As the two vessels moved ahead, the smaller schooner was now on the larger ship’s windward bow. Kite realised that for a moment or two he had a decided advantage, for only the forward guns of the rebel ship bore, while the traversing eighteen-pounder could sweep the waist and quarterdeck of the Rattlesnake. But Rathburne was equal to the occasion and in the face of this withering fire, tacked his ship through the wind in an attempt to rake the Spitfire’s stern, extend the range and re-engage with his starboard broadside. ‘Down helm! Lee-oh!’ Kite roared as the more responsive fore-and-aft rigged schooner conformed, to take station again on the Rattlesnake’s windward bow and resume her destructive cannonade.
Suddenly the full force of a double-shotted broadside swept them and Kite felt the enemy balls strike the Spitfire’s hull, sending up showers of splinters all along the bulwarks and dismounting a second gun forward. A man screamed with pain and another fell stone dead beside the mainmast, while one of Lamont’s gun crew slumped slowly to the deck, leaning on his rammer.
‘Keep up the fire, my lads!’ Kite shouted, looking about him for Sarah. For a moment his heart skipped a beat as he saw her stand up, her shirt soaked in blood. Then she caught his eye and smiled bravely and gestured at the still body lying at her feet: the blood was another’s and Sarah had been comforting the dying man. ‘Is that Paston? Where’s Paston?’ he called, casting about him and fearing the dead man was in fact the American prisoner, but the boy was crouching between the guns, released from duty as Sarah’s shield by her sudden concern for the dying seaman.
The two vessels were now close hauled, standing to the east north east and exchanging fire. It was clear that Lamont’s fire was having its effect on the larger ship, for while he could no longer throw anything remotely heavy at the enemy, the loose canvas bags of langridge were having a devastating impact on both personnel and the Rattlesnake’s rigging, slowly but surely robbing Rathburne of his ability to manoeuvre his ship. Lamont’s ammunition consisted of canvas bags into which all manner of odds and ends of metal junk, nails, broken bolts, shackle pins, broken glass bottles, stones and musket balls, had been sewn. To these horrific missiles Lamont added short lengths of chain, old off-cuts from the schooner’s bobstay and her yard slings and other rubbish which habitually littered the carpenter’s shop on any vessel. At a short range, thrown on a high trajectory, the latter sliced through rigging and sails, while on a lower path the former swept the enemy deck or flew in through the open gun ports. It occurred to Kite in a prescient moment that Rathburne’s ship’s company was under-strength, that the imperfect response from the Rattlesnake’s larboard guns was evidence that they were not fully manned, even by men crossing the deck from the starboard battery. Perhaps Rathburne had landed men somewhere, and this had had something to do with his apparent disappearance and his present attempt to reach Rhode Island.
Kite looked about him. His own vessel was in a state, but she remained manageable and, though riddle with holes, her sails still drew. As the two vessels continued to exchange fire, Kite grew increasingly alarmed at their position, for beyond Rattlesnake the higher land was falling away to a river valley. He looked astern; already Seakonnet Point was behind them while up ahead the land curved round across their bow towards Point Peril and the Old Cock and Hen rock. They were working their way into the bay into which the Coakset River debouched into the sea and this neglect of navigation of the part of Rathburne, a man familiar with the locality, convinced Kite that his enemy was in trouble.
‘His fire’s faltering, William,’ Sarah called, and Kite, sensing the same thing, was truly puzzled. Amidships, Lamont continued to pour his fire at the enemy, while the larboard broadside guns which remaining in action still threw their shot at Rattlesnake with unabated fury.
‘What’s that you’re saying?’ Sarah suddenly asked Paston, calling out, ‘William!’ to attract her husband’s attention and adding as she pointed to the boy who was watching the Rattlesnake with a grin. He suddenly looked up at Sarah, realised he had been speaking his thoughts out loud amid the prevailing thunder of the guns, and shook his head. ‘What did you say, Joe?’ she said, one hand going to a pistol butt in her belt.
‘Come here, boy!’ Kite ordered and as the trembling youth came close, Kite hauled him up onto the rail. ‘What is it, eh?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Tell me, damn you!’ Kite shook the lad. ‘Tell me!’
