'The ruse with the ensign didn't pay off then, sir,' Huke said, after reporting the guns secure.
'I think, Tom,' Drinkwater replied, without taking the glass from his eye, 'that as we carried off most of the Danish fleet, what few ships they retain are well known to any Danish officer worth his salt.'
'Even one commanding a remote fort in Norway?'
'Well, I don't think it is any coincidence,' Drinkwater said, counting the embrasures in the distant fort, 'that the Yankee ships are anchored under those guns, do you?'
'No. It's a damnably perfect rendezvous for them.'
'I think, sir,' put in Birkbeck sharply, 'they were expecting something larger!'
An urgency in Birkbeck's voice made Drinkwater lower the glass and look round. 'What the devil ...?'
He swung to where Birkbeck pointed. Far down the fiord, her white sails full of the following wind which had so lately wafted Andromeda through the narrows and which now mewed her up in the fiord, a large man-of-war was running clear of the gorge.
'Now there', said Drinkwater grimly, raising his glass, 'is a bird of exceeding ill-omen.'
CHAPTER 9
The Wings of Nemesis
Captain Drinkwater felt the cold grip of irresolution seize his palpitating heart. Here was the spectre of defeat, of dishonour. Retreat, he knew, merely postponed the inevitable and spawned greater reluctance; honour demanded he fight, if only to defend that of his flag. The white ensign now flew in place of the swallowtail ruse de guerre. He considered striking it after a few broadsides in permissible, if disreputable capitulation.
These thoughts coursed through his mind while it was yet clouding with other, more demanding preoccupations, for he saw the approaching enemy not merely as a hostile ship-of-war, but as the manifestation of something more sinister, an agent of fate itself. Here came the punishment for all his self-conceit. Sommer had served not simply his own ends, but also a greater purpose, to accomplish the destruction of Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater and his overweening pride in the obscurity of a remote Norwegian fiord.
How foolish he had been, he thought, to believe in providence as some benign deity which had taken a fancy to himself and which would cosset him personally. Blind faith proved only a blind alley, a trap.
Oh, it had sustained him, to be sure, given him a measure of protection which he, during his brief strutting moment, had transmuted into a gallant confidence, but he had outrun his alloted span, a fact which he now knew with a chilling certainty. He was old and careworn, a dog who had had his day and was masquerading in a young man's post, seduced by what...?
He found, in a wave of mounting panic, that he did not know. The vaguest notion of duty swept through his perception, to be dismissed as cynical nonsense and replaced by damning self-interest. What did he hope to achieve? This enemy ship approaching them had come, undoubtedly, to transfer the arms and munitions to the waiting Yankees, as Bardolini had foretold. And if providence had, in its cosmic wisdom, decided that Canada should, like America itself, be free of King George's government, it would surely engineer the defeat of so petty a player as Nathaniel Drinkwater.
He silently cursed himself. He could have, should have, been at home on his Suffolk acres with Elizabeth, expiating his many sins and wickednesses. His great conceit had been to think that fate had delivered Bardolini into his hands for him to accomplish some grandiloquent design and keep Canada as a dominion of the British kingdom. If fate had wanted that, it would never have condoned the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies.
This simplistic and overwrought, though logical conclusion terminated Drinkwater's nervously self-centred train of thought. Huke, Birkbeck, Mosse and Jameson were looking at him expectantly. The hands, many belonging to the watch below, just stood down from their action stations, milled curiously in the waist. They too stared expectantly aft.
Drinkwater raised his Dollond glass again, a charade he enforced upon himself to compel his wits to return to reality. With slow deliberation he lowered the telescope.
'We will attempt to break out to seaward,' he said with what he hoped was a quiet authority. 'Send the hands back to their quarters. Starboard battery to load bar-shot and elevate high. We will exchange broadsides as we pass and do our best to cripple that fellow. Mr Birkbeck, lay me a course to pass, say, seven cables distant from him ...'
'The wind will be foul in the narrows, sir.'
'When the wind comes ahead we will tow through. He is heavier than we are. That is a small advantage, but an advantage, none the less. You have your orders, gentlemen. We have a chance, let us exploit it!'
Drinkwater raised the glass again. Concentrating on the enemy's image occluded the closer world, left him to master himself, conspicuous upon his quarterdeck but mercifully hidden from all.
She was a big ship, a heavy frigate such as had long ago superseded the class to which Andromeda belonged, equal to the large American frigates which had so shocked the Royal Navy by a series of brilliant victories over British cruisers at the outbreak of the present war with the United States.
To counter this, the British had reacted by cutting down some smaller line-of-battle ships, producing razees, such as the Patrician, which Drinkwater himself had lately commanded. Had he had her at his disposal now, he would have been confident of taking on this powerful enemy, for with her he had shot to pieces the Russian seventy-four Suvorov. That, he reproached himself bitterly, was a past conceit, and it was for past conceits and victories that he was now to receive due retribution.
The Danish frigate, for he could tell she was such by her ensign, bore down towards them as they in turn, yards braced up, racing through the comparatively still waters of the fiord, rapidly closed the distance. Doubtless the Dane would seek to cripple Andromeda and, as the leeward ship, her guns would be pointing much higher. Drinkwater considered edging downwind, to give himself that advantage, but he dismissed the thought. It was just possible that the Danish commander did not know who, or what, they were, that their own ensign was masked by the mizen topsail, and he would think they were one of the American ships bearing down in welcome. No, the sooner they rushed past, the better.
At all events, the Dane stood stolidly on.
Huke came aft, his face grim. 'All ready, sir.'
'Very well.'
The first lieutenant contemplated the Danish ship. 'She's a heavy bugger.'
'Yes. Must be a new ship. I thought we'd destroyed all their power.'
'They've had time to build new. We left them numerous gun-vessels for their islands, I suppose they've built this fellow to defend the coast of Norway.'
'In which case he's doing a damnably good job. You know, once we work ourselves past him, we could blockade those narrows…'
'Let us get out first,' Huke cautioned. 'Hullo, he's shortening down; the cat's fairly out of the bag now!'
Critically they watched the topgallant yards lowered and the black dots of topmen running aloft. Andromeda had been eight or nine miles from the Dane when they first sighted the enemy. Now less than four miles separated the two frigates as they closed at a combined speed of sixteen or seventeen knots. They would be abeam of each other in a quarter of an hour. It seemed an age.
Mr Templeton was as confused about what was happening as he was about his own, private emotions. The ship's company had run to their battle stations and the internal appearance of Andromeda had been transformed; bulkheads were folded up under the deckhead, and the officers' quarters on the gun deck seemed suddenly to vanish. It had all been explained to him, but he still found the reality disquieting. Then, on passing the anchorage where, it was plain even to Templeton's untutored eye, two American ships lay, they had turned away and the men had been stood easy. After what seemed to Templeton so long a voyage, with their objective at last in sight, Captain Drinkwater's present action was incomprehensible. Templeton felt a certain relief that the air was not about to be filled with cannon-balls. Some days previously, Greer had picked one out of the garlands and thrown it to him. The sudden dead weight had almost broken his wrists and Greer had explained the crude technicalities of their brutal artillery with a morbid delight.