Deverel came striding aft at the head of a group of emigrants. His shoes made the only sound in the ship. He was in a state of high if suppressed excitement. He carried his scabbarded sword in his left hand. He was shivering slightly.
“Why, Edmund! I thought you was mustered at the guns!”
“Devil take it, I fell asleep.”
He laughed aloud.
“That’s cool! Well done, old fellow—but the others are all gone down. Good luck to you!”
“To you too—”
“Oh, I—why just now I would give my right arm for a bloody battle!”
He passed on, bounding up the ladder to the poop. I made my way down the contrary one to the cluttered gundeck.
Here at once a most unfortunate fact became plain. I was too tall for the gundeck. It had been designed for a company of dwarfs, miners perhaps, and I could not stand upright in it. I waited therefore to be directed. The gundeck was not much dimmer than the upper deck, for all the ports were open. Our six great guns were in position but their tackles not yet run up. There was a crowd round them but facing inboard where our commissioned gunner, Mr Askew, was pacing up and down as he addressed the company. He wore a belt with two pistols stuck in it.
“Now pay attention,” he said, “particularly those what have never seen this done before. You have now seen the guns loaded and primed. Should we need to have a reload you will leave it to them that knows the business. You gentlemen and emigrants will lay your hands to such ropes as the captains of guns may direct and when he says ‘Haul!’”—and here Mr Askew’s voice rose to what can only be called a suppressed roar—“you will haul till your guts fall out. I want to see your guts strung out there and there and there and there and there and there! And you will be silent the first time you run up the guns because Mr Summers has directed us to be as quiet as little mice so as the Frogs don’t know we are coming. So”—and his voice sank to a whisper—“when you have run the guns out silent you will pick your guts up, put ’em back, and stand waiting. If we should open fire you will see them gun trucks run back so fast you can’t see ’em move! I have seen gun trucks there and I have seen gun trucks back there but I have never seen ’em halfway, gentlemen, they moves so quick. So you better not be lounging behind them or the Frogs when they come aboard of us will think you are what they calls confiture. Jam, gentlemen. Jam.”
Little Pike put up his hand as if he were still at school.
“Won’t the enemy be firing by then?”
“How do I know, sir, and what do we care? When fire is opened things is different, oh, you have no idea, sir, how different things is! It’s very queer how different things is once a gun has been fired as they say in anger. So then you have the full permission of His Majesty the King, God bless him, to shout and yell and swear and shit yourselves and do what you like so long as it’s noisy and you haul your guts in and out when told to.”
“Good God.”
Mr Askew resumed in a conversational tone.
“It’s all flannel, of course. The Frogs don’t scare so easy as you gentlemen may think. Howsomever we must play our game as long as we can. So if we have to fight and if any volunteer should feel that the other side of the ship is cooler like and just a little farther off from the enemy, these two little fire irons in my belt are loaded. So now, my heroes, run up them guns!”
The next few moments for me were complicated and infuriating. The man whom I supposed to be the captain of the nearest gun pointed to the end of a rope which projected behind Bowles who was the hindmost of the four volunteers holding it. I had no sooner crouched close when the captain of the gun roared again, the volunteers leapt and Bowles struck me, cannoned into me so that I reeled two paces then fell, my head once more striking the deck so concussively that the whole world was obscured for a moment by a brilliant display of lights. I struggled to get up and heard, as far off, Mr Askew addressing me.
“Now, now, Mr Talbot, sir, where was you going? Had we been in action I might have been forced to put a pellet in your head, you come so close to the mid-point.”
The pain and the sense of having made myself a common mock was too much to bear. I leapt to my feet—and struck my head a second and even more shattering blow on the underside of the upper deck. This time I saw no lights and knew nothing until through a dizzying sickness I heard roaring laughter being shouted down by Mr Askew.
“Now then, you buggers, belay that and stand to! That was a hard knock the poor gentleman took and as stout a heart and head as there is in the ship I don’t doubt. God knows how much the beams is wounded on their underside. Half the deck planking must be started. Silence I said! How is it with you now, sir?”
I am sorry to say my only reply was a rehearsal of all the imprecations I could muster. Blood was trickling down my face. I sat up and the gunner held my arm.
“Easy does it, Mr Talbot. The gundeck is no place for you. Why, with Billy Rogers and Mr Oldmeadow you must be the three tallest men in the ship. You’ll do better on deck, sir, where the Frogs can get an eyeful of you all bloody and glaring. Keep low as you go, sir. Handsomely! A round of applause, my lads, for a gamecock of the afterguard!”
I did not know that fury could overcome dizziness and sickness so soon. I staggered up the ladder. The first person—by his voice—to notice me was Deverel.
“What the devil? Edmund old fellow! You are our first casualty!”
“I am too tall for the gundeck, God curse it! Where are the ladies?”
“Down in the orlop.”
“Thank God for that at least. Deverel, give me a weapon—anything!”
“Have you not had enough? Where it isn’t bloody, your face is corpse white.”
“I am coming to. A weapon for the love of God! A meat axe—sledge hammer—anything. I will engage to carve and eat the first Frenchman I come across!”
