A Brig of War

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Sending a boat, sir,’ Quilhampton reported.

  Drinkwater went below to inform Morris. He found the commander watching the newcomer from the larboard quarter gallery.

  ‘A twenty-eight, eh? A post ship. D’you know who commands her?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’ll come up.’

  The boat bobbed over the wave-crests between them. ‘There’s a midshipman in her, sir,’ reported Mr Quilhampton, his eyes bright with excitement. It occurred to Drinkwater that Mr Q was suddenly proud of his lost hand. It was little enough compensation, he thought. ‘Do you meet the young gentleman, Mr Q.’

  The men were peering curiously at the approaching boat, those at the guns through the ports. ‘Let ’em,’ said Drinkwater to himself. They had earned a little tolerance.

  His uniform awry Morris came on deck, holding out his hand for a glass. Lestock beat Dalziell in the matter. The midshipman swung himself over the side. There were catcalls from the lower gunports and Rogers’s voice snapped ‘Silence there!’ The boat’s crew were tricked out in blue and white striped shirts and trousers of white jean. They wore glazed hats with ribbons of blue and white and their oars were picked out in the same colours. Such a display amused the Hellebores and led Drinkwater to the conclusion that her captain was a wealthy man. An officer with interest of the ‘Parliamentary’ kind, probably young and probably half his own age. He was almost right.

  Quilhampton approached the quarterdeck, saw Morris and diverted his approach from Drinkwater to the commander. ‘Mr Mole, sir.’

  The midshipman bowed. His tall gangling fair haired appearance was in marked contrast with his name. His accent was rural Norfolk, though mannered.

  ‘My respects, sir, Commander Morris, I believe.’ Morris stiffened.

  ‘Captain to you, you damned brat. Who commands your vessel, eh?’

  The lad was not abashed. ‘Captain White, sir, Captain Richard White, he desires me to offer whatever services you require, though I perceive,’ he swept his hand aloft, ‘that you have little need of them. My congratulations.’

  Drinkwater smiled grimly. The young gentleman’s affront could only be but admired, particularly as he appeared impervious to Morris’s forbidding aspect.

  Morris’s mouth fell open. He closed it and turned contemptuously away, crossing the deck towards the companionway. ‘Mr Drinkwater, I expect the nob who commands yonder will want us to obey his orders. Tell this dog’s turd what we want, then kick his perfumed arse off my ship.’ He disappeared below.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Drinkwater regarded the midshipman. ‘Well, Mr Mole, are you commonly addressing senior officers in that vein?’

  The boy blinked and Drinkwater went on, ‘Your captain; is that Richard White from Norfolk, a small man with fair hair?’

  ‘Captain White is of small stature, sir,’ Mole said primly.

  ‘Very well, Mr Mole, I desire you to inform Captain White that we are short of men but able to make the Cape. We carry despatches from Admiral Blankett and are armed en flûte. We are the prize of a brig and most damnably grateful for your arrival the other day.’

  Mole smirked as though he had been personally responsible for the timely arrival of Telemachus.

  ‘Oh, and Mr Mole, I desire that you inform him that the captain’s name is Augustus Morris and my name is Drinkwater. I urge that you give him those particulars.’

  Mole repeated the names. ‘By the way, Mr Mole, what became of the Frenchman?’

  ‘He slipped us in the night, sir.’

  ‘Tut tut,’ said Drinkwater catching Quilhampton’s eye. ‘That would never have happened to us, eh, Mr Q?’

  ‘No, sir,’ grinned Quilhampton.

  ‘See what happened to Mr Quilhampton the last time we had an engagement . . .’

  Quilhampton held up his stump. ‘Mr Quilhampton stopped the enemy from running by taking hold of her bowsprit . . .’ Laughter echoed round Antigone’s scarred quarterdeck and Mole, aware that the joke was on him, touched his forehead and fled.

  ‘Boat ahoy!’ Lestock hailed the returning boat.

  ‘Telemachus!’ That hail confirmed that she bore the frigate’s captain.

  ‘How d’you propose we man the side, Mr Drinkwater?’ Lestock asked sarcastically. Drinkwater lowered his glass, having recognised the little figure in the stern.

