A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Starbowlines to larboard!’ Drinkwater roared. As if eagerly awaiting the call the frustrated men from the starboard guns hopped nimbly across the deck to fling their weight on the tackles of the larboard six pounders.

  La Torride fired her starboard battery as the brig overtook and a storm of shot poured across Hellebore’s deck. Men were flung back clutching their heads and bellies. One stood staring at a vacant arm socket and from aloft a body fell on the deck with an obscene impact.

  But the surprise of Hellebore’s manoeuvre had robbed the French of their greater weight of metal. The sudden appearance of a British cruiser had utterly surprised them, the more particularly as they had known Blankett’s squadron did not include a brig. To this psychological advantage the British had added that first devastating broadside. The lethal spray of canister combined with the round shot to produce an appalling effect. The destructive power of the shot was augmented by the splinters it caused while the range concentrated its effect. French resistance was robbed of its edge. Half of La Torride’s gun crews were already dead or wounded, her wheel was shot away, her rudder stock split and her commander mortally wounded in the space of a few minutes.

  Hellebore ran past her adversary as La Torride swung to starboard, broaching into the trough of the sea, out of control. Hellebore also swung to avoid being raked and came round to starboard, tacking through the wind and, once on the larboard tack, running back onto her victim. As the yards were secured there was a mad rush across the deck where the starbowlines returned to their guns.

  ‘Maximum elevation there!’ yelled Drinkwater, judging the angle of heel as the brig lay over to the wind. ‘Cripple her, Rogers!’ roared Griffiths and Drinkwater leapt at the after guns to pull out the quoins. Spinning round he grabbed a tiny powder monkey. ‘Boy! Get Mr Trussel to send up some bar shot.’

  But La Torride had recovered slightly, her men were not yet finished. Under her first lieutenant she had had the time to prepare another broadside for the British.

  ‘Heel’s too much, sir,’ shouted Drinkwater straightening up from sighting along a gun barrel. ‘Leggo t’gallant sheets!’

  The pressure at her mastheads eased slightly and the brig came nearer the vertical as she sped past La Torride. Both ships fired their broadsides simultaneously. Amidships a gun was dismounted at the moment of discharge with a huge crash. Men fell back and blood spurted from a dozen wounds while splinters of wood flew about. Griffiths was spun round by a musket ball that left his single epaulette hanging drunkenly from his shoulder. Drinkwater was hit by a splinter which lanced across his face, missing his eye and cheek and nicking his right ear. Then Hellebore was past and preparing to tack again. In the temporary respite Drinkwater supervised clearing the deck of wounded, while Lestock hauled the yards. He was aware of a large number of casualties, of blood staining the sanded planks in the waist but also of an unshaken band of men who toiled to make their lethal and brutish artillery ready for another broadside.

  La Torride had had enough. A cheer from first one gun’s crew spread along Hellebore’s deck. Looking up Drinkwater saw the tricolour that lay over the corvette’s shattered rail. Her foremast had gone by the board.

  ‘Take possession, Mr Drinkwater; Mr Lestock, heave to.’ Drinkwater went to inspect the boats and found the cutter serviceable. Griffiths came up to him.

  ‘I want neither prisoners nor prize, Nathaniel. Toss her guns overboard and order an officer aboard her as hostage against her good conduct. They may proceed to Suez if they are able.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘I think we have winged the eagle, Nathaniel,’ he added confidentially. Drinkwater grinned back. ‘Indeed sir, I believe you are right.’

  Drinkwater threw a leg over the rail to descend to the cutter bobbing alongside.

  ‘Knocked the bollocks of that Froggie, eh, Drinkwater?’ said Rogers, smiling broadly, his tendency to criticise temporarily quiescent.

  ‘Then perhaps you will consider our commander less senile than you are wont to assert.’

  Drinkwater and his party scrambled over the side of the corvette to the disquieting crackle of musketry and the shouts and screams of intense fighting. The sight that met their eyes was astonishing. Amid the ruin of her upper deck, covered as it was by the wreckage of her foremast, broken spars and torn sails, amid the tangled festoons of rope, amid the bodies of her dead and the writhing tortures of her wounded La Torride’s survivors fought a furious hand to hand action with Yusuf ben Ibrahim and his men. The Arab’s sambuk had held off, awaiting the outcome, but was now alongside the defeated corvette her men boarding in search of loot. Catching sight of the British a young aspirant waved frantically at the folds of the tricolour lying over the stern.

