1805

Chapter One The Club-Haul

'Sir! Sir!'

Midshipman Frey threw open the door of the captain's cabin with a precipitate lack of formality. The only reply to his urgent summons from the darkness within was the continuous creaking of the frigate as she laboured in the heavy sea.

'Sir! For God's sake wake up, sir!'

The ship staggered as a huge wave broke against her weather bow and sluiced over the rail into her waist. It found its way below by a hundred different routes. Outside the swinging door the marine sentry swore, fighting the impossibility of remaining upright. Frey stumbled against the leg of a chair overset by the violence of the ship's movement. He found the cabin suddenly illuminated as a surge of white water hissed up under the counter and reflected the pale moonlight through the stern windows. Mullender, the captain's steward, would catch it for not dropping the sashes if one of the windows was stove in, the boy thought irrelevantly as he shoved the chair aside and groped to starboard where, over the aftermost 18-pounder gun, the captain's cot swung.

'Sir! Please wake up!'

Frey hesitated. Pale in the gloom, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater's legs stuck incongruously out of the cot. Still in breeches and stockings they seemed appendages not consonant with the dignity of a post-captain in the Royal Navy. Frey reached out nervously then drew back hurriedly as the legs began to flail of their own accord, responding to the squealing of the pipes at the hatchways and the sudden cry for all hands taken up by the sentries at their unstable posts about the ship.

'Eh? What the devil is it? Is that you, Mr Frey?'

The cot ceased its jumping and Captain Drinkwater's face, haggard with fatigue, peered at the midshipman. 'Why was I not called before?'

'I had been calling you for some time…'

'What's amiss?' The captain's tone was sharp.

'Mr Quilhampton's respects…'

'What is it?'

'We've to tack, sir. Immediately, sir. Mr Quilhampton apprehends we are embayed!'

'God's bones!' The sleep drained from Drinkwater's face with the dawning of comprehension. Beyond the bulkhead the ship had come to urgent life with the dull thunder of a hundred pairs of feet being driven on deck by the bosun's mates.

'My hat and cloak, Mr Frey. On deck at once, d'you hear me!' Drinkwater forced his feet into his buckled shoes and tugged on his coat, stumbling to leeward as the frigate lurched again. He shoved past the midshipman and swore as his shin connected with the overset chair-leg. He swore a second time as he bumped into the marine sentry sliding across the deck in an attempt to avoid part of the larboard watch tumbling up from the berth-deck below via the after-ladder.

By the time Frey had collected the captain's hat and cloak he emerged onto an almost deserted gun-deck. The purser's dips glimmered, casting dull gleams on the fat, black breeches of the double-lashed 18-pounder cannon and the bright-work on the stanchions. A few round shot remained in the garlands, but most had been dislodged and rolled down to leeward where they rumbled up and down amid a dark swirl of water. Mr Frey paused in the creaking emptiness of the berth-deck.

'All hands means you too, younker. Get your arse on deck instanter, God damn you!'

Frey doubled up the ladder with a blaspheming Lieutenant Rogers at his heels. The first lieutenant had only roused himself from a drunken slumber with the greatest difficulty. He did not like being shown up in front of the whole ship's company and Frey's belated appearance served to cover his tardiness.

The first thing Drinkwater noticed when he reached the upper deck was the strength of the wind. He had gone below less than two hours earlier with the ship riding out a south-westerly gale under easy sail on the larboard tack. Hill, the sailing master, had observed their latitude earlier as being ten leagues south of the Lizard and the ship was holding a course of west-north-west. Even allowing for considerable leeway Drinkwater could not see that Mr Quilhampton's fears were justified. He had left orders to be called at eight bells when, with both watches, they could tack to the southward and hope to come up with the main body of the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis somewhere west of Ushant.

Quilhampton's face was suddenly in front of him. The strain of anxiety was plain even in the moonlight; clear too was the relief at Drinkwater's appearance.

'Well, Mr Q?' Drinkwater shouted at the dripping figure.

'Sir, a few minutes ago the scud cleared completely. I'm damned certain I saw land to leeward… or something confounded like it.'

'Have you seen the twin lights of the Lizard?' Drinkwater shouted, a worm of uncertainty uncoiling itself in his belly.

'Half an hour ago we couldn't see much, sir. Heavy, driving rain…'

'Then it cleared like this?'

'Aye, sir, and the wind veered a point or two…'

It was on Drinkwater's tongue to ask why Quilhampton had not called him, but it was not the moment to remonstrate. He crossed quickly to the binnacle, aware by the grunts of the helmsmen that they were having the devil of a time holding the frigate on course. A glance confirmed his fears. The veering wind had cast the ship's head to the north-west and if that latitude was in error he did not dare contemplate further.

'Thank you, Mr Frey.' He flung the boat-cloak over his shoulder and very nearly lost it in the violence of the wind. The scream of air rushing through the rigging had a diabolical quality that Drinkwater did not ever remember hearing before in a quarter-century of sea-service. He looked aloft. Both the fore and main topsails were hard-reefed and a small triangle of a spitfire staysail strained above the fo'c's'le. Even so the ship was over-canvased, almost on her beam ends as spume tore over her deck stinging the eyes and causing the cheeks to ache painfully.

'Look, sir! Look!'

Quilhampton's arm pointed urgently as he fought to retain his footing on the canting deck. Drinkwater slithered to the lee rail as the look-out took up the cry.

'Land! Land! Land on the lee bow!'

Rogers cannoned into him. 'She'll never stay in this sea, sir!'

Drinkwater smelt the rum on his stale breath, but agreed with him. 'Aye, Sam, and there's no room to wear.' He paused, gathered his breath and shouted his next order so there could be no mistake. 'We must club-haul!'

'Club-haul? Jesus!'

'Amen to that, Mr Rogers,' Drinkwater said sarcastically. 'Now, Mr Q. D'you get the mizen topmen and the gunners below to rouse out the top cable in the starboard tier. Open the port by number nine gun and haul it forward outside all. Clap it on the starboard sheet-anchor. Ah, Mr Gorton,' Drinkwater addressed the second lieutenant who had come up with the master. 'Mr Gorton, you on the fo'c's'le with the bosun. Get Q's cable made fast and the anchor cleared away. I shall rely upon you to let the anchor go when I give the word.' Gorton turned away with Quilhampton and both officers hurried off.

'I hope your confidence ain't misplaced, sir.' Rogers stared after the figures of the two young men.

'Both demonstrated their resource in the Greenland Sea, Sam. Besides, I want you amidships to pass my orders in case they ain't heard.' Drinkwater refused to be drawn by Roger's touchiness respecting his two juniors. For all his obvious disabilities Drinkwater had dragged Lieutenant Rogers off the poop of an ancient bomb-vessel and placed him on the quarterdeck of one of the finest frigates in the service, so he had little cause to complain of partiality. 'See that the men are at their stations and all ropes will run clear.' That at least was something Rogers would do superbly and with a deal of invective to spur the men's endeavours.

'Well, Mr Hill?'

'I've told two of my mates off into the hold to sound the well and Meggs is mustering a party at the pumps. If you open number nine port she'll be taking water all the while.'

'That,' replied Drinkwater shouting, 'is a risk we'll have to take.'

There was little either captain or master could do until the preparations were completed. The ship was rushing through the water at a speed that, under other circumstances, they would have been proud of.

'Is it Mount's Bay, d'you think?' Hill's concern was clear. He, too, was worried about that latitude. 'We haven't sighted the Lizard lights, sir.'

'No.' Drinkwater hauled himself gingerly into the leeward mizen rigging and felt the wind catch his body as a thing of no substance. He clung on grimly and stared out to starboard. The thin veil of cloud which showed the gibbous moon nearly at the full was sufficient to extend a pale light upon the waves as the wind tore their breaking crests to shreds and sent the spume downwind like buckshot. With the greatest difficulty he made out what might have been the grey line of a cliff out on the starboard beam. He could only estimate its distance with difficulty. Perhaps a mile, perhaps not so much.

Then the moon sailed into a clear patch of sky. It was suddenly very bright and what Drinkwater saw caused his mouth to go dry.

A point or two on their starboard bow, right in their track as they sagged to leeward, rose a huge grey pinnacle of rock. In the moonlight its crags and fissures stood out starkly, and at its feet the breakers pounded white. But in the brief interval in the cloud Drinkwater became aware of something else. Atop the rock, perched upon its highest crag, a buttress and wall reared sheer from the cliff. Immediately he knew their position and that the danger to the ship and her company was increased a hundredfold. For beneath the ancient abbey on St Michael's Mount, stretching round onto their windward bow, the breakers pounded white upon the Mountamopus shoal.

There are few periods of anxiety greater in their intensity than that of a commander whose ship is running into peril, waiting for his people to complete their preparations. On the one hand experience and judgement caution him not to attempt a manoeuvre until everything is ready; upon the other instinct cries out to be released into immediate action. Yet, as the sweat prickled between his shoulder blades, Drinkwater knew that to act hastily was to court disaster. If the ship failed in stays there would be no second chance. It was useless to speculate upon the erroneous navigation that had brought them to this point, or why Rogers stank of rum, or, indeed, whether the two were connected. All these thoughts briefly crossed his mind in the enforced hiatus that is every captain's lot once orders have been given.

He looked again at the mount. The moon had disappeared now under a thick mantle of cloud, but they were close enough for its mass to loom over them, an insubstantial-looking lightening of the darkness to leeward, skirted about its base by the breakers that dashed spray half-way up its granite cliffs. This sudden proximity made his heart skip and he looked along the waist where men had been clustered in a dark group, hauling on the messenger that pulled the heavy cable along the ship's side. He could imagine their efforts being thwarted by the protruberances of the channels, the dead-eyes, the bead-blocks and all the other rigging details that at this precise moment seemed so much infernal nuisance. God, would they never finish?

The wind shrieked mercilessly and the frigate lay over so that he felt a terrible concern for that open gun-port into which, without a shadow of doubt, the sea would be sluicing continuously. He was unable to hear any noise above the storm and hoped that the pumping party were hard at it.

'Ready, sir!'

After the worry the word came aft and took him by surprise. It was Rogers, his face a pale blur of urgency abruptly illuminated as, again, the cloud was torn aside and the moon shone brightly. The light fell on the frigate, the sea and St Michael's Mount, sublime in its terrifying majesty.

'Stations for stays!' He left Rogers to bawl the order through the speaking trumpet, took Hill by the elbow and forced him across the deck. 'We'll take the wheel, Mr Hill. It'll need the coolest heads tonight.' He sensed Hill's bewilderment as to what had gone wrong with the navigation.

Captain and sailing master took over the head-wheel, the displaced quartermasters moving across the deck to assist the gunners to haul the main-yard.

'Ease down the helm, Mr Hill!' Drinkwater could feel the vibration of the hull as it rushed through the water, transmitted up from the rudder through the stock and tiller via the tiller ropes which creaked with the strain upon them. The ship lay over as she began to turn into the wind. A sea hit her larboard bow and threw her back a point. Drinkwater watched the angled compass card serenely illuminated by the yellow oil lamp, quietly obeying the timeless laws of natural science amid the elemental turmoil of the wind and sea.

Drinkwater raised his voice: 'Fo'c's'le there! Cut free the anchor! Let the cable run!'

Rogers took up the cry, bawling the first part forward and the latter part below to the party at the gun-port and by the cable-compressors. Drinkwater was dimly aware of a flurry of activity on the fo'c's'le and the hail that the anchor was gone. Behind him one of the two remaining helmsmen muttered, 'Shit or bust, mateys!'

'I hope it holds,' said Hill.

'It'll hold, Mr Hill. 'Tis sand and rock. The rock may part the cable in a moment or two but she'll hold long enough.' He wished he possessed the confidence he expressed. He could feel the cable rumbling through the port, there was no doubt about that strange sensation coming up through the thin soles of his shoes. Rogers was crouched at the companionway and suddenly straightened.

'Half cable veered, sir!'

Sixty fathoms of thirteen-inch hemp. Not enough, not yet. Drinkwater counted to three, then: 'Nip her!'

'I believe,' said Drinkwater to cover the extremity of his fear that in the next few seconds the anchor might break out or the cable part, 'I believe at this point when staying, both the French and the Spanish invoke God as a matter of routine.'

'Not such a bad idea, sir, beggin' yer pardon,' answered one of the helmsmen behind him.

And then the ship began to turn. For a moment he thought she might go the wrong way, for he had let go the lee anchor and that from a port well abaft the bow.

'Hard over now, my lads…' He began to spin the wheel, aware that the anchor and cable were snubbing the ship round into the wind and thus assisting them. With the courses furled there were no tacks and sheets to raise and she was suddenly in the eye of the wind. There was a thunderous clap which sent a tremble through the hull as the fore-topsail came aback and juddered the whole foremast to its step in the kelson.

'Main-topsail haul!' Thank God for his crew, Drinkwater thought. They were only a few days out of Chatham and might have had a crew that were raw and unco-ordinated, but he had drafted the entire company from the sloop Melusine, volunteers to a man. The main and mizen yards came round. So too did the ship, she was spinning like a top, her bow rising and her bowsprit stabbing at the very moon as she passed through the wind. The main-topsail filled with a crack that sent a second mighty tremor through the ship.

'We've done it, by God!' yelled Rogers.

'Cut, man! Cut the bloody cable!'

With the ship cast upon the other tack they had only a few seconds before the action of the anchor would pull the ship's head back again, but the backed fore-topsail was paying her off.

'Haul all!'

The foreyards came round and Rogers came aft and reported the cable cut. Drinkwater caught a glimpse of rock close astern, of the hollow troughs of a sea that was breaking in shallow water.

He handed the wheel back to the quartermasters. 'Keep her free for a little while. We are not yet clear of the shoals.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'Ease the weather braces, Mr Rogers.'

They made the final adjustments and set her on a course clear of the Mountamopus as a dripping party came up from the gun-deck and reported the port closed. Relief was clear on every face. As if cheated in its intention, the storm swept another curtain of cloud across the face of the moon.

'You may splice the main-brace, Mr Rogers, then pipe the watch below. My warmest thanks to the ship's company.'

Drinkwater turned away and headed for the companionway, his cabin and cot.

'Three cheers for the cap'n!'

'Silence there!' shouted Rogers, well knowing Drinkwater's distaste for any kind of show. But Drinkwater paused at the top of the companionway and made to raise his hat, only to find he had no hat to raise.

Squatting awkwardly to catch the light from the binnacle, Mr Frey made the routine entry on the log slate for the middle watch: Westerly gales to storm. Ship club-hauled off St Michael's Mount, Course S.E. Lost sheet anchor and one cable. He paused, then added on his own accord and without instruction: Ship saved.

The weather had abated somewhat by dawn, though the sea still ran high and there was a heavy swell. However, it was possible to relight the galley range and it was a more cheerful ship's company that set additional sail as the wind continued to moderate during the forenoon.

Drinkwater was on deck having slept undisturbed for four blessed hours. His mind felt refreshed although his limbs and, more acutely, his right shoulder which had been mangled by wounds, ached with fatigue. It was almost the hour of noon and he had sent down for his Hadley sextant with a view to assisting Hill and his party establish the ship's latitude. The master was still frustrated over his failure of the day before, for he could find no retrospective error in his working.

On waking Drinkwater had reflected upon the problem. He himself did not always observe the sun's altitude at noon. Hill was a more than usually competent master and had served with Drinkwater on the cutter Kestrel and the sloop Melusine, proving his ability both in the confined waters of the Channel and North Sea, and also in the intricacies of Arctic navigation.

As Mullender gingerly lifted the teak box lid for Drinkwater to remove the instrument he caught the reproach in Hill's eyes.

'It wants about four minutes to apparent noon, sir,' said Hill, adding with bitter emphasis, 'by my reckoning.'

Drinkwater suppressed a smile. Poor Hill. His humiliation was public; there could be few on the ship that by now had not learned that their plight last night had been due to a total want of accuracy in the ship's navigation.

Hill assembled his party. Alongside him stood three of the ship's six midshipmen and one of the master's mates. Lieutenant Quilhampton was also in attendance, using Drinkwater's old quadrant given him by the captain. Drinkwater remembered that Quilhampton and he had been discussing some detail the previous day and that the lieutenant had not taken a meridian altitude. Nor had Lieutenant Gorton. Drinkwater frowned and lifted his sextant, swinging the index and bringing the sun down to the horizon. The pale disc shone through a thin veil of high cloud and he adjusted the vernier screw so that it arced on the horizon. He peered briefly at the scale, replaced the sextant to his eye and noted that the sun continued to rise slowly as it moved towards its culmination.

'Nearly on, sir,' remarked Hill who had been watching the rate of rise slow down. The line of officers swayed with the motion of the ship, a picture of concentration. The sun ceased to rise and 'hung'. Its brief motionless suspension preceded its descent into the period of postmeridian and Hill called, 'On, sir, right on!'

'Very well, Mr Hill, eight bells it is.'

By the binnacle the quartermaster turned the glass, the other master's mate hove the log and eight bells was called forward where the fo'c's'le bell was struck sharply. The marine sentinels were relieved, dinner was piped and a new day started on board His Britannic Majesty's 36-gun, 18-pounder, frigate Antigone as she stood across the chops of the Channel in search of Admiral Cornwallis and the Channel Fleet.

'Well, Mr Hill,' Drinkwater straightened from his sextant, 'what do we make it?' Drinkwater saw Hill bending over his quadrant, his lips muttering. A frown puckered his forehead, something seemed to be wrong with the master's instrument.

To avoid causing Hill embarrassment Drinkwater turned to the senior of the midshipmen: 'Mr Walmsley?'

Midshipman Lord Walmsley cast a sideways look at the master, swallowed and answered. 'Er, thirty-nine degrees, twenty-six minutes, sir.'

'Poppy cock, Mr Walmsley. Mr Frey?'

'Thirty-nine degrees six minutes, sir.' Drinkwater grunted. That was within a minute of his own observation.

'Mr Q?'

'And a half, sir.'

The two master's mates and Midshipman the Honourable Alexander Glencross agreed within a couple of minutes. Drinkwater turned to Mr Hill: 'Well, Mr Hill?'

