He had not forgotten the knack, though he had certainly lost his sea-legs in his months ashore. It was preferable to be up here than cooped in his cabin, for he could not sleep. He was loo restless, his mind too active to compose himself, and even lying in the cot had failed to lull him. The ship was noisy as she strained under the onslaught of the sea. Her complex fabric groaned whilst she alternately hogged and sagged as the following waves lifted her and thrust her forward, then passed under her and she fell back off each crest, into the succeeding trough.
Added to this ceaseless cycle of stresses was the resonance produced in the hull by the deep boom of the storm in the spars and rigging, that terrible noise that lay above the adolescent howl of a mere gale and sounded like nothing so much as the great guns of Mosse's phrase. And for Drinkwater and the officers quartered in the stern of the ship, there was the grind of the rudder stock, the clink of chains, and the curious noise made by the stretching of white hemp under extreme tension as the tiller ropes flexed from the heavy tiller through their sheaves to the wheel above, where Collier and his four helmsmen struggled to keep Andromeda on her course.
Secure and familiar now with the pattern of the ship's motion, Drinkwater took stock. They had struck the topgallant masts before sunset, and sent the upper yards down. Only the small triangle of the fore topmast staysail and the clews of the heavy forecourse remained set above the forecastle, yet even this small area of sail, combined as it was with the mighty thrust of the wind in the standing masts, spars and rigging, sent Andromeda down wind at a spanking six or seven knots.
This, Drinkwater consoled himself, was what frigates of her class were renowned for, this seaworthiness which, provided everything was done in due and proper form, engendered a sense of security. Then a thought struck him with as much violence as the storm.
'Mr Mosse!' he bellowed, 'Mr Mosse!' He began to unravel himself, but then the lieutenant appeared at his elbow.
'Sir?'
'The lantern! Did I not leave orders for the lantern to be left burning for Kestrel to keep station by?'
'Aye, sir. But it has proved impossible to keep it alight. I sent young Pearce below to set a new wick in it. He should be back soon.'
'When did you last see the cutter?'
'I haven't seen her at all, sir, not this watch.' Mosse continued to stand expectantly, waiting for Drinkwater to speak, but there was nothing he could say.
'Very well, Mr Mosse, chase the midshipman up.'
A few minutes later Drinkwater was aware of figures going aft with a gunner's lantern to transfer the light. They knelt in the lee of the taffrail and struggled for a quarter of an hour before, with a muffled cheer, Pearce succeeded in coaxing the flame to burn from the new wick and the stern lantern was shut with a triumphant snap.
Its dim glow, masked forward, threw just enough light for Drinkwater to see the muffled figure of the marine sentry posted by the lifebuoy at the starboard quarter. Neither vigilant sentry nor lifebuoy would do any poor devil the least good if he fell overboard tonight, Drinkwater thought, feeling for poor Quilhampton in his unfamiliar and tiny little ship.
No, that was ridiculous, James was as pleased as punch with his toy command and had made a brilliant passage from the Chapman light to Leith Road in four days, comparable to the best of the Leith packets and certainly faster then the passage Drinkwater had himself made with Captain McCrindle.
'She's a damned sight handier than the old Tracker,' Quilhampton had crowed, as he entertained Drinkwater to dinner in the cabin of the cutter aboard which Drinkwater himself had once served. He had proudly related how he had overhauled one of the packets off the Dudgeon light vessel. [See A King's Cutter.]
The recollection alarmed Drinkwater. He had so often witnessed pride coming before a fall, and, moreover, he was acutely aware that history had a humiliating habit of repeating itself. He recalled a storm off Helgoland when he had lost contact with his friend aboard the gun-brig Tracker. He had later been overwhelmed by Danish gun-boats, wounded and compelled to surrender, and the ship in which Drinkwater sailed had been wrecked upon the reefs off Helgoland itself. [See Under False Colours.]
He discarded the unpleasant memory, choking off the train of reminiscence as it threatened to overwhelm him. The past was past and could not, in truth, be reproduced or resurrected. He stared out into the hideously noisy darkness, aware that the motion of the ship had changed. The sea no longer roared up astern in precipitous and tumbling ridges from which Andromeda flew headlong. Now the crests had gone and, as he craned his head round, he felt the stinging impact of sodden air, the dissolution of those very wavetops into an aqueous vapour that filled the air they breathed.
Looking up he saw the night was not so dark: a pallid, spectral mist flew about them, streaming down wind with the velocity of a pistol shot, it seemed, so that the masts and rigging were discernibly black again, yet limned in with a faint and tenuous chiaroscuro. For a moment he thought it was St Elmo's fire, but there was no luminosity in it — it was merely the effect of salt water torn from the surface of the sea and carried along by the extreme violence of the wind.
A man could not face this onslaught, for it excoriated the skin and stung even squinting eyes. It not only made manifest the frigate's top-hamper, it also carried moisture into every corner. Running before even so severe a storm, Andromeda's decks had remained dry. Hardly a patter of spray had hissed over the rail, but now, in the back eddies and arabesque fantasies of air rushing over the irregularities of her upper-works and deck fittings, the sodden air flew everywhere. In minutes Drinkwater's cloak was soaked, as though he had been deluged with a green sea; and while hitherto the wind had not seemed excessively cold, there now struck a numbing chill.
He tried to imagine what it would be like for Quilhampton aboard Kestrel. The cutter's low freeboard and counter-stern would have made her prey to a pooping sea. If she still swam out there somewhere astern, Quilhampton would have hove her to, he was sure of that. She hove to fairly comfortably, Drinkwater remembered.
Somewhere, distant in the booming night, the ship's bell tolled the passing hours. The incongruity of the faultless practice of naval routine in such primeval conditions struck no one on the deck of the labouring British frigate. Such routine formed their lifeline to sanity, to the world of order and purpose, of politics and war, and so it went on in its own inexorable way as did the watch changes. The blear-eyed, shivering men emerged on to the wet deck to relieve their soaked and tired shipmates who slid below in the futile hope that some small comfort awaited them in their hammocks. Watch change followed watch change as the routine plodded through the appalling night and, in the end, triumphed.
For dawn brought respite, and a steady easing of the wind, and found Drinkwater asleep, unrested, half severed by the downhaul. He staggered and gasped as he woke and Huke gave him his hand.
'God's bones!' he groaned. The furrow caused by the lashing had bruised his ribs and he gasped as he drew breath.
'Are you able to stand, sir?' Huke's expression of concern was clear in the dawn's light. Even as returning circulation caused him a slow agony and brought tears to Drinkwater's eyes, he found some satisfaction in the knowledge. He had won Huke over.
'Damn stupid thing to do,' Drinkwater managed, gradually mastering himself as the pain eased. 'How's the ship?'
'When I heard you had been up all night I came to report. I've had a look round. She's tight enough, four feet of water in the well, but the watch are dealing with that now. One seaman sprained an ankle, but he'll mend.'