A King's Cutter nd-2

by Richard Woodman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'Larboard battery make ready!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'Up helm! Stand by to gybe!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Draaken drew abeam. 'Fire!'

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

  'Let fly all sheets! Boarders stand by!'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It was Edouard Santhonax.

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

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

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

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

  'For Christ's sake…'

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

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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Aftermath

  October 1797

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

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

  'Yes.' Drinkwater felt light-headed, aware of a thousand calls on his time, unable to tear himself away from the groans and stench of the cabin as t
hough by remaining there he could expiate himself for the murder they had been doing a few hours earlier. 'Yes,' he repeated, 'I am told he supported rne most gallantly in boarding.'

  Appleby ignored the remark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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