  ‘M’sieur . . . J’implore . . . m’aider . . .’ The boy looked wildly round, seeing Drinkwater’s bare sword blade, drawn in self defence at what he might find aboard the prize. The young officer had fallen at his feet in terror and Drinkwater put a calming hand upon his shoulder, but even so it was several minutes before the combined bullying of Drinkwater and his men had beaten off the fury of the Arabs.

  Yusuf himself seemed angry at Drinkwater’s refusal to allow his men to butcher the French. ‘In’sh Allah,’ he said shrugging, his eyes wild with the effects of hashish: ‘It is the will of Allah.’

  Drinkwater shook his head ‘Bism’ Allah,’ he said in the only Arabic he knew, ‘In the name of God, Emir Yusuf, the dhows . . .’ he conveyed the gift of the captured dhows with dramatic gestures, knowing Griffiths was not interested in prizes so far from home. God knew there were enough Frenchmen aboard them to satisfy Yusuf’s bloodlust without putting the corvette’s crew to the sword. ‘You,’ he said pointing at Yusuf’s chest, ‘take dhows. This,’ he said stabbing a finger at the deck of La Torride and to the French cadet, ‘this belong me . . .’ he waved his arm in a circular motion ending up pointing at his own chest.

  To Drinkwater’s surprise Yusuf rocked back on his heels and roared with laughter. Several members of his crew that had come menacingly to his support during the argument joined the laughter, after Yusuf had addressed a stream of Arabic at them. Yusuf made an aggressively sexual gesture with his forearm, tousled the cadet’s hair and slapped the amazed Drinkwater upon the back. Then, still laughing, he took himself off, followed by his men who made a series of good naturedly obscene gestures in Drinkwater’s direction.

  Beneath his tan Nathaniel flushed at the implication. ‘Dirty bastards, zur,’ muttered Tregembo loyally but Drinkwater was not to escape so lightly. To his further embarrassment the young Frenchman, who was trying to smile while tears made furrows through the powder grime upon his face, embraced him.

  Drinkwater shook the youth off. ‘Vôtre capitaine? Où est vôtre capitaine?’ he asked. The reply was a torrent of French, incomprehensible to Drinkwater but containing what he took to be names, each succeeded by the word mort, from which he deduced that most of La Torride’s officers were either dead or dying. Certainly no other uniformed figure appeared. Leaving the aspirant to muster his crew and draw up a list of the casualties Drinkwater made a brief inspection of the ship before returning to Hellebore.

  ‘She’s the ship corvette La Torride of the Rochefort squadron, sir, hulled in several places and unmanageable with her steering destroyed . . .’ He went on to outline the shambles he had found. When he had finished Griffiths pursed his lips and thought for a moment.

  ‘If we can get a dhow back from Ben Ibrahim we’ll let them go, bach, on parole for Suez. Take out of her powder, any useful shot, stores, water and rope, I recollect you want rope. In fact ransack her, though no man is to touch an item of personal belongings, we’ll leave looting to our Arab friends. Go on, get back to her, quick now. I’ll send Rogers and the other boat to requisition a dhow if that pirate has already grabbed them all. Bring back the cadet, he may be more forthcoming than a recalcitrant officer with ideas of his honour.’

  There followed a day of back-breaking endea
vour in which Drinkwater, with an enthusiasm engendered in first lieutenants when storehouses are thrown open to them, replenished almost every want of the Hellebore. On the basis that there were no officers surviving to lay claim to her cabin stores, he judiciously appropriated a quantity of wine which brought a gleam to Trussel’s eye comparable to that bestowed on the French powder. Trussel begged Drinkwater for a pair of fine brass chase guns but the condition of the boats and the state of the sea prevented their removal. The operation was carried out despite the sharks that were congregating astern, round the flotilla.

  By nightfall, when Drinkwater’s weary party finally returned to Hellebore, La Torride was stripped of useful moveables, an empty shell with smoke issuing from her hatchways and sufficient powder left aboard to dismember her. She blew up and sank an hour later but by then Hellebore with her attendant dhows was five miles to the southward, standing towards the Strait of Tiran and the Red Sea.

  Leaving the deck to Lestock, Drinkwater stumbled wearily below, calling for Meyrick to pour him a glass of grog. He was relaxing as Dalziell entered, thrusting the French cadet before him with a vicious shove. He seemed slightly discomfitted to find Drinkwater in the gunroom.

