A King's Cutter by Richard Woodman Page B

belayed it slackly around one of the exposed grapnel flukes. Moored head and stern the boat seemed safe and Drinkwater settled down to wait. Presently, despite the season, he was shivering.
    An hour later he was beginning to regret his insistence on making the landing. He was thoroughly cold and thought he detected the wind freshening again. He watched where Kestrel lay, watched for the lantern at the masthead that would signal his recall. But he knew Griffiths would wait until the last moment. Even now he guessed Jessup and the hands would be toiling to get a spring on the cable so that, when the time came, the cutter could be cast away from the wind and sail off her anchor. She was too close inshore to do anything else. He preoccupied himself as best he could and was oblivious of the first shots. When he did realise something was wrong he could already see the flashes of small arms on the cliff top and just below it, where a path dropped down to the beach. From his shelter he leapt out and raced for the grapnel, looking along the sand expectantly.
    He saw the man break away from the shadow around the base of the cliff. Saw him stumble and recover, saw the spurts of sand where musket balls struck.
    ‘Over here!’ he yelled, reaching the grapnel.
    He uncoiled the loop of light line and passed it around his waist in a bowline with a three fathom tail. The man blundered up gasping.
    ‘Major Brown?’
    ‘The same, the same
    ‘ The man heaved his breath in as Drinkwater passed the end of the line round his waist.
    ‘A kestrel
    ‘
    ‘
    for a knave.’ Brown finished the countersign as Drinkwater grasped his arm and dragged him towards the sea. Already infantrymen were running down on to the beach. Resolutely Drinkwater turned seawards and shouted: ‘Heave in!’
    He saw Tregembo wave and felt the line jerk about his waist. The breath was driven out of him as he was hauled bodily through a tumbling wavecrest. He lost his grip on the spy. Bobbing to the surface he glimpsed the night sky arched impassively above his supine body as he relinquished it to Tregembo’s hauling. He desperately gasped for breath as the next wave rolled over him. Then he was under the transom of the boat, feeling for the stirrup of rope Poll should have rigged. His right leg found it and he half turned for Major Brown who seemed waterlogged in his coat.
    ‘Get him in first, Tregembo,’ Drinkwater gasped, ‘he’s near collapse.’
    Somehow they pulled him up to the transom and Drinkwater helped turn him round with his back to the boat. ‘Get clear Mr Drinkwater!’ It was Tregembo’s voice and Drinkwater was vaguely aware of the two seamen, their hands on the shoulders of the Major, lifting him, lifting him, then suddenly plunging him down hard, down so that he disappeared then thrust to the surface where they waited to grab him and drag him ungainly into the boat. Drinkwater felt the tug on the line as Brown went inboard. He wearily replaced his foot in the stirrup and tried to heave himself over the transom but his chilled muscles cramped. Tregembo grabbed him and in a second he was in the bottom of the boat, on top of Brown and it no longer mattered about the coils of rope.
    ‘Beg pardon, zur,’ Tregembo heaved him aside with one hand and then his axe bit into the quarter knee cutting the grapnel line. Forward Poll showed the lantern and on board Kestrel all hands walked away with the hemp rope. Musket shot whistled round them and two or three struck splinters from the gunwales.
    Wearily Drinkwater raised his head, eager to see the familiar loom of Kestrel over him. Ten yards to go, then safety. To seaward he thought he saw something else. It looked very like the angled peaks of a lugger’s sails.
    Even as he digested this they were alongside and arms were reaching down to help him out of the boat on to the deck. Roughly compassionate, Griffiths himself threw a boat cloak around Drinkwater while the latter stuttered out what he had