‘I am truly sorry for the Danes,’ Drinkwater said. ‘Captain Dahlgaard was a most gallant officer . . .’
Kennedy sniffed disparagingly at this assertion. Drinkwater ignored the man’s infuriating importunity.
‘And what arrangements have you concluded?’
‘That all the Danes are to be landed and that we hand over the Kestrel immediately prior to our departure. A truce is to obtain until we are seaward of the narrows, thereafter they may communicate with Bergen.’
‘Very well. In the circumstances we must count that as satisfactory. Captain Dahlgaard may be sent ashore as soon as is possible.’
‘I took the liberty of permitting the one launch left to the Americans to pull out immediately and take off the worst of the wounded.’
Drinkwater nodded. ‘That was well done. Birkbeck has completed his survey of Kestrel and has condemned her as totally unfit for further service. Properly we should destroy her, but I do not think their Lordships will judge us too harshly for leaving this place with a measure of magnanimity towards our beaten foe.’
Kennedy sniffed again as he completed his work.
‘Physician, I suggest you heal yourself’, said Drinkwater, ‘instead of making that ridiculous noise.’ Kennedy scowled as he added, ‘Thank you for your solicitude.’
Frey watched the surgeon leave and turned to Drinkwater. ‘Sir, there is a matter of considerable importance I have to discuss with you . . .’
‘If it is to do with a prize-crew . . .’
‘No, no! Though I should like to know what arrangements you are intending.’
‘You will take the Odin home. We will stay in company and make for Rattray Head, thereafter I will signal Leith, or London, depending upon the circumstances. But come, what is this matter of such importance?’
‘Gold specie, sir.’
Frey breathed the words with a quiet satisfaction, as though not daring to frighten them away. Comprehension dawned slowly on Drinkwater.
‘Aboard the Odin?’
Frey nodded conspiratorially. ‘I was in a lather of apprehension whilst I was away, but it is quite safe. Captain Dahlgaard had made especial provision for it and I do not think many of his people knew. It was in a small lazarette below his cabin . . .’
‘And had, I think, come out of a similar lazarette in the General Wayne,’ said Drinkwater, remembering the empty space into which he had rolled the little barrels with their lethal filling of fine-milled black powder. ‘But how did you come by it?’
‘When we boarded and you attacked aft,’ Frey explained, ‘my party went for the wheel and then the gun deck. I had hoped to take the gunners in the rear, but too few of our fellows followed me. Most of the Danes on the upper deck fell back on their quarterdeck and we got below without encountering much resistance. The gun deck was reeking with smoke and we got the hatches down amidships and aft before, I think, anyone was aware of our presence. When I secured the after hatch to prevent anyone coming up from below, we were seen and set on by the aftermost gun crews. There were about a dozen men with me at that time including Fisher and we had a hard few moments of it, being hopelessly outnumbered and totally unsupported.’ Drinkwater could imagine the scene: the noise and confusion; the Danish gunners blazing away, half-deafened, the gun deck full of smoke and then someone spotting the strange intruders.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘It was curious, but the Danes had left the after bulkhead down. Fisher got the cabin door open and we retreated into Dahlgaard’s quarters, leaving four of our number outside. None of the after guns in there were manned . . .’
‘Well I’m damned! I never noticed, but forgive me; do go on.’
‘Dahlgaard had emptied the cabin space of furniture, though, and it struck me that there was a reason why he had not completely cleared the after part of the ship for action. At the time I gave it no further thought, beyond welcoming the respite, expecting the Danes to burst through the flimsy door at any moment. In fact the fire beyond the bulkhead slackened and then ceased. A few minutes later, things having fallen silent, we ventured out to find the ship had struck her colours. I think those men who were not still at the guns had been called away to defend the upper deck just at the point when you gained the upper hand.’
‘Go on.’
‘After you left me prize-master I posted guards and went back into the cabin to seize the ship’s papers. Dahlgaard had left a bunch of keys, a pair of pistols, a telescope and a number of other articles one would have supposed he ought to have had disposed about his person. I found them on the stern settee. I tried the keys and found they fitted the usual lockers and also a lazarette hatch. I think Dahlgaard underestimated us, sir, thought he could dispense with the aftermost guns in order to preserve intact what lay below his cabin.’