  ‘Er, Mr Rogers’s orders sir, the captain wants to interview him.’ He jerked his head at the dishevelled French youth who looked terrified.

  ‘You may leave him here, Mr Dalziell, and on your return to the deck acquaint Mr Rogers with my desire that he draws up a list of our casualties and brings it to me on completion.’

  Dalziell took the muster book from Drinkwater’s outstretched hand. Drinkwater motioned the French cadet to a seat and poured him some grog. He saw the boy gag on the spirit then swallow more. Gradually a little colour came to his cheeks.

  ‘Nom, m’sieur?’ asked Drinkwater in his barbarous French as kindly as he could manage.

  ‘Je m’appelle Gaston, m’sieur, Gaston Bruilhac, Aspirant de la première classe.’

  ‘Comprenez-vous anglais, Gaston?’

  Bruilhac shook his head. Drinkwater grunted, finished the grog and made up his mind. He leaned across the table. ‘Mon Capitaine, Gaston, il est très intrepide, n’est pas?’

  Bruilhac nodded. Drinkwater went on, ‘Bon. Mon Capitaine . . .’ he struggled, failing to find the words for what he wished to convey. He picked up the pistol he had removed earlier from his belt and pulled back the hammer. Taking Bruilhac’s hand he placed it palm down on the table and spread the fingers. ‘Bang!’ he said suddenly, pointing the weapon at the index finger. He repeated the melodrama for the other three. The colour drained from Bruilhac’s face and Drinkwater refilled his grog. ‘Courage, mon brave,’ he said, then, as the boy stared wide eyed over the shaking rim of the beaker, ‘Ecoutez-moi, Gaston: vous parlez, eh? Vous parlez beaucoup.’

  As if on cue Griffiths entered with Rogers behind him, bearing the muster book. Drinkwater stood up and snapped ‘Attention!’ Bruilhac sprang to his feet, rigidly obedient. ‘I think he’ll talk, sir,’ said Drinkwater, quietly handing the pistol to Griffiths. ‘Rum will loosen his tongue and I said you’d shoot each of his fingers off in turn if he did not speak.’

  Griffiths’s white eyebrows shot upwards and a wicked twinkle appeared in his eyes as he turned to the cadet, and the swinging lantern light caught his seamed face. To Bruilhac he seemed the very personification of Drinkwater’s imminent threats.

  Drinkwater motioned the boy to follow Griffiths into the after cabin. As he closed the door he heard Griffiths begin the interrogation. Words began to pour from the hapless boy. Drinkwater smiled; sometimes it was necessary to be cruel to be kind. He turned to Rogers.

  ‘Well Rogers, what kind of a butcher’s bill do we have?’

  ‘Oh, not too bad, bloody shame we blew the prize up. I’d have made a comfortable purse from her.’

  Drinkwater withheld a lecture on the impracticability of such a task as getting La Torride in order, and contented himself with saying, ‘She was a wreck. Now, how many did we lose?’

  ‘Only eleven dead.’

  Drinkwater whistled. ‘Only? For the love of God . . . what about the wounded?’

  ‘Eighteen slight: flesh wounds, splinters, the usual. I caught a splinter in the cheek.’ He turned so that the light caught the ugly jagged line, half bruise, half laceration, that was scabbing in a thick crust. ‘You escaped unscathed, I see.’

  Drinkwater looked Rogers full in the face, feeling again a strong dislike for the man. He found himself rubbing at a rough congealed mess in his right ear. ‘Almost,’ he said quietly, ‘I was lucky. What about the serious cases?’

  Rogers looked down at the muster book. ‘Seven, six seamen and Quilhampton.’

  ‘Quilhampton?’ asked Drinkwater, a vision of the boy’s pretty mother swimming accusingly into his mind’s eye. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Oh, a ball took off his hand . . . hey, what’s the matter?’

  Drinkwater scrambled below to where Appleby had his cockpit at the after end of the hold. Already the stench was noisome. To the creak of the hull and the turbid swirl of bilgewater were added the groans of the wounded and the ramblings of delirium. But it was not only this that made Drinkwater wish to void his stomach. There seemed some sickness in his fate that Providence could pull such an appalling jest upon him.

