'Oars,' he whispered to his men, though the grunting and straining of the men in the boats behind were plain enough. The oarsmen, eager for food and drink, ceased rowing and leaned on their oar looms. The curious craned round impatiently. 'What is it young 'un?' a voice enquired as the boat glided through the still water.
'There's a ship out there!'
'Well, why don't we just pull over an' capture it, an' make your bleedin' fortune, cully, eh?' The anonymous voice from forward was weary with sarcasm.
'Oi ain't following no little bugger whose bollocks are still up 'is arse,' another countered.
'Be quiet! Stand by! Give way together!'
With a knocking of oars, the boat forged ahead again, but Fisher did not put the tiller over.
'He's taken your advice, Harry, you stupid sod.'
'He would, the little turd.'
'Be quiet, damn you,' Fisher squeaked, uncertain whether to react to this blatant insubordination or to let it pass, since the men pulled on, seemingly willing enough.
'E won't live long enough to be a Hadmiral.'
'It's that cutter!' hissed Fisher excitedly, meaning not another pulling boat but a small, man-of-war cruiser. Older heads in the boat were less eager to share the midshipman's certainty. Men stopped pulling, missed their stroke and, for a moment or two, the discipline in the boat broke down as they craned round to see where the headstrong child was taking them.
'Boat ahoy!' came to them out of the darkness, the accents unmistakably, imperiously English. 'Lie to upon the instant or I shall blow you to Kingdom Come!'
'It's that one-handed bean-pole ...'
'It is the Kestrel…'
'I told you it was,' Fisher exclaimed gleefully.
'Well, tell that bloody lieutenant, before he shoots us!'
'Boat from Andromeda, permission to come aboard!'
'Come under my lee!'
They could see the irregular quadrilateral shape of the cutter's mainsail and the two fore triangles of her jib and staysail as she ghosted in towards the narrows and the Vikkenfiord.
'Put about, sir,' called Fisher, 'Andromeda's, towing out astern of us! There's a big Danish frigate and all sorts inside ...'
They were alongside now, a rope snaked out of the cutter's chains to take their painter, and the next moment they were towing alongside.
'Come aboard and report.'
Fisher scrambled up and over the cutter's side. 'Midshipman Richard Fisher, sir, from the frigate Andromeda, Nathaniel Drinkwater commanding.'
'He's right enough, Mr Quil'ampton, there's a frigate comin' up ahead.'
'Put her about, Mr Frey…'
'What's all that noise there?' The voice of Lieutenant Huke boomed into their deliberations as he shouted from Andromeda's, knightheads, his voice amplified by a speaking trumpet and echoing about in the stillness.
Quilhampton cupped his good hand about his mouth: 'Cutter Kestrel, Lieutenant Quilhampton commanding!' 'Follow me out, Mr Q and come aboard for orders.' 'That's Captain Drinkwater's voice,' advised Fisher. 'I know that.'
'We lay to under the trys'l, and when the weather moderated we made a good stellar observation and laid a course for the rendezvous. I guessed you couldn't afford to linger and that you had pressed on when we saw a man-o'-war's t'gallants away to the eastward, so we cracked on, thinking it was you.'
'That must have been the Odin,' observed Huke.
'Yes. Well, anyway, it was lucky we saw her, for it was just a question of watching her vanish. Frey, my first luff,' he explained for Huke's benefit, 'took a bearing. We ran down it and here we are. I thought we were heading for a wall of rock and was just about to put about when your young midshipmite hove out of the darkness.'
'Well, I am damnably glad to see you, James. Forgive my lack of hospitality, but we've been cleared for action for some time now. To be truthful, I didn't expect to see you again, first on your own account, and then on ours. We've just taken a drubbing.'
Drinkwater explained the day's events.
'So we've the goods, the Dane who brought them, and the Yankees who are going to tranship them to North America all boxed up in the Vikkenfiord, eh?' Quilhampton said with an air of satisfaction, when Drinkwater had finished.
'That's certainly an optimistic view of the tactical situation,' remarked Drinkwater drily.
'Well, they might think they've the measure of you, but they don't know I'm here yet.' Quilhampton grinned enthusiastically.
'True, James, true.'
'It's certainly food for thought,' said Huke. 'Will you be able to beat out behind us?'
'Yes. She ghosts in light airs and she's fitted with centre-plates. She can point much closer to the wind than you.'
'Gentlemen,' said Drinkwater, 'we will lie to now, until daylight. Recover the boats, Mr Huke, as soon as we are clear of danger. Then let us get an hour or two's sleep. Tomorrow we will see what we can accomplish. It will be the first of the month, I believe.'
"Tis already that, sir.'
Lieutenant Huke had conceived a liking for his odd and unorthodox captain. During the crazy interlude of the great dousing Huke had noticed, as had many others, that in addition to the faint facial scar and the powder burns on one eyelid, Captain Drinkwater was disfigured by a lop-sided right shoulder and a mass of scar tissue which ran down his right arm. These were the legacy of two wounds, one acquired in a dark alleyway in the year 1797, at the time of the great mutiny, the other the result of an enemy shell-burst off Boulogne, four years later. Such marks earned their bearer a measure of respect, irrespective of rank. In a post-captain they bespoke a seasoned man.
But, on that night and for the first time, Thomas Huke considered Captain Drinkwater's conduct to be, if not reprehensible, at the very least most unwise, an error of judgement. The first lieutenant felt that the matter of Malaburn could not be left until the morning.
He excused the captain on the grounds that Drinkwater did not know the man, despite the claims he had made about their escape from gaol and extraordinary migration north. Drinkwater had not had his suspicions aroused as had Huke. As an experienced first lieutenant Huke had acquired an instinct for trouble-makers, sea-lawyers and the disobedient. There were attitudes such men struck, inflections they used when spoken to, places in which they appeared unaccountably and times when they were late in mustering. A man might do such things once or twice in all innocence, but persistent offenders were almost always revealed as falling into one or other of these troublesome categories. Malaburn had been one such, conspicuous from the first day he had come aboard at Leith.
'Provoked me,' Mr Beavis had reported back in Leith Road. The master's mate had been in charge of one of the ship's three press-gangs sent to comb the ale-houses and brothels of Leith and Granton for extra hands a few days before Huke struck 'lucky' and obtained what he wanted from the merchantman. 'Almost dared me to take him,' Beavis had expanded, 'but, like most braggarts, gave in the moment we got a-hold of him.'
There seemed little enough in the remark at the time, except to draw Lieutenant Huke's attention to the man as he was sworn in. And although Malaburn had overplayed his hand a trifle in his eagerness to get himself aboard His Majesty's frigate Andromeda, he had succeeded in fooling them all. Until, that is, Captain Drinkwater made his mysterious revelation, alluding to the curious desire of the Americans to be pressed. The assertion fitted not just the group lifted from the merchantman, but also Malaburn.
Thus it was that Lieutenant Thomas Huke decided not to allow Malaburn to elude his just deserts an hour longer and why he passed word to Sergeant Danks to muster half a dozen of his men at the main capstan.