“Very kind of you, Mr Wickham. We must keep to this heading to be sure we clear Ushant, but once we are confident the island has been weathered, we shall set a course for Plymouth, for we have a fair wind, if too much of it.”
“We’ll scud home, Mr Hayden.”
“Fuir devant le temps, Mr Wickham.”
“Pardon me, sir?”
“It is what the French say for scud: fuir devant le temps. Fly before the wind.”
“If we are to dress as Frenchmen we might as well speak like them,” Wickham ventured in French.
Hayden went below, shed his oilskins, and was relieved to find his cabin more or less dry. He then removed his French jacket as well, pulling on his worn blue wool, his lieutenant’s epaulette gleaming dully in the light.
He folded the crimson silk coat carefully, and tucked it in the French captain’s trunk. A second’s contemplation, and he closed the trunk lid softly.
“A mere British lieutenant—with no future—again,” he whispered, and went to the table.
His hen in brandy sauce with pickled champignons was utterly cold, as was everything that accompanied it. The French claret, he was happy to note, was nearly the perfect temperature and he savoured every sip—a fragrant Bordeaux from Paulliac, he guessed, from the French captain’s own supplies. A knock, and his marine sentry opened the door to reveal Dr Griffiths.
“Come, Doctor, a glass of this magnificent claret will put some colour back in your cheeks.”
Griffiths nearly slumped in a chair. He removed his spectacles, and for a moment pinched the bridge of his nose with bony fingers, eyes tightly shut. Hayden held his peace until the doctor finally opened his eyes, crimson-veined and red at the rims. He received the offered wine with the softest thanks.
“It has been a difficult day in the sick-berth, I am sure, Doctor.”
“The most difficult I have known, but then Hart never got into a scrap, so we had only incidental injuries incurred in the course of running the ship. Today …” The man raised a hand, palm-up, then took a sip of his wine. “I will tell you honestly, Mr Hayden, when men refuse to surrender they can be terribly cut up before they are subdued. I dressed the wounds of a man who was stabbed and cut more times than I could count. Only one or two wounds were of consequence, but the cumulation must have let all the blood he could afford.”
“That is one patient you won’t have to bleed, Doctor,” Hayden offered.
Griffiths’ eyes went wide and then he choked out a laugh. “How can you make a jest at such a time?”
“Have you not asked me that very question before? I can’t quite remember.” Hayden held up his glass so that the light of the lantern shone through the deep-crimson liquid. “Jests are like wine, Doctor, they help ease our burdens, and allow us to see the world as a better place than truly it is. We took back the Themis, and though I know the cost was great, we prevented a British frigate being lost to the enemy.”
“Come have a closer look in my sick-berth and you will wonder if it was truly worth it.”
“I’m sure from the cockpit, in the middle of an action, all battles seem pointless. I would feel no different. But we cannot win a war without injuries and wounds—even deaths. I will pay a visit to your sick-berth once we have weathered this gale. It is important for officers to understand the human cost of their endeavours so that they do not spend men’s lives too freely.”
Griffiths nodded his agreement. “And where is our French frigate, do you think?”
“I hope she shaped her course for Brest, but all we can say with any certainty is that she cannot be seen at the moment. I think we have shaken her, or so I hope.”
Griffiths raised his glass. “Confusion to the enemy.”
“Hear,” Hayden said, and they both drank.
“I have one more morsel of news that you should hear before I leave you in peace,” the doctor said. “Being informed that you did indeed overhaul and take the Themis sent Hart into a rage. I have been plying him with alcoholic tincture of opium—laudanum—and he has been not quite in his right senses. I fear, however, that what he is saying is more the truth than not, and among his cursing and muttering he repeatedly said, ‘Thinks he will make me look the fool. He will see what I am made of when we reach England. I will do for him,’ and much more in a similar tone. I think the thing Hart fears most in this world is having the truth about his character revealed, which you have done quite handily.”
“Captain Bourne said much the same thing.”
“Well, so you know; Hart’s senses might be deranged for the moment, but his threats are not idle.”