  ‘Oh, I’d say you and Mr Dalziell will do for decoration, Mr Grey with his mates for sideboys. This ain’t the time for punctiliousness. Mr Q!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Inform the captain that Captain White is coming aboard.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Drinkwater went forward to join the side party. Lestock was furious.

  Grey’s pipe twittered and Drinkwater swept his battered hat from his head.

  ‘Stap me, but it is you!’ Richard White, gold lace about his sleeve and upon his shoulder, held out his hand in informal greeting, ‘Deuced glad to see you, Nat . . .’ he looked round the deck expectantly ‘What’s it that imp of Satan Mole said about . . . ?’ he paused and Drinkwater turned to see Morris emerging on deck.

  ‘Well damn my eyes, if it isn’t that bugger Morris!’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Cape of Good Hope

  November 1799–January 1800

  Captain Richard White had many years earlier suffered from the sadistic bullying of Morris when he and Drinkwater served on the frigate Cyclops as midshipmen. Since that time, when the frightened White had been protected by Drinkwater, service under the punctilious St Vincent followed by absolute command of his own ship had turned White into an irascible, forthright character. Beneath this exterior his friends might perceive the boyish charm and occasional uncertainty of a still young man, but the accustomed authority that he was now used to, combined with an irresistible urge to thus publicly humiliate his former tormentor.

  There was for a moment a silence between the three men that was pregnant with suppressed emotions. Drinkwater, caught like a shuttlecock between two seniors, prudently waited, watching Morris’s reaction, aware that White had committed a gross impropriety. Unaccountably Drinkwater felt a momentary sympathy for Morris. If the commander called for satisfaction at the Cape he would have been justified, whatever the naval regulations said about duelling. For his own part White was belligerently unrepentant, weeks of adolescent misery springing into his mind as he confronted his old tormentor.

  Morris stood stock still, colour draining from his face as the insult on his own quarterdeck outraged him. Brought up in the old school of naval viciousness, protected by petticoat influence from the consequences of his vice, his brutal nature protected by the privileges of rank for so long, Morris now found himself confronted by a moral superiority undeterred by the baser motives of naval intrigue. White’s impetuous candour had disarmed him.

  Morris shot White a look of pure venom, but his new-found accession to command caused him to hold his tongue. He turned and made for the companionway below, half jostling Drinkwater as he did so, his mouth twisted with rage and humiliation.

  White ignored Drinkwater’s embarrassed glance after the retreating figure of Morris. ‘Well, Nat, I’m damned sorry we lost the Frog, gave me the slip during the night. Blasted wind fell light under a threatening overcast. Black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots, by God. A damned shame.’ He cast his eyes over Antigone’s spars and rigging. By comparison with when he had last seen them they had all the hallmarks of Drinkwater’s diligence. ‘You’ve been busy I perceive. But come, tell me what the deuce became of that brig I last saw you on, heard you’d been sent to the Red Sea. St Vincent was damned annoyed. I do believe if Nelson had not blown Brueys to hell at Aboukir he might have been called to account.’ White grinned his boyish smile. ‘I wrote to Elizabeth and told her. Didn’t think you’d get word off until you reached the Cape . . .’ Drinkwater tried to express his thanks but White rattled on, all the while pacing the deck and staring curiously about him. ‘By the devil but you’ve a fine frigate her
e, and no mistake. Mole said you were en flûte.’

  ‘Aye, sir. Twelve eighteens on the main deck.’

  ‘And you fought the Romaine with a broadside of six, eh?’

  ‘Not quite. We had ‘em all mounted to starboard.’ White’s eyebrows went up and then came down with comprehension. ‘So your larboard battery was empty?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well stap me. You’re becoming as unorthodox as Nelson. But we thought you’d struck.’

  ‘Ensign halliards shot through,’ Drinkwater said obscurely.

  ‘Ahhh.’ White gave Drinkwater a quizzical look. ‘We had been looking for a French cruiser ever since Jupiter was mauled by Preneuse in October. We thought Romaine was the Preneuse, damn it.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Still, we will see you to the Cape, eh? Table Bay for orders, you may tell Morris that. What d’you say to dinner on the Telemachus, eh?’

  Drinkwater cast a rueful glance at the cabin skylight. ‘I shall be honoured to accept, sir. And I am indebted to you for writing to Elizabeth. She was with child d’you see.’

