Ebb tide

CHAPTER 1 Elizabeth

It was end of November 1781 when His Britannic Majesty's frigate Cyclops rejoined the Grand Fleet at Spidhead. In the grey half-light of a squally winter afternoon her cable rumbled through the hawse and she brought up to her anchor amidst the huge assembly of ships and vessels. Since frigates were constantly coming and going, her return from the Carolinas was unremarkable, but Captain Hope called upon Rear-Admiral Kempenfelt with some misgivings, for Cyclops's mission had been unsuccessful.

Having seen Hope down into his gig, Acting Lieutenant Nathaniel Drinkwater, a captured French sword at his hip, crossed the quarterdeck to where Lieutenant Devaux was levelling a telescope on the flagship. Kempenfelt commanded the rear division of the Grand Fleet from which Hope's frigate had been detached for special service some months earlier, flying his flag in the huge first-rate Royal George which lay some three miles away.

Drinkwater halted at the first lieutenant's elbow, coughed discreetly and said, 'Captain's compliments, sir, but would you be good enough to ensure no boats come alongside until he returns.'

Devaux lowered the glass a little and turned his gaze on the steel-grey waters of Spithead which were being churned by the vicious breeze into a nasty chop.

'D'you see any boats, Mr Drinkwater?'

'Er, no sir.'

'Er,' Devaux mimicked, replacing the telescope to his eye, 'no sir. Neither do I.'

'Except for the Captain's gig, that is, sir.'

'But no boats containing pedlars, usurers, tailors, cobblers, whores or whoremasters, eh?'

'None whatsoever, sir.'

'Then, Mr Drinkwater,' said Devaux with an ironic smile, turning his hazel eyes on the younger man, 'do you ensure that not one of them gets alongside. We must keep all manner of wickedness away from our fair ship, don't you know.' Devaux allowed a crease to furrow his equable brow and asked conversationally, 'Now, Nathaniel, do you suppose this sudden concern for the moral welfare of our people has anything to do with the fact that Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt is a religious man?'

'I suppose it might, sir.'

'I suppose it might, too,' responded the first lieutenant with a heavily exaggerated smile, replacing the telescope to his eye and returning his attention to Kempenfelt's flagship.

Drinkwater smiled to himself. Lieutenant the Honourable John Devaux was a man whom Drinkwater both admired and liked. He cautiously hoped that Devaux held Drinkwater himself in some esteem, for the nineteen-year-old enjoyed no patronage beyond the initial recommendation of his parish priest. Although this had secured him a midshipman's berth aboard Cyclops, nothing more could be expected from it. His acting rank was merely a convenient expedient for the ship, detached on special service as she had been. He expected to be returned to the midshipmen's mephitic berth in the next few days, as soon as a replacement could be found from the admiral's numerous élèves who inhabited this vast concourse of ships. Drinkwater sighed as he thought of his consignment to the orlop. His previous experiences of it had been far from happy. Hearing the sigh, Devaux turned upon him, lowering the glass and closing it with a sharp snick.

'Well, sir? How the deuce d'you intend to shoo the damned bum-boats off our side if you just stand there sniffing like an impregnated milkmaid?'

'I'm sorry, sir.' Drinkwater was about to turn away, aware that he had tested the first lieutenant's patience, when Devaux, staring around the ship, said with an ironic smile, 'Ah, but I see you have seen them all off.'

'I haven't seen a single one throughout the anchorage.'

'No, no one in his right mind would be out in a boat on an afternoon like this unless they had to be. Tis almost cold enough for snow, don't you think, or is it just because we hail from warmer climes?'

'Well, 'tis certainly chilly enough.'

'And I suppose you're concerned about your future, eh?'

'A little, I must confess.'

'You damned hypocrite, Nathaniel!' Devaux laughed. 'But don't expect a thing, cully. There'll be enough young gentlemen hereabouts', he went on, waving a hand expansively round the crowded anchorage, dark as it was with the masts of the fleet, 'to ensure we aren't without warm admirers. When word gets about that we've a berth empty in the gunroom, they'll all be writing to Howe or Kempenfelt or...'

'But there isn't an empty berth in the gunroom,' Drinkwater protested.

'A prophet is never credited in his own land, is he, eh?' Devaux remarked ironically. 'Resign yourself to the fact that by nightfall you will be back in the orlop.'

'I already have, but I cannot say I relish the prospect.'

Devaux looked seriously at Drinkwater. 'I shouldn't be surprised, Nathaniel, if we were not to be here for some time. If you would profit from my advice, I should recommend you to seek examination at the Trinity House and secure for yourself a warrant as master. You cannot afford to kick your heels in a midshipmite's mess until someone notices you. Unless I am completely out of tune with the times, there will be fewer opportunities to make your name as this war drags to its unhappy conclusion. At least with a master's warrant, your chances of finding some employment in a peace are much enhanced.'

'I shall mind what you say, sir, and thank you for your advice.'

"Tis no matter. I should not entirely like to see your abilities wasted, though my own influence is too small to afford you any advantage.'

'I had not meant...' Drinkwater protested, but Devaux cut him short with a brief, barked laugh.

'You've no need to be ashamed of either ambition or the need to make your way in the world.'

'But I had not meant to solicit interest, sir. I think, however, that I want experience to be considered for examination.'

'Don't be so damned modest.' Devaux turned away and raised the glass again.

Drinkwater had relinquished the deck when Hope returned. A cold and windy night had set in, with the great ships tugging at their cables, their officers anxious that they should not drag their anchors. The chill struck the gunroom, and those officers not on duty were considering the benefit to be derived from the blankets of their cots when Midshipman White's head peeped round the door.

'Mr Drinkwater,' he called, 'Mr Devaux's compliments and would you join him in the captain's cabin, sir.'

Ignoring the taunts of the other officers, Drinkwater pulled on his coat, picked up his hat and made for the companionway to the gun-deck. He halted outside the captain's cabin, ran a finger round his stock, tucked his hat neatly under his arm and, as the marine sentry stood to attention, knocked upon the door.

'Come!'

Captain Hope clasped a steaming tankard of rum flip, his shivering body hunched in the attitude of a man chilled half to death as he sat in his chair while his servant chafed his stockinged feet. The flickering candles showed his gaunt face pale with the cold and his eyes reddened by the wind. Devaux sat, elegantly cross-legged, on the settee that ran athwart the ship under the stern windows over which the sashes had been drawn, so the glass reflected the light of the candelabra.

'Ah, Drinkwater, my boy. I have some news for you.'

'Sir?'

'We are to have a new third lieutenant, I'm afraid.'

Drinkwater looked for a second at Devaux, but the first lieutenant's attention was elsewhere. 'I understand, sir ...'

'No you don't,' said Hope so sharply that Drinkwater coloured, thinking himself impertinent. 'Lieutenant Wallace will join tomorrow,' Hope went on, 'but since the establishment of the ship has been increased by one lieutenant, I have persuaded the Admiral to allow you to retain your acting commission.'

'I am much obliged to you, sir.' Drinkwater shot a second glance at Devaux and saw the merest flicker of a smile pass across his face.

'I have recommended that your commission be confirmed without further examination. I can make no pledges on Admiral Kempenfelt's behalf, but he has promised to consider the matter.'

'That is most kind of you, sir.'

'Well, well. We shall see. That is all.'

In the succeeding weeks Cyclops languished at Spithead, turning to the tide every six hours, but otherwise idle. Her people were active enough, hoisting in stores, water, powder and shot, and in due course other transactions began to take place. Though unpaid, since the present commission was of less than four years' standing, the frigate's people had received their accumulated prize money. Hardly had this been doled out by Captain Hope's prize agent's clerk than Cyclops was surrounded by bum-boats and invaded by a colourful and noisy mob whose trades and skills could provide both officers and ratings with their every want. A host of tricksters, fortune-tellers, tooth-pullers, pedlars, cobblers, vendors of every manner of knick-nack, traders' runners (advertising the expertise of their principals as sword-cutlers, tailors, pawn-brokers and portrait artists), Jewish usurers, gypsy-fiddlers and two score or so of whores infested the ship.

Amid this babel, the routine duties of the ship went on. Captain Hope absented himself for three weeks and Lieutenant Devaux took a fortnight's furlough. The ship underwent a superficial survey by the master shipwright of the dockyard, and her upper masts and yards were lowered and new standing rigging set up and rattled down. Five spars were renewed and Midshipman White spent three miserable days in the launch towing out replacements from the mast-pond in Portsmouth Dockyard.

Lieutenant Wallace arrived and was revealed as a protégé of the Elliot family to whom he was distantly related. His claim on their favour was small, it seemed, and it was acknowledged that he could have been a great deal worse. Life in the gunroom was thus tolerable enough. Drinkwater enjoyed the society of his fellow-officers, particularly the amusing banter between Devaux, when he was present, and the serious-minded but pleasant Lieutenant Wheeler of the marines. The sonorous gravity of the surgeon, Mr Appleby, often verged on the pompous, but his lengthy perorations could fill the gloom of an otherwise tedious evening with amusing targets for what passed for wit. Drinkwater exercised regularly with foils, and Wheeler and he recruited White and three other midshipmen into their salle d'escrime, as Wheeler, with light-hearted pretentiousness, insisted on calling the starboard gangway. As the junior lieutenant, Drinkwater was responsible for training the hands in the use of small arms, holding regular cutlass drills and target practices when, in the wake of the marines, they would shoot at bottles slung at the main yardarm.

In the midst of this activity Drinkwater received a letter, an answer to one he had sent off almost as soon as Cyclops had dropped her anchor, and he was soon afterwards anxious to obtain a few days' leave himself. The letter was from Miss Elizabeth Bower, whom he had met when last in England and to whom he had formed a strong attachment. She, it seemed, felt similarly attracted to him and they had exchanged correspondence, but he was uncertain of her whereabouts since her widowed father, with whom she lived, had moved from the Cornish parish of which he had briefly been inter-regnant. Now, having hardly dared hope that his letter would reach her, for he had sent it by way of the Bishop of Winchester, he found that her father had been inducted as incumbent in the parish of Warnford, which lay in the upper valley of the Meon, not many miles north of Portsmouth.

... It is so Comforting to hear from You,

Elizabeth had written, for Poor Father Exhausts himself in his Exertions to help the Unfortunate and Deserving Poor hereabouts... We have a Pleasant House with more Chambers than we can Sensibly use and Father joins me in Extending a Warm Invitation to you for Christmas, should You be Fortunate to Gain Your Freedom...

Keen both to justify Hope's faith in him and to oblige Devaux in the hope that in due course the first lieutenant would indulge his request for leave, Drinkwater penned a cautious note of acceptance hedged about by riders explaining his predicament, then threw himself into his duties. Occasionally these took him out of the ship, as when he acted for Hope on some business with the captain's prize agent, carrying papers ashore to the lawyer's chambers at Southsea. On this occasion, and in confident anticipation of his request being granted, Drinkwater spent two guineas of his prize money on a present for Elizabeth and was in high good humour as he returned from his expedition.

At the Sally Port he hired a wherry to take him back to the ship. It was a fine, cold winter's afternoon, with a brisk wind out of the northeast. A low sun laid a sparkling path upon the sea and threw long, complex shadows from the spars of the fleet. The wherryman set a scrap of lugsail as the boat cleared Southsea beach and they swooped and ducked over the choppy water in the lively but remarkably dry little craft as it fought the contrary tide. The panoply of naval might lay all about them in the brilliant sunshine. Curiously Drinkwater regarded each of the great ships as they lay with their heads to the westward, stemming the flood tide but canted slightly athwart its stream by the brisk wind. As they passed each of the ships-of-the-line, though his passenger could perfectly well read them, the boatman volunteered their names as if this additional service would ensure a large gratuity.

'Edgar, sir, seventy-four guns ... Monarch, seventy-four ... Glenelg, transport... Bedford...'

Drinkwater stared up at each as they struggled past; occasionally someone stared back and once a midshipman in a bucking cutter alongside a frigate waved cheerfully. With their yard and stay tackles manned, the ships were taking in stores from hoys and ketches bouncing and ranging alongside them. One vessel was landing a defective gun — Drinkwater could see a trunnion missing from it — and several ships were working on their top-hamper, sending down their upper spars. And above every stern the squadronal ensigns of red, white or blue snapped in the breeze.

'Royal George, sir, first-rate. Tallest masts in the navy an' 'er main yard's the longest.'

Drinkwater stared at the great ship with her ascending tiers of stern galleries and her lofty rig. Above the ornate decoration of her taffrail, a huge blue ensign bowed the staff as it strained at its halliards.

'Dick Kempenfelt's flag, sir ...'

'Yes,' Drinkwater replied, glancing up at the blue rectangle at the mizen truck, wondering if, at that moment, Kempenfelt was sitting at his desk mulling over the wisdom of recommending confirmation of the acting commission of the young man whose hired wherry even then bounced over a wave under his flagship's transom.

'Bin the flagship of Anson, 'Awke, Rodney an' Boscawen,' obliged the loquacious and informative wherryman. Then he leaned forward and gave Drinkwater a nudge with the air of a conspirator. Drinkwater turned, caught sight of a quid of tobacco as it rolled between caried teeth, and received a waft of foul breath.

'But she'm rotten, sir, fair rotten, they tell me.' He nodded, adding with malicious relish, 'They were to dock her way back, but it got put off.' He grinned again. 'Bit of luck you're on Cyclops, eh?' and the boatman laughed.

'I thought she was well built,' Drinkwater said, looking up at the great ship, for anything else seemed inconceivable. Upon her quarterdeck high above him, an officer was studying him through a telescope and Drinkwater thought him bored with his anchor watch. 'Didn't I hear she took ten years to build?'

'That's right, sir,' the boatman agreed enthusiastically, 'an' what 'appens to timber what's left out ten year?'

'Well, it weathers.'

'That's bollocks, sir, if you'll pardon me lingo,' and the man spat to leeward as if adding to the contempt of his dismissal. 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, but if that's what they teaches you young officers nowadays, then 'tis no wonder the fleet's rotten. Look sir, what happens wiv a fence when you puts it up, eh?'

Drinkwater had never in his life put up a fence, but he supposed the task might not be beyond him. 'Well you tar it, I imagine,' he ventured.

'You're a bright 'un, sir,' the boatman said. 'Of course you does. You tars it. You don't leave it out for ten year for the rain to soak it and the sun to split it, do you? No. But that's what they done wiv the Royal George!'

A week before Christmas, young Dicky White informed Drinkwater that his father had written and asked that his son be allowed to come home for Christmas. Drinkwater and White had become close friends and though Drinkwater's acting commission had distanced them, it had not destroyed their friendship. Even so, he knew that White possessed family interest and that his father's request would receive a favourable reply. The knowledge irked Drinkwater for he had no equivalent clout and, whatever his position vis-à-vis the midshipmen, he was the most junior officer in the gunroom. He felt a sudden certainty that the duty of Christmas would fall upon him. He stared for a moment out across Spithead to the grey shore of the Isle of Wight.

'I should like you to come with me and I have asked the first lieutenant,' White confided with a smile. 'You'll be glad to know he has no objection. Wallace has volunteered to remain on board.' White dropped his voice and added, 'There's a skeleton in the third lieutenant's locker, Nat. I've heard 'tis a gambling debt. I think he dare not set foot ashore. Either that, or an angry husband has a pair of pistols ready primed!'

The expression on White's face made Drinkwater laugh. 'I've heard nothing of the kind, Chalky. You have too much time in that mess of yours to let your imaginations run wild.' He grew serious, 'Look, my dear fellow, I'm vastly obliged to you for securing my release,' he paused, 'but... oh dear, this is deuced awkward...'

'You do not wish to accompany me to Norfolk?'

'I would dearly like to do so, but I have ... Damn it, Chalky, I have an invitation from ...'

'A lady!' White slapped his thigh in a highly precocious manner, his face broadening to a smile. 'Let me not stand in the way of love, Nat! I shall not say a word. I am so glad that I was the means of your furthering your suit! We shall leave together and we shall return to tell the first luff what a jolly time we had bagging pheasants!'

'Do you think we should go that far?' Drinkwater asked, laughing.

'Do you think we should not?' White retorted.

'Well, stap me, Chalky, if you aren't a veritable Cupid!'

Christmas of 1781 saw the streets of Portsmouth under snow. Even the warren of brothels and grog-shops that they passed through were lent an ethereal beauty by the dazzling whiteness of the snow. Set against an even tone of pearl-grey sky, the tumbled roofs, crooked chimneys and black windows seemed a haven of humanity rather than a nursery of vice and disease. The thin coils of smoke rising from fires of wood and sea-coal lent an air of happy domesticity to this illusion.

Soon they had left Portsmouth behind and found the road passable as it ascended the downs on the way towards Petersfield. White, with the air of a conspirator, had insisted he and Drinkwater leave the ship together. The conveyance Sir Robert White had provided for his son now departed from the post road sufficiently to put Drinkwater down within sight of the church tower of Farehurst. It was with a beating heart that he lugged his small portmanteau towards the vicarage, but anti-climax met him in the person of a small, careworn woman who opened the door and motioned him inside. She ushered him into what he took to be Mr Bower's study, for an ancient writing-table and a battered chair from which the majority of the stuffing had long since escaped, stood in the middle of the room. A litter of papers covered the table and two bookcases flanked the fireplace. An unlit fire was laid in the grate. Three odd upright chairs were set about the room, the pine boards of which were bare, and the windows were half-shuttered.

The woman opened these and waved him to a chair with a grunt. She avoided his eyes and pulled a grey shawl about her shoulders as if to emphasize the cold penury of the house. He did not sit, but moved to look at an engraving of Wells Cathedral above the overmantel, chafing his hands to stimulate circulation. Several books lay on the mantelshelf; idly he picked one up. It was a little anthology of poetry. On the flyleaf it bore the name Eliz. Bower, her Book. He flicked the pages over until the name Kempenfelt caught his eye and he had just started reading the admiral's poem 'Burst, ye Emerald Gates' when the door opened.

Elizabeth stood just inside the room, her dark hair bound up in a ribbon, her brown eyes wide with surprise. 'Nathaniel!'

She took a half-step towards him and then faltered; he felt her eyes on his face and remembered his scar.

'You have been hurt!'

In a sudden, embarrassed reflex he touched it with his fingers. "Tis nothing but a scratch. I had forgot it. I hope ...'

She stepped closer and he clasped her outstretched hands. 'Oh, but it does,' she said smiling, 'it utterly ruins your looks. I am pleased to say no sensible woman will ever look at you again.'

'You guy me.'

'La, sir, you are clever too!'

'And you, Elizabeth, how are you?'

She sighed and her gaze fell away for a second, but then she brightened and looked at him, her face alive with that infectious animation that he sometimes thought he had almost imagined. 'Much the better for seeing you ...'

'And your father?'

'Is old and worn out. He takes no thought for himself and is unwell, but he refuses to listen to my entreaties.' She paused, then tossed her head with a sniff. He drew her to him and felt her arms about him and smelt the fragrance of her hair as he brushed the top of her head with his lips. 'I am so very glad to have found you again,' he said.

She drew back and looked up at him, tears in her eyes. 'All I asked was that you should come back. How long do you have?'

'A sennight...'

