‘Stuff your sanctimonious cant, Drinkwater. Fight my bloody ship or I’ll blow you to hell.’
Drinkwater opened his mouth in astonishment. Then he closed it as a thump hit the ship and a spatter of splinters flew from the larboard quarter rail. The action had begun.
All on deck stared astern. In the full daylight the frigate foaming up looked glorious, her hull a rich brown, her gunstrake cream. She was a point upon their larboard quarter. Thank God for a strengthening wind, thought Drinkwater as he spoke to Lestock. ‘Mr Lestock! Do you let her fall off a little, contrive it to look a trifle careless.’
‘D’you give away weather gauge, Mr Drinkwater?’ contradicted Lestock with a look in Morris’s direction.
‘Do as you are told, sir!’ The quartermaster eased the helm up a couple of spokes and Antigone paid off the wind a few degrees. The gunfire ceased. Relative motion showed the Frenchman slowly crossing Antigone‘s stern. For the moment his bow chasers would not bear.
‘British colours, Mr Q.’ Old Glory snapped out over their heads and almost immediately the enemy’s larboard bow chaser opened fire. She had crossed their stern. Drinkwater had surrendered the weather gauge and still the Antigone had not fired a shot.
Drinkwater walked forward and gripped the rail. ‘Mr Brun-dell! Ease your foremast lee sheets a little!’ A tiny tremble could be felt through the palms of his damp hands as he clasped the rail tightly. Antigone was losing power through those trembling foresails. He hoped the enemy could not see those fluttering clews behind the sails of the mainmast. The French ship began to draw ahead, overtaking them on their starboard side, a fine big ship, almost, now, they could see her in profile, identical to themselves. ‘Are you ready, Mr Rogers?’ Drinkwater hailed and the word was passed back that Samuel Rogers was ready. To vindicate his honour, Drinkwater guessed.
‘I hope you know what you are about Mr Drinkwater.’ Morris’s voice sounded stronger. ‘So do I, sir,’ replied Drinkwater swept by a sudden mood of exhilaration. If only the Frog would hold his broadside until all his guns would bear.
‘Stand by mizen braces, Mr Brundell,’ he called in a sharp, clear voice.
‘What the bloody hell . . . ?’
‘For what we are about to receive . . .’
‘Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .’
A puff of smoke erupted from the forward larboard gun of the French frigate. They were her lee guns, pointing downwards on a deck sloping towards the enemy. So much for the weather gauge once the manoeuvring was over.
But it was not over: ‘Mizen braces! Mr Rogers!’
The lee mizen braces were flung from their pins, a man at each to see them free, with orders to cut them if a single turn jammed in a block. The faked ropes ran true as the weather braces were hauled under the vociferous direction of Brundell. All along the starboard side the smoke and flame of the main-deck battery opened fire, the twelve eighteen-pounders rumbling back on their trucks to be sponged and reloaded. Drinkwater did not think they would manage more than a single shot at their adversary as, under the thundering backing of the mizen sails, Antigone slowed in the water, appeared to stop dead as the enemy stormed past, suddenly firing ahead of the British prize. Quilhampton was hauling the carronade slides round to get off a second shot, screaming at his gun crews like a regular Tarpaulin officer.
‘Come you sons of whores, move it up, lively with that sponge, God damn you . . .’
Drinkwater looked for the fall of shot. At maximum elevation with the ship heeling away from the enemy they must have done some damage. Christ, they had hurled all the damned bar shot and chain shot they could cram in the guns, all the French dismasting projectiles to give the Frogs a taste of their own medicine.
And they had missed her. Mortified, Drinkwater’s ever observant eye could already read the name of the passing frigate: Romaine. And now, by heaven, they must run.
A cheer was breaking out on the fo’c’s’le and he looked again. The enemy’s maintopmast was tottering to leeward. It formed a graceful curve then fell in a splintering of spars and erratic descent as stays arrested it and parted under the weight.
Relief flooded Drinkwater. There was cheering all along the upper deck and from down below. Rogers had come up and was pumping his hand. Even Lestock’s face wore a sickly, condescending grin.
‘Sir! Sir!’ Quilhampton was pointing.
‘God’s bones!’
