Beneath the aurora

'Better than those poor bastards.'

The man's manner was abrupt, discourteous even, his accent American. Abruptly Drinkwater turned about and made for the gun deck. The canvas screen was almost rigged. When it was finished, Drinkwater, in the presence of Huke and Templeton, summoned the first of the prisoners aft.

He could not imagine why he had not realized it before, but it was impossible to conceal and it took little time to unravel, once the first tongue wagged. He was glad he had ordered the issue of spirits for, although prisoners were forbidden this privilege, such was the solidarity of the lower deck that some sympathetic souls would go to considerable lengths to supply men in the bilboes with rum, if only to help them endure the flogging all must have felt was inevitable.

In rousing sympathy, it did not much matter what a man was charged with, unless it was thieving from his shipmates. In this case few knew what had happened beyond the fact that these men had stabbed a marine and run and hidden. Cowards they might be, but a measure of sympathy had been extended by a couple of radical souls, enough to loosen a tongue or two, to the point of indiscretion, for the marines, the ship's police, could count enemies among the thirteen score of men whom they regulated.

When the interrogation of the prisoners was over, Drinkwater ordered the men taken away and returned to the bilboes. 'They are to be securely chained for tonight.'

Sergeant Danks took them off with a smart salute and an about-turn. Drinkwater turned to Huke. 'Well, Tom, here's a pretty kettle of fish.'

Even in the poor light of the battle lanterns, Huke's pallor was evident.

'I had no idea, sir.'

'And there's one missing. The ringleader, of course.'

'Malaburn.'

'An ominous name, by the sound of it,' offered Templeton nervously.

'It wasn't your fault, Tom,' said Drinkwater, ignoring the clerk. 'The truth is, there is a great deal more to this than you know. I blame myself that I didn't smell a rat the moment I heard Hopkins's Boston accent. Then, when we had the case of typhus, I should have realized that the infected man came aboard with the draft you pressed out of that merchant ship and that he was also American ...'

'It's the damned war, sir. We've such a polyglot mob aboard here, what with Irish, Yankees, Negroes, Arabs, Russians, Finns, Swedes and that Dane, Sommer.'

'That may well be the case, but you don't know the whole story. Those Americans had only recendy joined that merchantman at Leith because they had just come out of gaol. It was only just now that I recalled typhus ain't only called ship, low or putrid fever, but is also called gaol fever. You said yourself they offered little resistance. I think the reason they were so compliant was that they wanted to be pressed.'

'Wanted to be pressed?' Huke repeated incredulously, 'I don't follow; why in God's name would they want to be pressed?'

'To get aboard a man-o'-war destined to attempt the seizure of a large arms shipment to America to support an insurrection in Canada.'

Huke whistled. 'You mean with the intention of thwarting that seizure?' He frowned and added, 'Then getting a passage home? Is that your meaning?'

Drinkwater nodded.

'But how d'you know?'

'Don't ask me how, Tom, not now; but I'm damned certain they were sprung from Dartmoor gaol for the purpose.'

'The devil they were, and how the bloody hell did they spirit themselves from Dartmoor to Leith?' Huke asked, perplexed.

'By a carter, it seems, or maybe a whole host of carters. Such men move easily about the country and for all I know belong to some Corresponding Society or seditious, republican fraternity, though I grant the thing appears impossible.'

Huke scratched his head, then shook it. 'Perhaps not.' He spoke abstractedly and then looked up sharply, as though the consideration had led him to some pricking anxiety. 'We still have to take Malaburn.'

'He will be in the hold, and every exit is barred, is it not?'

'Aye, Danks has seen to that…'

'Well, let him rot there for a while. At least until we've concluded this business.'

'It's true he'll not get out, sir, there's a sentry on each hatchway, but I don't like the idea, sir.'

'Perhaps not, Tom — but leave him, just the same.'

They relapsed into silence for a moment, the constrained silence of disagreement, then Drinkwater said, 'Poor Walsh. We shall have to bury them all when we get outside.'

And 'if,' Huke added privately to himself, while Templeton, an increasingly nervous witness to these proceedings, nursed his own feelings.

'Look!'

'What is it?'

By the dim light of the stars the working parties had lowered the wreckage of the main topgallant mast, but unravelling the intricate web of tangled rigging that it had pulled down with it properly required daylight. Then, about four bells in the first watch, about ten o'clock by a landsman's time-piece, the high mountains to the north-west seemed to loom above them, closer than they remembered, a gigantic theatrical backcloth dragged forward by trolls. It was the second and more disquieting illusion of the day. A milky glow filled the sky above the mountain peaks, an ethereal and pulsing luminescence that made them all stand stock-still in amazement.

'Aurora borealis,' explained Birkbeck. 'Get back to work there! You can see what you're doing now.'

It was as though that strange phenomenon had been produced not merely for their wonder but also for their convenience. Tired though they were, the ship's company laboured with scarcely a grumble, until, long before midnight, the main was shorn of its upper spar, the broken stump drawn from the doublings and sent down to be split for kindling in the galley stove, and the lines tidied away. By the light of his lantern, the carpenter had declared it was no great thing to fish a new heel on to the old spar, and the men had been stood easy for half an hour, while spirits, biscuit and treacle were issued.

'Playing the deuce with my stores,' the purser complained.

'As you play the devil wiv our'n,' retorted a seaman within earshot, but he made no further complaint, having heard that Captain Drinkwater was no friend of peculating jobbers. Things had been somewhat different in Captain Pardoe's day...

At midnight the hands were sent to the capstan. The wind had fallen light after dark, though it was still foul for a passage of the narrows. Even a light breeze, funnelled between those rock buttresses, gained strength enough to prevent them making any attempt to work through under sail. The boats were hoisted out and manned. The carpenter had first had to put a tingle on the red cutter, and the launch required more extensive repairs before she could be lowered into the water again.

Ranging up under the bow, a rope was passed down into each and the boat officers, the second and third lieutenants and Beavis, the senior master's mate, fanned their charges out ahead of the frigate.

There was a faint outward current to carry them seaward, produced by streams and freshets further up the fiord, and they made slow but steady progress. By moonrise they were below the beetling crags of the narrows. After four hours Midshipman Fisher was dispatched in the white cutter with a relief crew for the first boat. Having run alongside Mr Jameson's boat and transferred his oarsmen, Fisher had the tired men of the third lieutenant's boat pull ahead, before he swung clear of the others, advancing in line abreast. Then his eye was caught by something irregular etched against the night sky. Under the black loom of the cliffs, no light came from the fading aurora. The sea beyond the gutway was a slightly less dark plane, its presence guessed at, rather than actually perceived. And Fisher was certain, as only the young can be, that something lay upon it.