After Mattins on Christmas morning, dinner in the vicarage was a merry meal. Having Drinkwater as a guest seemed to have given the Reverend Bower a new lease of life and his emaciated features bore a cheerful expression, notwithstanding the fact that he gently chided his house-keeper for failing to attend divine service.

'She doesn't understand,' he said resignedly, 'but when God has made you mute from birth, much must be incomprehensible. Nathaniel, my boy, do an old man a favour, slip out in about ten minutes with a glass of claret for her. She needs cheering, poor soul.'

After the modest meal of roast beef and oysters had been cleared away they exchanged gifts. Elizabeth had bought her father a book of sermons written by some divine of whom Drinkwater had never heard but who was, judging by old Bower's enthusiasm, a man of some theological consequence. So keen an appreciation of an intellectual present made Drinkwater's offering to old Bower seem insignificant, for he had been unable to think of anything other than a bottle of madeira he had bought from Lieutenant Wheeler. For his daughter, Bower had purchased a square of silk. It was the colour of flame and seemed to burst into the dingy room as she withdrew it from its wrapping. Elizabeth flung it about her shoulders and kissed her father, ruffling his white sidelocks with pleasure.

As unobtrusively as possible, Drinkwater slid Elizabeth's small parcel across the table. As she folded back the paper and opened the cardboard box it contained, her eyes widened with delight.

'Oh, my dear, it's beautiful!' She lifted the cameo out, held it in the palm of her hand and stared at the white marble profile of the Greek goddess on its field of pink coral. She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and it occurred to him that, though inadequate, his gift was sufficient to illuminate her dull existence. 'Look, Father ...'

Elizabeth secured the vermilion silk with the cameo, leaned across and kissed him chastely on the cheek. 'Thank you, Nathaniel,' she said softly in his ear.

Drinkwater sat back and raised his glass. He was astonished when Elizabeth placed two parcels before him. 'I have no right to expect hospitality and generosity like this.'

'Tush, Nathaniel,' Elizabeth scolded mischievously, 'do you open them and save your speeches until you see what you have been saddled with.'

He opened the first. It contained a watch from the vicar. 'My dear sir! I am overwhelmed ... I... I cannot...'

'I find the passage of time far too rapid to be reminded of it by a device that will outlive me. 'Tis a good time-keeper and I shall not long have need of such things.'

'Oh, Father, don't speak so!'

'Come, come, Elizabeth, I have white hairs beyond my term and I am not feared of death.'

'Sir, I am most grateful,' Drinkwater broke in, 'I do not deserve it...'

'Rubbish, my boy' The old man waved aside Drinkwater's protest with a laugh. 'Let's have no more maudlin sentiment. I give you joy of the watch and wish you a happy Christmas. I shall find the madeira of considerably more consolation than a timepiece this winter.'

Drinkwater turned his attention to the second parcel. 'Is this from you, Elizabeth?'

She had clasped her lower lip between her teeth in apprehension and merely nodded. He opened the flat package. Inside, set in a framed border, was a water-colour painting. It showed a sheet of water enclosed by green shores which were surmounted by the grey bastion of a castle. In the foreground was a rakish schooner with British over Yankee colours. He recognized her with a jubilant exclamation. 'It's Algonquin, Algonquin off St Mawes! Elizabeth, it's truly lovely, and you did it?'

She nodded, delighted at his obvious pleasure.

'It's utterly delightful.' He looked at Bower. 'Sir, may I kiss your daughter?'

Bower nodded and clapped his hands with delight. 'Of course, my boy, of course!'

And afterwards he sat, warmed by wine, food and affection, regarding the skilfully executed painting of the American privateer schooner Algonquin lying in Falmouth harbour. He had been prize-master of her, and the occasion of her arrival in Falmouth had been that of his first meeting with Elizabeth.

CHAPTER 2 A Commission as Lieutenant

Cyclops cruised in the Channel from early January until the end of April and was back in Spithead by mid-May when news came in of Admiral Rodney's victory over De Grasse off the West Indian islets called Les Saintes. Guns were fired and church bells rocked their steeples; peace, it was said, could not now be far away, for the country was weary of a war it could not win. It seemed the fleet would spend the final months of hostilities at anchor, but at the end of the month orders were passed to prepare for sea.

Admiral Lord Howe thrust into the North Sea with a dozen sail-of-the-line and attendant frigates to waylay the Dutch. The Dutch in their turn were at sea to raid the homeward Baltic convoy, but news of Howe's approach compelled them to abort their plans and Lord Howe had the satisfaction of bottling up the enemy in the Texelstroom. At the end of June he returned down Channel and his fleet was reinforced from Spithead. Twenty-one line-of-battle ships and a cloud of frigates stood on to the westwards, led by Vice-Admiral Barrington's squadron in the van and with Kempenfelt's blue squadron bringing up the rear. Rumour was rife that the combined fleets of France and Spain were at sea, as they had been three years earlier, but this time there would be no repeat of the debacle that had occurred under the senile Hardy when the enemy fleets had swept up the Channel unchallenged. The Grand Fleet had the satisfaction of covering the Jamaica trade coming in under the escort of Sir Peter Parker and then stood south in anticipation of falling in with the enemy's main body. But the British were running short of water and reports were coming in that Cordoba, the Spanish admiral, had turned south to bring Gibraltar finally to its knees. Lord Howe therefore ordered the Grand Fleet back to Spithead to take on water and provisions. At the end of August the great ships came into the lee of the Isle of Wight under a cloud of sail.

Some three hundred vessels lay between Portsmouth and Ryde, attended by the ubiquitous and numerous bum-boats, water-hoys, dockyard victualling craft, lighters, barges, wherries and punts, as well as the boats of the fleet. Despite the demands of the cruise and the sense of more work to be done as soon as the fleet was ready, the return to the anchorage brought a dulling to the keen edge of endeavour. The sense of urgency faded as day succeeded day and then the first week drifted into a fortnight.

Drinkwater had heard nothing of his commission being confirmed and began to despair of it, recalling Devaux's advice to petition the Trinity House for an examination for master. It was increasingly clear that he would receive no advancement without distinguishing himself, and since any opportunity of doing this seemed increasingly remote, his future looked decidedly bleak. His only consolation was a letter from Elizabeth, but even this irked him, for he had resolved to propose marriage to her when his affairs were on a better footing, and a lieutenant's commission would at least secure him half-pay if the war ended. Poor as it was, half-pay would be an improvement on her father's miserable stipend. His anxiety for her grew with the reflection that upon the old man's death she would not only be penniless but also roofless. He had almost lost her once before and could not face the prospect of doing so again, perhaps this time forever.

In the dreary days that followed, he fretted, unsettled by the proximity of the shore yet daily reminded of its blandishments; rooted by duty, but made restless by the lack of activity. This corrosive mood of embitterment settled on him as Cyclops swung at the extremity of her cable, and even the odd task that took him ashore failed to lighten his mood, since to go ashore but to be denied the freedom to go where he wished was simply an irksome imposition. Robbed of real liberty, Drinkwater had already acquired the true sailor's preference for his ship.

On a morning in late August, Drinkwater was returning from Portsmouth town whither he had been sent on behalf of the mess to make some purchases of wine, a decent cheese and some fat poultry. He was approaching the Sally Port and looking for Tregembo, the able seaman he had ordered to take back one load of mess stores, when a portly clerk bustled up to him.

'Excuse me, young sir ...' The man attached himself to Drinkwater's sleeve.

'Yes? What is it?'

The clerk was breathless and anxious, wiped his face with a none-too-clean handkerchief and gaspingly explained his predicament. 'Oh sir, I just missed Acting Lieutenant Durham, sir, he's aide to Rear-Admiral Kempenfelt... There's his boat, confound it...' The little man pointed at a smart gig just then pulling offshore. Plunging his handkerchief back in his pocket, he drew a letter from his breast. It was sealed with the dockyard wafer.

'I wonder, sir, if I might trouble you to deliver this to the admiral aboard the Royal George. He is most urgently awaiting it.' Drinkwater's hesitation was momentary, but the clerk rushed on in explanation. 'There's a leak in the flagship, d'you see? The admiral and Captain Waghorne are very concerned about it. This is the order to dry-dock her and I was, I confess, supposed to have it ready for Mr Durham but ...' The clerk wiped his hand across his mouth and Drinkwater sensed some awesome and official retribution awaiting this unfortunate drone of Admiralty. Suddenly his own lot did not seem so bad.

'But,' the clerk ran on, 'he is a most precipitate young man and had left before I had completed the copying...'

'Please don't concern yourself further,' Drinkwater interrupted impatiently. 'The flagship lies in my way. I only hesitate because I am waiting for some provisions and it may be ten or twenty minutes before I am ready to leave.'

Relief flushed the clerk's face and he pawed at Drinkwater in an effusion of gratitude. 'Oh, my dear sir, I require only your assurance that you will deliver the letter this afternoon, otherwise in your own good time, sir, in your own good time, to be sure.'

'Well you may rest assured of that.'

'And pray to whom am I indebted, sir?'

'Drinkwater, fourth of the Cyclops frigate.'

'Ah yes, Captain Hope. A most tenacious officer. Thank you, sir, thank you. I am vastly obliged to you, vastly obliged.' And the curious fellow backed away into the crowd, half bowing as he retreated. Drinkwater was left pondering the aptness of the adjective 'tenacious' as it applied to Hope.

A quarter of an hour later, Cyclops's port cutter drew away from the beach and began the long pull to windward. Drinkwater settled himself in the stern-sheets, resting his feet on a large cheese.

Compared to the clerk, he was indeed fortunate, and it occurred to him that the encounter might be fortuitous, if not providential. The order in his pocket offered him an opportunity to present himself before Kempenfelt. The thought gave him a private satisfaction and his mind ran on to the order in his pocket, recollecting that other boat trip he had made in the chilling winter wind when the wherry-man had given him lessons on ship-building and the erection of fences.

When they arrived alongside the flagship, Drinkwater ordered the cutter to lie off and wait, then scrambled up the huge ship's tumble-home and stepped into the gloom of the entry. The marine sentry came to attention at the sight of his blue coat whence the white collar patches had been removed but which betrayed their recent presence, and the duty midshipman, a young boy of perhaps eleven years of age, accosted him.

'May I enquire your ship and business?' the boy asked in a falsetto pipe that seemed incongruous against the dark and heaving background of the gun-deck.

'Drinkwater, fourth lieutenant of the Cyclops. I have a letter for Admiral Kempenfelt,' Drinkwater explained, adding, lest the boy take it from him and rob him of his opportunity, 'please be kind enough to conduct me to His Excellency's quarters.'

Drinkwater was shown into Kempenfelt's dining quarters which served, betwixt dinners, as an ante-room. At the table sat a man in a plain civilian coat. His pen moved industriously across a sheet of paper, stopping occasionally to recharge itself with ink from the well. Drinkwater observed that this action was so familiar to the admiral's secretary that he did not have to look up, but dipped his pen with unerring accuracy. Completing his task, the secretary sanded the paper, shook it and looked up over the top of a pair of half-moon spectacles. He had a shrewd face and his eyes did not miss the betraying patches of unweathered broadcloth on Drinkwater's lapels.

'Well, sir? State your business.'

'I bear a letter from the dockyard for His Excellency. I believe it was not ready when Lieutenant Durham left.' Without a word, the secretary held out his hand. Anxious to secure at least a glimpse of Kempenfelt, Drinkwater added conversationally, 'I understand the admiral is most anxiously awaiting it...'

'Then give it here, sir, and remove the anxiety from your mind,' the clerk retorted, his outstretched fingers making an impatient little flutter. At that moment the door to the great cabin opened and the light from the stern windows shone through, silhouetting a tall figure.

'Is Durham back with that order to dock yet, Scratch?'

'No, Sir Richard, but this young man has it.' Drinkwater relinquished the letter and the secretary applied his paper-knife while Kempenfelt regarded the stranger.

'Have I seen you before?' he asked, stepping out of the doorway so that Drinkwater could see his face properly.

'I think not, Sir Richard,' Drinkwater bowed, 'Drinkwater, acting fourth of the Cyclops.''

'Ah yes, Hope's hopeful' Kempenfelt smiled. 'You've been wounded.'

'In the taking of La Criole, sir, in the Carolinas.'

'The Carolinas?' Kempenfelt's brow furrowed in recollection. 'Ah yes, I recall the business. A privateer, eh? A murderous skirmish, no doubt. Now Scratch,' went on the admiral, turning to his secretary who had read the note, 'what d'ye have there? Good news, I hope.' Kempenfelt held out his hand. 'Good day to you, Mr Drinkwater.'

Drinkwater retired crest-fallen, once again disappointed in the high aspirations of impatient youth.

'Our number, sir,' Midshipman White reported formally to Drinkwater, 'send a boat.'

Drinkwater raised the long watch glass and studied the Royal George and the flutter of bunting at her mizen yardarm. It was three days since he had taken aboard the order to dock and the great ship had remained stationary in her anchorage.

'Very well, Chalky, do you take the starboard cutter and see what they want, and while you're over there, try and find out why she hasn't been taken to dock. I took aboard an order for it and they seemed anxious to get her in.'

White obeyed the order with evident reluctance. The seductive smell of coffee and something elusive wafting up from below reminded them both that they had been on deck for some hours and were eager to break their fasts. A trip to the Royal George might delay White's breakfast indefinitely. Drinkwater watched amused as his young friend slouched off and called the duty boat's crew away. It was a fine, sunny morning and, were it not the latest of a now numberless succession of such days, Drinkwater might have taken more pleasure in it. He could not understand why the relief of the fortress of Gibraltar had lost its urgency and supposed Admiral Cordoba had himself retired to Cadiz. Such matters had been much discussed in the gunroom of late and all concluded depressingly that the war was as good as over and that they sat at Spithead as mere bargaining counters for the diplomats.

Drinkwater fell to pacing the deck. Along the starboard gangway the sergeant of marines was parading his men for Lieutenant Wheeler's routine morning inspection prior to changing the sentries. Below, in the waist, the sail-maker had half the watch with needles and palms stitching a new main topsail. Hanks of sail-twine and lumps of beeswax were in evidence as the heavy canvas was stretched by means of hooks and lanyards to facilitate the difficult job of creating the sail. Old 'Sails' wandered round, looking over the shoulders of the seamen as they laboured, chatting quietly among themselves. Woe betide any man who drew less than ten stitches per needle-length, for he would receive a mouthful of abuse from the sail-maker. 'Such neat work would put a seamstress to envy,' Drinkwater recollected being told by Mr Blackmore, the sailing master, 'and so it should, for what seamstress has to build a dress capable of withstanding the forces aloft in a gale?' This seemed to clinch the superiority of a man-o'-war's sails over a duchess's gown, for though much reputation might ride on the latter, far more might rely on the even strength of those seams when worn aloft in a man-of-war.

Drinkwater smiled and looked forward. On the forecastle a party of men squatted on the deck, plying dark fids of lignum vitae as they spliced a large rope. Drinkwater had no idea where it was intended that the heavy hemp should go, for the work was endless, presided over by Blackmore and Devaux, whose men laboured away at the ceaseless task of maintaining the frigate's fabric. More men were scattered in the rigging, worming and parcelling, tarring and slushing.

Idly Drinkwater wondered at the cost of it all in terms of material. If such activity was going on in every one of the ships gathered together in that crowded roadstead, the financial resources behind them must be unimaginable: five, seven, perhaps ten or a dozen millions of sterling!

'Cutter's returning, sir,' the duty quartermaster reported, rescuing Drinkwater from his abstraction. White scrambled up the side and touched his hat-brim to the quarterdeck. 'Message for the captain,' he said, waving a letter, 'be back in a moment.'

White reappeared a few minutes later. 'The Commander-in-Chief wants a status report. Defects, powder, shot, victuals and water. Looks like we at least might be under sailing orders very soon. We've an hour to get it ready. The captain's to wait on Admiral Kempenfelt at nine.'

'I see.' Drinkwater greeted the news with mixed emotions. If they really were going to sea again, he resolved to write to Elizabeth immediately. It was pointless to prevaricate further. If she dismissed his suit he would no longer toss so aimlessly from horn to horn of this confoundedly disturbing dilemma!

As for the other matter,' White rattled on, 'I had a long chat with a young shaver in her launch.' Drinkwater smiled inwardly. The 'young shaver' was probably a year or so younger than White himself who had matured marvellously since the mess bully Morris had been turned out of the ship. Perhaps it was the eleven-year-old that Drinkwater himself had met the other day. Apparently she was to dock and then a couple of dockyard officers came aboard and located a leak in the larboard side of the hold. They put the work in hand to caulk the seam from the inside and afterwards declared her fit for sea.'

'Did your young shaver venture an opinion as to how the ship's people felt about that?'

White frowned at the question. 'Well, he said that in his opinion the dockyard officers were a laggardly pair of old hens, but the ship was the finest in the Service. I considered challenging him on that, but declined on grounds of his youthful inexperience!'

'Very wise of you, Mr White,' Drinkwater observed drily. 'Besides, to maintain the honour of our thirty-six guns against his hundred-and-something would be to push matters to extreme measures.' Drinkwater stared across the water at the distant flagship which he could see in the interval between two third-rates. 'Your informant's opinion of the dockyard officers sounds like the repetition of someone else's, though. I've heard the ship is decayed, though what proportion is rumour and what is rot, is rather hard to judge.'

'Ah, but that's not all, sir,' said White, enjoying being the bearer of scuttlebutt. 'Yesterday evening the Royal George's carpenter reported another leak, this time on the starboard side where the inlet valve draws water for the washdeck pumps!'

'What's that, d'ye say?' The master came on deck to catch part of their discussion. A leaking inlet valve, eh? Where d'ye say? Starboard side? If it ain't enough to be pressed for another damned inventory of stores at short notice ...'

'Morning, Mr Blackmore,' Drinkwater greeted the protesting master as he sought to tuck his unruly white locks under his hat. 'Rest easy. We were talking of the Royal George.'

'Well,' replied Blackmore, glancing at the flagship with relief, 'at the best it means the grommet sealing the valve's flange has become porous, but at worst the spirketting may be rotten, in which case the compression of the bolts will be ineffective and she'll leak.'

'Then she'll have to dock,' Drinkwater observed.

Blackmore shook his head. 'I doubt the inlet is more than half a fathom below the waterline. If we're in so confounded a hurry to sail, it's my guess they'll careen her. Now, I've work to do. If you've nothing better for this young imp, Mr Drinkwater, I've a host of errands for him!'

Drinkwater grinned at the expression of despair on White's face. It was the lot of a midshipman to tread the deck of a flagship one moment and rummage in the stygian gloom of a frigate's hold the next. 'You may have him, Mr Blackmore, and with my compliments.'

'Obliged, Drinkwater. Now, young shaver, you come with me ...'

Smiling, Drinkwater watched the two of them go below. White's breakfast remained in doubt.

Lieutenant Wallace relieved Drinkwater at eight bells and he hurried below after colours. Lieutenant Devaux was lingering over his coffee and poured Drinkwater a cup as the messman brought in some toast and devilled kidneys.

'Compliments of the first lieutenant, sir,' the man mumbled in his ear.

'Thank you, sir,' said Drinkwater, catching Devaux's eye. His mouth watered in anticipation as he fisted knife and fork. 'This is a surprise. I thought I smelt something tasty, but I couldn't identify it and in any case assumed it to be for Captain Hope's table.'

