The Corvette

Chapter Thirteen The Fate of the 'Faithful'

Drinkwater kept the deck for three days. By the end of this time he was reduced to a stupor of fatigue, suffering from a quinsy and incipient toothache. But Melusine and the whalers had broken out of the lead to the south-west and, but for the presence of a thousand ice floes, were in what passed for 'open' water. Their escape from being set fast and crushed had been as remarkable, as much for the danger to the ship as to the frequency of its occurrence. Perhaps twenty or thirty times, Drinkwater had lost count, they tacked, wore, or threw all aback to make a stern-board clear of impending doom. Many more times than this the hands bore lighter floes off with the spare spars. There were several minor injuries, one rupture and a case of crushed ribs amongst the men. The days of hunting parties were long forgotten, the yachting atmosphere paid for ten times over. Despite their best endeavours Melusine was several times jarred by collision with floes and the increasing number of growlers that bore witness to the high summer of the region.

There was little conviviality in gunroom or cockpit. On the berth deck the men rolled in or out of their hammocks as the watches changed, dog-tired, cold and miserable. Amid this atmosphere Macpherson ceased his ravings and quietly gave up the ghost, while Harvey now awash with opiates, continued to breathe with increasing difficulty. The internal routines of the ship went on, hammocks were piped up, the decks scrubbed, spirits served and the hands piped to their dinners. The mess kids were scoured and the hammocks piped down The cook and his mates swore and blasphemed at the coppers, the bosun's mates cursed at the hatchways, the loblolly boys in the cockpit as they cleared night soil from the sick.

On the quarterdeck Hill and Bourne bore the brunt of the activity, for Drinkwater had doubled the watches, and Rispin and Gorton were stationed in the waist, or forward, supervising the staving off of the ice.

And through it all Drinkwater kept the deck, his mind numbed with weariness, yet continually aware of every influence upon the movement of his ship. At moments of greatest peril he was the first to be aware of a sudden set towards a berg, the swirl of undertow suggesting the submerged presence of a growler or the catspaw of a squall from the turbulent lee of a large ice hummock. And it was Drinkwater who first suspected there might be something wrong with the rudder. It was nothing serious, a suspicious creaking when he listened from the privacy of the quarter-gallery latrine, a certain sluggishness as Melusine came to starboard. In fact it was at first only a suspicion, a figment, he thought, of an over-anxious mind. In the face of more pressing problems he tended to dismiss it. When he came below at the end of his three-day vigil as they drifted into the 'open' water and the wind, perversely, fell to a dead calm, he flung himself across his cot in grateful oblivion.

But when he woke, with Melusine rolling gently on a long, low swell, he heard again the creak from the rudder stock below.

Wearily he came on deck to find Hill on watch.

'What time is it, Mr Hill?'

'Six bells in the afternoon watch, sir.'

'I have slept the clock round… tell me, do the quartermasters complain of the steering?'

'No, sir.' Drinkwater looked at the two men at the wheel.

'How does she steer?'

'She seems to drag a little, sir, a coming to 'midships.'

'When you've had helm which way?'

'Larboard, I think, sir.'

'Why didn't you report it?'

The man shrugged. 'Only noticed it today, sir, while we've bin tryin' to catch this fluky wind, sir.'

'Very well.' He turned to Hill. 'I'm mystified, Mr Hill, but we'll keep an eye on it. Damned if I don't think there's something amiss, but what, I'm at a loss to know.'

'Aye, aye, sir, I'll take a look in the steerage if you wish.' Drinkwater nodded and Hill slipped below to return a few minutes later shaking his head.

'Nothing wrong, sir. Not that I can see.'

'Very well.'

'That whale hit the rudder, sir, and we've had a fair number of these damned ice floes…'

'Deck there!' They both looked aloft. 'Deck there! Think I can see gun-fire three points to starboard!'

The two officers looked at each other, then Drinkwater shouted, 'silence there!' They stood listening. A faint boom came rolling over the limpid water. 'That's gun-fire, by God!' Drinkwater ran forward and swung himself up into the main rigging. As he climbed he stared about him, trying to locate the whalers, aware that they had become widely dispersed in their struggle through the ice. He could see Diana, about five miles away to the eastward and ahead of them eight, perhaps ten miles distant was Truelove. Yes, her barque rig could be plainly seen beneath the curved foot of the main topgallant. Earl Percy and Provident were also to the east. He struggled up into the crow's nest as Leek slid agilely down.

'Where away?' gasped Drinkwater with the effort of his climb.

'Four points now, sir. I think it's where I last saw Faithful, sir, lost her behind a berg.'

'Very well.' He picked up the glass and stared to the south-west. He could see nothing. 'Leek!'

'Sir?'

'Away to Mr Hill, ask him to rig out the booms and set stun's'ls aloft and alow.'

'Stun's'ls aloft 'n' alow, aye, sir.' He watched Leek reach out like a monkey, over one hundred feet above the deck, and casually grab a backstay. The man diminished in size as he descended and Drinkwater levelled his glass once more. He felt the mast tremble as the topmen mounted the shrouds, he heard the mates and midshipmen as they supervised the rigging of the booms and the leading of outhauls and downhauls, heel-ropes and sheets. And then, as his patience was running out, he felt Melusine heel as she increased her speed. Five minutes later he located the Faithful.

She was fifteen or twenty miles away, perhaps more, for it was hard to judge. Her shape was vertically attenuated by refraction. She seemed to float slightly above the surface of the sea amid a city of the most fantastic minarets, a fairy-tale picture reminiscent of the Arabian Nights displaced to a polar latitude. But Drinkwater's interest was diverted from the extraordinary appearance of refracted icebergs by the unusual shape alongside the Faithful. At first he took it for a mirror image of the whaler. But then he saw the little points of yellow light between the ships. Sawyers was a Quaker and carried no guns. The second image was a hostile ship; an enemy engaging Faithful. Drinkwater swore; he was seven leagues away in light airs at the very moment Earl St Vincent had foreseen his presence would be required to protect the whalers.

'An enemy sir?'

'Yes, Mr Bourne, at a guess twenty miles distant and already with a prize crew on board the Faithful, damn it… Mr Hill, bear up, bear up! D'you not see the growler on the starboard bow…' Drinkwater broke off to cough painfully. His throat was rasped raw by the persistent demands made on him to shout orders, but he felt an overwhelming desire to press after the ship that had taken one of his charges from under his very nose.

'I have a midshipman at the masthead and want a pair of young eyes kept on the enemy and prize until they're both under our lee. The midshipman that loses sight of them will marry the gunner's daughter!' He coughed again. 'Now double the watches, Mr Bourne, this may prove a long chase.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Bourne hesitated, unwilling to provoke a captain whom he knew to be short-tempered if his orders were not attended to without delay. 'Beg pardon, sir, but what about the other ships?'

'I have made them a signal to the effect that I am chasing an enemy to the south-west. My orders to them oblige them to close together. Let us hope they do what they are told, Mr Bourne.'

Bourne took the hint, touched the fore-cock of his hat and hurried off. Drinkwater swallowed with difficulty, swore, and set himself to pace the quarterdeck, leaving the business of working the ship through the ice to Hill until he was relieved by Bourne himself at eight bells. He was beyond shouting orders, feeling a mild fever coming on and worrying over the loss of the Faithful and the ominous creaking that came from the rudder. But Melusine handled well enough and after another hour Tregembo appeared to announce Drinkwater's dinner, served late, as had become his custom in high latitudes to try and differentiate between day and night in the perpetual light.

It was while he was eating that Mr Frey came below to report they had lost the wind and the enemy.

'What…?' His voice whispered and he tried to clear his throat. 'Upon what point of sailing was the enemy and prize when last seen, Mr Frey?'

'Both ships were close hauled on the starboard tack, sir. They had a fair breeze before the fog closed in.'

'And their heading?'

'South-west, sir.'

'Very well. Tell Mr Bourne to strike the stun's'ls, and reduce to all plain sail. Double the forward lookouts and make a good course towards the south-west. A man to go to the mainmast head every hour to see if the enemy masts are above the fog. Kindly call me in two hours time.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Frey hesitated in the doorway.

'Well, what is it?'

'If you please, sir, Mr Bourne said I was to ask you if you wanted Mr Singleton to attend you?'

'Damn Mr Bourne's impertinence, Mr Frey, you've your orders to attend to…' The boy fled and, rolling himself in his cloak, Drinkwater flung himself across his cot shivering.

Two hours later Mr Frey called him. Staggering to his feet, his head spinning, Drinkwater ascended to the quarterdeck. Although the thermometer registered some 36° Fahrenheit it seemed colder. Every rope and spar dripped with moisture and the decks were dark with it. Mr Bourne touched his hat and vacated his side of the quarterdeck. It could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as the 'windward side' for Melusine lay wallowing in a calm. Almost alongside her a ridge of ice, hummocked and cracked with apparent age gleamed wetly in the greyness. It was not daylight, neither was it night. The ship might have been the only living thing in an eternity of primordial mist, an atmosphere at once eerie and oppressive through which each creak of the ship's fabric, each slat of idle canvas or groan of parrel as she rolled in the low swell, seemed invested with a more than ordinary significance. The grinding creak from the rudder stock seemed deafening now. Drinkwater was too sick to attribute this heightened perception to his fever, and too unsteady on his legs to begin to pace the deck. Instead he jammed himself against the rail close to the mizen rigging and beckoned Bourne over.

'Sir?'

'Mr Bourne, my apologies. I was short with Frey when he offered the services of the doctor.'

''Tis no matter, sir, but I thought you looked unwell…'

'Yes, yes, Mr Bourne, thank you for your kindness. I will see Singleton in due course. But I am more concerned with the rudder. Had you noticed the noise?'

'Mr Hill drew it to my attention. The ship has long lost steerage way, sir. But I had no reason to doubt much was wrong, sir. She answered the helm well enough when last the wind blew.'

Drinkwater nodded, then spoke with great difficulty. 'Yes, yes, but I fear the matter is a progressive disintegration of some sort. No matter, there is nothing to be done at the moment. You have no sign of those ships?'

'None, sir.'

'Very well. That is all, Mr Bourne.'

Bourne turned away and Drinkwater hunched his shoulders into his cloak. His right shoulder ached with the onset of the damp weather, his throat was sore and his toothache seemed to batter his whole skull.

The fog lasted for four days and was followed by a southwesterly gale during which the visibility never lifted above a half a mile. The air was filled with particles of frozen rain so that Drinkwater was obliged to secure the Melusine to a large ice floe. At the height of the gale he submitted to the ministrations of Mr Singleton and suffered a brief agony which ended his toothache by the extraction of a rotten molar. But the removal of the tooth also signalled the end of his quinsy. On the advice of Singleton he kept to his cabin and his cot while the Melusine was alongside the ice. There was, in any case, little he could do on deck and, as Singleton pointed out, his recovery would be the quicker and he would be fitter to attend his duties, the instant the gale abated and the visibility lifted.

He did not protest. His general debility was, he realised himself, his own fault. In circumstances of such peril as Melusine had so often been, it was physically impossible to keep the deck permanently. His confidence in his lieutenants had not initially been high and he had found it very difficult to go below in circumstances of broad daylight. However, the days of working the ship through the ice had improved the proficiency of Bourne and Gorton. Even Rispin showed more firmness and self-confidence, while Hill and the other warrant officers appeared to carry out their duties efficiently. In addition to the worry and sense of failure at the capture of Faithful, his shoulder plagued him, reducing his morale and subjecting him to fits of the 'blue devils' while the fever lasted. All the while the rudder ground remorselessly below him, like a long-fused petard waiting to explode. Despite its comparative idleness while they were secured to the floe, it continued to grind and groan as Melusine ranged and bumped the ice, rolling and sawing at her moorings as the gale moaned in the rigging. Meanwhile the watch stumbled about the deck, wound in furs, greygoes, even blankets, to combat the stinging particles in the air.

Ten days after the onset of the fog there came a change in the weather that was as abrupt as it was unexpected and delightful. A sense of renewed hope coincided with this change, sending Drinkwater on deck a fit man, all traces of quinsy and fever gone. He was burning to resume the pursuit of the unknown enemy ship that had taken the Faithful from under his nose. The situation of the Melusine had been transformed. The sun shone through a fine veil of cloud producing a prismatic halo upon the horizontal diameter of which appeared two parhelia, faint false suns, the results of atmospheric refraction. This phenomena was exciting some comment from the watch on deck and had so far absorbed Mr Rispin's interest that he had neglected to inform Drinkwater of the dramatic change in the weather. It was bitterly cold. On every rope and along the furled sails the moisture had frozen into tiny crystals which were glinting in the sunshine. Drinkwater sniffed the air and felt its chill tingle the membranes of his nasal passages. The resultant sneeze recalled Rispin belatedly to his duty.

'Oh, good morning, sir. As you see, sir, the wind has dropped and the visibility is lifting…'

'Yes, yes, Mr Rispin, I can see that for myself…' Drinkwater replied testily. The appearance of the twin sun dogs alarmed him, not on any superstitious account, but because he recollected something Harvey had said about their appearance indicating a change of weather. That much was obvious, but there had been something said about wind. He looked at the weft on the windward dog-vane, It hung down motionless. Casting his eyes aloft he saw that the masthead pendant was already lifting to a light air from the north. He also saw the crow's nest was empty.

'Mr Rispin!'

'Sir?'

'Direct a midshipman aloft upon the instant to look out for any sails, then have the topsails hard reefed and loosed in their bunt-lines, the foretopmast stays'l and spanker ready for setting and the longboat hoisted out and manned ready to pull the ship's head off.'

Rispin's mouth opened, then closed as his eyes filled with comprehension. He might be slow on the uptake, thought Drinkwater as he forced himself to a patience he was far from feeling, but Mr Rispin certainly made up for what he lacked in intelligence by a veritable out-pouring:

'Mr Glencross, aloft at once with a glass and cast about for sails. Bosun's mate! Pipe the watch aloft to loose topsails, topmen to remain at the yard arms and the bunts and await the order "let fall". Corporal of marines! Turn up the marines and send 'em aft to man the yard tackles. Master at Arms! Turn up the idlers below to man the stay tackles. Look lively there!' Rispin turned frantically, waving the speaking trumpet. 'Mr Walmsley! Have the afterguard cast loose the stops on the spanker. Fo'c's'le there! Cast loose the fore topmast stays'l!' Rispin's brow wrinkled in thought as he mentally ticked off the tasks Drinkwater had set him.

Already the dog-vanes pointed north and the wefts were lifting. Drinkwater watched a catspaw of wind ripple the surface of the clear water to starboard. A low raft of ice a cable to windward seemed to be perceptibly nearer.

'You may cut the moorings, Mr Rispin!'

'Cut the moorings, aye, aye, sir.' Rispin's relief was noticeable. He had clearly forgotten the necessity of putting a party onto the ice and the difficult business of recovering them by boat once the ship had got clear.

Hill and Bourne had come on deck, alarmed by the bellowing at the hatchways. Drinkwater nodded to them. 'We are about to get a blow from the north, gentlemen, I want the ship off this ice floe before we are trapped. The boat is about to be launched to pull her head off.'

Both Hill and Bourne acknowledged the immediacy of Drinkwater's alarm. There was already a perceptible breeze from the north, icy and dry after the southwesterly gale. 'Turn up the watch below, Mr Bourne!'

The longboat was already swaying up from the waist, the marines stamping aft as they leant their weight to the yard tackles that hoisted the boat out over the side. Mr Quilhampton was standing on the rail in charge of the launching party.

'Walk back all!' The boat descended below the rail as the last of her crew tumbled in. A second or two later she hit the water. 'Cone up all!' Marines and idlers relaxed as the tackles went slack and on the fo'c's'le Walmsley's party, having prepared the staysail, made a line ready for the boat. A carpenter's party was hacking through the moorings and in the tops Frey, Wickham and Dutfield held up their hands to indicate the topsails were ready.

A glance at the dog-vanes showed the wefts horizontal. It was not a moment too soon. There were pronounced white caps on the water to windward and Melusine was rubbing against the ice with some violence.

Drinkwater could feel the sensation of physical discomfort churning the pit of his stomach as his body adjusted to the state of acute worry. Ten minutes neglect by Rispin and they might remain pinned on the floe. He thought of setting sail in an attempt to spin the floe, but he had only the vaguest idea of its size. He was grasping at straws. Officers were reporting his preparations complete and he ordered the yards braced sharp up on the larboard catharpings. The boat was attempting to pull Melusine's head round towards the wind and, although the bow came some six feet off the ice they seemed to be unable to increase that distance. Forward a resourceful Mr Gorton was getting out a spare topgallant yard and lashing it to prevent losing what the longboat had gained. Meanwhile Mr Quilhampton was urging his boat's crew to further efforts, but Melusine seemed unwilling to move. On the last occasion this had occurred they had bounced off the remains of Narwhal. This time they did not have such help.

'Mr Bourne!' The lieutenant's face turned anxiously towards him.

'Sir?'

'Man the larboard guns, two divisions to fire unshotted cartridges alternately. The breechings to be set up tight. We'll use the recoil to throw the ship off.'

'Aye, aye, sir! Larbowlines! Larboard battery make ready…!'

It took several minutes, much longer than if the men had been at their stations for action. But there was no-one on deck, except perhaps Meetuck, who was not seaman enough to appreciate the nature of their situation. Hill was dragging a pudding fender aft to heave over the larboard quarter.

'Well done, Mr Hill…'

Drinkwater watched the dog-vanes, his stomach churning. He felt his isolation from the comforting expertise of the whale-ship masters acutely. It prompted him to hail the mainmasthead.

'Masthead there!'

Glencross's head appeared. 'D'you have anything in sight?'

'No, sir! There seems to be clear water to leeward of this floe, but no sails, sir.'

'Very well.' Drinkwater directed his thoughts to the fate of the Faithful. In which direction should he chase once he got clear of their present situation? He tried not to think of the possibility of their failing to clear the floe. Melusine was not fit for such work in these latitudes. He began to see the weaknesses of St Vincent's reforms undertaken in a mere temporary truce, while the protagonists of this great war caught their breath. But he had no time for further considerations. Bourne reported the guns ready.

'Very well. Forward battery to fire first and to reload as fast as possible. Fastest guns' crew will receive a double tot of rum. But no rolling fire, Mr Bourne, half broadsides only, to make best use of the recoil.'

'Aye, aye sir. I took the liberty of double-loading…'

'Have a care then, one round only doubled, Mr Bourne. See to it yourself and open fire without delay.'

Drinkwater clasped his hands behind his back with anxiety as Bourne ran along the deck. It would certainly make the ship recoil, double charging the guns like that. But it might also blow the chambers of the guns ..

'Fire!' The forward division of guns jerked back against their lashed breechings and their crews leapt round them, swabs and rammers plied as Melusine trembled. Drinkwater leaned over the side to see the rope to the longboat curve slightly.

'Pull, Mr Q! Pull!'

He saw Quilhampton wave as a sea swept over the bow of the boat. The after division of the larboard battery roared, the guns leaping against the capsquares on the restrained carriages.

