by Arlem Hawks
Where was she? He buckled on his cutlass, removed a folded page from his other coat, and slammed the lid of his trunk. A waft of lime swirled up from the little garland he had purchased for his mother. He shook his head, dismissing memories of the tropical sunset and slid the square of paper into his coat pocket. Bicorn tucked under his arm, he ran from the room.
He nearly knocked over a wide-eyed Georgana on the gun deck. His hands caught her elbows to keep her upright. What was she doing here? She should already have gone below. His grip tightened around her.
“You’re going to the powder room?” he asked.
“Peyton!” someone shouted down the hatch from the upper deck.
“I need to speak with you after,” she said, fingers digging into the sleeves of his coat.
“Yes.” He pulled himself away before he could kiss her furrowed brow. Not now. He needed his wits.
Dominic pulled on his hat upon reaching the main level and strode for the quarterdeck on Moyle’s heels. The captain barked orders. Midshipmen scattered over the deck toward their assignments.
“Whom do we face, sir?” Dominic asked. “Is it the American merchant again?” He blinked. The barest hint of morning light from behind him caught the sheets of not one but two vessels bearing down on them. The stiff wind filled their sails. Around the deck of the Deborah, men shouted and pulled at lines.
“Have them wet the sails,” Captain Woodall said, raising the telescope. “I want to outrun them as long as we can. Get some light before we do battle.”
Dominic relayed the orders, then returned to the captain’s side. “How did they catch us in the dark?”
The captain shrugged. “Last night we probably had enough lanterns on deck to alert any ship within thirty miles.”
The risk of celebrating at sea.
“They’ll come along either side,” Captain Woodall said. “Prepare the crew for an all-out attack.”
“Yes, sir.” Surrounded. Dominic fought to keep his hand from tugging at his stock. He couldn’t let the crew see anything but confidence. The Deborah outgunned the privateers, but in the chaos of firing guns from both port and starboard sides, anything could happen.
The captain grabbed his arm before he left. “Where is George?” The strain in his voice echoed Dominic’s own fears.
“I sent him to the powder room.”
They both knew the order wouldn’t necessarily keep her there. But with both of them needed on the quarterdeck, it was the best they could do. How strange, to care so much for a person Captain Woodall also held dear. Dominic had never experienced the camaraderie of protecting someone else. He’d always been on his own.
“He’ll be fine,” Dominic said. He clapped the captain’s arm. “We’re in far more danger up here than he will be.”
Captain Woodall nodded. “Carry on.”
Chapter 25
Georgana didn’t stay in the powder room long. With almost sixty men still down with the sickness, how could she? A few were trying to fight through their malady, but most were safely deposited in the cockpit. The help of every healthy person was needed.
Very little light touched the gun deck, only enough to see faceless shapes. Lanterns were forbidden. One overturned candle in the chaos of battle, and the whole ship could go up in flames.
“No more powder,” came the order when Georgana deposited her load. Gun crews on both sides of the ship crouched in readiness. She’d never experienced a battle on both sides. Her dry mouth made it difficult to swallow.
She followed the other powder monkeys to their stations near the center of the gun deck. No one spoke. She met Fitz’s eyes, barely visible in the twilight. For all his earlier bravado, she could feel his terror.
The ship pulsed with it.
Against her will, her mind fled to Lushill House—the soft greenery of the gardens, the serene architecture. If she wanted a better chance of seeing that place again, that place of so many bittersweet memories, she should have stayed in the powder room.
She chewed the corner of her bottom lip to distract herself from the quaking inside.
Jarvis uttered a long string of curses. Dominic almost joined him.
The glow of morning had increased enough to see the enormous flags flying from the approaching vessels. Blue, white, red.
The third lieutenant lowered the telescope and slammed it into Dominic’s waiting hand. “It’s the St. Germain and the Intelligence. I told you we should have taken the Intelligence. Now we get to suffer from your lack of intelligence.”