'The single joy of our situation, Nathaniel, is the occasional amelioration of our tedious diet. Sometimes I think it worth it, but at others I do not. This morning is no exception, for the kidneys come with ...', Devaux paused to sip his coffee, 'well, you will know about it.'

'The stores inventory?'

'I wish to God that's all it was, but dear old Kempenfelt wants to know how many musket balls the esteemed Wheeler has. "Enough", replies Wheeler, "to kill every Frenchman to be found in Spithead!"' Devaux paused, laying down his empty cup and refilling it. 'In the absence of any true wit, one is constrained to laugh,' he added.

Drinkwater smiled as he chewed the kidneys. 'I had better lend a hand then. I gather Captain Hope has to see the admiral at nine, so there is little time.'

'Indeed not, but you had better shave and dress your hair. You must go with the captain.'

'I must?' Drinkwater asked, his mouth full.

'I shall not tempt fate, Nathaniel, but consider how you might clear a foul hawse, or send down the t'gallants, or get the mainyard a-port-last.'

'I am to be examined?' Drinkwater asked in astonishment, his eyes wide.

'You cannot expect a proficiency with that damned French skewer of yours to entitle you automatically to a commission in His Majesty's navy'

'No, I suppose not.'

'So good luck. Eat up all those kidneys and prove yourself a devil to boot!' Devaux rose, smiling at his own wit, took his hat from the peg by the gunroom door and turned, suddenly serious. 'Don't forget to take your journals.' The door closed behind him and Drinkwater was abandoned to a lather of anxiety.

By a quarter to nine on the morning of 29 August 1782, Spithead was already crowded with the movement of boats and small craft. Among them coasting vessels worked through the congested roadstead. One of them, the fifty-ton Lark, laid herself neatly alongside the larboard waist of the Royal George and soon afterwards began to discharge hogsheads of rum into the first-rate, a task made somewhat easier for those hauling on the tackles by a slight larboard list. A few moments later a dockyard launch went alongside and the Master Plumber of the Dockyard seized the vertical manropes and laboriously hauled his bulk up the flagship's tumblehome. As soon as the yard boat had laid off, Cyclops's gig ran in under the entry, just astern of the Lark, and C'aptain Hope, in undress uniform, went up the side to the screech of the side-party's pipes. He was followed by Acting Lieutenant Drinkwater, whose bundle of journals went up after him on a line. As he trailed behind Hope through the gun-decks, leaning against the flagship's increasing list, Drinkwater observed men coiling down the larboard batteries' gun tackles, for all the guns on that side had been run out through the opened ports. It was clear the Royal George's company were in the process of careening her, as Blackmore had said they would. He also noted that the decks were even more crowded and noisy than those of Cyclops, the Royal George being similarly infested with what Blackmore collectively referred to as 'beach-vermin', but Drinkwater's anxious mind was dominated by the imminent and summary examination he must undergo and he thought no more of these facts.

Outside the admiral's cabin Hope paused and turned, bracing himself as if the ship were on the wind. 'Wait on the quarterdeck, Mr Drinkwater. You may be kicking your heels for some time. Be patient and muse on your profession. The admiral is a fast friend to those he knows, and particularly to men of merit. I have commended you most warmly, but I doubt not that he will want some confirmation of my opinion.'

'I understand, sir. And thank you.'

'Report to the officer of the watch then. Good luck. I shall send the gig back for you in due course.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater touched his hat to Hope and turned for the companionway to the quarterdeck. The upper gun-deck which stretched forward from where he stood was a scene of utter chaos. The dutymen had crossed the deck from securing the larboard batteries and were running in the starboard guns to the extent of their breechings to induce an even greater list, upsetting the cosy nests that wives and families had established between the cannon. In consequence, there were squeals, shouts, oaths and every combination of noise that flustered women, exasperated men and miserable children could make.

As Drinkwater came up into the sunshine of the quarterdeck, he saw the officer of the watch and a warrant officer just in front of him.

'She's listed far enough, sir,' he heard the warrant officer say, presuming he must be the flagship's carpenter, 'and the water's just lapping the lower-deck gun-port sills.'

'Well get on with your work then, damn it,' the lieutenant responded tartly, 'and start the pumps.' He turned and caught sight of Drinkwater. 'Who the deuce are you?'

'Drinkwater, Acting Lieutenant of Cyclops, sir. I'm waiting on Admiral Kempenfelt.'

'Oh are you.' The lieutenant stared at the journals tucked under Drinkwater's arm and, seeming to sum up his situation, expelled his breath contemptuously. 'Well, keep out of the confounded way! I could do without a lot of snot-nosed infants hanging around my coat-tails this morning.'

'I shall of course keep out of your way, sir.' Drinkwater had no wish to further acquaint himself with the objectionable officer. He acknowledged the man had his own problems this morning and soon forgot him as he turned over in his own mind the answers to those questions he thought he might be asked. He presumed a small board of examination had been convened, for there were enough senior officers hereabouts to form a score of such boards, and the thought led him to wonder if he were not the only candidate. The lieutenant's comments seemed to indicate there might be others.

Drinkwater struggled uphill to the high starboard side and peered over in the vain hope of catching sight of the work that was causing all the trouble. The marine sentries on either quarter muttered an exchange and, as Drinkwater turned to cross the quarterdeck to the low side, a man wearing the plain blue coat of Royal George's master came up from below and looked briefly about him. His face wore an expression of extreme apprehension and he too was muttering. He caught sight of the officer of the watch.

'Mr Hollingbury! Damn it, Mr Hollingbury...'

Lieutenant Hollingbury turned. 'What the devil do you want?'

'I must insist that you right the ship as I asked some moments ago. Right the ship upon the instant, sir! I insist upon it.'

'Insist? What the deuce d'you mean by insisting, Mister? I insist that you finish work on the damned cock. Have you finished work on the cock?'

'No, but...'

'Then attend to the matter. It is not pleasant standing here with such a heel...'

'Get the ship upright, you damned fool, there's water coming in over the lower-deck sills ...'

'What did you say?' Hollingbury's face was suffused with anger and he advanced on the warrant officer. 'We haven't got her over this far to jack in before the task's done. I've ordered the pumps to be manned. Just attend to that damned cock, or I'll have the warrant off you, you impudent old bugger!'

The master turned away, his face white. He hesitated at the top of the companionway and his eyes met Drinkwater's. At that instant they both felt a slight trembling from below. 'She'll go over,' the master said, looking away from Drinkwater and down the companionway as though terrified of descending.

A sudden cold apprehension took possession of Drinkwater's guts. The master's prophecy was not an idle one. Instinctively he felt there was something very wrong with the great ship, though he could not rationalize the conviction of his sudden fear. For a moment he thought he might be succumbing to the panic that held the master rooted to the top of the companionway. Then he knew. The list was no greater than if the Royal George had been heeled to a squall of wind, but there was something unambiguously dead about the feel of her beneath his feet.

Then from below there came an ominous rumbling, followed by a series of thunderous crashes accompanied by cries of alarm, screams of pain and the high-pitched arsis of human terror.

Drinkwater ran across the deck and leaned out over the rail to catch sight of Cyclops's boat.

'Gig, hoy!' he roared. 'Cyclops, hoy!' He saw the face of Midshipman Catchpole in the stern look up at him. Drinkwater waved his arm. 'Stand clear of us astern! Stand clear!' He saw the boy wave in acknowledgement and then thought of Hope down below in the admiral's cabin. He made a dash for the companionway. The master had gone, but now an indiscriminate horde of men and women, seamen, marines, petty officers and officers, poured up from below, all shouting and screaming in abject panic. Then Hollingbury, his face distorted by fury at the rank disorder, barred his way. It occurred to Drinkwater that Hollingbury was one of those men who, even in the face of enormity, either deceive themselves as to their part in it or are too stupid to acknowledge that a crisis is occurring

'The ship is capsizing, sir!' Drinkwater hurled the words into the lieutenant's face. 'Capsizing! D'you understand?'

Hollingbury's expression changed as the import of Drinkwater's statement dawned upon him, though it seemed the concept still eluded him, as though it was beyond belief that the almost routine careening of a mighty man-of-war could so abruptly change to something beyond control. But the pandemonium emerging from below finally confirmed that the warning shouted in his very face by this insolent stranger might be true. Comprehension struck Hollingbury like a blow. The colour drained from the lieutenant's face and he spun round. 'My God!' His eyes fell upon the hogsheads of rum hauled out of Lark and lying on the deck. In a wild moment of misguided inspiration, he sought to extricate the ship. The only weights he could move rapidly on the low side of the Royal George were those rum barrels. 'Get those casks over the side! Heave 'em overboard! Look lively there, damn your eyes!'

A boatswain's mate saw the logic of the order and, driven by habit, wielded his starter. The men on deck and those who were pouring up from below, themselves habituated to obedience, did as they were bidden and rushed across the deck in a mass. But it was too late; their very movement contributed to disaster. The ship's lower deck ports were now pressed well down below the level of the sea. Water cascaded into the ship, settling her lower in the water, deadening her as Drinkwater had divined, drowning those still caught on the orlop and in the hold spaces, and adding the torrential roar of its flooding to the chaos below.

Drinkwater failed to reach the companionway. His momentary confrontation with Hollingbury had delayed him, but even had he succeeded, he would have been quite unable to defy the press of terrified people trying to reach the upper deck. Instead he lost his footing and fell as a gust of wind fluttered across Spithead to strike the high, exposed bilge and the top-hamper of her lofty rig. The gust laid the Royal George on her beam ends.

No longer able to support the weight of the remaining starboard guns, the rest of the breechings parted. On the lower gun-deck the huge thirty-two-pounders broke free and hurled their combined tonnage across the lower deck, joined on the decks above by the twenty-four- and twelve-pounders. Lying full length, Drinkwater felt the death throes of the great ship as she shook to a mounting succession of shudderings. He cast about for his journals as they slid down the deck, his heart beating with the onset of panic, abandoned them and clutched at a handhold.

Throughout the Royal George's entire fabric a vast disintegration was taking place. It had started as the first guns broke adrift, careered across the decks and carried all before them, weakening stanchions, colliding with their twins on the opposite side of the gun-decks and knocking out the sills and lintels of the gun-ports piercing the larboard side. The increasing influx of water only settled the Royal George deeper. Had her capsizing moment been arrested, she might yet have righted herself sufficiently to be saved, but the rush of men to the larboard waist was just enough to further increase the flow of water and, augmented by that fatal gust of wind, took her past the point of no return.

Finally, the parting breechings of the majority of the guns loosed an avalanche of cast iron in a precipitous descent. Gun after gun crashed into the ship's side, embedding themselves in softening timber, dislodging futtocks and transmitting tremulous shocks throughout the fabric of the hull. Such dislocations sprung more leaks far below, where the upward pressure of the water bore unnaturally upon her heavily listing hull and found the weaknesses of rot. The roundness of her underwater body caved inwards in a slow, unseen implosion that those far above, in terror of their lives, felt only as a great cataclysmic juddering.

Drinkwater, clinging to a train tackle ring-bolt, felt the tremor. Almost, it seemed, directly above his head, one of the half-dozen six-pounder guns that had lined the starboard rail of the quarterdeck strained at its breeching. He watched the strands of the heavy rope unravel ominously. The sight of it galvanized him with the reactive urgency of self-preservation. He began to scrabble upwards, fascinated by the fraying rope-yarns, as though they counted out the remaining seconds of his existence. He did not dare catch hold of the gun-carriage lest his weight accelerate the rope's parting, and stretched instead for the gun-tackle on the left-hand side of the carriage, the hauling part of which now dangled untidily downwards. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the image of the ship's starboard side at which he had glanced out of idle curiosity only a few moments earlier. If he could make the rail and get over it, he might yet escape!

His fingers closed on the gun-tackle, worked at it as his right foot, lodged on the eyebolt, raised him an inch, his fingers scrabbling for a better grip. Then he caught and grasped it and was about to grab it with his other hand when the gun breeching failed. The six-pounder ran away and he found himself pulled the last few feet up the violently canted deck as the descending gun unrove the gun-tackle. The truck hit his foot and he kicked at it just as his eyes caught sight of the proximity of the standing block to his fingers. He let go of the rope, kicked again, found a momentary foothold on the slewing and falling gun-carriage, and grabbed another rope which had dropped from a pin on the mizen rail. He slid back as it ran slack, then drew tight; he began to climb, frantic in his movements, gasping for breath, his objective in sight. With a final effort dredged from the inner resource of pure terror, he hauled himself up to the pinrail. Here there was no lack of handholds and, almost exhausted with the effort, his heart beating in his breast and his breath rasping painfully in his throat, he threw himself over it. Panting and shaking, he glanced back, almost vertically downwards. The mainyard, its extremity already in the water, had stabbed down across the deck of the Lark. What had happened to the crowd of people he had seen in the coasting vessel's waist a few moments ago, he had no idea, for only a few heads bobbed in the water, and he thought it unnaturally quiet.

He turned away, shuddering too much from exertion and visceral fear to be able to stand. Instead he crawled past the open ports of the starboard side whence came the loud sibilance of compressed air roaring upwards with columns of debris. He understood now why he could not hear anyone shouting or screaming. Every unsecured port on the starboard side stood open, venting a furious mist in which unidentifiable items flew upwards, to flutter down beside the ship. What had once been a woman's shawl or a baby's diaper, a book, a shoe or a man's hat, fell into the surrounding sea as flotsam. Drinkwater pulled himself together as he realized that, shallow though the water was, it was deep enough to swallow whole the vast bulk of the Royal George. He began to crawl aft.

Perhaps ten other men and a solitary woman who screamed and rent her hair in despair were visible on the starboard side. Another man, a marine by his tunic, was hauling himself out of an open port on the middle gun-deck, the water running off him. Drinkwater scrambled towards the woman, but she turned on him in a fury, her eyes wild with dementia, a torrent of abuse pouring from her. He turned aft, thinking again of Hope below in the admiral's state-cabin. Perhaps he could free the stern windows before it was too late, but the wreck beneath his feet trembled again and suddenly the venting roar died away and the circle of water about him approached.

He was on his feet now, running aft in search of Cyclops's gig. He could see boats laying off, their oars immobile, the faces of their crews pale ovals as they watched the awesome sight of the Royal George foundering in the midst of the Grand Fleet, within sight of over three hundred vessels and the shore.

He had survived the immersion, being dragged painfully over the gig's transom and surrendered to the solicitous Appleby who had chafed his naked and bruised body with brandy. He had been touched by the anxious concern of White and Devaux, and later mourned the loss of his journals.

He was never to know, though he might afterwards have guessed, that a few days later a sabre-winged fulmar, sweeping low over the wave crests somewhere to the westward, in the overfalls that run off St Alban's Head, had its roving eye caught by a patch of white. It banked steeply and rolled almost vertically as it made its curving turn, keeping the white patch in view as it swooped back on its interminably hungry reconnaissance. But the white paper was of no nutritional value to the fulmar and it levelled off and skimmed on westwards towards Portland Bill, its wings motionless as they had been all the time it had surveyed the sheet of paper.

The secretary's ink had run by then and no one could have read Kempenfelt's last signature, nor that the paper was a commission made out in the King's name for a certain insignificant Nathaniel Drinkwater.

CHAPTER 3 The Flogging

The North Sea was a heaving mass of grey crests which broke in profusion, the pallid spume of their dissolution driving downwind. Under close-reefed topsails and the clew of the foretopmast staysail, Cyclops fought the inevitable drift to leeward, towards the shoals off the inhospitable Dutch coast. Beneath the lowering sky, from which neither sun nor moon obliged the patient Blackmore and his quadrant, the frigate lay battered by the fourth day of the gale. It was the third day of cold rations, since it had proved impossible to maintain the galley fire, and the only consolation to the shivering ship's company was that they had loaded a fresh stock of beer at Sheerness.

Everything below decks was its usual compound of stink and damp. Sea water squirted through the interstices of closed gun-ports as the lee side buried itself, and the crew were employed at the pumps for an hour and a half every watch. Men barely spoke to each other; nothing beyond the barest detail of duty was discussed and every man, irrespective of his station, sought only the meagre comfort of his hammock or cot as he came below from the greater misery of the deck.

Relieved by White, Midshipman Drinkwater made his bruised and buffeted way below and clambered wearily into his hammock. The dark of the orlop deck was punctured by the swaying lanterns which imparted their weird and monstrous shadows as they oscillated at different rates to the laden hammocks. From below came the swirl and effluvia of the bilge, counterpoint to the creaks and groans of the frigate's hull and the faint thrum of the gale roaring above through the mast and rigging.

Despite his exhaustion, Drinkwater was unable to sleep. His active brain rebelled against the fatigue of his body. Dulled by the monotony of the gale and the necessity of ignoring his protesting and empty stomach, it now refused to let him drift into the seaman's one palliative for misery, the balm of exhausted sleep.

It hardly seemed possible that Cyclops was the same frigate that had fought under Rodney in the Moonlight Battle, or that the sullen faces of the seamen were those that had followed the young Midshipman Drinkwater through the bilge of the Yankee schooner Algonquin in a bid to avert confinement in a French fortress. But it was not the weather or the duty of a winter cruise in the North Sea which had induced this sleepless anxiety, it was the misery which prevailed aboard, so reminiscent of his first months in the frigate when the very cockpit to which an unkind fate had now returned him had been dominated by the vicious presence of the bugger Morris. Far from obtaining a commission, Drinkwater had found himself deprived of the privacy and privileges of the acting rank to which he had grown accustomed.

It was a cruel blow, made worse by the departure of Devaux. After the tragic loss of Captain Hope aboard the Royal George, Lieutenant Devaux had briefly commanded the ship for the passage to Sheerness. On arrival there, Devaux, whose eldest brother had blown out his own brains over a gambling debt, now learned the news, already months old, that his second brother had died in the trenches before Yorktown. Devaux thus found himself the 6th Earl of Dungarth in the Irish peerage, and this change in his circumstances induced Miss Charlotte Dixon, a young woman outstanding for her beauty and intelligence, to consent to become his countess. As Miss Dixon was not merely lovely and clever but also the sole daughter of a nabob, Dungarth was in some hopes of repairing his family's fortunes and swiftly relinquished the profession of a naval officer. To Drinkwater, Devaux's departure seemed like a double desertion, for the first lieutenant, poor though he might be, left to make an advantageous marriage, abandoning his lieutenant's commission without a second thought. Drinkwater, for whom such a qualification seemed an impossible attainment, was left to muse upon the inequities of life, with only the thin consolation of his correspondence with Elizabeth to help him come to terms with his return to the midshipmen's mess. 'I am sorry, my dear fellow,' Devaux had said on their last night in the gunroom as Cyclops lay within half a mile of the light-vessel at the Nore. 'I should have liked to help you but my naval service is over. Perhaps we shall meet again, perhaps when there is peace you will come and stay with us ...'

Perhaps... perhaps ... How full of pathos that word seemed, and how Drinkwater envied Devaux the use of that plural pronoun.

Under orders though they were, their brief halt at Sheerness saw changes in the cockpit, as well as in the gunroom, but most of all a new commander read his commission to the ship's company.

