Ричард Вудмен - Beneath the aurora

They could judge him superstitious if they liked, but he had tempted fate enough and they had yet many leagues to make good before crowing a triumph.

The shadow of the narrows engulfed them. In the twilight, they moved through an ethereal world; the cliffs seemed insubstantial, dim, almost as though seen in a fog, except that beyond them lay the distant horizon hard against a sky pale with the washed-out afterglow of sunset.

Then, as they cleared the strait and left the Vikkenfiord behind them, as the grey and forbidding coast began to fall back on either side and the vast ocean opened about them, they saw the last rays of the setting sun strike the mountain summits astern. It was, Drinkwater recalled, how they had first spied them. For a moment it seemed as though the very sky had caught fire, for the jagged, snow-encrusted peaks flashed against the coming night, then vanished, as the western rim of the world threw its shadow into the firmament.

Drinkwater turned from contemplating this marvel and swallowed hard. Birkbeck came towards him.

'Course set sou'west by south, sir. Should take us clear of Utsira before dawn.'

'I hope so, Mr Birkbeck, I hope so.'

"Tis a damnable coast, sir, but we've been lucky with the fog. Just the one day.'

Yes. We've been lucky.'

They stood for a moment, then Birkbeck said, 'I hope you don't mind my saying, sir, but Pardoe would never have done what you did.'

Drinkwater stared blankly at the master. Then he frowned. 'What's that?'

'He'd have drawn off after the first encounter...' Seeing the bleak look on Drinkwater's face, Birkbeck faltered.

'Perhaps he would have been the wiser man, Mr Birkbeck,' Drinkwater replied coldly. Had it all been worth it? So many dead: Quilhampton, Mosse, that Marine corporal — Wilson, the boatswain's mate Greer and so many, many more: Dahlgaard, his sister's son, and the Americans. He was reminded of the fact that he still had American prisoners, though he had returned the Yankee privateer commander to the fort under Frey's flag of truce.

Birkbeck looked nonplussed, then said, 'Beg pardon, sir, I meant no offence ...'

'There was none taken.'

'Well, I'll...'

'Go below, Mr Birkbeck. You have done your utmost and I shall remember your services. Is there anything in my gift that I might oblige you with?'

Even in the gloom, Drinkwater could see Birkbeck brighten. 'I should like a dockyard post, sir, if it ain't asking too much.'

'I will see what I can do. Now, do you go below and I will keep the deck until midnight.'

'There's no need ...'

'Yes there is. I have much to think about.'

Time seemed of no account as the ship, even under her patchwork sail-plan, leaned to the breeze and seemed to take wing for the horizon. The northerly wind was light but steady, and bitterly cold, fogging their exhalations and laying a thin white rime on the hemp ropes as the night progressed.

Drinkwater paced the windward quarterdeck, no longer unsteady on his legs, but with the ease of long practice and the nervous energy of the sleepless. The sky was studded with stars, the great northern constellations of Ursa Major and Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra, Perseus, Auriga and, portentously, Andromeda, rolled about Polaris, beneath which lay the terrestrial pole. Across the heavens blazed the great swathe of the Milky Way. Such was the cold that their twinkling seemed to the watching Drinkwater to be of greater vigour than was customary.

About four bells in the first watch he became aware of the faint luminosity to the northward that marked an auroral glow. It was so faint that he thought at first he had imagined it, but then he became aware that it was pulsing, a grey and pallid light that came and then faded. Slowly it grew more intense and concentrated, turning in colour from a deathly pallor to a lucent green, appearing not as a nebulous glow but as a defined series of rays that seemed to diffuse from a distant, invisible and mysterious polar source.

For some fifteen or twenty minutes this display persisted and then the rays subsided and consolidated into a low, green arc. This in turn began to undulate and extend vertically towards the zenith so that it hung like some gigantic and diaphanous veil, stirred by a monstrous cosmic wind which blew noiselessly through the very heavens themselves. To men whose lives were spent in thrall to the winds of the oceans, this silence possessed an immense and horrible power before which they felt puny and insubstantial.

The sight overwhelmed the watch on deck; they stared open-mouthed, gaping at the northern sky, their faces illuminated by the unearthly light, while the frigate Andromeda and her prize stood south-east beneath the aurora.

'So, you bring home a prize at last, Captain Drinkwater.'

Barrow peeled off his spectacles and waved Drinkwater to a chair. A fire of sea-coal blazed cheerily in the grate of the Second Secretary's capacious office, but failed to take the chill out of the air. Outside the Admiralty, thick snow lay in Whitehall, churned into a filthy slush by the wheels of passing carriages. Icicles hung from every drainpipe and rime froze on the upper lips of the downcast pedestrians trudging miserably along.

Drinkwater sat stiffly, feeling the piercing cold in his aching shoulder, and placed his battered hat on the table in front of him.

'Is that a shot hole?' Barrow asked inquisitively, leaning forward and poking at the cocked hat.

'A musket ball,' Drinkwater said flatly, finding the Second Secretary's curiosity distasteful. 'I fear my prize is equally knocked about,' he added lest his true sentiments be too obvious.

'I hear the Master Shipwright at Chatham is much impressed with the Odin; a new ship in fact. There seems little doubt she will be purchased into the Service. I don't need to tell you we need heavy frigates as cruisers on the North American station.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'Quite.'

'You do not seem very pleased, Captain.'

'She has already been purchased at a price, Mr Barrow.'

'Ah, yes. I recollect your losses. Some friends among them, no doubt?'

'Yes. And their widows yet to face.'

'I see.'

Drinkwater forbore to enlarge. He was filled with a sense of anticlimax and a yet more unpleasant duty to attend to than confronting Catriona Quilhampton, or Tom Huke's dependent womenfolk.

'Coming from Norway,' Barrow continued, 'you will not feel the cold as we do! The Thames is frozen, don't you know. It has become such a curiosity that there is a frost fair upon it in the Pool.'

'I saw something of it as I came across London Bridge.'

'Indeed. Well, Captain, the First Lord desired that I send for you and present the compliments of the Board to you. Whatever the cost it is better than losing Canada; imagine that in burnt farmsteads and settlements, the depredations of Indians and the augmentation of American power.' Barrow smiled and replaced his spectacles. One hand played subconsciously with a pile of papers awaiting his attention. The profit and loss account of the Admiralty was, it seemed, firmly in credit and John Barrow, fascinated by a hole in a sea-officer's hat, was satisfied.

'You will not have heard all the news, I fancy, though it is run somewhat stale by now.' Barrow's high good humour was so buoyant that it threatened to become infectious.

'News, Mr Barrow? No, I have heard nothing.'

'Dear me, Captain, we must put that right at once. Boney was trounced at Leipzig in mid-October,' Barrow explained. 'Schwarzenburg's Austrians refused battle with the Emperor, but attacked his marshals in detail and forced the French to concentrate on Leipzig. With Blucher attacking from the north, Schwarzenburg pushed up from the south, leaving Bernadotte to advance from the east. He dallied, as usual, waiting to see which way the wind would blow, but Bonaparte sent a flag of truce to discuss terms. The delay allowed the Russians to reinforce the Allies and the attack was resumed next day with the odds two to one in the Allies' favour. At the height of the battle the Saxons and Wurttembergers deserted Boney and, with the game up, he began to withdraw across the River Elster. He might have got away, but the single bridge was prematurely blown up, and in the ensuing chaos the French losses were gargantuan — over two hundred and fifty guns alone! Since then thousands of men have straggled, conscripts have deserted in droves and the French garrisons in Germany are isolated. The 26,000 men at Dresden have surrendered and typhus is said to be raging in the camps of the Grand Army!'