Ebb Tide (14 page)

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inch of their own deck, but Wheeler was screaming at his marines, the majority of whom had ceased their advance or withdrawn to stand elevated in the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

1783-1785

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'.

The last weeks of the commission were strangely melancholic for all the officers, coloured by the dolorous prospect of half-pay. By contrast the hands were far more cheerful. The pressed men especially could scarcely refrain from desertion as they lay at the buoys in the Medway, with the smoking chimneys of Chatham a mere stone's throw distant. Only the promise of their pay, in some cases of four years' arrears, kept them at their duty as they sent down spars and ferried stores, guns, ammunition and sundry other items ashore. By the time they had finished,
Cyclops
was only a vestige of her former self, a dark and hollow hulk, stripped to her lower masts and with her jib-boom removed. She seemed much larger, for her thirty-two twelve-pounders and the chase and quarter guns had been laboriously hauled ashore, so lightening her considerably and causing her to ride high out of the water. Gone were the iron shot and powder, the cheese and butter, the kegs of beer and spirits, the hogsheads of salt pork, barricoes of water, bags of dried peas, sacks of hard grey flour, bales of wadding and oakum, blocks of pitch and barrels of tar. She bore little cordage, for most had been removed, from her huge spare cable to the reels of thin spun yarn. Only the lingering smell of these commodities served as a reminder of the warlike machine she had once been. All the myriad odds and ends that had made her existence possible, whose supply and issue had occupied the book-keeping skills of a small company of officers and petty officers over the long months of the commission, were removed for storage ashore. Shorewards went her anchors, lowered on to the mooring lighters from the dockyard by means of the only spar left crossed for the purpose, the main-topsail yard hoisted on the foremast in place of the foreyard. When the final load had gone, the large blocks were sent down and small whips left at the yard-arms. As almost the last task, the yard was cock-billed out of the way, leaving room for the next ship alongside.

In those last days, Lieutenant Callowell had received his promotion to commander, though he refused to leave the ship until she was reduced to the condition known as 'in ordinary'. He finally announced his decision to quit on the morning following the removal of the anchors. Early that forenoon, the marines were paraded for the penultimate time. Sergeant Hagan assembled his men with his usual precision, ensuring their appearance was immaculate. Their white cross-belts had been pipe-clayed to perfection, their breeches were like snow and their gaiters black as pitch. The older seamen watched with delight, knowing that the marines' imminent departure meant their own pay and discharge were soon to be forthcoming. As Hagan satisfied himself, the captain's gig was piped away and the sergeant fell out the entry guard who now joined the side-boys in
Cyclops's
last show of pomp in the present commission.

A grey sky lowered over the river and a keen easterly wind brought the odour of saltmarsh across the ruffled surface of the Medway. The lieutenants and warrant officers assembled in undress uniforms, their swords hitched to their hips; the midshipmen fell in behind them. Wheeler, having inspected his men in Hagan's wake, placed himself at their head and, drawing his hanger, called them to attention. A deathly hush fell upon the upper deck. A moment later, Commander Callowell ascended the companionway. He wore a boat cloak over his uniform and as the wind whipped it about him, Wheeler threw out the order for his men to present arms.

The clatter of muskets and simultaneous stamp of feet were accompanied by the wicked gleam of pale sunlight upon bayonets. Wheeler's hanger went up to his lips and then swept downwards in the graceful arc of the salute. The assembled lieutenants brought their fingers up to the cocks of their hats.

'Gentlemen ...' Callowell remained a moment looking forward and responded to the salutes of his officers and the guard. Then, without another word, he walked to the rail and went over the side to the shrilling pipes of the boatswain's mates.

The silence lasted a moment more, then someone forward shouted out, 'Three cheers for "Bloody-Back" Callowell!' The air was split by a thunderous bellow. It was a cheer such as they had given
Resolution
in the gathering gloom at the beginning of Rodney's Moonlight Battle three years earlier. Drinkwater remembered the disquieting power of the noise and he watched now as they cheered and cheered, not for Callowell, but for themselves. They cheered for what they had made of
Cyclops,
for their collective triumphs and disappointments; they cheered at the alluring prospect of that spirit of unity being broken into the individual delights of discharge, grog shops and brothels.

As the gig pulled out clear of the ship's side, they could see the figure of Callowell humped in the stern-sheets. He did not look back.