Deverel laughed aloud, then caught himself up. He was shivering with excitement.
“Spoken like a true Briton! Will you board with me?”
“Anything.”
“Mr Summers, sir, a weapon for my latest recruit!”
Someone put a cutlass in his free hand. He tossed it, caught the blade and presented the hilt to me.
“Here you are, sir. The plain seaman’s guide to advancement. Can you use it?”
For answer I made the three sabre cuts then saluted him. He saluted back.
“Well enough, Edmund. But the point is queen, remember. Join the band of brothers!”
I followed him to the poop where Mr Brocklebank sat in the gloom on his camp stool, an unopened portfolio on his knees. His head was on his chest or perhaps I should say the upper part of his stomach. His hat was over his eyes. On the quarterdeck the captain was now addressing Summers in a low and furious tone.
“Is this the silence I ordered, Mr Summers? Did I give you directions at the top of my voice? I command silence and am answered by a gale, a positive hurricane of laughter, orders shouted, conversations—is this a ship, sir, or a bedlam?”
“I am sorry for it, sir.”
Old Rumbleguts subsided a little.
“Very well, sir. You may proceed with your duties.”
Summers put his hat on and turned away. Captain Anderson went to the rail and peered down at the lighted binnacle.
“Mr Summers, she has drifted off half a point to the norrard.”
Summers ran to the after rail and spoke down to the boat idling under our stern.
“Williams, bring her stern across half a point to starboard and roundly!”
He turned back. My eyes were full of water. I was still dazed and my head ached confoundedly. A settled rage had converted me from any, dare I say, usual calculating attitude to one of wishing for nothing so much as the opportunity to vent it on someone physically! I glanced round and saw that the quarterdeck was full. Some of Oldmeadow’s men knelt by the larboard rail with muskets at the ready. I could just see that the waist was lined with men holding pikes to jab off any fool so thi
ck-witted as to climb into our netting. In fact the whole of the ship’s length on the larboard side was in a state of defence. I had the ridiculous thought that perhaps the nameless ship drifting inexorably towards us would after all approach from our starboard and completely defenceless side so that Captain Anderson would have to fire his great guns at nothing if he wished to be credited with an attempt at defence.
But Deverel was speaking or rather, since we were so near the captain, muttering in my ear.
“Now, old fellow, you’ll follow me close. You’ll have to scramble, d’you see? Wait till Oldmeadow’s men have fired though or you’ll get lead through you. Don’t forget your boots.”
“My boots, Jack?”
“Kick ’em in the balls, it’s as good as anything. Mind your own. Go low with the point! But it’ll be all over in seconds one way or another. Nobody goes on fighting—that’s only in books and the gazette.”
“The devil.”
“If you’re alive after one minute you’ll be a hero.”
“The devil.”
He turned from me as he spoke and whispered into the crowding men.
“Are you all ready?”
The answer was a kind of muted growl and with it there blew a thick waft of an aroma that came near to making me fall. It was rum and I made a mental note never to go into the commonest kind of danger without my hunting flask filled to the stopper. I was far, far too sober for this escapade, and the dullness of paregoric was fading.
“How d’you think it’ll go, Jack?”
He breathed in my ear. “Death or victory.”
I heard Summers speaking to the captain. “All is ready, sir.”
“Very good, Mr Summers.”
“Might I suggest that some heartening message should be passed among the various groups of men at their stations, sir?”
“Why, Mr Summers, they have had their rum!”
“Trafalgar, sir.”
“Oh well, Mr Summers, if you think it proper, have them reminded of the unforgettable signal.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And, Mr Summers.”
“Sir?”
“Remind them that with the way the war is going this may well be our last opportunity of prize money.”
Mr Summers touched his hat. The men on the quarterdeck clearly being seized of his information, he stepped down the ladder and disappeared in the gloom. I heard a succession of noises, that same muted growl spreading from the waist and then forrard to the fo’castle. Heroics and rum! The thought of that combination made me a little less of a madman and more aware of the silly position I had got myself into. Deverel, I knew, was the proper careless, dashing kind of fellow for such an enterprise. Besides, he was driven by the unquestionable fact that a gallant exploit would get him out of his difficulties. Even Captain Anderson would not be so mean-spirited as to proceed with the trial and punishment of a young officer who had led a desperate boarding party—but I, what had I to gain? All I had was everything to lose!
Then all reflection was banished from my mind. From out there in the darkness of the night and the mist there came the sound of a kind of whispering and multiplying creak. This was followed at once by a series of dull thumps.
Deverel muttered in my ear. “She has run out her guns!”
