The Continental Risque

by James Nelson

  ‘Hold up!’ Hackett shouted as the attackers once more fell on Tottenhill. ‘Hold up! Lieutenant!’ The men grabbed Tottenhill and held him as Hackett spoke.

  Biddlecomb stood, transfixed, and watched the scene.

  ‘Lieutenant, I thought you was with us, I thought you was a North Carolina man first and always! I just wanted you to be captain here, I just wanted to see an honorable gentleman in command, and not that Yankee bastard. This ain’t no mutiny, sir, we’re fighting for our rights, and once we gets ashore we can see it all made legal, and you appointed captain, but we have to get that Biddlecomb out of the way.’

  Tottenhill was silent. He stared up at Hackett, unmoving. And then his entire body seemed to relax and the hatred in his face was gone, as if mind and body together gave in to the man’s arguments. Biddlecomb wondered if Tottenhill was about to betray him, the final, complete betrayal. The men holding the lieutenant relaxed their grip as Tottenhill ceased to struggle against them.

  And then Tottenhill flung himself at Hackett, launched himself off the deck as if shot from a gun, screaming, ‘I’ll kill you!’ louder than one would have thought him able. And Hackett in turn cringed and dropped his cutlass, which fell clanging against the barrel of the gun on which he stood.

  He shrieked, a high, piercing scream, like a woman being stabbed to death, cutting through the din of the fight, the sound taking up where Tottenhill’s voice left off. All motion on the deck stopped. Men paused in the act of beating one another, and heads jerked toward the horrific sounds of the two men.

  Tottenhill snatched up the cutlass and like a flash in a priming pan he was up on the gun, slashing, but he was slashing at air. Hackett, just as fast, had turned and flung himself into the fore shrouds, scrambling aloft, shrieking continuously. Tottenhill flung the cutlass away and clambered after him, right at his heels. Fore and aft men straightened, disengaged from their fight and watched the two North Carolinians race aloft.

  Hackett reached the futtock shrouds and scrambled over them, up and out, just as Tottenhill came up below him. The lieutenant grabbed Hackett’s foot and pulled, jerking the seaman down as he clung to the futtocks in that awkward position, leaning backward under the foretop.

  ‘No! No!’ Hackett shouted, again and again in his high-pitched, hysterical voice as he tried to free his foot from Tottenhill’s grasp and Tottenhill in turn, tried to pull him from the rigging.

  Then Hackett pulled his other foot from the shrouds and hanging just from his hands kicked Tottenhill hard in the face, again and again, then jammed the heel of his shoe into the hand that held his other foot. Tottenhill released his grasp and sagged against the shrouds, and only his arm, entangled in the rigging, prevented him from plunging to the deck. Hackett’s feet found the ratlines once more, and he scrambled up over the edge of the foretop and into the topmast shrouds as Tottenhill, moving like a drunk, followed slowly behind.

  The Charlemagnes were silent, motionless, watching as Tottenhill pursued Hackett through the rig, dark shadows moving against the gray background of the foresails, illuminated in flashes by the distant battle in which no one was taking an interest.

  Hackett was halfway up the topmast shrouds when Tottenhill made his way over the edge of the foretop. Hackett’s movements were quick, jerky, panicked, in contrast to Tottenhill’s slow, deliberate, inexorable pursuit. It must have occurred to Hackett, Biddlecomb mused, that he would soon run out of mast. Soon there would be no place for him to go.

  Hackett reached the topmast crosstrees and paused, looking down at Tottenhill. ‘Get away from me! Get away from me, you son of a bitch, or I’ll kill you!’ he shrieked, but any threat he hoped to carry was lost in the unadulterated fear in his voice. And Tottenhill did not respond. He just continued to climb.

  The sound of Hackett’s voice broke the spell, for Biddlecomb at least. ‘Damn me!’ Biddlecomb said out loud. ‘Mr Faircloth! I want your marines to shoot that bastard Hackett! Shoot him down!’ And then as an afterthought he added, ‘And shoot any son of a bitch that tries to interfere with you!’ But it did not seem as if that would be a problem. No one on deck moved, no one took his eyes from the men aloft, save for the marines who were hastily loading their muskets.

