The very obvious reversal of orders, with the men chattering excitedly as they resumed their positions, now puzzled him and he ventured to ask Lieutenant Mosse what was going on.
'There's an enemy frigate approaching,' said Mosse obliquely, drawing his hanger with a wicked rasp. 'I suggest you might go on deck and watch.' Templeton hesitated and Mosse added, 'Much safer than staying here.'
Only half-believing this lie, Templeton reluctantly made for the forward companionway. Mosse winked at Jameson.
Thus Mr Templeton made to ascend the ladder normally reserved for the crew.
'Steady there, as she goes, Mr Birkbeck.'
Drinkwater watched the approaching ship. Both frigates ran on almost exactly reciprocal courses. Birkbeck and Ashley stood beside the binnacle where three helmsmen and a quartermaster held Andromeda to her track. Along the bulwarks the stubby barrelled carronades of the quarterdeck battery were surrounded by their crews, the gun-captains holding the taut lanyards to the cocked flintlocks. On the forecastle a lesser number of carronades supported the long bow-chasers. Below them, a similar scene was enacted, with the larger gun-crews gathered round the heavy 12-pounders of the main batteries. At key points aboard Andromeda the lesser and petty officers mustered groups of men ready to board or repel the enemy, bring ammunition or fire hoses, or work the ship if she was to be manoeuvred. Other groups clustered in the tops, marines among them, to act as sharpshooters, man the light swivel guns or lay out along the yards to shorten sail.
Upon the quarterdeck Huke, the first lieutenant, assisted the captain. A trio of midshipmen waited to act as messengers or attend to signals with the yeoman and his party. Lieutenant Walsh commanded the main detachment of marines who, interspersed with the carronades, laid their long muskets on the hammocks in the nettings and drew beads on the dark heads of the approaching enemy officers.
'You may fire when your guns bear!' Drinkwater's voice rang out, clear and crisp. The moment of fearful anticipation had passed and he was as cold and as purposeful as a sword-blade. Matters would fall out as they would, come what may.
'Pass word to the lieutenants on the gun deck, Mr Fisher,' Huke said, relaying Drinkwater's instruction. The boy ran off unobserved as every man concentrated upon the enemy ship. She was much closer than the seven cables Drinkwater had intended, but Mosse had drawn all the quoins and was sanguine that his guns would elevate. Periodically Drinkwater would quiz the gun-captain at the nearest carronade whose breech-screw fulfilled the same function.
'How is she now?'
'She'll do, sir ...'
There was a last expectant hiatus which all knew would be broken by the eruption of the first gun, the starboard bow-chaser whose position commanded a field of fire closer aligned to the Andromeda's line of advance than any other. The air was filled with the subdued hiss of the sea as it curled back from Andromeda's apple-bow, the steady thrum of wind in the rigging, the creak of the ship, of her hemp and canvas, of the long tiller ropes, the straining sheets and tacks, the lifts, halliards and braces that converted the energy of the wind into the advance of the frigate and her iron armament.
Then came the report of the bow-chaser, the bright flash from its muzzle and the puff of cloudy smoke which hung for a second under the lee bow before being shredded by the wind. A second report, that of the enemy's reply, coincided with the flat echo, followed by the general reverberations of a furious exchange of shots. Drinkwater marked the quickening succession of flashes rolling aft towards him as each gun bore.
Then something went terribly awry. Instead of the bearing of the enemy opening with inexorable precision as the two frigates passed each other on reciprocal courses, there was a sudden, inexplicable acceleration. The Danish ship drew aft with miraculous speed and the British guns threw their shot not at the enemy, but at the empty sea on their own starboard beam.
'What in the devil's name ...?'
'What the hell ...?'
A dozen fouler exclamatory questions stabbed the air. Drinkwater spun round, momentarily confounded and utterly confused. All he knew was that from passing the beam, the enemy was now, against all reason, crossing their stern.
'Oh, my God!'
'For what we are about to receive ...'
Inexplicably, Andromeda lay in the ideal position to be raked.
Mr Templeton saw exactly what happened, though he did not understand it at the time. He was, however, aware that the sudden movement of a group of seamen a few moments earlier had nothing to do with the business in hand, for he had heard no orders to stimulate men who, throughout the ship, were so manifestly poised but immobile with expectation. He was ascending the forward companionway as the two ships made their final approach and before the sudden and disorientating event which so perplexed all but a few on the upper deck, when he was abruptly shoved aside. As he spun round, expecting some jibe from Mosse, he caught sight of both lieutenants bent and staring out of gun-ports at the enemy, as were most of the men clustered about the guns, oblivious to this sudden rush of others to the upper deck.
Templeton had forgotten what Greer had told him, that when the ship cleared for action, marine sentries were posted at each of the companionways throughout the ship to prevent any man from leaving his post. Thus dissuading cowardice, these sentinels let only approved persons pass them: the ship's boys, the powder-monkeys, with cartridges for the cannon, midshipmen acting as messengers, officers, stretcher parties and the walking wounded.
Now he was reminded of that rude instruction, for the marine sentry at the forward companionway had fallen almost at his feet, stretched upon the ladder, the handle of a long butcher's knife protruding from his chest. Templeton saw the man's face white with shock, his hands pulling futilely at the yellow horn handle even as death took possession of him.
So quickly and silently had the thing happened that the sentry's musket had not clattered to the deck, but had been seized and taken by one of the men running past him. Templeton was no man of action, yet he felt shock and outrage at what had happened, knew it was impermissible, rebellious, contrary to those draconian Articles of War he had read abstractedly at the Admiralty and heard uttered by Captain Drinkwater on a windswept Sunday a few days earlier. It was this outraged impropriety, this affront to established order that propelled him upwards, after the running men; this and a horrified dread of the marine who twitched his last and had just attracted the notice of the crew of an adjacent gun.
So small a space of time had been occupied by this event that he arrived on the forecastle hard on the heels of the rebels, quite unaware that he was lucky to have escaped with his own life. He saw, looming above him and, it seemed, just beyond the stuffed hammock nettings, the rushing bowsprit, jibs, figurehead and forefoot of the passing Danish frigate.