'Aye, aye, sir.' He turned away.
'Mr Drinkwater.'
'Sir?' Griffiths was lowering himself on to his chair, his leg stiffly extended before him. An ominous perspiration stood out on his forehead and his flesh had a greyish pallor.
'There are Indiamen inshore there, three of them. I am sure one of them will carry our mails to England.'
'Yes, sir. Thank you.'
As he sat to finish the long letter to Elizabeth the first report of the salute boomed out overhead.
Chapter Six
The Cape of Storms
Drinkwater woke with a start, instantly alert. He stared into the inky blackness while his ears strained to hear the sound that had woken him. The ship creaked and groaned as the following sea rolled up astern and passed under her. It had been blowing a near gale from the south-west when he had come below two hours earlier and now something had woken him from the deepest sleep. Whatever the cause of his disturbance it had not alerted those on deck, for there were no shouts of alarm, no strident bellows of 'All Hands!' He thought of the ten cannon they had struck down into the hold before leaving the Cape a week ago. There had been barely room for them and they were too well lashed and tommed to move. It might have been the boats. They had both been taken out of the davits and turned keels up either side of the capstan, partially sheltering the canvas covered grating amidships, in the room made by the absent six-pounders. He doubted they would have sent such a tremble through the hull as he was now persuading himself he had felt.
Then it came again, a slight jar that nevertheless seemed to pass through the entire hull. It had a remorseless quality that fully alarmed Drinkwater. He swung his legs over his cot and reached for his breeches and boots. The source of that judder was not below decks but above. Something had carried away aloft. In the howling blackness of the night with the roar and hiss of the sea and the wind piping in the rigging, those on deck would not be aware of it. He pulled on his tarpaulin and turned the lengths of spunyarn round his wrists. The bump came again, more insistent now but Drinkwater was almost ready. Jamming his hat on his head he left the cabin.
He was doubly anxious, for effective command of the brig was his. Griffiths had been afflicted with malarial fever, contracted long ago in the Gambia, which returned to incapacitate him from time to time. He had been free of it for over a year but as Hellebore reached into the great Southern Ocean, down to forty south to avoid the Agulhas current, and made to double the Cape before the favourable westerlies, it had laid him delirious in his cot.
The wind hit Drinkwater as he emerged on deck and pulled the companionway cover over after him. Holding his hat on he cast his eyes aloft, staggered over to the foot of the mainmast and placed his hand upon it. He could feel the natural tremble of the mast but nothing more.
A figure loomed alongside. 'Is that you, Mr Drinkwater?'
'Yes, Mr Lestock,' he shouted back, 'there's something loose somewhere, but I'm damned if I know where.' He turned forward as a sea foamed up alongside and sluiced over the rail. The first dousing after a dry spell was always the worst. Drinkwater shuddered under the sudden chilling deluge. He was cursing foully as he reached the foremast and looked up. The topgallant masts had been sent down and he saw the topmast sway against the sky. The racing scud made it impossible to determine details but the pale rectangle of the triple-reefed topsail was plain. The instant he put his hand upon the mast he felt the impact, a mighty tremble that shook the spar silently, transmitting a quiver to the keelson below. He looked up again, spray stinging his eyes. It crossed his mind that Lestock had furled the forecourse since the change of watch. Drinkwater would have doused the topsail to keep the centre of effort low. Lestock seemed to do things by some kind of rote, an old-fashioned, ill-schooled officer. He felt the shudder again and then he saw its cause.
Above him the bunt of the fore topsail lifted curiously, the foot forming a sharp hyperbola rather than an elliptical arc. The foreyard below it looked odd, not straight but bending upwards.
'Mr Lestock!' Drinkwater turned aft. Somewhere in the vicinity of the jeers the big yard had broken, only the forecourse furled along it was preventing it from breaking loose. 'Mr Lestock!' Drinkwater struggled aft again, tripping over the watch huddling abaft the boats.
'I think the foreyard has carried away near the slings. One end seems to be fast under the jeers but t'other is loose and butting the mast. You can feel it below. We must get the fore topsail off her. Don't for God's sake start the braces; the whole thing will be down round our ears. Let the ship run off dead before the wind under the fore topmast staysail and rouse up all hands.' He was shouting in Lestock's ear but someone heard the cry for all hands and in a second the duty bosun's mate was bellowing down the companion-way Drinkwater grabbed one of the seamen.
'Ah, Stokeley, get everybody mustered abaft the boats, if that lot comes down it'll likely take someone with it. Who's on the fo'c's'le?'
'Davies, sir.'
'Right, Mr Lestock, Mr Lestock!'
'What is it?'
'Pass me the speaking trumpet.' He took the trumpet and held it up. 'Fo'c's'le there! Davies! Come aft here at once!' The wind carried his voice and the man came aft. Drinkwater left the explanations to Stokeley and joined the men assembling at the mainmast.
'Listen carefully, my lads. The foreyard has broken. We must start the sheets and clew up the topsail as quickly as possible. Then I want four volunteers to come aloft with me and pass a rope round the broken end of the yard, to lash it against the top until daylight.'
The men moved forward. Rogers emerged from the after companionway, he could see the two midshipmen. 'Be ready to tail on as required.' He gave his orders to have the men stationed to take in the topsail but as soon as they eased the sheets he could see it would not work. The eagerness with which the men sought to quell the flogging topsail by heaving on the clew and buntlines only added to the weight of wind in the sail, forcing it upwards like washing on a clothesline. The topsail sheets tugged the fore-yardarms upwards, twisting the furled course below. Perhaps the broken wood severed the first gasket that restrained the huge sail but suddenly three or four gaskets parted and the forecourse blew out in a vast pale billow. There was a crack like a gun and it disintegrated into a thousand streaming ribbons fluttering along the broken yard. The sail had blown clean out of the bolt ropes and the extent of the wounded yard could now be seen. It was a view that all contemplated for a split second. Then with a juddering crash the whole starboard half of the yard came down, the topsail stretched flat before splitting and tearing loose then blew off to leeward in an instant. The larboard half of the yard trailed its outboard extremity in the water, crashing downwards parting lifts, halliards and buntlines which fell in entangling coils, snaking across the deck to be torn overside by the wind then dragged aft past Hellebore's onrushing hull. What Drinkwater had intended to be the ordered application of manpower turned into a confused bedlam of shouts, curses and orders.
Drinkwater swore deeply and began to shout. At all costs those spars should be saved, not for their own sake but for the iron fittings that they would be unable to replace. 'Mr Lestock! Keep the ship off before the wind! Mr Rogers! A party to secure that starboard yardarm before we lose it!'
Rogers gathered men about him. He was not argumentative thought Nathaniel, terrible circumstances and the assertion of discipline drove the men in their common necessity. Drinkwater turned forward with his volunteers.