Under False Colours (28 page)

'What did you say?' Drinkwater asked anxiously.

'They ask where we go and I tell them to Helgoland for some food!'

'The truth is no deception, eh?' Drinkwater grunted, tugging at the oar looms. 'I did not know you spoke German.'

'In Altona it is of help to speak German and I speak already some English. When these men come from the English ship, I make my English better. I speak French too ...'

They were almost past Brunsbuttel when Drinkwater caught sight of the sentry. The bell-topped shako of a French line regiment was familiar to him by now. Perhaps he stared too long at the fellow, or perhaps the soldier had been attentive during his pre-duty briefing, but Drinkwater saw him straighten up and stare with interest at the boat.

'Hey!
Arrête! Halte
!' The sentry's voice carried clearly over the water, but Drinkwater pulled on as the man unslung his musket and aimed it at them. He seemed to have second thoughts, his head lifting, then lowering again as he sighted along the barrel. Just then an officer ran up and the man raised his gun barrel to point at the escaping punt. When he at last fired they were out of range and the ball plopped harmlessly into their wake.

'
Dios
!' said Castenada crossing himself.

'James,' asked Drinkwater when he was certain they were clear, 'about south-west of us, somewhere on the larboard bow, can you see the Kugel beacon at Cuxhaven?'

'I see it!' said Castenada, pointing ahead.

Quilhampton raised himself and nodded. He seemed flushed again. 'Yes, yes, it's there all right.' He slumped back amid the furs.

'Very well,' Drinkwater went on, suppressing his anxiety over Quilhampton's deteriorating condition. 'That is where they will intercept us. Dieudonne — that officer — is bound to raise the alarm there. There ain't a black-hulled Dutch cutter in sight, is there? She's a big Revenue Cruiser ...'

He stopped rowing and looked round himself, for Quilhampton appeared to be asleep. Castenada was staring at the horizon. 'I do not see any ships, Captain ...'

Drinkwater touched his arm and pointed anxiously at Quilhampton in the stern.

The doctor frowned and shook his head. 'He is not good.' Castenada made a move as though to rise and pass Drinkwater, but Drinkwater shook his head.

'No, no, Doctor, you will have us over ... listen, I think I may have an idea ...'

He rowed on, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. After a while Castenada asked, 'Where is this idea, Captain?'

'Ahead of us, Doctor, a secondary channel I recall from the chart, to the north of the Vogel Sand. We do not have to pass close to Cuxhaven and it is not many hours until dark now.'

'You would like more food?'

'Yes, and the last of that wine unless you want it for him,' he nodded at Quilhampton.

'No, it is better for you now. We are near the ocean, yes?'

'Yes.'

'And Helgoland is not far?'

'Far enough,' said Drinkwater grimly.

The end of the short winter's day came prematurely with an overcast that edged down from the north. Once the sun was obscured the leaden cheerlessness circumscribed their visible horizon. More snow began to fall. Their only consolation was that they were safe from pursuit, but this had its corollary in that they could see nothing.

The ebb came away at last and Drinkwater and his companions devoured the last of the food. All they had left was a mouthful of schnapps each, which they determined to preserve. The question of where their next meal was coming from no one mentioned.

Drinkwater was reasonably certain that they had entered the secondary channel north of the New Ground which led past the Vogel Sand, but beyond that he had no idea where they were in the darkness.

They had been nearly ten hours in the punt without being able to stretch their cramped limbs and this, combined with the cold, the aches of old wounds and general fearfulness reduced their spirits to rock bottom.

To make matters worse Quilhampton was sliding in and out of consciousness and relapsing into fever. Castenada was silent, a man of undoubted courage, thought Drinkwater, but nonetheless profoundly regretting his impetuous action in joining them.

For his own part Drinkwater was suffering from a severe quinsy, the chronic pain in his distorted shoulder and the debilitating effects of having plied the oars for three days. He had no real idea where they were and, worn out with worry and exertion, he dozed off.

He woke with Castenada shaking him. The punt was aground, the pale loom of a sand hummock seemed almost totally to surround them.

'It must be low water,' he muttered, dragging himself with difficulty from the seductive desire to sleep. He had a faint notion that to sleep was to be warm ...