Hill was frowning. 'I have the same as Lord Walmsley, sir.' His voice was puzzled and Drinkwater looked quickly at his lordship who had already moved his index arm and was lowering his instrument back into the box between his feet. It suddenly occurred to Drinkwater what had happened. Hill habitually muttered his altitude as he read it off the scale and Walmsley had persistently overheard and copied him. Yesterday, without Quilhampton and Drinkwater, Hill would have believed his own observation, apparently corroborated by Walmsley, and dismissed those of his juniors as inaccurate.

Drinkwater made a quick calculation. By adding the sum of the corrections for parallax, the sun's semi-diameter and refraction, then taking the result from a right angle to produce the true zenith distance, he was very close to their latitude. They were almost upon the equinox so the effect of the sun's declination was not very large and there would be a discrepancy in their latitudes of some twenty miles. Hill's altitude would put them twenty miles south, where they had thought they were yesterday.

'Very well, gentlemen. We will call it thirty-nine degrees, six and a half minutes.'

They bent over their tablets and a few minutes later Drinkwater called for their computed latitudes. Again only Walmsley disagreed.

'Very well. We shall make it forty-nine degrees, eleven minutes north… Mr Hill, you appear to have an error in your instrument.'

Hill had already come to the same conclusion and was fiddling with his quadrant, blushing with shame and annoyance. Drinkwater stepped towards him.

'There's no harm done, Mr Hill,' he said privately, reassuring the master.

'Thank you, sir. But imagine the consequences… last night, sir… we might have been cast ashore because I failed to check…'

'A great deal might happen if, Mr Hill,' broke in Drinkwater. 'There is too much hazard in the sea-life to worry about what did not happen. Now bend your best endeavours to checking the compass. We have an error there too, or I suspect you would have tumbled yesterday's inaccuracy yourself.'

The thought seemed to brighten Hill, to shift some of the blame and lighten the burden of his culpability. Drinkwater smiled and turned away, fastening his grey eyes on the senior midshipman.

'Mr Walmsley,' he snapped, 'I wish to address a few words to you, sir!'

Chapter Two The Antigone

Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater turned his chair and stared astern to where patches of sunlight danced upon the sea, alternating with the shadows of clouds. The surface of the sea heaved with the regularity of the Atlantic swells that rolled eastwards in the train of the storm. In the wake of the Antigone herself half a dozen gulls and fulmars quartered the disturbed water in search of prey. Further off a gannet turned its gliding flight into an abrupt and predatory dive; but Drinkwater barely noticed these things, his mind was still full of the interview with Lord Walmsley.

Drinkwater had inherited Lord Walmsley together with most of the other midshipmen from his previous command. They had already been on board when he had hurriedly joined the Melusine for her voyage escorting the Hull whaling fleet into the Arctic Ocean the previous summer. The officer responsible for selecting and patronising this coterie of 'young gentlemen', Captain Sir James Palgrave, had been severely wounded in a duel and prevented from sailing in command of the Melusine. Now Drinkwater rather wished Walmsley to the devil along with Sir James whose wound had mortified and who had paid with his life for the consequences of a foolish quarrel. Walmsley was an indolent youngster, spoiled, vastly over-confident and of a character strong enough to dominate the cockpit. Occasionally charming, there was no actual evil in him, though Drinkwater would have instinctively written bad against his character had he been asked, if only because Lord Walmsley did not measure up to Drinkwater's exacting standards as an embryonic sea-officer. The fact was that his lordship did not give a twopenny damn about the naval service or, Drinkwater suspected, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater himself. The captain was, after all, only in command of one of the many cruisers attached to the hastily raked-up collection of ships that made up the Downs Squadron. Lord Walmsley knew as well as Captain Drinkwater that, whatever hysteria was raised in the House of Commons about the menace of invasion across the Strait of Dover, it would not be Admiral Lord Keith's motley collection of vessels that stopped it but the might of the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis. Since Cornwallis's squadrons were bottling up the French in Brest it seemed unlikely that Keith's ships would be achieving anything more glorious than commerce harrying and a general intimidation of the north coast of France. It was well known that Keith himself did not want his job and that he considered his own post to be that usurped by the upstart Nelson: holding the key to the Mediterranean outside Toulon.

Drinkwater sighed; when the Commander-in-Chief of the station made common knowledge of his dissatisfaction, was it any wonder that a young kill-buck like Walmsley should adopt an attitude of indifference? What was more, Walmsley had influence in high places. This depressing reflection irritated Drinkwater. He turned, rose from his chair and, taking a key from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked his wine case. He took out one of the two cut-glass goblets and lifted the decanter. The port glowed richly as he held the glass against the light from the stern windows. Resuming his seat he hitched both feet up on the settee that ran from quarter to quarter across the stern and narrowed his eyes. Damn Lord Walmsley! The young man was a souring influence among a group of reefers who, if they were not exactly brilliant, were not without merit. Midshipman Frey, for instance, just twelve years old, had already seen action off the coast of Greenland, was proving a great asset as a seaman and had also demonstrated his talents as an artist. Drinkwater was not averse to advancing the able, and had already seen both Mr Quilhampton and Mr Gorton get their commissions and placed them on his own quarterdeck as a mark of confidence in them, young though they were. Messrs Wickham and Dutfield were run-of-the-mill youngsters, willing and of a similar age. The Honourable Alexander Glencross was led by Lord Walmsley. The sixth midshipman was even younger than Frey, a freckled Scot named Gillespy forced upon him as a favour to James Quilhampton. In his pursuit of Mistress Catriona MacEwan, poor Quilhampton had sought to press his suit by promising the girl's aunt to find a place for the child of another sister. Little Gillespy was therefore being turned into a King's sea-officer to enhance

Quilhampton's prospects as a suitable husband for the lovely Catriona. Drinkwater had had a berth for a midshipman and James had pleaded his own case so well that Drinkwater found himself unable to refuse his request.

'I believe Miss MacEwan is kindly disposed towards me, sir,' Quilhampton had said, 'but her festering aunt regards me as a poor catch…' Drinkwater had seen poor Quilhampton's eyes fall to his iron hook which he wore in place of a left hand. So, from friendship and pity, Drinkwater had agreed to the boy joining the ship. As for Gillespy, he had so far borne his part well despite being constantly sea-sick since Antigone left the Thames, and had spent the first half-dozen of his watches on deck lashed to a carronade slide. Drinkwater wondered what effect Walmsley and Glencross might have on such malleable clay.

'Damn 'em both!' he muttered; he had more important things to think about and could ill-afford his midshipmen such solicitude. They must take their chance like he had had to. Whatever his misgivings over the reefers, he was well served by his officers, Hill's error notwithstanding. That had been an unfortunate mistake and principally due to the badly fitted compass that was, in turn, a result of the chaotic state of the dockyards. They had found the error in the lubber's line small in itself, but enough to confuse their dead-reckoning as they steered down the Channel with a favourable easterly wind. That was an irony in itself after two months of the foulest weather for over a year; gales that had driven the Channel Fleet off station at Brest and into the lee of Torbay.

'Disaster,' he muttered as he sipped the port, 'is always a combination of small things going wrong simultaneously…' And, by God, how close they had come to it in Mount's Bay! He consoled himself with the thought that no great harm had been done. Although he had lost an anchor and cable, the club-haul had not only welded his ship's company together but shown them what they were themselves capable of. 'It's an ill wind,' he murmured, then stopped, aware that he was talking to himself a great deal too much these days.

'Now I want a good, steady stroke.' Tregembo, captain's coxswain regarded his barge crew with a critical eye. He had hand-picked them himself but since Drinkwater had read himself in at Antigone's entry the captain had not been out of the ship and this was to be the first time they took the big barge away. He knew most of them, the majority had formed the crew of Melusine's gig, but they had never performed before under the eyes of an admiral or the entire Channel Fleet.

He grunted his satisfaction. 'Don't 'ee let me down. No. Nor the cap'n, neither. Don't forget we owe him a lot, my lads,' he glowered round them as if to quell contradiction. There was a wry sucking of teeth and winking of eyes that signified recognition of Tregembo's partiality for the captain. 'No one but Cap'n Drinkwater d've got us out o' Mount's Bay an' all three masts still standing… just you buggers think on that. Now up on deck with 'ee all.' Tregembo followed the boat's crew up out of the gloom of the gun-deck.

Above, all was bustle and activity. Tregembo looked aft and grinned to himself. Captain Drinkwater stood where, in Tregembo's imagination, he always stood, at the windward hance, one foot on the slide of the little brass carronade that was one of a pair brought from the Melusine. Ten minutes earlier the whole ship had been stirred by the hail of the masthead look-out who had sighted the topgallants of the main body of the Channel Fleet cruising on Cornwallis's rendezvous fifty miles west of Ushant. In the cabin below, Mullender was fussing over Drinkwater's brand new uniform coat with its single gleaming epaulette, transferred now to the right shoulder and denoting a post-captain of less than five years seniority. Mullender at last satisfied himself that no fluff adhered to the blue cloth with a final wipe of the piece of wool flag-bunting, and lifted the stained boat-cloak out of the sea-chest. He shook his head over it, considering its owner would benefit from a new one and cut a better dash before the admiral to boot, but, with a single glance out of the stern windows, considered the weather too fresh to risk a boat journey without it. Gold lace tarnished quickly and the protection of the cloak was essential. Drawing a sleeve over the knap on the cocked hat, Mullender left the cabin. He had been saving the dregs of four bottles to celebrate such a moment and retired to his pantry to indulge in the rare privilege of the captain's servant.

Drinkwater lowered his glass for the third time, then impatiently lifted it again. This time he was rewarded by the sight of a small white triangle just above the horizon. In the succeeding minutes others rose over the rim of the earth until it seemed that, for half of the visible circle where sea met sky, the white triangles of sails surrounded them. Beneath each white triangle the dark hulls emerged with their lighter strakes and chequered sides. The gay colours of flag signals and ensigns enlivened the scene and Antigone buzzed as officers and men pointed out ships they recognised, old friends or scandalous hulks that were only kept afloat by the prayers of their crews and the diabolical links their commanders enjoyed with the devil himself.

'Ere, ain't that the bloody Himmortalitee?' cried an excited seaman, and an equally effusive Hill agreed.

'Aye, Marston, that is indeed the Immortalité, and a damned fine ship she was when I was in her as a master's mate.'

'Gorn to the devil, Mister 'Ill, now we oldsters ain't there to watch. She used to gripe like a stuck porker in anything of a blow…'

'God damn it the Belleisle, by all that's holy…'

'And the Goliath …'

Drinkwater tolerated the excitement as long as it did not mar the efficiency of the Antigone. One of the look-out cruisers broke away and hauled her yards to intercept them.

'Permission to hoist the private signal, sir?' James Quilhampton crossed the deck, touching his hat.

'Very well, Mr Q.' Drinkwater nodded and lifted his glass, watching the frigate close hauled on the wind as she moved to intercept the new arrival. She was a thing of loveliness on such a morning and was sending up her royals to cut a dash and impress the Antigone's company with her handiness and discipline. The two frigates exchanged recognition and private signals.

'Number Three-One-Three, sir. Sirius, thirty-six, Captain William Prowse.'

'Very well.' Drinkwater stood upon the carronade slide and waved his hat as the two cruisers passed on opposite tacks.

'The flagship's two points to starboard, sir,' the ever-attentive Quilhampton informed him.

'Very well, Mr Q, ease her off a little.' He wondered how Antigone appeared from Sirius as the look-out frigate tacked in her wake and hauled her own yards, swinging round to regain station. Drinkwater cast a critical eye aloft and then along the deck. Tregembo was mustering the barge's crew in the waist before ordering them into the boat. Although he was far from being a wealthy officer, he had managed a degree of uniformity for his boat's crew due to the large number of slops he had acquired in two previous ships. Over their flannel shirts and duck trousers the men wore cut-down greygoes that gave the appearance of pilot jackets, while upon their heads Tregembo had placed warm sealskin caps, part of the profit of the Melusine's voyage among the ice-floes of the Arctic seas. It was a piece of conceit in which Drinkwater took a secret delight.

He was proud of the frigate too. Notwithstanding the deplorable state of the dockyards and the desperate shortage of every necessity for fitting out ships of war caused by Lord St Vincent's reforms, she was cause for self-congratulation. The First Lord's zeal in rooting out corruption might have long-term benefits, but for the present the disruptions and shortages had made the commissioning of men-of-war a nightmare for their commanders. Drinkwater recognised his good fortune. The dreadful condition of Melusine on her return from the Arctic had removed her from active service and they had managed to take out of her a quantity of stores which, with what the dockyard at Chatham allowed, had enabled them to get Antigone down to Blackstakes for her powder in good time. Best of all he had employed seamen in her fitting out and not the convict labour St Vincent advocated. Besides, the ship herself had been in good condition. Built by the French in Cherbourg only nine years earlier, she had been captured in the Red Sea in September 1798 by a party of British seamen that included Drinkwater himself. His appointment to this particular ship was, he knew, a mark of favour from the First Lord. Originally armed with twenty-six long 24-pounder cannon, she had been taken with most of her guns on shore and the Navy Board had seen fit to reduce her force to conform with other frigates of the Royal Navy. Now she mounted twenty-six black 18-pounder long guns upon her gun-deck, two long 9-pounder bow-chasers upon her fo'c's'le together with eight stubby 36-pounder carronades. On her quarterdeck were eight further long nines and the two brass carronades that had formerly gleamed at the hances of Melusine.

Drinkwater grunted his satisfaction as Hill reported the flagship a league distant and gave his permission for sail to be shortened. There were occasions when he regretted not being able to handle the ship in the day-to-day routines but on an occasion such as the present one it gave him equal pleasure to watch the officers and men go about their duty, to remark on the performance of individuals and to note the weaker officers and petty officers in the ship. There was also the necessity to observe the whale-men he had pressed from the Hull whalers Nimrod and Conqueror; in particular a man named Waller, formerly the commander of the Conqueror, who had only escaped hanging by Drinkwater's clemency.[1] Waller was expiating treason before the mast as a common seaman and Drinkwater kept an eye on him. He had had Rogers, the first lieutenant, split all the whale-men into different messes so that they could not confer or form any kind of a combination. For a minute he was tempted to send Waller with the two score of pressed men taken aboard from the Nore guardship as replacements for the Channel Fleet. But he could not abandon his responsibilities that easily. It was better to keep Waller under his own vigilant eye than risk him causing trouble elsewhere in the fleet. The rest behaved well enough. Good seamen, most had come from the Melusine where they had originally been volunteers during the short-lived Peace of Amiens.

'Hoist the signal for dispatches, sir?'

Drinkwater turned to find the diminutive Mr Frey looking up at him. He nodded. 'Indeed yes, Mr Frey, if you will be so kind.' He smiled at the boy who grinned back. All in all, reflected Drinkwater, he was one of the most fortunate of all the post-captains hereabouts, and he cast his eyes round the horizon where ship after ship of the British fleet cruised under easy sail in three great columns with the frigates cast out ahead, astern and on either flank.

Drinkwater sniffed the fresh north-westerly breeze and felt invigorated by the delightful freshness of the morning. The storm of two nights previously had cleared the air. Even here, a hundred miles off the Isles of Stilly where already the first crocuses would be breaking through the soil, spring was in the air. He nodded at Rogers who walked over to him.

'Mornin', Sam.'

'Good morning, sir. Sail's shortened and the barge is ready for lowering.'

Drinkwater regarded his first lieutenant, remembering their previous enmity aboard the Hellebore when they had been wrecked after an error of judgement made by Samuel Rogers, and of their successes together in the Baltic in the old bomb-vessel Virago. Rogers was a coarse and vulgar man, no scientific officer and only a passable navigator, but he was a competent seaman and his valour in action was too valuable an asset to be lightly set aside merely because he lacked social accomplishments. Besides, in his present situation he would have precious little opportunity to worry over such a deficiency. He was, Drinkwater knew, perfect as a first luff; the very man the hands loved to hate, who was indifferent to that hatred and who could take the blame for all the hardships, mishaps and injustices the naval service would press upon their unfortunate souls and bodies.

'She's looking very tiddly, Sam. Fit for an admiral's inspection already. I congratulate you.'

Rogers gave him a grin. 'I heard about your appetite for tiddly ships after the Melusine, sir.'

Drinkwater grinned back. 'She was a damned yacht, Sam. You should have heard the gunroom squeal when I cut off her royal masts and fitted a crow's nest to con her through the ice.'

'She was different from the old Virago then?'

'As chalk is from cheese…'

They were interrupted by Lieutenant Quilhampton. 'Flag's signalling, sir: "Captain to come aboard".'

'Very well. Bring the ship to under the admiral's lee quarter, Mr Q… Sam be so good as to salute the flag while I shift my coat.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' The two officers began to carry out their orders as Drinkwater hurried below to where an anxious Mullender had coat, hat, cloak and sword all ready for him.

Chapter Three The Spy Master

Admiral Sir William Cornwallis rose from behind his desk and motioned Drinkwater to a chair. His flag-lieutenant took the offered packet of Admiralty dispatches and handed them to the admiral's secretary for opening.

'A glass of wine, Captain?' The flag-lieutenant beckoned a servant forward and Drinkwater hitched his sword between his legs, laid his cocked hat across his lap and took the tall Venetian goblet from the salver. 'Thank you. I have two bags of mail for the fleet in my barge and a draft of forty-three men for the squadron…'

'I shall inform the Captain of the Fleet, sir. Sir William, your permission?'

