The Corvette Read Online Free PDF Page B

Drinkwater was aware of a toll-keeper wrapped in a blanket as he threw wide his toll-gate to allow the mail through.
    The glorious speed of the coach seemed to speak to him of all things British and he smiled at himself, amused that such considerations still had the power to move him. His grim experience off Boulogne and the brush with death that followed had shaken his faith in providence. The ache in his shoulder further reminded him that he was going to venture into Arctic waters where he would need all the fortitude he could muster. Command of the Melusine and her charges would be his first experience of truly independent responsibility and, in that midnight hour, he began to feel the isolation of it.
    He took another swig of brandy and remembered the melancholia he had suffered after the fever of his recovery had subsided. The ‘blue-devils’ were an old malady, endemic among sea-officers and induced by loneliness, responsibility and, some men maintained, the enforced chastity of the life. Drinkwater was acutely conscious that he owed his full recovery from these ‘megrims’ to the love of his wife and friends. This thought combined with the stimulation of the brandy to raise his spirits.
    Tonight he was racing to join a ship beneath a cloudless sky at what surely must be twelve miles to the hour! His thoughts ran on in a more philosophic vein, recalling Dungarth’s long speech on the ambitions of France and the defence of liberty. He might talk of freedom being the goal of British policies, but at this very moment the press was out in every British sea-port, enslaving Britons for service in her Navy with as savage a hand as her landowners had appropriated and enclosed the countryside through which he was passing. The complexities of human society bewildered and exasperated Drinkwater and while his ordered mind was repelled by the nameless perfidies of politics, he was aware of the conflict it mirrored in himself.
    There were many in Britain and Europe who welcomed the new order of things that had emerged from the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. Bonaparte was the foremost of these, an example of the exasperation of youth and talent at the blind intractability of vested interest. Surely Dungarth had overplayed the real danger posed by Bonaparte alone? Yet he would sail in command of his ‘corvette’ to drive the tricolour of France from the high seas with the same eagerness that the mail-guard consulted his watch and urged his charge through the night. He suppressed the feeling of radical zeal easily. The excitement of the night was making him foolish. He had a duty to do in protecting the Hull whale-fleet. The matter was simplicity itself.
    Then a precarious sleep swallowed him, sleep that was interrupted by sudden jolts and the contraction of aching muscles, and accompanied by the memory of Elizabeth’s sadness at his departure.
    They broke a hurried fast at Grantham after the terrifying descent of Spitalgate Hill and by noon had crossed the Trent at Muskham. Drinkwater rode inside for a while but, assaulted again by Mrs MacEwan who seemed desirous of information regarding the ‘gallant and charming Mr Quilhampton’, he returned irritably to the box. He did not observe Mr Quilhampton’s look of joy as he again exchanged seats and he was thoroughly worn out by the time the mail rolled into the yard of the Black Swan at York.
    ‘And what, my dear, did you think of Mr Quilhampton?’ asked Mrs MacEwan staring after the captain and the tall young officer beside him.
    ‘I thought, Aunt,’ said the young woman, removing her bonnet and shaking her red-gold hair about her shoulders, ‘That he was a most personable gentleman.’
    ‘Ahhh.’ Mrs MacEwan sighed with satisfaction. ‘See, my dear, he has turned
    ‘ She waved her gloved hand with frivolous affectation while Catriona simply smiled at James Quilhampton.
    Drinkwater took to his bed before sunset, waiting only to instruct Quilhampton to mind