Drinkwater strode to the larboard side and looked overboard. There was a slight gap between the Melusine's tumblehome and the ice edge. He raised his glance forward to see Gorton rigging out another foot of spare spar. They would not lose what they had gained. He must remember to congratulate Gorton on his initiative.

'Fire!' The forward division of six pounders roared again and this time Drinkwater saw the sloop move, her head falling off as Gorton rigged out his spar a little more. Aft, Hill let the fender down so that the larboard quarter could set in on the ice, increasing the angle with the floe. If they could achieve an angle of two points, twenty-two and a half degrees, they might theoretically sail off, but in practise a greater angle would be required, for they would fall back towards the ice as they got the ship underway. The after division fired a second time.

There was no doubt that they were gaining on the wind! But that too was increasing. The forward division fired a third time.

Gorton's spar jerked out again, but Drinkwater could see the strain it was bearing.

'Mr Bourne! Hold the after battery and reload the forrard. All guns to fire simultaneously!'

'Tops there! Let fall the instant the guns discharge!' The three midshipmen acknowledged. 'And, Mr Hill, direct the sheets to be hove to the yardarms the instant the buntlines are slackened!'

'Very well, sir!'

Drinkwater was sweating with excitement despite the numbness of his hands. Quilhampton's boat was a liability now, but he dare not cast if off just yet.

'Ready sir.'

'Very well, Mr Bourne. Fire!'

Melusine shuddered throughout her entire length. Somewhere amidships an ominous crack sounded. But it was not the spar. Gorton's party grunted and swore with effort as their yard, hove out with an extempore tackle at its heel, took up two feet of increased gap. Astern Melusine's larboard quarter ground against the pudding-fender.

Above his head the sails creaked and cracked with ice as the men at the sheets hove down on the frozen canvas.

'Hoist away fore and aft!' The staysail rose from the fo'c's'le head and behind him the spanker was hauled out upon its gaff and boom.

'I can't hold her, sir!' Gorton cried from forward. Drinkwater's heart thumped with anxiety as Melusine gathered way.

'No matter, Mr Gorton…' The last words were drowned in the splitting crack that came from Gorton's breaking topgallant yard. Melusine's head fell back towards the floe, but she was already gaining speed.

'Mr Gorton, cut the longboat free and hoist the jib!'

Drinkwater stared forward. 'Steady, keep her full and bye, quartermaster. Not an inch to loo'ard.'

'Nothing to loo'ard, sir, aye, aye.'

But she was falling back. The gap between the ice and Melusine's hull was narrowing.

It was too late to order another broadside prepared. He gritted his teeth and watched the inevitable occur. The shock of collision was jarring, knocking some unsuspecting men to the deck, but Melusine bounced clear and began to stand off the ice. Half an hour later she hove-to in comparatively clear water and waited for the longboat to come up.

Drinkwater looked up from the chart and tapped it with the dividers. Bourne and Hill bent over the table at the broken and imperfect line that delineated the east coast of Greenland. There were a few identifiable names far to the south, Cape Farewell and Cape Discord, then innumerable gaps until Hudson's anchorage of Hold with Hope.

'I believe our present situation to be here, some sixty leagues west-nor'-west of Trinity Island.

'I believe that the enemy approached from, and retired to, the south-west. We should have seen him earlier had he attacked from any other quarter and it argues favourably to my theory that it was Faithful he took, the ship most advanced into that quarter. In addition the last sighting of him and his prize was to the southwest and sailing on the same point. I therefore propose that we chase in that direction. It is inconceivable that he did not experience the fog and south-westerly gale that we have just had and it may be that he is not far away.'

'What about the other whale ships, sir?' asked the cautious Bourne.

Drinkwater looked at the young man. 'There are times when it is necessary to take risks, Mr Bourne. They are armed and alerted to the presence of enemy cruisers while Faithful was unarmed and is a prize. It argues for our honour as well as our duty that we pursue Faithful with a view to retaking her.'

'D'you think there are more French cruisers in the area, sir?'

'It's a possibility that there are. I have reason to believe there may be.'

'You were aware of the possibility?' asked Hill.

'Yes,' Drinkwater nodded. 'That is why Melusine was appointed escort to the whale-fleet.'

Drinkwater understood what Hill was implying. It made the capture of Faithful highly discreditable to Melusine and her commander, despite the practical impossibilities of policing the whole Greenland Sea.

'What about the Spitzbergen ships, sir?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'One can only be in one place at one time, Mr Hill. Besides I believe that the capture of Faithful at least argues to our being in the right area, if not in the right position to prevent the capture. At all events, now it is our duty to reverse that. Do you have any more questions?'

First lieutenant and master shook their heads.

'Very well, gentlemen. In the meantime there is no need to impress upon you the necessity of keeping a sharp lookout.'

Chapter Fourteen The Corsair

Drinkwater awoke from a dream that had not disturbed him for many months since the nightmares of his delirium following the wounding he had received off Boulogne. But it terrified him as much as upon the first occasion he had experienced it, as a callow and frightened midshipman on the frigate Cyclops. Again the terrifying inability to move laid him supine beneath the advance of the ghastly white lady who over-rode his body to the accompanying clanking of chains. Over the years the white lady had assumed different guises. She had appeared to him with the face of Hortense Santhonax, sister to one of the French Republic's most daring frigate captains and secret agents, or as the sodomite tyrant of Cyclops's cockpit, the unspeakably evil Augustus Morris. Now she had a visage as cold as the icebergs that had given him so many nightmares of a more tangible nature in recent weeks. Her eyes had been of that piercing and translucent blue he had noticed forming in the shadows of pinnacles and spires. Although she changed her appearance Drinkwater knew the white lady had not lost the power to awake in him a strong feeling of presentiment.

He lay perspiring, despite the fact that his exposed feet were registering air at a temperature well below the freezing of water. He began to relax as he heard the rudder grind. It had been grinding so long now with so little apparent ill-effect that he had almost ceased to worry about it. Was he being cautioned by fate to pay it more attention? He tossed aside the blankets and with them such a childish notion. He was about to call the sentry to pass word for Tregembo when he considered it was probably still night, despite the light that came through the cabin windows.

He had almost forgotten the dream as he ascended to the deck. But its superstitious hold was once more thrown over him as he stepped clear of the ladder.

Meetuck turned from the rail where he seemed to have been looking at something, and his almond eyes fell upon Drinkwater with an almost hostile glare. The eskimo, whom Drinkwater had not seen for several days, took a step towards him. Meetuck was muttering something: then he halted, looked at his arm, which was still splinted, shrugged and turned forward.

Mystified by this pantomime Drinkwater nodded to Mr Bourne, who had the deck, and swung himself into the main rigging, reaching the crow's nest and ousting Glencross who appeared to have made himself comfortable with a small flask of rum and a bag of biscuit.

'You may leave that there, Mr Glencross. I doubt you'll be requiring them on deck.' The midshipman cast a rueful glance at the rum and mumbled, 'Aye, aye, sir.'

'I shall return the flask, Mr Glencross, in due course.'

Drinkwater settled himself down with the telescope. In five minutes all thoughts of dreams or eskimos had been driven from his mind. The wind had held steady from the north and they sailed through an almost clear sea, the bergs within five miles being largely decayed and eroded into soft outlines. More distant bergs presented a fantastic picture which increased in its improbability as he watched. Munching his way through Glencross's biscuit and warmed by the rum, he had been aloft for over an hour, enjoying the spectacle of increasing refraction as the sun climbed. The distant icebergs, floes and hummocks seemed cast into every possible shape the imagination could devise. He sighted a number of polar bears and numerous seals lay basking upon low ice. Once the ship passed through a school of narwhals, the males with their curious twisted swords. He saw, too, a number of grampuses, their black and livid white skin a brilliant contrast to the sea as they gambolled like huge dolphins in Melusine's wake as she pressed south-west. Drinkwater was reminded of Sawyers and the whale-captain's regard for the works of God in Arctic waters. He was also reminded of Sawyers's present plight.

It was four bells into the morning watch before Drinkwater saw what he had been looking for, amid the ice pinnacles on their starboard bow, almost indistinguishable from them except to one who had a hunter's keenness of purpose. The edges of sails, betrayed by the inverted image of two ships, their waterlines uppermost, jutted dark into the glare of the sky. They were perhaps thirty miles away and the easing of the wind and the comparative simplicity of navigation through such loose ice suited the slight and slender Melusine.

Descending to the deck, Drinkwater passed orders for the course to be amended three points closer to the wind and the corvette to hoist a press of sail. He doubted if Melusine presented such a conspicuous picture to the enemy, given her relative position to the sun, but if they were spotted he felt sure the ship's speed would close the gap between them and the distant Faithful, whose sea-keeping qualities were far superior to her speed.

At noon the distance between them had closed appreciably and at the end of the first dog-watch the enemy could be clearly seen from the head of the lower masts.

Drinkwater dined with Singleton and Bourne, remarking on the way the eskimo had startled him that morning.

'You mean you thought he had some hostile intent, sir?' asked Singleton.

'Oh, I conceived that impression for a second or two. His appearance was aggressive, but he seemed suddenly to recall some obligation relative to his arm.'

'So he damned well should,' said Bourne.

'Can you recall what he said to you, Captain?' asked Singleton, ignoring Bourne.

Drinkwater swallowed his wine and frowned. 'Not perfectly, but I recall something like "gavloonack"…'

'Gavdlunaq?'

'Yes, I think that was it. Why? Does it signify to you?'

'It means "white man". Was there anything else?'

Drinkwater thought again. 'Yes, nothing I could repeat though. Oh, he mentioned that place he said he came from…'

'Nagtoralik?'

'Aye, that was it, Nagtoralik.' Drinkwater experimented with the strange word. 'A place with eagles, didn't you say?'

'Yes, that's right, but I don't recall eagles being mentioned by Egede…'

Drinkwater threw back his head and laughed. 'Oh, come, Mr Singleton, you academics! If a thing ain't in print in some dusty library it don't signify that it don't exist.' Bourne joined in the laughter and Singleton flushed.

'There is a Greenland Falcon, the Falco Rusticolus Candicans of Gmelin which the innuits, in their unfamiliarity with the order Aves, may mistake for eagles. It is possible that an error in nomenclature took place in translation…' Bourne chuckled at Singleton's seriousness as Drinkwater said, somewhat archly, 'Indeed that may be the case, Mr Singleton.'

A silence filled the cabin. Singleton frowned. 'To return to Meetuck, sir. You can recall nothing further, nothing specific, I mean?'

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No. He was looking over the side, saw me, turned and advanced, uttered this imprecation, looked at his arm and went off forward. I can scarcely expect anything better from a savage.' Then Drinkwater became aware of something preoccupied about Singleton. 'What is it, Mr Singleton? Why are you so interested in an incident of no importance?'

Singleton leaned back in his chair. 'Because I believe it may indeed be of some significance, sir. I understand you are chasing to the south-west, chasing an enemy ship, a French ship perhaps?'

Drinkwater looked at Bourne enquiringly. The first lieutenant shrugged. 'Yes,' said Drinkwater, 'that is correct.'

'Why do you think this ship is running south-west, sir?'

'Well, Mr Singleton, the wind is favourable, she is luring us away from our other charges and the sea is less encumbered by ice in this direction.'

'It is also in the direction of the coast, sir.'

'And…?'

'And I believe Meetuck, though he is not very intelligent, even for an eskimo, has seen white men before, white men who have been hostile to him. I believe that before setting out on the ice he may have come from the Greenland coast where white men were…'

'Frenchmen?' broke in Bourne.

'It is possible,' said Singleton, turning to the lieutenant.

'It is indeed,' said Drinkwater thoughtfully, remembering the cautionary words of Lord Dungarth in his room at the Admiralty.

'You have some information upon that point, Captain?' asked Singleton shrewdly, but before Drinkwater could reply the cabin door burst open. Midshipman Lord Walmsley stood in the doorway. His usual look of studied contempt was replaced by alarm.

'An enemy, sir, to windward a bare league…'

Drinkwater rose. 'Beat to quarters, damn it!'

Mr Rispin had been caught out again. The enemy ship had clearly sighted the pursuing sloop and whether she knew Melusine for a naval ship or took her for a whaler, she had left Faithful to head west-south-west alone and doubled back unobserved, to lurk behind a berg until Melusine came up. Drinkwater reached the quarterdeck as the marine drummer beat the rafale.

'Who was your masthead lookout, Mr Rispin?' he asked venomously, casting round for the enemy. He saw the Frenchman immediately, frigate-built and with the tricolour flying from her peak.

'As bold as bloody brass,' said Hill, taking up his station on the quarterdeck alongside the captain.

'Well sir?' Drinkwater stared unblinkingly at Rispin.

'Lord Walmsley, sir.'

'God damn and blast his lordship!'

'D'you wish me to take in sail, sir?'

'Aye, Mr Hill, turn down-wind and get the stuns'ls in. Mr Bourne, don't show our teeth yet, all guns load canister and ball but hold 'em inboard with closed ports.'

Hill altered course and Drinkwater watched the yards squared and the topmen work aloft, stiff monkeys in the frozen air as the studding sails fluttered on deck. He looked astern. A dozen burgomaster gulls flew in their wake and a few fulmars swept the sea to starboard but he no longer had time for such natural wonders. He was studying the strange ship coming up on their starboard quarter.

She was bigger than themselves, a frigate of twenty-eight guns, he reckoned, more than a match for the Melusine and wearing French colours.

A shot plunged into the water just astern of them. A second following a minute later struck the hull beneath his feet. Drinkwater hoped Cawkwell had lowered the window sashes. A third ball plunged under their stern. Her guns were well served and there was no doubt that, whether a national frigate or a well-appointed corsair, she was determined upon making a prize of the Melusine.

Drinkwater set his mouth in a grim line. He had fought the Romaine off the Cape of Good Hope from a position of disadvantage, but now there were no British cruisers in the offing to rescue him.

'Ship's cleared for action, sir.' Bourne touched his hat.

Drinkwater turned forward and looked along the deck. The gun crews were kneeling at their posts, the midshipmen with their parties in the fore and main tops, two men at each topgallant crossing and marines aloft in the mizen top. The sail trimmers were at the rails and pins; on the fo'c's'le the bosun stood, his silver whistle about his neck. The helm was in the hands of the two quartermasters with Mr Quilhampton standing casually alongside, his wooden hand holding the log slate. Gorton and Rispin commanded the two batteries, seconded by Glencross and Walmsley, while Mr Frey attended the quarterdeck, with Drinkwater, Hill, Bourne and Lieutenant Mount, whose marines lined the hammock nettings.

'Very well, Mr Bourne.' He raised his voice. 'Starboard battery make ready. I intend to haul our wind and rake from forward.' He paused as another enemy ball found their stern. 'You may fire as you bear, Mr Rispin, but take your time, my lads, and reload as if the devil was on your tail.' He nodded to Hill, 'Very well, Mr Hill, starboard tack, if you please.'

Melusine began to turn, heeling over as she brought the wind round on her beam. Gun captains pulled up their ports and drove home more quoins to counter-act the heel. Rispin, leaped from gun to gun, his hanger drawn.

'God damn! Mr Frey, pass word to Tregembo to get my sword… Where the devil have you been, Tregembo?'

'Sharpening your skewer, zur, 'twas as rusty as a church door knocker…' Tregembo buckled on the sword and handed Drinkwater a pair of pistols. 'An' I took down the portraits, zur.' He reproached Drinkwater, his old face wrinkling with a kind of rough affection.

Drinkwater managed a half smile and then turned his attention to the ship. Above their heads the braces were swinging the yards. From forward he heard the report of the first gun and watched the enemy for the fall of shot. He saw splinters fly from the vessel's knightheads. Each gun fired in turn as Melusine crossed the stranger's bow, and although one or two holes appeared in the Frenchman's fore course and several spouts of water showed on either bow, most seemed to strike home. But as Melusine stretched out on the starboard tack she too exposed her stern to the enemy. They fired a broadside and several balls furrowed the deck, one wounded the mizen topmast and holes opened in the spanker.

Somewhere below there rose the most horrible howl of agony and Drinkwater was aware of little Frey shaking beside him.

'Mr Frey,' said Drinkwater kindly, 'I don't believe anyone has loaded Captain Palgrave's fancy carronades. Would you and your two yeomen attend to it, canister might be useful later in the action, wouldn't you say?'

Frey focussed his eyes on the two brass carronades that Captain Palgrave's vanity had had installed at the hances. They still slumbered beneath oiled canvas covers. Frey nodded uncertainly and then with more vigour. 'Aye, aye, sir.' It would be good for the child to have something to do.

Astern of them the enemy hauled into their wake. The Melusine's French build began to take effect. She started to open the distance between them.

'Mr Bourne, pass word for the gunner to report to me.'

The gunner was called for at the hatchways and made his appearance a moment or two later, his felt slippers sliding incongruously upon the planking.

'Ah, Mr Meggs, I want a caulked keg of powder with a three-minute fuse sealed up in canvas soon as you are able to arrange it.'

The gunner frowned, raised an eyebrow and compressed his toothless mouth. Then, without a word, knuckled his forehead and waddled below. Drinkwater turned to Bourne.

'Well, Mr Bourne, whatever our friend is, he'll not get a gun to bear at the moment.'

Hill came up. 'D'you intend to mine him, sir?'

Drinkwater grinned. 'We'll try. It's a long shot, but I'm not certain that he's a national frigate. I have an idea that he may be a letter-of-marque, in which case he'll be stuffed full of men and we cannot risk him boarding.'

'I am of the same opinion, sir. There's something about him that marks him as a corsair.'

'Yes. Now, we don't want him to see the keg dragging down on him so we will put it over forrard and lead the line out of a forrard port. That way he will not observe any activity around the stern here…'

'Use the log-line, sir? It's handy and long enough,' asked Hill.

'Very well. Do that if you please.' Drinkwater looked forward. 'But first, I think you had better luff, Mr Hill'

'Jesus!' Hill's jaw dropped in alarm as the berg reared over them. Drinkwater held his breath lest Melusine struck some underwater projection from the icy mass that towered over the mastheads. 'Down helm!'

Melusine swooped into the wind, her sails shivering, then paid off again as the berg drew astern. Their pursuer, his attention focussed ahead, had laid a course to pass almost as clear as his quarry. That the Melusine could shave the berg indicated that it was safe for him to do so, and Drinkwater remarked to Hill on the skill of their enemy.

'Aye, sir, and that argues strongly that he's a letter-of-marque.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'And he'll be able to read our name across our stern and know all about our being a French prize.'

Hill nodded and Bourne rejoined them. 'Meggs says he'll be a further ten minutes, sir, before the keg is ready.'

'Very good, Mr Bourne. Will you direct Rispin to take watch on the fo'c'sle and warn us of any ice ahead. Take over the starboard battery yourself.'

Bourne looked crestfallen but acknowledged the order and moved forward to the waist.

Meggs brought the wrapped keg to the quarterdeck in person.

