It was a matter of good fortune that they had had the foresightedness to bend a cable on to the best bower the afternoon before. Indeed they had mooted anchoring, but decided against it, believing they had sufficient sea room to remain hove-to overnight and able to get sail of the barque before the following noon.
'By the deep eleven!'
The anchor dropped from the cat-head with a splash and the cable rumbled out through the hawse-pipe. Littlewood was roused fully from his momentary lapse of initiative. Drinkwater heard him calling for the carpenter to sound the well and the hands to man the pumps. The pounding that the Galliwasp had taken on the reef must surely have started a plank or dislodged some of her sheathing and caulking. Littlewood must be dog-tired, Drinkwater thought, feeling useless and unable to contribute much beyond feeling for Littlewood a surrogate anxiety. He turned to the flames of the lighthouse as he felt Galliwasp's anchor dig its flukes into the sea bed and the ship jerk round to her cable.
Carefully Drinkwater observed the bearing of the light steady.
Littlewood stumped breathlessly aft. 'He was asleep ... the mate I mean ... God damn his lights ...'
'The bearing's steady ... she's brought up to her anchor.'
'Thank God the wind's dropping.'
'Amen to that,' murmured Drinkwater.
'She's making water, sir.' The carpenter came aft and made his report at which Littlewood grunted. 'We'll have to keep the men at the pumps until daylight.' He raised his voice. 'Mr Watts!'
The mate came aft, a shuffling figure whose shame at having fallen asleep was perceptible even in the darkness. As Drinkwater overheard Littlewood passing orders to keep men at the pumps he reflected on the situation. The Galliwasp's hands had laboured like Trojans, Watts among them. There were too few of them, far fewer than would have been borne by a naval vessel of comparable size. Detached, Drinkwater could almost condone their failure. Littlewood turned towards him with a massive shrug as Watts went disconsolately forward.
'I'll stand your anchor watch for you,' Drinkwater said. 'You have all been pushed too hard.' Littlewood stood beside him for a moment, looked forward, where the thudding of the pumps were beginning their monotonous beat, and then stared aft, above the taffrail, where the flaring coals of Helgoland light burned.
'Obliged to 'ee,' he said shortly, and went below.
Dawn revealed their position. To the south east the cliffs and high flat tableland of the island dominated the horizon. Their concern at the difficulties of fetching the flyspeck of rock had been confounded by a providence that had landed them on the very reefs which ran out to the north-west of Helgoland itself and which, just to seaward of them, now lay beneath a seething white flurry of breaking swells, the last vestiges of the tempest.
Drinkwater could see clearly the column of the lighthouse, together with the roofs of some buildings and the spire of a church. To the left of Helgoland lay a narrow strait of water in which several merchant ships lay at anchor. Beyond them the strait was bounded by a low sandy isle on which a pair of beacons could be clearly seen against the pale yellow dawn. Drinkwater found the battered watchglass that nestled in a rack below the Galliwasp's rail, focused and swept the cliff top. The rock rose precipitously, fissured and eroded by countless gales and the battering of the sea. Tufts of thrift and grass, patches of lichens, and the streaked droppings of seabirds speckled the grim and overhanging mass. Floating like a cloud above the cliff edge, hundreds of gulls hung on motionless wings, ridge-soaring on the updrafts of wind. Then Drinkwater saw the men, two of them, conspicuous in British scarlet. He lowered the telescope and stowed it. Striding aft he found Galliwasp's ensign and took it forward. Their situation must have been obvious, even to the pair of lobsters regarding them from the cliff, but there was no harm in underlining their predicament, or in declaring their nationality.
Walking forward past the tired men labouring halfheartedly at the pump handles, he caught hold of a halliard rigged on a spar raised and fished to the stump of the foremast. Bending on the ensign he ran it up, union down in the signal of distress.
'D'you reckon on any help from the shore, Cap'n?' asked one of the party at the pumps, an American, by his accent.
'We've been seen by two soldiers on the cliff top,' Drinkwater answered confidently as he belayed the flag halliard, 'and I see no reason why those vessels at anchor shouldn't lend us a hand.'
He pointed and the men, grey faced with fatigue, looked up and saw the anchored ships for the first time.
'Say, Cap'n Waters, what is this place?'
Drinkwater grasped the reason for their anxiety. They had no idea where they were, and probably considered his act of hoisting a British ensign a piece of folly.
'It's all right, lads,' he said, 'this is Helgoland. It's British occupied; those soldiers ain't Frenchmen.'
He could see the relief in their faces as they spat on their hands and resumed the monotonous duty of keeping the Galliwasp afloat until help arrived.
Help arrived in the form of Mr Browne and two naval launches. The heavy boats crabbed slowly towards them, rounding the eastern point of Helgoland under oars. They were full of men and followed by several smaller boats from the merchant ships.
Mr Browne, a heavily built man with a florid face and white side-whiskers, was dressed in a plain blue coat secured with gilt buttons. On these Drinkwater noticed the anchor of the naval pattern. Mr Browne, he correctly deduced — together with his two launches — was a servant of the crown.
'Browne,' the man announced, staring about him as he clambered over the Galliwasp'?, rail. 'King's harbour-master.'
'Litttlewood, Master of the Galliwasp of London, bound for the Baltic from the London River. This is Captain Waters, supercargo.'
Browne nodded perfunctorily at Drinkwater.
'You're in a pickle, to be sure,' said Browne, pushing a tarred canvas hat back from his forehead and scratching his skull.
'I've a valuable cargo, Mr Browne,' said Littlewood with a show of tired dignity, 'and I've every intention of saving it.'
Browne cast a ruminative eye on the fat shipmaster.
'We've a great deal of valuable cargo hereabouts, Mister,' he said in an equally weary tone, 'but we'll see what can be done.' He sniffed, as though the noise signified his taking charge of the situation, then turned to the ship's side, cupping two massive hands about his mouth and shouting instructions to the boats assembling round the wallowing Galliwasp.
'We'll tow her in, boys ...' He turned to Littlewood, 'Is she taking much water?'
'Enough, but the pumps are just holding their own,' Littlewood replied, throwing Drinkwater a quick glance to silence him. Watts had just reported the water to be gaining on them.
'If she looks like foundering,' the harbour-master bellowed to his boat coxswains, 'we'll beach her on the spit by the new beacon.'
Browne turned inboard again, fished in a pocket, brought out a quid of tobacco and thrust it into his mouth. 'We'll buoy-off your anchor, Cap'n, save a bit o' time and miss the worst of the ebb against us in the road. Can your men get a rope ready forrard?'
By noon, having set a scrap of sail on the jury foremast and submitted to the efforts of the boats orchestrated by Mr Browne, the Galliwasp lay anchored to her second bower just off the new beacon, where she would take the bottom at low water.
To the east the low sandy isle protected them from easterly winds. Extending north-west and south-east, reefs like the one they had struck twelve hours earlier protected them from the north and south.