'By all means.' The admiral bent over the opened dispatches as the flag-lieutenant left the cabin. The servant withdrew and Drinkwater was left with Cornwallis, his immobile secretary and another man, a dark stranger in civilian clothes, who seemed to be regarding Drinkwater with some interest and whose evident curiosity Drinkwater found rather irksome and embarrassing. He avoided this scrutiny by studying his surroundings. The great cabin of His Britannic Majesty's 112-gun ship Ville de Paris was a luxurious compartment compared with his own. As a first-rate line of battleship the Ville de Paris was almost a new ship, built as a replacement for Rodney's prize, the flagship of Admiral De Grasse, taken at the Battle of Saintes in the American War and so badly knocked about that she had foundered on her way home across the stormy Atlantic. It was an irony that a ship so named should bear the flag of the officer responsible for keeping the French fleet bottled up in Brest. Drinkwater did not envy the admiral his luxury: the monotony of blockade duty would have oppressed him. Even in a frigate attached to the inshore squadron cruising off Ushant, the perils of tides and rocks would far outweigh the risk of danger from the enemy coupled as they were with the prevailing strong westerly winds. As his old friend Richard White constantly wrote and told him, he was lucky to have avoided such an arduous and thankless task. There were a few who had carved out a glorious niche for themselves with brilliant actions. Pellew, for instance, in the Indefatigable and with Amazon in company had caught the French battleship Droits de l'Homme, harried her all night and forced her to become embayed in Audierne Bay where she was wrecked. The thought of embayment still caused him a shudder and he recollected that Pellew's triumph had also caused the loss of Amazon from the same cause. No, for the most part the maintenance of this huge fleet with its frigates and its supply problems was simply to keep Admiral Truguet and the principal French fleet capable of operating in the Atlantic, securely at its moorings in Brest Road. By this means Napoleon would not be able to secure the naval supremacy in the Channel that he needed to launch his invasion. Whatever the monotony of the duty there was no arguing its effectiveness. All the same Drinkwater was not keen to be kept under the severe restraint of commanding a frigate on blockade.

There was a rustle as Cornwallis lowered the papers and leaned back in his seat. He was a portly gentleman of some sixty years of age with small features and bright, keen blue eyes. He smiled cordially.

'Well, Captain Drinkwater, you are not to join us I see.'

'No, Sir William. I am under Lord Keith's command, attached to the Downs Squadron but with discretionary orders following the delivery of those dispatches.' He nodded at the contents of the waterproof packet which now lay scattered across Cornwallis's table.

'Which are…?'

'To return to the Strait of Dover along the French coast, harrying trade and destroying enemy preparations for the invasion.'

'And not, I hope, wantonly setting fire to any French villages en route, Captain?' It was the stranger in civilian dress who put this question. Drinkwater opened his mouth to reply but the stranger continued, 'Such piracy is giving us a bad name, Captain Drinkwater, giving the idea of invasion a certain respectability among the French populace that might otherwise be not over-enthusiastic about M'sieur Bonaparte. Hitherto, whatever the enmities between our two governments, the people of the coast have maintained a, er, certain friendliness towards us, eh?' He smiled, a sardonic grin, and held up his glass of the admiral's claret. 'The matter of a butt or two of wine and a trifle or two of information; you understand?'

Drinkwater felt a recurrence of the irritation caused earlier by this man, but Cornwallis intervened. 'I am sure Captain Drinkwater understands perfectly, Philip. But Captain, tell us the news from London. What are the fears of invasion at the present time?'

'Somewhat abated, sir. Most of the news is of the problems surrounding Addington's ministry. The First Lord is under constant attack from the opposition led by Pitt…'

'And we all know the justice of Billy Pitt's allegations, by God,' put in the stranger with some heat.

Drinkwater ignored the outburst. 'As to the invasion, I think there is little fear while you are here, sir, and the French fleet is in port. I believe St Vincent to be somewhat maligned, although the difficulties experienced in fitting out do support some of Mr Pitt's accusations.' Drinkwater judged it would not do him any good to expatiate on St Vincent's well-meaning but near-disastrous attempts to root out corruption, and he did owe his own promotion to the old man's influence.

Cornwallis smiled. 'What does St Vincent say to Mr Pitt, Captain?'

'That although the French may invade, sir, he is confident that they will not invade by sea.'

Cornwallis laughed. 'There, at least, St Vincent and I would find common ground. Philip here is alarmed that any relaxation on our part would be ill-timed.' Then the humour went out of his expression and he fell silent. Cornwallis occupied the most important station in the British navy. As Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet he was not merely concerned with blockading Brest, but also with maintaining British vigilance off L'Orient, Rochefort and even Ferrol where neutral Spain had been coerced into allowing France to use the naval arsenals for her own. In addition there was the immense problem of the defence of the Channel itself, still thought vulnerable if a French squadron could be assembled elsewhere in the world, say the West Indies, and descend upon it in sufficient force to avoid or brush aside the Channel Fleet. On Cornwallis's shoulder fell the awesome burden of ensuring St Vincent's words were true, and Cornwallis had transformed the slack methods of his predecessor into a strictly enforced blockade, earning himself the soubriquet of 'Billy Blue' from his habit of hoisting the Blue Peter to the foremasthead the instant his flagship cast anchor when driven off station by the heavy gales that had bedevilled his fleet since the New Year. It was clear that the responsibility and the monotony of such a task were wearing the elderly man out. Drinkwater sensed he would have liked to agree with the current opinion in London that the threat of invasion had diminished.

'Did you see much of the French forces or the encampments, Captain?' asked the stranger.

'A little above Boulogne, sir, but I was fortunate in having a favourable easterly and was ordered out by way of Portsmouth and so favoured the English coast. I took aboard the Admiralty papers at Portsmouth.'

'It is a weary business, Captain Drinkwater,' Cornwallis said sadly, 'and I am always in want of frigates… by heaven 'tis a plaguey dismal way of spending a life in the public service!'

'Console yourself, Sir William,' the stranger put in at this show of bile, and with a warmth of feeling that indicated he was on exceptionally intimate terms with the Commander-in-Chief. 'Consider the wisdom of Pericles: "If they are kept off the sea by our superior strength, their want of practice will make them unskilful and their want of skill, timid." Now that is an incontestable piece of good sense, you must admit.'

'You make your point most damnably, Philip. As for Captain Drinkwater, I am sure he is not interested in our hagglings…'

The allusion to Drinkwater's junior rank, though intended to suppress the stranger, cut Drinkwater to the quick. He rose, having no more business with the admiral and having securely lodged his empty glass against the flagship's roll. 'I would not have you think, Sir William, that I am anxious to avoid any station or duty to which their Lordships wished to assign me.'

Cornwallis dismissed Drinkwater's concern. 'Of course not, Captain. We are all the victims of circumstance. It is just that I feel the want of frigates acutely. The Inshore Squadron is worked mercilessly and some relief would be most welcome there, but if Lord Keith has given you your orders we had better not detain you. What force does his Lordship command now?'

'Four of the line, Sir William, five old fifties, nine frigates, a dozen sloops, a dozen bombs and ten gun-brigs, plus the usual hired cutters and luggers.'

'Very well. And he is as anxious as myself over cruisers I doubt not.'

'Indeed, sir.'

Drinkwater moved towards the door as Cornwallis's eyes fell again to the papers. These actions seemed to precipitate an outburst of forced coughing from the stranger. Cornwallis looked up at once.

'Ah, Philip, forgive me… most remiss and I beg your pardon. Captain Drinkwater, forgive me, I am apt to think we are all acquainted here. May I introduce Captain Philip D'Auvergne, Due de Bouillon.'

Drinkwater was curious at this grandiose title. D'Auvergne was grinning at his discomfiture.

'Sir William does me more honour than I deserve, Captain Drinkwater. I am no more than a post-captain like yourself, but unlike yourself I do not have even a gun-brig to command.'

'You are a supernumerary, sir?' enquired Drinkwater.

Both Cornwallis and D'Auvergne laughed, implying a knowledge that Drinkwater was not a party to.

'I should like you to convey Captain D'Auvergne back to his post at St Helier, Captain, as a small favour to the Channel Fleet and in the sure knowledge that it cannot greatly detain you.'

'It will be an honour, Sir William.'

'Very well, Captain,' said D'Auvergne, 'I am ready. Keep in good spirits, Sir William. It will be soon now if it is ever to occur.'

Unaware to what they alluded, Drinkwater asked: 'You have no baggage, Captain D'Auvergne?'

D'Auvergne grinned again. 'Good Lord no. Baggage slows a man, eh?' And the two men laughed again at a shared joke.

The meal had been a tense affair. Captain D'Auvergne had become almost silent and Drinkwater had remained curious as to his background and his function, aware only that he enjoyed a position of privilege as Cornwallis's confidant. The only clue to his origin was in his destination, St Helier. Drinkwater knew there were a hundred naval officers with incongruous French-sounding surnames who hailed from the Channel Islands. But Cornwallis had called St Helier D'Auvergne's 'post', whatever that meant, and it was clear from his appetite that he had not lived aboard ship for some time or he would have been a little more sparing with Drinkwater's dwindling cabin stores. The decanter had circulated twice before D'Auvergne, with a parting look at the retreating Mullender, leaned forward and addressed his host.

'I apologise for teasing you, Drinkwater. The fact is Cornwallis, like most of the poor fellows, is worn with the service and bored out of his skull by the tedium of blockade. Any newcomer is apt to suffer the admiral's blue devils. 'Tis truly a terrible task and to have been a butt of his irritability is to have rendered your country a service.'

'I fear,' said Drinkwater with some asperity, 'that I am still being used as a butt, and to be candid, sir, I am not certain that I enjoy it over much.'

The snub was deliberate. Drinkwater had no idea of D'Auvergne's seniority though he guessed it to be greater than his own. But he was damned if he was going to sit at his own table and listen to such stuff from a man drinking his own port! Drinkwater had expected D'Auvergne to bristle, rise and take his leave; instead he leaned back in his chair and pointed at Drinkwater's right shoulder.

'I perceive you have been wounded, Captain, and I know you for a brave officer. I apologise doubly for continuing to be obscure… Mine is a curious story, but I am, as I said, a post-captain like yourself. I served under Lord Howe during the American War and was captured by the French. Whilst in captivity I came to the notice of the old Due de Bouillon with whom I shared a surname, although I am a native of the Channel Islands. His sons were both dead and I was named his heir after a common ancestry was discovered…' D'Auvergne smiled wryly. 'I might have been one of the richest men in France but for a trifling matter of my estates having been taken over by their tenants.' He made a deprecatory gesture.

'You might also have lost your head,' added Drinkwater, mellowing a little.

'Exactly so. Now, Drinkwater, that wound of yours. How did you come by that?'

Since his promotion to post-captain and the transfer of his epaulette from his left to his right shoulder, Drinkwater had thought his wound pretty well disguised. Although he still inclined his head to one side in periods of damp weather when the twisted muscles ached damnably, he contrived to forget about it as much as possible. He was certainly not used to being quizzed about it.

'My shoulder? Oh, I received the fragment of a mortar shell during an attack on Boulogne in the year one. It was an inglorious affair.'

'I recollect it. But that was your second wound in the right arm, was it not?'

'How the deuce d'you know that?'

'Ah. I will tell you in a moment. Was it a certain Edouard Santhonax that struck you first?'

'The devil!' Drinkwater was astonished that this enigmatic character could know so much about him. He frowned and the colour mounted to his cheeks. The relaxation he had begun to feel was dispelled by a sudden anger. 'Come, sir. Level with me, damn it. What is your impertinent interest in my person, eh?'

'Easy, Drinkwater, easy. I have no impertinent interest in you. On the contrary, I have always heard you spoken of in the highest terms by Lord Dungarth.'

' Lord Dungarth?'

'Indeed. My station in St Helier is connected with Lord Dungarth's department.'

'Ahhh,' Drinkwater refilled his glass, passing the decanter across the table, 'I begin to see…'

Lord Dungarth, with whom Drinkwater had first become acquainted as a midshipman, was the head of the British Admiralty's intelligence network. Drinkwater's personal relationship with the earl extended to a private obligation contracted when Dungarth had helped to spirit Drinkwater's brother Edward away into Russia when the latter was wanted for murder. The evasion of justice had been accomplished because he had killed a French agent known to Dungarth. Edward had in fact slaughtered Etienne de Montholon because he had found him in bed with his own mistress, but Dungarth's interest in Montholon had served to cover Edward's crime and protect Drinkwater's own career. It was an episode in his life that Drinkwater preferred to forget.

'What do you know of Santhonax?' he asked at last.

D'Auvergne looked round him. 'That he commanded this ship in the Red Sea; that you captured him and he subsequently escaped; that he was appointed a colonel in the French Army after transferring from the naval service; and that he is now an aide-de-camp to First Consul Bonaparte himself.'

'And your opinion of him?'

'That he is daring, brave and the epitome of all that makes the encampments of the French along the heights of Boulogne a most dangerous threat to the safety of Great Britain.'

Drinkwater's hostility towards D'Auvergne evaporated. The two had discovered a common ground and Drinkwater rose, crossing the cabin and lifting the lid of the big sea-chest in the corner. 'So I have always thought myself,' he said, reaching into the chest. 'Furthermore, I have this to show you…'

Drinkwater returned to the table with a roll of canvas, frayed at the edges. He spread it out on the table. The paint was badly cracked and the canvas damaged where the tines of a fork had pierced it. It was D'Auvergne's turn to show astonishment.

'Good God alive!'

'You know who she is?'

'Hortense Santhonax… with Junot's wife one of the most celebrated beauties of Paris… This…' He stared at the lower right hand corner, 'this is by David. How the devil did you come by it?'

Drinkwater looked down at the portrait. The red hair and the slender neck wound with pearls rose from a bosom more exposed than concealed by the wisp of gauze around the shoulders.

'It hung there, on that bulkhead, when we took this ship in the Red Sea. I knew her briefly.'

'Were you in that business at Beaubigny back in ninety-two?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'Aye. I was mate of the cutter Kestrel when we took Hortense, her brother and others off the beach there, émigrés we thought then, escaping from the mob…'

'Who turned their coats when their money ran out, eh?'

'That is true of her brother certainly. She, I now believe, never intended other than to dupe us.' He did not add that she had been Hortense de Montholon then, sister to the man his own brother Edward had murdered at Newmarket nine years later.

D'Auvergne nodded. 'You are very probably right in what you say. She and her husband are fervent and enthusiastic Bonapartists. I have no doubt that if Bonaparte continues to ascend in the world, so will Santhonax.'

'This knowledge is learned from your station at St Helier, I gather?'

D'Auvergne smiled, the sardonic grin friendly now. 'Another correct assumption, Drinkwater.' He regarded his host with curiosity. 'I had heard your name from Dungarth in the matter of some enterprise or other. He is not given to idle gossip about all his acquaintances, as a gentleman in our profession cannot afford to be. But I perceive you have seen a deal of service…' he trailed off.

Drinkwater smiled back. 'My midshipmen consider me an ancient and tarpaulin officer, Captain D'Auvergne. Very little of my time has been spent in grand vessels like the one I have the honour to command at this time. I take your point about the need to guard the tongue, but I also take it that you have a clearing house on Jersey where information is collected?'

'Captain,' D'Auvergne said lightly, 'you continue to amaze with the accuracy of your deductions.'

The decanter passed between them and Drinkwater began to relax for the first time since the morning. The silence that fell between them was companionable now. After a pause D'Auvergne said, 'Knowing the confidence reposed in you by Lord Dungarth, I will venture to tell you that it is part of my responsibility to gather information through a network of agents in northern France. My operations are of particular interest to Sir William, for I am able to pass on a surprising amount of news concerning Truguet's squadron at Brest. Hence my unease at the prospect of you harrying the actual sea-borders of France. Harry their trade and destroy the invasion barges wherever you find them, but have a thought for the sympathies of sea-faring folk who have never had much loyalty for the government in Paris…'

'Or London, come to that,' Drinkwater added wryly. The two men laughed again.

'Seriously, Drinkwater, I believe we are at the crisis of the war and I am sad that the government is not united behind a determination to face facts. This inter-party wrangling will be our undoing. The French army is formidable, everywhere victorious, a whole population turned to war. All we have to hope for is that Bonaparte might fall. There are indications of political upheavals in France. You have heard of the recent discovery of a plot to kill the First Consul; there are other reactions to him still fermenting. If they succeed I believe we will have a lasting peace before the year is out. But if Bonaparte survives, then not only will his position be unassailable but the invasion inevitable. The plans are already well advanced. Do not underestimate the power, valour or energy of the French. If Bonaparte triumphs he will have hundreds of Santhonaxes running at his horse's tail. Their fleet must be kept mewed up in Brest until this desperate business is concluded. This is the purpose of my visits to Cornwallis but I can see no harm in the captain of every cruiser being aware of the extreme danger we are in.' D'Auvergne leaned forward and banged the table for emphasis. 'Invasion and Bonaparte are the most lethal combination we have ever faced!'

Chapter Four Foolish Virgins

'Where away?'

Drinkwater shivered in the chill of dawn, peering to the eastward where Hill pointed.

'Three points to starboard, sir. Ten or a dozen small craft with a brig as escort.'

He saw them at last, faint interruptions on the steel-blue horizon, growing more substantial as every minute passed and the gathering daylight grew. Squatting, he steadied his glass and studied the shapes, trying to deduce what they might be. Behind him he heard the shuffle of feet as other officers joined Hill, together with a brief muttering as they discussed the possibility of an attack.

Drinkwater rose stiffly. His neck and shoulder arched in the chilly air. He shut the telescope with a snap and turned on the officers.

'Well, gentlemen. What d'you make of 'em, eh?'

'Invasion barges,' said Hill without hesitation. Drinkwater agreed.

'"Chalowpes" and "péniches", I believe they call the infernal things, moving eastwards to the rendezvous at Havre and all ready to embark what Napoleon Bonaparte is pleased to call the Army of the Coasts of the Ocean.'

'Clear for action, sir?' asked Rogers, his pale features showing the dark shadow of an unshaven jaw and reminding Drinkwater that daylight was growing quickly.

'No. I think not. Pipe up hammocks, send the hands to breakfast. Mr Hill, have your watch clew up the fore-course. Hoist French colours and edge down towards them. No show of force. Mr Frey, a string of bunting at the fore t'gallant yardarms. We are Frenchbuilt, gentlemen. We might as well take advantage of the fact. Mr Rogers, join me for breakfast.'

As he descended the companionway Drinkwater heard the watch called to stand by the clew-garnets and raise the fore tack and sheet. Below, the berth-deck erupted in sudden activity as the off-duty men were turned out of their hammocks. He nodded to the marine sentry at attention by his door and entered the cabin. Rogers followed and both men sat at the table which was being hurriedly laid by an irritated Mullender.