'Three-minute fuse, sir,' he said, handing over the keg to Hill who had mustered three sail-trimmers to carry the thing forward, together with the log-line tub. Five minutes later Drinkwater saw him straighten up and look expectantly aft. Drinkwater nodded and leaned over the side. The keg drifted astern as Melusine rushed past, the log-line paying out. Snatching up his glass Drinkwater knelt and focussed his telescope, levelling it on the taffrail and shouting for Quilhampton.

'Mr Q! The instant I say, you are to tell Hill to hold on.'

'Hold on, aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater could see the canvas sack lying in the water. It jerked a few times, sending up little spurts of water as the ship dragged it along when the line became tight, but in the main it drifted astern without appreciably disturbing the wake. He wondered if his opponent would have a vigilant lookout at the knightheads. He did not seem a man to underestimate.

Suddenly in the image glass he saw not only the keg, but the stem of the advancing ship. The bow wave washed the keg to one side.

'Hold on!'

'Hold on!' repeated Quilhampton and Drinkwater saw the line jerk tight and then the persistent feather of water as Melusine dragged the keg astern, right under the larboard bow of the pursuing Frenchman.

He wondered how long it had taken to veer the thing astern. Perhaps no more than a minute or a minute and a half. He wondered, too, how good a fuse Meggs had set. It was quite likely that the damned thing would be extinguished by now. It was, as he had admitted to Hill, a long shot.

'Stand by to tack ship, Mr Q!'

Quilhampton passed the order and Drinkwater stood up. He could do no more, and his shoulder hurt from the awkward position it was necessary to assume to stare with such concentration at the enemy's bow. The keg blew apart as he bent to rub his knees.

'Larboard tack!'

He felt the deck cant as the helm went down and Hill ran aft telling his men to haul in the log-line. Struggling down on his knees again he levelled his glass. At first he thought that they had achieved nothing and then he saw the Frenchman's bowsprit slowly rise, The bobstay at least had suffered and, deprived of its downward pull the jibs and staysails set on the forestays above combined with the leeward pull of the foremast to crack the big spar. He saw it splinter and the sails pull it in two. There was a mass of men upon the enemy fo'c's'le.

He spun his feet. 'We have him now, by God!' But Melusine had ceased to turn to starboard. She was paying off before the wind.

'She won't answer, sir! She won't answer!'

It was then that Drinkwater remembered the rudder.

Chapter Fifteen The Action with the 'Requin'

Drinkwater did not know how much damage he had inflicted upon the enemy, only that his own ship was now effectively at the mercy of the other. It was true the loss of a bowsprit severely hampered the manoeuvrability of a ship, but by shortening down and balancing his loss of forward sail with a reduction aft, the enemy still had his vessel under command. And there was a good enough breeze to assist any manoeuvre carried out in such a condition.

As for themselves, he had no time to think of the loss of the rudder, beyond the fact that they were a sitting duck. But the enemy could not guess what damage had been inflicted by fortune upon the Melusine.

'Heave the ship to under topsails, Mr Hill!' Drinkwater hoped he might convey to his opponent the impression of being a cautious man. A man who would not throw away his honour entirely, but one who considered that, having inflicted a measure of damage upon his enemy, would then heave to and await the acceptance of his challenge without seeking out further punishment.

Despatching Hill to examine and report upon the damage to the rudder Drinkwater called Bourne aft.

'Now, Mr Bourne, if I read yon fellow aright, he ain't a man to refuse our provocation. It's my guess that he will work up to windward of us then close and board. I want every man issued with small arms, cutlasses, pikes and tomahawks. The larboard guns you are to abandon, the gun crews doubling to starboard so that the fastest possible fire may be directed at his hull. Canister and ball into his waist. Mr Mount! Your men to pick off the officers, you may station them where you like, but I want six marines and twenty seamen below as reinforcements. You will command 'em, Mr Bourne, and I want 'em out of the stern windows and up over the taffrail. So muster them in my cabin and open the skylight. Either myself, Hill or Quilhampton will pass word to you. But you are not to appear unless I order it. Do you understand?'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'Oh, and Mr Bourne, blacken your faces at the galley range on your way below.'

'Very good, sir.'

'And you had better warn Singleton what is about to take place. Tell him he'll have some work to do. By the way who was hit by that first ball?'

'Cawkwell, sir. He's lost a leg, I believe.'

'Poor devil.'

'He was closing the cabin sashes, sir.'

'Oh.'

Drinkwater turned away and watched the enemy. As he had guessed, the Frenchman was moving up to windward. They had perhaps a quarter of an hour to wait.

'Mr Frey!'

'Are your two carronades loaded?'

'Aye, sir.'

'I think you may have employment for them soon. Now you are to man the windward one first and you are not to fire until I pass you the express order to do so. When I order you to open fire you are to direct the discharge into the thickest mass of men which crowd the enemy waist. Do you understand?'

The boy nodded. 'I need a cool head for the job, Mr Frey.' He lowered his voice confidentially. 'It's a post of honour, Mr Frey, I beg you not to let me down.' The boy's eyes opened wide. He was likely to be dead or covered in glory in the next half-hour, Drinkwater thought.

'I will not disappoint you, sir.'

'Very good. Now, listen even more carefully. When you have discharged the windward carronade you are to cross to the other and train it inboard. If you see a number of black-faced savages come over the taffrail you are to sweep the waist ahead of them with shot, even, Mr Frey, even if you appear to be firing into our own men.'

The boy's eyes opened wider. 'Now that is a very difficult order to obey, Mr Frey. But that is your duty. D'you understand me now?'

The boy swallowed. 'Yes, sir.'

'Very good.' Drinkwater smiled again, as though he had just asked Frey to fetch him an apple, or some other similarly inconsequential task. He went to the forward end of the quarterdeck and called for silence in the waist, where the men were sorting out the small arms, joking at the prospect of a fight.

'Silence there, my lads.' He waited until he had their attention. 'When I order you to fire I want you to pour in as much shot across his hammock nettings then hold him from boarding. If he presses us hard you will hear the bosun's whistle. That is the signal to fall back. Seamen forward under Lieutenants Rispin and Gorton. Marines aft under Mr Mount. When Mr Bourne's reserve party appears from aft you will resume the attack and reman your guns as we drive these impertinent Frenchmen into the sea. I shall then call for the fore course to be let fall in order that we may draw off.'

A cheer greeted the end of this highly optimistic speech. He did not say he had no intention of following the enemy and taking their ship. He did not know how many men knew the rudder was damaged, but some things had to be left to chance.

'Very well. Now you may lie down while he approaches.'

Like an irreverent church congregation they shuffled down and stretched out along the deck, excepting himself and Mount who kept watch from the quarterdeck nettings.

The enemy ship was almost directly to windward of them now and also heaving to. As Drinkwater watched, the side erupted in flame, and shot filled the air, whistling low overhead, like the ripping of a hundred silk shirts.

The second broadside was lower. There were screams from amidships and the ominous clang as one of the guns was hit on the muzzle and a section of bulwark was driven in. A marine grunted and fell dead. Drinkwater nudged Mount. It was Polesworth. Drinkwater felt his coat-tails being tugged. Mr Comley, the bosun, was reporting.

'I brought my pipe aft, sir.'

'Very good, Mr Comley. You had better remain with me and Mr Mount.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Have you served in many actions, Mr Comley?' asked Drinkwater conversationally.

'With Black Dick in the Queen Charlotte at the Glorious First, sir, with Cap'n Rose in the Jamaicky at Copenhagen, when you was in the Virago, sir, an' a score o'boat actions and cuttin' outs and what not…'

A third broadside thudded home. Aloft rigging parted and the main top gallant mast dangled downwards.

'You were with the gun brigs then, on the 2nd April?'

'Aye, sir. An' a precious waste of time they were, an' all. I says to Cap'n Rose that by the time we'd towed 'em damned things across to Denmark and then half the little barky's got washed ashore here an' there…'

But Drinkwater never knew what advice Mr Comley had given Captain Rose in the battle with the Danish fleet. He knew that the Melusine could stand little more of the pounding she was taking without fighting back.

'Open fire!' He yelled and immediately the starboard guns roared out. For perhaps ten whole minutes as the larger ship drove down upon the smaller, the world became a shambles of sights and sounds through which the senses peered dimly, assaulted from every direction by destructive forces. The shot that whistled and ricochetted; the canister that swept a storm of iron balls across the Melusine's deck; the musket balls that pinged off iron-work and whined away into the air; the screams; the smoke; the splinters that crackled about, made it seem impossible that a man could live upon the upperdeck and breathe with anything like normality. Even more astonishing was the sudden silence that befell the two ships' companies as they prepared, the one to attack, the other to defend. It lasted perhaps no more than ten seconds, yet the peace seemed somehow endless. Until that is, it too dissolved into a bedlam of shouting and cursing, of whooping and grunting, of killing and dying. Blades and arms jarred together and the deck became slippery with blood. Drinkwater had lost his hat and his single epaulette had been shot from his left shoulder. It was he who had ended the silence, ordering Frey's brass carronade to sweep the enemy waist from its commanding position at the hance. He had pushed the boy roughly aside as he placed his foot on the slide to repel the first Frenchman, a young officer whose zeal placed himself neatly upon the point of Drinkwater's sword.

Simultaneously Drinkwater discharged his pistol into the face of another Frenchman then, disengaging his hanger, cut right, at the cheek of a man lowering a pike at Mount.

'Obliged, sir,' yelled Mount as he half-turned and shrugged a man off his shoulder who had tried leaping down from the enemy's mizen rigging. The smoke began to clear and Drinkwater was suddenly face to face with a man he knew instinctively was the enemy commander. Drinkwater fell back a step as the small dark bearded figure leapt through the smoke to Melusine's deck. It was a stupid, quixotic thing to do. The man did not square up with a sword. He levelled a pistol and Drinkwater half-shielded his face as Tregembo hacked sideways with a tomahawk. The Frenchman was too quick. The pistol jerked round and was fired at Tregembo. Drinkwater saw blood on the old Cornishman's face and lunged savagely. The French captain jumped back, turned and leapt on the rail. Drinkwater's hanger caught him in the thigh. A marine's bayonet appeared and the French commander leapt back to his own deck. Drinkwater lost sight of him. He found himself suddenly assailed from the left and looked down into the waist. The defenders were bowed back as a press of Frenchmen poured across.

'Mr Comley, your whistle!' Drinkwater roared.

He had no idea where Comley was but the whistle's piercing blast cut through the air above the yelling mob and Drinkwater was pleased to see the Melusines give way; he skipped to the skylight.

'Now, Bourne, now, by God!'

A retreating marine knocked into him. The man's eyes were dulled with madness. Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy had the larboard carronade lanyard in his hand.

'Fire, Mr Frey!' The boy obeyed.

Drinkwater saw at least one Melusine taken in the back, but there seemed a hiatus in the waist. Most of his men had disengaged and skipped back two or three paces. The marines were drawn up in a rough line through which Bourne's black-faced party suddenly appeared, passing through the intervals, each armed with pike or tomahawk. Bourne at their head held a boarding axe and a pistol. The hiatus was over. The bewildered Frenchmen were suddenly hardpressed. Drinkwater turned to Comley.

'Let fall the fore course, Mr Comley!'

The bosun staggered forward. 'Mr Frey!'

'Sir?'

'Reload that thing and get a shot into the enemy waist from there.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Slowly the Melusines were recovering their guns. There were dead and wounded men everywhere and the decks were red with their blood. Drinkwater followed Bourne down into the waist, joining Mount's marines as they bayoneted retreating Frenchmen. The quarterdeck was naked. If the French took advantage of that they might yet lose the ship. Drinkwater turned back. Two or three of the enemy were preparing to leap across. He shot one with his second pistol and the other two were suddenly confronting him. They looked like officers and both had drawn swords. They attacked at once.

Drinkwater parried crudely and felt a prick in his right leg. He felt that his hour had come but smote hard upon the blade that threatened his life. Both his and his assailant's blades snapped in the cold air and they stood, suddenly foolish. Drinkwater's second attacker had been beaten back by a whooping Quilhampton who had shipped his hook, caught the man's sword with it and twisted it from his grip. With his right he was hacking down at the man's raised arm as he endeavoured to protect his head. The tomahawk bit repeatedly into the officer's elbow.

'Quarter, give quarter, Mr Q!'

Drinkwater's own opponent was proffering his broken sword, hilt first as Tregembo, his cheek hanging down like a bloody spaniel's ear, the teeth in his lower jaw bared to the molars, pinned him against the rail.

Drinkwater was aware of the hull of the enemy drawing slowly astern as the foresail pulled Melusine clear. The French began to retreat to orders screamed from her deck and the two ships drifted apart. As they did so the enemy swung her stern towards the retiring Melusine. Drinkwater could see his opponent's name: Requin, he read.

Drinkwater bent over the table and pointed at the sketch he had drawn. The cabin was crowded. With the exception of Mr Rispin, who had been wounded, and Mr Gorton, who had the deck, every officer, commissioned and warrant, was in the room, listening to Drinkwater's intentions, offering advice on technical points and assisting in the planning of the rigging of a jury rudder.

For eight hours Melusine had run dead before the wind under a squared fore course which was occasionally clewed up to avoid too heavy a crash as she drove helplessly through the ice. There was no way they could avoid this treatment to the ship. His own cuts and scratches he had dressed himself, the wound in his thigh no more than an ugly gash. Since the action Drinkwater had had Singleton question Meetuck. It had been a long process which Singleton, exhausted after four hours of surgery, appalled by the carnage after the fighting and strongly disapproving of the whole profession of arms, had accomplished only with difficulty. But he had turned at last to Drinkwater with the information he wanted.

'Yes, he says there are places from which the ice has departed at this season and which our big kayak can come close to.'

But Drinkwater could not hope to close a strange coast without a rudder. In order to refit his ship with a rudder capable of standing the strain of a passage back to Britain he had to have one capable of allowing him to close the coast of Greenland. It was this paradox that he was engaged in resolving.

He straightened up from the table. 'Very well, gentlemen. If there are no further questions we will begin. Mr Hill, would you have the fore course taken in and we will unrig the mizen topmast without delay'

There was a buzz of conversation as the officers filed out of the cabin. Drinkwater watched them go then leaned again over the plan. How long would it take them? Six hours? Ten? Twelve? And still the masthead lookout reported the Requin in sight to the east-north-east. He wondered what damage they had really inflicted on her. How seriously had her commander been wounded? Would his wound deter him, or goad him to resume the pursuit? The action had ceased by a kind of mutual consent. Each party had inflicted upon the other a measure of damage. He was certain the Requin was a letter-of-marque. It would be an enormous feather in the cap of a corsair captain to bring in a sloop of the Royal Navy, particularly one that was a former French corvette. First Consul Bonaparte might be expected to find high praise and honours for so successful a practitioner of la guerre de course. But his owners might not be pleased if it was at the expense of extensive damage to their ship, or too heavy a loss amongst their men. Privateering was essentially a profit-making enterprise. The Requin had clearly been built on frigate lines intended to deceive unwary merchantmen entering the Soundings. Certainly, ruminated Drinkwater, it argued that her owners had not spared expense in her fitting-out. He sighed, hearing overhead the first thumps and shouts where the men began the task of rigging the jury rudder.

Sending down the mizen topmast was a matter of comparative simplicity, a standard task which the men might be relied upon to carry out in a routine manner. Melusine lay stationary, rolling easily upon a sea dotted with floes, but comparatively open. After an hour's labour the topmast lay fore and aft on the quarterdeck and was being stripped of its unwanted fittings. The topgallant mast was removed from it, but the cross-trees were left and the upper end of the topmast itself was rested on the taffrail. It was lashed there until the carpenter's mate had added a notch in the handsome carving. Meanwhile the carpenter had begun to build up a rudder blade by raising a vertical plane on the after side of the mast, coach-bolting each baulk of timber to its neighbour. In the waist the forge was hoisted up and a number of boarding pikes heated up to be beaten into bars with which to bind the rudder blade.

Fabricating the jury rudder and stock was comparatively easy. What exercised Drinkwater's ingenuity was the manner of shipping it so that it could be used to steer the ship. After some consultation with the warrant officers, particularly regarding the materials available, it was decided that an iron ring to encircle the masthead could be fabricated from the head-iron at the top of the mizen lower mast. This was of a sufficient diameter to encompass the heel of the mizen topmast so, by fitting it to the lesser diameter of the topmast's other end, there was sufficient play to allow the mast to rotate. The head-iron also had the advantage of having a second ring, a squared section band, which capped the mizen lower masthead. To this could be secured two chains, made from the yard slings from the main yard and elongated by those from the foreyard. These could then be led as far forward as was practical and bowsed taught at the fore-chains. This iron would thus become the new heel-iron for the rudder stock, a kind of stirrup.

The first part of the work went well. Some considerable delay was experienced in driving the head-iron off the mizen lower mast, but while Bourne and the bosun were aloft struggling with wedges, two stout timbers were prepared to be lashed either side of the vertical mizen topmast when it was lowered upside down, over the stern. A large pudding-fender was also slung over the side and lashed against the taffrail. The jury rudder stock would then turn against this well-slushed fender, restrained from moving to left or right by the side timbers.

There remained two problems. The first was to keep tension on the heel arrangement which it would be impossible to attend to once the thing was hoisted over the side. And the other would be to fabricate a method of actually turning the rudder.

Drinkwater estimated that Melusine's forward speed would contribute greatly to the first as long as her alterations of direction were small, such as would occur while steering a course. Terrific strain would be imposed if large rudder angles were necessary, as would be the case with tacking or wearing or, God help them, if they had to fight another action with the Requin. To this end Drinkwater had the mizen topgallant mast slung over the stem and lashed below the level of his quarter galleries. From here tackles were led to the mizen topmasthead which would, of course, be the heel of the rudder stock when rigged. The cross-jack yard was similarly readied across the upper taffrail from quarter to quarter and lashed to the stern davits. From here two tackles could be rigged to the upper end of the topmast which would extend some feet above the rail and give good leverage to steady the spar.

The problem of rigging some steering arrangement proved the most difficult. The idea of lashing a tiller was rejected owing to the great strain upon it which would almost certainly result in the lashing turning about the round mast. In the end it was found necessary to bore the mast, a long task with a hand auger that occupied some four hours work. Into the mortice thus made, the yard arm of the mizen royal yard was prepared to go to become a clumsy tiller.

While these works were in progress Drinkwater frequently called for reports from the masthead about the movement of the Requin. But she, too, seemed to be refitting, although her inactivity did not remit the anxiety Drinkwater felt on her account, and he fumed at every trivial delay.

His impatience was unjust for, as he admitted to himself, he could not have been better served, particularly by Hill, Bourne, Gorton and Quilhampton. Comley, the bosun and Mr Marsden, the carpenter were indefatigable, while the men, called upon to exert themselves periodically in heaving the heavy timbers into position, in fetching and carrying, in the rigging of tackles and the frequent adjustment of leads until all was to the demanding exactness Drinkwater knew was the secret of such an operation, carried out their multifarious orders willingly.

There were considerable delays and a few setbacks, but after eight hours labour the timbers assembled on the quarterdeck looked less like a lowered mast and more like a rudder and stock. In one of these delays Drinkwater took himself below to attend the wounded.

