Look Tregembo, I can pay you nought beyond your naval pay and certainly not enough to support you and your future wife…' he got no further.

''tis enough, zur, your prize money'll buy you a handsome house, zur an' my Susan can cook, zur.' He grinned triumphantly. 'Thank 'ee, zur, thank 'ee…'

Taken aback Drinkwater could only mutter 'Well I'm damned,' and stare after the retreating seaman. He remembered Tregembo's Susan as a compact, determined woman and guessed she might have some part in it.

He had better write to Elizabeth and tell her he had a commission and she, it appeared, had a cook.

Chapter Seventeen The Puppet Master

'Orders, sir.' Hill passed the oiled packet that the guard boat had just delivered. Drinkwater pushed the last bottle of Griffiths's sercial across to Appleby and opened the bundle on the table.

As he read the frown on his brow deepened. Silently Appleby and Hill searched their commander's face for some indication of their fate. Eventually Drinkwater looked up.

'Mr Hill, we drop down to the Nore with the ebb this afternoon and I will require a boat to take me to the Gun Wharf at five of the clock…' He looked down again at the papers.

Hill acknowledged his instructions and left the cabin. 'What is it?' enquired Appleby.

Drinkwater looked up again. 'Confidential I'm afraid, Mr Appleby,' he said with chilly formality. But it was not Appleby's curiosity that had set Drinkwater on edge. It was the signatory of his orders. They had not come from Admiral Duncan but from Lord Dungarth.

It was the earl who descended first from the carriage that swung to a halt on the windy quay. Drinkwater advanced to greet him as he turned to assist the second occupant out of the carriage. The hooded figure was obscured in the gathering dusk, but there was something about the newcomer that was vaguely familiar.

'So,' she said, looking about her, 'you are going to deport me, no? Not shoot me after all?'

Drinkwater recognised Hortense Montholon as Dungarth replied 'Aye ma'am against both my judgement and inclination, I do assure you.' He turned to Drinkwater. 'Good evening, Lieutenant.' Dungarth gave a thin smile of congratulation.

'Good evening, my Lord.'

Lord Dungarth turned to the woman and removed a pair of handcuffs from his coat pockets. 'Be so kind as to hold out your right wrist.'

'Must you practice this barbarity,' she said frowning and shooting Drinkwater a look full of pathetic helplessness. He avoided her gaze.

'We are men, not saints sweet lady,' quoted his lordship as he handcuffed himself to the prisoner then led her towards the waiting boat.

Kestrel weighed and carried a favourable westerly breeze out of the Thames. Drinkwater came below at midnight to find Lord Dungarth sitting in the lamplit cabin with Hortense Montholon asleep on the leeward settee.

Silently Drinkwater brought out a bottle. He poured two glasses and passed one to Dungarth. The wheel had come full circle now, the cutter's cabin that had been the scene of its beginning witnessed its end. Dungarth raised his glass.

'To your cockade, Nathaniel, you have earned it.'

'Thank you, my Lord.' His eyes strayed to the woman. The auburn hair tumbled about her shoulders and a slight emaciation of her face due to her incarceration lent her a saintly, martyr-like quality. Something of her effect on Drinkwater was visible on his face.

'She is as dangerous as poison,' said Dungarth in a low voice and Drinkwater turned guiltily away.

'What is to be done with her?'

Dungarth shrugged. 'Were she a man we would have shot her, were she an English woman in France the regicides would have guillotined her. As it is she is allowed her freedom.' The cynical way in which Dungarth made his remarks clearly indicated he did not approve of the decision.

'Her brother has some influence in emigré circles and pressure was brought to bear upon Government,' he sighed. 'Would that poor Brown had had such an advocate.'

'Aye my Lord…' Drinkwater thought of the gibbet hanging over the battery at Kijkduin. 'And what of Santhonax?'