Captain Smetherley, whose father supported the new government of Lord Rockingham, was twenty-six years old. Pleasant in disposition, he possessed an easy manner of command but had little practical experience to his name. He had been entered on a ship's books as a boy, had dodged the regulations and had been commissioned at sixteen with neither achievement nor examination to testify to his suitability. During his six months as a commander, he had been in charge of a sloop which had spent half that time at anchor in the Humber. With Captain Smetherley came an elderly first lieutenant named Callowell, a hard-drinking tarpaulin of the old school sent by a considerate Admiralty to offset the professional shortcomings of the new post-captain. Callowell was a man from the other end of the navy's social spectrum. Twice the age of his commander, a man with neither influence nor the dash that might have earned him merited promotion, he offered no threat to Smetherley in the matter of glory, but he was well known as a highly competent seaman and a tough sea-officer. Unfortunately, Callowell was also a harsh man. Cruelty and fault-finding were visited on all, irrespective of rank. Moreover, fellow-officers more favourably placed than himself who were disposed to assist the advancement of a competent, if disadvantaged officer, were turned away by Callowell's spite.

Within a few days, Drinkwater reflected, Callowell had made enemies of Appleby the surgeon, Lieutenant Wheeler of the marines and poor Lieutenant Wallace, and it was borne in upon Drinkwater how fine an influence Devaux had been on the frigate as a whole. He was greatly missed and, Drinkwater felt certain, he himself would not have been turned so precipitately out of the gunroom had Devaux remained aboard.

Smetherley's arrival had also, in Callowell's phrase, 'cleaned out the midshipmites' cockpit'. Only White and Drinkwater remained of the original midshipmen, and they were now joined by four young kill-devils to whose families Smetherley owed some obligation or who had solicited his favour. Both White and Drinkwater viewed this invasion with disquiet. It was clear that the four all knew each other, and while seasickness had demoralized them for the first few days, it was obvious from their slovenly indiscipline, their abuse of Jacob the messman, and their noise that they were going to prove troublesome. Had they remained a week longer at anchor at Spithead, Drinkwater knew that White would have been able to leave the frigate, for he was daily in expectation of the order, but within a few days of the foundering of the Royal George, Cyclops had sailed for Sheerness. Rodney's defeat of De Grasse had revenged Graves's disgrace off the Virginia Capes, though it did not restore the Thirteen Colonies, and even as they tossed in the fury of the northern gale, Lord Howe and the Grand Fleet were relieving Gibraltar for the third and final time. As the unpopular conflict spluttered to its close, Cyclops had to maintain her vigil to see that neither Dutch nor French cruisers stole a march on the exhausted British nor tipped the delicate balance of negotiations in the peace talks that all seemed certain were about to bring matters to a conclusion. Perhaps, Drinkwater thought as he resolutely composed himself to grab a few hours' sleep, the war would at last be truly over. Providence had saved him from plunging to his death with all those other poor souls trapped aboard the Royal George; it must surely have preserved him for some purpose, and what purpose could there possibly be other than to allow him to return to Elizabeth?

Lieutenants Callowell and Wallace stood on the weather quarterdeck staring to windward. Callowell, his feet well spread and both hands gripping the rail against the heel of the frigate, was speaking to Wallace, his cloak beating about him in a sinister manner — like a bat's wings, Drinkwater thought, approaching them. He touched his hat to the two officers as he made his way aft to the taffrail to heave the log which the two quartermasters were preparing. It was almost eight bells, the end of the morning watch, and Drinkwater was tired and hungry. He nodded to the two petty officers, and the log-ship went over the side, drawing the knotted line off the spinning reel while Drinkwater regarded old Bower's watch.

'Now!' he called, and the line was nipped. 'Five knots?'

'And a half.'

'Very good. And how much leeway d'you reckon?' Drinkwater shouted above the roar of the gale, cocking an eye at the older quartermaster. The man had served as mate in a merchantman and knew his business.

"Bout eight degrees, I'd say.' Drinkwater and the second quartermaster nodded their assent.

'Very well. We'll make it so. You may hand the log.' And leaving them to wind in the hemp line, Drinkwater walked forward to move the pegs on the traverse board. The glass was turned, eight bells were struck and the forenoon took over from the morning watch. On deck men in sodden tarpaulins were stamping about, eager to be dismissed below, and those just emerged from the foetid berth-deck huddled in miserable groups in what shelter they could find, trying to delay the inevitable moment of a sousing for as long as possible. The petty officers made their reports and Drinkwater went aft to where Wallace and Callowell were still in conversation, staring out over the grey waste to windward.

'Beg pardon, sir ...' Drinkwater shouted. The two officers looked over their shoulders, Callowell raising an interrogative eyebrow, though it was Wallace who was about to be relieved.

'Starboard watch mustered on deck. Permission for the larbow-lines to go below, sir.'

Callowell looked at Drinkwater. From Wallace's look of embarrassment, Drinkwater knew trouble was brewing. He repeated his report and Callowell said in a voice raised above the wind, 'Mr Drinkwater, we are waiting...' 'Sir?'

'Waiting, damn you ...' 'I'm sorry, Mr Callowell, but...'

'Mr Callowell is waiting for the courtesy of a "good morning",' Wallace said hurriedly.

Drinkwater had thought himself absolved from such an absurdity by the violence of the weather, the fact that he and Wallace had been on deck since four o'clock in the morning, and the salute he had given the two officers as he made his way aft to heave the log. He was about to swallow his pride, aware that to provoke Callowell with any form of justification was a waste of time, when Callowell denied him this small amelioration.

'As first lieutenant of this frigate, I expect my midshipmen to demonstrate the respect due to the senior officer below the commander. You, sir, can disabuse yourself of any advantages your late acting rank gave you, or any that might have been conferred by your friendship with the last first lieutenant or the late Captain Hope. The fresh air of the foretopmasthead will do you the world of good, will it not, Mr Wallace?'

Wallace mumbled uncomfortably, but Callowell was not yet satisfied. 'But you shall first heave the log again and be pleased to use the glass, not your damned watch. She makes six knots.'

It was growing dark when Drinkwater was brought down from the masthead. The topgallant masts had been struck and he had lashed himself into the shelter available, passing the afternoon in a miserable, semi-conscious state, wracked by cold, cramps and hunger. He had been incapable of descending the mast unaided, and Tregembo and another seaman had sent him down on a gantline.

'There, zur,' the Cornishman had muttered, 'that bastard'll get a boarding-pike in his arse if ever we zees action.'

'Poor bugger can't hear you,' his companion said.

'Maybe not,' Tregembo said philosophically, 'but when he wakes up, he'll agree with me.'

On deck the pain of returning circulation woke Drinkwater to a full and agonizing consciousness that was too self-centred to admit even a single thought of revenge. He gasped with the pain, involuntary tears starting from his eyes, as poor White brought orders that were to further prolong his distress. From this state of half-recovery, Callowell demanded his immediate presence on the quarterdeck where, Drinkwater was told, it was time for him to stand his next watch. Had not Drinkwater been able to rely upon the loyal White to smuggle him victuals on deck and had he not eaten them equally unobserved, his collapse from cold and hunger would have proved fatal. As it was, he endured the ordeal.

Drinkwater was not the only victim of Callowell's harsh malice. Before the gale finally abated, several floggings of undue severity had been ordered out to the hands for trivial offences. Several of these would normally have been summarily dealt with by the frigate's regulating system, minor punishments being meted out by the boatswain and his mates. Devaux, had he even bothered to notice them, would have disdained to act. Callowell, on the other hand, possessed a knack of always observing these small incidents so that it seemed his presence actually caused them, and men shrank from him. The first lieutenant appeared indifferent to this shunning. Appleby named him Ubique Callowell, to the amusement of Wheeler, but it was Appleby who first warned of serious discontent among the hands. His position as surgeon enabled him to divine more of the frigate's undercurrents than any gunroom officer and, as his business chiefly occupied him below decks, he was particularly sensitive to the moods of the people. In fact Callowell's behaviour only exacerbated a deteriorating situation. The ship's company had largely been aboard Cyclops since October 1779 and in all that time had not enjoyed a single day of liberty ashore. Nor had these long-suffering men been paid their wages. They had, however, had women aboard and had revelled in the excesses of unbridled lust, a pleasure paid for by their share of prize money but now requiring Appleby's mercurial specific against the lues. Some prize money, however, remained, and this excited an envious greed among those intemperate spendthrifts who were now paying painfully for past pleasures.

To compound matters, before leaving Spithead Cyclops had been obliged to pass twenty men to the Bedford, men under sailing orders, and had made up the deficiency from a draft embarked at the Nore where her new captain joined before she sailed to her cruising ground on the Broad Fourteens. The new crew members were duly taken aboard from the Conquistador, guardship at the Nore, the majority being 'Lord Mayor's men', those who made up the deficiencies in the parish quotas by the simple expedient of being released from the confinement ordered by the petty sessions.

Among the men from Conquistador were some skilled petty felons, men who owed neither His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy in general nor their shipmates in the frigate Cyclops in particular any shred of loyal forbearance. Even before they had weighed from the anchorage off Sheerness, thieving had broken out on the berth-deck, but it was after the abatement of the gale that these men revealed the full extent of the two unsought contributions they had brought aboard.

The thieving was bad enough, but far worse was the gaol fever. The outbreak of typhus, a disease harboured in the parasites inhabiting these men's filthy garments, caused Appleby much labour and anxiety. The surgeon found the purser unwilling to issue slop-clothing until Callowell approved it and this the first lieutenant declined to do. Thus both thieving and disease permeated the ship, causing infinite distress and disorder among the men. The knowledge of a deadly infection striking indiscriminately only fuelled the pathetic desperation with which the miserable hands sought other diversions. With silver florins unspent upon the berth-deck, every form of card-sharping, knavery, pilfering and coercion flourished. Nor was this moral disintegration the sole province of the newly drafted men; on the contrary they were but the catalyst. Men who had been messmates, even friends, when confronted with sudden personal losses, turned on their equals to redeem them. As if this witches' cauldron were not enough, there were among the drafted men two devil-may-care light dragoons sentenced by a court martial to be dismissed from their regiment and sent as common seamen into the Royal Navy. They had received a flogging and had come to Cyclops with the notion that, since service in the navy was of a punitive nature, it was little deserving of respect. In their former corps, the 7th Queen's Own Light Dragoons, both men had been non-commissioned officers and they resented the treatment meted out to them by the boatswain's mates and, in particular, the midshipmen.

In the choice of his new midshipmen, Captain Smetherley had been unfortunate. Of the four who had come in his train, all were ignorant and incompetent, while the example of Callowell encouraged a viciousness sometimes natural in young men. Despite their youth they were usually more drunk than sober and they had discovered a means of amusing themselves by bullying and taunting the men until, answered back, they ordered the boatswain's mates to start the alleged offenders.

Such was the sorry state of affairs aboard Cyclops, and it augured ill after the fair and relatively humane regime of Hope and Devaux. The effect of the gale only exacerbated the deterioration in morale. What occurred in a few short days might have taken longer in a better climate or a pleasanter season, but it came as no surprise to those who regarded the new regime with distaste when trouble arose.

Two days after the gale had blown itself out and patches of watery sunshine and blue skies had replaced the grey wrack that had streamed above the very mast trucks, a sail was made out to the northward. The change in the weather had brought most of the officers on to the quarterdeck and the mood lightened still further as this news broke the monotony of their existence. The ship was standing to the northward, close-hauled on the larboard tack and carrying sails to the topgallants.

'Royals, sir?' Callowell asked Smetherley as he came on deck.

'As you see fit, Mr Callowell,' Smetherley said, falling to pacing the weather planking, hands clasped behind his back. Callowell turned to bawl his orders. Cyclops set her kites flying, the yards being run up when required and the sheets rove through the topgallant yardarms by the upper topmen. The pipes shrilled and the seamen leapt aloft, poking fun at the fumbling landsmen who were preparing to heave the halliards.

'A glass at the foremasthead, sir?' prompted Callowell.

'If you please, Mr Callowell,' assented Captain Smetherley with urbane assurance. Callowell turned to find Midshipman Baskerville at his elbow.

'Take a glass aloft and see what you make of him,' Callowell growled, and the midshipman passed Drinkwater with a smirk. He was the most loathsome of the captain's toadies, the leader of the quartet, related by blood to Smetherley and therefore unassailable. To Baskerville, Drinkwater was a passed-over nonentity, and while he was cautious of White, for he recognized him as one of his own, he did not scruple to use a high and usually insolent tone with Drinkwater. As Baskerville hauled himself into the foremast rigging, Drinkwater walked over to the lee rail where Blackmore was peering through his battered perspective glass, trying to gain a glimpse of the strange sail.

'Can you make him out yet, Mr Blackmore?'

'Not yet, but I'm thinking he'll be British, and sailing without convoy. Out of Hamburg at this season.' Blackmore was apt to be inscrutable at such moments and Drinkwater recollected that he had commanded a Baltic trader until ruined by war and knew the North Sea trade better than any other man on board. As the two men waited for the sail to be visible from the deck, neither witnessed the incident that provoked the coming trouble.

Amongst the men ordered into the lower rigging to see the royal yards run clear aloft was Roach. He had been rated landsman, as was customary, but as a former troop corporal of light dragoons, he was an active and an intelligent man. Whatever the shortcomings of their fellow landsmen, neither Roach nor his fellow-cavalryman Hollins lacked courage. Contemptuous of their new Service, they flung themselves into the rigging as though charging an enemy, disdaining to be associated with the drabber, duller men of the Sheerness draft. They were not yet of much use aloft but were clearly the raw material of which upper topmen were made, and their dare-devilment had already earned a grudging admiration from Cyclops's people, especially those who had observed the state of their backs.

In descending the foremast rigging Roach, aware that to go through the lubber's-hole was considered the coward's path, was about to fling himself over the edge of the top and into the futtock shrouds. The heels of his hessian boots, which he had found an indispensable weapon on the lower deck, trod on the up-reaching fingers of Midshipman Baskerville just then ascending the mast with his telescope. Hearing the youth's shout, Roach drew back into the top and, as the midshipman came over the edge, muttered a half-hearted apology. But he was grinning and this, combined with the sharp pain, provoked Baskerville.

'You bloody fool! You've made me drop the glass! What the devil d'you mean by wearing those festerin' boots, damn your eyes?'

'Doin' my duty, sir.' The dragoon drew out the last syllable so that it oozed from him like a sneer and he did it with the studied insolence of twenty years of barrack-room experience, deeply resenting the authority of the young oaf. Roach pressed his advantage. 'I apologized to you, Mr Baskerville.' Again there was that sibilant distortion in the tide which set Baskerville fuming while Roach persisted in his grinning. But then another figure appeared in the top. It was a boatswain's mate.

'Mr Jackson,' Baskerville asked quickly, 'd'you see that man's grin?'

'Aye, I do.'

'Then mark it well, Jackson, mark it well and take the bugger's name!'

'Very well, sir. Here's your glass. You were fortunate I caught it.'

Baskerville almost snatched the telescope from Jackson's outstretched hand, then, without another word, swung himself into the topmast shrouds and scrambled upwards.

And what have you done to upset Mr Baskerville, Roach?' the boatswain's mate asked.

'I trod on his fingers, Mr Jackson, and I apologized.'

Jackson shook his head. 'Tch, tch, tch. There's no fucking justice, is there? I wish you'd trodden on his fucking head, but you'll get a checked shirt for this, my lad, or my name's not Harry Jackson.'

Blackmore's prediction turned out to be accurate and the sail revealed herself as the brig Margaret of Newcastle, bound from Hamburg to London with timber and flax. At the frigate's signal she hove to and Cyclops rounded up under her lee quarter, backing her own maintopsail. Alongside Drinkwater, Blackmore muttered, 'Damn, you can smell the turpentine from here!'

Callowell leapt up on to the rail and raised a speaking-trumpet to his mouth. 'You're not in convoy, Mister. Any sign of enemy ships?'

'Aye,' responded a stout figure at the Margarets rail in the unmistakable accents of the Tyne, 'convoy dispersed by a ship-rigged Frenchman. He took twa vessels oot of tha ten of us. Be aboot twenty guns.'

'What of your escort?'

'A bomb-vessel. She couldn't work to windward before the Frenchman made off.'

'Where away?'

'Norderney!'

'Thank you, Captain! Bon voyage!' The patrician accent of Captain Smetherley replaced the abrupt Callowell. For once he had the situation in hand. 'Haul your maintopsail, Mr Callowell. Mr Blackmore, lay me a course for Norderney, if you please. Let's see if we can catch this damned Frog.'

'Lay me, be damned,' Blackmore muttered to Drinkwater and then, raising his voice, called out, 'Aye, aye, sir.'

Summary justice was a principle upon which Jonas Callowell dealt with all matters of discipline and good order. If an offence was committed, it was swiftly punished. When he received Baskerville's complaint he reported to Smetherley who lounged in his cabin, a glass of port in one hand.

'Damned rascal was insolent to the midshipman, insolence witnessed by Jackson, sir.'

'Jackson, Mr Callowell?'

'Bosun's mate.'

'Ahhh.' Smetherley took a mouthful of port and rolled it around his tongue, swallowed and smacked his lips. He looked up at Callowell with a frown. And you demand punishment?'

'Of course, sir. For the maintenance of discipline. Absolutely indispensable,' Callowell replied, a little astonished.

'Naturally, Mr Callowell, but the principle of mercy ... does it enter into the particulars of this case?'

'Not to my mind, sir,' said Callowell, who had never heard anything so damned stupid.

'Will two dozen suffice for insolence to a midshipman?'

'As you see fit, sir,' responded Callowell drily, but Smetherley, pouring another glass of port, needed to maintain the fiction of command and enjoyed a little light-hearted baiting of his first lieutenant.

'What, if you were in my position, would you give the man, Mr Callowell?'

'I'd smother the bugger with the captain's cloak, sir.'

'Three dozen, eh? Isn't that a trifle hard?'

'Not in my view, sir.'

'Mr Baskerville is a somewhat forward young man. His only redeeming feature, as far as I can see, is a rather lovely sister.' Smetherley pulled a face over the rim of his glass. 'But that would not concern you, Mr Callowell. Two dozen will suffice, I think.'

'As you see fit, sir,' Callowell repeated, leaving the cabin.

Roach was confined to the bilboes until the watch changed. When Appleby heard, he hurried to the gunroom where the first lieutenant was tossing off a pot of blackstrap.

'You cannot mean this, Mr Callowell?'

'Mean what?' asked Callowell, whose contempt for the surgeon's humanity was only exceeded by his dislike of the man himself whom he regarded as a meddling old wind-bag.

'Why flogging Roach, of course!'

'And why, pray, should I not flog Roach?' asked Callowell, lowering his tankard and staring at Appleby. 'Is he not guilty of insolence to an officer?'

'A very junior, inexperienced under officer,' Appleby expostulated testily, 'a mere insolent aspirant himself, without skill and wanting common manners to boot, but that is not the point...'

'Then for God's sake get to your damned point, Appleby!'

'How many's he getting?'

'Two dozen.'

'Two dozen! But that's twice the permitted limit for a post-captain to award!'

'Are you questioning the captain's authority, Mr Appleby? My word, you'd make a fine sight at the gratings yourself!'

'Damn it, Mr Callowell, you have no right...'

'Is that your point, Appleby?' Callowell broke in impatiently.

