'Recall, sir,' Drinkwater shouted, 'my loyalty's in question!' He was lightheaded now, not with the fainting fit which had almost overwhelmed him in Smetherley's cabin, but with a mad yet calculating coolness. Smetherley had regained his breath and, imbued with a bloody fighting lust and scarcely recognizing Drinkwater, flung himself at the rear of more Frenchmen who were pressing Wheeler's marines amid the heaving mass of men who struggled for possession of the forward quarterdeck. Drinkwater was left in sole possession of the space abaft the mizen and someone on the French frigate had noticed. A musket ball scored Drinkwater's shoulder, opening the seam of his coat and half turning him round with the force of its impact. As he stumbled, another French officer came over the rail, obviously intent on sweeping Drinkwater out of the way and finally hauling down the British colours.
Drinkwater met him with a savage swipe. The officer parried, but only partially, and such was the force of Drinkwater's blow that his blade slid down the French officer's sword, cutting into the man's thigh, severing a tendon and causing him to drop to one knee. As his head slipped forward, Drinkwater thumped at the back of the man's skull with the pommel of his sword, felling him completely.
A moment later another man slumped at his feet and Drinkwater recognized the bloody wreck of Smetherley who had been cut down by three or four Frenchmen intent on taking him prisoner and securing the surrender of the frigate. 'Drinkwater!' Smetherley cried.
Drinkwater stepped across the captain's body and stood over him, slashing wildly left and right, holding off the attackers. Beyond his immediate surroundings, he was quite oblivious of anything else. Down below, the gunners still plied their deadly trade, the gunfire unabating as the guns' barrels warmed up and the great pieces fairly leapt with eagerness at each discharge.
He could not tell that the fire from the French frigate had slowed and then almost stopped as the battering of the British guns gradually overcame their opposition. Thus, as the French boarders gained ground on the upper deck of Cyclops, the fierce tenacity of the British gunnery from the deck below was pounding their ship to pieces. Drinkwater drove off those of the enemy immediately intent on securing Captain Smetherley, unaware that he himself had received several light flesh wounds.
As the French withdrew, Drinkwater regained his breath, aware of a general retreat and of an increasingly panic-stricken scrambling backwards of desperate men, pricked by Wheeler's marines' bayonets and hounded by British seamen. He had no idea what had caused this retrograde movement, but once started it seemed irreversible and soon Drinkwater saw the backs of the marines stabbing their way over the rail. Looking down, Drinkwater caught sight of Smetherley staring up at him, his eyes fixed and already clouding. The captain's white waistcoat was dark with blood and a great pool of it spread out round Drinkwater's feet. Then something splattered the pool of blood. Looking up, Drinkwater saw the French sharpshooter still in the mizen top. Without a pistol Drinkwater relinquished his charge and stepped to the larboard rail, put his foot on the truck of a quarterdeck gun and hoisted himself into the mizen rigging.
The French seamen were fighting like demons, contesting every inch of their own deck, but Wheeler was screaming at his marines, the majority of whom had ceased their advance or withdrawn to stand elevated in the Cyclops's larboard hammock netting.
'Call off your men, Callowell!' Wheeler shouted at the top of his voice. 'I'll clear the deck!'
The marines discharged a volley at Wheeler's command. The musket balls were indiscriminate in finding their marks and several of the more advanced British seamen were caught in the fire, but the general effect threw the defenders back and into the brief interval the British poured, Drinkwater jumping down among them, unsatiated and eager for the appalling excitement of action.
A boy ran under his guard and stabbed a seaman next to him, then turned and made to jab at Drinkwater. Drinkwater drove the guard of his hanger into the boy's shoulder and knocked him down. Then he pronated his blade and lunged at a pig-tailed quartermaster defending the binnacle with a cutlass. Drinkwater's point drove through the quartermaster's windpipe and the wretched man died with a curious gasping whistle, clutching at his throat as he fell.
A tall, dark officer lay against the binnacle, his high collar decorated with gold, his broad shoulders bearing the bullion embellishments of epaulettes. A younger officer knelt by his side, then, sensing the looming presence of an enemy as the quartermaster crashed to the deck, stood and confronted Drinkwater, his hand holding a broken sword.
'Do you surrender, sir?' Drinkwater asked. To his astonishment the younger man nodded, dropped the broken weapon, bent and took from the feeble grasp of the fallen captain that officer's sword and offered it hilt foremost to Drinkwater.
'Merci, M'sieur,'
Drinkwater managed, mercilessly adding with a jerking motion to the great white ensign overhead, 'et voire drapeau, s'il vous plaît.''
The younger man looked down at the pallid face of his commander. The mortally wounded French captain opened his eyes, looked at Drinkwater, then closed them with a nod. A few moments later the oriflamme of Bourbon lilies fluttered to the deck just as the sun lifted over the lip of cloud that veiled the eastern horizon and flooded the scene with a sudden, dazzling light.
CHAPTER 5
Peace
They had been cheated of their prize, for within moments of her striking her colours, the French frigate L'Arcadienne took fire. It was necessary for Cyclops to be worked clear of her and to lie to and lick her own wounds while L'Arcadienne burned furiously, until, about an hour after noon, she exploded with a thunderous roar, flinging debris high into the air. This fell back into a circle of sea flattened by the detonation, over which hung a pall of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the French ship and most of her company had disappeared.
Among their own dead and wounded was old Blackmore. He took six days to die of a musket ball in the bowels, begging Drinkwater to take his belongings home to his wife and giving him his folio volumes of carefully observed notes and sketches, the fruit of a lifetime's interest. After the action, Lieutenant Callowell had taken command and was driven to the expedient of reappointing Mr Drinkwater to a temporary berth in the gunroom. Callowell remained indifferent to him, but no more was ever said of Drinkwater's participation in any mutiny and he suspected Wheeler's intervention. At all events, the incident was apparently closed and the shadow of it gradually passed.
After the terror of an action in which he had not distinguished himself but had been knocked unconscious, Midshipman Baskerville seemed less inclined to tell tales. Though he would not admit it, he was privately glad that Drinkwater never afterwards referred to the incident, though Wheeler spoke to him, leaving Baskerville in no doubt but that there were several officers who knew of his mendacity. After Cyclops was laid up in the Medway, Baskerville went ashore, never to return to sea, though in later years he spoke knowledgeably of naval affairs in the House of Commons, being returned as one of two members for a pocket borough. Captain Smetherley was granted an encomium in the Intelligencer, having died, it was stated, 'at his moment of triumph'. Moreover, the Intelligencer informed its readers, 'the Royal Navy had been thereby deprived of a gallant officer in the flower of his youth, and the Nation of a meritorious officer of whom it might otherwise have entertained expectations of long, gallant and distinguished service'.