That evening the gunroom held a valedictory dinner in the vacated captain's cabin. Wallace, as acting first lieutenant, presided in name only, for in reality it was Wheeler's evening. The midshipmen were guests, as were the senior warrant officers and senior mates, and the intention was to drink off the remaining wine in the possession of the gunroom officers, a quantity of the former having been taken out of
L'Arcadienne
before the fire had driven back the looters. Once the eating was dispensed with, the serious business of the evening commenced. Amidst the wreckage of chicken bones and suet dumplings, bumpers of increasing extravagance were drunk to toasts of increasing dubiety.

The whole evening was a marked contrast to Drinkwater's first formal dinner on board when Captain Hope had dined with Admiral Kempenfelt and he had been compelled to toast the company. He was a very different person from the ingenuous and inebriated youth who had risen unsteadily to his feet on that occasion. The harsh path of duty had matured him and his capacity for wine had much improved. Now he joined lustily in the singing of 'Spanish Ladies' and 'Hearts of Oak', and clapped enthusiastically when O'Malley, the Irish cook and the ship's fiddler, scraped the air of Nancy Dawson' on his ancient violin.

Finally Wheeler rose unsteadily to his feet. His handsome face was flushed, but his cravat remained neatly tied under his perspiring chin as he called the lubberly company to order.

'Gennelmen,' he began, 'gennelmen, we are gathered here tonight in the sight of Almighty God, the Devil and Mr Surgeon Appleby, to conclude a commission memorable for its being in an infamous war in which I believe all of us here executed our duty with honour, as behoves all true Britons.' He paused for the cheers that this peroration called forth from the company to die down. 'Tomorrow ... tomorrow we will be penniless beggars, but tonight we are as fit as fighting cocks to thrash Frenchmen, Dons and Yankees ...'

Wheeler paused again while more cheers accompanied Midshipman White's disappearance as he slid slowly beneath the table, his face sinking behind the cloth like a diminutive setting sun, to lie unheeded by his fellows whose upturned faces awaited more of Wheeler's pomposities. 'Gennelmen, I give you a toast: A short peace and a long war!'

The company cheered yet again and some staggered to their feet. They gulped their wine and thumped the table, calling for more.

'Silence! Silence!'

Hisses were taken up and some sort of order was re-established. 'It has been brought to my notice by the purser,' continued Wheeler, 'as Christian a gennelman as ever sat on a purser's stool mark you, that we are down to our last case of wine, which is... which is... which is what, m'dear fella?'

'Madeira.'

'Madeira, gennelmen, madeira...'

Wheeler collapsed into his chair amidst more cheers. The vacuum was filled by the last bottles being set out and the ponderous figure of Appleby rising to his feet. An attempt was made to shout him down. 'No speeches from the surgeon!'

'You're a guest! Sit down!'

But Appleby stood his ground. 'I shall not make a speech, gentle-men ...' His voice was drowned in further cheers, but he remained standing when they died away. 'I shall simply ask you to raise your glasses to fallen comrades ...'

A hush fell on the company and a scraping of chairs indicated a lugubrious assent to Appleby's sentiment. A shamefaced mumbling emanated from bowed heads as they recalled those who had started the commission and had not survived it — Hope, Blackmore and many others.

'And now...', resumed Appleby, and the mood lightened immediately.

'No speeches, damn your eyes!'

'Appleby, you farting old windbag, sit down!'

'And now,' Appleby went on, 'I ask you to raise your glasses in another toast...'

'For God's sake, Appleby, we've drunk to everything under heaven except your mother and father!'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' roared the surgeon, 'We have forgotten the most important after His Majesty's health ...' Silence, apart from White's brutish snoring under the table, again permeated the cabin. 'I prithee charge your glasses ... Now, gentlemen, I ask you to drink to this one-eyed frigate, gentlemen, this Cyclopean eye-of-the-fleet. Just as you are closing both of your limpid orbs in stupor, she is closing her noble eye on war. Gentlemen, be upstanding and drink to the ship! I give you "An eye of the fleet, His Britannic Majesty's frigate
Cyclops
!"'

There were punning shouts of 'Aye, aye!', much nudging of neighbours' ribs and more loud cheers which finally subsided into gurgling, dyspeptic mumblings and an involuntary fart from Wheeler. Suddenly the cabin door flew open and Sergeant Hagan entered wearing full dress uniform. Wheeler looked up blearily as the sergeant's boots crashed irreverently upon the deck and his right hand executed an extravagant salute circumscribed only by the deck beams above.