'No, no it isn't.' Appleby collected himself. 'Mr Callowell, Roach was given two hundred and fifty lashes after his court martial. I am empowered to prevent...'

'I've no doubt but that he deserved them,' broke in Callowell. 'As for your being empowered to do anything, Mr Appleby, I believe it is limited to advice. Well, thank you for your advice. It was my advice to Captain Smetherley that Roach be given three dozen ...'

'I daresay it was, but heed me. The man's back is in no state to suffer further punishment. You'll kill the fellow'

'So much the better. The man is no good to us, he will be nothing but trouble.' 'But...'

Callowell's emptied tankard crashed down upon the table and he rose to his feet, leaned across it and thrust his face into that of the surgeon. 'Listen, Appleby, do you cure the pox, the gaol fever, the itch, button scurvy and the clap, and when you can do all that you may come back here and teach me my duty. Now take your damnable cant back to where you belong and keep your fat arse out of the gunroom. It's for the commissioned officers, not bloody tradesmen. Get out!'

Appleby departed with what dignity he could muster, but word of the encounter percolated rapidly through the ship. The surgeon himself was far from capitulating. He approached Captain Smetherley and obtained a stay of execution of two days, until the Sunday following. It was unlikely to achieve anything other than to compel the inexperienced Smetherley to think again and, in the event, Appleby's compassion misfired badly. The delay only served to fuel resentment at Roach's sentence. Strict discipline made the life of the decent majority of the ship's company bearable, saving them from the predatory conduct of the worst elements of their own kind. But a virtual death sentence on a grown man of proven courage for insolence to a boy whose authority far exceeded his abilities and who had yet to prove his mettle to the hands, was a different matter.

Drinkwater was more aware of the state of things than the feckless wastrels who pounded Baskerville's back in congratulation as though he had won a great victory. He wished he had known of the matter before Baskerville had reported it to Callowell. Watching the scene, he determined matters could not go on and, now that they all appeared recovered from their seasickness, the moment seemed opportune. White was absent on deck and Drinkwater laid down the book he had been trying to read by the guttering illumination of the purser's dip.

'You sicken me, you really do.'

Silence fell on the rabble and the four faces turned towards him. 'Whom are you addressing?' Baskerville asked superciliously.

'All of you,' replied Drinkwater, staring up at their half-lit faces. In the gloom they possessed a diabolical appearance. 'You are a scandalous disgrace. It is likely that Roach will die, if not under punishment then as a consequence of it. If you had a shred of decency, Baskerville, you would go at once and withdraw the charge, say it was a mistake and apologize.'

'Why you contemptuous shit, Drinkwater,' said Baskerville, looking round at his friends. 'He needs a licking...'

'If one of you so much as lays a finger on me,' Drinkwater said, reaching up to where his French sword was slung by its scabbard rings on the deck beam overhead, 'I'll slit his gizzard.' He drew the blade with a rasp. 'Four to one is Frenchmen's odds, my fine bantam cocks, and you've yet to see action. Please, don't give me the excuse.' He paused. Irresolution was already visible in one or two faces and the light played on the wicked blade of the French sword. 'No, don't give me the excuse to defend myself, or I might take singular pleasure in it.'

Drinkwater rose. 'Brooke,' he said quietly, addressing the youngest of the midshipmen before him, 'go and fetch Jacob.' The boy hesitated and looked at Baskerville for permission, whereupon Drinkwater commanded, 'Go boy!' and Brooke scampered off in search of the messman. While he was gone, Drinkwater dragged his chest out, opened it and threw his belongings into it. A moment later the messman appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes. 'Jacob, move my chest and hammock forrard. I shall sleep with the marines.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater paused at the canvas curtain that served to screen off that portion of the orlop known as the cockpit. 'The stink of puppy-dogs in here is overpowering!'

By Sunday morning Cyclops had passed Norderney without sighting any enemy cruiser. The wind had dropped and there was a mist which persisted into the forenoon, resisting the sun's heat.

'Dense fog by nightfall,' Blackmore remarked.

After divine service the hands remained mustered to witness the punishment. The officers gathered about the captain; the marines lined the hammock nettings, their bayonets fixed. In the waist, over two hundred men were assembled. They murmured softly, like a swarm of bees. Triced up in the main shrouds, the grating awaited the prisoner.

Roach was escorted on deck by two boatswain's mates. He walked upright between them, his shirt loose and his breeches tucked into the offending boots. At the grating he took off his shirt, revealing the scabbed welts and blue bruising of his former punishment. The murmuring was replaced by a low rumbling.

'Silence!' commanded Callowell.

Smetherley stepped forward. 'Landsman Roach, I tolerate no insolence to my officers, commissioned or otherwise, aboard any ship under my command. You will receive two dozen lashes. Bosun's mates, do your duty!'

'Trice him up!' Callowell ordered, and Roach was thrust forward and his wrists seized and strapped to the grating. One of the men grabbed his hair and jerked his head back to shove a leather wad into his mouth.

'Shame!' called a voice from forward. It was answered by a chorus of anonymous 'Ayes!' from the crowd amidships. Wheeler drew his sword and commanded the marine drummer to beat his snare. Callowell bawled, 'Lay on!'

The two boatswain's mates, each with a cat-o'-nine-tails, began to administer the punishment, six lashes each in succession, while the drummer manfully maintained his roll and the men mouthed their disapproval. Roach spat the leather wad from his mouth and roared defiant curses until, at about the nineteenth stroke, he fell silent.

Drinkwater felt an utter revulsion at the spectacle. He sought distraction by observing the other officers. Appleby stood rigid, his portly frame wracked by sobs, the sheen of angry tears upon his ruddy cheeks. Blackmore gazed out over the heads of the crew, sure that the foremast catharpings could do with some attention. Wheeler stood like a statue, his drawn sword across his breast, his eyes flickering restlessly over the ship's company, waiting for the first sign of trouble. Callowell too watched the men, but with less apprehension than the marine officer. Blinded by the insensitivity of a life circumscribed by duty, he possessed no imagination, no compassion and few feelings for others. Cyclops was a man-of-war and sentiment of any kind was out of place upon her decks. To a man of Callowell's stamp, the emergence of personality among the people was an affront, and his cruelty stemmed from this conviction rather than any sadistic impulse. It was his lot to administer, and theirs to endure.

But next to Drinkwater, White stood stock still. 'Christ Almighty, I can see his ribs,' he whispered.

CHAPTER 4 Servants of the Night

The fog Blackmore had predicted closed down during the afternoon. All day the becalmed Cyclops had drifted with the tide and, as the visibility deteriorated, the rattling blocks, slack cordage, slatting canvas and black hempen stays dripped moisture on to the wet decks. Below, the damp permeated everything. Shortly after sunset, when the light went out of the vapour surrounding them, Appleby reported the death of Roach. The news surprised nobody and Cyclops, shut in her world of sodden misery, seemed to hold her breath in anticipation.

Drinkwater was late being relieved at midnight. White rushed on deck breathless with apologies and anxious to avoid trouble.

'Couldn't sleep, Nat. Kept thinking of that poor devil's bones, then I must have dropped off...'

'Best not to think too much, Chalky,' Drinkwater put a hand on the younger midshipman's shoulder, 'you'll get over it.'

As he passed through the gun-deck on his way below, Drinkwater was half aware of movement forward. He hesitated. If trouble was brewing, he ought not to let it pass, but when he looked he could see nothing untoward and so passed on, bone-weary and eager for the small comfort of sleep. A light still showed through Appleby's door and Drinkwater went forward, ducking under the swaying hammocks, to wish him goodnight, for he knew the surgeon had been upset by the death of Roach. Drinkwater knocked. There was no reply and he cocked his ears. In the creaking darkness, assailed by the thousand sounds of the ship and of men snoring, he thought he heard an insistent grunt. Another, more identifiable, followed. He turned the handle, found it locked against him and forced the flimsy door with his shoulder. Appleby was trussed and gagged. His face was an unpleasant colour and his eyes started from their sockets.

Bending, Drinkwater released the gag and Appleby gasped for air while his rescuer turned his attention to the light-line binding wrists and ankles. Catching his breath, Appleby spat out, 'Mutiny, Nat! They meant me no harm. Wanted to know if I'd said Roach was unfit ... to receive punishment. That's my duty. My privilege ...'

'Who's their leader? The other dragoon?'

Appleby nodded. 'Yes. Hollins, his name is. I told them to desist.' Appleby rubbed his wrists, his face contorted with pain. 'I told 'em what'd been done to Roach was chicken-feed compared with what'd be done to them if they persisted, but they'd have none of it. So they trussed me. Apologized, but trussed me ... They're after Callowell. We've got to stop them, for they'll take Smetherley and Baskerville too! Before you know it, we'll all be involved!'

'Very well!' snapped Drinkwater, getting Appleby's ankles clear and rubbing them himself. 'Do you get Wheeler. Now!' He stood, remembering the noise in the gun-deck. 'There's no time to be lost,' he added, helping the surgeon get to his unsteady feet, then he turned and scrambled aft under the hammocks to the marines' berth. Grabbing his sword he savagely elbowed the hammock next to him. A grunt emanated from it.

'What the fuck...?'

'Get your men up, Sergeant! Quietly!' he hissed insistently. 'Bayonets! And hurry! We've trouble!'

'Oh shit!' Waiting only for the appearance of the pale form of Sergeant Hagan's emerging limb, Drinkwater moved swiftly to the companionway leading to the berth-deck above. As he passed the cockpit, the light of the lantern at the foot of the companionway caught a face peering round the canvas curtain. 'Is something amiss?' It was Baskerville.

'No. Turn in! Keep out of the way!'

'Why've you got your sword?'

'Turn in!' Drinkwater could brook no delay for explanations. Crouching, he turned his back on Baskerville and cautiously ascended the companionway ladder. He could see no movement under the hammocks of the berth-deck and swung round the stanchion, heading for the gun-deck. As he poked his head above the upper coaming he realized he was not a second too soon. A pale, almost spectral group of barefooted men, perhaps a dozen of them, in shirts and breeches, each clutching some form of weapon in their hands, were approaching the doors to the officers' cabins. Turning his head slowly, Drinkwater saw in the light of the after lantern that the marine sentry outside Captain Smetherley's door was nodding at his post.

There was no doubt that he was witnessing a combination of men bent on mutinous conduct, whatever the limitations of their intentions. Should he raise a general alarm or seek to defuse an explosive situation himself? He had no time to ponder and took consolation from the thought that Sergeant Hagan was behind him, for Appleby would not reach Wheeler in time. The men merged with the deep shadows round the guns, almost concealed behind the few hammocks that were slung in the gun-deck. To a casual observer the place was normal, a dark space the after end of which, abaft the companionway below, was lined with the cabins of the lieutenants and master, and which terminated with the captain's accommodation across the stern.

With sudden resolve Drinkwater flung himself over the hatch coaming and drew the hanger from its scabbard. The hiss of the steel rasped against the brass mounting, abruptly arresting the progress of the mutineers.

'Stand where you are!' His voice was low, yet carried through the gloom. 'Get forrard and out of my sight before I set eyes on one of you.'

'They killed Roach, Mister.' Hollins's voice came out of the darkness.

'And you've assaulted the surgeon. That's mutiny and you'll hang for it unless you obey me! Get forrard! Now!'

Drinkwater heard rather than saw the men behind him, smelt their presence and, glancing round, saw the dull gleam of drawn bayonets. 'We're right behind 'e, sir.' Sergeant Hagan's voice added to the menace of the stalemate.

'You don't frighten us with your boot-necked bullies ...' Hollins began, but Hagan cut him short.

'Shut your fuckin' mouth, Hollins, or you're a dead man.'

Drinkwater was aware of someone else puffing up on his left. 'What the devil's going on here?' asked Lieutenant Wheeler, a drawn hanger in his right hand.

'These men are being recalled to their duty, Mr Wheeler.'

'Is this a damned combination?'

'No, no,' Drinkwater said quickly, lowering his sword point, 'they were gambling, Mr Wheeler. A foolish occupation at this time of night,' Drinkwater jerked his head aft, 'but not as reprehensible as being asleep on sentry.'

Wheeler looked round at the nodding marine posted outside the captain's door. 'Sergeant Hagan!' he said in a low voice, pointing at the offending sentry.

'Now what about... Stap me, they've gone!' In the few seconds allowed them, Hollins's men had melted away forward.

'Yes.' Much relieved, Drinkwater lowered his sword. Had they dispersed for the time being, or would they recombine? Perhaps tomorrow, or the next night? Would that something would happen, Drinkwater prayed, to distract them from the bloody death of their comrade.

'And what, Nathaniel,' Wheeler asked pointedly, after he had sent all his men except the sergeant below again, 'was all that about?'

'As far as I know, Mr Wheeler, those men were gambling dangerously.'

'With their lives, I gather, from what Appleby said,' Wheeler observed.

'With someone's,' Drinkwater replied.

'Make damned certain it ain't yours, my lad.'

'Or yours, sir.'

Drinkwater heard Wheeler sigh in the darkness. 'Damn you, Drinkwater,' he muttered, but even though he could not see the marine officer's face, Drinkwater knew there was no malice in Wheeler's voice. As if to confirm the matter, he felt a pat on the back. 'Better put that sword up.'

'Where's Appleby?' Drinkwater asked as he ran the French blade into its scabbard.

'In my cabin, recovering his wind. I gather the buggers ...'

Wheeler broke off and turned to the contrite marine whom the sergeant brought forward into the circle of lantern light at the head of the companionway. 'How in Hades' name did you sleep through all this?' he asked the unfortunate man.

'Dunno, sir. I'm very sorry, sir ...' The marine was trembling.

'You stink. Were you drinking before you were posted?'

'No, sir.'

An insistent cough came from Sergeant Hagan and the man admitted, 'Yes, sir.'

'You know what this means?'

'Aye, sir.'

'Post another sentinel, Sergeant, and put this ass in the bilboes. We'll deal with him later.'

He had just finished berating the sentry when Callowell's door suddenly opened. 'What's all this damned racket?'

In his hand Callowell held up a lantern. He peered about him, catching sight of the odd assembly of Wheeler, Drinkwater, Sergeant Hagan and the wretched marine at the head of the companionway. In the euphoria of his relief, Drinkwater almost burst out laughing at the ludicrous figure the first lieutenant cut in his night-shirt and tasselled night-cap. The spectacle clearly amused Wheeler also, for Drinkwater detected the catch in his voice as he replied, 'Damned sentry was dozing, Mr Callowell. Thanks to Mr Drinkwater's vigilance, he'll be punished.'

'What's that?' Wheeler repeated the explanation while Drinkwater caught the marine's eye. It was unfortunate that the marine should suffer the inevitable cat, but he had been asleep deeply enough not to be woken by the confrontation further forward.

'Damned certain he will be!' Callowell snorted, staring round him again. Appearing satisfied, he grunted and retired within his cabin. Wheeler and Drinkwater stood uncertainly for a moment, then Wheeler expelled his breath in a long, relieved sigh. 'Very well, Sergeant, carry on.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'Well,' said Wheeler in a low voice, 'as I said, poor old Appleby's hiding in my cabin where I've the remains of a bottle to crack.' Wheeler led aft, then paused, turned and giggled in Drinkwater's ear, 'Damn me if old Callowell don't remind me of Wee Willie Winkie!'

Neither of them saw the pale face of Baskerville retreat into the darkness of the berth-deck below.

Two days later, as Cyclops remained inert in the foggy calm, Drinkwater discovered a scrap of paper laid inside the lid of his sea-chest. On it were crudely spelt the words:

In the days that followed, Drinkwater was more content and the incident appeared to have relieved the tension in the frigate. He felt an occasional anxiety when he thought of Baskerville's face peering from the cockpit, but with Lieutenant Wheeler's support and every appearance of the suppression of mutinous sentiments, this lessened as time passed.

The fog persisted for several days, but eventually a cold breeze sprang up from the north-east and, under easy sail, Cyclops cast about between Helgoland and Borkum, still in search of an enemy sail. For her people, the wearying routine of the ship ground inexorably on. Occasional lighter moments were engineered when the weather served, and on the first afternoon of pallid sunshine, as the decks gradually dried after the fog, Lieutenant Wheeler determined to encourage some proficiency in fencing.

'How many times do I have to tell you, Nat? The merest pronation and pressure with the thumb and forefinger are all that are required. Look.' Wheeler removed his mask and demonstrated the point with his own foil.

Drinkwater and the marine officer occupied the starboard gangway during the afternoon watch. Both were stripped to shirt and breeches, despite the season, and their exertions had attracted a small crowd of off-duty sailors who sat on the forecastle guns or boats, or in the lower forward rigging, watching the two officers recommence the opening gambits of their bout.

Wheeler advanced, changing his line. Then, with a quick shift of footing, he executed a balestra and lunged at the midshipman. Drinkwater was not so easily fooled. He parried Wheeler's blade and riposted, catching the marine officer's shoulder. The hit was acknowledged and they came en garde again and resumed, with Wheeler quickly advancing. Drinkwater retreated, disengaged and drew his blade, then swiftly cut over Wheeler's pointe, dropped his own and lunged low at Wheeler's stomach.

Wheeler unmasked. 'By heaven, Nat, that was damnably good. To tell you the truth, I doubt there's much more I can teach you now you've digested my late point.'

Drinkwater tugged his own mask off. He was grinning as the two shook their left hands.

'Beg pardon, sir...' The former light dragoon Hollins approached Wheeler.

'What is it?' Wheeler ran his hand over his damp hair.

'Begging your pardon, sir, but have you ever considered introducing sabre parries for hand-to-hand fighting?'

'Well, cutlass drill incorporates some elements ...' Wheeler blustered, but Hollins could barely stifle a snort. He had seen the jolly tars exercising. It scarcely compared with the precise sabre drill of the Queen's Own Light Dragoons.

'May I, sir?' Hollins held out his hands to Drinkwater who relinquished foil and mask. Hollins flexed the blade, donned the mask, flicked a salute at Wheeler and came on to his guard. 'Cut at me, Mr Wheeler,' he said through the mesh of the mask, 'any point or direction.'

Wheeler advanced and cut at Hollins's head and the dragoon parried with his own blade held horizontally above his head. Wheeler cut swiftly at his flank and again the dragoon's blade interposed. For four breathless minutes, closely observed by the watchers, Wheeler whirled the foil from every conceivable direction. Hollins always met it steel to steel. Then, as the marine lieutenant flagged, Hollins counter-attacked and cut at Wheeler's cheek so that the mask flew off. The watching seamen burst into a spontaneous cheer until a voice cut them short.

'You there! With the mask!' It was Callowell who had come on deck. Disapproving of these sporting bouts, though unable to prevent them, Callowell had sought such an opportunity to curtail his subordinates' pleasure. He knew very well who the masked swordsman was, for the boots and cavalryman's breeches betrayed Roach's companion.

Hollins drew off his mask. Callowell strode over to him, wrenched the foil from his grip and rounded on Wheeler. 'Is this yours?'

'You know damned well it is. I lend it to Drinkwater,' Wheeler replied in a low, angry voice, darting glances at the surrounding seamen. Callowell was blind to the hint.

'Did you give this to this man?' Callowell asked Drinkwater, gesturing at Hollins.

'In a manner of speaking, sir.'

'You gave this weapon to a man serving His Majesty under sentence of a court martial? A known and convicted criminal?'

