'All ready, sir.' Bourne touched his hat.
'Very good, Mr Bourne. Let's have it over…'
'Aye, aye, sir. Set tight all. Ready, Mr Gorton?' Gorton was up on the taffrail, hanging overboard with two topmen.
'Ready, sir.'
Bourne lifted the speaking trumpet and turned forward. 'Mr Wickham! Mr Dutfield! Your parties to take up slack only!'
'Aye, aye, sir!' The tackles from the heel iron came inboard at the chess-trees and here the two midshipmen had half a dozen men each to set the heel of the rudder tight.
'Very well, Mr Comley, haul her aft.'
'Haul aft, aye, aye…'
The mast was pushed aft, the tackles overhauling or tightening as necessary. At the point of equilibrium the weight was slowly taken on the side tackles that led downwards from the mizen topgallant mast, Mr Gorton shouting directions to Quilhampton in the cabin below, where the hauling parts came inboard.
'Some weight on the retaining tackle, Mr Comley…'
'Holding now, sir.' They had rigged a purchase from the base of the mizen mast to the upper end of the rudder stock. This now took much of the weight until the stock approached a more vertical angle and the full weight was taken by Quilhampton's quarter tackles. The rudder blade dipped down and entered the sea. There was an ominous jerk as Comley eased his purchase and the weight came upon the quarter tackles. But they were heavy blocks, with sufficient mechanical advantage to handle the weight. The rudder stock approached the vertical, coming to rest on the pudding fender and, further down, the cross member formed by the mizen topgallant mast.
'I think some parcelling there, Mr Gorton, together with a loose frapping will make matters more secure,' said Drinkwater, leaning over the stern by the starboard stern davit.
'Aye, aye, sir.' He called down to Quilhampton and explained what Drinkwater wanted. Looking down, Drinkwater could see Quilhampton's quarter tackles disappear into the water. They were bar-tight. Above his head Comley was removing the purchase to the mizen mast and setting up two side purchases, stretched out to the arms of the cross-jack yard which was lashed up under the boat davits. This was to ease some of the effects of torsion the improvised rudder could be expected to undergo.
Forward Wickham and Dutfield were hauling their tackles tight under Bourne's direction. As Comley clambered down Drinkwater directed him to set up some additional bracing lines to support the extremities of the mizen topgallant mast and the cross-jack yard. He felt his anxiety subside and rubbed his hands with satisfaction.
'Well done, Mr Bourne, a splendid achievement.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Drinkwater hailed the masthead. Mr Frey looked over the rim of the crow's nest.
'Any sign of the Requin, Mr Frey?'
'No change, sir! East-nor'-east, distant three or four leagues, sir!'
'Very well!' Drinkwater turned to Bourne. 'Heave the ship to, Mr Bourne, then set an anchor watch. Pipe "Up spirits", all hands to have a double tot and then send 'em below. We'll lie-to, then get under way in four hours. The masthead is to be continually manned. Carry on.'
Drinkwater was cheered for the second time that day, only on this occasion he felt less guilty.
Chapter Sixteen
A Providential Refuge
'We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead)…'
Obadiah Singleton, the stole of ordained minister of the Church of England about his muffled neck, read the solemn words as Melusine's entire company stood silently in the waist. Drinkwater nodded and the planks lifted. From beneath the bright bunting of the ensigns the hammocks slid over the standing part of the fore-sheet, to plunge into the grey-green sea.
There were fifteen to bury, with the likelihood of a further seven or eight joining them within a day or two. They did not go unmourned. Among Melusine's company, friends grieved the loss of shipmates. For Drinkwater there was always the sense of failure he felt after sustaining heavy losses and among those rigid bundles lay Cawkwell, his servant. He wondered whether he had been wise to have held Melusine's fire for so long, and yet he knew he had inflicted heavy casualties upon the Requin, that her reluctance to renew the action could only in part have been due to the physical damage they had done to her fabric. From what he had seen of her commander the purely commercial nature of privateering would not prevent him from seeking a chance of glory. Drinkwater knew that the ablest of French men were not in the Republic's battle-fleet, rotting in her harbours, penned in by the Royal Navy's weary but endless blockade. France's finest seamen were corsairs, aboard letters-of-marque like the Requin, as intrepid and daring as any young frigate captain in the Royal Navy. They were pursuing that mode of warfare at which they excelled: the war against trade, wounding the British merchants in their purses and thus bringing opposition to the war openly into Parliamentary debate. It was not without reason that First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte described the British as 'a nation of shopkeepers'. Singleton closed the prayerbook as the Melusines mumbled their final 'Amens'.
'On hats!'
Drinkwater turned away for the companionway and his cabin. Already Bourne was piping the hands to stations for getting under way.
Drinkwater looked up at the stump of the mizen mast. They would set no more than the spanker on that, but the wind, although it had swung round to the south, remained light. It had brought with it a slight lessening of the visibility and they had not seen the Requin for three hours.
However, although Drinkwater's anxiety was eased he was still worried about the rudder and had ordered Bourne to hoist only spanker, main topsail and foretopmast staysail to begin with. It was one thing to devise extempore measures and quite another to get them working. But while Bourne brought the ship onto a course for the Greenland coast there was something else Drinkwater had to attend to, an inevitable consequence of death.
'Pass word for Mr Quilhampton,' he said to the marine sentry who came to attention as Drinkwater opened the cabin door. Drinkwater took off his full-dress coat and changed it for the stained undress he wore over the blue guernsey that had become an inseparable, if irregular, part of his uniform clothing. The air had warmed slightly with the onset of the southerly breeze, but it had also become damp again and Drinkwater felt the damp more acutely in his bones and shoulder than the very cold, drier polar airstream of the northerly.
Drinkwater heard the knock at the door. 'Enter!'
'You sent for me, sir?'
'Ah, yes, sit down a moment. Pray do you pour out two glasses there.' He nodded at the decanter nestling between the fiddles on the locker top. Quilhampton did as he was bid while Drinkwater opened a drawer in his desk and removed a paper.
'Far be it from me to rejoice in the death of a colleague, James, but what may be poison to one man, oft proves meat to another.' He handed the sheet to Quilhampton who took it frowning. The young man's brow cleared with understanding.
'Oh… er, thank you, sir.'
'It is only an acting commission, Mr Q, and may not be ratified by their Lordships, and although you have passed your Master's Mate's examination you have not yet sat before a Captains' board to pass for lieutenant… you understand?'