‘The specie?’
‘Yes. A dozen chests of it. Gold ingots . . . I have no idea how many.’
‘And you placed a guard on it?’
‘Mr Fisher. I locked the poor fellow in. I have just been aboard, before reporting to you. He is all right; he stuck to his post after I impressed the importance of it upon him, though he is very hungry.’
‘Does he know what he is guarding?’
Frey shook his head. ‘No, not exactly; only that it is important.’
‘Twelve-year-old boys take much for granted, including the presumed wisdom of their elders, I’m glad to say. And the Danes made no attempt to regain it, not even during your negotiations?’ Frey shook his head. ‘No. I thought better than to draw their attention to it.’
‘Quite.’ Drinkwater frowned, then said, ‘Perhaps Dahlgaard and his lieutenants were the only ones to know of it, and I suppose the Americans themselves may well have physically shifted the stuff. The fact that it was concealed in wooden boxes would have prevented all but a few officers from knowing its true nature. It would also explain the protracted length of time taken to tranship that cargo. I imagine Dahlgaard insisted the Americans surrender the gold before he released the arms. There was certainly much toing and froing between the ships, and the Odin would have been stuffed with the arms shipment. Her crew must have been heartily sick of having their freedom impeded by so much cargo.’
Frey looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, Frey,’ Drinkwater added, ‘you ain’t party to all the ramifications of this business. I will tell you all about it when we anchor in British waters.’ Drinkwater smiled wanly. ‘You’ll have to possess your soul in patience until then, but suffice it to say the Danes were only acting as carriers, which may explain their indifference to the gold’s fate. It was destined for Paris, not Copenhagen.’
‘Ah, I see. Payment from the Yankees to the French for the arms being shipped into the American privateers.’
‘Exactly so.’
‘And kept damn quiet by those Danish officers in the know.’
‘Yes.’
‘I imagine there can be few of them left,’ Frey said, ‘judging by the carnage on deck.’
‘No.’ Both men were briefly silent, than Drinkwater returned to the matter in hand. ‘You had better take Danks and four marines with you as a special guard. Keep Fisher, take Ashley and pick your prize crew, sixty men. We will weigh as soon as possible. Rattray Head is to be the rendezvous.’
‘You don’t wish to tranship the specie aboard here, sir?’
Drinkwater shook his head again. ‘No. The fewer people who know about it the better. It is safe enough in your hands. Besides, I don’t want to wait a moment longer.’ His last sentence was an excuse. The truth was, there was something obscene about the thought of tucking the gold under his own wing.
‘I rather think you have made your fortune, sir.’
Drinkwater shook his head again. ‘I doubt it. I’ll lay a guinea on it becoming a droit of Admiralty, Mr Frey, but you may at least have the commission for carrying it.’
And a brief gleam of avarice came into Frey’s eyes, the first manifestation of mundane emotion since he had announced the death of
James Quilhampton.
Mr Templeton looked up at the figure silhouetted against the battered remains of the stern windows. The seated clerk was shivering with cold and persistently glanced at the blanket forming an inadequate barrier to the open air which whistled with a mournful moan through the shot-holes in Andromeda’s starboard quarter.
Captain Drinkwater’s silence grew longer, past the point of mere reflection and into an admission of abstraction. Templeton coughed intrusively. Drinkwater started and looked round.
‘Ah . . . yes . . . Read what you have written, Templeton,’ Drinkwater commanded.
‘To the Secretary, and so on and so forth,’ Templeton began, then settled to read: ‘Sir, I have the honour to report . . .’
Head bent and stoop-shouldered beneath the deckhead beams, his hands clasped behind his back, Drinkwater paced ruminatively up and down the shattered cabin as Templeton’s voice droned on through the account of the past weeks. He was compelled to live through those last hours in Quilhampton’s company and forced to recreate from the spare words of his report the frightful minutes crawling through the hold in search of Malaburn. Finally Templeton concluded the details of the final action which culminated in the capture of the Odin as a prize of war.