'It's only a practice foil...'

'Never mind that, did you give it to him?' Callowell laid an implacable insistence upon the verb.

'Well, I lent it to him, sir. We were only practising ...'

'What is the trouble, Mr Callowell?' The captain's reedy voice interrupted Callowell's interrogation of the midshipman. He stood at the head of the companionway, pulling his cloak about him in the chill. Callowell stumped aft to report.

'Get forrard, Hollins, and keep out of sight,' Wheeler muttered, gathering up the fencing equipment and nodding to Drinkwater to precede him below.

'Mr Drinkwater!' Reluctantly Drinkwater laid aft to where Smetherley and Callowell stood beside the binnacle.

'Sir?' After the events and responsibilities of the last few days, Captain Smetherley's self-assured youth struck Drinkwater with peculiar force.

'Is it true that you gave a weapon to a seaman under punishment?'

'I lent a practice foil to a man for the purpose of a demonstration...'

'Did you, or did you not, give your weapon to this man ... er ...'

'Hollins, sir,' offered Callowell helpfully.

Drinkwater knew he had been boxed into a corner. 'I lent the foil I borrow from Lieutenant Wheeler to Hollins, yes, sir.'

'Well, Mr Drinkwater, that is a serious misjudgement on your part. I cannot see why the late Captain Hope had such faith in you. Such behaviour is as irresponsible as it is reprehensible and I shall consider what measures I shall take. As for this habit of appearing on the quarterdeck improperly dressed', Smetherley indicated Drinkwater's shirt, 'and uncovered', the captain gestured at Drinkwater's bare head, 'I shall cure that immediately. What is our latitude, Mr Callowell?'

'Fifty-four degrees north, sir.'

'Fifty-four north and November. Fore t'gallant masthead, Mr Drinkwater. Perhaps that will teach you to behave properly'

The hours he spent aloft in this second mastheading were of almost unendurable agony. After the perspiration of the bout and the climb, the light wind quickly began to chill him and his nose, ears, fingers and feet were soon numbed, while his body went into uncontrollable fits of shivering. He had, as before, lashed himself securely out of a sense of self-preservation, but it was not long before he could not have cared less whether he lived or died, and then he was walking with Elizabeth through knee-length grass and would have been happy had there not been the anxiety that the fields through which they wandered hand-in-hand were limitless. The disquiet grew and grew, robbing him of any comfort until, looking at her, he found Elizabeth had gone and he held the frozen hand of a pallid and terrible Medusa and recognized the hideous pale succubus of his recurring dream.

But it was in fact Midshipman White, shaking him and calling him to wake up and wrap himself in the greygoe and tarpaulin he had hauled aloft. From that point, Drinkwater drifted in and out of semiconsciousness until Captain Smetherley ordered him on deck at midnight to stand his watch. The agony of returning movement wakened him and when he finally went below to his hammock a further four hours later, he was exhausted and fell asleep immediately.

The following morning, Appleby averred it was a miracle that he had survived, but Wheeler remarked that Drinkwater was 'an individual of considerable inner resource', a remark deliberately made in Callowell's hearing, though in the course of a half-private conversation between the marine officer and the surgeon.

At four bells in the forenoon watch, Captain Smetherley sent for Drinkwater. As he entered the cabin from the gloom of the orlop, his head and body still wracked by aches and pains from the previous evening, Drinkwater could see little of Smetherley but the captain's bust silhouetted against the stern windows. Beyond a watery sunlight danced wanly upon the wavetops and the bubbling wake as it drew out from under the hull. On the captain's left sat Lieutenant Callowell and also present, but standing, was Lieutenant Wheeler. The marine officer was in the panoply of full dress and his gorget reflected the light off the sea. As he entered the cabin, Drinkwater was aware that Wheeler was concluding an account of the fencing bout, prolonging it for Drinkwater's own benefit, that he might divine how matters lay. It seemed to Drinkwater that Smetherley might be beginning to perceive he was in danger of being made a fool of, for in his conclusion Wheeler was astute enough to placate Smetherley and to offer the captain some way out of his dilemma, without unduly arousing Callowell's further hostility.

'And so, sir, my excess of enthusiasm for the sport led to foolishness on my part, compromising Midshipman Drinkwater. Mr Callowell misunderstood the situation but, as a zealous officer, sought to prevent a, er ...', Wheeler strove to find the means of explaining himself, '... a contretemps.'

Smetherley shifted uncomfortably in his seat and turned his attention to Callowell. 'Well, Mr Callowell?'

'The offence was committed, sir. A weapon was deliberately given to a man under punishment... Mr Drinkwater's part in the affair is uncontestable: he admitted culpability in your hearing.'

'It was a foil, Callowell,' an exasperated Wheeler broke in, but Smetherley silenced him and Callowell pressed doggedly onwards.

'The weapon was deliberately given to a man under punishment by a man ...', Callowell paused and fastened his eyes upon Drinkwater who felt an instinctive fear of what the first lieutenant was about to say, 'by a man, sir, who has been seen engaged in conduct of a mutinous nature.'

Drinkwater felt himself go light-headed. Weakened as he was, his whole being fought the desire to faint and he clutched at the back of an adjacent chair while Wheeler took a half-step towards him out of concern before voicing his protest, but Smetherley's hand again restrained him.

'You talk in riddles, Mr Callowell'

'Aye, sir, because I am unsure of the exact nature of the facts, not being a witness to the entire event, and I was apt to put a more charitable explanation upon matters until this present incident persuaded me that I had failed in my duty and should have reported my misgivings earlier.'

'Sir,' interjected Wheeler,' this is a preposterous notion ...'

'Mr Wheeler, your partiality to a former messmate does you some credit, but let us hear what Mr Callowell has to say' Smetherley was watching Drinkwater as the accused young man fought to master himself. 'I am marking the reaction of Mr Drinkwater with interest, and I wish to hear of what this event consisted. Mr Callowell, pray continue.'

'Well, sir, 'tis simple enough. The midshipman was outside my cabin the other night at the head of a number of other scum, known trouble-makers, sir, Hollins among 'em. Had not Lieutenant Wheeler arrived in the nick of time, at which this jackanapes put up his sword and whispered to the conspirators to disperse, you and I might not be sitting here now ...'

Drinkwater had mastered his nausea now and was filling with a contrary sense of burning outrage. He recalled Baskerville's face and knew for a certainty that the younger midshipman had concocted some malicious tale and let it be known to Callowell. He had little doubt that to Callowell, Drinkwater could be represented as a man nurturing an embitterment, though why that should act as incitement to mutiny seemed so perverse a sequence of cause and effect that it begged the motive of jealousy. Drinkwater's analysis was more accurate than he knew; it was also a shrewd summation of Callowell's own bitterness. Deprived of patronage himself, he habitually clipped the wings of any young rooster who seemed likely to get on. As for Baskerville, he was a nasty little toady, a boy for whom survival had been a matter of constant currying of favour and at which he had become expert. Baskerville was quite unable to see that, sooner or later, Callowell would select him for similar treatment.

For a moment there was silence in the cabin, then Drinkwater said in a low voice, 'That is a damned lie, Lieutenant Callowell, and since you have made it so publicly, I shall ask you to retract it, or I shall...'

'The only part of your statement that bears the slightest shred of truth, Callowell, is the fact that I arrived in time,' Wheeler broke in before Drinkwater could fling himself into deeper trouble. 'Mr Drinkwater had sent for me since he had the notion there was some trouble brewing after the death of Roach.'

'And was there?' Smetherley asked sharply.

'Oh yes,' Wheeler replied with cool assurance, 'and I, sir, was not surprised, neither in an emotional nor a practical sense ...'

'Are you implying...?'

'I am implying nothing, sir,' Wheeler said with more force, 'I am merely stating that both Mr Drinkwater and myself in particular, as the officer commanding the marines, did our duty with an assiduity of which even Mr Callowell should have approved.'

'And you would have concealed this ... this evident combination from me?'

Wheeler shook his head. 'I do not know where you received the idea of a mutinous combination, sir. Had it been such a thing, I doubt Mr Drinkwater would have survived his ordeal, since he confronted the disaffected men alone, and by the time I arrived he had cooled their ardour.'

'Well, what in God's name d'you think a party of men wanderin' around in the middle of the night is about, if it ain't murdering their officers?'

'Had they been intent on so doing, sir, Mr Drinkwater would not be here. He turned aside their anger very quickly ...'

'What the devil d'you mean, "anger"?'

Wheeler sighed. 'Sir, in my opinion, and since you press me on the matter, it was unwise to have flogged Roach on the word of Midshipman Baskerville.' Wheeler paused for a second and then an idea seemed to strike him, for he suddenly asked, 'Mr Callowell, did you see Mr Drinkwater with a drawn sword?'

'I knew he had drawn his sword ...'

'But did you see him?'

'Well, I, er ...' Callowell scratched his head.

'Or did Midshipman Baskerville tell you he had seen Mr Drinkwater with a drawn sword?'

'What the devil has Baskerville got to do with all this?' Smetherley asked, signs of boredom evident in the captain's face.

'He's a veritable imp of Satan, Captain Smetherley. I'm surprised you didn't know that...'

'But you lied to me, Wheeler,' Callowell said, 'you told me Drinkwater had called your attention to that marine we flogged for being asleep at his post.'

'That was not a lie, Mr Callowell, that was the perfect truth.'

'It wasn't all...'

But before Callowell had completed his new explanation or Smetherley had gathered his wits, a peremptory knock at the cabin door ushered in Midshipman White. 'Mr Wallace's compliments, sir, but we've a frigate under our lee and Mr Wallace thinks it's the man-o'-war we've been looking for!'

There was a moment's hiatus in the cabin, then Captain Smetherley shoved his chair back and rose to his feet. 'I shall have to give this matter further consideration, gentlemen. It seems we have more pressin' matters to hand. We shall resolve this later.'

The strange sail lay to until Cyclops, foaming downwind towards her, bared her iron teeth and broke out British colours at her peak. Having expected a friend and now realizing his rashness, the stranger crowded on sail and a chase began.

As they had left the captain's cabin with Smetherley's 'we shall resolve this later' ringing ominously in his ears, Drinkwater had expressed his gratitude to Wheeler.

'We are not yet off the lee shore, Nat, but by heaven I'll not see you ruined by that little bugger Baskerville, nor that oaf Callowell, neither. Just thank providential intervention for this fellow.' Wheeler jerked his head as though at the strange sail. 'Who, or whatever he is, he is a deus ex machina!'

Drinkwater's only shred of comfort was that his action station was now on the quarterdeck as signals midshipman and the captain's aide, a position that seemed to offer at least the opportunity of demonstrating his loyalty if an action resulted in the forthcoming hours. A cold resolution grew on him as time passed and the autumn day drew towards its close. He entertained little hope for the future, and the memory of his more recent mastheading filled him with a wild contempt for life itself.

A gibbous moon shone fitfully from behind the clouds, the pale shape of the stranger's towering canvas now dimming to a distant faintness, now revealed as a dramatic image. The two ships were close enough to remain in sight of each other throughout the night as both ran on to the northwards but, though Cyclops held her ground, she was unable to overhaul her quarry.

At about three o'clock in the morning the enemy attempted a ruse to throw off Cyclops and catch her pursuer at a disadvantage. Still some three points to starboard and about two miles distant, the enemy ship abruptly came to the wind, tacked and stood across Cyclops's bow.

'Stand to your guns! Stand to your guns!' Callowell roared through his speaking-trumpet. The crew of the Cyclops, who had been clustered half-awake at their action stations for hours, were now summoned to full consciousness.

'What is it, Mr Callowell?' Smetherley asked, staggering forward and peering into the gloom. Quite unaware that the enemy was athwart his own hawse with his larboard broadside trained on Cyclops as she bore down upon his guns, like a bull upon the matador's sword, Smetherley rubbed the sleep from his eyes and relinquished the slight shelter and support of the mizen rigging.

'Up helm!' Callowell roared again. 'Up helm or we'll be raked!'

Callowell's order was too late. The flicker of the enemy cannon showed close ahead, just as the helmsmen began to drag the great tiller across the steerage below.

'Larboard battery! Fire as you bear!' Smetherley's voice cracked the night in its imperious shrillness. As the enemy shot tore into Cyclops, there was a brief pause and then a desultory fire was returned. The strange ship continued to turn off the wind to larboard and the two frigates ran down each other's sides on opposite courses, with Cyclops herself beginning her swing off the wind.

'Belay that order!' Smetherley now shouted, confusing the issue. 'Put your helm down, sir! Down!'

As the British frigate turned, she increasingly presented her vulnerable stern to the enemy, inviting further raking fire. Smetherley now sought to cross the enemy's rear, but the matter had been left far too late. The reversing helm dragged speed off the British frigate's progress and the brief moment in which Cyclops had her quarry at a disadvantage was lost. The larboard guns had yet to be reloaded, and the raking shots fired were far too few to achieve anything of significance. Then, as the enemy extended the range, the opportunity was lost.

Drinkwater reported his sighting of the enemy's ensign. 'French colours, sir.'

Smetherley's attention, however, was swiftly diverted to a more immediate concern.

'She'll not stay, sir,' Drinkwater heard Blackmore shout as Cyclops came up in the wind with a sluggish feel to her.

'God damn!' Smetherley swore as the ship steadied, heading into the wind's eye. With a crack and a kind of roaring noise that was compounded of parting ropes, flapping canvas and wood and iron descending in slow motion, the foretopmast went by the board. The extra pressure of the wind had parted forestays damaged by the enemy's opening shots and now, as Cyclops emerged into a patch of moonlight, the foredeck was littered with fallen spars and festooned with rigging and canvas from aloft. Some hung over the side; to tear at the frigate's forechains where men were already cutting away the wreckage.

Drinkwater dutifully returned his attention to the progress of the enemy. He thought the Frenchman would now escape entirely, but the enemy commander, having seen the predicament of the British frigate in the sudden moonlight, was not about to let an opportunity slip through his fingers.

'Enemy's wearing ship, sir!' Drinkwater reported.

'What's that?' Smetherley spun round, distracted from the mess on the forecastle and in the waist by Drinkwater's shout.

'He's wearing ship, sir.'

The patch of moonlight spread and they could plainly see the enemy cruiser's larboard broadside as she turned her stern through the wind.

'He's going to re-engage, sir,' Drinkwater remarked. Smetherley raised his glass and Drinkwater could hear him muttering. 'Call the master,' he said audibly after a moment.

Drinkwater went forward in search of Blackmore whom he found directing the work of clearing the mess forward and bringing the ship under command again.

'Captain wants you, Mr Blackmore,' he said.

Blackmore grunted, gave a final instruction and walked aft. 'Carpenter's reporting water in the well, sir,' he stated. 'That Frenchman's hulled us.'

'And he's coming back to finish off what he started, Mr Blackmore,' Smetherley said, pointing astern just as the moon disappeared again and they seemed suddenly plunged into an impenetrable gloom.

'Well, we're making a fine stern board at the moment, sir, he may misjudge matters.'

'I wish to re-engage,' Smetherley replied. Then, turning to Drinkwater, he ordered, 'Let the officers on the gun-decks know they're to open fire when their guns bear, the unengaged side to assist the other. D'you understand, Drinkwater?'

'Perfectly, sir.' Drinkwater ran off to find Wallace and cannoned into Callowell at the head of the companionway.

'Where's the master?'

'On the quarterdeck, sir, with Captain Smetherley. The Frenchman's running back towards us and I'm to let the officers on the gun-deck know'

Callowell made off as Drinkwater descended into the greater darkness of the gun-deck. In contrast to the chaos above, a sinister order reigned below. Almost on the very spot where Drinkwater had turned aside the mutiny, all had changed. Gone were the grey lumps of the hammocks and the neat row of officers' cabins; gone were the white painted bulkheads shutting off the after end of the ship for the privacy of her commander and officers. Now a long, almost open space, intersected by stanchions, gratings, half-empty shot-garlands and the massive bulk of the two capstans, was lined by the gleaming black barrels of the frigate's main armament of guns. The fitful light of the protected battle-lanterns threw long shadows and conferred an ominous movement upon what was largely a motionless scene, with the gun-crews in readiness about their pieces and only the scampering of the ship's boys making any significant noise in the expectant gloom. It struck Drinkwater with peculiar force that these men had almost no knowledge of what was going on above their heads. He ran forward in search of Wallace and found him peering out of a gun-port.

'Mr Wallace, sir.'

Wallace turned and straightened himself up as far as the deck-beams would allow. 'Ah, what news do you bring?'

'We've lost the foretopmast...'

'We thought something must have given way...'

'And the enemy's worn ship. You're to re-engage with whatever battery bears, the other side to assist.'

'Short range?'

'I would think so, sir.'

'Shot?'

'Whatever you think fit, sir,' said Drinkwater, only afterwards noting the significance of the phrase.

'Ball on ball, then. That should do for a start.' Wallace turned and shouted, 'Double-shot your guns, my lads! They're coming back for a taste of rusty iron!'

Suddenly the gun-deck was alive with movement, like a nest of rats stirred from their sleep, the gun-trucks rumbling on the planking and sending a trembling throughout the frigate.

'Good luck, sir.' Drinkwater hurried aft in search of the companionway and the upper-deck. Here too all had changed, for the distance between the two ships had closed and the enemy seemed to tower over them as he drove across their bows for a second time. But this was a more ponderous manoeuvre in contrast with the quickwitted desperation of the first. The enemy ship had shortened sail and, while Cyclops's stern board had robbed the Frenchman of the chance to attack from leeward and rake the vulnerable stern of his quarry by throwing her maintopsail aback at the right moment, he might still inflict severe punishment on his former pursuer by lying to athwart Cyclops's hawse.

However, now that the French ship was committed to raking from ahead, Cyclops's stern could be thrown round so that her larboard broadside bore upon the Frenchman. Callowell and Blackmore were urging this on Smetherley who gave the impression of dithering before agreeing. By hauling the main braces and putting over the helm, Cyclops was now brought round by degrees so that as the enemy guns reopened fire, the British frigate's larboard guns roared out in reply.

But the French commander was a bold man and backed his own maintopsail, drifting slowly down on to Cyclops and fighting his opponent gun for gun, matching discharge for discharge. A slow cloud of acrid powder-smoke rolled down upon them, musketry swept the deck like hail and, while heavy shot thumped into Cyclops's hull, the lighter calibre ball from the Frenchman's quarterdeck guns, mixed with deadly canister and langridge, blasted holes through the hammock nettings and knocked men down like bloody ninepins in the cold light of the growing dawn.

The view each man had of the fight became obscured in the smoke. Drinkwater, obliged to be always at the captain's elbow, kept his eyes on the dull gleam of Smetherley's figure. The din of the guns and the sharp crack of musketry rendered him partially deaf so that he felt rather than heard the almost simultaneous discharge of a French broadside. It struck him as a wave of hot, stinking gas, accompanied by the whirring roar of a passing ball and the involuntary gasp as the thing winded him.

Two more such devastating detonations followed, acts calculated to have maximum effect before boarding, for Drinkwater heard Callowell, as if at a great distance although he could be seen through the smoke, screaming to repel boarders.

Drinkwater saw Smetherley draw his sword and, as he drew his own, he caught a glimpse beyond the captain of a looming hedge of cutlasses and boarding-pikes a moment before there came to him the jarring impact as the two frigates ground together. A moment later he was fighting for his life.