Kite could feel Paston shuddering with terror and then, as the guns barked and shot flew past him, endangering him from his friends’ fire, the lad stuttered, ‘the lobster pots… the Two Miles Rock…’
For a moment Kite failed to understand the allusion, but then he saw the flags on the light spar buoys marking the lobster pots around the rock lying in the middle of the bay. Did Rathburne intend to run his ship aground? Or had Kite’s manoeuvring unwittingly driven him into a position from which he could not escape?
Just then one of Lamont’s seamen ran up to him. ‘Sir, the Mate says he has only three rounds left, sir!’
‘What?’
‘The Mate…’
‘Yes, yes!’ Kite waved him aside and raised his voice, aware now that he was hoarse with shouting. ‘Cease fire! Cease fire! Jacob, down helm, put her about! Mr Harper! Headsail sheets! We’re going about!’
As the schooner turned and her big main and foresails shook with a rattle of blocks as she passed through the eye of the wind, Kite watched the islet that formed Point Peril track across the Spitfire’s bow, then he spun round and stared astern. A few shot followed them, as the schooner’s vulnerable stern was exposed, but the risk betrayed the truth: Rathburne had shot his bolt and even as Kite realised that the storm of raking shot was not going to follow them, he saw the Rattlesnake’s foremast shudder and then crash forward in a tangle of falling spars and torn sails.
‘She has struck the Two Miles Rock,’ he said flatly, then turning forward he called out, ‘secure the guns and ease yourselves, men. You have done well. Mr Lamont and Mr Harper, do you lay aft, if you please!’
‘William, look!’
He spun round and stared to where Sarah was pointing. Kite extended his glass and raised it to his right eye. Just beyond the Rattlesnake, under her stern, a pair of boats lay in the water, men lying on their oars. Had they come from the shore, or had Rathburne’s slackening fire meant he had diverted his men to lower the boats from the waist? Then Kite saw the wooden davits that Rathburne had erected under the mizen mast since he had stolen the ship: their falls trailed in the water. Rathburne was abandoning his ship. Kite was furious. ‘I knew it had been too damned easy,’ he said, turning with a sudden cold anger at what he knew Rathburne was about to do. The telescope closed with a metallic snap.
‘What is it?’ Sarah asked, seeing the terrible expression upon her husband’s face.
‘That bastard,’ Kite bellowed, though it came as a cracked roar from his strained throat, ‘is going to burn my ship!’ He strode forward. ‘Get back to your guns and load ’em! Boarders are to be ready! Second Mate! Headsail sheets! You men amidhips, veer that fores’l sheet! Jacob up helm! Lamont load that gun of yours with all the shit your can lay your hands on!’
‘Up hellum,’ intoned Jacob as Kite turned aft, kicked Paston and called to Sarah, ‘come you two, help me veer this main-sheet.’ The raising his voice again, he shouted, ‘stand-by to gybe! Overhaul those sheets now…’ and bending Kite, Paston and Sarah, tended the big mainsail as the Spitfire cocked her stern up into the easterly wind. ‘Watch there! Watch there!’ Kite called out and then to Paston and Sarah he warned, ‘be careful when she gybes… Now! Heave in!’
Frantically they hauled the sheet so that when the wind caught the other side of the huge mainsail above them and carried the heavy boom across the deck with a murderous swing, they checked it with the sheet before it had gained an excess of momentum. The moment of dangerous flurry over, the sheets were trimmed, and with her men once more at their battle stations, the Spitfire stood back
into the bay towards her enemy.
Kite was frigid with anger. The concentration of nerve and judgement necessary to the handling of the Spitfire in the action had not yet drained him of his reserves of energy, while the realisation that he might yet lose his rightful property induced a terrible, cold rage. It was not solely directed against Rathburne as a man, but against Rathburne as an agent of that capricious providence of which Sarah had so recently remarked. To receive another blow to his fortunes argued that fate had, after all, a grudge against him and this he could not yet fully contemplate, though the notion lurked on the edge of his sensibility. For the moment, however, he was a thing of sinew and bone, of blood and a raging desire to level with the pirate who, under some illusory banner of assumed rectitude, had merely exercised the ancient tyranny of might.
‘Train to larboard, Mr Lamont, I’m coming alongside his starboard gangway! D’you have some lines ready fore and aft! Gun captains, remove your quoins and double-shot your pieces! Boarders make ready! We’ll storm her after the first discharge!’