“It can’t be.” Dominic raised the instrument to his eye. The Intelligence had been American. He sighted the frigate. It certainly appeared to be their previous foe.
Twenty-eight guns on the St. Germain. A thirty-eight-gun frigate like the Deborah should have the advantage, but add the ten or twelve guns of its schooner companion . . .
He set his jaw. It would be a fair fight.
He scanned the deck of the smaller boat, looking for a sign that Jarvis’s assumption was right. The crew looked to be an unassuming mixture of nationalities, like many crews. He dropped the telescope to the man at the wheel, and his fingers contracted around the shaft. Thick red hair topped the burly man’s head. Dominic remembered the stammering captain. Now the man shouted, but he didn’t seem to be in charge. The dark-featured man, who had acted as a mate when Dominic inspected their cargo, was giving orders and striding the forecastle.
They’d been fooled.
“It is the Intelligence.” His stomach tightened, as though it had been rammed into the barrel of a cannon. He’d walked that boat. He’d heard the odd accent of the real captain pretending to be a first mate and the uncertainty of the American acting as though he was in charge. The red-haired man was probably the only American that ship had on board. And they’d duped him. Rice and tobacco. No doubt they had only enough to make a convincing storeroom.
Dominic spun on his heel and raced to where Captain Woodall stood with the sailing master, Mr. Jordan. The ship hadn’t come up to speed as quickly as they had hoped.
“The St. Germain and the Intelligence,” Dominic said.
The captain’s eyes closed. They should have listened to Jarvis. The lieutenant would gloat when this was over.
“If every man does his duty, we will see this through,” Captain Woodall said.
Dominic nodded. The flags that bore Nelson’s last message to his men as they sailed toward the Battle of Trafalgar waved in his mind. England expects that every man will do his duty. How many men, like him, drew strength from that phrase?
A pop echoed across the water, and as one, the entire crew hit the deck. The cannonball whistled harmlessly off the larboard side. Dominic’s mind shifted, more slowly than usual, into its practiced numbness.
“Turn her about,” the captain shouted. “To your post, Jarvis. Ready a broadside and load the chase guns. We need to throw as much as we can at them before we’re surrounded.”
The third lieutenant ran for the hatch. Dominic almost followed him to check that Georgana wasn’t with the powder monkeys. Instead he turned and relayed the wearing orders to the crew. She’d told him she’d go to the orlop deck, had she not? He couldn’t remember.
Seamen drew in the sails above him. They couldn’t run anymore. Now was the time to stand and fight.
Georgana gripped the ladder as the boy above her swung his feet. He’d already kicked her face twice, and they had only made it to the messdeck.
Someone had called for more ammunition, even though the ship hadn’t fully turned yet. She moved more slowly than usual, not wanting to put up too much powder at once. Some of the boys moved at regular pace, mindlessly following the ill-advised orders. They were on their third round of powder as though in the midst of battle already.
A broadside shot from above rocked the ship back. She braced herself against the next la
dder, then mounted and continued her journey. Now they could move at normal speed, though with all crews working shorthanded, loading would take longer than usual.
Darkness still prevailed on the gun deck, but they were starting to see clearer. The gun crews’ faces glowed blue in the light of the rising sun seeping through the ports around the cannons. Midshipmen snapped orders, and powder monkeys scuttled about to avoid getting trampled.
Georgana set down her cartridges. With two enemy ships, this battle could last hours. She jumped to her feet and ran for the hatch.
Her head didn’t turn at the boom—not until it knocked her flat. She skittered across the deck, bowling into men and boys. Arms and legs, waistcoats and petticoat breeches, lay in a jumbled mess across the floor.
Smoke filled the room. Georgana’s ears whined so loudly they nearly blocked the cry, “Fire! Fire on the gun deck!”
She pushed herself away from another stunned powder monkey and cringed at the burning in her palms. They bled through the dust and powder coating her skin. She stared, her brain not engaging. What . . . ?