He thrust his right shoulder forward and parried a pike, recovered and hacked at the arm that held it. He missed, but the man was past him and lunging to the left where, out of the corner of his eye, Drinkwater saw a marine jabbing a bayonet. He was confronted next by an officer with fiercely gleaming eyes. Drinkwater beat the man's extended blade and, in something akin to disbelief, watched the blade drop from the officer's fingers. Dully he realized the man's wrist had been shattered and that the ferocity in the poor fellow's eyes was the shock of pain. A cutlass blade seemed to appear from nowhere, being drawn back to hack at him. Drinkwater swept his arm in a cutting arc which Hollins would have approved of and felt his blade bite into the cutlass-bearer's side as the weapon in turn slashed down. Somehow it missed him as the man dropped, knocking into Drinkwater with considerable force. Twisting away, Drinkwater slithered and fell. He felt a foot on his back and gasped for breath, filled with the vague idea that he would now be in further trouble for having deserted the captain. Then, the next instant, he was overcome by a desire to stay where he was, to give up this madness and succumb to the aching of his muscles. Who would notice? He might lie like a dog while the world took its course without him. It cared not for him; why should he care for it? He looked round and saw, twenty feet abaft him at the frigate's taffrail, a French officer fiddling with the ensign halliards. Cyclops was taken!

The thought filled him with an odd contentment. Smetherley and Callowell could go to hell, along with Baskerville and his miserable crew of insufferable cronies. But then he thought of poor White and of the things he had done for Drinkwater in tending him while he was enduring his two mastheadings; and Wheeler, who had helped him the previous morning; and poor old Blackmore and Appleby. Then the thought of captivity suddenly burst upon him as the French officer seemed to clear the halliards and begin to take down the British ensign. A second later Drinkwater was on his feet and rushing aft. The man looked round just as Drinkwater ran him through. Ice had settled in his heart now and his mind was strangely clear. He drew his blade from the dead weight of the fallen body, belayed the halliards and swung round. Looking forward he saw Captain Smetherley surrounded by three French seamen who were jabbing at him with pikes. Taking them in the rear, Drinkwater had dispatched two of them before the third fled and he confronted Smetherley who drew his breath in gasps.

'Recall, sir,' Drinkwater shouted, 'my loyalty's in question!' He was lightheaded now, not with the fainting fit which had almost overwhelmed him in Smetherley's cabin, but with a mad yet calculating coolness. Smetherley had regained his breath and, imbued with a bloody fighting lust and scarcely recognizing Drinkwater, flung himself at the rear of more Frenchmen who were pressing Wheeler's marines amid the heaving mass of men who struggled for possession of the forward quarterdeck. Drinkwater was left in sole possession of the space abaft the mizen and someone on the French frigate had noticed. A musket ball scored Drinkwater's shoulder, opening the seam of his coat and half turning him round with the force of its impact. As he stumbled, another French officer came over the rail, obviously intent on sweeping Drinkwater out of the way and finally hauling down the British colours.

Drinkwater met him with a savage swipe. The officer parried, but only partially, and such was the force of Drinkwater's blow that his blade slid down the French officer's sword, cutting into the man's thigh, severing a tendon and causing him to drop to one knee. As his head slipped forward, Drinkwater thumped at the back of the man's skull with the pommel of his sword, felling him completely.

A moment later another man slumped at his feet and Drinkwater recognized the bloody wreck of Smetherley who had been cut down by three or four Frenchmen intent on taking him prisoner and securing the surrender of the frigate. 'Drinkwater!' Smetherley cried.

Drinkwater stepped across the captain's body and stood over him, slashing wildly left and right, holding off the attackers. Beyond his immediate surroundings, he was quite oblivious of anything else. Down below, the gunners still plied their deadly trade, the gunfire unabating as the guns' barrels warmed up and the great pieces fairly leapt with eagerness at each discharge.

He could not tell that the fire from the French frigate had slowed and then almost stopped as the battering of the British guns gradually overcame their opposition. Thus, as the French boarders gained ground on the upper deck of Cyclops, the fierce tenacity of the British gunnery from the deck below was pounding their ship to pieces. Drinkwater drove off those of the enemy immediately intent on securing Captain Smetherley, unaware that he himself had received several light flesh wounds.

As the French withdrew, Drinkwater regained his breath, aware of a general retreat and of an increasingly panic-stricken scrambling backwards of desperate men, pricked by Wheeler's marines' bayonets and hounded by British seamen. He had no idea what had caused this retrograde movement, but once started it seemed irreversible and soon Drinkwater saw the backs of the marines stabbing their way over the rail. Looking down, Drinkwater caught sight of Smetherley staring up at him, his eyes fixed and already clouding. The captain's white waistcoat was dark with blood and a great pool of it spread out round Drinkwater's feet. Then something splattered the pool of blood. Looking up, Drinkwater saw the French sharpshooter still in the mizen top. Without a pistol Drinkwater relinquished his charge and stepped to the larboard rail, put his foot on the truck of a quarterdeck gun and hoisted himself into the mizen rigging.

The French seamen were fighting like demons, contesting every inch of their own deck, but Wheeler was screaming at his marines, the majority of whom had ceased their advance or withdrawn to stand elevated in the Cyclops's larboard hammock netting.

'Call off your men, Callowell!' Wheeler shouted at the top of his voice. 'I'll clear the deck!'

The marines discharged a volley at Wheeler's command. The musket balls were indiscriminate in finding their marks and several of the more advanced British seamen were caught in the fire, but the general effect threw the defenders back and into the brief interval the British poured, Drinkwater jumping down among them, unsatiated and eager for the appalling excitement of action.

A boy ran under his guard and stabbed a seaman next to him, then turned and made to jab at Drinkwater. Drinkwater drove the guard of his hanger into the boy's shoulder and knocked him down. Then he pronated his blade and lunged at a pig-tailed quartermaster defending the binnacle with a cutlass. Drinkwater's point drove through the quartermaster's windpipe and the wretched man died with a curious gasping whistle, clutching at his throat as he fell.

A tall, dark officer lay against the binnacle, his high collar decorated with gold, his broad shoulders bearing the bullion embellishments of epaulettes. A younger officer knelt by his side, then, sensing the looming presence of an enemy as the quartermaster crashed to the deck, stood and confronted Drinkwater, his hand holding a broken sword.

'Do you surrender, sir?' Drinkwater asked. To his astonishment the younger man nodded, dropped the broken weapon, bent and took from the feeble grasp of the fallen captain that officer's sword and offered it hilt foremost to Drinkwater.

'Merci, M'sieur,'

Drinkwater managed, mercilessly adding with a jerking motion to the great white ensign overhead, 'et voire drapeau, s'il vous plaît.''

The younger man looked down at the pallid face of his commander. The mortally wounded French captain opened his eyes, looked at Drinkwater, then closed them with a nod. A few moments later the oriflamme of Bourbon lilies fluttered to the deck just as the sun lifted over the lip of cloud that veiled the eastern horizon and flooded the scene with a sudden, dazzling light.

CHAPTER 5 Peace

They had been cheated of their prize, for within moments of her striking her colours, the French frigate L'Arcadienne took fire. It was necessary for Cyclops to be worked clear of her and to lie to and lick her own wounds while L'Arcadienne burned furiously, until, about an hour after noon, she exploded with a thunderous roar, flinging debris high into the air. This fell back into a circle of sea flattened by the detonation, over which hung a pall of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the French ship and most of her company had disappeared.

Among their own dead and wounded was old Blackmore. He took six days to die of a musket ball in the bowels, begging Drinkwater to take his belongings home to his wife and giving him his folio volumes of carefully observed notes and sketches, the fruit of a lifetime's interest. After the action, Lieutenant Callowell had taken command and was driven to the expedient of reappointing Mr Drinkwater to a temporary berth in the gunroom. Callowell remained indifferent to him, but no more was ever said of Drinkwater's participation in any mutiny and he suspected Wheeler's intervention. At all events, the incident was apparently closed and the shadow of it gradually passed.

After the terror of an action in which he had not distinguished himself but had been knocked unconscious, Midshipman Baskerville seemed less inclined to tell tales. Though he would not admit it, he was privately glad that Drinkwater never afterwards referred to the incident, though Wheeler spoke to him, leaving Baskerville in no doubt but that there were several officers who knew of his mendacity. After Cyclops was laid up in the Medway, Baskerville went ashore, never to return to sea, though in later years he spoke knowledgeably of naval affairs in the House of Commons, being returned as one of two members for a pocket borough. Captain Smetherley was granted an encomium in the Intelligencer, having died, it was stated, 'at his moment of triumph'. Moreover, the Intelligencer informed its readers, 'the Royal Navy had been thereby deprived of a gallant officer in the flower of his youth, and the Nation of a meritorious officer of whom it might otherwise have entertained expectations of long, gallant and distinguished service'.

The last weeks of the commission were strangely melancholic for all the officers, coloured by the dolorous prospect of half-pay. By contrast the hands were far more cheerful. The pressed men especially could scarcely refrain from desertion as they lay at the buoys in the Medway, with the smoking chimneys of Chatham a mere stone's throw distant. Only the promise of their pay, in some cases of four years' arrears, kept them at their duty as they sent down spars and ferried stores, guns, ammunition and sundry other items ashore. By the time they had finished, Cyclops was only a vestige of her former self, a dark and hollow hulk, stripped to her lower masts and with her jib-boom removed. She seemed much larger, for her thirty-two twelve-pounders and the chase and quarter guns had been laboriously hauled ashore, so lightening her considerably and causing her to ride high out of the water. Gone were the iron shot and powder, the cheese and butter, the kegs of beer and spirits, the hogsheads of salt pork, barricoes of water, bags of dried peas, sacks of hard grey flour, bales of wadding and oakum, blocks of pitch and barrels of tar. She bore little cordage, for most had been removed, from her huge spare cable to the reels of thin spun yarn. Only the lingering smell of these commodities served as a reminder of the warlike machine she had once been. All the myriad odds and ends that had made her existence possible, whose supply and issue had occupied the book-keeping skills of a small company of officers and petty officers over the long months of the commission, were removed for storage ashore. Shorewards went her anchors, lowered on to the mooring lighters from the dockyard by means of the only spar left crossed for the purpose, the main-topsail yard hoisted on the foremast in place of the foreyard. When the final load had gone, the large blocks were sent down and small whips left at the yard-arms. As almost the last task, the yard was cock-billed out of the way, leaving room for the next ship alongside.

In those last days, Lieutenant Callowell had received his promotion to commander, though he refused to leave the ship until she was reduced to the condition known as 'in ordinary'. He finally announced his decision to quit on the morning following the removal of the anchors. Early that forenoon, the marines were paraded for the penultimate time. Sergeant Hagan assembled his men with his usual precision, ensuring their appearance was immaculate. Their white cross-belts had been pipe-clayed to perfection, their breeches were like snow and their gaiters black as pitch. The older seamen watched with delight, knowing that the marines' imminent departure meant their own pay and discharge were soon to be forthcoming. As Hagan satisfied himself, the captain's gig was piped away and the sergeant fell out the entry guard who now joined the side-boys in Cyclops's last show of pomp in the present commission.

A grey sky lowered over the river and a keen easterly wind brought the odour of saltmarsh across the ruffled surface of the Medway. The lieutenants and warrant officers assembled in undress uniforms, their swords hitched to their hips; the midshipmen fell in behind them. Wheeler, having inspected his men in Hagan's wake, placed himself at their head and, drawing his hanger, called them to attention. A deathly hush fell upon the upper deck. A moment later, Commander Callowell ascended the companionway. He wore a boat cloak over his uniform and as the wind whipped it about him, Wheeler threw out the order for his men to present arms.

The clatter of muskets and simultaneous stamp of feet were accompanied by the wicked gleam of pale sunlight upon bayonets. Wheeler's hanger went up to his lips and then swept downwards in the graceful arc of the salute. The assembled lieutenants brought their fingers up to the cocks of their hats.

'Gentlemen ...' Callowell remained a moment looking forward and responded to the salutes of his officers and the guard. Then, without another word, he walked to the rail and went over the side to the shrilling pipes of the boatswain's mates.

The silence lasted a moment more, then someone forward shouted out, 'Three cheers for "Bloody-Back" Callowell!' The air was split by a thunderous bellow. It was a cheer such as they had given Resolution in the gathering gloom at the beginning of Rodney's Moonlight Battle three years earlier. Drinkwater remembered the disquieting power of the noise and he watched now as they cheered and cheered, not for Callowell, but for themselves. They cheered for what they had made of Cyclops, for their collective triumphs and disappointments; they cheered at the alluring prospect of that spirit of unity being broken into the individual delights of discharge, grog shops and brothels.

As the gig pulled out clear of the ship's side, they could see the figure of Callowell humped in the stern-sheets. He did not look back.

That evening the gunroom held a valedictory dinner in the vacated captain's cabin. Wallace, as acting first lieutenant, presided in name only, for in reality it was Wheeler's evening. The midshipmen were guests, as were the senior warrant officers and senior mates, and the intention was to drink off the remaining wine in the possession of the gunroom officers, a quantity of the former having been taken out of L'Arcadienne before the fire had driven back the looters. Once the eating was dispensed with, the serious business of the evening commenced. Amidst the wreckage of chicken bones and suet dumplings, bumpers of increasing extravagance were drunk to toasts of increasing dubiety.

The whole evening was a marked contrast to Drinkwater's first formal dinner on board when Captain Hope had dined with Admiral Kempenfelt and he had been compelled to toast the company. He was a very different person from the ingenuous and inebriated youth who had risen unsteadily to his feet on that occasion. The harsh path of duty had matured him and his capacity for wine had much improved. Now he joined lustily in the singing of 'Spanish Ladies' and 'Hearts of Oak', and clapped enthusiastically when O'Malley, the Irish cook and the ship's fiddler, scraped the air of Nancy Dawson' on his ancient violin.

Finally Wheeler rose unsteadily to his feet. His handsome face was flushed, but his cravat remained neatly tied under his perspiring chin as he called the lubberly company to order.

'Gennelmen,' he began, 'gennelmen, we are gathered here tonight in the sight of Almighty God, the Devil and Mr Surgeon Appleby, to conclude a commission memorable for its being in an infamous war in which I believe all of us here executed our duty with honour, as behoves all true Britons.' He paused for the cheers that this peroration called forth from the company to die down. 'Tomorrow ... tomorrow we will be penniless beggars, but tonight we are as fit as fighting cocks to thrash Frenchmen, Dons and Yankees ...'

Wheeler paused again while more cheers accompanied Midshipman White's disappearance as he slid slowly beneath the table, his face sinking behind the cloth like a diminutive setting sun, to lie unheeded by his fellows whose upturned faces awaited more of Wheeler's pomposities. 'Gennelmen, I give you a toast: A short peace and a long war!'

The company cheered yet again and some staggered to their feet. They gulped their wine and thumped the table, calling for more.

'Silence! Silence!'

Hisses were taken up and some sort of order was re-established. 'It has been brought to my notice by the purser,' continued Wheeler, 'as Christian a gennelman as ever sat on a purser's stool mark you, that we are down to our last case of wine, which is... which is... which is what, m'dear fella?'

'Madeira.'

'Madeira, gennelmen, madeira...'

Wheeler collapsed into his chair amidst more cheers. The vacuum was filled by the last bottles being set out and the ponderous figure of Appleby rising to his feet. An attempt was made to shout him down. 'No speeches from the surgeon!'

'You're a guest! Sit down!'

But Appleby stood his ground. 'I shall not make a speech, gentle-men ...' His voice was drowned in further cheers, but he remained standing when they died away. 'I shall simply ask you to raise your glasses to fallen comrades ...'

A hush fell on the company and a scraping of chairs indicated a lugubrious assent to Appleby's sentiment. A shamefaced mumbling emanated from bowed heads as they recalled those who had started the commission and had not survived it — Hope, Blackmore and many others.

'And now...', resumed Appleby, and the mood lightened immediately.

'No speeches, damn your eyes!'

'Appleby, you farting old windbag, sit down!'

'And now,' Appleby went on, 'I ask you to raise your glasses in another toast...'

'For God's sake, Appleby, we've drunk to everything under heaven except your mother and father!'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' roared the surgeon, 'We have forgotten the most important after His Majesty's health ...' Silence, apart from White's brutish snoring under the table, again permeated the cabin. 'I prithee charge your glasses ... Now, gentlemen, I ask you to drink to this one-eyed frigate, gentlemen, this Cyclopean eye-of-the-fleet. Just as you are closing both of your limpid orbs in stupor, she is closing her noble eye on war. Gentlemen, be upstanding and drink to the ship! I give you "An eye of the fleet, His Britannic Majesty's frigate Cyclops!"'

There were punning shouts of 'Aye, aye!', much nudging of neighbours' ribs and more loud cheers which finally subsided into gurgling, dyspeptic mumblings and an involuntary fart from Wheeler. Suddenly the cabin door flew open and Sergeant Hagan entered wearing full dress uniform. Wheeler looked up blearily as the sergeant's boots crashed irreverently upon the deck and his right hand executed an extravagant salute circumscribed only by the deck beams above.

'Sah!'

'Eh? Whassa matter, ser'nt?' Wheeler struggled upright in his chair, affronted by the intrusion and vaguely aware that the sergeant's presence in parade dress augured some disagreeable occurrence elsewhere. Wheeler fixed the man with what he took to be a baleful stare, the vague disquiet of a summons to duty intruding upon his bemused brain.

'I have the honour to escort the officers' cheese, sah!' Hagan replied, looking straight into his commanding officer's single focused eye.

'Cheesh, ser'nt? Whadya mean cheesh?'

'Mr Dale's orders, sah!'

'Dale? You mean the carpenter?' Wheeler shook his head in incomprehension. 'You don't make yourself clear, ser'nt.'

'Permission to bring in the officers' cheese, sah!' Hagan persisted patiently in pursuance of his instructions, holding himself at rigid attention throughout this inane exchange.

Wheeler looked round the company and asked, 'We've had cheesh, haven't we, gennelmen? I'm certain we had cheesh ...'

But his query went unheeded, for there were more table thumpings and cries of 'Cheese! Cheese! We want cheese!'

Wheeler shook his head, shrugged and slumped back in his chair, waving his assent. 'Very well, Ser'nt Hagan. Please escort in the cheese!'

'Sah!' acknowledged Hagan and drew smartly aside. Two of the carpenter's mates entered bearing a salver on which reposed the cheese, daintily covered by a white damask napkin. At the lower end of the table, midshipmen drew apart to allow the worthy tarpaulins to deposit their load. They were grinning as they withdrew and Wheeler's numbed brain was beginning to sense a breach of propriety. He rose very unsteadily, leaning heavily upon the table. 'Sergeant!'

'Sah?'

'Whass that?' Wheeler nodded at the napkin-covered lump.

'The officers' cheese, sah!' repeated Hagan in the reasonable tone one uses to children, and executing another smart salute he retreated from the cabin, closing the door behind him.

Wheeler's misgivings were not shared by his fellow-diners who had just discovered that the remaining stock of wine amounted to at least one glass each. The demands for cheese were revived and with a flourish Drinkwater leaned forward and whipped off the napkin.