Melusine had suffered greatly in the action, not only in her fabric, but in her company. As Drinkwater made his way below to the cockpit he refused to allow his mind to dwell on the moral issues that crammed the mind in the aftermath and anti-climax of action. No doubt Singleton would hector him upon the point in due course and Drinkwater felt a stab of conscience at the way he had been instrumental in turning little Frey from a frightened boy to a murderous young man who had killed in the service of his King and Country. Still, Drinkwater reflected, that was better than fulfilling that mendacious platitude: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

But it was not Singleton's face that reproached him in the gloom of the cockpit. Skeete leered at him abruptly, holding up the horn lantern to see who it was.

'Are 'ee wounded, Cap'n, sir?' The foul breath of Skeete's carious teeth was only marginally worse than the foetid stink of the space, crammed as it was with wounded men. They lay everywhere, some twisted in agony, some slumped under the effects of laudanum or rum, some sobbed and cried for their wives or mothers. Singleton looked up as Drinkwater leaned over the body of Mr Rispin. Their eyes met and Singleton gave the merest perceptible shake to his head. Drinkwater knelt down beside the lieutenant.

'Well now, Mr Rispin. How goes it, eh?' he asked quietly.

Rispin looked at him as though he had no idea who it was. There was very little left of Rispin's chest and his eyes bore testimony to the shock his body had received. His pupils were huge: he was already a dead man, astonished to be still alive, if only for a little longer.

Drinkwater turned aside. He almost fell over one of the ship's nippers, a boy of some nine years of age named Maxted, Billy Cue Maxted, Drinkwater remembered from the ship's books, named for the battleship Belliqueux, from whence his father had come to ruin the reputation of poor Mollie Maxted. Now little Billy was a cripple. He had been carrying powder to his gun when a ball knocked off both his legs. They were no more than dry sticks and he was conscious of their loss. Drinkwater knelt down beside him.

The child's eyes alighted on the captain and widened with comprehension. He struggled to rise up, but Drinkwater pushed him back gently, feeling the thin shoulder beneath the flannel shirt.

'Oh, Cap'n Drinkwater, sir, I've lost both my legs, sir. Both on 'em, and this is my first action, sir. Oh, sir, what'm I going to do, sir? With no legs, who'll carry powder to my gun, sir, when next we fights the Frogs, sir?'

'There, Billy, you lie back and rest. It's for me to worry about the guns and for you to be a good boy and get well…'

'Will I get well, sir?' The boy was smiling through his tears.

'Of course you will, Billy…'

'And what'll happen to me, sir?' Drinkwater swallowed. How could you tell a nine-year-old he was a free-born Briton who would never be a slave? He was free to rot on whichever street corner took his fancy. He might get a pension. Perhaps ten pounds a year for the loss of two legs, if someone took up his case. Drinkwater sighed.

'I'll look after you, Billy. You come and see me when you're better, eh? We'll ship you a pair of stumps made of whale ivory…'

'Aye, sir, an' a pair o'crutches out o' the Frog's topgallant yards, eh, Cap'n?'

An older seaman lying next to Billy hoisted himself on one elbow and grinned in the darkness. Drinkwater nodded, rose and stepped over the inert bodies. Rispin had died. Somewhere in the stinking filth of the orlop his soul sought the exit to paradise, for there were no windows here to throw wide to the heavens, only a narrow hatchway to the decks above. At the ladder Drinkwater paused to look back.

'Three cheers for Cap'n Drinkwater!' It was little Billy's piping voice, and it was answered by a bass chorus. Drinkwater shuddered and reached for the ladder ropes.

Dulce et decorum est…

He had not seen Tregembo in the cockpit, he realised as he passed the marine sentry stationed outside his cabin. He opened the door only to find a party of men under Mr Quilhampton completing the lashings of the mizen topgallant mast across the stern.

'We had to break two of the glazings, sir,' said Quilhampton apologetically, pointing at the knocked-out corners of the stern windows.

'No matter, Mr Q. How does it go?'

'Just passing the final frappings now.'

'Very well.' Drinkwater paused and looked hard at one of the men. The fellow had his back to Drinkwater and was leaning outboard. 'Is that Tregembo?'

'Yes, sir. He refused to stay in the cockpit,' Quilhampton grinned, 'complained that he wasn't having a lot of clumsy jacks in his cabin.'

Drinkwater smiled. 'Tregembo!'

The Cornishman turned. 'Aye, zur?' His head was bandaged and he spoke with difficulty.

'How is your face?'

'Aw, 'tis well enough, zur. Mr Singleton put a dozen homeward bounders in it an' it'll serve. I reckon I'll be able to chaw on it.'

Drinkwater wondered what sort of an appearance Tregembo would make, his cheek crossed by the scars of Singleton's sutures. If they ever reached Petersfield again he could expect some hard words from Susan. He nodded his thanks to the man for saving his life. The Cornishman's eyes lit. There was no need for words.

'Very well.'

'You've broken your sword, zur.' Tregembo was reproachful. The French sword had hung on his hip since he had taken it from the dead lieutenant of La Creole twenty-odd years ago off the coast of Carolina. He had forgotten the matter.

'You'd better have Mr Germaney's, zur. For the time bein'.'

Drinkwater nodded again, then turned to Quilhampton.

'Carry on, Mr Q.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

They were ready to heave the jury rudder over the taffrail when he returned to the deck. All the purchases were manned, each party under the direction of an officer or midshipman. The former mizen topmast, the ball from the Requin prised out of it and the improvised rudder blade bound to it, jutted out over the stern. The heel-iron at its extremity was fitted with the requisite chains and shackles and the head of the mast was, where it passed through the heel-iron, well slushed with tallow to allow free rotation.

'All ready, sir.' Bourne touched his hat.

'Very good, Mr Bourne. Let's have it over…'

'Aye, aye, sir. Set tight all. Ready, Mr Gorton?' Gorton was up on the taffrail, hanging overboard with two topmen.

'Ready, sir.'

Bourne lifted the speaking trumpet and turned forward. 'Mr Wickham! Mr Dutfield! Your parties to take up slack only!'

'Aye, aye, sir!' The tackles from the heel iron came inboard at the chess-trees and here the two midshipmen had half a dozen men each to set the heel of the rudder tight.

'Very well, Mr Comley, haul her aft.'

'Haul aft, aye, aye…'

The mast was pushed aft, the tackles overhauling or tightening as necessary. At the point of equilibrium the weight was slowly taken on the side tackles that led downwards from the mizen topgallant mast, Mr Gorton shouting directions to Quilhampton in the cabin below, where the hauling parts came inboard.

'Some weight on the retaining tackle, Mr Comley…'

'Holding now, sir.' They had rigged a purchase from the base of the mizen mast to the upper end of the rudder stock. This now took much of the weight until the stock approached a more vertical angle and the full weight was taken by Quilhampton's quarter tackles. The rudder blade dipped down and entered the sea. There was an ominous jerk as Comley eased his purchase and the weight came upon the quarter tackles. But they were heavy blocks, with sufficient mechanical advantage to handle the weight. The rudder stock approached the vertical, coming to rest on the pudding fender and, further down, the cross member formed by the mizen topgallant mast.

'I think some parcelling there, Mr Gorton, together with a loose frapping will make matters more secure,' said Drinkwater, leaning over the stern by the starboard stern davit.

'Aye, aye, sir.' He called down to Quilhampton and explained what Drinkwater wanted. Looking down, Drinkwater could see Quilhampton's quarter tackles disappear into the water. They were bar-tight. Above his head Comley was removing the purchase to the mizen mast and setting up two side purchases, stretched out to the arms of the cross-jack yard which was lashed up under the boat davits. This was to ease some of the effects of torsion the improvised rudder could be expected to undergo.

Forward Wickham and Dutfield were hauling their tackles tight under Bourne's direction. As Comley clambered down Drinkwater directed him to set up some additional bracing lines to support the extremities of the mizen topgallant mast and the cross-jack yard. He felt his anxiety subside and rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

'Well done, Mr Bourne, a splendid achievement.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Drinkwater hailed the masthead. Mr Frey looked over the rim of the crow's nest.

'Any sign of the Requin, Mr Frey?'

'No change, sir! East-nor'-east, distant three or four leagues, sir!'

'Very well!' Drinkwater turned to Bourne. 'Heave the ship to, Mr Bourne, then set an anchor watch. Pipe "Up spirits", all hands to have a double tot and then send 'em below. We'll lie-to, then get under way in four hours. The masthead is to be continually manned. Carry on.'

Drinkwater was cheered for the second time that day, only on this occasion he felt less guilty.

Chapter Sixteen A Providential Refuge

'We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead)…'

Obadiah Singleton, the stole of ordained minister of the Church of England about his muffled neck, read the solemn words as Melusine's entire company stood silently in the waist. Drinkwater nodded and the planks lifted. From beneath the bright bunting of the ensigns the hammocks slid over the standing part of the fore-sheet, to plunge into the grey-green sea.

There were fifteen to bury, with the likelihood of a further seven or eight joining them within a day or two. They did not go unmourned. Among Melusine's company, friends grieved the loss of shipmates. For Drinkwater there was always the sense of failure he felt after sustaining heavy losses and among those rigid bundles lay Cawkwell, his servant. He wondered whether he had been wise to have held Melusine's fire for so long, and yet he knew he had inflicted heavy casualties upon the Requin, that her reluctance to renew the action could only in part have been due to the physical damage they had done to her fabric. From what he had seen of her commander the purely commercial nature of privateering would not prevent him from seeking a chance of glory. Drinkwater knew that the ablest of French men were not in the Republic's battle-fleet, rotting in her harbours, penned in by the Royal Navy's weary but endless blockade. France's finest seamen were corsairs, aboard letters-of-marque like the Requin, as intrepid and daring as any young frigate captain in the Royal Navy. They were pursuing that mode of warfare at which they excelled: the war against trade, wounding the British merchants in their purses and thus bringing opposition to the war openly into Parliamentary debate. It was not without reason that First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte described the British as 'a nation of shopkeepers'. Singleton closed the prayerbook as the Melusines mumbled their final 'Amens'.

'On hats!'

Drinkwater turned away for the companionway and his cabin. Already Bourne was piping the hands to stations for getting under way.

Drinkwater looked up at the stump of the mizen mast. They would set no more than the spanker on that, but the wind, although it had swung round to the south, remained light. It had brought with it a slight lessening of the visibility and they had not seen the Requin for three hours.

However, although Drinkwater's anxiety was eased he was still worried about the rudder and had ordered Bourne to hoist only spanker, main topsail and foretopmast staysail to begin with. It was one thing to devise extempore measures and quite another to get them working. But while Bourne brought the ship onto a course for the Greenland coast there was something else Drinkwater had to attend to, an inevitable consequence of death.

'Pass word for Mr Quilhampton,' he said to the marine sentry who came to attention as Drinkwater opened the cabin door. Drinkwater took off his full-dress coat and changed it for the stained undress he wore over the blue guernsey that had become an inseparable, if irregular, part of his uniform clothing. The air had warmed slightly with the onset of the southerly breeze, but it had also become damp again and Drinkwater felt the damp more acutely in his bones and shoulder than the very cold, drier polar airstream of the northerly.

Drinkwater heard the knock at the door. 'Enter!'

'You sent for me, sir?'

'Ah, yes, sit down a moment. Pray do you pour out two glasses there.' He nodded at the decanter nestling between the fiddles on the locker top. Quilhampton did as he was bid while Drinkwater opened a drawer in his desk and removed a paper.

'Far be it from me to rejoice in the death of a colleague, James, but what may be poison to one man, oft proves meat to another.' He handed the sheet to Quilhampton who took it frowning. The young man's brow cleared with understanding.

'Oh… er, thank you, sir.'

'It is only an acting commission, Mr Q, and may not be ratified by their Lordships, and although you have passed your Master's Mate's examination you have not yet sat before a Captains' board to pass for lieutenant… you understand?'

Quilhampton nodded. 'Yes sir, I understand.'

'Very well. You will take Mr Rispin's watch… and good luck to you.' Drinkwater raised his glass and they sipped for a moment in companionable silence. Quilhampton gazed abstractedly through the stern windows, the view was obscured by the spars and lashings of the jury rudder but he was unaware of them. He was thinking of how he could now swagger into Mrs MacEwan's withdrawing-room, to make a leg before the lovely Catriona, and send that damned lubber of a Scottish yeoman to the devil!

'I see,' said Drinkwater turning, 'that you are watching the effects of the ship getting under way upon the rudder.'

'Eh? Oh, oh, yes sir…' Quilhampton focussed his eyes as Drinkwater drained his glass, rose and picked up his hat.

'Well, Mr Q, let us go and see how it answers our purpose…'

It answered their purpose surprisingly well. Kept under easy sail after a little experimenting with balancing the rig, and running tiller lines to the mizen royal yard in a manner which best suited steering the ship, Melusine made west-north-west. There was a thinning of the floes and although the wind remained from the south, it began to get colder. Fog patches closed in and from these circumstances Drinkwater deduced that the coast of Greenland could not be very far distant. There were other indications that this was so; an increase in the number of birds, particularly eider ducks, and a curious attentive attitude on the part of Meetuck who, having hidden during the action with the Requin to the amusement of the Melusines, now hung about the knightheads sniffing the air like a dog.

Then, shortly before eight bells in the morning watch the next day he was observed pointing ahead with excitement. He repeated the same word over and over again.

'Nunataks! Nunataks!'

The hands, with their customary good-natured but contemptuous ignorance, laughed at him, tapping their foreheads and deriving a good deal of fun at the eskimo's expense. Quilhampton had the watch and was unable to see anything unusual. Nevertheless he went forward and had Singleton turned out of his cot to translate.

'What the devil does he mean, Obadiah? Noon attacks, eh?'

Singleton stared ahead, nodding as Meetuck pulled at his arm, his eyes shining with excitement.

'You need to elevate your glass, Mr Quilhampton. Meetuck refers to the light on the peaks of Greenland.' There was an uncharacteristic note of awe in Singleton's voice, but it went unnoticed by the practical Quilhampton.

'Well, I'm damned,' he said shortly, looking briefly at a jagged and gleaming outline in the lower clouds to the west. It was the sun shining on the permanent ice-cap of the mountains of Greenland.

'Mr Frey! Be so good as to call the captain…'

Drinkwater raised his glass for the hundredth time and regarded the distant mountains. They were distinguishable from icebergs by the precipitous slopes of dark rock on which the snow failed to lie. He judged their distance to be about twenty miles, yet he could close the coast no further because of the permanent coastal accretion of old ice, its hummocks smoothed, its ancient raftings eroded by the repeated wind-driven bombardment of millions upon millions of ice spicules. So far there was no break in that barrier of ice and mountains that indicated the existence of an anchorage. Drinkwater swore to himself. He was a fool to think a primitive savage of an eskimo could have any idea of the haven that he sought. And, he reflected bitterly, he was a bigger fool for actually looking. But he peered through his glass yet again in the fast-shrivelling hope that Meetuck might be right.

'It's a remarkable sight, isn't it?' Beside him Obadiah Singleton levelled the battered watch-glass he had borrowed from Hill.

Drinkwater could see little remarkable in the distant coast. It was as cold and forbidding as that of Arabia had been hot and hostile and his irritation was increased by the knowledge that Singleton had ceased to think like the ad hoc surgeon of Meiusine and had reverted to being an Anglican divine sent on a mission to convert the heathen by a London Missionary society. When he had persuaded Singleton to assume the duties of surgeon Drinkwater had imagined it would prove regrettably impossible to find the time or opportunity to close the coast and land the missionary. Now it would be impossible to refuse, even if it meant landing Singleton on the ice.

'Don't you think it remarkable, sir?' asked Singleton again.

'I would think it so if I found an ice-free anchorage with a fine sandy bottom in five fathoms at low water, Mr Singleton. I should consider that highly remarkable.'

'But the colour, the colour, to what do you suppose it is due?'

'Eh?' Drinkwater took his glass from his eye and looked where Singleton was pointing. He had been scanning the coast ahead and failed to notice the strange coloration of the snow on the slopes of a mountain which plunged into the ice on the south side of what they took to be an ice-covered bay. This slope, just opening on their larboard beam was a dark, yet brilliant red.

'An outcrop of red-hued rock, perhaps…' he said with only a mild curiosity. 'The rocks and cliffs of Milford Haven are a not dissimilar colour…'

'No, that is too smooth and even for rock. It's snow… red snow. Egede did not mention red snow…'[4]

'To the devil with red snow, Mr Singleton. Get that damned eskimo aft here and quiz him again. Is he sure, absolutely sure of this anchorage for big kayaks? Have you explained that we must anchor our ship, Singleton, not run it up the beach like a bloody dugout?'

Singleton sighed. 'I have asked him that several times, sir…'

'Well get him aft and ask him again.' Drinkwater raised his glass and trained it forward to where a cape jutted out. There was the faint shadow of further land. Could that be the expected opening in the coast that Meetuck assured them existed? And if it was, how the hell were they to break through this fast-ice with a leaky old hull and a jury rudder, a stump mizen and a truncated mainmast?

They had drawn maps for Meetuck, but he did not seem to comprehend the concept of a bird's eye view and Drinkwater was increasingly sceptical of Singleton's assurances of his use of other faculties.

The olfactory organs did not rate very highly as navigational aids, clouded by the eskimo's own inimitable musk. Drinkwater had scoffed at Singleton's adamant assertions, privately considering that whatever inner faith makes a man a priest, also betrays he lacks common sense.

Drinkwater smelled Meetuck's presence and lowered the telescope. Since their dawn encounter Meetuck had appeared uneasy in Drinkwater's presence. He stuck close to Singleton and nodded as he fired the same questions yet again.

Meetuck answered, his flat speech with its monotonous modulation and clicking, minimal mouth movements seemed truly incomprehensible, but after some minutes Drinkwater thought he detected an unusual enthusiasm in Meetuck's answers.

Singleton turned to Drinkwater. 'He says, yes, he's sure that Nagtoralik is to the north, only a little way now.' Singleton gestured on the beam. 'This is aquitseq, a nameless place. It is also anoritok, very windy, and there are no fish, especially capelin. Soon, he says, we will see vivak, which is a cape to be skirted and beyond it we will see ikersak, the strait upon the northern shores of which his people live.' At each innuit word Singleton turned to Meetuck, as if for confirmation, and on each occasion the eskimo repeated the word and grunted agreement.

'He says it is upernavsuak, a good location to dwell in the spring, by which I assume he means that by this time of year it is ice free, but again he repeats that there are bad white men near Nagtoralik, white men like you, sir. He seems to have conceived some idea that you are connected with them after the action with the Requin. I cannot make it out, sir…'

'Perhaps your preaching has turned him into a proper Christian, Mr Singleton. Meetuck seems terrified by the use of force,' said Drinkwater drily. 'He certainly absented himself from the deck during the action. Ask him if that,' Drinkwater pointed to the distant cape, 'is the promontory to be skirted, eh?'

