Captain Drinkwater's silence grew longer, past the point of mere reflection and into an admission of abstraction. Templeton coughed intrusively. Drinkwater started and looked round.
'Ah ... yes ... Read what you have written, Templeton,' Drinkwater commanded.
'To the Secretary, and so on and so forth,' Templeton began, then settled to read: 'Sir, I have the honour to report …'
Head bent and stoop-shouldered beneath the deckhead beams, his hands clasped behind his back, Drinkwater paced ruminatively up and down the shattered cabin as Templeton's voice droned on through the account of the past weeks. He was compelled to live through those last hours in Quilhampton's company and forced to recreate from the spare words of his report the frightful minutes crawling through the hold in search of Malaburn. Finally Templeton concluded the details of the final action which culminated in the capture of the Odin as a prize of war.
'... And having, subsequent to a survey by Mr Jonathan Birkbeck, Master, condemned the Kestrel, cutter, as unfit for further service, her stores and guns having been removed out of her, she was, by my order, turned over to the enemy as an act of humanity in order that communication might be opened with Bergen and the removal of the wounded to that place be effected.
'Having taken in my charge the former Danish frigate Odin and placed on board a prize-crew, Lieutenant Frey in command, the said Odin did weigh and proceed in company with HBM Frigate Andromeda, leaving the Vikkenfiord shordy before dark ...'
'Very well. Add the date.' Drinkwater paused while Templeton scratched. 'Is that all for the time being, sir?'
Drinkwater had yet to account for the dead, to write their collective and official epitaph.
'Yes, for the time being. It is getting dark.'
'The evenings draw in swiftly in these high latitudes, sir.'
'Yes,' Drinkwater replied abstractedly. 'It is time we were gone, while this favourable breeze holds.'
'Mr Birkbeck says the glass stands very high and the northerly wind will persist for many days.'
'Does he now?' Drinkwater looked at Templeton as if seeing him for the first time in weeks. Templeton was not usually prone to such abject ingratiation. You are taking an uncommon interest in nautical matters, Mr Templeton.'
'Sir?'
The sarcasm struck Templeton like a whip and he turned his face away, but not before Drinkwater had seen the unaccountable effect his words had had. Nor could Templeton disguise the withdrawing from his sleeve of a pocket handkerchief.
Drinkwater was about to speak, then held his peace. He had been too hard on a man not inured to the fatigue of battle. A man of Templeton's sensibilities might receive hidden wounds, wounds of the mind, from the events of the last few days. For a moment Drinkwater looked at his clerk, remembering the rather supercilious man who had brought the news of Bardolini's landing that night at the Admiralty. Drinkwater felt the stirrings of guilt for, had he not insisted that Templeton sail aboard Andromeda, the wretched fellow might never have been subjected to the rigours of active service.
They had gone through much since, much that should have brought them closer, but Drinkwater felt a constraint between them; they no longer enjoyed that intimacy of communication which had marked their relationship in London. Something between them had diminished and failed to withstand the manifold pressures of life at sea. Perhaps it was merely the distance imposed by the isolation of his rank, and yet Drinkwater felt it was something more subtle. And with the thought, Drinkwater realized he felt an intuitive dislike of Templeton.
The dull boom of a gun, followed by another, echoed across the water. It was the agreed signal that Frey was ready to weigh, though it made Templeton start with a jerk.
'That is all for now, Mr Templeton.' Drinkwater watched the clerk shuffle unhappily forward, blowing his nose, bearing his own weight of guilt and grief.
Drinkwater threw his cloak about his shoulders, clamped his damaged hat upon his head and went on deck. He could not dismiss the unease he felt about Templeton, aware of his own part in the clerk's transformation. Something had altered the man himself, and Drinkwater felt an instinctive wariness towards him. It was a conviction that was to grow stronger in the following days.
The two ships stood down the fiord in line ahead, the symmetry of their sail-plans wrecked by battle. Andromeda's jib-boom was shortened from her impact with the Odin, and both frigates bore an odd assortment of topsails on a variegated jumble of jury-rigged spars.
Already the high bluff with its fort and the burnt-out wrecks of the two American privateers had faded in the distance. They seemed now to have no existence except in the memory, though Drinkwater wondered how the Danish garrison were coping with the influx of wounded and the encumbrance of numerous Yankee privateersmen. He wondered, too, whether Dahlgaard had survived his wounds, or whether death had claimed him as well as so many others.
On either hand the mountains and forests merged into a dusky monotone, and the waters of the fiord, though stirred by the breeze, were the colour of lead. Even the pale strakes of their gun decks, yellow on Andromeda and buff on Odin, were leached of any hue; nor were the white ensigns more than fluttering grey shapes at the peaks of the twin spankers, for Drinkwater had forbidden Odin to fly her colours superior to those of Denmark while they remained in Norwegian waters.
'I dislike gloating, Mr Frey. You may play that fanfare when in a British roadstead, but not before.'
They could judge him superstitious if they liked, but he had tempted fate enough and they had yet many leagues to make good before crowing a triumph.
The shadow of the narrows engulfed them. In the twilight, they moved through an ethereal world; the cliffs seemed insubstantial, dim, almost as though seen in a fog, except that beyond them lay the distant horizon hard against a sky pale with the washed-out afterglow of sunset.
Then, as they cleared the strait and left the Vikkenfiord behind them, as the grey and forbidding coast began to fall back on either side and the vast ocean opened about them, they saw the last rays of the setting sun strike the mountain summits astern. It was, Drinkwater recalled, how they had first spied them. For a moment it seemed as though the very sky had caught fire, for the jagged, snow-encrusted peaks flashed against the coming night, then vanished, as the western rim of the world threw its shadow into the firmament.
Drinkwater turned from contemplating this marvel and swallowed hard. Birkbeck came towards him.
'Course set sou'west by south, sir. Should take us clear of Utsira before dawn.'
'I hope so, Mr Birkbeck, I hope so.'
"Tis a damnable coast, sir, but we've been lucky with the fog. Just the one day.'
Yes. We've been lucky.'
They stood for a moment, then Birkbeck said, 'I hope you don't mind my saying, sir, but Pardoe would never have done what you did.'
Drinkwater stared blankly at the master. Then he frowned. 'What's that?'
'He'd have drawn off after the first encounter...' Seeing the bleak look on Drinkwater's face, Birkbeck faltered.
'Perhaps he would have been the wiser man, Mr Birkbeck,' Drinkwater replied coldly. Had it all been worth it? So many dead: Quilhampton, Mosse, that Marine corporal — Wilson, the boatswain's mate Greer and so many, many more: Dahlgaard, his sister's son, and the Americans. He was reminded of the fact that he still had American prisoners, though he had returned the Yankee privateer commander to the fort under Frey's flag of truce.