‘. . . And having, subsequent to a survey by Mr Jonathan Birkbeck, Master, condemned the Kestrel, cutter, as unfit for further service, her stores and guns having been removed out of her, she was, by my order, turned over to the enemy as an act of humanity in order that communication might be opened with Bergen and the removal of the wounded to that place be effected.
‘Having taken in my charge the former Danish frigate Odin and placed on board a prize-crew, Lieutenant Frey in command, the said Odin did weigh and proceed in company with HBM Frigate Andromeda, leaving the Vikkenfiord shortly before dark . . .’
‘Very well. Add the date.’ Drinkwater paused while Templeton scratched. ‘Is that all for the time being, sir?’
Drinkwater had yet to account for the dead, to write their collective and official epitaph.
‘Yes, for the time being. It is getting dark.’
‘The evenings draw in swiftly in these high latitudes, sir.’
‘Yes,’ Drinkwater replied abstractedly. ‘It is time we were gone, while this favourable breeze holds.’
‘Mr Birkbeck says the glass stands very high and the northerly wind will persist for many days.’
‘Does he now?’ Drinkwater looked at Templeton as if seeing him for the first time in weeks. Templeton was not usually prone to such abject ingratiation. ‘You are taking an uncommon interest in nautical matters, Mr Templeton.’
‘Sir?’
The sarcasm struck Templeton like a whip and he turned his face away, but not before Drinkwater had seen the unaccountable effect his words had had. Nor could Templeton disguise the withdrawing from his sleeve of a pocket handkerchief.
Drinkwater was about to speak, then held his peace. He had been too hard on a man not inured to the fatigue of battle. A man of Templeton’s sensibilities might receive hidden wounds, wounds of the mind, from the events of the last few days. For a moment Drinkwater looked at his clerk, remembering the rather supercilious man who had brought the news of Bardolini’s landing that night at the Admiralty. Drinkwater felt the stirrings of guilt for, had he not insisted that Templeton sail aboard Andromeda, the wretched fellow might never have been subjected to the rigours of active service.
They had gone through much since, much that should have brought them closer, but Drinkwater felt a constraint between them; they no longer enjoyed that intimacy of communication which had marked their relationship in London. Something between them had diminished and failed to withstand the manifold pressures of life at sea. Perhaps it was merely the distance imposed by the isolation of his rank, and yet Drinkwater felt it was something more subtle. And with the thought, Drinkwater realized he felt an intuitive dislike of Templeton.
The dull boom of a gun, followed by another, echoed across the water. It was the agreed signal that Frey was ready to weigh, though it made Templeton start with a jerk.
‘That is all for now, Mr Templeton.’ Drinkwater watched the clerk shuffle unhappily forward, blowing his nose, bearing his own weight of guilt and grief.
Drinkwater threw his cloak about his shoulders, clamped his damaged hat upon his head and went on deck. He could not dismiss the unease he felt about Templeton, aware of his own part in the clerk’s transformation. Something had altered the man himself, and Drinkwater felt an instinctive wariness towards him. It was a conviction that was to grow stronger in the following days.
The two ships stood down the fiord in line ahead, the symmetry of their sail-plans wrecked by battle. Andromeda’s jib-boom was shortened from her impact with the Odin, and both frigates bore an odd assortment of topsails on a variegated jumble of jury-rigged spars.
Already the high bluff with its fort and the burnt-out wrecks of the two American privateers had faded in the distance. They seemed now to have no existence except in the memory, though Drinkwater wondered how the Danish garrison were coping with the influx of wounded and the encumbrance of numerous Yankee privateersmen. He wondered, too, whether Dahlgaard had survived his wounds, or whether death had claimed him as well as so many others.
On either hand the mountains and forests merged into a dusky monotone, and the waters of the fiord, though stirred by the breeze, were the colour of lead. Even the pale strakes of their gun decks, yellow on Andromeda and buff on Odin, were leached of any hue; nor were the white ensigns more than fluttering grey shapes at the peaks of the twin spankers, for Drinkwater had forbidden Odin to fly her colours superior to those of Denmark while they remained in Norwegian waters.
‘I dislike gloating, Mr Frey. You may play that fanfare when in a British roadstead, but not before.’