The wreckage was slewing the Romaine sharply to larboard, across Antigone’s bow. In the perfect position to rake. And men were working furiously at the wreckage with axes. Forward a man screamed as his leg flew off. It was Mr Brundell. ‘Mr Grey! Back the yards on the foremast!’ He turned, ‘Mr Dalziell, back the yards on the main, lively now.’
He waited impatiently. Antigone had hove herself to. Now they must make a stern board, to get out of trouble before . . .
The raking broadside hit them, the balls whirling the length of the deck. Mr Quilhampton fell and beside Drinkwater Lestock went ‘Urgh!’ and a gout of blood appeared all over Drinkwater’s breeches. Drinkwater stood stock still. On the fo’c’s’le, legs still apart, stood Mr Grey. The two men stood numbed, one hundred feet apart, regarding each other over a human shambles. As if by magic figures stood up and the main yards groaned round in their parrels. They were followed by those on the foremast. Antigone began to gather sternway. The next broadside roared out. It had been fired on an upward roll. Antigone’s foretopgallant mast went overboard.
‘Helm a weather! Hard a-starboard!’ But Drinkwater’s order was too late. The frigate was already paying off, her bow coming up into the wind, across the wind, until finally she wallowed with her unarmed larboard side facing the enemy.
‘Lee forebrace!’ If he could trim the yards to the larboard tack they might yet escape. The third broadside brought the main topmast down, the mizen topgallant with it. No one stood alive at the wheel.
Drinkwater looked at the Romaine. French cruisers, he knew, carried large crews. Now the advantages thus conferred upon them became apparent. Already the wreckage was cleared away and she was under control, setting down towards them.
‘Mr Dalziell, prepare your larboard carronades. Mr Grey! Larboard fo’c’s’le carronades.’ Bitterly Drinkwater strode forward and jerked one of the brass gangway swivels. He lined it up on the approaching frigate.
‘Mr Drinkwater!’ He turned to find Morris pointing the pistol at him. ‘You failed, Drinkwater . . .’
‘Not yet, by God, Morris, not yet!’
‘What else can you do, dog’s turd, your cleverness has destroyed you.’ Drinkwater’s brain bridled at Morris’s suggestion. True, a second earlier he himself had been on the verge of despair but the human mind trips and locks onto odd things under stress. It did not occur at that moment that Morris’s action in pointing the gun at him was irrational; that Morris’s apparent delight at his failure would also result in Morris’s own capture. It was that old cockpit epithet that sparked his brain to greater endeavours.
‘No, sir. By God there’s one card yet to play!’ he shouted below for Mr Rogers even as Dalziell approached with a coloured bundle in his arms.
‘What the hell is that?’ screamed Drinkwater.
‘I was ordered to strike,’ said Dalziell.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Matter of Luck
November-December 1799
Drinkwater snatched the ensign from Dalziell’s grasp. The red bunting spilled onto the deck. He turned to Morris, the question unasked on his lips. Morris inclined his head, implying his authority lay behind the surrender.
The belief that he was dying had taken so sharp a hold upon his mind that he was sure surrender offered him survival. The enemy cruiser was from Ile de France. As commander of such a well-fought prize he would be treated with respect, and removed from the source of his poisoning he would recover. Into Morris’s mind came another reason, adding its own weight in favour of surrender. While he enjoyed an easy house arrest at Port Louis his offi
cers would be incarcerated. Drinkwater would be mewed up for the duration of the war. It would finish the work he had failed to do at Kosseir.
In the electric atmosphere that charged the quarterdeck all this was plain to them both. Their mutual antipathy had reached its crisis.
‘The French are sending a boat, sir,’ said Dalziell, eyes darting from one to the other. Drinkwater turned and shoved the ensign back at Dalziell.
‘That is Hellebore’s ensign, by God! I’ll not see it struck yet!’
Rogers arrived on the quarterdeck. He saw the ensign. ‘Surely we haven’t . . . ?’
‘No, by Christ, we have not!’ Dalziell was pushed towards the halliards as Drinkwater snapped to Rogers, ‘Get Santhonax up here, and Bruilhac! Quick!’
Drinkwater looked at the approaching boat, a launch packed with men, a cable from them.
‘I command, damn you!’ Morris hissed furiously. Drinkwater turned and looked down the barrel of the pistol.
