He slumped at his desk as behind him a pale, watery sun set over a heaving grey sea. All about him Andromeda creaked mournfully, echoing his dismal thoughts and ushering in an attack of the blue-devils. As the daylight leached out of the sky and the twilight gloom increased, he fell into a doze. Hortense and Elizabeth were in the cabin with him, both were restored to the beauty they had possessed when he had first set eyes upon them and both improbably held hands like sisters, and smiled at him approvingly. He woke with a start, his heart beating furiously, possessed with a terrible fear of the unknown.
The cabin was completely dark. During his brief sleep and unknown to Drinkwater, Frampton had entered the cabin but seeing his commander asleep had beat a tactful retreat. Waking thus, Drinkwater was overcome with the feeling that the cabin was haunted by ghosts. In an instant, he had rammed his hat on his head and fled to the quarterdeck wrapped in his cloak.
He almost instantly regretted this precipitate action. The quarterdeck was scarcely less congenial than the cabin; in fact it was a good deal less so. Night had fallen under a curtain of rain which knocked the sea down, hissed alongside as it struck the surface of the water and sharply reduced the temperature of the air. Ashton had the watch, his extra duty relieving Birkbeck of the task, and so the emotional air was even chillier than the atmospheric, though Drinkwater himself took little notice of this and, in his own way, only added to it by his presence.
His cloak was soon sodden, but he paced the windward quarter, his stride and balance adjusting to the swoop and roll of the ship as, with her yards braced up sharply, she stood northwards under easy sail, steering full-and-bye with the wind in the west-north-west. It was a dying breeze and about four bells the rain stopped abruptly as the wind veered a point or two. Drinkwater was vaguely aware of Lieutenant Ashton adjusting the course to the north-eastwards, maintaining the trim of the yards in accordance with the provision of Drinkwater's night orders for cruising stations. Within fifteen minutes the sky was clearing rapidly as the overcast rolled away to leeward and the stars shone out in all their glory.
If the air had been chilly before, it was positively cold now, or so it seemed to Drinkwater as the dramatic change woke him from his reverie and he found himself shivering. He was about to go below and seek the warm comfort of his cot, when something stopped him. He stood like a pointing hound, tingling with instinctive premonition. He looked anxiously aloft. The pale parallelograms of the topsails and topgallants were pale against the sky; the main course was loose in its buntlines, but the fore course was braced sharp up, its tack hauled down to the port bumkin. Behind him the quadrilateral spanker curved gracefully under the pressure of the wind. As he watched, it flogged easily, the failing wind easing and then filling it again, causing a fitful ripple to pass across the sail, from throat to clew. The lines of reef points pitter-patted against the tough canvas. Despite this apparently peaceful scene, something struck him as wrong. Something in the air which made his scalp creep.
'Mr Ashton!'
'Sir?' Ashton stirred from the starboard mizen rigging.
'Get the t'gallants off her!'
'The t'gallants, sir?'
'The t'gallants sir! And at once, d'you hear me?'
Drinkwater could almost hear Ashton's brain turning over the captain's lunatic order, but then the word was passed and the watch stirred out of its hiding places, hunkered down about the decks, and the shapes of men moved about the pin rails and prepared to go aloft. There was little urgency in their demeanour, obvious to Drinkwater's acute and experienced eye, even in the dark.
'Look lively there!' he cried, injecting a sharp urgency into the night. Ashton began to cross the deck towards him and Drinkwater turned away in silent rebuff, staring to windward, watching to see what would happen. Then he saw the cloud as it loomed into the night sky, rapidly blotting out the stars to the north-westwards. He could feel its presence as the air suddenly crackled with the dull menace of the thing, revealing the source of his premonition. It was odd, he thought, as he watched the vast boiling mass of it rear up and up into the heavens, how such a gigantic manifestation of energy could almost creep up on one unawares.
The cumulo-nimbus cloud moved towards them like a mythological creature; potent and awe-inspiring. Drinkwater had no idea of its altitude, indeed he was unable to see the distant anvil-shaped thunder head which was torn from its summit by the strong winds of the upper-atmosphere; nor did he know of the movement of air and moisture within it that made of it a cauldron seething at the temperature ice formed. What concerned him was the wind he knew it would generate at sea level, and the hail that might, in the next quarter of an hour, hit them with the force of buckshot.
Then, as if to signal an intelligence of its own, the thundercloud gave notice of its presence to the less observant men on Andromeda's deck. It was riven from top to bottom by a great flash as the differences in electrical charge within the cloud sought resolution. The sudden, instantaneous illumination galvanized the men into sudden, furious action and within minutes Andromeda's topgallants were off her before the first erratic gusts of the squall arrived; then it was upon them in unremitting fury, producing a high-pitched whine in the rigging as the full force of the wind struck them.
'Steady there,' Drinkwater said, striding across the deck to brace himself alongside the helmsmen, 'ease her if you have to, Quartermaster.'
The frigate heeled to the onslaught and began to accelerate rapidly through the water which foamed along her lee rail. The sea was almost flat; the earlier rain had done its work and now hailstones beat its surface with a roar. Andromeda raced through the water so that even Ashton was moved to comment.
'My God, sir,' he said, coming up to Drinkwater, 'she's reeling off the knots as if pursued by all the devils in hell!' He laughed wildly, caught up in the excitement of the moment as, with a tremendous thunderclap, lightning darted all about them and the retina was left with a stark impression of wet and drawn faces about the wheel, sodden ropes and the lines of caulking in the blanched planking. Even the streaks of a million hailstones as they drummed a furious tattoo on the deck remained, it seemed, indelibly impressed upon the brain. So vivid was this brief vision that the quarterdeck seemed inhabited by more ghosts, and Drinkwater shivered as much from the supernatural moment as the cold drenching he was undergoing.
Circumstances remained thus for some twenty minutes, with the ship driving to the north-east, her helm having been eased up to let her run off before the wind a little and ease the strain on the gear aloft, for she still carried her full topsails, fore topmast staysail and spanker. Periodically illuminated by lightning and assaulted by thunder, Andromeda ran headlong. After the first moments of apprehension, the glee infecting Ashton had spread to the men at the helm and a quiet chuckling madness gripped them all. The excitement of their speed was undeniable and their spirits rose as the hail eased and then stopped.
As the huge cloud passed over them, it took the wind with it. The first sign of this moderation was a slow righting of the ship, so that while she still heeled over, the angle at which the deck canted eased imperceptibly back towards the horizontal. And it was at this moment that the frigate was visited by the corposant.