Kite stared ahead as they approached the Rattlesnake. She drew more than the schooner and, though he had given the matter little thought, he guessed they might lie alongside her without themselves touching the reef. He could clearly see figures running about her waist, and men staring in their direction, then a gun was fired, followed by a second. Kite was vaguely aware of the tearing sound of the passing shot, felt a dull thump somewhere and heard someone scream in agony, a noise that subsided into a whimper. One could ignore that, he thought callously, it simply spoke of a soul in agony. He moved closer to Jacob.
‘Set up the main and fore topping lifts, and stand by all halliards,’ he called. He watched with mounting impatience as the seamen threw the coils off the pins and singled up the turns ready to drop the heavy gaffs and the two headsails. He must keep way on the schooner enough to carry him directly alongside. More guns were fired from the Rattlesnake, but this was no concerted broadside, thank God!
Kite chose his moment. ‘Lower all! Handsomely with that foresail now!’ Lowering his voice and sensing Sarah by his side, he muttered, ‘it would never do to smother Lamont with falling canvas at the crucial moment.’ Then he turned and, his eyes falling on Paston beside his wife, he motioned to him. ‘Come here, boy!’ Kite ordered and as the trembling youth came close, Kite thrust him forward. ‘Get up onto that rail and let those rebel dogs see you.’
‘William…!’ Behind him Sarah protested, but Kite was not listening. With her sails lowered, the Spitfire was losing way, but her jib-boom was only seventy yards from the Rattlesnake’s side. ‘Put the helm over, Jacob!’ Kite sang out as the thunder of six or seven of the Rattlesnake’s guns fired, but now the balls passed over their heads and, with the Spitfire’s sails doused, it no longer mattered if they cut away a rope or two.
Forward, the jib-boom fouled in the wreckage of the Rattlesnake’s foremast where it hung over the side in the water. Her swing was arrested, but several of the guns’ captains had anticipated this and were busy spiking their guns round as Lamont, traversing his with far greater ease, set his linstock to the eighteen-pounder’s touch-hole. The gun fired with a tremendous roar, confined as the noise was by the proximity of the Rattlesnake’s side, and then Kite drew his sword and called the boarders away.
He scrambled up the old Wentworth’s remembered tumblehome and over the bulwark onto her deck.
The scene that met his eyes could scarcely be believed and, as the wave of boarders followed, it seemed they paused in shock. Their shot had dismounted no guns, nor had it much damaged the sturdy fabric of the Rattlesnake’s upperworks, but the stones and nails, the old bolts, copper rovings and odds and ends of metal and glass had driven in through the open gun-ports and swept over the rail to wound and maim. Men lay twisted in the agony of painful death, lacerated and bloody from a score of flesh-wounds. Many still groaned as their life drained from them and a few, the least wounded, dragged themselves painfully about, withdrawing from the enemy just then heaving themselves over the rail with a muttering of oaths and slithering in the slimy mess that ran across the once clean decks of the West Indiaman. Somewhere someone was sick and behind Kite, Sarah stood on the rail astounded at the horror before her.
In that instant of stunned hiatus Kite smelt the smoke, and a moment later, as though playing some hellish trick, like a madly sinister and deadly jack-in-the-box, a score or so of men poured up from below, armed to the teeth. ‘The incendiaries!’ cried Kite, lunging forward to strike at the nearest man. ‘You bastards!’ he said, almost losing his footing in the gore. Then, recovering his blade, he parried the man’s sword-thrust, and riposted swiftly, running the fellow through.
A few feet away a man stood his ground at the foot of the main-mast and beside the binnacle. ‘Captain Kite!’
Kite recognised the figure in his brown coat. ‘Rathburne, you dog, surrender and give up my property!’
‘You shall never have her, Kite! She is bilged and burning!’ but as Kite sought to get over a pile of three tortured bodies, he felt a wrist grab his ankle and, looking down, slashed at the mortally wounded rebel who sought to encumber him. Breaking clear he looked up in time to see Rathburne spin round, drop his sword and clasp his upper left arm.