  He paused to allow his eyes to become adjusted to the gloom. He could see the pale figure of Catherine Best straighten up, a beaker in her hand. She came aft, catching sight of the first lieutenant. ‘Mr Drinkwater?’ she said softly, and in the guttering lamplight her face was once again transfigured. But it was not a beauty that stirred him. He saw for the first time that whatever life had done to this woman, her eyes showed a quality of compassion caused by her suffering.

  ‘Where is Mr Q?’ he asked hoarsely. Catherine led him past Tyson who was bent over a man Drinkwater recognised as Gregory, the helmsman who had held the brig before the wind the night they struggled with the broken foreyard. Tyson was easing a tourniquet with a regretful shake of his head. The woman stepped delicately over the bodies that lay grotesquely about the small, low space.

  Quilhampton lay on his cloak, his head pillowed on his broadcloth coat. His breeches stained dark with blood and urine. His left arm extended nine inches below his elbow and terminated in a clumsy swathe of bloodstained bandages. His eyelids fluttered and he moved his head distressingly in a shallow delirium. Catherine Best bent to feel the pale sweating forehead. Drinkwater knelt beside the boy and put his hand on the maimed stump. It was very hot. He looked across the twitching body. Catherine’s eyes were large with accusation.

  Drinkwater rose and stumbled aft, suddenly desperate for the fresh air of the deck. At the ladder he ran into Appleby. The surgeon’s apron was stiff with congealed blood. He was wiping his hands on a rag and he reeked of rum. He was quite sober.

  ‘Another glorious victory for His Majesty’s arms . . . you will have been to see Quilhampton?’ Drinkwater nodded dumbly. ‘I think he will live, if it does not rot.’ Appleby spat the last word out, as if the words ‘putrefy’ or ‘mortify’ were too sophisticated to waste on a butcher like Drinkwater.

  Nathaniel made to push past but Appleby stood his ground. ‘Send two men to remove that . . . sir,’ he said, pointing. Drinkwater turned. A large wooden tub lay in the shadows at the bottom of the ladder. Within it Drinkwater could see the mangled stumps and limbs amputated from Appleby’s patients.

  ‘Very well, Mr Appleby, I will attend to the matter.’

  Appleby expelled his breath slowly. ‘There’s a bottle in the gunroom, I’ll join you in a moment.’ Drinkwater nodded and ascended the ladder.

  Griffiths sat in the gunroom, while Rogers poured for both of them. ‘The teat of consolation, annwyl,’ said Griffiths gently, seeing the look in Drinkwater’s eyes. ‘Santhonax is at Kosseir.’

  ‘Ah,’ Drinkwater replied listlessly. The rum reached his belly, uncoiling the tension in him. He stretched his legs and felt them encounter somet
hing soft. Looking under the table he saw Bruilhac curled like a puppy and fast asleep.

  ‘He still has all his fingers.’

  Drinkwater looked at Griffiths and wondered if the commander knew in what appalling taste his jest was. Griffiths could not yet have seen the casualty list.

  ‘He’s lucky,’ was all he said in reply.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kosseir Bay

  August 1799

  On the afternoon of 10th August it seemed that Santhonax had surprised them. Anxious glasses trained astern at the two ships foaming up from the southward while Hellebore staggered under a press of canvas in a desperate claw to windward and safety. The leading pursuer was indisputably a frigate. Optimists claimed it was Fox, the more cautious Griffiths assumed the worst. Bruilhac had told them of a third ship in Santhonax’s squadron, for whom Hellebore had been taken by the officers of La Torride. He was not to be caught by the same ruse. ‘Let the wrecks of others be your seamarks, Mr Drinkwater,’ he said without removing his eye from the long glass.

  ‘She’s tacking.’ They watched the leading ship come up into the wind, saw her foresails flatten and the swing of the mainyards. As she paid off, the foreyards followed suit and the bright spots of bunting showed from her mastheads.

  ‘British colours and Admiral Blankett’s private signal, sir,’ reported Rogers. Her exposed side revealed her as Fox.

  ‘It seems you were right, Mr Drinkwater,’ said Griffiths drily. Keeping his men at quarters the commander put Hellebore before the wind and ran down towards his pursuers. They proved to be Fox and Daedalus, sent north by Rear-Admiral Blankett who had taken sufficient alarm from Strangford Wrinch to despatch Captains Stuart and Ball without seeing the necessity to come himself and thus forgo the carnal delights of Mr Wrinch’s hospitality.