  White made a deprecating gesture with his hand, pregnant women being outside his experience. He had caught the significance of Drinkwater’s concern for the smouldering Morris beneath them. ‘Haven’t made it too hard for you, have I? Between you and Morris, I mean?’

  ‘It couldn’t be much worse, sir.’

  White cocked a shrewd eye at Drinkwater. ‘Had you struck?’

  ‘I hadn’t sir.’ Drinkwater returned the stare and emphasised the personal pronoun.

  ‘I’ll see you at the Cape, Nat.’ Drinkwater watched White’s gig pull smartly away. The Cape of Good Hope was still a thousand miles distant and seamen called it the Cape of Storms. It had been that on their outward voyage, he hoped it might live up to its other name on the homeward. Drinkwater put his hat on.

  ‘Brace her sharp up, Mr Lestock. A course of south-west if she’ll take it.’

  He went below to confront Morris.

  The commander sat bolt upright in his chair, his hands gripping the arms. He was paralysed by the judicial implications of White’s remark and fear of the noose warred with a sense of outrage at being humiliated on his own quarterdeck. The timid White had become a choleric, devil-may-care captain, a coming man and recognisably dangerous to Morris’s low cunning.

  Drinkwater had the distinct impression that Morris would spring at his throat even while he sat rigid with shock. Perhaps Nathaniel saw in his mind’s eye the intent of Morris’s spirit.

  ‘I am sorry for Captain White’s remark sir, I was not a party to . . .’

  ‘God damn you, Drinkwater! God damn you to hell!’ Morris spat the words from between clenched teeth, but so great was his fury as it burst through his self restraint that his words became an incomprehensible torrent of filth and invective.

  Drinkwater spun on his heel. Later Rattray came in search of Dalziell.

  Two weeks passed during which Morris made no appearance on deck. Appleby paid him daily visits, announcing that though there was some improvement in his condition it was not as rapid as he himself had hoped. He did not amplify the remark but it was made with a significant gravity that was not lost on Drinkwater.

  They were not to come to the shelter of Table Bay without leave of the sea. Antigone carried the favourable current round the southern tip of Africa ignorant of the fact that somewhere off the Agulhas Bank, where the continental shelf declines into the depths of the Southern Ocean, a combination of the prevailing westerlies opposing the force of the current produces some of the most monstrous seas encountered by man.

  As the frigate beat laboriously to windward, her small crew wet through, tired and hungry, the westerly gales blew furiously. Even the bad jokes about the southern summer faded, giving way to hissed oaths as men struggled to haul the third earings out to the topsail yardarms.

  In the screaming madness of an early morning Lieutenant Drinkwater clung onto a mizen backstay. The decks were shiny with water, pools of it still running out through the lee ports from the last inundation. Every rope ran with water, the sails were stiff with it. To windwa Telemachus butted into the seas.

  Amidships he heard a cry and saw the seaman’s pointing arm.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ whispered Drinkwater, his voice filled with awe. He reached for the speaking trumpet: ‘Hold fast! Hold fast there!’

  At the cry Mr Quilhampton looked up from the coil of log line in its basket. His gaze fell stupidly on his left arm. He had a hook there now, cunningly fashioned from a cannon worm by Mr Trussel. He flung himself down behind the aftermost carronade slide and hooked its point round a slewing eye, throwing a bight of the train tackle round his waist and catching a turn on the gun’s cascabel. It was his very vulnerability that saved him.

  At the main deck companionway Dalziell emerged on deck unbidden, dismissed by Morris in the dawn. The wave was three-quarters of a mile away when they had seen it, looming huge over the crests before it, a combination of forces far beyond the imagination. Its crest was reaching that critical state of instability that would induce its collapse in a rolling avalanche of water.

  The frigate fell into the trough and her sails cracked from loss of wind. Even in the depths of her hull, where Appleby was doing his morning rounds this momentary hiatus was felt. Then the mass of solid water thundered over the ship.

  Drinkwater was smashed to his knees and swept along the deck like flotsam. He was washed beneath a gun, the air squeezed from his lungs as his mind filled with a red and roaring struggle for breath. Mr Quilhampton too, lay gasping as the seemingly endless mass of water poured green across the deck. Forward a tremble and a shudder told where the frigate’s long jib-boom detached itself from the bowsprit. A body bumped past Drink-water and then Antigone began to rise, the water sluicing from her decks. The succeeding waves were much lower, giving men time to catch their breath. They staggered to their feet, stumbling among the shot, dislodged from the garlands and rolling menacingly from side to side, ready to trip or cripple the unwary.