'You're early this morning, sir,' grumbled the steward, with the familiar licence allowed to intimate servants.

'No, Mullender, you are late… Sit down, Sam, and let us eat. The morning's chill has made me damned hungry.'

'Thank you. You do intend to attack those craft, don't you?'

'Of course. When I've had some breakfast.' He smiled at Rogers who once again looked at though he had been drinking heavily the night before. 'D'you remember when we were in the Virago together we were attacked off the Sunk by a pair of luggers?'

'Aye…'

'And we beat 'em off. Sank one of them if I remember right. The other…'

'Got away,' interrupted Rogers.

'For which you have never forgiven me… ah, thank you, Mullender. Well I hope this morning to rectify the matter. Let's creep up and take that little brig. She'd make a decent prize, mmm?'

'By God, I'll drink to that!' Comprehension dawned in Rogers's eyes.

'I thought you might, Sam, I thought you might. But I want those bateaux as well.'

They attacked the skillygolee enthusiastically, encouraged by the smell of bacon coming from the pantry where Mullender was still muttering, each occupied with their private thoughts. Rogers considered a naval officer a fool if he did not risk everything to make prize-money. Since he had never had the chief command of a ship, he thought himself very hard done by over the matter. The event to which Drinkwater had alluded was a case in point. Both knew that they had been fortunate to escape capture when they were engaged by a pair of lugger privateers off Orfordness when on their way to Copenhagen. But whereas Drinkwater appreciated his escape, Rogers regretted they had not made a capture, even though the odds against success had been high. The Virago had been a lumbering old bomb-vessel whose longest-range guns were in her stern, an acknowledgement that an enemy attack would almost certainly be from astern! But a pretty little brig-corvette brought under the guns of the Antigone would be an entirely different story. With such an overwhelming superiority Drinkwater would not hesitate to attack and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless Rogers found himself hoping the brig would have a large crew, so that he might distinguish himself and perhaps gain a mention in The Gazette.

Drinkwater's thoughts, on the other hand, were only partially concerned with the brig. It was the other vessels he was thinking of. They were five leagues south-east of Pointe de Barfleur, on the easternmost point of the Contentin Pensinsula. The convoy of invasion craft were on passage across the Baie de la Seine bound for their rendezvous at Le Havre. It was here that the French were assembling vessels built further west, prior to dispersing them along the Pas de Calais, at Etaples, Boulogne, Wimereux and Ambleteuse, in readiness for the embarkation of the army destined to conquer Great Britain and make the French people masters of the world.

Perhaps Drinkwater's experiences of the French differed from those of his colleagues who were apt to ridicule the possibility of ultimate French victory; perhaps Captain D'Auvergne had alerted him to the reality of a French invasion; but from whatever cause he did not share his first lieutenant's unconditional enthusiasm. What Rogers saw as a possible brawl which should end to their advantage, Drinkwater saw as a matter of simple necessity. It was up to him to destroy in detail before the French were able to overwhelm in force. There had been much foolish talk, and even more foolish assertions in the newspapers, of the impracticality of the invasion barges. There had been mention of preposterous notions of attack by balloon, of great barges driven by windmills, even some crackpot ideas of under-water boats which had had knowledgeable officers roaring with laughter on a score of quarterdecks, despite the fact that such an attack had been launched against Admiral Howe in New York during the American War. Drinkwater was apt to regard such arrogant dismissal of French abilities as extremely unwise. From what he had observed of those chaloupes and péniches there was very little wrong with them as sea-going craft. That alone was enough to make them worthy targets for His Majesty's frigate Antigone.

'Beg pardon, sir.'

'Yes, Mr Wickham, what is it?' Drinkwater dabbed his mouth with his napkin and pushed back his chair.

'Mr Hill's compliments, sir, and the wind's falling light. If we don't make more sail the enemy will get away.'

'We cannot permit that, Mr Wickham. Make all sail, I'll be up directly.'

Rogers followed him on deck and swore as soon as he saw the distance that still remained. Hill crossed the deck and touched his hat.

'Stuns'ls, sir?'

'If you please, Mr Hill, though I doubt we'll catch 'em now.'

Drinkwater looked round the horizon. Daylight had revealed a low mist which obscured the sharp line of the horizon. Above it the sun rose redly, promising a warm day with mist and little wind. Already the sea was growing smooth, its surface merely undulating, no longer rippling with the sharp though tiny crests of a steady breeze. Hardly a ripple ran down Antigone's side: the wind had suddenly died away and Drinkwater now detected a sharp chill. Beside him Rogers swore again. He turned quickly forward.

'Mr Hill!'

'Sir?'

'Belay those stuns'ls. All hands to man yard and stay tackles, hoist out the launch!' He turned to Rogers. 'Get the quarter-boats away, Sam, there's fog coming. You're to take charge.'

Rogers needed no second bidding. Already alert, the ship's company tumbled up to sway out the heavy launch with its snubnosed carronade mounted on a forward slide. It began to rise jerkily from the booms amidships as, near at hand, the slap of bare feet on the deck accompanied a hustling of men over the rail and into the light quarter-boats hanging in the davits. Among the jostling check shirts and pigtails, the red coats and white cross-belts of the marines mustered with an almost irritating formality.

'Orders, sir?' Mr Mount the lieutenant of marines saluted him.

'Mornin', Mr Mount. Divide your men up 'twixt quarter-boats and launch. Mr Rogers is in command. I want those invasion craft destroyed!'

'Very well, sir.' Mount saluted and spun round: 'Sergeant, your platoon in the starboard quarter-boat. Corporal Williams, your men the larboard. Corporal Allen, with me in the launch!'

The neat files broke up and the white-breeched, black-gaitered marines scrambled over the rails and descended into the now waiting boats. Drinkwater looked at the enemy. The invasion craft had already vanished but the brig still showed, ghostly against the insubstantial mass of the closing fog.

'Mr Hill! A bearing of the brig, upon the instant!'

'Sou'-east-a-half-south, sir!'

'Mr Rogers!' Drinkwater leaned over the rail and bawled down at the first lieutenant in the launch. 'Steer sou'-east-a-half-south. We'll fire guns for you but give you fifteen minutes to make your approach.'

He saw Rogers shove a seaman to one side so that he could see the boat compass and then the tossed oars were being lowered, levelled and swung back.

'Give way together!'

The looms bent with sudden strain and the heavy launch began to move, followed by the two quarter-boats. In the stern of each boat sat the officers in their blue coats with a splash of red from the marines over which the dull gleam of steel hung until engulfed by the fog.

'Now we shall have to wait, Mr Hill, since all the lieutenants have left us behind.'

'Indeed, sir, we will.'

Drinkwater turned inboard. There was little he could do. Already the decks were darkening from condensing water vapour. Soon it would be dripping from every rope on the ship.

'I had hoped the sun would rise and burn up this mist,' he said.

'Aye, sir. But 'tis always an unpredictable business. The wind dropped very suddenly.'

'Yes.'

The two men stood in silence for a few minutes, frustrated by being unable to see the progress of the boats. After a little Hill pulled out his watch.

'Start firing in five minutes, sir?'

'Mmmm? Oh, yes. If you please, Mr Hill.' They must give Rogers every chance of surprise but not allow him to get lost. Drinkwater would not put it past a clever commander to launch a counter-attack by boat, anticipating the very action he had just taken in sending a large number of his crew off.

'Send the men to quarters, Mr Hill, all guns to load canister on ball, midshipmen to report the batteries they are commanding when ready.' He raised his voice. 'Fo'c's'le there! Keep a sharp look-out!'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

'Report anything you see!'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

He turned aft to where the two marine sentries stood, one on either quarter, the traditional protection for the officer of the watch. It was also their duty to throw overboard the lifebuoy for any man unfortunate enough to fall over the side. 'You men, too. Do you keep a sharp look-out for any approaching boats!'

He fell to restless pacing, aware that the fog had caught him napping, a fact which led him into a furious self-castigation so that the report of the bow chaser took him by complete surprise.

The boom of the bow chaser every five minutes was the only sound to be heard apart from the creaks and groans from Antigone's fabric that constituted silence on board ship. Even that part of the ship's company left on board seemed to share some of their captain's anxiety. They too had friends out there in the damp grey fog. The haste with which the boats had been hoisted out had allowed certain madcap elements among the frigate's young gentlemen to take advantage of circumstances. In manning the guns, Drinkwater had learned, most of the midshipmen had clambered into boats, and those who had not done so were now regretting their constraint.

Lord Walmsley had gone, followed by the Honourable Alexander Glencross, both under Rogers in the launch. Being well acquainted with his temperament, Drinkwater knew that Rogers would have—what was the new expression?—turned a blind eye, that was it, to such a lack of discipline. Wickham had also gone in the boats, carting off little Gillespy. Dutfield had not been on deck and Frey had too keen a sense of obligation to his post as signal midshipman to desert it without the captain's permission, even though the lack of visibility rendered it totally superfluous. As a consequence Drinkwater had posted Hill's two mates, Caldecott and Tyrrell, in the waist and in charge of the batteries.

'Gunfire to starboard, sir!'

The hail came from the fo'c's'le where someone had his arm stretched out. Drinkwater went to the ship's side and cocked his head outboard, attempting to pick up the sound over the water and clear of the muffled ship-noises on the deck. There was the bang of cannon and the crackle of small-arms fire followed by the sound of men shouting and cursing. It did nothing to lessen Drinkwater's anxiety but it provoked a burst of chatter amidships.

'Silence there, God damn you!' The noise subsided. Side by side with Hill, Drinkwater strained to hear the distant fight and to interpret the sounds. The cannon fire had been brief. Had Rogers attacked the brig successfully? Or had the brig driven Antigone's boats off? If so was Rogers pressing his attack against the invasion craft? And what had happened to little Gillespy and Mr Q? Anxiety overflowed into anger.

'God damn this bloody fog!'

As though moved by this invective there was a sudden lightening in the atmosphere. The sun ceased to be a pale disc, began to glow, to burn off the fog, and abruptly the wraiths of vapour were torn aside revealing Antigone becalmed upon a blue sea as smooth as a millpond. Half a mile away the brig lay similarly inert and without the aid of a glass Drinkwater could see her tricolour lay over her taffrail.

A cheer broke out amidships and beside him Hill exclaimed, 'She's ours, by God!' But uncertainty turned to anger as Drinkwater realised what Rogers had allowed to happen. He swept the clearing horizon with his Dolland glass.

'God's bones! What the hell does Rogers think he's about… Mr Hill!'

'Sir?'

'Hoist out my barge… and hurry man, hurry!'

Drinkwater swept the glass right round the horizon. There were no other ships in sight. But beyond the brig the convoy of chaloupes and péniches was escaping, quite unscathed as far as he could tell. In a lather of impatience Drinkwater sent Frey below for his sword and pistols.

'You will remain here, Mr Frey, to assist Mr Hill… Hill, you are to take command until Mr Rogers returns. I will take Tyrrell with me.' Frey opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again as he caught sight of the baleful look in his captain's eyes.

As he hurried into the waist, Drinkwater heard Hill acknowledge his instructions and then he was down in the barge and Tregembo was ordering the oars out and they were away, the oar looms bending under Tregembo's urging. He looked back once.

Antigone sat upon the water, her sails slack and only adding to the impression of confusion that the morning seemed composed of. He forced himself to be calm. Perhaps Rogers had had no alternative but to attack the brig. Drinkwater knew enough of Rogers's character to guess that the fog would have given him a fair excuse to ignore the invasion craft.

They were approaching the brig now. They pulled past three or four floating corpses. Someone saw their approach and then Rogers was leaning over the rail waving triumphantly.

'Pass under the stern,' Drinkwater said curtly to Tregembo, and the coxswain moved the tiller. Drinkwater stood up in the stern of the boat.

'Mr Rogers,' he hailed, 'I directed you to attack the invasion craft!'

Rogers waved airily behind him. 'Mr Q's gone in pursuit, sir.' The first lieutenant's unconcern was infuriating.

'You may take possession, Mr Rogers, and retain the quarter-boat. Direct Gorton and Mount to follow me in the launch!'

Rogers's crestfallen look brought a measure of satisfaction to Drinkwater, then they were past the brig and Drinkwater realised he had not even read her name as they had swept under her stern windows. Tregembo swung the boat to larboard as the invasion craft came into view.

Smaller than the brig and clearly following some standing order of the brig's commander, they had made off under oars as soon as Rogers's attack materialised. They were about a mile and a half distant and were no longer headed away from the brig. Seeing they were pursued by only a single boat they had turned, their oars working them round to confront their solitary pursuer. Mr Quilhampton's quarter-boat still pressed on, about half a mile from the French and a mile ahead of Drinkwater.

'Pull you men,' he croaked, his mouth suddenly dry; then, remembering an old obscenity heard years ago, he added, 'pull like you'd pull a Frenchman off your mother.'

There was an outbreak of grins and the men leaned back against their oars so that the looms fairly bent under the strain and the blades flashed in the sunshine and sparkled off the drops of water that ran along them, linking the rippled circles of successive oar-drips in a long chain across the oily surface of the sea. Drinkwater looked astern. The white painted carvel hull of the big launch was following them, but it was much slower. Drinkwater could see the black maw of the carronade muzzle and wished the launch was ahead of them to clear the way. The thought led him to turn his attention to the enemy. Did they have cannon? They would surely be designed to carry them in the event of invasion but were they fitted at the building stage or at the rendezvous? He was not long in doubt. A puff of smoke followed by a slow, rolling report and a white fountain close ahead of Quilhampton's boat gave him his answer. And while he watched Quilhampton adjust his course, a second fountain rose close to his own boat. For a second the men wavered in their stroke, then Tregembo steadied them. An instant later half a dozen white columns rose from the water ahead.

Beside him Tyrrell muttered, 'My God!' and Drinkwater realised the hopelessness of the task. What could three boats do against ten, no twelve, well-armed and, Drinkwater could now see, well-manned boats armed with cannon. One carronade was going to be damn-all use.

'Stand up and wave, Mr Tyrrell.'

'I beg pardon, sir?'

'I said stand up and wave, God damn you! Recall Quilhampton's boat before we are shot to bits!'

'Aye, aye, sir.' Tyrrell stood and waved halfheartedly.

'I said wave, sir, like this!' Drinkwater jumped up and waved his hat above his head furiously. Someone at the oars in Quilhampton's boat saw him.

'Swing the boat round, Tregembo, I'm breaking off the attack.'

'Aye, aye, zur,' Tregembo acknowledged impassively and the barge swung round.

He waved again, an exaggerated beckoning, until Quilhampton's boat foreshortened in its turn. 'Pull back towards the launch.' He sat down, relieved. Ten minutes later the three boats bobbed together in a conferring huddle while, nearly a mile away, the French invasion craft had formed two columns and were pulling steadily eastwards.

'Well they've lost a brig, sir,' said Mount cheerfully. A ripple of acknowledgement went round the boat crews, a palliative to their being driven off by the French.

'Very true, Mr Mount, and doubtless we'll all be enriched thereby, but the smallest of those péniches can carry fifty infantry onto an English beach and you have just seen how well they can hold off the boats of a man-of-war. If the French have a few days of calm in the Channel it will not matter how many of their damned brigs are waiting to be condemned by the Prize Court, if the Prize Court ain't able to sit because a French army's hammering on the doors.' He paused to let the laboured sarcasm sink in. 'In carrying out an attack with a single boat you acted foolishly, Mr Q.' Quilhampton's face fell. Drinkwater rightly assumed Rogers had ordered him forward, but that did not alter the fact that Drinkwater had nearly lost a boat-load of men, not to mention a friend. It was clear that Quilhampton felt his public admonition acutely and Drinkwater relented. After all, there was no actual harm done and they had taken a brig, as Mount had pointed out.

'We have all been foolish, Mr Q, unprepared like the foolish virgins.'

This mitigation of his earlier rebuke brought smiles to the men in the boats as they leaned, panting on their oar looms.

'But I still have not given up those invasion craft. By the way, where's Mr Gorton?'

'Er… he was wounded when we boarded the brig, sir.' Quilhampton's eyes did not meet Drinkwater's.

'God's bones!' Drinkwater felt renewed rage rising in him and suppressed it with difficulty. 'Pull back to the ship and look lively about it.'

He slumped back in the stern of the barge, working his hand across his jaw as he mastered anger and anxiety. He was angry that the attack had failed to carry out its objective, angry that Gorton was wounded, and angry with himself for his failure as he wondered how the devil he was going to pursue the escaped invasion craft. And the parable he had cited to Quilhampton struck him as having been most applicable to himself.

Chapter Five Ruse de Guerre

Captain Drinkwater's mood was one of deep anger, melancholy and self-condemnation. He stood on the quarterdeck of the 16-gun brig Bonaparte, a French national corvette whose capture should have delighted him. Alas, it had been dearly bought. Although surprised by the speed of Rogers's attack, the French had been alerted to its possibility. Two marines and one seaman had been killed, and three seamen and one officer severely wounded. In the officer's case the stab wound was feared mortal and Drinkwater was greatly distressed by the probability of Lieutenant Gorton's untimely death. Unlike many of his colleagues, Drinkwater mourned the loss of any of his men, feeling acutely the responsibility of ordering an attack in the certain knowledge that some casualties were bound to occur. He was aware that the morning's boat expedition had been hurriedly launched and that insufficient preparation had gone into it. The loss of three men was bad enough, the lingering agony of young Gorton particularly affected him, for he had entertained high hopes for the man since he had demonstrated such excellent qualities in the Arctic the previous summer. It was not in Drinkwater's nature to blame the sudden onset of fog, but his own inadequate planning which had resulted not only in deaths and woundings but in the escape of the invasion craft whose capture or destruction might have justified his losses in his own exacting mind.

But he had been no less hard on Rogers and Mount. He had addressed the former in the cabin, swept aside all protestations and excuses in his anger, and reduced Rogers to a sullen resentment. It simply did not seem to occur to Rogers that the destruction of the invasion craft was of more significance than the seizure of a French naval brig.