Hayden was too exhausted to feel the threat, but his tired brain told him that Griffiths was right. “I will bear that in mind, Doctor. Thank you.”
In less than an hour, Hayden was back on the deck, wrapped in the dead captain’s oilskins. There was no sign of the French ship now, but neither could he make out the Themis, partly because looking to windward was near impossible with the rain driving upon them. Landry would have the good sense to give them sea-room. A collision in the dark of a stormy night would bring both ships to ruin. The gale-driven rain pelted his back like gravel. As the seas and wind rose, Hayden ordered sail reduced until they were down to foresail and main topsail, both reefed—“a skirt and bonnet.” The main topsail was clewed to the unsound mainsail yard, but Hayden hoped this sail, close-reefed, would not exert enough pressure to shatter the fished spar. He told Dryden to be certain the braces were carefully tended so that no undue pressure was put on one side or the other.
The night wore on and the gale freshened by the hour. Hayden set watches for his acting officers, but given the scarcity of able crew, condition of the ship, and severity of weather, he chose to keep the deck as long as he was able—through the night if necessary. Wickham was an exceptional middy, mature beyond his count, and with a grasp of seamanship that was rare in one so few years at sea, but he was still lacking in experience, and even a very dexterous mind would not make up for that.
The Dragoon rolled more heavily than he liked, and an increase in top-hamper would likely have aided her, but of course such spars were in danger in these conditions. She also had a strong tendency to yaw, which Hayden was sure could be corrected by stowing her hold to increase her draught aft.
Seas came hissing out of the darkness, lifting the stern high. They would carry the ship on their shoulder, and then disappear forward as the ship settled in the trough. Running before it could become dangerous if the seas mounted too high. Hayden had four men on the helm, as it was, and he paid careful attention to the ship’s motion, noting that despite her tendency to yaw, the helmsmen were able to keep her more or less dead before it, though she slewed a little as each wave lifted her.
Occasionally a great, maned monster would take them from behind, thundering against her damaged stern, and Hayden would send a man below to be sure no harm had been done.
Dryden appeared out of the darkness, wrapped in a Frenchman’s oilskins. He had been aloft, inspecting the mats and guarding the rigging against chafe.
“How fare your thrum mats, Mr Dryden?”
“Well enough, sir. Mr Barthe would not be too disheartened by the job we’ve done, if I do say so.” Dryden was quiet a moment. “It is a prodigious sea, Mr Hayden, is it not?”
“Indeed it is, and will grow worse as we reach soundings. I hardly remember a late-summer gale more severe.”
“No, sir, though I have not been at sea so very long. Mr Barthe would say it is no great sea compared to ‘the grey beards of the southern ocean.’ ”
Hayden laughed. “And I’m sure he would be right, but with this damaged ship and her juried rig I do not want any more of it.”
“Yes, sir, but the wind appears to be making yet. I think we have not seen quite the worst of it.”
Dryden, it was soon revealed, was more prescient than usual. The gale did grow worse, and the sea more dangerous. The deck was awash more than once, and a particularly steep sea dum
ped green water over the stern, which almost washed the ship’s captain off his feet. The ship, however, served them well, and Mr Chettle’s repairs stood the test, though she was not as dry below as anyone would have liked.
Hayden relieved the helmsmen often, and after sending Wickham below for some rest and a time to dry and warm, he took a turn below himself. It was in the middle-watch, but Perseverance Gilhooly brought him a cold leg of mutton and a block of crumbling, only slightly mouldy cheese. Hayden chased it down with port.
For an hour he lay dozing in his cot, which he swung athwart-ship to accommodate the direction of the seas. It traced a great arc across the cabin, flinging him high, then swooping back down again. He had to remind himself that it was the ship moving in such furious gyrations, and the cot that remained more or less stationary. Sleep did not find him for more than a few moments at a time, and then dreaming and waking bled together, the sounds of the gale pressing into his fancies, until it was difficult to tell one from the other. Once he thought he heard whispering in French, and snapped awake, only to smile. The ship’s bell rang, a glass was no doubt turned, and all was well.