They could judge him superstitious if they liked, but he had tempted fate enough and they had yet many leagues to make good before crowing a triumph.
The shadow of the narrows engulfed them. In the twilight, they moved through an ethereal world; the cliffs seemed insubstantial, dim, almost as though seen in a fog, except that beyond them lay the distant horizon hard against a sky pale with the washed-out afterglow of sunset.
Then, as they cleared the strait and left the Vikkenfiord behind them, as the grey and forbidding coast began to fall back on either side and the vast ocean opened about them, they saw the last rays of the setting sun strike the mountain summits astern. It was, Drinkwater recalled, how they had first spied them. For a moment it seemed as though the very sky had caught fire, for the jagged, snow-encrusted peaks flashed against the coming night, then vanished, as the western rim of the world threw its shadow into the firmament.
Drinkwater turned from contemplating this marvel and swallowed hard. Birkbeck came towards him.
‘Course set sou’west by south, sir. Should take us clear of Utsira before dawn.’
‘I hope so, Mr Birkbeck, I hope so.’
‘ ’Tis a damnable coast, sir, but we’ve been lucky with the fog. Just the one day.’
‘Yes. We’ve been lucky.’
They stood for a moment, then Birkbeck said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying, sir, but Pardoe would never have done what you did.’
Drinkwater stared blankly at the master. Then he frowned. ‘What’s that?’
‘He’d have drawn off after the first encounter . . .’ Seeing the bleak look on Drinkwater’s face, Birkbeck faltered.
‘Perhaps he would have been the wiser man, Mr Birkbeck,’ Drinkwater replied coldly. Had it all been worth it? So many dead: Quilhampton, Mosse, that Marine corporal – Wilson, the boatswain’s mate Greer and so many, many more: Dahlgaard, his sister’s son, and the Americans. He was reminded of the fact that he still had American prisoners, though he had returned the Yankee privateer commander to the fort under Frey’s flag of truce.
Birkbeck looked nonplussed, then said, ‘Beg pardon, sir, I meant no offence . . .’
&nb
sp; ‘There was none taken.’
‘Well, I’ll . . .’
‘Go below, Mr Birkbeck. You have done your utmost and I shall remember your services. Is there anything in my gift that I might oblige you with?’
Even in the gloom, Drinkwater could see Birkbeck brighten. ‘I should like a dockyard post, sir, if it ain’t asking too much.’
‘I will see what I can do. Now, do you go below and I will keep the deck until midnight.’
‘There’s no need . . .’
‘Yes there is. I have much to think about.’
Time seemed of no account as the ship, even under her patchwork sail-plan, leaned to the breeze and seemed to take wing for the horizon. The northerly wind was light but steady, and bitterly cold, fogging their exhalations and laying a thin white rime on the hemp ropes as the night progressed.
Drinkwater paced the windward quarterdeck, no longer unsteady on his legs, but with the ease of long practice and the nervous energy of the sleepless. The sky was studded with stars, the great northern constellations of Ursa Major and Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra, Perseus, Auriga and, portentously, Andromeda, rolled about Polaris, beneath which lay the terrestrial pole. Across the heavens blazed the great swathe of the Milky Way. Such was the cold that their twinkling seemed to the watching Drinkwater to be of greater vigour than was customary.
About four bells in the first watch he became aware of the faint luminosity to the northward that marked an auroral glow. It was so faint that he thought at first he had imagined it, but then he became aware that it was pulsing, a grey and pallid light that came and then faded. Slowly it grew more intense and concentrated, turning in colour from a deathly pallor to a lucent green, appearing not as a nebulous glow but as a defined series of rays that seemed to diffuse from a distant, invisible and mysterious polar source.
For some fifteen or twenty minutes this display persisted and then the rays subsided and consolidated into a low, green arc. This in turn began to undulate and extend vertically towards the zenith so that it hung like some gigantic and diaphanous veil, stirred by a monstrous cosmic wind which blew noiselessly through the very heavens themselves. To men whose lives were spent in thrall to the winds of the oceans, this silence possessed an immense and horrible power before which they felt puny and insubstantial.
Beneath the Aurora Page 23