'God damn it, man,' he had said angrily to Rogers, 'don't you see that you could have directed the quarter-boats to attack the brig, even as a diversion! Even if they were driven off! You and Mount in the launch could have wrought havoc among those bateaux in the fog, coming up on them piecemeal. The others would not have opened fire lest they hit their own people!' He had paused in his fury and then exploded. 'Christ, Sam, 'twas not the brig that was important!'

Well it was too late now, he concluded as he glared round the tiny quarterdeck. Rogers was left behind aboard Antigone with a sheet of written orders while Drinkwater took over the prize and went in pursuit of the invasion craft.

'Tregembo!'

'Zur?'

'I want those prisoners to work, Tregembo, work. You understand my meaning, eh? Get those damned sweeps going and keep them going.'

'Aye, aye, zur.' Tregembo set half a dozen men with ropes' ends over the prisoners at the huge oars.

It was already noon and still there was not a breath of wind. The fog had held off, but left a haze that blurred the horizon and kept the circle of their visibility under four miles. Somewhere in the haze ahead lay the chaloupes and the péniches that Drinkwater was more than ever determined to destroy. He had taken the precaution of removing the brig's officers as prisoners on board Antigone and issuing small arms to most of his own volunteers. In addition he had a party of marines under a contrite Lieutenant Mount (who was eager to make amends for his former lack of obedience). Drinkwater had little fear that the brig's men would rise, particularly if he worked them to exhaustion at the heavy sweeps.

He crossed the deck to where Tyrrell stood at the wheel.

'Course south-east by east, sir,' offered the master's mate.

Drinkwater nodded. 'Very well. Let me know the instant the wind begins to get up.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

He turned below, wondering if he would find anything of interest among the brig's papers and certain that Rogers had not thought of looking.

The wind came an hour after sunset. It was light for about half an hour and finally settled in the north and blew steadily. Drinkwater ordered the sweeps in and the prisoners below.

'Mr Frey.'

'Sir?' The midshipman came forward eagerly, pleased to have been specially detailed for this mission and aware that something of disgrace hung over the events of the morning.

'I want you to station yourself in the foretop and keep a close watch ahead for those invasion craft. From that elevation you may see the light from a binnacle, d'you understand?'

'Perfectly sir.'

'Very well. And pass word for Mr Q.'

Quilhampton approached and touched his hat. 'Sir?'

'I intend snatching an hour or two's sleep, Mr Q. You have the deck. I want absolute silence and no lights to be shown. Moonrise ain't until two in the mornin'. You may tell Mount's sentries that one squeak out of those prisoners and I'll hold 'em personally responsible. We may be lucky and catch those invasion bateaux before they get into Havre.'

'Let's hope so, sir.'

'Yes.' Drinkwater turned away and made for the cabin of the brig where, rolling himself in his cloak and laying his cocked pistols beside him, he lay down to rest.

He was woken from an uneasy sleep by Mr Frey and rose, stiff and uncertain of the time.

'Eight bells in the first watch, sir,' said Frey.

Drinkwater emerged on deck to find the brig racing along, leaning to a steady breeze from the north, the sky clear and the stars glinting like crystals. Quilhampton loomed out of the darkness.

'I believe we have 'em, sir,' he pointed ahead, 'there, two points to starboard.'

At first Drinkwater could see nothing; then he made out a luster of darker rectangles, rectangles with high peaks: lugsails.

'Straight in amongst 'em, Mr Q. Get the men to their quarters in silence. Orders to each gun-captain to choose a target carefully and, once the order is given, fire at will.' Fatigue, worry and the fuzziness of unquiet sleep left him in an instant.

''Ere's some coffee, sir.'

'Thank you, Franklin.' He took the pot gratefully. Night vision showed him the dark shadow of Franklin's naevus, visible even in the dark.

''S all right, sir.'

Drinkwater swallowed the coffee as the men went silently to their places. The brig's armament was of French 8-pounders; light guns but heavy enough to sink the chaloupes and péniches.

'Haul up the fore-course, Mr Q. T'gallants to the caps, if you please.'

'Rise fore-tacks and sheets there! Clew-garnets haul!' The orders passed quietly and the fore-course rose in festoons below its yard.

'T'gallants halliards…'

The topgallant sails fluttered, flogged and kicked impotently as their yards were lowered. The brig's speed eased so as to avoid over-running the enemy.

Drinkwater hauled himself up on the rail and held onto the forward main shroud on the starboard side. Bonaparte had eased her heel and he could clearly see the enemy under her lee bow.

'Make ready there! Mr Frey, stand by to haul the fore-yards aback.'

The sudden flash of a musket ahead was followed by a crackle of fire from small arms. The enemy had seen them but were unable to fire cannon astern.

'Steady as you go…'

'Steady as she goes, sir.'

He saw the dark blob of a chaloupe lengthen as it swung round to fire a broadside, saw its lugsails enlarge with the changing aspect, saw them flutter as she luffed.

'Starboard two points! Gun-captains, fire when you bear.'

There was a long silence, broken only by shouts and the popping of musketry. A dull thud near Drinkwater's feet indicated where at least one musket ball struck the Bonaparte. The chaloupe fired its broadside, the row of muzzles spitting orange, and a series of thuds, cracks and splintering sounded from forward. Then they were running the chaloupe down. He could see men diving overboard to avoid the looming stem of the brig as it rode over the heavy boat, split her asunder and sank her in passing over the broken hull. Along the deck the brig's guns fired, short barking coughs accompanied by the tremble of recoil and the reek of powder. Another boat passed close alongside and Drinkwater felt the hat torn from his head as musket balls buzzed round him.

'Mind zur.' Like some dark Greek Olympic hero Tregembo hefted a shot through the air and it dropped vertically into the boat. Next to him Quilhampton's face was lit by the flash of the priming in a scatter gun and the bell-muzzle delivered its deadly charge amongst the boat's crew as they drew astern, screaming in the brig's wake.

'Down helm!'

'Fore-yards, Mr Frey!'

The Bonaparte came up into the wind and then began to make a stern board as Drinkwater had the helm put smartly over the other way. Amidships the men were frantically spiking their guns round to find new targets. Individual guns fired, reloaded and fired again with hardly a shot coming in return from the invasion craft that lay in a shattered circle around them. Mount's marines were up on the rails and leaning against the stays, levelling their muskets on any dark spot that moved above the rails of the low hulls, so that only the cry of the wounded and dying answered the British attack.

'Cease fire! Cease fire!'

The reports of muskets and cannon died away. Drinkwater counted the remains of the now silent boats around them. He could see nine, with one, possibly two, sunk.

'I fear one has escaped us,' he said to no one in particular.

'There she is, sir!' Frey was pointing to the southwards where the dark shape of a sail was just visible.

'Haul the fore-yards there, put the ship before the wind, Mr Q.'

Bonaparte came round slowly, then gathered speed as they laid a course to catch the departing bateau. From her size Drinkwater judged her to be one of the larger chaloupes canonnières, rigged as a three-masted lugger. For a little while she stood south and Drinkwater ordered the fore-course reset in order to overhaul her. But it was soon obvious that the French would not run, and a shot was put across her bow. She came into the wind at once and the Bonaparte was hove to again, a short distance to windward.

'What the devil is French for "alongside"?' snapped Drinkwater.

'Try accoster, sir.'

'Hey, accoster, m'sieur, accoster!' They saw oar blades appear and slowly the two vessels crabbed together. 'Mr Mount, your men to cover them.'

'Very well, sir…' The marines presented their muskets, starlight glinting dully off the fixed bayonets. There was a grinding bump as the chaloupe came alongside. The curious, Drinkwater among them, stared down and instantly regretted it. Drinkwater felt a stinging blow to his head and jerked backwards as it seemed the deck of the vessel erupted in points of fire.

He staggered, his head spinning, suddenly aware of forty or fifty Frenchmen clambering over the rail from which the complacent defenders had fallen back in their surprise.

'God's bones!' roared Drinkwater suddenly uncontrollably angry. He lugged out his new hanger and charged forward. 'Follow me who can!' He slashed right and left as fast as his arm would react, his head still dizzy from the glancing ball that had scored his forehead. Blood ran thickly down into one eye but his anger kept him hacking madly. With his left hand he wiped his eye and saw two marines lunging forward with their bayonets. He felt a sudden anxiety for Frey and saw the boy dart beneath a boarding pike and drive his dirk into a man already parrying the thrust of a bayonet.

''Old on, sir, we're coming!' That was Franklin's voice and there was Tregembo's bellow and then he was slithering in what remained of someone, though he did not know whether it was friend or foe. His sword bit deep into something and he found he had struck the rail. He felt a violent blow in his left side and he gasped with the pain and swung round. A man's face, centred on a dark void of an open mouth, appeared before him and he smashed his fist forward, dashing the pommel of his hanger into the teeth of the lower jaw. The discharge of his enemy's pistol burnt his leg, but did no further damage and Drinkwater again wiped blood from his eyes. He caught his breath and looked round. Something seemed to have stopped his hearing and the strange absence of noise baffled him. Around him amid the dark shapes of dead or dying men, the fighting was furious. Quilhampton felled a man with his iron hook. Two marines, their scarlet tunics a dull brown in the gloom, their white cross-belts and breeches grey, were bayo-netting a French officer who stood like some blasphemous crucifix, a broken sword dangling from his wrist by its martingale. A seaman was wrestling for his life under a huge brute of a Frenchman with a great black beard while all along the deck similar struggles were in progress. Drinkwater recognised the struggling seaman as Franklin from the dark, distinctive strawberry birthmark. Catching up his sword he took three paces across the deck and drove the point into the flank of the giant.

The man turned in surprise and rose slowly. Drinkwater recovered his blade as the giant staggered towards him, ignoring Franklin who lay gasping on the deck. The giant was unarmed and grappled forward, a forbidding and terrifying sight. There was something so utterly overpowering about the appearance of the man that Drinkwater felt fear for the first time since they had gone into action. It was the same fear a small boy feels when menaced by a physical superior. Drinkwater's sword seemed inadequate to the task and he had no pistols. He felt ignominious defeat and death were inevitable. His legs were sagging under him and then his hearing came back to him. The man's mouth was open but it was himself that was shouting, a loud, courage-provoking bellow that stiffened his own resolve and sent him lunging forward, slashing at the man's face with his sword blade. The giant fell on his knees and Drinkwater hacked again, unaware that the man was bleeding to death through the first wound he had inflicted. The giant crashed forward and Drinkwater heard a cheer. What was left of his crew of volunteers encircled the fallen man, like the Israelites round Goliath.

The deck of the Bonaparte remained in British hands.

Antigone leaned over to the wind and creaked as her lee scuppers drove under water. Along her gun-deck tiny squirts of water found their way inboard through the cracks round the gun-ports. In his cabin Drinkwater swallowed his third glass of wine and finally addressed himself to his journal.

It is not, he wrote at last, the business of a sea-officer to enjoy his duty, but I have often derived a satisfaction from achievement, quite lacking in the events of today. We have this day taken a French National brig-corvette of sixteen 8-pounder long guns named the Bonaparte.We have also destroyed twelve invasion bateaux, two of the large class mounting a broadside of light guns, taken upwards of sixty prisoners and thereby satisfied those objectives set in launching the attack at dawn. Yet the cost has been fearful. Lieutenant Gorton's wound is mortal and nineteen other men have died, or are likely to die, as a result of the various actions that are, in the eyes of the public, virtually un-noteworthy. Had we let the enemy slip away, the newspapers would not have understood why a frigate of Antigone's force could not have destroyed a handful of boats and a little brig. It was clear the enemy had prepared for the possibility of attack, that the brig was to bear its brunt while the bateaux escaped, and, that, at the end, we were nearly overwhelmed by a ruse de guerre that might have made prisoners of the best elements aboard this ship, to say nothing of extinguishing forever the career of myself. Even now I shudder at the possible consequences of their counter-attack succeeding.

He laid his pen down and stared at the page where the wet gleam of the ink slowly faded. But all he could see was the apparition of the French giant and remember again how hollow his legs had felt.

Chapter Six The Secret Agent

As April turned into a glorious May, Lieutenant Rogers continued to smart from Drinkwater's rebuke. It galled him that even the news that the Bonaparte had been condemned as a prize and purchased into the Royal Navy—thus making him several hundred pounds richer failed to raise his spirits. There were few areas in which Rogers evinced any sensitivity, but one was in his good opinion of himself, and it struck him that he had come to rely upon his commander's reinforcement of this. Such hitherto uncharacteristic reliance upon another further annoyed him, and to it he began to add other causes for grievance. Drinkwater's report had said little, certainly nothing that would elevate his first lieutenant and place him on the quarterdeck of the prize as a commander. In fact Drinkwater had sent the prize into Portsmouth with the wounded under the master's mate Tyrrell, so, apart from his prize money, Rogers had dismissed the notion that he could expect anything further from the capture. In addition to this it seemed that the impetus to Antigone's cruise had gone, that no further chance of glory, advancement, or simply resuming his normal relationship with Drinkwater would offer itself to him. He took refuge in the only action left to him as first lieutenant; he harried the crew. Antigone's people were employed constantly in a relentless series of drills. They shifted sails, exercised at small-arms and cutlasses, and sent down the topgallant and topmasts. To kill any residual boredom they even got the heavy lower yards across the rails aportlast. When Drinkwater drily expressed satisfaction, Rogers demurred respectfully and repeated the evolution until it was accomplished to his own satisfaction.

For his part, Drinkwater accepted this propitiation as evidence of Rogers's contrition, and his own better nature responded so that the difference between them gradually diminished. Besides, news of Gorton's slow death at Haslar Hospital seemed to conclude the incident.

Towards the end of April they had spoken to the 18-gun brigsloop Vincejo on her way to the westward, with orders to destroy the coastal trade off south Brittany. Her commander had come aboard and closeted himself with Drinkwater for half an hour. Their discussion was routine and friendly. After Wright's departure Drinkwater was able to confirm the speculations of the officers and explain that their late visitor was indeed the John Wesley Wright who, as a lieutenant, had escaped from French custody in Paris with Captain Sir Sydney Smith. He also mentioned that Wright was far from pleased with the condition of his ship, its armament, or its manning, and this seemed to divert the officers into a discussion about the 'Vincey Joe', an old Spanish prize, held to be cranky and highly unsuitable for its present task.

Drinkwater kept to himself the orders Wright had passed him and the knowledge that Wright, like himself twelve years earlier, had been employed by Lord Dungarth's department in the landing and recovery of British agents on the coast of France. The orders Wright had brought emanated from Lord Dungarth via Admiral Keith, and prompted Drinkwater to increase his officers' vigilance in the interception and seizure of French fishing boats. Hitherto fishermen had been largely left alone. They were, as D'Auvergne had pointed out, the chief source of claret and cognac in England, and were not averse to parting with information of interest to the captains of British cruisers. But their knowledge of the English coast and its more obscure landing places, the suitability of their boats to carry troops and their general usefulness in forwarding the grand design of invasion had prompted an Admiralty order to detain them and destroy their craft. In this way Antigone passed the first weeks of a beautiful summer.

It was from their captures, and from the dispatch luggers and cutters with which Lord Keith kept in touch with his scattered cruisers, that Drinkwater and his officers learned of the consequences of the attempt made by discontented elements in France to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte. The Pichegru-Cadoudal conspiracy had implicated both wings of French politics and been exposed in the closing weeks of the previous year. It had taken some time to round up the conspirators and had culminated in the astounding news that Bonaparte's gendarmes had illegally entered the neighbouring state of Baden and abducted the young Due D'Enghien. The duke had been given a drum-head court-martial which implicated the Bourbons in the plot against Bonaparte, and summarily shot in a ditch at Vincennes. Drinkwater's reaction to the execution of D'Enghien combined with the orders he had received from Wright to extend Antigone's cruising ground further east towards Pointe d'Ailly.

'Standing close inshore like this,' Drinkwater overheard Rogers grumbling to Hill as he sat reading with his skylight open, 'we're not going to capture a damn thing. We're more like a bloody whore trailing her skirt up and down the street than a damned frigate. I wish we were in the West Indies. Even a fool of a Frenchman isn't going to put to sea with us sitting here for all to see.'

'No,' said Hill reflectively, and Drinkwater put down his book to hear what he had to say in reply. 'But it could be that that is just what the Old Man wants.'

'What? To be seen?'

'Yes. When I was in the Kestrel, cutter, back in ninety-two we used to do just this waiting to pick up a spy.'

'Wasn't our Nathaniel aboard Kestrel then?'

'Yes,' said Hill, 'and that cove Wright has been doing something similar more recently.'

'Good God! Why didn't you mention it before?'

Drinkwater heard Hill laugh. 'I never thought of it.'

In the end it was the fishing boat that found them as Drinkwater intended. She came swooping over the waves, a brown lugsail reefed down and hauled taut against the fresh westerly that set white wave-caps sparkling in the low sunshine of early morning. Drinkwater answered the summons to the quarterdeck to find Quilhampton backing the main-topsail and heaving the ship to. He levelled his glass on the approaching boat but could make nothing of her beyond the curve of her dark sail, apart from an occasional face that peered ahead and shouted at the helmsman. A minute or two later the boat was alongside and a man in riding clothes was bawling in imperious English for a chair at a yardarm whip. The men at the rail looked aft at Drinkwater.

He nodded: 'Do as he asks, Mr Q.'

As soon as the stranger's feet touched the deck he dextrously extricated himself from the bosun's chair, moved swiftly to the rail and whipped a pistol from his belt.

'What the devil are you about, sir?' shouted Drinkwater seeing the barrel levelled at the men in the boat.

'Shootin' the damned Frogs, Captain, and saving you your duty!' The hammer clicked impotently on a misfire and the stranger turned angrily. 'Has anyone a pistol handy?'

Drinkwater strode across the deck. 'Put up that gun, sir, d'you hear me!' He was outraged. That the stranger should escape from an enemy country and then shoot the men who had risked everything to bring him off to Antigone seemed a piece of quite unnecessary brutality.

'Here, take this.' Drinkwater turned to see Walmsley offering the stranger a loaded pistol.

'Good God! What, you here, Walmsley! Thank you…'

'Put up that gun, sir!' Drinkwater closed the gap between him and the spy and knocked up the weapon. The man spun round. His face was suffused with rage.