Meetuck screwed his eyes up and stared on the larboard bow. Then something odd happened. His weathered skin smoothed out as he realised this was indeed the cape they sought. He turned to speak to Singleton as if to confirm this and his face was so expressive that Drinkwater knew that, whatever the cape hid, and however it answered their purpose, Meetuck had brought them to the place he intended. But his eyes rested on Drinkwater and his expression changed, he muttered something which ended in a gesture towards the nearest gun and the noise 'bang!' was uttered before he ran off, disappearing below.

'Upon my soul, Mr Singleton, now what the devil's the meanin' of that?'

Singleton frowned. 'I don't know, sir, but he has an aversion to you and cannon-fire. And if I'm not mistaken it has something to do with the bad white men of Nagtoralik.'

'No bottom…' The leadsman's chant with its attenuated syllables had become a mere routine formality, a precaution for it was obvious that the water in the strait was extraordinarily deep.

'D'you have a name for the cape, sir?' asked Quilhampton who, with Hill and Gorton was busy striking hurried cross bearings off on a large sheet of cartridge paper pinned to a board.

'I think it should be named for the First Lord, Mr Q, except that he took his title off a Portuguese cape…' Drinkwater was abstracted, watching the dancing catspaws of increasing wind sweep down from the mountainous coast two miles to the southwards.

'How about Cape Jervis, sir,' suggested Quilhampton who, if the captain did not decide quickly would name the promontory Cape Catriona.

'A capital idea, Mr Q,' then to the quartermaster, 'Meet her, there, meet her.'

The katabatic squall hit the Melusine with sudden, screaming violence and the tiller party shuffled and tugged at the clumsy arrangement. It had succeeded in steering through an ice strewn lead that was now opening into what Meetuck called Sermiligaq: the fiord with many glaciers. Melusine, under greatly reduced canvas, leaned only slightly to the increased pressure of the wind and began to race westward with the cold wind coming down from the massive heights to larboard.

'No-o botto-o-m…'

Curiosity had filled the quarterdeck. Those officers not engaged in the sailing of the ship or the rough surveying of the coast, formed in a knot around Singleton. The missionary's eyes were alight with a proprietary fire as he pointed to the dark rock that rose in strata after horizontal strata, delineated by a rind of snow as erosion reduced successive layers, giving the appearance of a gigantic series of steps.

'It is more impressive, gentlemen,' Singleton was saying, 'than either Crantz or Egede had led me to believe, more remarkable, perhaps, than those bizarre stratifications found in the Hebrides because of the enormous extent of this coastline… Is it not possible to imagine such a land as inflaming the imagination of the old Norse harpers when they composed their sagas? A land wherein giants dwelt, eh?'

Drinkwater strode up and down, catching snatches of Singleton's lyrical enthusiasm, watching the progress of the ship and casting an eye over the hurried mapping of the coastline. Hill had just completed a neat piece of triangulation from which he had established the elevation of the mountains closest to the extremity of Cape Jervis as 2,800 feet. From this he deduced a summit ten miles inland to the westward to be about 3,000 feet from its greater height. His proposal to name it after Melusine's commander was gently rebuffed.

'I think not, Mr Hill, flattering though it might be. Shall we call it after the ship, eh?'

So Mount Melusine it became, a name of which nature seemed to approve because even as they made the decision there came a crack like gunfire. For an instant all the faces on the deck looked round apprehensively, until Singleton laughingly drew their attention to the calving glacier, one of many frozen rivers that ran down to the sea in the valleys between those mighty summits.

They watched with awe the massive lump of ice as it broke clear of the glacier and rolled with an apparent gentle slowness into the sea, finding its own floating equilibrium to become just one more iceberg in the Arctic Ocean.

'Nature salutes our eponymous ship, sir,' said Singleton turning to Drinkwater.

'Let us hope it is a salutation and not an omen, Mr Singleton. By the by, where is Meetuck?'

Singleton pointed forward. 'Upon what I believe you term "the knightheads", keeping a lookout for his kin, the Ikermiut.'

'Their village lies hereabouts, on this inhospitable shore?' Drinkwater indicated the mountains to the southward.

'No sir, to the north, where the land is lower. That is what I believe Meetuck means when he says we will find an anchorage at Nagtoralik.'

A lower coastline presented itself to them the following afternoon, but the lead failed to find the bottom and Meetuck was insistent that this was not the place. Nevertheless they stood close inshore and half a dozen glasses were trained upon the patches of surpris-ing green undergrowth that sprouted between the dark outcrops of rock. There were flocks of eider ducks and geese paddling upon the black sandy beaches and Mr Frey spotted a whirring brace of willow grouse that rose into the air.

Melusine tacked offshore and Drinkwater luxuriated in the amazing warmth of the sun. It struck his shoulders, seeping into aching muscles and easing some of the tension he felt in his anxiety both for the ultimate safety of Melusine and also that of Sawyers and the Faithful. Forward, Meetuck still kept his self-appointed vigil, staring ahead and Drinkwater felt an odd reassurance in the sight, a growing confidence that the eskimo was right.

The sun was delicious and it was clear that its heat melted the snows, and the moraine deposits brought from higher ground by the action of the ice had deposited enough of a soil to root the chickweed and ground willow that covered the low shore. It argued an area that might support life, if only there was an anchorage…

They went about again and rounded a headland of frowning black rocks. It was a salient of the mountains that rose peak above peak to the distant, glistening nunataks. Standing close in, the dark, deeply fissured rocks showed a variety of colours in the sunshine where lodes of quartz and growths of multi-hued lichens relieved the drabness. They were also made uncomfortably aware of the existence of mosquitos, a surprising discovery and one that made even the philosophical Singleton short tempered.

Squatting on a carronade slide little Frey recorded the drab appearance of the rocks as a shrewdly observed mixture of greys, deep red and dark green. His brush and pencil had been busy since they had first sighted land and the active encouragement of the captain had silenced the jeers of Walmsley and Glencross, at least in public.

Above them the cliff reared, precipitous to man, but composed of a million ledges where the stains of bird-lime indicated the nesting sites of kittiwakes and auks. A number still perched on these remote spots, together with the sea-parrots whose brilliant coloured beaks glowed like tiny jewels in the blazing sunshine.

Alongside, an old bull seal rose, his nostrils pinching and opening, while two pale cubs, the year's progeny, dived as the shadow of the ship fell upon them. As they cleared the cape open water appeared to the westward, bounded to the northern shore by another distant headland. From forward came a howl of delight from Meetuck. He pointed west, down the channel where distant mountains rose blue against the sky.

Singleton crossed the deck, his ear cocked to catch Meetuck's words.

'It seems, sir, that the anchorage of Nagtoralik lies at the head of this fiord.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'Let us hope that it is the providential refuge that we so desperately need, Mr Singleton.'

'And where you can land me,' answered Singleton in a low voice, staring ahead.

Daylight diminished to a luminous twilight for the six hours that the sun now dipped beneath the horizon. The brief arctic summer was fast fading and with its warmth gone the wind dropped and a dripping fog settled over the ship. Lines hung slack and the sails slatted impotently. After the warmth of the day the chill, grey midnight struck cold throughout the ship, though in fact the mercury in the thermometer had fallen far lower among the ice-bergs of the Greenland Sea.

Shivering in his cabin Drinkwater wrote up his journal, expressing his anxiety over the state of Melusine's steering gear and his inability to find and rescue Sawyers.

Assuming that we are able to effect repairs to the rudder by hauling down I am not optimistic of locating the Faithful. The lack of belligerence in Captain Sawyers made of him and his ship a gift to the marauding French and it is unlikely that we shall be of further use to him.

He paused, unwilling to admit to himself the extent of his sense of failure in carrying out Earl St Vincent's orders. At the moment the very real anxieties of a safe haven, the possibility of carrying out effective repairs and of returning to join the whalers for the homeward convoy were more immediately demanding. With a sigh he turned to a more domestic matter.

My desire to anchor will, of necessity, rob me of the services of Mr Singleton who is determined to pursue his mission among the eskimo tribes. I am torn between admiration and… He paused. He had been about to write 'contempt', but that would not be accurate, despite the fact that he considered Singleton a fool to think he could either convert the eskimos or survive himself. He did not doubt that men imbued with Singleton's religious zeal could endure incredible hardships, but his own years of seafaring had taught him never to gamble with fate, always to weigh the chances carefully before deciding upon a course of action. He had never seen himself as a dashing sea-officer of the damn-the-consequences type. Drinkwater sighed again. He admired Singleton for his fortitude and he was in awe of his faith. He scratched out his last sentence and wrote:

I admire Singleton's courage at undertaking his mission, but I do not understand the power of his faith. His presence on board as a surgeon will be sorely missed, but I fear my remonstrances fall upon deaf ears and he is determined to remain upon this coast.

Soon afterwards Drinkwater's head fell forward upon his chest and he dozed.

'Captain, sir! Captain, sir!'

'Eh? What is it?' Drinkwater woke with a start, cold and held in a rigor of stiff muscles.

'Mr Quilhampton's compliments, sir, and there's a light easterly breeze, sir.'

'Thank you, Mr Frey, I'll be up.'

The boy disappeared and Drinkwater dragged himself painfully to his feet. On deck he found the fog as dense as ever, but above his head the squared yards spread canvas before the light wind. Quilhampton touched his hat.

'Mornin' sir.'

'Mornin' Mr Q.'

'Wind's increasing sir. Course west by north. Beggin' your pardon sir, but d'you wish us to heave to, sir, or, if we stand on to sound minute guns?'

'D'you sound minute guns, Mr Q, and post a midshipman forrard to sing out the instant he hears an echo. We will put the ship on the wind and the moment that occurs on a course of east-nor'-east. '

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater fell to pacing the quarterdeck. Before the fog closed down they had seen the fiord open to the westward. They could stand down it with a reasonable degree of safety, provided of course that they heard no echoes close ahead from the towering cliffs in answer to their minute guns. Eight bells rang, the end of the middle watch, four o'clock in the morning and already the sun had risen. He longed for its warmth to penetrate the nacreous vapour, consume the fog and ease the pain in his shoulder.

It was six hours later before the fog began to disperse. The wind had fallen light again and their progress had been slow, measured only by the anxious barking of the minute gun and the hushed silence that followed it. They saw distant mountain peaks at first and it became clear that they were reaching the head of the fiord for they lay ahead, on either bow and either beam. Snow gleamed as the sun seemed suddenly fierce and the fog changed from a pervasive cloud to dense wraiths and then drew back to reveal a little, misty circle of sea about them while the cliffs seemed to reach downwards from the sky.

It was a fantastic effect, but their vision was still obscured at sea level, and for a further hour they moved slowly westward, Drinkwater still anxiously pacing the quarterdeck while on the knightheads Meetuck waited with the expectancy of a dog.

And then, about five bells in the morning watch, the visibility suddenly cleared. Melusine was almost at the head of the fiord. To the south stretched the cliffs and mountains that culminated in the cape beneath whose fissured rocks they had tacked the previous afternoon. This wall of rock curved round to the west and north, bordering the fiord. The northern shore was comprised of mountains but these were less precipitous, the littoral formed of bays and inlets some of which were wooded with low conifers. At the head of the fiord, where once a mighty glacier had calved bergs into the sea, was a bay, backed by rising ground, an alpine meadow-land that turned to scree, then buttresses of dark rock rising to mountain peaks.

On the fo'c's'le Meetuck pointed triumphantly, capering about and clapping his hands, his lined face creased with happiness.

'My God!' exclaimed Drinkwater fishing for his glass. It was an anchorage without a doubt. Not a mile from them five ships lay tranquilly at anchor. One of them was the Requin, flying the tricolour of France.

An instant later she opened fire.

Chapter Seventeen Nagtoralik Bay

'Beat to quarters, Mr Bourne!'

Drinkwater ignored the bedlam surrounding him while Melusine was put into a state to fight. He swept the anchorage, pausing only briefly on each ship to determine its force. But it occurred to him as he did so that there was something remarkable about three of the ships in the bay. Identification of the Recjuin was simple. She must have arrived off Cape Jervis well ahead of the Melusine and now she was swung, a spring on her cable, every gun pointing at the British ship which, by its minute guns, had warned her of its approach.

Drinkwater swore, for he realised that anchored to the south of the Requin was a large lugger, a chassé marée, and to the east of her, the unpierced topsides of the Faithful. To find Sawyers's ship in such circumstances was hardly reassuring, given that Melusine still laboured under her jury rudder.

To the west of Requin two more vessels lay at anchor and Drinkwater knew them instantly for whale ships. They were not immediately familiar and as Bourne reported the sloop cleared for action, Drinkwater ordered the course altered to starboard, risking raking fire, but anxious to close the distance a little before responding to Requin's guns. Drinkwater began to calculate the odds. The big, French privateer made no obvious move to get under way. She would sit at anchor, in the centre of her captures, relying upon her superior weight of metal to keep Melusine at a distance. When she had driven off Melusine she would come in pursuit, to administer the coup de grâce.

Drinkwater swore again. Their jury rudder and obvious reduction of rig bespoke their weakness. He looked again at the Requin for signs of damage to her bow. She had a bowsprit, perhaps a trifle shorter than when they had first met, and therefore a jury rig, but it looked perfectly serviceable.

'That's the bloody Nimrod!' Hill called in astonishment, 'and the Conqueror!'

Drinkwater swung his glass left. The extent of his own ineptness struck him like a blow even as Bourne replied to the sailing master.

'They must have been taken off Spitzbergen, by God!'

Was Bourne right? Had the Requin taken Nimrod and Conqueror off Spitzbergen and cruised with complete impunity throughout the Greenland Sea? If so, Melusine's presence had been a farce, a complete charade. Every exertion of her company a futile waste of time. He could see again the contempt for his own inexperience in Captain Ellerby's pale blue eyes. How mortifyingly justified that contempt was now proved. He had bungled his commission from Lord St Vincent and failure stared at him from every one of Requin's gun muzzles.

Drinkwater swallowed hard. He felt as though he had received a physical blow.

'Make ready the larboard battery, Mr Bourne. Put the ship on the wind, Mr Hill, starboard tack. We will open fire on the Requin, Mr Bourne, all guns to try for the base of her mainmast.' His voice sounded steady and assured despite his inner turmoil.

He nodded as the two officers acknowledged their orders, then he raised his glass again, anxious to hide his face.

Melusine headed inshore, her bowsprit pointing at the stern of the Faithful as Requin fired her second broadside. It was better pointed than the first as the British sloop stood well into range. Drinkwater felt shots go home, holes appeared in several sails and he felt acutely vulnerable with his clumsy jury steering gear. But a plan was formulating in his mind. If he could lay Melusine alongside the Faithful he might be able to launch a boat attack on the Requin while partially protecting Melusine's weak stern from the Requin's heavier guns.

'Larboard battery ready, sir,' Bourne reported, and Drinkwater took his glass from his eye only long enough to acknowledge the readiness of the gunners.

'Fire when you bear, Mr Bourne.'

They were closing Faithful rapidly and more shots from Requin arrived, striking splinters from forward and sending Meetuck scampering aft and down the companionway like a scuttering rabbit. A roar of laughter ran along the deck and then Melusine's guns replied, the captains jerking their lanyards in a rolling broadside.

'Mr Mount! Your men are to storm the whaler Faithful when I bring the ship under her lee. I doubt she has more than a prize crew aboard and…'

'Bloody hell!' A heavy shot thumped into the quarter rail and smashed the timbers inboard. It was perilously close to Mr Hill as he stood by the big tiller and he swore in surprise. Drinkwater looked up to determine the source of the ball and another hit Melusine, dismounting an after larboard gun. It was carronade fire.

'It's the fucking Nimrod, by God!' howled Hill, his face purple with rage as he capered to avoid the splinters. Whatever it was it was dangerous and Drinkwater decided to retire.

'Larboard tack, Mr Hill, upon the instant!'

Hill jumped to the order with alacrity and Drinkwater swung his glass onto the whaler Nimrod. Smoke drifted away from her side and he saw another stab of yellow fire and a second later was drenched in the spray from the water thrown up no more than five yards astern.

'By Christ…' Drinkwater saw a black-bearded figure standing on the rail. There was no doubt about it being Jemmett Ellerby and he was waving his hat as yet another shot was fired from his carronades.

Drinkwater's blood froze. He wanted to make sure of what he saw and studied the big figure intently. Yes, there could be no doubt about it. Nimrod flew no colours while above his own head the British ensign snapped out as Melusine lay over to the larboard tack, exposing her stern, but rapidly increasing her distance from the enemy.

'Ship full and bye on the larboard tack, sir,' Hill reported. Drinkwater nodded, his brain still whirling with the evidence his senses presented him with. It seemed impossible, but then, as the ship stood out of danger to the eastward and he could order the gun crews stood easy, he gave himself time to think.

'Beat to windward, Mr Hill. You may reduce sail and have the men served dinner at their guns…'

'Look at that, sir! Do you see it?' Lieutenant Bourne cried incredulously. He pointed astern to where, beyond the anchored ships what looked like stone huts, low and almost part of the beach, showed beyond the anchored ships. There was a flagpole and from it flew the unmistakable colours of Republican France.

Drinkwater attempted to make sense of the events of the forenoon. At first he was bewildered but after a while he set himself the task of assembling the evidence as he saw it. He retired to his cabin as Melusine stood eastward under easy sail, making short tacks. On a piece of paper he began to list the facts and as he wrote he felt a quickening of his pulse. Under the stimulus of a glass or two his memory threw up odd, remembered facts that began to slot neatly together. He was seized by the conviction that his reasoning was running true and he sent for Singleton, explaining that he would land the missionary as soon as it was safe to do so but what appeared to be Frenchmen held the post at Nagtoralik.

'I want you to question Meetuck exhaustively, Mr Singleton. His attitude to the guns has been odd, so has his attitude to myself. You recollect he talked of "bad" white men,' Drinkwater explained and Singleton nodded.

'I do not expect he is able to tell the difference between British, French, Dutch or Russians, all of whom have frequented these seas from time to time. He could not be expected to comprehend a state of war exists between us and the men occupying his village.'

'You saw a village then?'

Singleton nodded. 'I saw twenty or so topeks and a number of kayaks drawn up on the beach.'

Drinkwater sighed, biting off a sarcasm that Singleton would have been better employed in the cockpit. The divine was no longer bound to serve there, he was free to go ashore when circumstances permitted, and, thank God, Melusine had suffered no casualties thanks to Drinkwater's timely withdrawal.

'Very well. Be a good fellow and see what information you can extort from our eskimo friend. I am almost certain that Ellerby, the master of the Nimrod, is in league with whoever is ashore there. He opened fire on us.'

Singleton nodded. 'I wish to land in a place untainted by such doings, Captain Drinkwater. I shall see what I can do.'