'Is this Helgoland?' Castenada asked, and the ridiculous question finally dragged an unwilling Drinkwater back to his responsibilities.

'No ... no, it ain't Helgoland, though I'm damned if I know where it is.'

With a tremendous effort he drew back the furs over his legs and forced himself to crouch. The silk stockings he wore as gloves were barely adequate to keep the cold from paralysing his hands, but somehow he levered himself so that he could swing his feet over the side.

The hessian boots leaked immediately and the freezing sand gave beneath him. He knew that at the tideline, where the water still drained from the recently uncovered sand, it was not dense enough to support any weight. Higher up though, where the sand had dried, it would bear and he floundered as quickly as he could through the dragging quicksand, taking the painter with him. He found firmer footing and dragged the punt as high as he was able, until Castenada joined him and, with Quilhampton's weight in the stern, they got it higher still.

The bare sandbank yielded no fuel but the movement restored their circulation. The pain of returning feeling was intense, beyond imagination, so that they both crouched apart on the sand, sobbing uncontrollably until it eased and they were able to act together again.

'
Dios
,' muttered Castenada speaking for both of them. 'Never, not the pain of the stone, nor sear of the brand can compare with that!'

When they had recovered, Drinkwater said, 'We must leave Quilhampton his furs, Doctor, but you and I must give up two of ours.'

'I do not understand.'

'We have fifteen leagues yet to go, across the open sea. The boat is not suitable: she is too low. If there is any wind the water will come in ...'

'Ah, yes, I understand. You need furs to cover ...' Castenada made draping gestures over the well of the boat with his hands.

'Yes, like an Eskimo's
kayak
, then we have a good chance. You will have shelter underneath.'

They found a long eel-line stowed in the forepart of the boat and with this and the skilleting knife they fashioned covers and passed lashing beneath the hull. Despite the risk of incoming breakers, Drinkwater decided to brave the rising tide. He knew that the tides were neap and hoped the bank they had landed on might not cover at all. If it looked like doing so they might have to make a portage to its eastern side and launch from there. Besides, he thought to himself, accepting the cogent argument of the only certainty, he was lost and he needed daylight to get his bearings.

He was certain afterwards that had they spent that night in the Elbe, fire or no, they would have perished. Their bodily reserves were almost exhausted and the cold of a land frost would undoubtedly have killed them. As it was the surrounding sea mitigated the temperature and this helped sustain them until they faced another bleak dawn.

The tide was already rising and they had to drag the punt higher and higher several times. The eel-line did not part and they decided prudence dictated they launch on the side of the bank away from the incoming breakers. They were low enough, but both men were anxious to avoid getting wetter than was absolutely necessary.

At the first light Castenada peeled off Quilhampton's dressing and sniffed the stump. Drinkwater waited for his diagnosis. He knew the slightest whiff of putrefaction signalled Quilhampton's inevitable death. His heart beating, Drinkwater bent over the exposed wound, shielding it from the cold as Castenada tugged the ligatures. Quilhampton stirred, opened his eyes and grunted as Castenada, with an appreciative hiss, drew the ligatures cleanly.

'I think his fever is not so much from this,' said the surgeon, replacing the lead acetate dressing, 'as from this ...' He nodded about them. Quilhampton was asleep again. 'He is strong but,' Castenada clicked his tongue and shook his head, 'one more night ... I don't know.'

The wind came up with the sun, a northerly breeze that kicked up vicious little waves and produced the low grumble of surf on the shoal.

Drinkwater knew the advancing tide would shortly cover their retreat and told Castenada they would have to make a move. Crossing himself the Spaniard nodded. They pushed the punt into the water and, wet to the knees, struggled aboard. Immediately the difference in their circumstances was obvious. They were no longer borne on the smooth, dark bosom of the Elbe; now they faced the open sea. It was more difficult to row and they realized very soon that they would make little progress under oars.

Drinkwater caught a glimpse of a distant beacon. He was certain that it was not the Kugelbacke at Cuxhaven, but could not remember how many beacons there were in the outer estuary, and though he recalled some on Neuwerk he could see no sign of the island. The beacon lay to the southward of them, and it seemed that during the early part of the night, just before they had grounded again, the ebb had carried them through one of the gullies that cut into the Vogel Sand, so that they had travelled south instead of west.