  Hackett had stepped from the shrouds onto the fore topsail yard. He was walking along the top of the spar, one hand against the topgallant sail for balance, with the ease of an experienced topman, when the first musket banged out. Biddlecomb could see the hole that the bullet punched in the topgallant sail, ten feet from Hackett’s head. Another gun and then another fired, but none of the shots were any closer, and they did no more than hurry Hackett along to yardarm where he stopped and turned inboard. There was no place left to go.

  ‘Give me that, you cockeyed imbecile!’ Faircloth jerked a musket from one of the marine’s hands and brought the gun to his shoulder, training it aloft.

  ‘Hold your fire, Mr Faircloth!’ Biddlecomb shouted. Tottenhill had reached the yard and was walking out along its length, closing with Hackett. Faircloth was good with a musket, Biddlecomb knew that, but he did not want to take the chance of Tottenhill’s being hit or knocked from the yard by the impact of the bullet. Faircloth pointed the gun to the sky and eased the lock to half-cock.

  ‘Get away from me! Get the hell away from me!’ Hackett screamed. Tottenhill said something in return, but his words could not be heard from the deck. The lieutenant was advancing on Hackett. He pulled his clasp knife from his coat pocket and held it before him, the blade flashing in the light of the guns.

  Hackett had edged out to the end of the topsail yard, seventy feet above the water. His left foot was on the studdingsail boom, even beyond the extreme end of the yard, his right hand holding on to the leech of the topgallant sail for balance.

  He plunged his left hand into his shirt and pulled out a small pistol, aiming it with a straight arm at the lieutenant. Even over the distant fire the men on deck could hear the distinctive click of a flintlock pulled back into the firing position.

  ‘Hackett! No! Get back on deck this instant!’ Biddlecomb roared. Why had he just stood there, watching this happen? Because, he realized, he had assumed that Tottenhill would kill Hackett. It had not occurred to him that there would be any other outcome.

  ‘Hackett!’ he shouted again, and then the whole topgallant sail was illuminated by the flash of Hackett’s pistol, priming and powder. The two men seemed frozen like a painting, like an apparition: Hackett with gun held at arm’s length, Tottenhill, doubled over, hands on his chest, falling slowly against the sail, mouth open, eyes wide in horror.

  In the next instant the vision was gone, and before the report of the pistol had died, Faircloth’s musket banged out. Hackett was lifted off the yard like a crumpled paper in the wind. He fell slowly, twisting and shrieking, surrounded by a fine mist of his own blood.

  He hit the water flat on his stomach, sending up a great spray; not a neat jet of water like falling round shot, but something bigger and uglier than that. Biddlecomb, still perched on the bulwark, watched the churning, rippling spot on the still ocean to see if Hackett would surface.

  And then, ten feet from the spot, there was another splash, another great spray of water as Tottenhill plunged from the high yard. Biddlecomb gasped in surprise, nearly toppling backward to the deck. No one had seen the lieutenant fall.

  From behind him Biddlecomb heard Rumstick shout, ‘Hands to the boat falls! Come on, move it, you lazy bastards!’ and then the familiar, comforting sound of bare feet moving quickly to obey. Biddlecomb stared at the twin circles of water spreading out across the glassy surface of the sea, overlapping, pushing each other aside, reflecting the flash of gunfire in broken patterns.

  ‘Mr Rumstick!’ he shouted. ‘Belay that.’ There was no need for a boat. The two men in the water had not yet returned to the surface, and Biddlecomb knew that they never would.

  He looked up suddenly, some alarm in his head ringing out a signal of danger.

  The circumsta
nces of the battle, still raging half a cable away, were much altered now. The Alfred seemed to have regained some control; she was broadside to the Glasgow, just beyond the frigate’s larboard quarter, and both ships were still blazing away. The Cabot, crippled though she was, was off the Glasgow’s larboard quarter, giving back as best she could and getting the worst of the exchange. The Columbus had managed to find a breath of wind, had drawn up under the Glasgow’s stern, and was pouring fire into the frigate’s transom.

