Larcum Mudge (Alexander Clay Series Book 8)
Page 18
‘Is that so?’ said Mudge, stepping back to examine the door. The two bolts were easy to find, and looked well-oiled. He considered the situation for a moment, then drew out his seaman’s knife. The honed edge of the blade was a line of fire in the lamplight. He checked the corridor was still empty, and heard muffled cries coming from the cockpit. Good, they may prove useful, he thought. He returned the knife to its sheath, swung the door open and slipped into the cell. He closed the door behind him, and stood with his back against it.
‘I bloody knew it were you, Tombstone,’ he said. The sailor started at the name, and then peered more closely at his visitor. Mudge hung the lamp from the beam overhead, so that the light shone on his face.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ exclaimed the prisoner. ‘Being stuck down in this cell must addle the mind, for me not to have marked that voice! Jack bleeding Broadbent, if I ain’t mistaken. How come you ain’t long gone, away to the South Seas on one of them Yankee whalers you was always banging on about? You been pressed?’
‘Nah, I went an’ volunteered.’
‘You did what? After all we done! Have you gone an’ lost your bleeding mind?’
‘Steady there, Tombstone, an’ I’ll have less of that “we”. I never did more than strike down Daniels.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ scoffed the prisoner. ‘Well, you be sure to tell the hangman that, when he comes for you. He’ll be all ears. So when did you join this here barky?’
‘Back home, like,’ explained Mudge. ‘Found me a nice little berth, with a captain as treats his people fair. Course I had no notion as to where the Griffin were bound. They was just back from foreign parts, so I reckoned she were due a nice quiet year in the Channel Fleet, or maybe a run to the Med. Enough time for word to blow over, any road. I damned near soiled myself when I found that I had picked the one ship as was to be sent straight back here, hunting after the old Peregrine.’
‘But what possessed you join the bleeding navy, for all love!’
‘I held it the last place the buggers would look for me,’ he explained.
‘Is that right,’ marvelled the prisoner. ‘You was always a deep one, but I never held you to have the pluck for that, Jack Broadbent.’
‘I left that name on the quayside, Tombstone. I be Larcum now. Larcum Mudge.’
His companion roared with laughter. ‘Larcum, bleeding Mudge!’ he spluttered. ‘What kind of name be that?’
‘A right good one, I think you’ll find,’ said Mudge. ‘You still go by John Graves?’
The prisoner spat to one side before answering. ‘I ain’t given the traps no names, nor aught else besides. You be the only man on board as knows me, not that that will serve me any.’ He raised a hand to his scar. ‘A cut like this marks a man plain enough, whatever daft name he might choose to hide behind.’
Mudge nodded at this, and there was quiet between the two men. The noise of the sea sloshing past the hull sounded from beyond the curved outer wall of the cell. From somewhere forward of them came the thump of the bow chasers firing.
‘Nice of ’ee to find the time to come an’ call on an old mate,’ said Graves. ‘What with a battle raging an’ all. Or were there some purpose behind it?’ Mudge watched the mutineer. The prisoner’s hard face was cross-lit by the glow of the lamp, making the puckered scar seem deeper. The eyes that looked back at him were every bit as fierce as he remembered them from that night in the Mona Passage. Fierce, but also holding a note of calculation in them, he decided. He inched his hand behind him, feeling for the reassurance of the knife that hung from his belt. Graves’s eyes flickered towards the movement, and a faint smile crossed his lips.
‘Ah, so we comes to it, at last,’ he said. ‘Not just a social call on poor old Tombstone, then, left down on the orlop with aught but rats for company. Why, I’d be kicking my heels, if they wasn’t clamped down so bleeding well. Go on then, Jack, or Larcum, or whatever. What were it as truly brought you here?’
‘Did you enjoy that night?’ demanded Mudge.
‘The one we killed that shit Daniels, you mean?’
‘I don’t give a damn for that one!’ snarled Mudge. ‘But what of the others? The nippers and the sick? Them Lobsters and the loyal hands as had done us no ill?’
‘I just done what needed doing,’ shrugged Graves. ‘We all swore to it.’
‘I never did.’