All that grey forenoon Drinkwater kept the frail craft hove-to with the northerly wind on the starboard bow and the flood tide setting them back into the Elbe.

They were too low in the water to see anything beyond the wave caps lifting on a horizon less than two miles away. Once they saw a buoy and Drinkwater tried desperately to reach it so that they could secure to it and await the ebb but the strength of the tide was against him and he was compelled to give up and it was soon lost to view. Then, some time towards noon, the sky began to clear again and the wind backed into the north-west and freshened, cutting up a rough sea that threatened, with the turn of the tide in their favour, to get far worse.

Two hours later Drinkwater lost an oar. Stupidly he watched it drift away, unable to do anything about it. Castenada said nothing. He was prostrated with sea-sickness, vomiting helplessly over the fur cover so that the wind bore the sharp stench to even Drinkwater's stupefied senses.

The punt lay a-hull, rolling its way to windward and at the same time being blown south. Darkness found them aground again, no more than a few miles from their starting-off point, having made good a course of west-south-west.

Castenada and Drinkwater floundered carelessly ashore. Their only thought was for Quilhampton and it occurred to Drinkwater in a brief moment of lucidity that they were wasting their time: Quilhampton was going to die because they were incapable of saving him.

They sat shivering on the punt listening to the delirious ramblings of their charge whilst they shared the last of the schnapps.

'In the bull-fight,' Castenada said, 'they watch to see if the bull makes a good death.'

Drinkwater nodded sagely and said, 'Scharhorn ... this is the Scharhorn sand ...'

He was pleased with himself for remembering the chart, and grinned into the darkness.

'That is not a good name,' said Castenada.

Drinkwater never had any recollection of the succeeding hours until waking to the grim thunder of breakers. The noise reverberated through the very sand upon which he lay and it was perhaps this appeal to his seaman's instinct that roused him from a slumber intended by nature to be his last. But this may not have been the only cause of his awakening, for a large, predatory herring gull had already drawn blood from his cheek and his sudden movement sent the bird screeching into disgruntled flight.

He sat up. It took him several minutes to fathom out his whereabouts and how he came to be lying exposed on the Scharhorn Sand. He cast about him and spotted Castenada, some distance off, and Quilhampton lying as though dead in the punt. Just beyond his friend, the white mist of spume rising over incoming breakers finally goaded him to action. The sudden fear of drowning overcame the pain of movement. He got to his feet and began to hobble towards Castenada. He tried shouting, but his quinsy and the schnapps he had drunk before his collapse made his throat dry. He began to feel the first tortures of severe thirst.

And then he saw it: not half a furlong distant, rising from the sand on a framework of massive timbers, the Scharhorn beacon.

February-April 1810

Acting Lieutenant Frey stood beside Lieutenant O'Neal on the heeling deck of the twelve-gun cutter
Alert
. From time to time he went forward, levelled a battered telescope and scanned the horizon. It was broken at two points: by the Vogel sand to the north and the Scharhorn to the south. Beyond the Scharhorn lay the low island of Neuwerk with its stone tower and beacons. The crew of the alarm vessel marking the entrance of the River Elbe — technically the enemy — waved cheerfully as the heavily sparred cutter with its huge gaff mainsail carried the wind and tide on her daily reconnaissance into the estuary. The deck-watch on the
Alert
waved back.

Frey walked aft again and shook his head.

'Nothing?' asked O'Neal in his Ulster accent.

'Nothing,' said Frey disconsolately.

'We'll take the tide up as far as Cuxhaven,' O'Neal said encouragingly.

The incoming tide had covered the Scharhorn Sand by the time Drinkwater had got Castenada and Quilhampton up on to the massive beacon. The heavy baulks of timber tapered to a platform halfway up, access being provided by a ladder so that during the summer months carpenters from Cuxhaven could repair the ravages of the winter gales. Above the platform the structure rose further, culminating in a vertical beam of oak about which, in the form of a vast cage, the distinctive topmark was constructed.