After he had gone Drinkwater again gathered his thoughts. Of course St Vincent had not guessed that the French would attempt to make settlements in Greenland. Drinkwater could only imagine what privations the inhabitants endured during the Arctic winter. But since the loss of Canada forty years earlier France had held St Pierre and Miquelon and it was not inconceivable that now she dominated Denmark, the country that claimed sovereignty over these remote coasts, France might attempt such a thing. St Vincent had mentioned Canada and had seemed certain that some moves were being made by Bonaparte's government or its agents, official or entrepreneurial, in these northern seas. 'This is no sinecure,' the Earl had said, 'and I charge you to remember that, in addition to protecting the northern whale-fleet you should destroy any attempt the French make to establish their own fishery…'

Was that what they were doing? It seemed possible. The Portuguese hunted the whale from island bases and, although the winter ice would close the bay, the collusion of a traitor like Ellerby to supply whales, blubber, oil and baleen to them began to make a kind of sense. He began to consider Ellerby and as he did so the figure of Waller insinuated itself into his mind. Conqueror was the other ship in the anchorage. Was Waller tied up with Ellerby? Had Conqueror also fired into Melusine unobserved?

Drinkwater thought back to Hull. Waller had seemed like Ellerby's familiar then. They had clearly acted together, Drinkwater concluded, as he recollected other things about the two men. Ellerby's hostility to Palgrave had resulted in a duel. It occurred to Drinkwater that whatever his prejudices against a man of Palgrave's stamp the quarrel might have been deliberately provoked. And there was Ellerby's affirmation at the Trinity House that he intended to fish for whales where the whim took him. 'Do not expect us to hang upon your skirts like frightened children,' he had said insolently. The recollection stimulated others. When Drinkwater had mentioned the menace of French privateers and the sailing of enemy ships for the Arctic seas he had intended a deliberate exaggeration, a hyperbole to claim attention. He remembered the look of surprise that the black-bearded Ellerby had exchanged with the master sitting next to him. That man had been Waller.

Later, in Bressay Sound, Waller had shown considerable interest in Drinkwater's intentions. It was with some bitterness that Drinkwater realised he had taken little note of these events at the time and had been hoist by his own petard to some extent. And there was something else, something much more significant and, to a seaman much less circumstantial. Waller's attitude to Drinkwater's offer of protection had been dismissive. How dismissive and how ineffectual that offer had been, now burned him with shame; but that was not the point. Waller had stated that the masters of whalers resented interference and when Drinkwater had nominated the rendezvous position Waller had smoothed the chart out. He had been on the left of Drinkwater, looking at the west Greenland coast, yet he and Ellerby intended to hunt whales off Spitzbergen!

The deception was simple. Ellerby, who had already attempted and failed to intimidate Drinkwater, took a back seat and sent Waller to the conference at Bressay Sound. Waller checked Drinkwater's methods and intentions, sounded him and gauged his zeal and ability before reporting back to Ellerby. Drinkwater cursed under his breath. It explained why, after his public humiliation leaving the Humber, Ellerby's Nimrod had behaved with exemplary regard for the convoy regulations. Yet Sawyers himself had remarked upon Ellerby's 'massive pride', spoken figuratively of David and Goliath and warned Drinkwater about Ellerby. For a fleeting second Drinkwater thought Sawyers too might be a part of the conspiracy, given his religious contempt for war and the rights and wrongs of the protagonists. Allied with the well-known Quaker liking for profit it made him an obvious suspect. But Faithful had been captured under Drinkwater's very nose and Sawyers's behaviour did not really give any grounds for such a suspicion.

Drinkwater sat back in his chair, certain that he had solved the riddle. For some reason the French had established a settlement on the Greenland coast in a position that was demonstrably ice-free, to use for shipping whale products back to France. The risks were high, given the closeness of the British blockade. How much easier to establish contact with British ship-masters who could facilitate the return of the cargoes to France via the good offices of a smuggler or two. From Hull the coast of the Batavian Republic was easily accessible and Drinkwater, like every other officer in the Navy, had heard that French soldiers preferred to march in Northampton boots, rather than the glued manufactures of their own country.

The provision of a powerful French privateer, more frigate than corsair, argued in favour of his theory. Encountered at sea she gave nothing away about official French involvement with the settlement, thus avoiding problems with the Danes, and her loss, if it occurred, would cause no embarrassment to First Consul Bonaparte.

Drinkwater nodded with satisfaction, convinced of Ellerby's treachery, almost certain of Waller's and then, with a start, recollected that Earl St Vincent would not so easily be satisfied.

A knock came at his door. Frey's head was poked round the door when Drinkwater called him in.

'Beg pardon, sir, but Mr Hill says to tell you that there's three ships crowding on sail astern.'

'Very well, Mr Frey. My compliments to the first lieutenant and he's to issue spirits to all hands and then we'll give these fellows a drubbin', eh?'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater sat a moment longer and considered the news. One of the ships would be Requin and the second almost certainly Nimrod. Was the third Conqueror or that damnable lugger? He sighed. He would have to go on deck to see. Whatever the third ship was, Drinkwater was uncomfortably aware that he was outnumbered, outgunned and might, in an hour, have followed Germaney and Rispin into the obscurity of death.

The third ship turned out to be the lugger, her big sails proving more efficient to windward than the other two. He had been right about them. They were indeed Requin and Nimrod. He studied them through his glass. Nimrod was astern of Requin, hiding behind the more numerous guns of the big privateer, but ready to bring the smashing power of those heavy carronades to bear upon a Melusine that, in her captain's mind's eye, was already a defenceless hulk under the Requin's guns.

Drinkwater summoned Singleton and requested his help after the action which, he confided, he expected to be bloody. He also asked about Meetuck's interrogation.

'It is a complicated matter, but there is much about a big, bearded man with eyes the colour of, er "shadowed ice", if that makes sense to you.'

'I am indebted to you.' Drinkwater smiled and Singleton felt an immense compassion for the cock-headed captain and his terrible profession. 'And now, Mr Singleton, I'd be further obliged to you if you would read us the Naval Prayer.' Drinkwater called the ship's company into the waist. Seamen and officers bared their heads and Obadiah Singleton read the words laid down to be used before an action.

'Oh most powerful and Glorious Lord God, the Lord of Hosts, that rulest and commandest all things…'

When it was over Singleton exceeded his brief and led the ship's company into the Lord's Prayer with its slurred syllables and loud, demotic haste. He finished with the Naval Prayer and Bourne, casting an agonised look at the closing enemy, hastily ordered the men back to their stations.

Scarcely less impatient, Drinkwater ordered more sail and turned to Hill, explaining his intentions and those he thought that would be the enemy's.

'Requin will seek to disable us, Mr Hill, aiming high from a range that will favour her long guns. The instant we are immobilised he will board while the Nimrod ranges alongside and pummels us with those damned carronades. He hasn't many of them, but I'll wager they'll be nasty.'

'Beg pardon, sir, but is Nimrod manned by a prize crew?'

'I don't believe she is, Mr Hill. I'm not certain, but I am sure that she's commanded by her British master, one Jemmett Ellerby who deserves to swing for his treachery'

'Jesus…'

'Very well. Now we will bear up and put the ship before the wind. Mr Bourne! A moment of your time. We will run down on the lugger. She is in advance of the other vessels and is doubtless ready to run alongside and pour in men when Requin boards. If we can hit her hard with round shot and canister I'll be happy. Then I intend to manoeuvre and avoid Requin, using our long guns to come up with Nimrod and disable her…' He outlined Ellerby's treachery for Bourne's benefit and saw the astonishment in his expression harden to resolution. Drinkwater did not say that he intended to destroy Nimrod in the belief that they stood little chance of ultimate survival after an action with Requin.

He knew now that word of Ellerby's treachery would spread like wildfire and his men fight better for the knowledge. He smiled at his first lieutenant and sailing master. 'Very well, gentlemen. Good luck. Now you may take post.'

They bore down on the lugger which attempted to sheer away. Drinkwater had decided that the jury rudder would take such strains that their manoeuvring might throw upon it. If the enemy did not shoot it away Melusine might be relied upon to handle reasonably well, despite the leaky condition a few months in the ice had caused. Her superior height and the fury of her fire cleared the lugger's deck and wounded her mainmast, but her dogged-ness worried Drinkwater. He was almost certain the officer commanding her had been trying to work round his stern, within range of his light carriage guns to attempt to hit the rudder. This intention to disable the British sloop argued that they knew all about her weak spot. Whatever their intent, the enemy's first move had been thwarted, now he had to deal with the real threat. The Requin was on their starboard bow, close hauled on the larboard tack. In a few minutes she would cross their bow, rake them and then bear up astern, holding the weather gauge and assailing their vulnerable rudder.

Drinkwater ordered the course altered to starboard, to bring Melusine's guns to bear as the two ships passed.

'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.'

A murmur of blasphemous 'Amens' responded to Hill's facetious remark.

Chapter Eighteen Ellerby

'Fire!'

The gun captains jumped back, jerking their lanyards and snapping the hammers on the gunlocks. Melusine's larboard six-pounders recoiled inboard against their breechings and as their crews moved forward to sponge and reload them the storm of shot from Requin's broadside hit them. Uncaring for himself Drinkwater watched its effect with anxiety, knowing his enemy possessed the greater weight of metal and the risk he had taken in turning back instead of running from his pursuers. But he knew any chase would ultimately lead to either damage to Melusine's exposed jury rudder or capture due to her being overtaken under her cut-down rig. Besides, he had already determined that Ellerby should reap the just reward of his treachery and that duty compelled him to exercise justice.

He therefore watched the smoke clear from the waist and saw, with a pang of conscience, that Bourne was down and perhaps eight or nine other men were either killed or badly wounded.

'Mr Gorton! Take command of the batteries!' Gorton crossed the deck and saw Bourne carried below as Drinkwater swung round to study Requin, already half a cable astern on the larboard quarter. The big privateer had been closed hauled on the wind and her gunnery had suffered from the angle to Melusine and the heel of her deck. Nevertheless it was a heavy price to pay for a single broadside. Drinkwater hoped the effects of his own shot, fired from the more level deck of a ship before the wind, had had greater effect. He could see Requin's sails begin to shiver as her captain brought her through the wind to bear down on Melusine's undefended stern. If her gunners were anything like competent they could catch the British sloop with a raking broadside.

Drinkwater turned resolutely forward and raised his glass. They were already very close to Nimrod. Ellerby's big figure jumped into the image lens with a startling clarity. Drinkwater closed the glass with a vicious snap.

'Starboard battery, make ready!' Quilhampton looked along the line of guns, his sword drawn. He nodded at Gorton.

'All ready, canister and ball.'

Drinkwater raised his speaking trumpet. 'Sail trimmers to their posts,' he turned to Hill. 'Bear up under his stern, Mr Hill, I want that broad side into his starboard quarter.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

They raced down upon the approaching whaler. Her bulk and ponderous motion gave her an appearance of greater force than she possessed. Her gunwhales were only pierced for three carronades on each side, but they were of a heavy calibre.

Drinkwater ran forward to the starboard cathead and raised the speaking trumpet again. The two ships were already level, bowsprit to bowsprit.

'Captain Ellerby! Captain Ellerby! Surrender in the King's name before you consign your men to the gallows!'

Ellerby's violent gesture was all that Drinkwater knew of a reply, although he saw Ellerby was yelling something. Whatever it was it was drowned in the roar of his guns, their wide muzzles venting red and orange flame at point-blank range.

Drinkwater nodded at Quilhampton and as Hill put the helm down and Melusine began to lean over as she turned, the starboard guns poured ball and canister into the whaler's quarter. Drinkwater fought his way aft, through the sweating gun crews and the badly maimed who had been hit by the langridge from Ellerby's cannon. A man bumped into him. He was holding his head and moaning surprisingly softly seeing that several assorted pieces of iron rubbish protruded from his skull. Drinkwater regained the quarterdeck and looked astern. Nimrod continued apparently unscathed on an easterly course.

'Put her on the wind, Mr Hill, and then lay her on the starboard tack!'

Hill began to give orders as the waist was cleared of the dead and wounded, the guns reloaded and run out again. The days of practice began to pay off. Each man attending to his allotted task, each midshipman and mate supervising his half-division or special party, each acting-lieutenant marking his subordinates, attending to the readiness of his battery while Hill, quietly professional on the quarterdeck, directed the trimming of the yards and the sheets to get the best out of the ship.

Melusine turned into the wind, then swung her bowsprit back towards the Nimrod, gathering speed as she paid off the starboard tack. Beyond the whaler, Drinkwater could see the Requin and was seized by a sudden feeling of intense excitement. He might, just might, be able to pull off a neat manoeuvre as Requin and Nimrod passed each other on opposite courses. He pointed the opening out to Hill.

'She'll do it, sir,' Hill said, after a moment's assessment.

'Let's hope so, Mr Hill.'

'Never a doubt, sir.'

Drinkwater grinned, aware that Melusine with her jury rudder and ice-scuffed hull was no longer the yacht-like 'corvette' that had danced down the Humber in the early summer.

They crossed Nimrod's stern at a distance of four cables. Not close enough for the six-pounder balls to have much effect on the whaler's massive scantlings. But there was no response from the Nimrod's carronades and Drinkwater transferred his attention to the Requin, whose bearing was opening up on the sloop's starboard bow.

'He's not going to let us do it, Mr Hill…' They had hoped to cross the Requin's stern too, and pour the starboard broadside into her but the privateer captain was no fool and was already turning his ship, to pass the British sloop on a reciprocal course. They would exchange broadsides as before…

'Up helm! Up helm!' Drinkwater shouted. 'Starbowlines, hold your fire!'

'Stand by the lee braces, there!' Hill bawled at his sail-trimmers, suddenly grasping Drinkwater's intention.

'Pick off the officers!' Drinkwater yelled at the midshipmen and marines in the tops. Melusine was already turning, an ominous creaking coming from the rudimentary steering gear as a terrific load came on it. Requin's guns roared as the Melusine's stern swung away from the arc of her fire, and although a shower of splinters flew from the taffrail the rudder stock and supporting timbers and spars were untouched.

'Steady her and then bring her round onto the larboard tack. So far so good.'

Drinkwater felt the exhilaration of having called the tune during the last half hour, despite the losses Melusine incurred. He was aware of a mood of high elation along the deck where the men joked and relived the last few moments with an outbreak of skylarking equally uncaring in the heady excitement for those below undergoing the agonies of Singleton's knife.

Melusine clawed back to windward while her two enemies came round in pursuit again. Already they were a mile away to the northwest and Drinkwater thought he could keep them tacking in his wake for an hour or two yet while he sought a new opening.

'That lugger's out of the running, sir,' offered Hill, pointing to the chassé marée half a mile away. Her crew had sweeps out and were pulling her desperately out of the path of the approaching British sloop which seemed to be bearing down upon them with the intention of administering the coup de grâce. In fact Drinkwater had long since forgotten about the lugger, although it had been no more than forty or fifty minutes since they had fired into her.

He nodded at Gorton with the good-natured condescension of a school-master allowing his pupils an indulgent catapult shot at sparrows. The larboard guns fired as they passed and several balls struck home, causing evident panic among the lugger's crew.

Drinkwater was seized by a sudden feeling that things had been too easy and recalled the dead and wounded. He turned and called sharply to the midshipman who was in attendance to the quarterdeck and whose obvious pleasure at still being alive had induced a certain foolish garrulousness with the adjacent gun crews.

'Mr Frey!'

'S… Sir?'

'Pray direct your attention to the surgeon, present him with my compliments and ascertain the extent of our losses. I am particularly concerned about Mr Bourne.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

After Frey had departed Drinkwater called for reports of damage and the carpenter informed him that they had a shot between wind and water, but that otherwise most of the enemy's fire had been levelled at personnel on the upper deck.

Pacing up and down Drinkwater tried to assess the state of his enemies. He had not succeeded in forcing Nimrod to surrender and his chances of annihilating the Requin were slight. But the whaler had failed to take advantage of a clear shot at Melusine''s stern. Did that argue her untrained crew had simply missed an opportunity or that, having fired into a King's ship they might have taken heed of Drinkwater's earlier hail?

Discipline was not so tight on a merchantman and a crew might be seduced from its nominal allegiance to their master by the threat of the gallows. Drinkwater considered the point. Did it also signify that Requin's fire had been at Melusine's deck, not at her rigging? In the place of the privateer Captain Drinkwater thought he might have wanted the naval vessel disabled from a distance, without material damage to the Requin herself.

Unless, argued Drinkwater, Requin's superiority was overestimated. Perhaps her crew were less numerous than he supposed and therefore to decimate the British had become a priority with Requin's commander.

'Wind's veering, sir.' Hill interrupted his train of thought.

'Eh?'

'Hauling southerly, sir.'

It was true. The wind had dropped abruptly and was chopping three, no, four points and freshening from the south-east. Drinkwater stared to the south, there was a further shift coming. In ten minutes or so the wind would be blowing directly off the mountain peaks to the southward. All the ships in the fiord would be able to reach with equal facility. It altered everything.

'That puts a different complexion on things, Mr Hill.'

Hill turned from directing a trimming of the yards and nodded his agreement. For a few moments Drinkwater continued pacing up and down. Then he came to a decision.

'Put the ship on an easterly course, Mr Hill. I want her laid alongside the Nimrod without further delay.'

It was a decision that spoke more of honour than commonsense, yet Drinkwater was put in an invidious position by his orders. It was doubtful if St Vincent could have foreseen the extent of the French presence in the Arctic, or of the treachery of Ellerby and, presumably, Waller. Yet Drinkwater's orders were explicit in terms of preventing any French ascendancy in the area. The red rag of honour was raised in encouragement; not to use his utmost endeavour was to court a firing squad as Byng had done fifty years before.

Requin's shot stove in the gunwhale amidships, dismounted a gun and wiped out two gun crews. The maintopmast was shot through and went by the board and the big privateer bore up under Melusine's stern. The single report of a specially laid gun appeared to annihilate the four men steering by the clumsy tiller.

Then Drinkwater realised that the rudder stock had been shot to pieces and the tiller merely fallen to the deck, taking the men with it. They picked themselves up unhurt, but Drinkwater's eyes met those of Hill and both men knew Melusine was immobilised. Two minutes later she bore off before the wind and with a jarring crash that made her entire fabric judder she struck Nimrod amidships.

'Boarders awa-a-way!' Mad with frustration and anger Drinkwater lugged out his borrowed sword and grabbed a pistol from his waistband and ran forward. Men left the guns and grabbed pikes from the racks by the masts and cutlasses gleamed in the sunshine that beat hot upon their backs as they crowded over the fo'c's'le and scrambled down onto the whaler's deck.

Quilhampton was ahead of Drinkwater and had reached the Nimrod's poop where Ellerby stood aiming his great brass harpoon gun into the Nimrod's waist as Drinkwater led his boarders aft. A cluster of men had gathered round him but the majority of his crew, over twenty men, were dodging backwards into whatever shelter the deck of the whaler offered, making gestures of surrender and calling for quarter.

'Mr Q! Stand aside, damn it!' Drinkwater called, his voice icy with suppressed fury. He saw Ellerby raise the huge gun, saw its barrel foreshorten as the piece was aimed at his own breast and heard the big Yorkshireman yell:

'Stand fast, Cap'n Drinkwater! D'you hear me! Stand fast!'

But Drinkwater was moving aft and saw the smoke from the gun. He felt the rush of air past his cheek as the harpoon narrowly missed him and a second later he was shoving Quilhampton aside.