‘Remember Arthur Tyrell!’ Sarah shrieked from the rail, from where, without advancing a foot, she had shot at Rathburne. Then Kite had closed the distance between them and had Rathburne up against the mast. ‘I should kill you, you dog, and would do so if it would not lower me to the level of a pirate like yourself…’
But Rathburne spat in his face and as Kite jerked back and wiped his eye, Harper was beside him, his face pale under its covering of powder smoke. ‘Get back to the schooner, sir! They’ve fired her with trains to the magazine! Look, see where they run!’
Kite was aware of the rebels seamen rushing aft to clamber over the taffrail and down into their waiting boats. Two men turned at the stern and shouted for their commander: ‘Cap’n Rathburne!’
But then they saw Kite, his sword drawn and its point against the familiar figure backed up against the mainmast. Behind the vicious-looking Englishman were more men, including a large, ugly featured fellow brandishing a tomahawk who stood above Rathburne and the English commander. Both rebels turned and threw themselves over the side.
‘You will burn in hell yet, Rathburne, like you burned Tyrell…’ Kite said, his sword point an inch from Rathburne’s face.
‘Damn you, Kite, damn you…’ Rathburne, his face contorted by the pain of his broken arm, glared defiance at his persecutor.
‘Come Zachariah,’ Kite said, getting an arm about Rathburne. ‘Help me get this bastard aboard.’ As they rose unsteadily, with Rathburne between them Kite called breathlessly to the immobile Sarah who seemed rooted to the spot by the terrible scene before her. ‘Sarah! Go back aboard. Tell Lamont to hoist the sails!’
The fire had already taken hold of the Rattlesnake and was burning fiercely below as they struggled across the deck towards the Spitfire, shouting at the boarding party to retire and fall back. Reaching the rail they lowered Rathburne down to where a few seamen helped them, then Harper was running forward along the Spitfire’s deck, shouting orders and hacking at the ropes securing the two vessels.
Dumping Rathburne beside the binnacle to where Jacob swiftly cast a line about the wretched man, Kite leaned on the tiller. ‘Bear off forrard!’ he yelled, but Harper was already hacking at the tangled jib-boom and, his leg against the Rattlesnake’s forward channels, was thrusting with all his might as more men joined him, taking alarm from the column of smoke and flames roaring up out of the Rattlesnake’s hold.
But the wind pinned them against the larger ship’s hull and, although Lamont had some men toiling at the halliards, they could not shove the schooner’s head clear. For a moment Kite thought the game was up. Any second he expected the whole world to be rent asunder in an immense and terrible explosion as the Rattlesnake’s magazine blew the s
hip apart, but the minutes passed. Then, very slowly they began to drop astern, grating all along the Rattlesnake’s side, with Harper and his men managing to shove them clear of the worst of the obstructing channels so that little real damage was done to the schooner. Then the stern of the schooner was clear of the stern of the Rattlesnake and Kite could see the rebel boats pulling ashore where a small crowd had gathered. Finally drawing clear, the Spitfire blew round broadside to the wind, her jib-boom pointing ashore as her sails filled and she began to gather way.
‘Sah!’ warned Jacob, ‘it will get too damn shallow inshore, sah. Don’t press revenge too hard, sah!’
‘What?’ Kite was vaguely aware of the increased rhythm of the oarsmen ahead of them as the fugitive enemy tried to escape.
‘Jacob’s right, William,’ said Sarah beside him and Kite looked round into his wife’s eyes. He would never forget her appearance, for she looked like a corpse, her beauty oddly stark, drained of colour yet not of form. She would look like that when she died, he thought, shocked at the awesome revelation. ‘Don’t pursue vengeance any more. We have done enough slaughter for one day and have Rathburne a prisoner.’
Suddenly Kite relinquished the tiller. ‘Jacob,’ he said unsteadily, ‘take the helm and put her about. ‘Helm’s a lee, stand by to tack ship!’
Slowly the schooner began to turn up into the wind. It seemed to Kite that they must at any moment run ashore, but then the long strand of Hen’s Neck beach with its grass-covered dunes was swinging past the bow, followed by the burning Rattlesnake and then the hummock of Point Peril and the Old Cock and Hen reef beyond. A few minutes later, her sails trimmed, the schooner Spitfire stood out to sea, the embroidered pendant still streaming from her mainmasthead.
The Privateersman Page 27