Someone grasped her under the arms and hoisted her up. Fitz shook her shoulders. “Fire!” She saw his lips move more than heard him.
Fire.
Flames licked the deck, and men beat them with shirts and jackets, whatever they had. Guns abandoned, crew members ran for the elm-tree pump to fill buckets. Lifeless bodies lay scattered across the floor.
Fitz dragged her to the messdeck to get out of the way of the men fighting the fire. Crewmen laden with bleeding comrades eased down the ladders toward the surgeon on the orlop deck.
Too much powder. They’d had too much powder. Fitz shook her again. “Are you hurt, George?”
Despite her stinging hands, she moved her head slowly left and right.
“Good. Come on,” he said as though the explosion hadn’t happened and men weren’t lying dead on the floor above them.
They headed for the magazine and more powder.
Chapter 26
Dawn brought clearer views and smoke rising from the hatchway. The crank of the elm-tree pump beat time with the steps of men towing buckets down to the gun deck. Cannon fire punctuated the steady rhythm, its thunder reverberating up through Dominic’s shoes.
The Deborah rocked back and forth each time a ball hit her hull. The Intelligence had ridden up on the larboard side. She didn’t have many guns but enough to drive the carpenter’s crew across the ship patching holes. The St. Germain had neared, placing the Deborah in range of the French ship’s twelve-pounders, though she’d already used the swivel gun at her bow to inflict damage to the Deborah’s mizzenmast.
Dominic ran across the deck, shouting orders to the midshipmen for how to set their guns. He couldn’t stop moving. Stopping would give him time to think about the fire on the gun deck. Though she was supposed to be two decks below it, the blaze started near the bow of the ship, just above Georgana’s position in the powder room.
They’ll put it out, he told himself repeatedly, trying not to let the fears consume him.
The St. Germain’s masts nodded toward them as the ship sailed closer. The large French flag snapped defiantly.
“Give them a broadside the moment she’s in line,” Captain Woodall said, voice tight. His gaze kept darting to the hatchway’s smoke.
“Yes, sir.”
A ruddy head lifted through the hatch before Dominic could give the command. Captain Woodall jumped toward the edge of the quarterdeck, eyes piercing.
The crack of another round of enemy fire echoed across the water.
“Back to your post, Jarvis!” the captain screamed, jabbing a finger at the lieutenant in the hatchway.
Grapeshot whizzed past Dominic’s face, its hot lead beating the air against his skin. His eyes clenched, and he waited for the pain of a piece hitting its mark. But that was not the shock he should have been bracing for.
Dominic heard a scream that rattled his soul, and his eyelids flew open to splinters and rope raining down on the quarterdeck over a writhing figure. Blood stained the sawdust and planks beneath a mangled hand.
“Captain!” Dominic dropped to his knees. The whites of the man’s wide eyes shone in the growing light.
Jarvis ran up. “Stupid oaf, I came to tell him the fire is out.”
Dominic ground his teeth. “Stow it, Jarvis,” he said, jaw taut. Jarvis withered under his glare. “Take him below.”
Jarvis was the last person he wished to entrust the captain to, but Dominic had to stay on the quarterdeck. Someone must be in command.
Dominic shouted for sailors from the surrounding gun crews, and they lifted the battered captain from the deck and eased him toward the hatch.
Dominic had watched this scene before. It had played over and over through his mind for months. A different captain, a different ship, but both then and now Dominic was left alone on the quarterdeck with three hundred men at his command. Only this time it wasn’t just the captain who was wounded. It was Georgana’s father.
Dominic caught the arm of a powder monkey running past. “Find George Taylor in the magazine. Send him to the surgeon.”
“Yes, sir!”
The boy ran off after the men carrying Captain Woodall. The captain’s eyes were closed, and he pressed his arm into his stomach. Crimson stained his waistcoat and jacket.