'Ah,' Dungarth grunted with greater relish, a cruel smile crossing his mouth. 'We have him mewed up close, very close. You ruined his looks Nathaniel, tch, tch.' Drinkwater passed the bottle as Kestrel lurched into a wave trough. Dungarth waved it towards the sleeping woman. 'She does not yet know of his apprehension. It is going to be something of a disappointment to her when she arrives home.' He smiled and sipped his wine.

Drinkwater looked at Hortense again. She stirred as Kestrel butted another wave and her eyes opened. She sat up puzzled, then shivered and drew the cloak round her in a curiously childish way. Then her eyes recognised the company and her circumstances and an expression close to satisfaction settled upon her face.

'Watch her well, Nathaniel,' said Dungarth, 'she is an old deceiver, a veritable Eve. It was a pity Jacobin sentiment, undiscriminating though it is, had not been a little more zealously employed at Carteret and saved us the trouble of rescuing such a viper.'

'Can you believe such a face could betray her betrothed, eh?'

Drinkwater saw Hortense frown, uncomprehending. He remembered poor De Tocqueville and his unrequited passion.

'What do you mean?' she asked, 'betray…'

'Do not mock me ma'am, your lover Santhonax had De Tocqueville cut down in the gutters of London and well you know it.'

'No, no… I knew nothing of that.' For a moment she digested the news then held up her head. 'I do not believe you. You lie… you lie to protect yourself, you are fools, already your navy is crippled by the brave republicans, soon the Dutch will come to help and then all the ships will join those of France and the greatest navy in the world will be at our command…' Her eyes blazed with the conviction of one who had sustained herself in prison with such thoughts. 'Even now you have spared me to use me in your plight.'

Beside him Drinkwater heard Dungarth begin to laugh. Quietly Nathaniel said, 'The mutiny in our navy is over, rna'am. The Dutch are not coming, their fleet is destroyed.'

'You see,' put in Dungarth, 'your plan has gravely misfired. Command of the Channel is ours and Ireland is safe.'

'Ireland is never safe,' snapped Hortense, a gleam of rekindled fire in her eyes which died abruptly as Dungarth replied, 'Neither is Santhonax.'

Hortense caught her breath in alarm, looking from one to another and finding no comfort in the expressions of her captors. 'He is in France,' she said uncertainly.

'He was in Holland, madam, but Mr Drinkwater here took him prisoner in the recent battle with the Dutch fleet.'

She opened her mouth to protest they were bluffing but read the truth in their eyes. Drinkwater had not baited her, Drinkwater did not deal in words and intrigue. She recollected him probing De Tocqueville's wound here, in this very cabin, an age ago. He was a man of deeds and she knew Santhonax had been taken, immured like herself by these barbarian English.

'And I believe his face was much disfigured by a pike,' Dungarth said abstractedly.

Both Dungarth and Drinkwater went ashore in the gig. Above them the height of Mont Jolibois rose into the night, its summit shrouded in a light mist that the breeze rolled off the land. The sea was smooth under the mighty arch of the sky.

Between the two of them the hooded figure remained obscured from the oarsmen. The gig was run on to the beach and Drinkwater lifted Hortense into his arms, splashing ashore and setting her down on the sand.

'There madam,' said Dungarth pointedly, 'I hope we never meet again.'

Hortense caught Drinkwater's eyes in the gloom. Hers were openly hostile that this nondescript Englishman had taken her lover and disfigured his beauty. Then she turned and made off over the sand. Drinkwater watched her go, oblivious of Dungarth beside him until the pistol flashed.

'My Lord!' He stared after Hortense, feeling Dungarth's hand restraining him from rushing forward. She stumbled and then they saw her running, fading into the night.

He stood staring with Dungarth beside him. Behind them he heard the boat's crew murmuring.

'It wasn't loaded,' said Dungarth, 'but she'll run the faster.'

He smiled at Drinkwater. 'Come, come, Nathaniel, surely you are not shocked. She had even half-seduced you.' He chuckled to himself. 'Why sometimes even a puppet master may pull a wrong string.'

They turned and walked in silence back to the boat.