Just as the realization struck him, Poulter heard the cry of alarm from the foredeck.
'Hard a-starboard!' he roared at the quartermaster, then rushed to the rail. The two men posted forward to handle the braces were pointing and shouting, looking back up at the bridge, their faces white with alarm.
'Oh, my God!'
It was then that Poulter realized he had compounded matters, that he was in part author of the disaster he was now powerless to avert. In his moment's inattention, Poulter had not noticed the ship slew to port, nor observed Potts' frantic attempt to counter the violent skewing effect of a large sea which had run up under Vestal's port quarter with fatal timing. As a result, as the ship's head had fallen off to port, she had brought the boat across to her starboard bow. Poulter's attempt to throw her unstoppable bulk away from the boat consequently resulted in the exact contrary.
Even as he watched, too late to do anything, Poulter's ship ran down her own boat.
Drinkwater had seen Vestal's head fall to port and thought the sheer deliberate, perhaps the first indication of a turn. But the sudden steadying of her aspect, growing in apparent size with the speed of her approach, turned her from a welcome haven to a terrifying threat. For a few seconds those in the stern staring forward processed the implications of the evidence before their eyes. Drinkwater heard Quier swear under his breath, joined by the coxswain in a louder tone.
'Bloody hell!'
Drew's cry completed this crescendo of comprehension while his look of stark fear caused the oarsmen to break stroke as each man jerked round to stare over their shoulders. Quier leant for the tiller even as Thomas hauled it over. But it was too late, and in those last few attenuated seconds men thought only of themselves and began to dive over the port side of the boat in a terrified attempt to escape the huge, dark mass approaching them.
Only Drinkwater sat immobile. In that second of understanding and nervous reaction, as the combined weight of all those in the boat moving to escape destruction from that terrible, overwhelming bow caused her to capsize, he knew the meaning of his dream. The presentiment of death was confirmed, for he saw above him, in the pallid shape of the Vestal's figurehead, the white lady of his recurrent nightmare. Hers was not the petrifying face of Medusa, nor the fearsome image of a terrifying harpy; she bore instead the implacable expression of indifference.
As he was pitched out of the boat into the sudden, shocking chill of the sea, Drinkwater felt the utter numbness of the inevitable. For a ghastly moment of piteous regret, he thought of his wife. He heard her cry and then a figure loomed briefly near him, open-mouthed in a rictus of terror, and was as suddenly gone. He glimpsed the sky, pitiless in its lowering overcast, as his body was swept aside by the moving mass of the ship. As suddenly he was tugged back again. The ship's black side with its copper sheathing rushed past him.
Suddenly loud in his ears, he heard the familiar clanking of the dream, a crescendo of noise which filled him with fear and abruptly resolved itself into the thrash of the great starboard paddle-wheel and the adjusting of its floats by the eccentric drive-rods radiating from its centre.
Then he was trampled beneath it.
It battered him.
It shoved him down until his whole head ached from the pressure and he bled from the lacerations of its indifferent mechanism.
Finally, it hurled him astern, three fathoms below the surface of the sea, as his bursting lungs reacted and his terrified mind thought that he would never see Elizabeth again.
PART ONE
Flood Tide
It is commonly held, though upon what authority I am uncertain, that a drowning man clutches at a straw, that he rises three times before the fatal immersion and that his life passes before him in a flash.
CHAPTER 1
Elizabeth
It was end of November 1781 when His Britannic Majesty's frigate Cyclops rejoined the Grand Fleet at Spidhead. In the grey half-light of a squally winter afternoon her cable rumbled through the hawse and she brought up to her anchor amidst the huge assembly of ships and vessels. Since frigates were constantly coming and going, her return from the Carolinas was unremarkable, but Captain Hope called upon Rear-Admiral Kempenfelt with some misgivings, for Cyclops's mission had been unsuccessful.
Having seen Hope down into his gig, Acting Lieutenant Nathaniel Drinkwater, a captured French sword at his hip, crossed the quarterdeck to where Lieutenant Devaux was levelling a telescope on the flagship. Kempenfelt commanded the rear division of the Grand Fleet from which Hope's frigate had been detached for special service some months earlier, flying his flag in the huge first-rate Royal George which lay some three miles away.
Drinkwater halted at the first lieutenant's elbow, coughed discreetly and said, 'Captain's compliments, sir, but would you be good enough to ensure no boats come alongside until he returns.'
Devaux lowered the glass a little and turned his gaze on the steel-grey waters of Spithead which were being churned by the vicious breeze into a nasty chop.
'D'you see any boats, Mr Drinkwater?'
'Er, no sir.'
'Er,' Devaux mimicked, replacing the telescope to his eye, 'no sir. Neither do I.'
'Except for the Captain's gig, that is, sir.'
'But no boats containing pedlars, usurers, tailors, cobblers, whores or whoremasters, eh?'
'None whatsoever, sir.'
'Then, Mr Drinkwater,' said Devaux with an ironic smile, turning his hazel eyes on the younger man, 'do you ensure that not one of them gets alongside. We must keep all manner of wickedness away from our fair ship, don't you know.' Devaux allowed a crease to furrow his equable brow and asked conversationally, 'Now, Nathaniel, do you suppose this sudden concern for the moral welfare of our people has anything to do with the fact that Rear-Admiral Richard Kempenfelt is a religious man?'
'I suppose it might, sir.'
'I suppose it might, too,' responded the first lieutenant with a heavily exaggerated smile, replacing the telescope to his eye and returning his attention to Kempenfelt's flagship.
Drinkwater smiled to himself. Lieutenant the Honourable John Devaux was a man whom Drinkwater both admired and liked. He cautiously hoped that Devaux held Drinkwater himself in some esteem, for the nineteen-year-old enjoyed no patronage beyond the initial recommendation of his parish priest. Although this had secured him a midshipman's berth aboard Cyclops, nothing more could be expected from it. His acting rank was merely a convenient expedient for the ship, detached on special service as she had been. He expected to be returned to the midshipmen's mephitic berth in the next few days, as soon as a replacement could be found from the admiral's numerous élèves who inhabited this vast concourse of ships. Drinkwater sighed as he thought of his consignment to the orlop. His previous experiences of it had been far from happy. Hearing the sigh, Devaux turned upon him, lowering the glass and closing it with a sharp snick.