'A pox on you! Who the deuce d'you think you are to meddle in my affairs?'

'Have a care! I command here and you'll not fire into that boat!'

'D'you know who I am, damn you?'

'Indeed, Lord Camelford, I do; and I received orders to expect you some days ago.' He dropped his voice as Camelford looked round as though to obtain some support from Walmsley. 'Your reputation with pistols precedes you, my Lord. I must insist on your surrendering even those waterlogged weapons you still have in your belt.' He indicated a further two butts protruding from Camelford's waistband.

Camelford's face twisted into a snarl and he leaned forward, thrusting himself close to Drinkwater. 'You'll pay for your insolence, Captain. I do not think you know what influence I command, nor how necessary it was that I despatched those fishermen…'

'After promising them immunity to capture if they brought you offshore I don't doubt,' Drinkwater said, matching Camelford's anger. 'No fisherman would have risked bringing you off and under my guns without such assurance. It's common knowledge that we have been taking every fishing boat we can lay our hands on…'

'And now look, you damned fool, those two got clean away…' Camelford pointed to where the brown lugsail leaned away from the rail, full of wind and hauling off from Antigone's side as her seamen stood and witnessed the little drama amidships.

'And you have kept your word, my Lord,' Drinkwater said soothingly, 'and now shall we go to my cabin? Put the ship on a course of north north-east, Mr Q. I want to fetch The Downs without delay.'

'Who the hell is he?' Rogers asked Hill as first lieutenant and master stood on the quarterdeck supervising their preparations for coming to an anchor in The Downs. 'D'you know?'

'Yes. Don't you recall him as Lieutenant Pitt? Vancouver left him ashore at Hawaii back in ninety-four for insubordination…'

'Is he the fellow that shot Peterson, first luff of the Perdrix, in, what, ninety-eight?'

'The same fellow. And the court-martial upheld his defence that Peterson, though senior, had refused to obey a lawful order…'

'Having the name Pitt helped a great deal, I don't doubt,' said Rogers. 'He resigned after it though, a regular kill-buck by the look of it. I thought Drinkwater was going to have a fit when he came aboard.'

'Oh he'll get away with almost anything. He's related to Lord Grenville by marriage, Billy Pitt by blood, and, I believe, to Sir Sydney Smith. I daresay it's due to the latter pair that he's been employed as an agent. I wonder what he was doing in France?'

'Mmmm. It must take some stomach to act as a spy over there,' Rogers's tone was one of admiration as he nodded in the direction of the cliffs of Gris Nez.

'Oh yes. Undoubtedly,' mused Hill, 'but I wonder what exactly…' The conversation broke off as a thunderous-looking Drinkwater came on deck.

'Are we ready to anchor, Mr Rogers?'

'Aye, sir, as near as… all ready, sir.' Rogers saw the look in Drinkwater's eye and went forward.

'Very well, bring-to close to the flagship, Mr Hill, then clear away my barge!'

Drinkwater had had a wretched time with the obnoxious Camelford. In the end he had virtually imprisoned the spy in his own cabin with a few bottles and spent most of the time on deck. Actually avoiding a ridiculous challenge from the man's deliberate provocation tested his powers of self-restraint to the utmost. He found it hard to imagine what on earth a person of Camelford's stamp was doing on behalf of the British government in France. After they had anchored, Drinkwater went below and found Camelford slumped in his own chair, the portrait of Hortense Santhonax spread on the table before him. He opened his mouth to protest at the ransacking of his effects but Camelford slurred:

'D'you know this woman, Captain Drinkwater?'

'The portrait was captured with the ship,' Drinkwater answered non-committally.

'I asked if you know her.'

'I know who she is.'

'If you ever meet her or her husband, Captain, do what I wanted to do to those fishermen. Shoot 'em both!'

Drinkwater sensed Camelford was in earnest. Whatever the man's defects, he was, at that moment, making an effort to be both conciliatory and informative. Besides, experience had taught Drinkwater that agents recently liberated from a false existence surrounded by enemies were apt to behave irrationally, and news of Santhonax or his wife held an especial fascination for him. He grinned at Camelford.

'In his case I doubt if I'd hesitate.'

'You know Edouard Santhonax too, then?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'He was briefly my prisoner on two occasions.'

'Did you know Wright was captured in the Morbihan?'

'Wright? Of the Vincejo?'

'Yes. He was overwhelmed in a calm by a number of gunboats and forced to surrender. They put him in the Temple and cut his throat with a rusty knife.' Camelford tapped the cracked canvas before him. 'Her husband visited the Temple the night before, with a commission from the Emperor Napoleon…'

'The Emperor Napoleon?' queried Drinkwater, bemused by this strange and improbable story.

'Hadn't you heard, Captain?' Camelford leaned back. 'Oh my goodness no, how could you? Bonaparte the First Consul is transfigured, Captain Drinkwater. He is become Napoleon, Emperor of the French. A plebiscite of the French people has raised him to the purple.'

Following Camelford's welcome departure, Drinkwater was summoned to attend Lord Keith. As he kicked his heels aboard Keith's flagship, the Monarch, Drinkwater learned that not only had Napoleon secured his position as Emperor of the French but his own patron, Earl St Vincent, had been dismissed from the Admiralty. The old man refused to serve under William Pitt who had just been returned as Prime Minister in place of Addington. Pitt had said some harsh things about St Vincent when in opposition and had replaced him as First Lord of the Admiralty with Lord Melville. But Drinkwater's thoughts were not occupied with such considerations for long. His mind returned to the image of Wright lying in the Temple prison with his throat cut and the shadowy figure of Edouard Santhonax somewhere in the background. He wondered how accurate Camelford's information was and what Camelford was doing in France. Was it possible that a man of Camelford's erratic character had been employed to do what Cadoudal and Pichegru had failed to do: to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte? The only credible explanation for that hypothesis was that Camelford had been sent into France in a private capacity. Drinkwater vaguely remembered Camelford had avoided the serious consequences of his duel with Peterson. If that had been due to family connections, was it possible that someone had put him up to an attempt on the life of Bonaparte? Pitt himself, for instance, to whom Camelford was related and who had every motive for wishing the Corsican Tyrant dead.

There was some certainty nagging at the back of Drinkwater's mind, something that lent credibility to this extraordinary possibility. And then he remembered D'Auvergne's obscure remark to Cornwallis. Something about 'it would be soon if it was ever to be'. At the time he had connected it with D'Auvergne's passionate conviction that invasion was imminent; now perhaps the evidence pointed to Camelford having been sent into France to murder Napoleon. D'Auvergne's involvement in such operations could have made him a party to it. He was prevented from further speculation by the appearance of Keith's flag-lieutenant.

'The admiral will see you now, sir.'

He looked up, recalled abruptly to the present. Tucking his hat under his arm, Drinkwater went into the great cabin of the Monarch, mustering in his mind the mundane details of his need of firewood, fresh water and provisions. His reception was polite but unenthusiastic; his requisitions passed to Keith's staff. The acidulous Scots admiral asked him to take a protege of his as lieutenant in place of Gorton and then instructed Drinkwater that his presence had been requested by the new Prime Minister, then in residence at Walmer Castle.

Drinkwater answered the summons to Walmer Castle with some misgivings. It chimed in uncomfortably with his train of thought while he had been waiting to see Keith and he could only conclude Pitt wished to see him in connection with the recent embarkation of his cousin, Camelford. It was unlikely that the interview would be pleasant and he recalled Camelford's threats when he had prevented the shooting of the fishermen.

The castle was only a short walk from Deal beach. Many years ago he had gone there to receive orders for the rendezvous that had brought Hortense and then Edouard Santhonax into his life. On that occasion he had been received by Lord Dungarth, head of the Admiralty's intelligence service. To his astonishment it was Dungarth who met him again.

'My dear Nathaniel, how very good to see you. How are you?'

'Well enough, my Lord.' Drinkwater grinned with pleasure and accepted the offered glass of wine. 'I hope I find you in health?'

Dungarth sighed. 'As well as can be expected in these troubled times, though in truth things could not be much worse. Our hopes have been dashed and Bonaparte has reversed the Republic's principles without so much as a murmur from more than a handful of die-hards. Old Admiral Truguet has resigned at Brest and Ganteaume's taken over, but I believe this imperial nonsense will combine the French better than anything, and that shrewd devil Bonaparte knows it… But I did not get you here to gossip. Billy Pitt asks for you personally. You did well to get Camelford back in one piece.'

'It was nothing, my Lord…'

'Oh, I don't mean embarking him. He's a cantankerous devil; I'm surprised he hasn't challenged half your officers. His honour, what there is of it, is a damned touchy subject.'

'So I had gathered,' Drinkwater observed drily.

Dungarth laughed. 'I'm sure you had. Anyway his capture would have been an embarrassment, particularly with the change of government.'

'You said "our hopes have been dashed", my Lord; might I assume that Bonaparte was not intended to live long enough to assume the purple?'

Dungarth's hazel eyes fixed Drinkwater with a shrewd glance. 'Wouldn't you say that Mr Pitt serves the most excellent port, Nathaniel?'

Drinkwater took the hint. 'Most excellent, my Lord.'

'And most necessary, gentlemen, most necessary…' A thin, youngish man entered the room and strode to the decanter. Drinkwater noticed that his clothes were carelessly worn, his stockings, for instance, appeared too large for him. He faced them, a full glass to his lips, and Drinkwater recognised the turned-up nose habitually caricatured by the cartoonists. 'So this is Captain Drinkwater, is it?'

'Indeed,' said Dungarth, making the introductions, 'Captain Drinkwater; the Prime Minister, Mr Pitt.'

Drinkwater bowed. 'Yours to command, sir.'

'Obliged, Captain,' said Pitt, inclining his head slightly and studying the naval officer. 'I wish to thank you for your forbearance. I think you know to what I allude.'

'It is most considerate of you, sir, to take the trouble. The service was a small one.' Drinkwater felt relief that the incident was to be made no more of.

Pitt smiled over the rim of his glass and Drinkwater saw how tired and sick his boyish face really was, prematurely aged by the enormous responsibilities of high office.

'He was the only midshipman that remained loyal to Riou when the Guardian struck an iceberg in the Southern Ocean,' said Pitt obliquely, as though this extenuated Camelford's behaviour. Drinkwater recalled Riou's epic struggle to keep the damaged Guardian afloat for nine weeks until she fetched Table Bay. The thought seemed to speak more of Riou's character than of Camelford's. 'Lord Dungarth assures me', Pitt went on, 'that I can rely upon your absolute discretion.'

So, Drinkwater mused as he bowed again and muttered, 'Of course, sir', it seemed that he had guessed correctly and that Pitt himself had sent his cousin into France to end Bonaparte's career.

But he was suddenly forced to consider more important matters.

'Good,' said Pitt, refilling his glass. 'And now, Captain, I wish to ask you something more. How seriously do you rate the prospects of invasion?'

The enormity of the question took Drinkwater aback. Even allowing for Pitt's recent resumption of office it seemed an extraordinary one. He shot a glance at Dungarth who nodded encouragingly.

'Well, sir, I do not know that I am a competent person to answer, but I believe their invasion craft capable of transporting a large body of troops. That they are encamped in sufficient force is well known. Their principal difficulty is in getting a great enough number of ships in the Strait here to overwhelm our own squadrons. If they could achieve that… but I am sure, sir, that their Lordships are better placed to advise you than I…'

'No, Captain. I ask you because you have just come in from a Channel cruise and your opinions are not entirely theoretical. I am told that the French cannot build barges capable of carrying troops. I do not believe that, so it is your observations that I wished for.'

'Very well, sir. I think the French might be capable of combining their fleet effectively. Their ships are not entirely despicable. If fortune gave them a lucky start and Nelson…' he broke off, flushing.

'Go on, Captain. "If Nelson…"'

'It is nothing, sir.'

'You were about to say: "if Nelson maintains his blockade loosely enough to entice Latouche-Tréville out of Toulon for a battle, only to lose contact with him, matters might result in that combination of their fleets that you are apprehensive of." Is that it?'

'It is a possibility talked of in the fleet, sir.'

'It is a possibility talked of elsewhere, sir,' observed Pitt with some asperity and looking at Dungarth. 'Nelson will be the death or the glory of us all. He let a French fleet escape him before Abukir. If he wasn't so damned keen on a battle, but kept close up on Toulon like Cornwallis at Brest…' Pitt broke off to refill his glass. 'So you think there is a chance of a French fleet entering the Channel?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'It is a remote one, sir. But the Combined Fleets of France and Spain did so in seventy-nine. They would have more chance of success if they went north about.'

'Round Scotland, d'you mean?'

'Yes, sir. There'd be less chance of detection,' said Drinkwater, warming to his subject and egged on by the appreciative expression on Dungarth's face. 'A descent upon the Strait of Dover from the North Sea would be quite possible and they could release the Dutch fleet en route. You could circumvent Cornwallis by…'

'A rendezvous in the West Indies, by God!' interrupted Pitt. 'Combine all your squadrons then lose yourself in the Atlantic for a month and reappear at our back door… Dungarth, d'you think it's possible?'

'Very possible, William, very possible, and also highly likely. The Emperor Napoleon has one hundred and seventy thousand men encamped just across the water there. I'd say that was just what he was intending.'

Pitt crossed the rich carpet to stare out of the window at the pale line of France on the distant horizon. The waters of the Strait lay between, blue and lovely in the sunshine beyond the bastions of the castle, dotted with the white sails of Keith's cruisers. Without turning round, Pitt dismissed Drinkwater.

'Thank you, Captain Drinkwater. I shall take note of your opinion.'

Dungarth saw him to the door. 'Thank you, Nathaniel,' the earl muttered confidentially, 'I believe your deductions to be absolutely correct.'

Drinkwater returned to his boat flattered by the veiled compliment from Dungarth and vaguely disturbed that his lordship, as head of the navy's intelligence service, needed a junior captain to make his case before the new Prime Minister.

Chapter Seven The Army of the Coasts of the Ocean

'Six minutes, Mr Rogers,' said Drinkwater pocketing his watch, 'very creditable. Now you may pipe the hands to dinner.'

The shifting of the three topsails had been accomplished in good time and the tide was just turning against them. They could bring to their anchor and dine in comfort, for there was insufficient wind to hold them against a spring ebb. It was a great consolation, he had remarked to Rogers earlier, that they could eat like civilised men ashore at a steady table, while secure in the knowledge that their very presence at anchor in the Dover Strait was sufficient to keep the French army from invading.

For almost seven weeks now, Antigone had formed part of Lord Keith's advance division, cruising ceaselessly between the Varne Bank and Cap Gris Nez, one of several frigates and sixty-fours that Keith kept in support of the small fry in the shallower water to the east. Cutters, luggers, sloops and gun-brigs, with a few bomb-vessels, kept up a constant pressure on the attempts by the French army to practise embarkation. Drinkwater knew the little clashes between the advance forces of the two protagonists were short, sharp and murderous. His disfigured shoulder was proof of that.

Having frequently stood close inshore at high water, Drinkwater had seen that the invasion flotilla consisted of craft other than the chaloupes and péniches with which he was already familiar. There were some large prames, great barges, one hundred feet long and capable of carrying over a hundred and fifty men. A simple elevation of the telescope to the green hills surrounding Boulogne was enough to convince Drinkwater that he had been right in expressing his fears to Pitt. Line after line of tents spread across the rolling countryside. Everywhere the bright colours of soldiers in formation, little squares, lozenges, lines and rectangles, all tipped with the brilliant reflections of sunlight from bayonets, moved under the direction of their drill-masters. Occasionally squadrons of cavalry were to be seen moving; wheeling and changing from line to column and back to line again. Drinkwater was touched by the fascination of it all. Beside him Frey would sit with his box of water-colours, annoyed and impatient with himself that he could not do justice to the magnificence of the scene.

At night they could see the lines of camp-fires, the glow of lanterns, and occasionally hear the bark of cannon from the batteries covering the beaches which opened fire on an insolent British cutter working too close inshore.

Now Drinkwater waited for the cable to cease rumbling through the hawse and for Hill to straighten up from the vanes of the pelorus as Antigone settled to her anchor.

'Brought up, sir.'

'Very well. Mr Hill, Mr Rogers, would you care to dine with me? Perhaps you'd bring one of your mates, Mr Hill, and a couple of midshipmen.'

Mullender had fattened a small pig in the manger on scraps and that morning pronounced it ready for sacrifice. Already the scent of roasting pork had been hanging over the quarterdeck for some time and Drinkwater had been shamed into sending a leg into the gunroom and another into the cockpit. Mullender had been outraged by this largesse, particularly when Drinkwater ordered what was left after his own leg had been removed to be sent forward. But it seemed too harsh an application of privilege to subject his men to the aroma of sizzling crackling and deny them a few titbits. Besides, their present cruising ground was so near home that reprovisioning was no problem.

A companionable silence descended upon the table as the hungry officers took knife and fork to the dismembered pig.

'You are enjoying your meal, Mr Gillespy, I believe?' remarked Drinkwater, amused at the ecstatic expression on the midshipman's face.

'Yes, sir,' the boy squeaked, 'thanking you sir, for your invitation…' He flushed as the other diners laughed at him indulgently.

'Well, Mr Gillespy,' added Rogers, his mouth still full and a half-glass of stingo aiding mastication and simultaneous speech, 'it's an improvement on the usual short commons, eh?'

'Indeed, sir, it is.'

'You had some mail today, Mr Q, news of home I trust?'

Drinkwater asked, knowing three letters had come off in the despatch lugger Sparrow that forenoon.

'Yes, sir. Catriona sends you her kindest wishes.' James Quilhampton grinned happily.

'D'you intend to marry this filly then, Mr Q?' asked Rogers.

'If she'll have me,' growled Quilhampton, flushing at the indelicacy of the question.

'Can't see the point of marriage, myself,' Rogers said morosely.

'Oh, I don't know,' put in Hill. 'Its chief advantage is that you can walk down the street with a woman on your arm without exciting damn-fool comments from y'r friends.'

'Fiddlesticks!' Rogers looked round at the half-concealed smirks of Quilhampton and Frey. Even little Gillespy seemed to perceive a well-known joke. 'What the devil d'you mean, Hill?' demanded Rogers, colouring.

