'We've been attacking the binnacle with brick-dust and lamp-oil,' Frey said apologetically, 'but we were waist-deep in water on the passage and it's been a bit difficult…'
'It don't signify,' Drinkwater said pensively, his hand rubbing the edge of the companionway to the after accommodation from which, he noticed standing aside, the officers' table-cloth was being brought on deck by the steward. 'If you can manoeuvre under sail and fire your cannon at an enemy ...' He looked at Frey. 'I commanded her at Camperdown, you know.' He remembered being cold and sodden as they beat about the gatways behind the Haak Sand off the Texel in the days before the battle, while Admiral Duncan's fleet mutinied off Yarmouth. [See A King's Cutter.]
'I didn't know that, sir.'
'It was a long time ago.'
He had known Frey for ten years; the lieutenant had been a midshipman aboard the sloop Melusine when he had last ventured north. The boy was a man now, growing grizzled in the sea service as this long war rumbled interminably on.
'She still sails well?'
'She leaks like a sieve. She had her keel and kelson pierced for centre-plates which make her claw up to windward like a witch, but the boxes let in water and she needs regular pumping.'
'I recall them being fitted,' Drinkwater mused, then asked, 'Did you bring your paint-box?'
'Never go anywhere without it, sir,' Frey said, waving an enthusiastic hand about him. On either side the steep, dark sides of the gorge closed about them, and beyond, its surface pale and cold, the fiord lay bordered by the dark forest. 'Imagine being here, amid this splendour, without the means to record it.'
'I cannot', said Drinkwater ruefully, 'imagine what it must be like.'
And he grinned as the shadow of the gorge fell across the deck, and they entered the Vikkenfiord.
CHAPTER 12
The Flag of Truce
The twelve-gun cutter Kestrel ran up the Vikkenfiord with a quartering wind, her huge main boom guyed out to larboard, obscuring the lie of the land and the bluff upon which lay the guns of the Danish fort. Though the British ensign flew from the peak of her gaff, the white tablecloth flapped languidly in the eddies emptying from the leeward leech of the square topsail set above the hounds. Astern, Drinkwater's gig towed in their wake.
The rain had passed and, though the threat of more lay banked up in engorged clouds beyond the mountains to the south and west, the sun blazed upon the blue waters of the fiord and the breeze set white-capped waves dancing across its surface. The low, black-hulled cutter raced downwind. She still sported two long 4-pounders forward, but her ten pop-gun 3-pounders had long ago been replaced by carronades. Frey had had these cleared away and now ordered the square topsail clewed up and furled. Kestrel would neither stay nor wear quickly with it still set, and Drinkwater wanted the little cruiser to be as handy as skill and artifice could make her, in case his enterprise collapsed.
Leaving the management of the cutter to Frey, he walked forward and levelled his glass at the bluff, steadying it against a forward shroud. Above the embrasures of the fort, the colours of Denmark proclaimed Norway to be a possession of the Danish crown. Drinkwater could already see the masts of the American and Danish ships, lying at their anchors in the small bay beyond the bluff and under the protection of the fort's guns.
As they drew closer, Drinkwater watched and waited for a response from these cannon. At two miles he saw nothing to indicate the sentries had seen the approaching cutter, then they were within cannon shot.
Any signs, sir?' asked Frey, coming forward and screwing up his eyes.
'Not a damned thing,' Drinkwater muttered, his glass remaining to his eye. 'Ah, wait...'
For a moment he had thought the brief flash to have been the discharge of a cannon, but then the white of an extempore flag like their own appeared to hang down from a gun-embrasure, pressed by the wind against the grey stonework of the rampart.
Drinkwater lowered his glass. 'I think we may stand on with a measure of confidence, Mr Frey.'
'I'll heave to just off the point then.'
'Yes, and get the boat alongside and the crew into it as fast as possible. I don't want them coming to us.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Drinkwater raised his glass again and swept the adjacent coast with care. 'Time spent in reconnaissance', he muttered to himself, quoting Quilhampton, 'is seldom wasted.'
So engrossed was he in this task that the sudden righting of Kestrel's heeling deck and the shift of its motion to a gentle upward and downward undulation as she came head to wind took him by surprise. The headsails shook for a moment and then the jib was sheeted down hard and the staysail sheet was carried to windward as Frey hove his charge to on the starboard tack. The bluff, with its granite coping and the dark gun-embrasures, loomed above the cutter's curved taffrail, and on her port quarter where the gig was being quickly brought alongside, the bay beyond was filled with the three ships and its sheltered waters dotted with the oared boats Drinkwater had been so assiduously studying.
Now he went aft, watched as a boathook adorned with a table-napkin was passed to the bowman and, gathering up his sword, eased a foot over the rail, stood awkwardly on the rubbing band, chose his moment and tumbled into the boat.
Barking his shins he stumbled aft with considerable loss of dignity to take his seat beside Captain Pardoe's coxswain, Wells.
'Carry on, cox'n. Make for the Danish ship!' 'Aye, aye, sir.'
They pulled away from the cutter and were soon in the comparatively calmer waters of the bay. Drinkwater coughed to catch the attention of the labouring boat's crew. 'Keep your eyes in the boat, men. No remarks to any enemy boats that may come near and', he turned to the coxswain, 'lie off a little while I am aboard.' Aye, sir.'
As they approached the Odin, Drinkwater threw back his boat-cloak to reveal the remaining perfect epaulette on his left shoulder. He wore the undress uniform he had worn in the action of the day before. The bullion on his right shoulder was wrecked beyond repair, though Frampton had done his best when he swabbed the blood from the coat. Drinkwater stared woodenly ahead, but allowed his eyes to rove over the scene. The Danes had made good most of the ravages of the action, reinstating the foremast just as Quilhampton was doing at that moment aboard Andromeda beyond the entrance to the fiord.
Inshore of the Danish frigate the two American ships lay at anchor. They looked slightly less formidable upon closer inspection: privateers rather than frigates, though well armed. Between them and the Dane all the boats of the combined ships seemed to be waterborne, industriously plying to and fro. Many had stopped, their crews lying on their oars as they watched the bold approach of the enemy. They were quite obviously engaged in the business of transferring stands of arms, barrels of powder and the product of Continental arsenals destined for North America.
'Boat 'hoy!'
'Oars, cox'n.'
'Oars!' ordered Wells and the gig's crew stopped pulling, holding their oar-looms horizontally as the gig gradually lost way some fifty or sixty yards from the bulk of the Odin's dark hull. Officers lined the quarterdeck while the faces of many curious onlookers, Danish sailors and marines, stared down at the approaching gig. Drinkwater stood up and doffed his hat.
'Good morning, gentlemen. Do I have your permission to come aboard?'
There was a brief consultation between the blue and gold figures. English, it appeared, was understood, but the matter seemed to be uncertain, so Drinkwater called out, 'I know you are transferring arms from your ship to the American vessels, gentlemen. I know also they came from France and travelled via Hamburg to Denmark. I think it will be to your advantage if I speak to your captain.'