‘Aye, that’s right,’ said the prisoner, pointing at him. ‘You was too high and mighty to join hands with your shipmates. Or too shy, more like.’
‘That were because of all the other slaughter,’ snapped Mudge, his face growing red. ‘I wasn’t having no part of killing nippers, and the like.’
‘That be you all over, Jack Broadbent,’ scoffed Graves. ‘Happy to share in the feast, but having no truck with sweeping the tavern floor after!’
Mudge ripped his knife out, and leant over the prisoner, the blade glittering in the lamplight. ‘Just you listen here,’ he growled. ‘I shot that snivelling little shit O’Connell, for no more than looking like he were going to blab on me.’
‘That bleeding Irish fool!’ laughed Graves. ‘Where did you chance to come across him? On that Frog privateer he was idiot enough to join? You’ll find me a harder man to do over, damn your eyes!’
‘I can kill you, Graves, easy, for what you did that night. Right now!’ Mudge, stepping behind his victim, and hauled his head back by its pigtail.
‘I dare say you could, me being shackled and you with your blade an’ all, but it’ll be me as will be having the last laugh, in hell, where I’ll be waiting for you, Broadbent!’
‘How’d you figure that, then?’
‘I’m already a dead man!’ sneered Graves, looking up into his killer’s eyes, his throat exposed. ‘I been caught, you fool! Ain’t no ways as I be getting out of this. Go ahead! Save the hangman the bother. But you’ll be swinging straight ways after.’
‘Aye, ’cause you will fucking tell them about me if I don’t stick you, you bastard!’
‘No, that ain’t it,’ said Graves, the smile still playing on his lips. ‘Didn’t you say how a Lobster stopped you coming down here, with some nipper as had copped it?’
‘What of it?’ snarled Mudge.
‘Only I daresay he might recall you, when I be found murdered, and his Grunter wants to know who he let pass.’ Mudge released the pigtail, and stepped away in confusion, breathing heavily. He had screwed himself up to kill, and his pulse was still banging in his head as he pulled himself back from the ragged edge of violence. He looked at his knife and found the blade was trembling in the lamplight.
‘You are a stupid bleeding arse, Broadbent,’ said Graves, rubbing his throat. ‘Now fuck off back to your little battle, before they string you up for desertion.’
Mudge nodded weakly, and then stumbled from the cell.
‘Don’t forget to hang that light back up, and see you bolt me back in, good and proper,’ sneered the prisoner.
When the door was secured once more, Mudge looked back through the bars. ‘Ain’t you going to ask me to let you go free, or something,’ he said weakly.
‘Don’t you go fretting on my account,’ said Graves, tapping one temple with his forefinger. ‘I got my escape all worked out.’
‘How you going to do that then?’
‘Why, I shall be set free presently, by my new friends. You doesn’t really think this little ship has the beating of that Frog monster you be milling with?’
Chapter 11 Battle
Larcum Mudge came back up onto the main deck just as a shot from the Centaure’s stern chasers passed overhead with a sound like ripping canvas. He ducked down with his hands protecting his head as a severed line rattled down from above, coiling into a heap on the deck beside him. When he looked back up, he saw O’Malley waving him across, and he hurried over to take his place among the crew of the eighteen-pounder.
‘Where the feck have you been?’ demanded the Irishman. ‘Fletcher’s been raging fit to
burst.’
‘I … I only took Charlie down to the sawbones,’ said Mudge, forcing himself to think clearly.
‘Aye, but that was last fecking week!’ exclaimed O’Malley.
‘You be alright, Larcum mate?’ asked Trevan. ‘You looks all pale, like.’
‘Watch it lads,’ hissed Evans. ‘Here comes trouble.’
‘Good of you to bleeding join us, Admiral Mudge!’ roared the red-faced petty officer. ‘Has his lordship enjoyed a diverting turn around the lower deck?’
‘Sorry Mr Fletcher, only Mr Corbett needed me to help hold the lad down …’
‘Don’t you play me for a bleeding fool,’ warned Fletcher, leaning close. ‘You telling me that a sawbones with three assistants couldn’t tend to one nipper without you? You’re in a world of shit, once this is over. Deserting your post in the face of the enemy, that’s what you gone and done! Now get back to your station, and bleeding well stay there!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Mudge, his face contrite.