He crossed the deck in two strides and wrenched the gun from his grasp. ‘You may rot, Morris, but I am not through yet . . . get that ensign up, Dalziell, you lubber . . .’
Drinkwater was aware that he was holding the pistol at the young man. Dalziell threw a final, failing glance at Morris then did as he was bid. He belayed the halliards as Santhonax came on deck. The Frenchman looked curiously about him, took in the fallen spars, the broken bodies and blood spattered across the deck. He saw too the ensign being belayed and his quick mind understood. A glance to windward showed him his countrymen, the gun-ports of Romaine, and the boat, almost alongside.
‘Get ’em up on the rail, Rogers, that Frog won’t fire on his own boat.’
But a gun did fire, the ball whistling overhead, a single discharge to recall the British to the etiquette of war.
Drinkwater pointed the pistol at Santhonax. ‘Captain, tell that boat to pull off. This ship has not surrendered. The ensign halliards were shot through. If the officer in the boat pulls off I will not open fire until he has regained his ship, otherwise I shall destroy him,’ he paused, ‘and you also, Captain.’
The French boat was ten yards off, the officer standing in the stern, looking up in astonishment at the apparition of a Republican naval officer standing beneath the British ensign like Hector on the walls of Troy.
Santhonax looked at Drinkwater. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I leave it to the desperation of your plight and your conscience to shoot me.’
Drinkwater’s heart was thumping painfully and he could feel the sweat pouring out of him. He sensed Morris awaiting events. He swore beneath his breath.
‘Get up, Bruilhac!’ The terrified boy climbed trembling on the rail as Drinkwater jerked his head at Rogers to pull Santhonax off the rail. Rogers leapt forward, together with Tregembo. But they were too late.
Drinkwater was about to threaten Bruilhac with instant death if he did not do his bidding but he was spared this cruel necessity. A sudden eruption of cannon fire to the east of them swung the focus of attention abuptly away from the wretched little drama on Antigone’s rails. At first it seemed Romaine had fired a final shattering broadside to compel Antigone to strike. In their boat the French thought the same. There was a simultaneous ducking of heads. Bruilhac fainted through sheer terror while a similar reflex caused Santhonax to dive outboard.
Even as Drinkwater registered Santhonax’s escape and heard the howl of rage from Morris he had noticed there was no flame from Romaine’s larboard broadside. The sun beat down through the clearing smoke of their earlier discharges as the wind shredded the last of it to leeward and there, in the bright path laid by the sun upon the sea, they saw the newcomer.
‘A British frigate, by all that’s wonderful!’ shouted Rogers, suddenly releasing them all from their suspended animation. Tregembo picked up two round-shot from the carronade garlands and tried to lob them into the French boat. The Frenchmen suddenly laid on their oars and spun her round just as Captain Santhonax’s hand reached up for help. Drinkwater had a brief glimpse of his face, disfigured and distorted by the pain in his shoulder, his left arm trailing, his long legs kicking powerfully.
Another thundering broadside, this time from Romaine, caused a second’s pause. There was no fall of shot near Antigone’, Romaine was bracing her yards round to fill her sails with wind.
Drinkwater leapt to the deck. ‘Rogers! Tregembo!’
He picked up a cartridge and rammed it into the nearest carronade. Tregembo rolled a shot into the muzzle and joined Rogers on the tackles. Drinkwater spun the screw and watched the blunt barrel depress. He leant against the slide and felt it slew on its heavy caster. ‘Secure!’
Through the gunport he could see the boat, see the officer and a man hauling Santhonax over the transom. Rogers drove the priming quill into the touch-hole and blew powder into the groove. Still sighting along the barrel Drinkwater’s right hand cocked the lock and his long fingers wound round the lanyard. The boat traversed the back-sight.
It occurred to him that it was easier to kill at a distance, removed from the confrontation from which Santhonax had just escaped. He had only to jerk the lanyard and Santhonax would die. He thought of the grey eyes staring from the portrait below, and of how he and Dungarth had let her go. From Hortense he thought of Elizabeth. The boat’s transom crossed the end of the barrel. He jerked the lanyard.
The carronade roared back on its slide. Drinkwater leapt up to mark the fall of shot. He saw the spout of water a foot off the boat’s quarter. He was surprised at the relief he felt.