Hayden stayed for a moment, his cot feeling uncommonly warm and snug. He listened to the sounds of the gale; the creaking of the ship, the high, shrill note of wind as it oscillated up and down in the gusts, the squeaking of the tiller as it moved. And then he heard the whisper again, “Silence!”—but pronounced by a Frenchman. Did he sleep or wake?
Disembarking from his cot was almost an adventure in itself, but long practice landed him upright on the deck. Quickly, he drew on his clothes, and snatched his cutlass from the rack. Outside his door he found the marine sentry slumped in the corner, head forward. Hayden stirred the man with his foot. Then crouched before him, as the marine, Jennings, shook himself from sleep, a stupid, indignant look upon his face.
“Not a sound, Jennings,” Hayden warned him softly.
The man scrambled up, the indignation quickly replaced by consternation. Dereliction of duty would see a marine flogged.
But Hayden had not time for such matters now. He put a finger to his lips, and crept forward, bracing his bare feet against the ship’s pitch and roll. The gale had not abated and the roar of seas and screaming wind remained loud. He made his way to the companionway, where for a moment he tarried, listening carefully. And then he heard it again—someone whispering; English this time but heavily accented.
“Move quickly; no sound.”
“But I am the surgeon …” came the reply, firm but frustrated. “I don’t have keys for the lockup or the armoury.”
Griffiths!
Then a whisper, almost drowned by the crashing seas—though Hayden was left with the impression, due entirely to speech rhythms, that it was French, as was the answer.
He put his head close to the marine’s ear. “Some Frenchmen are free on the berth-deck. Get yourself forward and find me some men. But keep them quiet.”
The marine nodded, and set off into the near-darkness, slipping out the door onto the gun-deck. A little blast of wind fluttered the candle in the single lantern, and he thought he heard the men below pause in their movements, though above the thunder of waves, he could not be certain.
He lay on his stomach near the companionway, wondering what time it might be—how near it was to the change of watch. If only someone would ring the bell. Trying to still his breathing, he concentrated all his energies on the single act of listening. How many were there? Marin-Marie, and at least one other, for he had heard him speak to someone in his own tongue. Straining to hear in the lull between gusts and rushing seas, he could not distinguish the rhythmic creaking of the pumps. The prisoners must have overwhelmed their guards. Eight Frenchmen plus Marin-Marie, then, though the latter was wounded. Too many for him to confront alone—and then there was the doctor, presently hostage. This was the only reason he did not raise a cry; if the Frenchmen barricaded themselves in the gunroom with one or more hostages, the possibility of harm being done to one of his crew would be great.
Hayden could not, however, let them reach the armoury, release their countrymen, or take control of either of the magazines. They were on the berth-deck, he a deck above, and the armoury was one deck below them, on the orlop. The magazines, fore and aft, were half-sunken so that they extended below the orlop a small distance into the hold. By the sound of their whispers, Hayden believed the Frenchmen to be outside the gunroom by the companionway stair—essentially in the midshipmen’s berth. Due to the small crew, fewer sentries stood their stations than would have been normal on a frigate of this rate. Hayden also knew that the men in their hammocks forward of the midshipmen’s berth were all exhausted beyond measure and would not be roused easily—and the fury of the gale would mask many a sound.
The loud hiss of the great waves passing; in the rigging, a high, modulating moan; the rudder working forth and back like an old door; timbers strained and complaining. Amid all of this, bare feet, perhaps, descending the stair, hesitant in the dim light, and then the stumble of booted feet—Griffiths, who could never adjust his gate to the roll of a ship in a gale.
Hayden slid slowly forward, resting a hand on a stair so that he could peer down into the dimness below. Beneath him, shadows. Whitewashed bulkhead, planks soot-smeared from candle smoke. A door, crooked in its frame but shut; beyond, the silent gunroom. All angles and lines, no irregular shapes that might be men.
Hayden glanced up at the door the marine had taken, wondering where in hell he could be. Silently he climbed down the stair, using hands and feet on the treads, like a child. The gunroom door had a tendency to creak, so he timed its opening with a sea crashing aboard, the hinges’ tell-tale shriek lost among the din.