'That you cut out a pretty little corvette, trimmed fore and aft with ribbons and lace, with an entry port used by half the fleet in Chatham…'

'God damn it…'

'Now had you been married we would have thought it your wife, don't you see?'

'Why… I…'

'No, Hill, we'd never have fallen for that,' said James Quilhampton, getting his revenge. 'A married man would not have been so imprudent as to have carried so much sail upon his bowsprit,'

Upon this phallic reference the company burst into unrestrained laughter at the first lieutenant's discomfiture. Rogers coloured and Drinkwater came to his rescue.

'Take it in good part, Sam. I heard she was devilish pretty and those fellows are only jealous. Besides I've news for you. You need no longer stand a watch. I received notice this morning that Keith wants us to find a place for an eleve of his, a Lieutenant Fraser…'

'Oh God, a Scotchman,' complained Rogers, irritated by Quilhampton and knowing his partiality in that direction. Mullender drew the cloth and placed the decanter in front of Drinkwater. He filled his glass and sent it round the table.

'And now, gentlemen… The King!'

Drinkwater looked round the table and reflected that they were not such a bad set of fellows and it was a very pleasant day to be dining, with the reflections of sunlight on the water bouncing off the painted deckhead and the polished glasses.

Two days later the weather wore a different aspect. Since dawn Antigone had worked closer inshore under easy sail, having been informed by signal that some unusual activity was taking place in the harbour and anchorage of Boulogne Road. By noon the wind, which had been steadily freshening from the north during the forenoon, began to blow hard, sending a sharp sea running round Cap Gris Nez and among the considerable numbers of invasion craft anchored under the guns of Boulogne's defences.

The promise of activity, either action with the enemy or the need to reef down, had aroused the curiosity of the officers and the watch on deck. A dozen glasses were trained to the eastward.

'Mr Frey, make to Constitution to come within hail.'

'Aye, aye, sir.' The bunting rose jerkily to the lee mizen topsail yard and broke out. Drinkwater watched the hired cutter that two days earlier had brought their new lieutenant. She tacked and lay her gunwhale over until she luffed under the frigate's stern. Drinkwater could see her commander, Lieutenant Dennis, standing expectantly on a gun-carriage. He raised a speaking-trumpet.

'Alert Captain Owen of the movement in the Road!' He saw Dennis wave and the jib of Constitution was held aback as she spun on her heel and lay over again on a broad reach to the west where Owen in the Immortalité was at anchor with the frigate Leda. Owen was locally the senior officer of Keith's 'Boulogne division' and it was incumbent upon Drinkwater to let him know of any unusual movements of the French that might be taken advantage of.

'Well, gentlemen, let's slip the hounds off the leash. Mr Frey, make to Harpy, Bloodhound and Archer Number Sixteen: "Engage the enemy more closely".' The 18-gun sloop and the two little gun-brigs were a mile or so to the eastward and eager for such a signal. Within minutes they were freeing off and running towards the dark cluster of French bateaux above which the shapes of sails were being hoisted.

'Mr Hill, a man in the chains with a lead. Beat to quarters and clear for action, Mr Rogers.' He stood beside the helmsmen. 'Up helm. Lee forebrace there…'

Antigone eased round to starboard under her topsails and began to bear down on the French coast. The sun was already westering in a bloody riot of purple cloud and great orange streaks of mare's tails presaging more wind on the morrow. Antigone stood on, coming within clear visual range of the activity in the anchorage.

'Forty-four, forty-five brigs and—what've you got on that slate, Frey?—forty-three luggers, sir,' reported Quilhampton, who had been diligently counting the enemy vessels as the sun broke briefly through the cloud and shot rays of almost horizontal light over the sea, foreshortening distances and rendering everything suddenly clear. Then it sank from view and left the silhouettes of the Immortalité and Leda on the horizon, coming in from the west.

The small ships were close inshore, the flashes from their guns growing brighter as daylight diminished and the tide turned. Owen made the signal for withdrawal and the Antigone, in company with the Harpy, Bloodhound and Archer, drew off for the night and rode out the rising gale at anchor three leagues offshore.

At daylight on the following day, 20th July, Drinkwater was awoken by Midshipman Dutfield. 'Beg pardon, sir, but Mr Fraser's compliments, sir, and would you come on deck.'

Drinkwater emerged into the thin light of early morning. The north-north-westerly wind was blowing with gale force. The Channel waves were steep, sharp and vicious and Antigone rode uncomfortably to her anchor. The flood tide was just away and the frigate lay across wind and tide, rolling awkwardly. But it was not this circumstance that the new lieutenant wished to draw to Drinkwater's attention.

'There, sir,' he pointed, 'just beyond the low-water mark, lines of fascines to form a rough wall with artillery… see!' Fraser broke off his description as the French gave evidence of their purpose. The flash of cannon from the low-water mark was aimed at the gun-brigs anchored inshore. Out of range of the batteries along the cliffs, they were extremely vulnerable to shot from a half-mile nearer. The French, as if demonstrating their ingenious energy, had made temporary batteries on the dry sands and could withdraw their guns as the tide made. What was more, shot fired on a flat trajectory so near the surface of the sea could skip like stones upon a pond. They'd smash a gun-brig with ease and might, with luck, range out much further.

'It's bluidy clever, sir.'

'Aye, Mr Fraser… but why today?' Drinkwater adjusted his glass and immediately had his answer. At the hour at which it was normal to see lines of infantry answering the morning roll-call he was aware of something very different about the appearance of the French camps. Dark snakes wound their way down towards the dip in the hills where the roofs and belfries of Boulogne indicated the port.

'By heaven, Mr Eraser, they're embarking!'

'In this weather, sir?'

'Wind or not, they're damned well on the move…' The two officers watched for some minutes in astonishment. 'There are a lot less bateaux in the anchorage this morning,' Drinkwater observed.

'Happen they've hauled them inshore to embark troops.'

'That must have been a ticklish business in this wind with a sea running.'

'Aye.'

As the tide made, Owen ordered his tiny squadron under weigh and once again Antigone closed the coast. By now the batteries along the tideline had been withdrawn and there was sufficient water over the shoals for the bigger frigates to move in after the sloops and gun-brigs.

At noon Antigone came within range of the batteries and Drinkwater opened fire. After the weeks of aimless cruising, the stench of powder and the trembling of the decks beneath the recoiling carriages was music in the ears of Antigone's crew.

Their insolence was met by a storm of fire from the shore; it seemed that everywhere the ground was level the French had cannon. The practical necessity of having to tack offshore in the northerly wind allowed them to draw breath and inspect the ship for damage. There was little enough. A few holes in the sails and a bruised topgallant mast. Astern of them the gun-brigs and sloops were snapping around the two or three luggers that were trying to work offshore. The flood tide swept them northwards and, off Ambleteuse, Drinkwater gave orders to wear ship.

'Brace in the spanker there! Brace in the after-yards! Up helm!' The after-canvas lost its power to drive the frigate as Drinkwater turned her south.

'Square the headyards! Steady… steady as she goes!'

'Steady as she goes, sir.'

'Square the after-yards!'

Antigone steadied on her new course, standing south under her three topsails, running before the wind inside the shoals and parallel with the coast. It wanted an hour before high water but here the tide ran north for several hours yet and they could balance wind and tide, checking the ship's southward progress against the tide, and thus wreak as much havoc as they possibly could while the smoke from their own guns hung over their deck masking them from the enemy. The motion of the deck eased considerably.

'Mr Rogers! Shift over the starbowlines to assist at the larboard batteries. Every gun-captain to choose his target and fire as at a mark, make due allowance for elevation and roll. You may open fire!'

Drinkwater stared out to larboard. They were a mile from the cliffs at Raventhun and suddenly spouts of water rose on their beam. Drinkwater levelled his glass.

'Mr Gillespy!'

'Sir?'

'D'you see that square shape over there, where the ground falls away?'

The boy nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

'That's Ambleteuse fort. Be so kind as to point it out to Mr Rogers so that he may direct the guns.'

The little estuary that formed the harbour opened up on their beam as Antigone exchanged shot with the fort. Within the harbour they could see quite clearly a mass of rafted barges crammed with soldiers, rocking dangerously as the sharp waves drove in amongst them.

A shower of splinters sprouted abruptly from the rail where a ball struck home and more holes appeared in the topsails. Amidships the launch was hit by three shot within as many minutes and then they were passing out of range of the fort's embrasures. Rogers was leaping up and down from gun to gun, exhorting his men and swearing viciously at them when their aim failed. As the land rose again a battery of horse artillery could be seen dashing at the gallop along the cliff. Suddenly Drinkwater saw the officer leading the troop fling up his hand and the gunners rein in their horses.

'Mr Rogers! See there!' Rogers narrowed his eyes and stared through the smoke that cleared slowly in the following wind. Then comprehension struck him and he leant over the nearest gun and aimed it personally. The Frenchmen had got their cannon unlimbered and were slewing them round. They were shining brass cannon, field pieces of 8- or 9-pound calibre, Drinkwater estimated, and they were ready loaded. He saw white smoke flash from an almost simultaneous volley from the five guns and a second later the shot whistled overhead, carrying off the starboard quarter-boat davits and dumping the boat in the sea alongside, where it trailed in its falls amongst the broken baulks of timber.

Amidships Rogers was howling with rage as his broadside struck flints and chunks of chalk from the cliff a few feet below the edge. But his next shots landed among the artillerymen and they had the satisfaction of seeing the battery limbered up amid frantic cheers from the gunners amidships.

'We're too close inshore, sir. Bottom's shoaling.' Drinkwater turned to the ever-dutiful Hill who, while this fairground game was in progress, attended to the navigation of the ship.

'Bring her a point to starboard then.'

They were abeam of Wimereux now. Here too, there was a fort on the rocks at the water's edge, and below the fort two of the French invasion craft were stranded and going to pieces under the white of breakers. Drinkwater was suddenly aware that the cloud of powder smoke that rolled slowly ahead of the ship was obscuring his view. 'Cease fire! Cease fire!'

The smoke cleared with maddening slowness, but gradually it seemed to lift aside like a theatrical gauze, revealing a sight of confusion such as their own cannon could not achieve. They were less than two miles from Boulogne now, and under the cliffs and along the breakwaters of the harbour more than a dozen of the invasion barges lay wrecked with the sea breaking over them. Their shattered masts had fallen over their sides and men could be seen in the water around them.

They had a brief glimpse into the harbour as they crossed the entrance, a brief glimpse of chaos. It seemed as though soldiers were everywhere, moving like ants across the landscape. Yet, as Antigone crossed the narrow opening the guns of Boulogne were briefly silent, their servers witnesses of the drowning of over a thousand of their comrades. In this hiatus Antigone passed by, her own men standing at their guns, staring at the waves breaking viciously over rocking and overloaded craft, at men catching their balance, falling and drowning.

'I think there's the reason for the activity, sir,' said Fraser pointing above the town. 'I'll wager that's the Emperor himself.'

Drinkwater swung his glass and levelled it where Fraser pointed. Into the circle of the lens came an unforgettable image of a man in a grey coat, sitting on a white horse and wearing a large black tricorne hat. The man had a glass to his eye and was staring directly at the British frigate as it swept past him. As he lowered his own glass, Drinkwater could just make out the blur of Napoleon's face turning to one of his suite behind him.

'Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor o' the French,' muttered Fraser beside him. 'He looks a wee bit like Don Quixote… Don Quixote de la Manche…'

Fraser's pun was lost in the roar of the batteries of Boulogne as they reopened their fire upon the insolent British frigate. Shot screamed all round them. Hill was demanding they haul further offshore and Rogers was asking for permission to re-engage. He nodded at both officers.

'Very well, gentlemen, if you would be so kind.' He turned for a final look at the man on the white horse, but he had vanished, obscured by the glittering train of his staff as they galloped away. 'The gale has done our work for us,' he muttered to himself, 'for the time being.'

Chapter Eight Stalemate

'Will you damned lubbers put your backs into it and pull,'

Midshipman Lord Walmsley surveyed the launch's crew with amiable contempt and waved a scented handkerchief under his nose. He stood in the stern sheets of the big boat in breeches and shirt, trying to combat the airless heat of the day and urge his oarsmen to more strenuous efforts. Out on either beam Midshipmen Dutfield and Wickham each had one of the quarterboats and all three were tethered to the Antigone. At the ends of their towropes the boats slewed and splashed, each oarsman dipping his oar into the ripples of his last stroke, so that their efforts seemed utterly pointless. The enemy lugger after which they were struggling lay on the distant horizon.

Walmsley regarded his companion with a superior amusement. Sitting with his little hand on the big tiller was Gillespy, supposedly under Walmsley's tutoring and utterly unable to exhort the men.

'It is essential, Gillespy, to encourage greater effort from these fellows,' his lordship lectured, indicating the sun-burnt faces that puffed and grunted, two to a thwart along the length of the launch. 'You can't do it by squeaking at 'em and you can't do it by asking them. You have to bellow at the damned knaves. Call 'em poxy laggards, lazy land-lubbing scum; then they get so God-damned angry that they pull those bloody oar looms harder. Don't you see? Eh?'

'Yes… my Lord,' replied the unfortunate Gillespy who was quite under Walmsley's thumb, isolated as he was in the launch.

The lesson in leadership was greeted with a few weary grins from the men at the oars, but few liked Mr Walmsley and those that were not utterly uncaring from the monotony of their task and being constantly abused by the senior midshipman of their division, resented his arrogance. Of all the men in the boat there was one upon whom Walmsley's arrogant sarcasm acted like a spark upon powder.

At stroke oar William Waller laboured as an able seaman. A year earlier he had been master of the Greenland whale-ship Conqueror, a member of the Trinity House of Kingston-upon-Hull and engaged in a profitable trade in whale-oil, whale-bone and the smuggling of furs from Greenland to France where they were used to embellish the gaudy uniforms of the soldiers they had so recently been cannonading upon the cliffs of Boulogne. It had been this illicit trade that had reduced him to his present circumstances. He had been caught red-handed engaged in a treasonable trade with a French outpost on the coast of Greenland by Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater.

Although well aware that he could have been hanged for what he had done, Waller was a weak and cunning character. That he had escaped with his life due to Drinkwater's clemency had at first seemed fortunate, but as time passed his present humiliations contrasted unfavourably with his former status. His guilt began to diminish in his own eyes as he transferred responsibility for it to his partner who had been architect of the scheme and had died for it. The greater blame lay with the dead man and Waller was, in his own mind, increasingly a victim of regrettable circumstances. When he had been turned among them, many of Melusine's hands had been aware of his activities. They had shunned him and despised him, but Waller had held his peace and survived, being a first-rate seaman. But he had kept his own counsel, a loner among the gregarious seamen of his mess, and long silences had made him morose, driven him to despair at times. He had been saved by the transfer to the Antigone and a bigger ship's company. Among the pressed and drafted men who had increased the size of the ship's company to form the complement of a frigate, there had been those who knew nothing of his past. He had taught a few ignorant landsmen the rudiments of seamanship and there were those among the frigate's company that called him friend. He had drawn renewed confidence from this change in his circumstances. He let it be known among his new companions that he was well-acquainted with the business of navigation and that many of Antigone's junior officers were wholly without knowledge of their trade. In particular Lord Walmsley's studied contempt for the men combined with his rank and ignorance to make him an object of the most acute detestation to Waller.

On this particular morning, as Waller hauled wearily at the heavy loom of the stroke oar, his hatred of Walmsley reached its crisis. He muttered under his breath loudly enough for Walmsley and Gillespy to hear.

'Did you say something, Waller?'

Waller watched the blade of his oar swing forward, ignoring his lordship's question.

'I asked you what you said, Waller, damn you!'

Waller continued to pull steadily, gazing vaguely at the horizon.

'He didn't say nothing, sir,' the man occupying the same thwart said.

'I didn't ask you,' snapped Walmsley, fixing his eyes on Waller. 'This lubber, Mr Gillespy, needs watching. He was formerly the skipper of a damned whale-boat…' Walmsley laid a disparaging emphasis on the two words, 'a bloody merchant master who thought he could defy the King. And now God damn him he thinks he can defy you and I…'

Waller stopped rowing. The man behind him bumped into his stationary back and there was confusion in the boat.

'Give way, damn you!' Walmsley ordered, his voice low. Beside him little Gillespy was trembling. The oarsmen stopped rowing and the launch lost way.

'Go to the devil, you poxed young whoreson!' Waller snarled through clenched teeth. A murmur of approval at Waller's defiance ran through the boat's crew.

'Why you God-damn bastard!' Walmsley shoved Gillespy aside and pulled the heavy tiller from the rudder stock. In a single swipe he brought the piece of ash crashing into the side of Waller's skull, knocking him senseless, his grip on the oar-loom weakened and it swept up and struck him under the chin as he slumped into the bottom of the boat.

The expression on the faces of the launch's crew were of disbelief. Astern of them the towline drooped slackly in the water.

Drinkwater sat in the cool of his cabin re-reading a letter he had recently received from his wife Elizabeth, to see if he had covered all the points raised in it in his reply. The isolation of command had made the writing of his private journal and the committing of his thoughts to his letters an important and pleasurable part of his daily routine. Cruising so close to the English coast meant that Keith's ships were in regular contact with home via the admiral's dispatch-vessels. In addition to fresh vegetables and mail, these fast craft kept the frigates well supplied with newspapers and gossip. The hired cutter Admiral Mitchell had made such a delivery the day before.

He laid the letter down and picked up the new steel pen Elizabeth had sent him, dipping it experimentally in the ink-pot and regarding its rigid nib with suspicion. He pulled the half-filled sheet of paper towards him and resumed writing, not liking the awkward scratch and splatter of the nib compared with his goose-quill, but aware that he would be expected to reply using the new-fangled gift.

Our presence in the Channel keeps Boney and his troops in their camps. Last week he held a review, lining his men up so that they presented an appearance several miles long…

He paused, not wishing to alarm Elizabeth, though from her letters he knew of the arrangements each parish was making to raise an invasion alarm and call out the militia and yeomanry.