  Drinkwater coughed the last of the sea water from him and helped Mr Quilhampton to his feet. ‘Get below, see Meyrick for a flask of rum!’ He raised his voice.

  ‘Quartermaster! Up helm! Ease the ship before the wind.’ He picked up the speaking trumpet rolling fortuitously past him across a deck that was still inches deep in water. ‘Mr Grey! Have your men at the braces! Rise foretacks and sheets, get the ship before the wind! Have Johnson sound the well!’

  Already the ship was turning, gathering way from her broached position, supine in the huge wave troughs and rolling abominably, sluggish from the water washing about below.

  ‘Spanker brails there! Douse the spanker, Mr Q!’ He grabbed the flask from the midshipman and drew on its contents.

  He looked forward as the spirit warmed him. They might have lost the jib-boom but they could still set a fore topmast staysail. He would get everything off her in a minute, leaving only the clews of the forecourse to goosewing her before the wind while they sorted out the shambles and pumped her dry. They must not run off too much easting for they would have to claw every inch back again.

  Slowly they fought the ship before the wind, cutting away the raffle forward, unjamming the blocks aloft where parted ropes had fouled, and laboriously pumping the Southern Ocean from their bilges. It was four hours before they brought the ship to the wind again. Telemachus had disappeared.

  It was only then they found Dalziell was missing.

  ‘Permission to make the signal, sir?’ Drinkwater requested. Morris did not turn, merely nodded. Drinkwater looked up at the peak of the gaff. Old Glory, the British red ensign they had salvaged from Hellebore and that had fluttered briefly over a tiny islet in the Red Sea, now cracked, tattered, in the sharp breeze blowing into Table Bay. Beneath it flew the much larger ensign of France, its brilliant scarlet fly snapping viciously, as though resenting its inferior position.

  ‘Hoist away, Mr Q.’ The little bundles rose to break out in
the sunshine and stream colourfully to leeward. Mr Quilhampton looked aloft with evident pride.

  ‘Beg pardon, zur,’ said Tregembo belaying the halliards, ‘but what do it say?’

  ‘It says, Tregembo,’ explained Quilhampton expansively, ‘that this ship is the prize of the brig-sloop Hellebore.’

  Not one of the most memorable of signals, Drinkwater concluded, levelling his glass at the fifty-gun two-decker Jupiter with a broad pendant at her masthead. But given the limitations of the code an apt description of Antigone. He wished it was old Griffiths who occupied the weather side of her quarterdeck.

  Morris turned, as if aware of Drinkwater’s thoughts. There was a calmness about the commander that had come with returning health. It pleased Appleby but worried Drinkwater. There was a triumph in those hooded eyes.

  ‘Have the ship brought to the wind, Mr Lestock,’ ordered Morris. There was a new authority about Morris too, a confidence which disturbed Drinkwater. The sailing master obeyed the order with obsequious alacrity. Morris had exploited the dislike between his master and first lieutenant to make Lestock a creature of his own. Lestock now wore a permanently prim expression, anticipating Drinkwater’s imminent downfall. It occurred to Drinkwater as he observed this new and unholy alliance that Dalziell had gone unmourned.

  Drinkwater touched the letter in his pocket. If he could have it delivered to White all might yet be set right, provided it did not fall into the wrong hands or was misconstrued. That thought set doubts whirling in his brain and to steady himself he raised his glass again.

  Antigone was turning into the wind, her sails backing. At an order from the quarterdeck Johnson let the anchor go. The splash was followed by the rumble of the cable snaking up from the tiers.

  ‘Topsail halliards!’

  ‘Aloft and stow! Aloft and stow!’

  ‘Commence the salute, Mr Rogers!’

  Drinkwater could see six vessels in the anchorage. Three flew the blue pendant of the Transport Board and partially obscured what appeared to be two frigates and a sloop. He stared hard, satisfying himself that one of the frigates was Telemachus. White had beaten them to the Cape after their separation in the gale. He felt a sensation of relief at the sight of the distant frigate.