Inside he was met by utter darkness. Chairs would have been removed to some place where they could be restrained; the table, though, was bolted to the floor. Groping forward, he found its hard edge, and made his way, hand by hand, along one side. Hawthorne preferred the centre cabin to starboard, and Hayden hoped he had managed to claim it here.
Pulling open the door, he whispered, “Mr Hawthorne! Mr Hawthorne, sir!”
A rustling, then a muttered “Fuck off. I’ve only just gone to sleep.”
“Hawthorne, it’s Hayden.”
Louder rustling. “Mr Hayden? I beg you to forgive me, sir! I didn’t—”
“Hawthorne. Some Frenchmen are loose in the dark and they have taken hostage the doctor.”
He heard the marine lieutenant fumble out of bed, perhaps breeches being pulled on, a muttered “Where is my bloody sword?”
Hawthorne’s hand found Hayden’s shoulder in the dark. “Dryden slings his cot across the way, if he’s not on deck.”
In a moment they’d roused a muddled Dryden and went as three blind men out the creaking gunroom door. A marine almost shot them as they emerged into the dim light of a watch lantern.
“There you are, Jennings,” Hayden whispered. “It appears there are nine of them, gone down onto the orlop with the doctor as hostage.”
Four men lurked behind Jennings—two marines and two hands, the former with muskets, though perhaps too wet to fire, and the latter with handspikes. He and Hawthorne had cutlasses and Dryden was unarmed.
“We cannot let them release the prisoners or break into the armoury,” Hayden whispered. “I shall try to negotiate their surrender, but we might have to fight.
“Shall I raise the off-watch, sir?” Dryden asked.
“Only a few men you can trust, Dryden. Too much noise will tip our hand.” Hayden crouched down by the companionway, listening, then lay down and leaned his head and upper body into the opening. He could hear no sounds of men, see no lurking shadows or movement. The cockpit was below; forward, the cable tiers; various store rooms, including the armoury; and right forward, in place of the sailroom, the temporary prisoners’ lockup. Abaft this was situated the forward magazine.
There were two guards stationed there, though not necessarily marines, as there were so fe
w of them aboard. From the deckhead between them, a lantern swung; a damnably sooty one, which cast only a frail circle of squalid light.
A grunt. The rasp of a strangled cry. Two bodies thudding dully to the deck. Whispers.
The Frenchmen would have two muskets now, and though the guards did not possess keys for the lockup, the locks or hinges could be prised, given time. The near-constant clamour of the gale would make such efforts almost undetectable. A sentry would begin his rounds at some point, the watch would change, but the Frenchmen would be free and likely have broken into the armoury by then. Once they were armed, the ship would be theirs.
Hayden found Hawthorne in the dark. “We must take them by stealth. If detected, we must charge. The doctor will have to look out for himself.”
Hawthorne put his mouth near to Hayden’s ear. “We must be mindful of the powder-room.”
“Inform your musketeers,” Hayden whispered, and led them down to the orlop.
They crept forward, around the hatchway to the hold, keeping low, hiding behind the cable tiers, over the coils of massive cable for the anchors, the stench of salt and mud. Hayden could see the escaped prisoners, bent before the lockup door. A clatter to his right.
“Merde,” a voice muttered.
Hayden found himself face-to-face with a dark shape and without thinking drove the heel of his sword hilt into the man’s temple, collapsing him like a tent. Hayden lowered the man to the planks and struck him once more to be certain he was gone.
They crouched behind the noisome coils, watching for an instant. A grating squeal as iron fittings were drawn through wood.
“As she lifts …” Hayden said, and as the stern began to rise, he vaulted over the cable. Crouching to clear the low deckhead, they crossed the few yards with as much stealth as speed would allow. The dim light, half hidden by the Frenchmen gathered about the lockup door, and the pounding seas, masked their attack. Only at the last second did they have the ill luck for one man to stumble, causing the prisoners to turn.
Hayden drove his blade into a man raising a musket, and it discharged harmlessly into the deck. Cries all around, both French and English. A desperate melee erupted as men were thrown forward by the motion of the ship.
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