'I hope your confidence ain't misplaced, sir.' Rogers stared after the figures of the two young men.
'Both demonstrated their resource in the Greenland Sea, Sam. Besides, I want you amidships to pass my orders in case they ain't heard.' Drinkwater refused to be drawn by Roger's touchiness respecting his two juniors. For all his obvious disabilities Drinkwater had dragged Lieutenant Rogers off the poop of an ancient bomb-vessel and placed him on the quarterdeck of one of the finest frigates in the service, so he had little cause to complain of partiality. 'See that the men are at their stations and all ropes will run clear.' That at least was something Rogers would do superbly and with a deal of invective to spur the men's endeavours.
'Well, Mr Hill?'
'I've told two of my mates off into the hold to sound the well and Meggs is mustering a party at the pumps. If you open number nine port she'll be taking water all the while.'
'That,' replied Drinkwater shouting, 'is a risk we'll have to take.'
There was little either captain or master could do until the preparations were completed. The ship was rushing through the water at a speed that, under other circumstances, they would have been proud of.
'Is it Mount's Bay, d'you think?' Hill's concern was clear. He, too, was worried about that latitude. 'We haven't sighted the Lizard lights, sir.'
'No.' Drinkwater hauled himself gingerly into the leeward mizen rigging and felt the wind catch his body as a thing of no substance. He clung on grimly and stared out to starboard. The thin veil of cloud which showed the gibbous moon nearly at the full was sufficient to extend a pale light upon the waves as the wind tore their breaking crests to shreds and sent the spume downwind like buckshot. With the greatest difficulty he made out what might have been the grey line of a cliff out on the starboard beam. He could only estimate its distance with difficulty. Perhaps a mile, perhaps not so much.
Then the moon sailed into a clear patch of sky. It was suddenly very bright and what Drinkwater saw caused his mouth to go dry.
A point or two on their starboard bow, right in their track as they sagged to leeward, rose a huge grey pinnacle of rock. In the moonlight its crags and fissures stood out starkly, and at its feet the breakers pounded white. But in the brief interval in the cloud Drinkwater became aware of something else. Atop the rock, perched upon its highest crag, a buttress and wall reared sheer from the cliff. Immediately he knew their position and that the danger to the ship and her company was increased a hundredfold. For beneath the ancient abbey on St Michael's Mount, stretching round onto their windward bow, the breakers pounded white upon the Mountamopus shoal.
There are few periods of anxiety greater in their intensity than that of a commander whose ship is running into peril, waiting for his people to complete their preparations. On the one hand experience and judgement caution him not to attempt a manoeuvre until everything is ready; upon the other instinct cries out to be released into immediate action. Yet, as the sweat prickled between his shoulder blades, Drinkwater knew that to act hastily was to court disaster. If the ship failed in stays there would be no second chance. It was useless to speculate upon the erroneous navigation that had brought them to this point, or why Rogers stank of rum, or, indeed, whether the two were connected. All these thoughts briefly crossed his mind in the enforced hiatus that is every captain's lot once orders have been given.
He looked again at the mount. The moon had disappeared now under a thick mantle of cloud, but they were close enough for its mass to loom over them, an insubstantial-looking lightening of the darkness to leeward, skirted about its base by the breakers that dashed spray half-way up its granite cliffs. This sudden proximity made his heart skip and he looked along the waist where men had been clustered in a dark group, hauling on the messenger that pulled the heavy cable along the ship's side. He could imagine their efforts being thwarted by the protruberances of the channels, the dead-eyes, the bead-blocks and all the other rigging details that at this precise moment seemed so much infernal nuisance. God, would they never finish?
The wind shrieked mercilessly and the frigate lay over so that he felt a terrible concern for that open gun-port into which, without a shadow of doubt, the sea would be sluicing continuously. He was unable to hear any noise above the storm and hoped that the pumping party were hard at it.
'Ready, sir!'
After the worry the word came aft and took him by surprise. It was Rogers, his face a pale blur of urgency abruptly illuminated as, again, the cloud was torn aside and the moon shone brightly. The light fell on the frigate, the sea and St Michael's Mount, sublime in its terrifying majesty.
'Stations for stays!' He left Rogers to bawl the order through the speaking trumpet, took Hill by the elbow and forced him across the deck. 'We'll take the wheel, Mr Hill. It'll need the coolest heads tonight.' He sensed Hill's bewilderment as to what had gone wrong with the navigation.
Captain and sailing master took over the head-wheel, the displaced quartermasters moving across the deck to assist the gunners to haul the main-yard.
'Ease down the helm, Mr Hill!' Drinkwater could feel the vibration of the hull as it rushed through the water, transmitted up from the rudder through the stock and tiller via the tiller ropes which creaked with the strain upon them. The ship lay over as she began to turn into the wind. A sea hit her larboard bow and threw her back a point. Drinkwater watched the angled compass card serenely illuminated by the yellow oil lamp, quietly obeying the timeless laws of natural science amid the elemental turmoil of the wind and sea.
Drinkwater raised his voice: 'Fo'c's'le there! Cut free the anchor! Let the cable run!'
Rogers took up the cry, bawling the first part forward and the latter part below to the party at the gun-port and by the cable-compressors. Drinkwater was dimly aware of a flurry of activity on the fo'c's'le and the hail that the anchor was gone. Behind him one of the two remaining helmsmen muttered, 'Shit or bust, mateys!'
'I hope it holds,' said Hill.
'It'll hold, Mr Hill. 'Tis sand and rock. The rock may part the cable in a moment or two but she'll hold long enough.' He wished he possessed the confidence he expressed. He could feel the cable rumbling through the port, there was no doubt about that strange sensation coming up through the thin soles of his shoes. Rogers was crouched at the companionway and suddenly straightened.
'Half cable veered, sir!'
Sixty fathoms of thirteen-inch hemp. Not enough, not yet. Drinkwater counted to three, then: 'Nip her!'
'I believe,' said Drinkwater to cover the extremity of his fear that in the next few seconds the anchor might break out or the cable part, 'I believe at this point when staying, both the French and the Spanish invoke God as a matter of routine.'
'Not such a bad idea, sir, beggin' yer pardon,' answered one of the helmsmen behind him.
And then the ship began to turn. For a moment he thought she might go the wrong way, for he had let go the lee anchor and that from a port well abaft the bow.
'Hard over now, my lads…' He began to spin the wheel, aware that the anchor and cable were snubbing the ship round into the wind and thus assisting them. With the courses furled there were no tacks and sheets to raise and she was suddenly in the eye of the wind. There was a thunderous clap which sent a tremble through the hull as the fore-topsail came aback and juddered the whole foremast to its step in the kelson.
'Main-topsail haul!' Thank God for his crew, Drinkwater thought. They were only a few days out of Chatham and might have had a crew that were raw and unco-ordinated, but he had drafted the entire company from the sloop Melusine, volunteers to a man. The main and mizen yards came round. So too did the ship, she was spinning like a top, her bow rising and her bowsprit stabbing at the very moon as she passed through the wind. The main-topsail filled with a crack that sent a second mighty tremor through the ship.