Clay had watched the sailor’s return, and the petty officer’s burst of rage that accompanied it, from his place at the rail. There he stood, aloof from the hurly-burly of the crowded main deck beneath him, watching on with Olympian detachment. He pondered the incident he had witnessed, wondering what had caused it, and then pushed it to the back of his mind. There would be time for such matters later, he told himself. He had quite enough to deal with staying clear of the dangerous opponent sailing a few cable lengths off the bow.
The chase had resumed while Mudge had been away. The Centaure was moving appreciably slower now. She had just lost the topgallant sail on her main mast, thanks to an astonishingly fortunate direct hit from one of the bow chasers. It had smashed clean through the yard, breaking a ten-foot length off from one side. Clay could see a cluster of men working aloft, trying to secure the broken yard as it thrashed around, causing yet more damage to the rigging. The sails beneath that one and on the foremast were all still drawing, but wherever he looked he saw trailing cables and ragged holes punched through canvas. Her mizzen was reduced to just the thick lower section, with a jutting stump marking where the upper mast had once been. The wreck of that had been cut free some time ago, falling in an avalanche of debris into the sea alongside. Looking behind him he could see the mass of flotsam bobbing in the Griffin’s wake. Just beyond that was the Stirling and the Daring. Both ships were hull up, with every sail set as they thrashed along. The distance between them and the Griffin was shrinking all the time.
‘Sir! Sir!’ warned Armstrong beside him. ‘Mr Preston is signalling.’
Clay spun around and saw the lieutenant standing at his post on the forecastle. This time he was waving his hat to the left. Clay focused beyond the frigate’s bowsprit at the battered stern of the French ship. The rudder was only slightly over, pushing the Centaure into a long, gentle curve. As he watched, the Frenchman’s stern chasers fired again, and a fresh hole appeared in the frigate’s foretopsail.
‘What are they about, I wonder,’ mused Clay. ‘Not seeking to bringing us under their guns, I think, with such a leisurely turn. We had best follow them around, Mr Armstrong.’
‘I declare they may be making for Pointe-à-Pitre, sir,’ said the ship’s sailing master. ‘Returning to port to effect repairs, perhaps? You can mark where the island lies, over there.’
Nothing could be seen of Guadeloupe itself this far out to sea, but a cluster of white clouds on the far horizon marked where the island lay. The sweeping turn ended with the Frenchman’s bow pointing directly towards the clouds. The Griffin’s bow chasers fired once more, and Clay watched as one of the French sailors working aloft was knocked from his hold by the passage of the shot. The tiny figure tumbled through the air as he sped towards the stone-hard deck beneath, thrown this way and that by the rigging before vanishing behind a tattered sail.
‘Heading home, with their tail between their legs, you think Jacob?’ resumed Clay, wrenching his gaze away from the place where the poor seaman had vanished.
‘Yes, sir. Can you blame them?’
‘How far off is Guadeloupe?’ he asked.
‘Every part of thirty miles, sir,’ replied Armstrong. ‘It will be after sunset by the time they reach it.’
The two men turned to look at the chasing ships behind them, estimating the distance.
‘Three hours?’ suggested Clay. The American rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
‘A little less, I should say,’ he offered. ‘Especially as we should be able to wound the enemy’s rigging further.’
‘Time enough for us to let the gun crews stand down for a while and have a bite to eat,’ said Clay. ‘No question of lighting the galley, while French shot continues to arrive on board. Some cheese and ship’s biscuit will have to answer.’ He turned and beckoned over one of the midshipmen standing by the wheel.
*****
By the time that the last of the gun crews had returned to their posts, wiping their mouths as they crossed the deck, the tropical sun was past its zenith and had begun its long descent into the west. It still shone fiercely on the crew, who had been active since just after dawn. They had spent long hours manoeuvring their frigate across the azure water, hitting their opponent again and again. There had been lengthy queues at the scuttlebutts as the men had drunk their fill, and Clay had been surprised how thirsty he was, draining the jug of watered wine that Harte had brought for him in moments. He felt weary with the tension of the day, but he steeled himself for one more effort.