Somebody had passed Ellerby a whale-lance and its long shaft kept Drinkwater at a distance. 'You traitorous bastard, Ellerby. Put that thing down, or by God, I'll see you swing…'

Drinkwater was forced backwards, stumbled and fell over as Ellerby, his face a mask of hatred, stabbed forward with the razor-sharp lance. Suddenly Ellerby had descended the short ladder from Nimrod's poop and stood over Drinkwater.

Aware of the quivering lance and the fanatical light in Ellerby's pale blue eyes Drinkwater could think only of the pistol he had half fallen on. Even as Ellerby stabbed downward Drinkwater rolled over, his thumb pulling the hammer back to full cock and his finger squeezing the trigger.

He felt the lance head cut him, felt the cleanness of the keen edge with a kind of detachment that told him that it was not fatal, that the lance had merely skidded round his abdomen, through the thin layer of muscles over his right ribs. He stood up, bleeding through the rent in his coat.

Ellerby was leaning drunkenly on the lance that, having wounded Drinkwater, had stuck in the deck. The beginnings of a roar of pain were welling up from him and streaming through his beard in a shower of spittle. Drinkwater could not see where the ball had entered EUerby's body, but as he crashed forward onto the deck its point of egress was bloodily conspicuous. His spine was shattered in the small of his back and the roar of impotence and pain faded to a wheezing respiration.

Drinkwater pressed his hand to his own flank and looked down into his fallen foe. EUerby's wound was mortal and, as the realisation spread men began to move again. The whale-ship crew threw down their weapons and James Quilhampton, casting a single look at Drinkwater, gave orders to take possession of the Nimrod.

Drinkwater turned, aware of blood warm on his hand. Before him little Mr Frey was trying to attract attention.

'Yes, Mr Frey? What is it?'

Frey pointed back across Melusine's deck to where the Requin could be seen looming out of the smoke.

'B… beg pardon, sir, but Mr Hill's compliments and the Requin is bearing up to windward.'

As if to lend emphasis to the urgency of Frey's message the multiple concussion of Requin's broadside filled the air, while at Drinkwater's feet Ellerby gave up the ghost.

Chapter Nineteen The Plagues of Egypt

Drinkwater felt the relief of the broad bandage securing the thick pledget to his side. He stared through the smoke trying to ignore Skeete who was tugging his shirt down after completing the dressing.

'That'll do, damn it!' he shouted above the noise of the guns.

'Aye, aye, sir.' Skeete grinned maliciously through his rotten teeth and Drinkwater tucked his shirt tails impatiently into his waistband still trying to divine the intentions of Requin's commander.

Leaving Lord Walmsley in command of Nimrod Drinkwater and the boarding party had returned to Melusine although the whaler and sloop still lay locked together. Requin lay just to windward, firing into the British ship with her heavier guns. At every discharge of her cannon they were swept by an iron storm. There were dead and dying men lying on the gratings where their mates had dragged them to be clear of the guns and from where the surgeon's party selected those worthy to be carried below to undergo the horrors of amputation, curettage or probing. The superficially wounded dressed themselves from the bandage boxes slotted into the bar-holes in the ship's capstans, and held against such an eventuality. Drinkwater saw that stained bandages had sprouted everywhere, that the larboard six-pounders were being served by men from both batteries and that Gorton was wounded.

The noise was deafening as the Melusines fired their cannon as fast as each gun could be sponged, charged and laid. Ropes and splinters rained down from aloft and below the mainmast three bodies lay where they had fallen from the top. Only the foremast stood intact, the foretopsail still filled with wind.

The stink of powder smoke, the noise and the confusion and above all the unbelievably hot sun combined with the sharp pain in his flank to exhaust Drinkwater. It crossed his mind to strike, if only to end the killing of his men and the intolerable noise.

Something of this must have been evident in his face, for Hill was looking at him.

'Are you all right, sir?' Hill shouted.

Drinkwater nodded grimly.

'Here sir…' Hill held out a flask and Drinkwater lifted it to his lips. The fiery rum stirred him as it hit the pit of his stomach.

'Obliged to you, Mr Hill…' He looked up at the spanker. It was too full of holes to be very effective, but an idea occurred to him.

'Chapel that spanker, Mr Hill, haul it up against the wind. Let us swing the stern round and try and put Nimrod between us and that bloody bastard to windward!'

A shower of splinters were struck from the adjacent rail and Drinkwater and Hill staggered from the wind of the passing ball, gasping for breath. But Hill recovered and bawled at the afterguard. Drinkwater turned. He must buy time to think. He saw Mount's scarlet coat approaching after posting his sentries over the prisoners aboard Nimrod.

'Mr Mount!'

'Sir?'

'Mr Mount, muster your men aft here…'

The katabatic squall hit them with sudden violence, screaming down from the heights to the south of them, streaking the water with spray and curling the seas into sharp, vicious waves in the time it takes to draw breath. The air at sea level in the fiord had been warmed for hours by the unclouded sun. Rising in an increasing mass, this air was replaced by cold air sliding down from its contact with the ice and snow of the mountain tops to spread out over the water as a squall, catching the ships unprepared.

Melusine's fore topgallant mast, already weighed down by the wreckage of the main topmast and its spars, carried away and crashed to leeward. But the chapelled spanker, hauled to windward by Hill's men, spun the sloop and her prize, while Nimrod's sails filled and tended to drive both ships forward so that their range increased from their tormentor.

But it was a momentary advantage for, hove to, the Requin increased her leeway until the strain on her own tophamper proved too much. Already damaged by Melusine's gunfire, her wounded foremast went by the board. Dragged head to wind and with her backed main yards now assisting her leeward drift, Requin presented her stern to Drinkwater and he was not slow to appreciate his change of fortune. A quick glance at Nimrod's sails and he saw immediately that he might swiftly reverse their turning movement and bring Melusine's battered larboard broadside to bear on that exposed stern.

'Belay that Hill!' He indicated the spanker. 'Brail up the spanker! Forrard there! Mr Comley! Foretopmast staysail sheets to windward…' His voice cracked with shouting but he hailed Nimrod.

'Nimrod! Nimrod 'hoy! Back your main and mizen tops'ls, Mr Walmsley, those whalemen that help you to be pardoned…' It was a crazy, desperate idea and relied for its success on a swifter reaction than the Requin's captain could command. Drinkwater waited in anxious impatience, his temper becoming worse by the second. He raised his glass several times and studied the Requin, each time expecting to see something different but all he could distinguish with certainty was that the big privateer was drifting down on them. And then Melusine and her prize began to turn again, swinging slowly round, rolling and grinding together as the continuing wind built up the sea.

The katabatic squall had steadied to a near gale and swept the smoke away. The sun still shone from a cloudless sky although its setting could not be far distant. The altered attitude of the ships had silenced their gunfire and the air was filled now with the scream of wind in rigging and the groaning of the locked ships.

Drinkwater shook his head to clear it of the persistent ringing that the recent concussion of the guns had induced and raised his speaking trumpet again.

'Larboard guns! Gun captains to lay their pieces at the centre window of the enemy's stern. Load canister on ball. Fire on the command and then independently!'

He saw Quilhampton in the waist acknowledge and wondered what had become of Gorton. He raised his glass, aware that Mount was still beside him awaiting the instructions he was in the process of giving when the squall hit them.

'Any orders, sir?' Mount prompted.

Drinkwater did not hear him. He was watching Melusine's swing and waiting for the raised arms that told him his cannon were ready. The last gun captain raised his hand. He waited a little longer. A quick glance along the gun breeches showed them at level elevation. They traversed with infinite slowness as Nimrod and Melusine cartwheeled… Now, by God!

'Fire!'

Noise, smoke and fire spewed from the ten six-pounders as sixty pounds of iron and ten pounds of small ball hit Requin's stern. Drinkwater was engulfed in the huge cloud of smoke which was as quickly rent aside by the wind. Then the six-pounders began independent fire, each captain laying his gun with care. Requin's stern began to cave in, beaten into a gaping wound, her carved gingerbread-work exploding in splinters.

'Sir! Sir!' Mr Frey was dancing up and down beside him.

'What the devil is it, Mr Frey?' Drinkwater suddenly felt anxious for the boy whose presence on the quarterdeck he had quite forgotten.

'She strikes, sir! She strikes!'

Drinkwater elevated his glance. The tricolour was descending from the gaff in hasty jerks.

'Upon my soul, Mr Frey, you're right!'

'Any orders, sir,' repeated the hopeful Mount.

'Indeed, Mr Mount. You and Frey take possession!'

Drinkwater jerked himself awake with a start. The short Arctic night was already over. His wound, pronounced superficial by an exhausted Singleton, throbbed painfully and his whole body ached in the chill of dawn. He rose and stared through the stern windows. Melusine and her assorted prizes lay at anchor in Nagtoralik Bay, the battered British sloop to seaward, a spring on her cable, covering any signs of trouble in the other ships. He had prize crews aboard the lugger Aurore, the Requin and the Nimrod, although the Nimrod had assumed the character of consort, having towed the helpless Melusine into the anchorage.

They had been met by boats from the whalers Conqueror and Faithful as the last of the daylight faded from the sky and the wounded ships had come to their anchors. It was clear from the expression of Captain Waller of the Conqueror that he had put an entirely different interpretation on the sight of Melusine towing in astern of Nimrod than was the case. His false effusions of congratulation had been cut short by Drinkwater arresting him and having him placed in the bilboes.

'Thou hast done right, Friend,' said Sawyers, holding out his hand. But Drinkwater gently dismissed the Quaker, pleading tiredness and military expediency for his bad manners. There would be time enough for explanations later, for the while it was enough that Faithful was recaptured and Requin a prize.

Drinkwater turned from the stern windows and slumped back in his chair. The low candle-flame in the lantern fell upon the muster book. In the two actions with the Requin he had lost a third of his ship's company. They were terrible losses and he mourned Lieutenant Bourne who had died of head wounds shortly after the Requin surrendered.

Hardly a man had not collected a scratch or a splinter wound. Little Frey had received a sword cut on his forearm which he had bravely bandaged until Singleton spotted the filthy linen and ordered the boy below. Tregembo had been knocked senseless and of the quarterdeck officers only Mount and Hill were unscathed.

He blew the sand off the muster book and closed it. Amid all the tasks that awaited him this morning he must bury the dead. His eyelids dropped. On deck Mr Quilhampton paced up and down, the watch ready at the guns. Mount was aboard Requin with a strong detachment of marines; Lord Walmsley commanded Nimrod and the Honourable Alexander Glencross the Conqueror.

He could allow himself an hour's sleep. He was aware that providence had chastened him but that luck had saved him. His head fell forward onto his breast and his ears ceased to ring from the concussion of guns.

'Will you receive the deputation now, sir?' Drinkwater nodded at Mr Frey's figure standing in the cabin doorway. It was frightening how fast the maturing process could work. Frey stood aside and half a dozen whale-men came awkwardly into the cabin under the escort of Mount's sergeant and two private marines.

'Well,' said Drinkwater coldly, 'who is to speak for you?'

A man was pushed forward and turned a greasy sealskin hat nervously in his hands. Addressing the deck he began to speak, prompted by shamefaced shipmates.

'B… beg pardon, yer honour…'

'What is your name?'

The man looked about him, as if afraid to confess to an identity that separated him from the anonymous group of whale-men.

'Give an answer to the captain!' Frey snapped with a sudden, surprising venom.

'…Jack Love, sir, beggin' yer pardon. Carpenter of the Nimrod, sir…'

'Go on, Love. Tell me what you have to say.'

'Well sir, we went along of Cap'n Ellerby, sir…'

'An' of Cap'n Waller, sir…' another piped up to a shuffling chorus of agreement.

'Pray go on.'

'Well sir, there was a fair profit to be made, sir, during the peace like…' He trailed off, implying that trade with the French under those circumstances was not illegal.

'In what did you trade, Love? Be so good as to tell me.'

'We brought out necessaries, sir… comestibles and took home furs…'

'Furs?'

'Aye, sir,' an impatient voice said and a small man shoved forward. 'Furs, sir, furs for the Frog army what Ellerby could sell at a profit…'

Drinkwater digested the news and a thought occurred to him.

'Do you know anything about two Hull whale ships that went missing last winter?' He looked round the half-circle of faces. Love's hand rubbed anxiously across his mouth and he shook his head, avoiding Drinkwater's eyes.

'We don't want no traitorous doin's, sir. We was coerced, like…' He fell silent. The word had been rehearsed, fed him by some sea-lawyer and he was lying, although Drinkwater knew there was not a shred of evidence to prove it. They would have profited under Ellerby, war or peace, so long as no supercilious naval officer stuck his interfering nose into their business.

Love seemed to have mustered his defences, prodded on by some murmuring behind him.

'When we realised what Ellerby was doing, sir, we wasn't 'aving none of it. We didn't obey 'im sir…' Drinkwater remembered Nimrod's failure to take full advantage of her position during the action.

'And Conqueror's people. How are they circumstanced?'

'We were coerced too, sir. Cap'n Waller threatened to withhold our proper pay unless we co-operated…'

Drinkwater stared at them. He felt a mixture of contempt and pity. He could imagine them under the malign influence of Ellerby and he remembered the ice-cold fanaticism in his eyes. The men began to shuffle awkwardly under his silent scrutiny. They were victims of their own weakness and yet they had caused the death of his men by their treachery.

'Would you wish to prove your loyalty to King and Country, then?' he asked, rising to his feet, the picture of a patriotic naval officer. Their eagerness to please, to fall in with his suggestion, verged on the disgusting.

'Very well. You will find work enough refitting the ships under the direction of my officers. You may go now. Return to your ships; but I warn you, the first man that fails to show absolute loyalty will swing.'

Their delight was manifest. It was the kind of thing they had hardly dared hope for. They nodded their thanks and shambled out.

'You may discharge the guard, sergeant,' Drinkwater addressed Mr Frey. 'Do you go to the two whale ships, Mr Frey, and ransack the cabins of Captain Ellerby and Captain Waller. I want the press-exemptions of every man-jack of those whale-men.'

Drinkwater regarded Waller with distaste. Without Ellerby he was pathetic and Drinkwater was conscious that, as a King's officer, he represented the noose to Waller. Somehow hanging was too just an end for the man. He had tried a brief, unconvincing and abject attempt at blustered justification which Drinkwater had speedily ended.

'It is useless to prevaricate, Captain Waller. Ellerby fired into a British man-o'-war wearing British colours and I am well aware, from information laid before me by men from Nimrod and Conqueror, that you and he were in traitorous intercourse with the enemy for the purposes of profit. That fact alone put you in breach of your oath not to engage in any other practice other than the pursuance of whale-fishing. What I wish to know, is to what precise purpose did you trade here and with whom?'

Waller's face had drained. Drinkwater slammed his fist on the cabin table. 'And I want to know now!'

Waller's jaw hung slackly. He seemed incapable of speech. Drinkwater sighed and rose. 'You may,' he said casually, 'consider the wisdom of turning King's Evidence. I do have enough testimony against you to see you swing, Waller…'

Drinkwater's certainty was overwhelmingly persuasive. Waller swallowed.

'If I turn King's Evidence…'

'Tell me the bloody truth, Waller, or by God I'll see you at the main yardarm before another hour is out!'

'It was Ellerby… he said it couldn't fail. We did well out of it during the peace. There seemed no reason not to go on. When the war started again, I tried to stop it. Aye, I said it weren't worth the risk like. But Ellerby said it were worth it. Happen I should have known'd better. Anyroad I went along wi'it…'

The dialect was thick now. Waller in the confessional was a man turned in upon himself, contemplating his weaknesses. Again Drinkwater felt that surge of pity for a fool caught up in the ambitions of a strong personality.

'Went along with what?' he asked quietly.

'Furs. French have this settlement. Just before Peace of Amiens Ellerby had run into a French privateersman, Jean Vrolicq. This Vrolicq offered us a handsome profit if we carried furs to England, like, and smuggled them across t'Channel. Easier, nay, safer than Vrolicq trying to run blockade. Furs for the French army taken to France in English smuggling boats…'

'Furs?' It was the second time Drinkwater queried the word, only this time he was more curious about the precise nature of the traffic and less preoccupied by the fate of the man before him.

'Aye, Cap'n. Furs for French army. They have bearskins on every cavalry horse, fur on them hussars…'

Drinkwater recollected the cartoons of the French army, the barefoot scarecrows motivated by Republican zeal… and yet he did not doubt Waller now. .

'We ran cargoes of fox, ermine, bear and hares… four hundred pounds clear profit on top o' what the fish brought in…'

'Very well, Captain Waller. You may put this in writing. I shall supply you with the necessaries.'

Drinkwater called the sentry and Waller was taken out.

It was a strange tale, yet, thinking back to his interviews with Earl St Vincent and Lord Dungarth he perceived the first strands of the mystery had been evident even then. That he had stumbled on the core of it was a mixture of good and bad luck that was compounded, for those who liked to think of such matters in a philosophical light, as the fortune of war.

He poured a glass of wine and listened to the noise around him. Melusine's jury rudder was being lifted and the blacksmith from Faithful was fashioning a yoke iron so that tiller lines might be fitted to its damaged head and so rigged for the passage home. Spars were being plundered from the Requin to refit the sloop and the Aurore was being put in condition to sail to Britain.

Mindful of the political strictures St Vincent had mentioned in respect of the whale fishery, Drinkwater was anxious that both Nimrod and Conqueror returned to the Humber. But his own desperate shortage of men prevented him from taking Requin home as a prize. He intended burning her before they left Nagtoralik Bay.

A knock at the cabin door preceded the entry of Obadiah Singleton. His blue jaw seemed more prominent as his face was haggard with exhaustion.

'Ah, Mr Singleton. What may I do to serve you?'

'I consider that I have completed my obligations to the sick, Captain Drinkwater. I shall leave them in the hands of Skeete…'

'God help them…'

'Amen to that. But there is work enough for me ashore…'

'You cannot be landed here, Mr Singleton, there is a French settlement…'

'Your orders were to land me, Captain Drinkwater. There are eskimos here. As for the French, I cannot think that you would invite them on board your ship…'

'My orders, Mr Singleton,' Drinkwater replied sharply, 'are to extirpate any French presence I find in Arctic waters. To that end I must root out and take prisoner any military presence ashore.'

'I think your concern for your own ship will not permit that,' Singleton said with a final certainty.

'What the devil d'you mean by that?'

'I mean that Mr Frey, whom you sent ashore for water, has returned with information that leads me to suppose the poor devils ashore here are afflicted with all the plagues of Egypt, Captain Drinkwater.'

Chapter Twenty Greater Love Hath no Man

They had assembled all the French prisoners ashore prior to burning the Requin. Flanked by Mount and Singleton and escorted by a file of marines, Drinkwater inspected the hovels that made up the French settlement. Drawn apart from the privateersmen and regarded with a curious hostility by a crowd of eskimos, an untidy, starveling huddle of men watched their approach cautiously. They wore the remnants of military greatcoats, their feet bound in rags and their shoulders covered in skins. Most hid their faces. They were Bonaparte's Arctic 'colonists'.