It is said that Boney himself went afloat in a gilded barge and that he dismissed Admiral Bruixfor attempting to draw a sword on him when he protested the folly of trying an embarkation in the teeth of a gale. What the truth of these rumours is I do not know, but it is certain that many men were drowned and some score or so of barges wrecked.

He picked up his pen and finished the letter, then he sanded, folded and sealed it. Mullender came into the cabin and, at a nod from Drinkwater, poured him a glass of wine. He leaned back contented. Beyond the cabin windows the Channel stretched blue, calm and glorious under sunshine. Through the stern windows the reflected light poured, dancing off the deckhead and bulkheads of the cabin and falling on the portraits of his family that hung opposite. He became utterly lost in the contemplation of his family.

His reverie was interrupted by a shouting on deck and a hammering at his cabin door.

Drinkwater sat in his best uniform, flanked by Lieutenant Rogers and Lieutenant Fraser. The black shapes of their three hats sat on the baize tablecloth, inanimate indications of formality. Before them, uncovered, stood Midshipman Lord Walmsley. Drinkwater looked at the notes he had written after examining Midshipman Gillespy. The boy had been terrified but Drinkwater and his two lieutenants had obtained the truth out of him, unwilling to make matters worse by having to consult individual members of the boat's crew. Gillespy had withdrawn now, let out before Walmsley was summoned to hear the surgeon's report.

Drinkwater had once entertained some hopes of the midshipman but this episode disgusted him. He himself had no personal feelings towards Waller beyond a desire to see him behave as any other pressed seaman on board and to see him treated as such. Walmsley knew of Waller's previous circumstances and Drinkwater assumed that this had led to his contemptuous behaviour.

He looked up at the young man. Walmsley did not appear unduly concerned about the formality of the present proceedings. Drinkwater recollected his acquaintance with Camelford and wondered if Camelford's presence had set a portfire to this latent insolence and arrogance of Walmsley.

The silence of waiting hung heavily in the cabin. Following the incident in the launch, Drinkwater had had the boats hoisted inboard. Their progress to the west was no longer necessary since their chase, a lugger holding a breeze inshore, had long ago disappeared to the south-west. There was a knock at the door.

'Enter!'

'Come in, Mr Lallo. Pray take a seat and tell us what is the condition of Waller.'

The surgeon, a quiet, middle-aged man whose only vice seemed to be a messy reliance upon Sharrow's snuff, seated himself, sniffed and looked at Drinkwater. His didactic manner prompted Drinkwater to add: 'In words we all comprehend, if you please, Mr Lallo.'

Mr Lallo sniffed again. 'Well, sir,' he began, casting a meaningful look at the back of Lord Walmsley, 'the man Waller has taken a severe and violent blow with a heavy object…'

'A tiller,' put in Rogers impatiently.

'Just so, Mr Rogers. With a tiller, which has caused an aneurism… a distortion of the arteries and interrupted the flow of blood to the cere… to the brain…'

'You mean Waller's had a stroke?'

Lallo looked resentfully at Rogers and nodded. 'In effect, yes. He is reduced to the condition of an idiot.'

Drinkwater felt the particular meaning of the word in its real form. That Waller and his treason were no longer of any consequence struck him as an irony, but that a midshipman should have reduced him to that state by an over-indulgence of his authority was a reflection of his own powers of command. Drinkwater did not share Earl St Vincent's conviction that the men should respect a midshipman's coat if the object within was not worthy of their duty. He had always considered the training of his midshipmen a prime responsibility. With Walmsley he had failed. It did not matter that he had inherited his lordship from another captain. Nor, he reflected, could he hope that the processes of naval justice might redress something of the balance. The arrogance of well-connected midshipmen was nothing new in the navy, nor was the whitewashing of their guilt by courts-martial.

'Thank you, Mr Lallo. You do not entertain any hopes for Waller's eventual recovery then?'

'I doubt it, Captain Drinkwater. I believe him to have been a not unintelligent man, sir. He might be fit to attend the heads for the remainder of his days, though he is like to be afflicted with ataxia.' Lallo glared at the first lieutenant, defying him to require a further explanation.

'Thank you, Mr Lallo. That will be all.'

After the surgeon had left, Drinkwater turned his full attention upon Walmsley.

'Well, Mr Walmsley. Do you have anything to say?'

'I did my duty, sir. The man was insolent. I regret…'

'You regret. You regret hitting him so hard, I suppose. Eh?'

Walmsley swallowed. 'Yes, sir.'

'Lord Walmsley,' Drinkwater said, using the title for the first time, 'you are a young man with considerable ability, aware of your position in society and clearly contemptuous of your present surroundings. It is my intention to punish you as you are a midshipman. What you do after that as a gentleman is a matter for your own sense of honour. You may go now.'

'May I not know my punishment?'

'No. You will be informed. Whatever you appear at the gaming tables, you are, sir, only a midshipman on board this ship!'

Walmsley stood uncertainly and Drinkwater saw, for the first time, signs that the young man's confidence was weakening. There was a trembling about the mouth and a brightening of the eyes.

Walmsley turned away and the three officers watched him leave the cabin.

Next to him Drinkwater heard Lieutenant Fraser expel his breath with relief. Drinkwater turned to him. 'Well, Mr Fraser, it is customary upon these occasions to ask the junior officer present to give his opinion first.'

'Court-martial, sir…'

'But upon what charge, Fraser, for God's sake?' put in Rogers intemperately and Drinkwater smelt the drink on him. 'No, sir, he's too much influence for that. I doubt that'd do any of us any good.' Rogers spoke with heavy emphasis and Drinkwater raised an eyebrow. 'Besides he's done no more than many, and Waller was an insolent bastard at times. My advice, sir, is keep it in the ship.'

'Not a bluidy mastheading, for God's sake, sir,' expostulated Fraser who was showing signs of ability and perception far exceeding the first lieutenant's.

'No, gentlemen,' Drinkwater cut in. 'Thank you both for your opinions, so succinctly put,' he added drily. 'You are both right. The matter should not go outside the ship, but I do not hold with officers abusing their powers. Whatever Walmsley's expectations he is but a midshipman, and a midshipman going to the bad. It is not my intention to encourage him further. As for his punishment, we shall marry him to the gunner's daughter.'

Drinkwater rose from the table and took up his hat. The two lieutenants scrambled to their feet.

'Pipe all hands to witness punishment, Mr Rogers!'

Drinkwater emerged on deck some few minutes later, the punishment book in his hand. It contained few entries since Drinkwater was reluctant to administer corporal punishment for any but serious offences and had adopted such measures as stoppage of grog and the wearing of a collar as a public humiliation, finding them much more appropriate and effective for the trivial offences usually committed. This morning, however, would be different.

He took his place at the head of the officers who stood in a half-circle, their swords by their sides. Behind them in three ranks, Mount's marines were paraded, a glittering assembly of scarlet, white and steel. The men were crowded in the waist, over the boats and the hammock nettings in the gangways. Word had got about that Walmsley was to be punished and the hands were in a state of barely suppressed glee. In the circumstances and in view of the offender's station, Drinkwater called him forward and read the usually curtailed preamble with formal gravity.

'Silence there!' barked Rogers as the hands murmured their delight when Walmsley stepped uncertainly forward. He had lost his cocksure attitude and was clearly very apprehensive. It occurred to Drinkwater that Walmsley might have imagined such a thing as this could never happen to him, that it was something that affected others not of his standing.

'Mr Walmsley, the enquiry held by myself and the officers of His Britannic Majesty's frigate under my command have examined and condemned your conduct this forenoon and found you guilty of behaviour both scandalous and oppressive. This crime, not being capital, shall be punished according to the Custom of the Navy under the Thirty-Sixth Article of War, as enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of, Drinkwater paused and fixed his eyes on the abject Walmsley, 'the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled.

'You are, Mr Walmsley, to be flogged over the breech of a gun.' He snapped the book closed. 'Mr Comley!' The boatswain stepped forward. 'Two dozen strokes, sir. And lay 'em on!'

Comley put his hand on Walmsley's shoulder and pushed him forward until he stood by the breech of one of the quarterdeck guns. A shove sent the young man over the cannon and Comley drew back his rattan. In the next few minutes the boatswain did not spare his victim.

Captain Drinkwater continued walking the windward side of the quarterdeck long after sunset. The blazing riot of scarlet had faded by degrees to a pale lemon yellow and finally to a duck-egg blue that remained slightly luminous as the stars in their constellations blazed overhead. The air remained warm although there was enough of a breeze to enable Antigone to be steered under her topsails, and she cruised slowly southwards.

Drinkwater thought over the events of the day, distressed by the incident in the boats and aware that he had dealt with it in the only just way. Walmsley had begged an interview with him which he had refused, and the sight of Waller lying inert in the care of Mr Lallo convinced him that he was right, that the longer the young man felt his punishment the better. Drinkwater sighed, worrying about the effect on the rest of the ship's company. The internal business of the ship was oppressing him, already the tedium of blockade, even in this relatively independent form of cruising, was making him irritable and the ship's company fractious. The fine summer weather and apparent inactivity of the French seemed to lend a quality of futility to their movements, although logic proclaimed the necessity of their presence, along with the other independent frigates and all the vessels of the various blockading squadrons. There was a quality of stalemate in the war and it was difficult to determine what would happen next. It seemed to Drinkwater that the equation was balanced, that even the weather, usually so impartial a player in the game, had assimilated some of this inertia and put no demands on his own skill or the energies of his people. It seemed an odd contrast to the previous summer when the changeable moods of the Greenland Sea kept them constantly about the business of survival.

He found himself longing for action. Antigone had missed the bombardment of Havre in late July and seen no more than some pedestrian chases after small fry which had achieved little. At the beginning of August had come the news that Admiral Ganteaume had attempted a break-out from Brest, but had turned back; so that the equation, showing for a moment signs of imbalance, had had its equilibrium re-established.

Drinkwater heard seven bells struck. Eleven o'clock. It was time he took himself below. Mr Quilhampton, who had been confined to the lee quarterdeck in the down-draught from the main-topsail for his entire watch, looked after the retreating figure and clucked his tongue sympathetically.

'Poor fellow,' he muttered to himself, taking up the weather side and ordering Gillespy to heave the log, 'fretting over a pair of ne'er-do-wells!'

Chapter Nine Orders

'All hands, ahoy! All hands, reef topsails!'

Drinkwater staggered as Antigone slammed into a sea. A burst of spray exploded over her weather bow and whipped aft, catching the officers on the quarterdeck in the face to induce the painful wind-ache in their cheeks. The equinox had found them at last and Drinkwater experienced a pang of sudden savage joy. He had been warned of the onset of the gale by the increasing ache in his neck and shoulder that pressaged damp weather. During the long, warm, dry days of that exceptional summer he had hardly been reminded of his wound, but now the illusions were gone, stripped aside in that first wet streak of winter that incommoded his officers and afforded him his amusement.

He clapped his hand to his hat as a gust more violent than hitherto laid the ship over. 'Mr Rogers!'

'Sir?'

'We'll reef in stays, Mr Rogers. See what the hands can do!' He saw Rogers's look of incredulity and grinned as the first lieutenant turned away.

'Hands, tack ship and reef topsails in one!' bawled Rogers through his speaking trumpet. It amused Drinkwater to see the variety of reactions his order provoked. Hill caught his eye with a twinkle, Quilhampton grinned in anticipation, while Lieutenant Fraser, still considering Drinkwater something of an enigma, looked suitably quizzical. The hands milled at their mustering points.

'Man the rigging! 'Way aloft, topmen!'

Drinkwater crossed the deck and stood by the helm. 'Keep her off the wind a half point, quartermaster.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater felt the thrill of anticipation. There was no real need to put the ship upon the other tack at this precise moment, but the evolution of going about and reefing the topsails at the same moment was an opportunity for a smart frigate to demonstrate the proficiency of her ship's company. By the eagerness with which the topmen lay aloft, some of this had communicated itself to them. One could always count on an appeal to a professional seaman's skill.

'Deck there!' The masthead look-out was hailing. 'Sail four points on the weather bow, sir. Looks like a cutter!'

Drinkwater acknowledged the hail, his sense of satisfaction growing. They now had a reason for tacking and an audience, and Fraser was looking at Drinkwater as if wondering how he had known of the presence of the other vessel.

'Down helm!'

Next to Drinkwater the four men at the double wheel spun the spokes through their fingers. Antigone came upright as she turned into the wind, the rush of her forward advance slowed rapidly and the scream of the wind across her deck diminished.

'Clew down topsails! Mainsail haul! Trice up and lay out!'

This was the nub of the manoeuvre, for the main and mizen yards were hauled with the topmen upon them at the same moment as the topsail yards were lowered on their halliards, the braces tended, the bowlines slacked off and the reef-pendants hauled up. Apart from Drinkwater's orders to the helmsmen and the general commands to the deck conveying the progress of the manoeuvre, there was a host of subsidiary instructions given by the subordinate officers and petty officers at their stations at the pin rails, the braces, the halliards and in the bunts of the topsails aloft.

As the yards were lowered, the studding sail booms lifted and the main and mizen topsails flogged, folding upwards as the reef-pendants did their work. Antigone continued her turn, heeling over to her new course as the fore topsail came aback, spinning her head with increasing speed.

'Midships and meet her.' Drinkwater peered forward and upwards where he could see the foretopmen having the worst time of it, trying to reef their big topsail while it was still full of wind.

'Man the head-braces! Halliards there!'

Rogers watched for the hand signals of the mates and midshipmen aloft to tell him the earings were secured and the reefpoints passed round the reduced portions of each topsail. Meanwhile Antigone crabbed awkwardly to leeward.

'Hoist away topsails! Haul all!'

Aloft the topsails rose again, stretched and reset, assuming the flat curve of sails close hauled against the wind as the forebraces hauled round their yards parallel with those on the main and mizen masts. On deck the halliards were sweated tight and the bowlines secured against the shivering of the weather leeches, belayed ropes were being coiled down and the topmen were sliding down the backstays, chaffing each other competitively. Antigone stopped crabbing and began to drive forward again on the new tack. She butted into a sea and the spray came flying aft over the other bow.

'Steady,' Drinkwater ordered the helmsmen, peering into the binnacle at the compass bowl. 'Course Nor'west by west.'

'Steady, sir. Course Nor'west by west it is, sir.'

Rogers came aft and touched his hat. He was grinning back at Drinkwater. 'Ship put about on the larboard tack, sir, and all three topsails reefed in one.'

'Very creditable, Mr Rogers. Now you may pipe "Up spirits" and let us see what this cutter wants.'

Drinkwater glanced through the stern windows where the Admiral Mitchell danced in their wake. The lieutenant in command of her had luffed neatly under their lee quarter half an hour ago and skilfully tossed a packet of dispatches on board from her chains. She now lay waiting for him to digest the news they contained. He studied the written orders for some moments, put aside the private letters and newspapers, and summoned Lord Walmsley. To Drinkwater's regret Walmsley had not offered to resign, though Drinkwater knew he could afford to and had therefore taken steps to settle the midshipman elsewhere. The young man knocked and entered the cabin.

'Sir?' Walmsley had been rigidly formal since his punishment. The experience had been deeply engraved upon his consciousness, yet Drinkwater sensed beneath this formality a deep and abiding resentment. Walmsley was still not convinced that he had erred.

'Mr Walmsley, I have for some time been considering your future. I have been successful in obtaining for you another berth. Rear-Admiral Louis who has, as you know, hoisted his flag aboard the Leopard to assist Lord Keith in the Strait of Dover, has agreed to take you on board.'

Walmsley had clearly not expected such a transfer and Drinkwater hoped that he would be appreciative of it. 'I hope,' he added, 'that you are sensible of the honour done you by Admiral Louis. No word of your conduct has been communicated to the Leopard. You will join with a clean slate. Do you understand?'

'Sir.'

'Very good. We will transfer you to the cutter as soon as the sea allows a boat to be launched. You may pack your traps.'

Drinkwater stared after the midshipman. He felt he had failed to make an impression on the youth and he feared that Walmsley would see that his sending him to a flagship only indicated his own lack of interest or influence.

It was two days before Walmsley departed, two days in which Antigone worked slowly south and west in obedience to her new orders. The formation of Rear-Admiral Louis's squadron had released her from her duties in the Channel and she was sent out to join Cornwallis and the Channel Fleet. Drinkwater greeted this news with mixed feelings. The close contact with the shore would be broken now, the arrival of mail less frequent and he would feel his isolation more. Nor was he very sure of the opinion Cornwallis had formed of him when they had last met. But his puritan soul derived that strange satisfaction from the anticipation of an arduous duty, and in his innermost heart he welcomed the change and the challenge.

It was two days, too, before he found the time to read the newspapers and mail. The most electrifying news for the officers and men of the Antigone was that war with Spain seemed imminent. Since the end of the Peace of Amiens 'neutral' Spanish ports had been shamelessly used by French warships. Their crews had enjoyed rights of passage through the country to join and leave their ships, and Spain had done everything to aid and abet her powerful and intimidating neighbour short of an actual declaration of war against Great Britain. Now the new British government had precipitated a crisis by sending out a flying squadron of four frigates to intercept a similar number of Spanish men-o'-war returning from Montevideo with over a million and a quarter in specie. Opposed by equal and not overwhelming force, the Spanish admiral, Don Joseph Bustamente, had defended the honour of his flag and in the ensuing action the Spanish frigate Mercedes had blown up with her crew and passengers. Although no immediate declaration of war had come from Madrid, it was hourly anticipated, and Drinkwater immediately calculated that the addition of the Spanish fleet to the French would augment it by over thirty ships of the line. They were superb ships too; one, the Santissima Trinidad had four gun-decks and was the greatest ship in the world. It was while reflecting on the possible consequences of Mr Pitt's aggressive new policy, and on whether it would enable the French Emperor to attempt invasion, that his eye fell upon another piece of news; a mere snippet of no apparent importance. Thomas Pitt, second Baron Camelford, had been killed in a duel near Holland House. The circumstances of the affair were confused, but what was of interest to Drinkwater was that there was some veiled and unsubstantiated claims in the less respectable papers that Camelford's death had been engineered by French agents.