1805 by Richard Woodman Page A

Quilhampton's
boat gave him his answer. And while he watched Quilhampton adjust his
course, a second fountain rose close to his own boat. For a second the
men wavered in their stroke, then Tregembo steadied them. An instant
later half a dozen white columns rose from the water ahead.
    Beside him Tyrrell muttered, 'My God!' and Drinkwater realised
the hopelessness of the task. What could three boats do against ten, no
twelve, well-armed and, Drinkwater could now see, well-manned boats
armed with cannon. One carronade was going to be damn-all use.
    'Stand up and wave, Mr Tyrrell.'
    'I beg pardon, sir?'
    'I said stand up and wave, God damn you! Recall Quilhampton's
boat before we are shot to bits!'
    'Aye, aye, sir.' Tyrrell stood and waved halfheartedly.
    'I said wave, sir, like this!' Drinkwater jumped up and waved
his hat above his head furiously. Someone at the oars in Quilhampton's
boat saw him.
    'Swing the boat round, Tregembo, I'm breaking off the attack.'
    'Aye, aye, zur,' Tregembo acknowledged impassively and the
barge swung round.
    He waved again, an exaggerated beckoning, until Quilhampton's
boat foreshortened in its turn. 'Pull back towards the launch.' He sat
down, relieved. Ten minutes later the three boats bobbed together in a
conferring huddle while, nearly a mile away, the French invasion craft
had formed two columns and were pulling steadily eastwards.
    'Well they've lost a brig, sir,' said Mount cheerfully. A
ripple of acknowledgement went round the boat crews, a palliative to
their being driven off by the French.
    'Very true, Mr Mount, and doubtless we'll all be enriched
thereby, but the smallest of those
péniches
can
carry fifty infantry onto an English beach and you have just seen how
well they can hold off the boats of a man-of-war. If the French have a
few days of calm in the Channel it will not matter how many of their
damned brigs are waiting to be condemned by the Prize Court, if the
Prize Court ain't able to sit because a French army's hammering on the
doors.' He paused to let the laboured sarcasm sink in. 'In carrying out
an attack with a single boat you acted foolishly, Mr Q.' Quilhampton's
face fell. Drinkwater rightly assumed Rogers had ordered him forward,
but that did not alter the fact that Drinkwater had nearly lost a
boat-load of men, not to mention a friend. It was clear that
Quilhampton felt his public admonition acutely and Drinkwater relented.
After all, there was no actual harm done and they
had
taken a brig, as Mount had pointed out.
    'We have
all
been foolish, Mr Q,
unprepared like the foolish virgins.'
    This mitigation of his earlier rebuke brought smiles to the
men in the boats as they leaned, panting on their oar looms.
    'But I still have not given up those invasion craft. By the
way, where's Mr Gorton?'
    'Er… he was wounded when we boarded the brig, sir.'
Quilhampton's eyes did not meet Drinkwater's.
    'God's bones!' Drinkwater felt renewed rage rising in him and
suppressed it with difficulty. 'Pull back to the ship and look lively
about it.'
    He slumped back in the stern of the barge, working his hand
across his jaw as he mastered anger and anxiety. He was angry that the
attack had failed to carry out its objective, angry that Gorton was
wounded, and angry with himself for his failure as he wondered how the
devil he was going to pursue the escaped invasion craft. And the
parable he had cited to Quilhampton struck him as having been most
applicable to himself.

----
Chapter
Five
April 1804
Ruse de Guerre
    Captain Drinkwater's mood was one of
deep anger, melancholy
and self-condemnation. He stood on the quarterdeck of the 16-gun brig
Bonaparte
,
a French national corvette whose capture should have delighted him.
Alas, it had been dearly bought. Although surprised by the speed of
Rogers's attack, the French had been alerted to its possibility. Two
marines and one seaman had been killed, and three seamen and one
officer severely wounded. In the officer's case the stab wound was
feared