‘Let’s try for the frigate,’ Drinkwater spun the elevating screw again, bringing the retreating Romaine into his sights as, with crippled masts she moved sluggishly away. The wind was falling light, the concussion of their guns having killed it. They fired six shots before giving up. Romaine was out of range.
They craned their necks to see what was happening. They saw their rescuer begin to turn, trying to work across Romaine’s stern to rake. The French captain put his helm over and followed the British ship so they circled one another like dogs, nose to tail. A shattering broadside crashed from Romaine, a lighter response from the other. Another came from the Britisher. The Romaine began to draw off to the south-east. The stranger wore in pursuit, her mizen topmast going by the board as she did so.
‘Telemachus,’ Drinkwater spelled out, peering through his glass. The two ships moved slowly away, leaving Antigone rolling easily. The boat had vanished.
Drinkwater turned inboard. He and Morris exchanged a glance. Beneath his hooded lids Morris bore a whipped look. He went below.
Without any feeling of triumph Drinkwater’s eyes fell upon the body of Quilhampton. Tregembo joined him.
‘There’s not a mark on him. Hold, he’s not gone . . . Mr Q! Mr Q! D’you hear me?’ Drinkwater began to chafe the boy’s wrists. His eyes fluttered and opened. Rogers bent over them. ‘Winded by a passing shot. He’ll live,’ said Rogers.
It took three days to re-rig the frigate, three days of strenuous labour during which the much depleted crew struggled and cursed, ate and slept between the guns. But although they swore they laboured willingly. They were not Antigones but Hellebores and the big frigate was their prize, the concrete proof of their corporate endeavours. She was also the source of prize money, and their shrinking numbers increased each individual’s share.
By dint of their efforts they sent up new or improvised topmasts and could cross courses and topsails on all three masts. Later, Drinkwater thought, after they had carried out some additional modifications to the salvaged broken spars they might manage a main topgallant.
For Drinkwater the need to bring the frigate under command over-rode everything else. Morris retired to his cabin from whence came the news that he was keeping food down at last. From the cockpit came the hammock-shrouded corpses that failed to survive Appleby’s surgery, the bravely smiling wounded and the empty rum bottles that sustained Appleby during the long hours he spent attending his grim profession.
&nb
sp; Johnson reported they had been struck in the hull by twenty-one shot, but only two low enough to cause serious leakage.
The pumps clanked regularly even as the remaining men toiled to slew those half-dozen eighteen-pounders back into their larboard ports. They had lost sixteen men killed and twenty wounded in the action. Rank had almost ceased to exist as Drink-water urged them on, officers tailing on to ropes and leading by example. Mr Lestock shook his head disapprovingly and Drink-water left the deck watch to him and his precious sense of honour, deriving great comfort from the loyal support of Tregembo and even poor, handless, Mr Quilhampton who did what he could. Samuel Rogers emerged as a man who, given a task to do, performed it with that intemperate energy that so characterised him.
Late in the afternoon of the third day after the action with Romaine a sail was seen to leeward. Nervously glasses were trained on her, lest she proved the re-rigged Romaine come to finish off her late adversary. The last anyone aboard Antigone had seen of the two ships had been the Telemachus in pursuit of the Romaine. There had been no sign of Santhonax and the French boat and it was supposed that she had made the shelter of Romaine.
Drinkwater put Antigone on the wind and informed Morris. He was favoured with a grunt of acknowledgement.
‘I think she’s the Telemachus, sir,’ Quilhampton informed Drinkwater when he returned to the deck.
‘Hoist the interrogative, Mr Q. Mr Rogers! General quarters if you please!’
The pipes squealed at the hatchways and the pitifully small crew tumbled up, augmenting the watch on deck. The stranger was coming up fast, pointing much higher than the wounded frigate. The recognition signal streamed from her foremasthead. ‘She’s British, then,’ said Lestock unnecessarily.
Drinkwater kept the men at their stations as the ship closed them. At a mile distance she fired a gun to leeward and hoisted the signal to heave to.
Drinkwater gave the order to back the maintopsail. In her present state Antigone could neither outsail nor outfight the ship to leeward.
A Brig of War Page 25