'God bless my soul!'

'Stap me vittals!'

'Rot me cods!'

'God's bones!'

'It's the festering main truck!'

'The what?'

'It's the god-damned truck from the mainmasthead!'

And there, amid the wreckage of what had passed for a banquet, sat the cap of the mainmast, pierced and fitted with its two sheaves for the flag halliards.

'Well, of all the confounded nerve ...'

'I'm damned if I understand ...' Wheeler passed a hand over his furrowed brow. Next to him Wallace had begun a slow dégringolade beneath the table.

'Hang on for your cheese, Wallace,' someone said.

'Dale's right,' Drinkwater said, 'I remember not believing him when he swore he had told me the truth back in seventy-nine.'

'Whadya mean?' Wheeler asked.

A chorus of slurred voices demanded an explanation. 'Mr Dale made it out of pusser's cheese,' Drinkwater explained. 'He carved it out of a cheese which had been supplied for the hands to eat... it's cheese, d'you see? Cheese; it really is cheese!'

'Well I'm damned.' Wheeler sat back in his chair, looking fixedly at the object before him. 'Well, I'll be damned ...' and with that he slid slowly downwards, to join the company assembling beneath the table.

'Well, Nathaniel,' Appleby said, raising his glass and holding it up to the stumps of the candles in the candelabra, 'there are only a few of us worthy of remaining above the salt, it seems. Your health, sir.'

'And yours, Mr Appleby, and yours.'

'You don't care for any cheese, I take it?'

'Thank you, no.'

The next morning the marines turned out in order of route. Pulled ashore in the launch, bound for their billets at Chatham barracks, they left to ribald farewells from the high-spirited boats' crews. Wheeler departed with them, his pale face evidence of an aching head. Before he went down into the boat, he shook his fellow-officers' hands in farewell. To Drinkwater he said, 'Good luck, young shaver. Always remember what I have taught you: never flinch when you parry and always riposte.'

During the forenoon other officers left. Midshipman Baskerville and his gang were seen off without regret, but White, hung-over and emotional, took his departure with a catch in his voice.

'Damn it, Nat,' he said, wringing Drinkwater's hand, 'I'm deuced glad to be leaving, but sorry that we must part. You shall come and see us, eh? There's good shooting in Norfolk and there's always a bed at the Hall.'

'Of course, Chalky. We shall remain friends and I shall write as soon as I have determined what to do. You won't forget to deliver Blackmore's dunnage?'

'No, no. His house lies almost upon my direct route. I shall lodge at Colchester and make the detour to Harwich without undue delay'

'Please pass my condolences to his widow. You have my letter.'

'Of course.'

'Well goodbye, old fellow. Good fortune and thank you for your solicitude when I was aloft. Appleby considered you saved my life.'

'Then we are quits,' White said, following his sea-chest over the rail with a gallant smile that seemed to cause him some agony. Drinkwater, suffering himself, grinned unsympathetically.

After the departure of the officers and their dunnage of sea-chests, bundles, portmanteaux, sword-cases, hat-boxes and quadrant-boxes, the frigate's remaining boats were sent in to the boat-pond and she was left with a dockyard punt of uncertain antiquity to attend her. At noon the ship was boarded by the paymaster and his clerks who brought with them an iron-bound chest with its escort of marines from the dockyard detachment. The men were mustered to the shrilling of the pipes in an excited crowd under the final authority of the boatswain and his mates. They turned out in all the splendid finery of their best shore-going outfits, sporting ribboned hats, decorated pea-jackets, elaborately worked belts of white sennet and trousers with extravagantly flared legs. Many held their shoes in their hands and those who had donned theirs walked with the exaggerated awkwardness of men quite unused to such things. As each man received his due reward, signing or marking the purser's and the surgeon's ledgers for the deductions he had accrued over the commission, he turned away with a wide grin, picked up his ditty-bag and went to the rail in quest of transport. Word had passed along the river, and boats and wherries arrived to lie expectantly off Cyclops's quarters from where the unfortunate crew were confronted with the first joy of the shore, being subjected to the ravages of land-sharks who were demanding exorbitant charges to ferry them ashore.

In the wake of this exodus, the ship sank into a state of suspension, the silence along her decks eerie to those who had known them crowded with men and full of the buzz of human occupation.

Responsibility for the ship now fell upon the standing warrant officers, for Drinkwater's acting commission ceased the day Cyclops decommissioned, and in the absence of a master, the gunner was the senior. Drinkwater remained on board unofficially, his sole purpose in lingering to augment his knowledge and study, for he had received word from the Trinity House that he could attend for examination in a little over a fortnight and he was determined to secure at the very least a certificate as master as soon as possible. With the approval of the gunner, he therefore remained in the gunroom, and in that now echoing space once loud with Devaux and Wheeler's discourse, he unrolled Blackmore's charts and studied the legacy the old man had left him. Apart from a treatise on navigation, Drinkwater had found a dictionary and, to his surprise, some works of poetry. Somehow the memory of the sailing master and his didactic lectures on the mysteries of lunar distances did not square with the love-poems of Herrick and Rochester. Oddly, though, there seemed a strange, almost sinister message from beyond the grave implicit in a slim anthology which contained a work by Richard Kempenfelt. He read a couplet out loud:

This discovery briefly diverted his thoughts to Elizabeth and the book of hers that he had found containing a hymn of the admiral's. But it was the manuscript books which most fascinated Drinkwater for, from his first appointment as second mate of a merchantman, Blackmore had kept notebooks containing details of anchorages and ports and the dangers of their approaches, of landfalls, conspicuous features, leads through swatchways and gatways, and the exhibited lights and daymarks of lighthouses and alarm vessels. Interspersed with the carefully scribed text were exquisite drawings, some washed in with water-colours, which turned these compendiums into private rutters of sailing directions. It was a double surprise to find these talents in the old man, filling Drinkwater with a profound regret that he had not done so earlier, that he had in some way failed the dead man. The discovery of these things after Blackmore's death laid a poignant burden upon him, a feeling of lost opportunity.

To the inhabitants of the cockpit as a whole, Blackmore had been a fussy old woman whose interest in versines, Napier's logarithms and plane sailing were as obsessive as they were boring. Fortunately Drinkwater had not found them so, and as a result had benefited from Blackmore's patiently shared experience. He was too young to know that such enthusiasm was enough for Blackmore and had decided the dying man to leave his professional papers to his aptest pupil.

Drinkwater turned the pages of Blackmore's rutters. They charted the dead man's life from the Gulf of Riga to the Dardanelles. There were notes on anchorages on the coasts of Kurland and Corsica, on ice in the Baltic and on the currents in the Strait of Gibraltar. There were notes of the approaches to Stralsund and some complex clearing marks off Ushant. There were observations on Blackmore's native Harwich Harbour, and on the Rivers Humber and Mersey, together with a neat chartlet of the Galuda River in South Carolina. Drinkwater shuddered. He remembered the Galuda too well, its mosquitoes, its dead and the manner of their dying. He did not care to think of such things and dismissed them from his mind. In an effort to concentrate, he wrote to Elizabeth, then bent himself to his studies.

Trinity House was an impressive building, situated on the rising ground of Tower Hill. Iron railings provided a forecourt to the stone façade, the ground floor of which comprised an arched entrance with Ionic columns supporting a plain entablature pierced by tall windows. These in turn were interspersed with ornate embellishments comprising the Corporation's arms and the medallions of King George III and Queen Charlotte, together with representations of nautical instruments and lighthouses. The Elder Brethren who formed the ruling court of this ancient body, as well as licensing pilots and buoying out the Thames Estuary, the Downs and Yarmouth Roads, and generally overseeing their own and private lighthouses, also examined the proficiency of candidates seeking warrants as masters or mates in the Royal Navy.

It was a contentious matter, for to command a brig-sloop or unrated ship of less than twenty guns, a lieutenant or commander was supposed to have passed an examination before the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House. Indeed, implicit in the very rank 'Master and Commander' was lodged an acknowledgement of navigational skill, allowing the holder the courtesy title of 'Captain', without the confirmed and irreversible rights attaching to that of 'Post-Captain'. Therein lay the rub. Despite the fact that the Brethren were mariners of experience, all having commanded ships, and in spite of the Corporation being empowered by Royal Charter, they were themselves merchant masters. Officers holding commissions from the King considered that to submit to such examination was an affront to their dignity. Thus the exigencies of service at sea and abroad, and the expediences of special cases, combined with the more powerful influences of blood and interest almost to negate the wise provision of this regulation. It was, therefore, unfortunately observed mostly in the breach. The resulting ineptitude of many commissioned officers as navigators had frequently caused danger to naval ships and ensured continuing employment for those men brought up in merchantmen, whose humbler path led them into the navy as masters and mates. These men had their certificates from the Trinity House and their warrants from the Navy Board but, competent though they might be, commissioned they were not.

Strictly according to regulation, a midshipman was not permitted to act as prize-master unless he had passed for master's mate and thus demonstrated his competence to bring his prize safely into port. A mixture of luck and expedience had secured Drinkwater his own warrant as master's mate when he had served briefly in the Corporation's yacht under Captain Poulter. At the time she had been flying the flag of Captain Anthony Calvert, an Elder Brother on his way to the westward from Plymouth, and Calvert had obtained a certificate for the young Midshipman Drinkwater. Despite this brief service in the Corporation's buoy-yacht, this was the first time Drinkwater had visited the elegant headquarters on Tower Hill, built by Samuel Wyatt.

Drinkwater was shown to a seat in an ante-room by a dark-suited clerk. An Indian carpet deadened all sound except the measured and mesmeric ticking of a tall long-case clock which showed the phases of the moon. On one wall a magnificently wrought painting by Thomas Butterworth depicted a ship being broken to pieces under beetling cliffs. Drinkwater rose and studied the picture more closely. It was of the Ramillus whose wrecking, Drinkwater recalled being told, was due to the errors made by her sailing master. The thought was uncomfortable and he turned, only to gaze into the forbidding stare of a pendulous bellied master-mariner whose portrait glared from under a full peruke wig. The mariner pointed to a chart on an adjacent table upon which were also a telescope and a quadrant. Beyond lay a distant view of an old ship, leaning to a gale.

'This way, sir.' The clerk's appearance made Drinkwater jump. Nervously gathering up his papers, he followed the man into an adjacent but larger chamber. Here more ancient sea-captains stared down at him, and a seductive view of a British factory somewhere, Drinkwater guessed, on the coast of India, occupied one entire wall. In the background, surrounded by green palm trees and some native huts, lay the grim embrasures of a dun-coloured fort above which British colours lifted languidly. In the foreground three Indiamen lay at anchor, with a fourth in the process of getting under weigh, while native boats plied between them. Between Drinkwater and the painting there was a long table upon which lay some books, charts, rules and dividers. Gingerly Drinkwater laid his papers alongside them on the gleaming mahogany.

A moment later a man in a plain blue coat with red cuffs, white breeches and hose, his hair powdered and tied in a queue, strode briskly into the room. Drinkwater recognized him as Captain Calvert.

'Mr Drinkwater, good morning. I recall our previous meeting. You caused me a deal of trouble.'

'I did sir?' Drinkwater's surprise was unfeigned. Such a beginning was unfortunate.

'The Navy Board wished you to sit a proper examination before they granted your warrant and referred the matter back to this House. I said you had passed a better examination than most of your ilk and the matter became a shuttlecock until they relented and issued you your warrant.'

'I had no idea, sir,' Drinkwater said. 'You must think me an ingrate for not thanking you properly'

'Not at all. It was a point of principle between us and the gentlemen in the Strand.' Calvert waved Drinkwater's embarrassment aside and asked for his journals.

'I do not have them, sir,' he began as Calvert looked up sharply and withdrew his expectant hand. 'I was ordered to present myself for examination as lieutenant aboard the Royal George on the fatal morning she capsized, sir ...' He paused and passed across the table a slim volume of manuscript. 'This is what I have done subsequently.'

'So you were one of the few to escape?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And would have passed for lieutenant otherwise?'

'I entertained that hope, yes, sir.'

'We are more exacting here, Mr Drinkwater. A master's certificate is not so easily come by.'

Calvert drew the book towards him and turned its pages with maddening slowness while Drinkwater sat, endeavouring to mask his nervousness. When he had finished, Calvert closed the book and looked up. 'Well, sir, you seem to have committed some knowledge to paper, let us determine to what extent you have retained it elsewhere.'

Drinkwater's mouth felt dry.

'How many methods are there to determine longitude?'

'Two, sir. By chronometer and by lunar distances.'

'And which would you employ?'

'The former, sir, though I have tried the latter.'

'And on what grounds do you favour the former method?'

'It is less complex and better suited to shipboard observations now that the necessary ephemerides are available.'

Calvert nodded. 'Very well. Pray, explain the principle of observation by chronometer.' Drinkwater launched himself into an explanation of the hour-angle problem, discoursing on polar distances and right ascensions. He had hardly finished before Calvert threw him a simple query about latitude. Drinkwater hesitated, sensing a trap, but then answered.

Without reacting, Calvert continued: 'You are asked by your commander to advise him of the best time for a cutting-out operation. On what would you base your response?'

Drinkwater's mind went obligingly blank. He had survived one such attempt by a French ship when Cyclops had been anchored in the Galuda. He remembered it only as a wild night of gun flashes, sword thrusts, shouts and mayhem.

'Come, come, Mr Drinkwater, this is not so difficult, surely?' Calvert prompted impatiently. 'Employ your imagination a little before you are dead with indecision.'

'I er, I should require a dark night... I should, er, make a study of any dangers to navigation and endeavour to supply sufficient details of these and any clearing marks which might aid the passage of boats ... Oh, and I should seek to make such an attempt when the tides were most favourable, particularly for bringing the prize out.'

'Very well.' Calvert unfolded a chart and, turning it, pushed it across the table. He also indicated an almanac, a sheet of paper and a pencil. 'I wish to make such an attempt on a vessel lying in Camaret Road within the next week. When should I carry it out?'

Drinkwater bent to his task. Calvert presumed he knew the location of Camaret Road which was unfortunate, because he was not certain, but he soon found it near Brest and began the calculation that would give him a moonless night with the most favourable tide. It took him fifteen minutes to resolve the problem satisfactorily. An ebb tide out of the Iroise and a dark night gave him three possibilities and he chose the first on the grounds that if the operation failed or the weather was inclement, he would have two alternatives. Calvert expressed his approval and went on to ask him more questions, questions concerned with anchoring and sail-handling.

After further calculations, Calvert asked to be 'conducted verbally in a frigate from Plymouth Sound to St Mary's Road, Scilly'. It was a chink of daylight, for both men knew Drinkwater had made such a passage in the Trinity yacht all those months earlier. Drinkwater expatiated on the manoeuvre of weighing from Plymouth and standing out clear of the Draystone, of avoiding the Eddystone and the lethal, unmarked danger of the Wolf Rock, which he cleared by a bearing on the twin lights of the Lizard. Finally he recalled the leading marks for entering the shelter of St Mary's Road, keeping clear of the Spanish and Bartholomew Ledges.

Some questions followed about the stowage and storage of stores and cordage, an area of unfamiliarity to the candidate. Calvert asked, 'How would you stow kegs of spirits, Mr Drinkwater?'

Drinkwater havered. Did the significance of the question lie in the fact that the commodity concerned was spirituous? Or that it was in kegs? Clearly Calvert, a merchant master by trade, regarded it with some importance, as if a trick lay in its apparent simplicity. Then a magic formula occurred to Drinkwater, one he had heard Blackmore use frequently. Though he had never thought to employ it himself, being unsure of its precise meaning, its purpose struck him now. He ventured it in a blaze of comprehension. 'I should ensure they were wedged bung-up and bilge-free, sir.'

'Excellent. That will do very well, Mr Drinkwater. I desire you to wait in the ante-room. I shall fill out your certificate and you may present it to the Comptroller's clerks at Somerset House. I would not be too sanguine of an immediate appointment in a sixth-rate with the war ending, though.' Calvert smiled and held out his hand.

'I am not anticipating any such luck, Captain Calvert,' Drinkwater replied, taking Calvert's hand. 'I shall seek a berth in a merchant ship. I am anxious to marry and have been advised that opportunities in Liverpool are more likely.'

Calvert nodded. 'A fellow like you would be of considerable use in a slaver, no doubt of it. Well, good day to you. Pray wait a moment next door and I shall have my clerk bring you your paper.'

Drinkwater gathered up his documents as Calvert left the room. He returned to the ante-room and picked up his hat. He would go home to Barnet tonight, and see his mother and brother, then write again to Elizabeth with the news. He could afford to visit her before he went to Liverpool in search of a ship. Though greatly tempted, he forbore from winking at the pot-bellied mariner still gazing sternly down into the room. He was well pleased with himself and promised that before he made for Barnet, he would indulge himself with a meat-pie and a bottle in one of the eating houses nearby.

The clock ticked and the minutes drew into a quarter of an hour.

He supposed Calvert had been distracted on some important matter and settled himself to wait. After another quarter of an hour, he found himself incapable of sitting still and instead rose and began to study the wreck of the Ramillies under Bolt Head, but even this did not absorb him and he started to pace the carpet with mounting impatience.

At last, after what seemed an interminable delay, the clerk reappeared, but he bore no paper, only a summons that Drinkwater should wait a few moments more. After a further interval of ten minutes, Calvert reappeared.

'Mr Drinkwater,' Calvert said solemnly, so that Drinkwater imagined the very worst, 'the damndest coincidence, don't ye know ...'

'You have the advantage of me, sir.'

'I have kept you kicking your heels, Mr Drinkwater, because news has just come in from Gravesend that the Buoy Warden requires the services of a mate in the Argus. It occurred to me that, were you so inclined and bearing in mind your intention to marry, the post might have fallen vacant at a providential moment.' Calvert paused, allowing Drinkwater to digest the fact that he was being made an offer of employment.

'The inordinate delay, I'm afraid, was occasioned by the urgent necessity to establish whether or not another officer, who had been half promised the next vacancy, still wished to take up our earlier offer. Happily, in view of the Peace, he has declined, and sails a week hence in a West Indiaman.' Calvert smiled. 'So there, sir. What d'ye say, eh?'

Drinkwater stammered his delighted acceptance.

Nathaniel Drinkwater and Elizabeth Bower were married in her father's parish church on a warm, late autumn day in 1783 during a short furlough taken by the groom. The Peace of Paris had been concluded two months earlier in September, and Drinkwater settled to his work in the service of the Trinity House, rising rapidly to mate. His wife stayed with her father for the first eighteen months of their marriage until his death in 1785. She then removed to London and took rooms in Whitechapel where she interested herself in a charitable institution. Drinkwater maintained a correspondence with Richard White, whose promotion to lieutenant and appointment to a frigate on the Halifax station he learned of in the summer of the following year.

Drinkwater also remained in contact with Lord Dungarth who on several occasions asked Drinkwater to dine with him in his modest town house. The two men were both interested in hydrographical surveying and Lord Dungarth had been asked by the Royal Society to evaluate the quality of charts then available to the Royal Navy and British merchant ships.

His Lordship moved in illustrious circles compared with the indigent and struggling Drinkwater, but he entertained his guest without condescension, increasingly appreciating his judgement and acknowledging his professional skills. As for Drinkwater himself, he gradually forgot his naval aspirations.