'Da iawn, Mr Drinkwater, well done.' Griffiths's voice was warm and congratulatory. Drinkwater relaxed with relief: it seemed he had passed a test. Griffiths quietly gave orders. The mainsail was scandalised and the staysail backed. The boat towing astern was hauled alongside and two men tumbled in to bale it out. Beside Drinkwater the cloaked figure of the British agent stood staring ashore.
'Your glass, sir, lend me your glass.' The tone was peremptory, commanding, all trace of jollity absent.
'Yes, yes, of course, sir.' He fished it out of his coat pocket and handed it to the man. After scrutinising the beach it was silently returned. Griffiths came up.
'Take the boat in, Mr Drinkwater, and land our guest.'
It took a second to realise his labours were not yet over. Men were piling into the gig alongside. There was the dull gleam of metal where Jessup issued sidearms. 'Pistol and cutlass, sir.' There was an encouraging warmth in Jessup's voice now. Drinkwater took the pistol and stuck it into his waistband. He refused the cutlass. Slipping below, screwing his eyes up against the lamplight from the cabin, he pushed into his own hutch. Behind the door he felt for the French épée. Buckling it on he hurried back on deck.
Mont Jolibois rose above them as the boat approached the shore. To the left Drinkwater could see a fringe of white water that surged around the hummocks of the Roches des Muron. He realised fully why Griffiths insisted they land at low water. As many dangers as possible were uncovered, providing some shelter and a margin of safety if they grounded. Forward the bowman was prodding overside with his boathook.
'Bottom, sir!' he hissed, and a moment later the boat ran aground, lifted and grounded again. Without orders the oars came inboard with low thuds and, to Drinkwater's astonishment, his entire crew leapt overboard, holding the boat steady. Then, straining in a concerted effort that owed its perfection to long practice, they hove her off the sand and hauled her round head to sea. Drinkwater felt foolishly superfluous, sitting staring back the way they had come.
'Ready sir.' A voice behind him made him turn as his passenger rose and scrambled on to the seaman's back. The boat lifted to a small breaker and thumped back on to the bottom. The seaman waded ashore and Drinkwater, not to be outdone, kicked off his shoes and splashed after them with the agent's bag. Well up the beach the sailor lowered his burden and the agent settled his cloak.
'Standard procedure,' he said with just a trace of that humour he had earlier displayed. He held out his hand for the bag. 'Men with dried salt on their boots have a rather obvious origin.' He took the bag. 'Thank you; bonsoir mon ami.'
'Goodnight,' said Drinkwater to the figure retreating into the threatening darkness that was Revolutionary France. For a second Drinkwater stood staring after the man, and then trudged back to the boat.
There was a perceptible easing of tension as the men pulled back to the waiting cutter. As though the shadow of the guillotine and the horrors of the Terror that lay over the darkened land had touched them all. Wearily Drinkwater clambered on board and saluted Griffiths.
The lieutenant nodded. 'You had better get some sleep now,' he said. 'And Mr Drinkwater…'
'Sir?' said Drinkwater from the companionway.
'Da iawn, Mr Drinkwater, da iawn.'
'I'm sorry sir, I don't understand.' He wrestled with fatigue.
'Well done, Mr Drinkwater, well done. I am pleased to say I do not find my confidence misplaced.'
Chapter Two
First Blood
Not all their operations went as smoothly. There were nights that seemed endless when a rendezvous was missed, when the guttering blue lights shown at the waterline spat and sizzled interminably achieving nothing. There were hours of eye strain and physical weariness as the cutter was laboriously kept on a station to no purpose, hours of barely hidden bad temper, hunger and cold. Occasionally there was brief and unexpected excitement as when, in thick weather, Kestrel disturbed a mid-Channel rendezvous of another kind. The two boats that parted in confusion did so amid shouts in French and English; slatting lugsails jerked hurriedly into the wet air and the splash of what might have been kegs was visible in the widening gap between the two vessels. Kestrel had fired her bow chasers at the retreating smugglers to maintain the illusion of being the revenue cruiser she had been taken for.
Then there had been an occasion of dubious propriety on their own part. Griffiths sent two boats to creep for barricoes off St Valery while Kestrel luffed and filled in the offing, Griffiths handling her with patient dexterity. Sitting in one of the boats Drinkwater continually verified their position, his quadrant horizontal, the images of two spires and a windmill in alternating sequence as he made minute adjustments to the index. His voice cracked with shouting instructions to the other boat, his eyes streamed at the effort of adjusting to look for Jessup's wave before refocusing on the reflected images of his marks. The two boats trailed their grapnels up and down the sea bed for hours before they were successful. What was in the little barrels Drinkwater never discovered for certain. Griffiths merely smiled when he eventually reported their success. It crossed his mind it might, quite simply, be cognac; that Griffiths as a man entrusted with many secrets might have capitalised on the advantages his position offered. After all, thought Drinkwater, it was in the best traditions of naval peculation and there was the matter of a few loose gold coins he had himself acquired when he retook the Algonquin in the last war. Somehow it was reassuring to find Griffiths had some human failings beyond the obvious one of enjoying his liquor. Certainly Kestrel never lacked strong drink and Griffiths never stinted it, claiming with a mordant gleam in his eye, that a good bottle had more to offer a man than a good woman.
'A woman, look you, never lets you speak like a bottle does, boyo. She has the draining of you, not you her, but a bottle leaves your guts warm afterwards…' He finished on a long sigh.
Drinkwater smiled. In his half-century at sea poor Griffiths could only have experienced the fleeting affection of drabs. Hugging his own knowledge of Elizabeth to him Nathaniel had felt indulgent. But he had not refused the cognac that made its appearance after the day off St Valery.
Certainly Griffiths was unmoved by the presence of women which always sent a wave of lust through the cutter when they transferred fugitives from French fishing boats. The awkward bundles of women and children, many in bedraggled finery, who clambered clumsily over the stinking bulwarks into the boats to the accompanying grins of the Frenchmen, never failed to unsettle the exemplary order of the cutter. Griffiths remained aloof, almost disdainful, and obviously pleased when they had discharged their passengers. While their duties became this desperate business of strange encounters and remote landings Drinkwater patiently worked at his details. The tides, distances and the probabilities of unpredictable weather occupied him fully. Yet his curiosity and imagination were fed by these glimpses of fear and the glint of hatred that mingled with that of avarice in the fishermen's eyes as they handed over their live cargoes. 'We may stink of fish,' a giant Malouin had laughed as his lugger drew off, 'but you stink of fear…'
As time passed, by a gradual process of revelation, Drinkwater slowly acquired knowledge beyond the merely digital duty of his own part of the puppet's hand. From an apparently mindless juggling with the moon's phases and southing, with epacts and lunitidal intervals, a conspiratorially winking Jessup one day showed him a lobster pot containing pigeons. The bosun silently revealed the small brass cylinder strapped to a bird's leg. 'Ah, I see,' said Drinkwater, as pleased with the knowledge as the demonstration of trust bestowed by Jessup. Another link in the mysterious chain was added when he saw the pot hidden in the fishwell of a boat from Dieppe.