  And this Tyringham Howe, captain of the Glasgow, apparently had had enough. The frigate’s mainsail tumbled from the yard and was once more set, bellying slightly in the light air. The sheets were hauled aft and the frigate began to pull away from the Americans, all of whom were already astern of her. The Glasgow was fast, Biddlecomb well knew that, and the clumsy Americans would never be able to overhaul her.

  She was heading north, and that meant Newport and the rest of James Wallace’s fleet. And the only thing standing between the great victory of capturing a British frigate and the humiliation of her escape was the Charlemagne, and her small, bloodied, and mutinous crew.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Stern Chase

  ‘Listen here, you sons of bitches!’ Biddlecomb roared out at the men on the deck below where he stood. Battered and bloody faces turned from staring at that spot on the ocean where Tottenhill and Hackett had disappeared and looked up at him. He could see no anger, no rage, no bitterness, just forlorn resignation. They looked like galley slaves who had long ago stopped caring whether they lived or not.

  ‘The Glasgow is making for Newport, and she’s leaving the others in her wake. But she’s hurt bad, and we have a chance to stop her. If you hope to salvage any dignity for yourselves and this ship, and if you don’t want to hang for mutiny, you get to the guns now, man ’em and run ’em out.’

  He reached over to a marine who had positioned himself between the captain and the rioting men, grabbed the man’s musket, and took it from his hands. With great drama he opened the frizzen and checked the priming in the flashpan. There was none – the gun was not loaded – but Biddlecomb did not allow his expression to betray that fact. He clicked the frizzen back in place and cocked the lock. ‘And I’ll shoot the first bastard that even hesitates to obey my orders, is that clear? Now go!’

  And they went. And Biddlecomb was not surprised, not entirely. He had reckoned the odds were about even that his orders would be obeyed after the sobering sight of the chief mutineer plummeting, screaming and bleeding, from the topsail yard to be swallowed up by the pitiless ocean.

  ‘Mr Rumstick, you are first officer once more, I believe,’ he called out, his voice grim. A week before he would have been happy to see Rumstick back in that office no matter what the price, even one as high as that which had just been paid, but he no longer felt that way.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Rumstick replied.

  ‘How’s Weatherspoon?’

  ‘He’ll live.’

  ‘Good. Send him aft.’ Biddlecomb made his way around the smattering of bloody patches and wounded men back to the quarterdeck. The helmsmen still stood at the tiller where they had remained beyond the fray, unmoving, save for slight adjustments to the helm, exactly as they had been an hour before. They seemed as unreal as all of the other events that had taken place.

  He could not think on that now. He turned and looked past the bow. The Glasgow had already pulled away from the Americans, and being a fast ship and not loaded to the gunnels with pilfered military stores, she was quickly building her lead.

  The Cabot had taken an awful beating, and she lay motionless on the sea, her tattered and useless sails hanging from her yards. The Alfred, the Columbus, and the Andrew Doria, badly shot up as well, had fallen into the Glasgow’s wake and were doing their best to chase, an unimpressive best in that light air. But the Charlemagne was largely intact, save for her battered company, and as the helmsmen had obeyed Biddlecomb’s last order and kept her head northeast by north, she was in a good position to intercept the frigate.

  The Charlmagne could not stop the Glasgow by herself, but she could slow the frigate’s escape long enough for the big Americans to come up with her again. And if that meant running the brig right into the frigate’s bow, then Biddlecomb was determined that that was what he would do.

  And as far as he could see, that was what he would have to do.

  ‘Fall off,’ he said to the men at the tiller. ‘We’ll cross her bow.’

  The Glasgow was one hundred yards away when the Charlemagne turned across her path, sailing at a right angle to the oncoming frigate. From that position she could rake the big ship while the Glasgow in turn could hit back only with bow chasers, and those only sporadically.