Explanation came slowly, as though the revelation of horror should not be sudden. They were military ghosts, two companies of Invalides, a euphemism for the broken remnants of Bonaparte's vaunted Egyptian and Syrian campaigns. A handful of men who had regained France after the desertion of Bonaparte and the assassination of his successor Kleber; men who had returned home from annexed Egypt where their accounts of what had happened and the decay of their bodies were a double embarrassment to the authorities.

Drinkwater remembered the purulent eyes of the men he had fought hand to hand off Kosseir on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. Perhaps some of these poor devils had been in the garrison that had so gallantly resisted the British squadron under Captain Lidgbird Ball. He surveyed the diseased remnants of French ambition who had been trepanned to Greenland in an attempt to form a trading post to acquire furs for the French army. Here they could supply the voracious wants of the First Consul's armies at the expense of degrading the eskimos, exchanging liquor for furs, liquor that came through the agency of British whalers.

Under Drinkwater's scrutiny several of the Frenchmen drew themselves up, still soldiers, such was the power of military influence. The rags fell away from their faces. The ravages of bilharzia, trachoma-induced blindness, skin diseases, frostbite and God alone knew what other contagions burned in them.

Drinkwater turned aside, sickened. He met the eyes of Singleton. 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,' said the missionary softly.

'Where is this man Vrolicq?' Drinkwater muttered through clenched teeth.

Mount had the privateer's commander and officers quartered in a wretched stone and willow-roofed hovel. They stood blinking in the pale sunshine that filtered through a thin overcast and stared at the British officers.

Jean Vrolicq, corsair, republican opportunist and war-profiteer regarded Drinkwater through dark, suspicious eyes. He was a small man whose hardiness and energy seemed somehow refined, as though reduced to its essence in these latitudes, and disdaining a larger body. His face was bearded, seamed and tanned, his eyes chips of coal. Drinkwater recognised the man who had wounded him during their first action with the Requin.

'So, Captain, today you remember you have prisoners, eh?' Vrolicq's English was good, his accent suggesting a familiarity with Cornwall that was doubtless allied to the practice of 'free trade'.

'Tell me, M'sieur, was this trade you had with Captain Ellerby profitable to yourself?'

Perhaps Vrolicq thought Drinkwater was corruptible instead of merely curious, angling for a speculative cargo aside from his duty.

'But yes, Captain, and also for the carrier.' The man grinned rapaciously. 'You British are expert at making laws from which profits can be made with ease. You are equally good at breaking your own laws, which is perhaps why you make them, yes? Ellerby, he traded furs for cognac, his friends traded gold for cognac. We French now have gold in France and cognac in Greenland. Ellerby has furs which he also trades. To us French. So we have gold, cognac and furs. Ellerby has a little profit. It is clever, yes? And because your King George has a wise Parliament who all like a little French cognac' The disdain was clear in Vrolicq's voice. But it was equally clear why Ellerby had not wanted Drinkwater's presence in the Greenland Sea, yet needed his protection in soundings off the British coast where an unscrupulous naval officer might board him in search of men and discover he had tiers of furs over his barrels of whale blubber. If Ellerby's plan had not been disrupted he and Waller would have been at the rendezvous off Shetland at the end of September and allowed Drinkwater to escort them safely into the Humber. And how assiduously Drinkwater had striven to afford Ellerby the very protection he needed for his nefarious trade!

'It is quite possible,' said Vrolicq, breaking into Drinkwater's thoughts, 'that you might yourself profit a little…'

'Go to the devil!' snapped Drinkwater, turning away and striding down the beach towards the waiting boat.

Drinkwater stood on the quarterdeck wrapped in the bear-skin given him by the officers. It was piercingly cold, the damp tendrils of a fog reaching down into the bay from the heights surrounding them. The daylight was dreary with mist; the Arctic summer was coming to its end.

'Boat approaching, sir.' Drinkwater acknowledged Frey's report and watched one of the Nimrod's boats, commandeered to replace Melusine's losses, as it was pulled out from the curve of dark sand and shingle that marked the beach at Nagtoralik. He waited patiently while Obadiah Singleton clambered over the rail, nodded him a greeting, then ushered him below to the sanctuary of the cabin.

'Well Obadiah, you received my note. I am about to sail. All the ships are ready and the wind, what there is of it, will take us clear of the bay as soon as this fog lifts. This is the last chance to change your mind.'

'That is out of the question, Nathaniel.' Singleton smiled his rare smile. All pretence at rank had long since vanished between the two men. Singleton's determination to stay and minister to the human flotsam on the shores of the bay ran contrary to all of Drinkwater's instincts. He could not quite believe that Singleton would remain. 'Oh, I know what you intend to say. "Remember whom you are to cope withal; a sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways, a scum of Bretagnes, and base lackey peasants whom their o'er cloyed country vomits forth to desperate ventures, and assured destruction…" King Richard the Third, Nathaniel. That last clause is most appropriate. Scarcely any will survive the coming winter. There is evidence of typhus…'

'Typhus!'

'Yes, what you call the ship or gaol fever…'

'I know damned well what typhus is…'

'Well then you know that as a divine I should urge you to take mercy upon them, to have compassion even at the risk of infecting your ship's company. As a physician I warn you against further contact with them. There is not only typhus, there is…'

'I know, I know. I do not wish to reflect upon the whole catalogue of ills that infests this morbid place. So you advise me to take no action. To leave them here to rot.'

'This is the first time, Nathaniel, that I have seen you indecisive.' Singleton smiled again.

'There is no need to enjoy the experience, damn it!'

'Forgive me. Perhaps one thing I have learned during our acquaintance is that true decisions are seldom made upon philosophical lines. Sometimes the burdens of your position are too great for one man to bear. It is God's will that I surrogate for your conscience.'

'And what will happen to you, Obadiah? Eh?'

'I do not know. Let us leave that to God. You were bidden to land me upon the coast of Greenland. You have done your duty.'

'And Vrolicq?'

'Vrolicq is an agent of the devil. Leave him to me and to God.'

'I have already offered you whatever you wish for out of the ships. Surely you till take my pistols…'

'Thank you, no. I have taken such necessaries as I thought desirable out of the Recjuin before you fired her yesterday. I have everything I need.' He paused. 'I am at peace, Nathaniel. Do not worry on my account. It is you who work for implacable masters. It was Christ's essential gospel that we should love our enemies.'

'I do not understand you, damned if I do.'

'John, fifteen, verse thirteen,' he held out his hand. 'Farewell, Nathaniel.'

'Have you any questions, gentlemen?'

The assembled officers shook their heads. Sawyers of Faithful had loaned his speksioneer, Elijah Pucill, to assist Mr Quilhampton in bringing home Nimrod. Gorton was sufficiently recovered to command Conqueror, seconded by Lord Walmsley. Sawyers's son was assisting Glencross in the Aurore. The crews of the two whalers had been tempered by prize crews from Melusine while those elements whose loyalty might still be in doubt were quartered aboard the sloop herself. Drinkwater dismissed them, each with a copy of his orders. They filed out of the cabin. Captain Sawyers hung back.

'You wished to speak to me, Captain Sawyers?'

'Aye, Friend. We have both been busy men during the past five days. I wished for a proper opportunity to express to thee my gratitude. I have thanked God, for the force of thine arm was like unto David's when he slew Goliath, yet I know that to be an instrument of God's will can torture a man severely.'

Drinkwater managed a wry smile at Sawyers's odd reasoning. 'I am considering it less hazardous to be surrounded by ice than by theologians. But thank you.'

'I have left thy servant, the Cornishman, a quantity of furs. Perhaps thou might find some use for them better than draped over the horses of the un-Godly.'

Drinkwater grinned. Some explanation of Sawyers's activities in the last few days suggested itself to Drinkwater. It occurred to him that Sawyers knew all along of Ellerby's treachery but his religious abhorrence of war enabled him to overlook it. Besides, now the shrewd Quaker had most of Nimrod's cargo of furs safely stowed aboard the Faithful.

'What have you entered in your log book concerning your capture?'

'That I was taken by a French privateer, conducted to an anchorage and liberated by thyself. I have no part in thy war beyond suffering its aggravations.'

'Good. It was not my intention to advertise this treachery. Much distress will be caused thereby to the families of weak and defenceless men.'

Sawyers raised an eyebrow. 'Canst thou afford such magnanimity? Seamen gossip, Friend.'

'Captain Sawyers, if you were to come upon two unmanned whalers anchored inside the Spurn Head, would you ensure they came safely home to their owners?'

A gleam of comprehension kindled in Sawyers's eyes. 'You mean to press the crews when you have anchored the ships?'

'There are a few of your men already on board to claim salvage. I am not asking you to falsify your log, merely amend it.'

Sawyers chuckled. 'A man who cannot write a log book to his own advantage is not fit to command a ship, Captain Drinkwater.' He paused. 'But what advantage is there to thee?'

Drinkwater shrugged. 'I have a crew again.'

'Patriotism is an unprofitable business and thy acumen recommends thee for other ventures. But have you considered the matter of their press exemptions?'

'I had them collected from the two ships. They burned with Requin.'

'And Waller?' asked Sawyers, raising an eyebrow in admiration.

Drinkwater smiled grimly. 'Ellerby may take the burden of treachery dead. Waller can expiate his greed if not his treason by serving the King along with the rest of the whale-men. It is better for them to dance at the end of the bosun's starter rather than a noose. Besides, as Lord St Vincent was at pains to point out to me, loss of whale-men means loss of prime seamen. It seems a pity to deprive His Majesty of seamen to provide employment for the hangman.'

Sawyers laughed. 'I do not think that it is expiation, Friend. It seems to be immolation.'

Drinkwater lingered a while after the Quaker had departed, giving him time to return to Faithful, then he reached for his hat and went on deck to give the order to weigh anchor.

Drinkwater stared astern. Gulls dipped in Melusine's wake and beside him the jury rudder creaked. As if veiling itself the coast of Greenland was disappearing in a low fog. Already Cape Jervis had vanished.

Far to the west, above the fog bank, disembodied by distance and elevation, the nunataks of the permanent ice-cap gleamed faintly, remote and undefiled by man.

Drinkwater turned from his contemplation and began to pace the deck. He thought of Meetuck who had disappeared for several days, terrified of the guns that rumbled and thundered over his head. He had reappeared at last, driven into the open by hunger and finally landed a hero among his own people. He remembered the thirty odd Melusines that would not return, Bourne among them. And the survivors; Mr Midshipman Frey, Gorton, Hill, Mount and James Quilhampton. And little Billie Cue about whose future he must write to Elizabeth.

He looked astern once more and thought of Singleton, ministering to the sick veterans of an atheist government who were corrupting the eskimos. Singleton would die attempting to alleviate their agonies and save their souls whilst proclaiming the existence of a God of universal love.

There was no sense in it. And yet what was it Singleton had said?

'Mr Frey!'

'Sir?'

'Be so kind as to fetch me a Bible.'

'A Bible, sir?'

'Yes, Mr Frey. A Bible.'

Frey returned and handed Drinkwater a small, leatherbound Bible. Drinkwater opened it at St John's Gospel, Chapter Fifteen, verse thirteen. He read:

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Then he remembered Singleton's muttered quotation as they had stared at the French veterans: 'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.'

'It's all a question of philosophy, Mr Frey,' he said suddenly, looking up from the Bible and handing it back to the midshipman.

'Is it, sir?' said the astonished Frey.

'And the way you look at life.'

Chapter Twenty-One The Nore

'Square the yards, Mr Hill, and set t'gallants.'

Drinkwater watched the departing whalers beat up into the Humber, carried west by the inrush of the flood tide. He had at least the satisfaction of having obeyed his orders, collecting the other ships, the Earl Percy, Provident, Truelove and the rest, at the Shetland rendezvous. He had now completed their escort to the estuary of the River Humber and most of them were taking advantage of the favourable tide to carry them up the river against the prevailing wind. Only Nimrod, Conqueror and Faithful remained at anchor in Hawke Road while Sawyers shipped his prize crews on board to sail the remaining few miles to the mouth of the River Hull.

Amidships Drinkwater watched Mr Comley's rattan flick the backsides of reluctant whalemen into Melusine's rigging. Their rueful glances astern at their former ships tugged at Drinkwater's conscience. It had been a savage and cruel decision to press the crews of the Nimrod and Conqueror, but at least his action would appear to have the sanction of common practice and no-one would now hang for the treachery of Jemmett Ellerby. The irony of his situation did not escape him. A few months earlier he had given his word that no-one would be pressed from his convoy by a marauding cruiser captain intent on recruiting for the Royal Navy here off the Spurn. Now he had done the very thing he deplored. He did not think that waterfront gossip in Hull would examine his motives deeply enough to appreciate the rough justification of his action. But it was not local opinion that he was worried about.

He had collected all his scattered parties now, after the weary voyage home from Greenland. Aboard Melusine the watches had been reduced to the drudgery of regular pumping and Drinkwater himself had slept little, his senses tuned to the creaks and groans of the jury steering gear, every moment expecting it to fly to pieces under the strain. But it had held as far as Shetland where they had again overhauled it as the rest of the whalers prepared to sail south, and it would hold, God-willing, until they reached the Nore.

They passed Faithful as they stood out of the anchorage. She was already getting under way and Drinkwater raised his hat in farewell to Sawyers on his poop. The Quaker stood to make a small fortune from the voyage now that the 'salvage' of Nimrod and Conqueror could be added to his tally of profits on baleen, whale oil and furs. Drinkwater wished him well. He had given an undertaking to drop a few judicious words to any of the Hull ship-owners who sought to press the Government for reparation for the excessive zeal of a certain Captain Drinkwater in pressing their crews. Drinkwater was aware of the benefit of a precedent in the matter.

But there were other matters to worry Drinkwater. Sawyers's reassurances now seemed less certain as Melusine stood out to sea again. It was true Drinkwater had spent nearly two days in composing his confidential despatch to the Secretary of the Admiralty. In addition he had sent Mr Quilhampton to Hull on board the Earl Percy to catch the first London mail, a Mr Quilhampton who had been carefully briefed in case he was required to answer any question by any of their Lordships. Drinkwater doubted there would be trouble about the pressing of the whalemen. The Admiralty were not fussy about where they acquired their seamen. But what of Waller? Supposing Drinkwater's decision was misinterpreted? What of his leaving to their fate those pitiful French 'invalides'? The Admiralty had not seen their condition. To the authorities they might appear more dangerous than Drinkwater knew them to be. As for Singleton, what had appeared on his part of an act of tragic courage, might now seem oddly fatuous. Drinkwater had carried a letter from Singleton to the secretary of his missionary society and had himself also written, but God alone knew what would become of the man.

'She's clear of the Spit, sir.'

'Very well, Mr Hill, a course for The Would, if you please.'

Drinkwater turned from contemplating the play of light upon the shipping anchored at the Nore. He had been thinking of the strange events of the voyage and the clanking of Melusine's pumps had reminded him of his old dream and the strange experience when he had been lost in the fog. He came out of his reverie when Mr Frey reported the approach of a boat from Sheerness. Instinctively Drinkwater knew it carried Quilhampton, returning from conveying Drinkwater's report to Whitehall. He sat down and settled a stern self-control over the fluttering apprehension in his belly.

The expected knock came at the door. 'Enter!'

Mr Quilhampton came in, producing a sealed packet from beneath his boat cloak.

'Orders, sir,' he said with indecent cheerfulness. Drinkwater took the packet. To his horror his hand shook.

'What sort of reception did you receive, Mr Q?' he asked, affecting indifference as he struggled with the wax seals.

'They kept me kicking my heels all morning, sir. Then the First Lord sent for me, sir. Rum old devil, begging your pardon. He sat me down, as polite as ninepence, and asked a lot of questions about the action in Nagtoralik Bay, the force of the Requin, sir… I formed the impression he was judging the force opposed to us… then he got up, paced up and down and looked at the trees in the park and turned and dismissed me. Told me to wait in the hall. Kept me there two hours then a fellow called Templeton, one of the clerks, took me into the copy-room and handed me these,' he nodded at the papers which had suddenly fallen onto the table as Drinkwater succeeded in detaching,the last seal.

'It was rather odd, sir…'

'What was?' Drinkwater looked up sharply.

'This cove Templeton, sir. He said, well to the best of my recollection he said: "You've smoked the viper out, we knew about him in May when we intercepted papers en route to France, but you caught him red-handed".' Quilhampton shrugged and went on. 'Then he asked after Lieutenant Germaney and seemed rather upset that he'd gone over the standing part of the foresheet…'

But Drinkwater was no longer listening. He began to read, his eyes glancing superficially at first, seeking out the salient phrases that would spell ruin and disgrace.

The words danced before his eyes and he shuffled the papers, looking from one to another. Quilhampton watched, uncertain if he was dismissed or whether further intelligence would be required from him.

With the silent familiarity of the trusted servant Tregembo entered the cabin from the pantry. He held a filled decanter.

'Cap'n's got some decent wine, at last, zur,' he said to Quilhampton conversationally. 'Happen you've a thirst since coming from Lunnon, sur…'

Quilhampton looked from the Cornishman's badly scarred face to the preoccupied Drinkwater and made a negative gesture.

'Give him a glass, Tregembo, and pour me one too…'

It was not unqualified approval. St Vincent considered Waller should have been handed over:

Bearing in mind the political repercussions upon the sea-faring community of Kingston-upon-Hull I reluctantly endorse your actions, acknowledging the extreme measures you were forced to adopt and certain that service in any of His Majesty's ships under your command will bring the man Waller to an acknowledgement of his true allegiance…

Drinkwater was aware of a veiled compliment. Perhaps Dungarth's hand was visible in that. But he was not sure, for the remainder of the letter was pure St Vincent:

It is not, and never has been, nor shall be, the business of the Royal Navy to make war upon sick men, and your anxieties upon that score should be allayed. The monstrous isolation which the Corsican tyrant has condemned loyal men to endure, only emphasises the nature of the wickedness against which we are opposed…

Drinkwater relaxed. He had been believed. He picked up the other papers somewhat absently, sipping the full glass Tregembo had set before him.

…I am commanded by Their Lordships to acquaint you of the fact that the condition of the sloop under your command being, for the present unfit for further service, you are directed to turn her over to the hands of the Dockyard Commissioner at Chatham and to transfer your ship's company entire into the frigate Antigone now fitting at that place…

'Good Heavens, James. I am directed to turn the ship's company over to the Antigone! Our old prize from the Red Sea!'

''Tis a small world, sir. Does that mean Melusine is for a refit?'

Quilhampton's anxiety for his own future was implicit in the question. Drinkwater nodded. 'I fear so, James.'

'And yourself, sir…?'

'Mmm?' Drinkwater picked up the final sheet and the colour left his face. 'God bless my soul!'

'What is it, sir?'

'I am posted to command her. Directly into a thirty-six gun frigate, James!'

'Posted, sir? Why my heartiest congratulations!'

Drinkwater looked at his commission as a Post-Captain. It was signed by St Vincent himself, a singular mark of the old man's favour.

'About bloody time too, zur,' muttered Tregembo, refilling the glasses.