The crews of the two bow chasers had just been changed, and the rate of their steady bombardment of the Centaure had picked up. They fired again as he looked, sending another pair of little nine-pounder balls fluttering through the tattered rigging of their opponent. They were tiny spheres when compared with the frigate’s main armament, or the huge shot spat out by the big carronades that lined the sides of the quarterdeck, but little by little, remorseless hour after remorseless hour, they had done as much damage as the half dozen broadsides that Blake’s crews had managed to fire. High in the French ship’s masts there was a splintering crack, and another yard hung down, the sail it supported blowing free.
But the wreck of the French ship’s sails had come at some cost to the frigate. While the enemy’s fire had been far less effective, over time it too was starting to tell. The frigate’s big foretopsail had half a dozen ragged holes in it, and Harrison’s men were all aloft repairing cut lines. The Griffin’s bow was scarred and battered, and the bowsprit bore a strip of naked wood where a glancing blow had torn away a large section. The surgeon had treated several casualties, but on the whole Clay was content. When the time came to close with the enemy, his ship would be in almost as good a fighting trim as it had been when he had awoken that morning. Then he gulped nervously as he realised that the same would be true of the Centaure. Although her masts and rigging were in a shocking state, that huge hull with its double row of massive cannon had been largely untouched by the frigate’s fire. As the two bow chasers reloaded, a fountain of water lifted up from just beside the enemy’s stern. Clay looked around in confusion.
‘The flagship has opened fire, sir,’ explained Armstrong. ‘With her bow chasers.’
Clay was surprised to see how close the other two ships had come. He had been focused so intently on the enemy ahead that he had almost forgotten the friendly ships behind. The Stirling was leading, a creaming bow wave beneath her beakhead. Her hull was almost as high out of the water as the Centaure’s, and she had every one of her double row of cannon run out, but there the comparison ended. The sixty-four was a good third shorter, and her beam was barely wider than the Griffin’s. Sir George would need all the help Clay could give him to win this battle.
‘The admiral is signalling, sir!’ announced Midshipman Russell. A line of flags fluttered out high on the Stirling’s mast.
‘Daring’s number, sir,’ reported Russell, coming over with his signalling slate. “Engage enemy from astern”.’
‘Daring has acknowledged, sir,’ announced the midshipman. The little sloop pulled out from behind the flagship and came on in fine style. Clay could see points of scarlet in the sunshine as some of her marines climbed aloft.
‘Our number now, sir!’ announced the midshipman, writing quickly. ‘“Flag to Griffin, engage enemy from leeward side”.’
‘Acknowledge, if you please, Mr Russell,’ said Clay. ‘Mr Todd. Give Mr Preston my compliments. He is to order his bow chasers to shift their aim to the enemy hull, after which he can re-join me on the quarterdeck.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the youngster.
‘Steer a point off to leeward, if you please, Mr Armstrong.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Clay next called down onto the main deck. ‘Mr Blake?’ Along both sides of the ship the gun crews quietly stopped what they were doing.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the lieutenant, stepping out from beneath the quarterdeck, and looking back up at him, a single face among a sea of listening men.
‘We shall presently be going into action proper,’ he said. ‘Your mark is to be her hull from now. You should be able to land a few broadsides into her quarter as we approach, then we shall range up alongside. Fire swift and true, and all will be well.’
A growl rose up from the crews, and several rammers were brandished aloft.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Blake, with a grin. ‘The men will not be found wanting.’
*****
Guadeloupe had just risen over the horizon, her highest peaks a jagged silhouette, breaking the perfect deep blue line where the sea met the sky. The sun was perhaps halfway to the horizon, low enough to cast black shadows on the water from the four ships as they sailed across it. The Centaure led, her huge main and foremasts looking odd and unbalanced compared with the stump of her mizzen. She had given up altogether with trying to manoeuvre. Her tattered sails and creaking rigging were too fragile for anything bold. Safety lay ahead, and she made her way towards it as swiftly as she could. If her pursuers wanted to stop her, they would need to brave the eighty big guns that studded her sides.