Read Online Under False Colours by Richard Woodman - Free Book Online

windward like a witch. Poor Quilhampton was going to have to exert himself to the utmost to carry out his orders. The thought made Drinkwater smile grimly.
    'You are amused, Captain?' Littlewood asked.
    Drinkwater nodded. 'A little,' he admitted. 'The young fellow in command over there had his head filled with romantic notions the other day. I daresay he has other things on his mind just now.'
    Littlewood laughed. 'I'll shorten down for him, if you wish; there's no point in outrunning him.'
    'I'd be obliged to you, Captain Littlewood,' Drinkwater nodded, acutely conscious that it was the gun-brig that was to afford them protection, rather than the reverse.
    'It's bound to back soon,' said Littlewood, turning away to give orders to his crew, 'bound to ...'
    But Littlewood's optimism was misplaced. Nightfall found them shortened to triple reefed topsails and the clew of a brailed spanker as the wind increased to gale force.

CHAPTER 5
The Storm
    September 1809

    Drinkwater was unable to sleep. Although Galliwasp was not his personal responsibility the habits of command were too deeply ingrained to be swept easily aside. Besides, the moral burden for the former West Indiaman and her mission were laid squarely upon his lop-sided shoulders, so at midnight, wrapped in a tarpaulin, he sought Littlewood and found him at his post on deck.
    'There are times, Captain Waters, when the temptation to suck on a bottle in one's bunk and leave the deck to one's mates and the devil are well-nigh irresistible,' Littlewood shouted, staggering across his wildly lurching poop to grab a backstay somewhere behind Drinkwater's right shoulder.
    'You don't fool me, sir,' Drinkwater shouted back, grinning in the darkness despite his discomfort. Littlewood's black humour suggested he would be a good man in a tight corner. 'Though I imagine a snug anchorage in the Scheldt seems more attractive than our present position.'
    Littlewood leaned towards Drinkwater. 'It's getting no better, Captain,' he said, the confidence imparted in a loud voice to sound above the mounting roar of the rising wind. 'By my reckoning we can let her go 'til morning, but at first light we will have to put about ...'
    'You'll have to wear ship ...'
    'Aye,' Littlewood agreed, 'she'll not tack in this ...'
    Both men stared to windward thinking the same thoughts simultaneously. The Galliwasp heeled under the wind's weight, rolling further to starboard as grey seas reared out of the darkness to larboard and bore down upon her. Some broke to windward and the spray from their collapsing crests streamed across their exposed deck with a sibilant hiss. Some she rode over, groaning and creaking in protest as the roaring gale plucked new, higher pitched notes from the Strained weather stays and a curious resonant vibration from the slacker, leeward rigging. Others broke on board, sluicing with a roar across the deck and filling the scuppers and waterways of the starboard waist, while some broke against the hull with Titanic hammer blows that shook the Galliwasp from keel to truck. Then the thwarted wave threw itself into the air where, level with the rail, the wind caught it and drove it downwind with the force of buckshot; an icy assault that struck exposed cheeks with a painful impact and left the wet skin to the worse agony of the wind-ache that followed.
    The duty watch huddled from the hazard in odd corners, only the mate on watch and the helmsmen weathering it behind a scrap of canvas dodger. Even Drinkwater and the bare-headed Littlewood could not avoid the stinging, lancing spume bursting upon them out of the black and howling darkness.
    Ineffectively dodging one such explosion, Drinkwater recovered his balance and dashed the streaming water from his eyes, to stare astern and to leeward.
    'What the devil's that?' he asked.
    'Bengal fire?' queried Littlewood beside him.
    The thrust of the wind sent both men down the deck to leeward. They cannoned into the lee rail, aware that the deep