1805 by Richard Woodman Page A

over their sides and men could be seen in the water around them.
    They had a brief glimpse into the harbour as they crossed the
entrance, a brief glimpse of chaos. It seemed as though soldiers were
everywhere, moving like ants across the landscape. Yet, as
Antigone
crossed the narrow opening the guns of Boulogne were briefly silent,
their servers witnesses of the drowning of over a thousand of their
comrades. In this hiatus
Antigone
passed by, her
own men standing at their guns, staring at the waves breaking viciously
over rocking and overloaded craft, at men catching their balance,
falling and drowning.
    'I think there's the reason for the activity, sir,' said
Fraser pointing above the town. 'I'll wager that's the Emperor himself.'
    Drinkwater swung his glass and levelled it where Fraser
pointed. Into the circle of the lens came an unforgettable image of a
man in a grey coat, sitting on a white horse and wearing a large black
tricorne hat. The man had a glass to his eye and was staring directly
at the British frigate as it swept past him. As he lowered his own
glass, Drinkwater could just make out the blur of Napoleon's face
turning to one of his suite behind him.
    'Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor o' the French,' muttered Fraser
beside him. 'He looks a wee bit like Don Quixote… Don Quixote
de la Manche
…'
    Fraser's pun was lost in the roar of the batteries of Boulogne
as they reopened their fire upon the insolent British frigate. Shot
screamed all round them. Hill was demanding they haul further offshore
and Rogers was asking for permission to re-engage. He nodded at both
officers.
    'Very well, gentlemen, if you would be so kind.' He turned for
a final look at the man on the white horse, but he had vanished,
obscured by the glittering train of his staff as they galloped away.
'The gale has done our work for us,' he muttered to himself, 'for the
time being.'

----
Chapter
Eight
July-August 1804
Stalemate
    'Will you damned lubbers put your
backs into it and
pull
,'
    Midshipman Lord Walmsley surveyed the launch's crew with
amiable contempt and waved a scented handkerchief under his nose. He
stood in the stern sheets of the big boat in breeches and shirt, trying
to combat the airless heat of the day and urge his oarsmen to more
strenuous efforts. Out on either beam Midshipmen Dutfield and Wickham
each had one of the quarterboats and all three were tethered to the
Antigone
.
At the ends of their towropes the boats slewed and splashed, each
oarsman dipping his oar into the ripples of his last stroke, so that
their efforts seemed utterly pointless. The enemy lugger after which
they were struggling lay on the distant horizon.
    Walmsley regarded his companion with a superior amusement.
Sitting with his little hand on the big tiller was Gillespy, supposedly
under Walmsley's tutoring and utterly unable to exhort the men.
    'It is essential, Gillespy, to encourage greater effort from
these fellows,' his lordship lectured, indicating the sun-burnt faces
that puffed and grunted, two to a thwart along the length of the
launch. 'You can't do it by squeaking at 'em and you can't do it by
asking them. You have to bellow at the damned knaves. Call 'em poxy
laggards, lazy land-lubbing scum; then they get so God-damned angry
that they pull those bloody oar looms harder. Don't you see? Eh?'
    'Yes… my Lord,' replied the unfortunate Gillespy who
was quite under Walmsley's thumb, isolated as he was in the launch.
    The lesson in leadership was greeted with a few weary grins
from the men at the oars, but few liked Mr Walmsley and those that were
not utterly uncaring from the monotony of their task and being
constantly abused by the senior midshipman of their division, resented
his arrogance. Of all the men in the boat there was one upon whom
Walmsley's arrogant sarcasm acted like a spark upon powder.
    At stroke oar William Waller laboured as an able seaman. A
year earlier he had been master of the Greenland whale-ship
Conqueror
,
a member of the