Dominic’s heart begged him to run for Georgana himself, but his feet stayed planted. Now was not the time. He was acting captain, not a lovesick lieutenant. With all his fortitude, he slammed an iron door shut against the impulse and let his battle instincts take over.
“Run out the guns!” he cried. “Fire!”
White smoke filled the air, heralding the start of his command.
Georgana met them on the ladder. For a moment she stared, not comprehending the scene before her. Jarvis hauling her father down to the orlop. She saw red. So much red.
“George!” Jarvis snapped. “Back to your duty.” He guided the group holding Papa toward the ladder to the orlop.
Georgana’s feet didn’t move. Her stomach heaved. She couldn’t . . .
“Lieutenant Peyton wants him to go with the captain,” one of the boys said, coming down on the heels of the group.
Jarvis’s eyes flashed. He quit his position, making the men stumble under her father’s weight. Georgana dashed in. She didn’t ease the load of the sturdy crewmen much, but she helped keep her father steady.
The third lieutenant stood to the side, watching the struggle. Hot indignation, thicker than the smoke that filled the gun deck, billowed inside her. She urged to launch herself at the smirking officer.
“Come, sir,” she said quietly to her father as they descended. “Étienne will help you.” The deep lines across Papa’s face wrenched at her heart. Though partially covered, she could see the mutilated flesh of his arm. Could this much blood have come just from his hand?
Scorched and broken men filled the surgeon’s workroom. The curly haired Frenchman quickly tied off a bandage before running to the captain’s side. “Here. Put him here.”
They laid her father on a stained table amid a display of surgeon’s tools. Georgana balked at the sight of their sharp edges.
“My arm,” Papa wheezed. “My arm.”
Étienne took one look and turned, motioning to his mate. “The arm, it has to come off.” A mate jumped forward to grab straps to secure Papa to the table.
“It . . . what?” Georgana’s tiny voice got lost in the groans of the wounded around them. They couldn’t take his arm. How would he function as a captain? He wouldn’t be able to write. Grandmother would shame him. What sort of life could he lead? “No, you can’t!”
Étienne glowered. “If I do not take the arm, infection will eventually take his life. Plenty of men will line up behind him waiting for my care. Will you help, or must I send you ou
t?”
“George,” her father whispered. He panted under the straps the surgeon’s mate tightened about him. Étienne made a cut in the sleeve of her father’s coat and tore it off.
Georgana flinched at the callousness. Her eyes burned. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She should be sitting at Lushill in the breakfast room listening to Grandmother’s shrieking and the clinking of china. She should be a young lady, naive and sheltered from the horrors of the world.
But she wasn’t a lady. She had seen war and helped fuel cannons that maimed and destroyed. She didn’t fit into the genteel life anymore, and she didn’t fit into this one either.
Her fingernails dug into her palms. Papa needed her. She pushed herself forward to the end of the table and knelt. “I’m here.” She put a hand on his head. Her chin trembled. “I’m here.”
She closed her eyes and ducked her head, steeling herself as the surgeon took Papa’s strong arm that had lifted her to his shoulders in the few happy moments of her childhood, and sawed it away.
Chapter 27
Georgana carefully lowered her father onto the makeshift bed in the corner of the carpenter’s workshop with the help of a blood-covered surgeon’s mate. The young man retreated quickly, leaving her and Papa alone in the dark room. Here the deck didn’t rock so violently with the ship’s movement. Walls muted sounds of wounded and dying men. Bringing him to the workshop was the best she could do.
She moved the little lantern she’d found in the room to a secure place near him. Then she sat on the floor to watch. His shuddering breaths had strengthened a little since the trauma of surgery. She couldn’t break her gaze away from the knob that ended just above where his elbow should have been.
“The ship,” he said. His eyes stayed closed. “The fire.”
She took his shaking hand, the only one he had left. “The fire is gone. The deck was damaged, but the men worked fast enough that it didn’t eat down to the messdeck.”