Silence again—and surely, a faint washing and rippling and splashing, as if some heavy object was being moved bodily sideways through the water, two bodies, two ships, we and they—There had been in Deverel’s voice the fierce anticipation of a beast of prey which hears its victim close! But I—all at once I was vividly aware that out there in the darkness the round muzzles of guns were pointed at me! I could not breathe. Then instantly I was blinded by a brilliant flash, not the dagger in my head, but out there in the darkness: and the flash was followed, no, surrounded, by the awful explosion of the gun—a kind of wide roar with a needle-point of instantaneity in it. The roar was like no peacetime salute. It rebounded awesomely from the very sky in a brazen replication which set me jerking and shuddering with excitement. The cutlass fell from my hand and must have clattered on the deck though I heard nothing through the sound of blood beating in my head. I scrabbled after the hilt but my right hand was frozen and would not open to pick it up or close on the grip. I had to use both hands, then staggered up again.
Captain Anderson was speaking and apparently addressing the sky.
“Aloft there!”
Young Mr Taylor answered from the rigging.
“All ready, sir. She missed us, sir.”
“That was a signal gun, you young fool!”
“Signal gun,” muttered Deverel, “that’s just what the Frogs would do to make us show ourselves. There’s still hope of a battle, my lads! Here she comes!”
Before my eyes the green after-image of the explosion was fading. I stared where Deverel was pointing with his sword. Like hills appearing through mists, or—but I cannot find a comparison. Like anything, the appearance of which is doubtful and gradual then suddenly and unquestionably there, the dark bulk of a huge vessel came into view. She was broadside on to us. Good God, I thought, and my knees trembled for all I could do—she is the same rate as L’Orient, 120 guns!
Then high up in her rigging, sparks appeared. Directly after, the sparks took fire, became three dazzling lights, two white lights with a red light between them. The lights danced and glared and smoked and spilled down drops and sparks that joined their own reflections in the water. I heard Taylor shouting something, then above my head but outboard there was an answering dazzle—two white lights and a blue one! A cascade of drops fell before me like blazing rain. I saw Deverel staring up from one set of lights to the other. His mouth was open, his eyes wide, face gaunt in the glare. Then with a shouted or perhaps screamed stream of imprecations, he struck his sword inches deep into our rail! Captain Anderson had been using a speaking trumpet but I had not heard what he said. A voice spoke from the other ship, a hollow voice through a speaking trumpet so that it seemed the man hung among the brilliant rain from all the lights.
“His Majesty’s frigate Alcyone, Captain Sir Henry Somerset, twenty-seven days out of Plymouth.”
Deverel’s sword remained fast in the rail. The poor fellow himself stood by it, his face in his hands. The isolated voice through the speaking trumpet went on.
“News, Captain Anderson, for you and your whole ship’s company. The war with the French is over. Boney is beat and abdicated. He is to be King of Elba. God save our gracious King and God save His Most Christian Majesty, King Lewis of France, the eighteenth of that name!”
(5)
The roar that followed these words was almost as extraordinary as the sound of the cannon shot! I saw Captain Anderson swing round and aim his speaking trumpet down into the waist but he might as well have had no voice.
Our ship was all filled with moving, and, yes, capering figures. Here and there lights were appearing as by magic though the signal flares had dropped one by one into the sea. Men were carrying lanterns up into the rigging of our ship. Someone was drawing the screens from our great stern lanterns. For the first time in my experience the poop and quarterdeck were irradiated by the powerful light of their oil lamps. Alcyone was moving closer and strangely enough was becoming smaller as she came. I saw that she was much of our length, though somewhat lower in the water. Summers was standing on our fo’castle and his mouth was opening and shutting but no sound could be heard. There was a petty officer or boatswain or the like roaring his head off with commands about ropes and fenders while an anonymous voice—could it be Billy Rogers?—was shouting for three times three so that huzzahs resounded endlessly to be answered from the deck of Alcyone! Now she was so close that I could distinguish beards and bald heads, black, brown, white faces, eyes and open mouths and grins by the hundred. It was a bedlam, and I, with light and noise and news near enough as mad as the others!
Then I knew that this was no conceit and I was mad indeed. Before ever a gangway was securely in pl
ace between the two ships, a man climbed up cleverly from her bulwark to ours. He was, he must be an hallucination! For it was Wheeler, that sly servant who had been lost overboard and drowned many days before—Wheeler who knew so much and contrived so much! It was the man himself, his once pale face blotched with the wounds of too much salt and sun, those two puffs of white hair still standing out on either side of his baldness. Now he was speaking to Summers and now he was turning, walking towards the quarterdeck where I still stood.
“Wheeler! Curse it, you was drowned!”
A strong convulsion shook the man. He said nothing, however, but stared at the cutlass in my right hand.
“Drowned! What the devil!”
“Allow me, sir.”
He took the cutlass out of my hand with a slight inclination of the head.
“But, Wheeler! This is—”
Once more, that convulsion.
“The life was too strong in me, sir. You are wounded, sir. I will bring water to your cabin.”
I was suddenly aware that my feet had been stuck in the same place and position for an age. It seemed they were embedded in the deck. My right hand was creased with the imprint of a hilt. My head, I discovered, was in a fearful state of pain and confusion. I was suddenly aware of what a figure I must present before so many new people and I hurried away to make myself as neat as possible. Peering into my small mirror I saw my face was indeed bloody and my hair matted. Wheeler brought water.
To the Ends of the Earth Page 26