  ‘Starboard battery, fire as you bear!’ Biddlecomb shouted. The men did not have to think now, indeed that was the last thing that he wanted. They just had to move like mechanized things, go through the motions that they had been drilled to perform. Rumstick was prowling the waist, walking from gun to gun to make certain they did just that.

  Number one gun went off with a brilliant flash, then number three and number five, down the line, blinding, deafening, as the Charlemagne sailed past the bow of the Glasgow, eighty yards away. The noise hurt Biddlecomb’s ears, and the pain felt good, as if his ship were alive again, a single fighting unity.

  The men at those guns that had fired were flinging themselves into the reloading. There was nothing sullen in their movements now; their training was taking over and pushing their anger and their despondency aside. He wondered if the gunfire was as cathartic for them as it was for him.

  Number seven gun, number nine gun. Biddlecomb could see the shots striking home, tearing sections of the frigate’s headrail away, leaving great gaps in her foresail and the fore topsail. He would come up again, close-hauled, and rake them once more, and then if need be, he would crash the Charlemagne into the Glasgow’s bow and hope he and his men could hold off the boarders until the Alfred and Columbus came up with them.

  Number eleven gun, number thirteen gun, and the starboard battery was finished. The forwardmost guns were already firing their second round, but in a moment they would be past the frigate and out of range. ‘Sail trimmers to stations, ready to brace for a larboard tack! Gunners to the larboard battery!’ Biddlecomb shouted, and the men ran – they ran, they did not shuffle – to obey. ‘Helmsman, full and bye!’

  The Charlemagne turned up into the light wind, turning her stern to the oncoming frigate. For a moment the two vessels were on the same course, as if the Charlemagne were leading the Glasgow north, but the brig continued to turn and slowly the larboard battery came to bear.

  Number two gun went off and a part of the Glasgow’s headrail plunged into the sea. Number four gun fired. Biddlecomb wondered how long the frigate would take this punishment before she fired back. And just as that thought came to him, the Glasgow’s starboard bow chaser went off. He heard the shot whistle overhead, passing through the Charlemagne’s rigging and apparently missing it all.

  Biddlecomb tore his eyes from the frigate and looked for the American fleet. They were already sagging farther behind, robbed of their air and held back by their own clumsy qualities and the damage the Glasgow had inflicted. There was no question about it now; he would have to run the Charlemagne into the frigate. There was no other way to stop her.

  ‘Steady up,’ Biddlecomb barked at the helmsmen, and the brig turned toward the frigate. ‘Good, steady as she goes.’ They were on a heading now that would still allow the Charlemagne’s guns to bear on the enemy. At the last moment he would put the helm hard over and run them aboard. It was foolhardy, bordering on suicidal, but it had to be done. One British frigate could not be allowed to defeat the entire American navy.

  He would not tell the Charlemagnes about this plan.

  ‘Frigate’s luffing up, sir,’ mumbled Weatherspoon, who, a moment before, had limped up to the quarterdeck to take his customary place beside and behind his captain
. He made that report at the same instant that Biddlecomb noticed the movement. The Charlemagne and the Glasgow had been closing on each other at nearly a right angle, but now the Glasgow was turning away from the brig, turning up into the wind. There was only one reason for it. She was bringing her broadside to bear.

  Biddlecomb turned to the helmsmen. ‘Luff up!’ If he held the course he was on, then the Charlemagne would be nearly bow-on to the frigate and the frigate’s great guns would sweep down the entire length of her deck. He had seen once before the carnage that that could create, he did not wish to see it again.

  The Charlemagne turned into the wind, matching the frigate’s course, broadside to broadside and fifty yards apart. Overhead the sails slatted and banged as the wind came forward of the beam. The remaining guns on the Charlemagne’s larboard side fired at once, four in all, while number two gun was running out again.

  ‘Wait for it—’ Biddlecomb muttered, staring at the frigate’s side and squeezing the hilt of his sword as he braced for the broadside.

  And then it came, twelve big guns at once, the long columns of flame reaching out through the night, the all too familiar sound of iron screaming through the air and the deck jarring underfoot with the impact of round shot.

  The Charlemagne’s number two gun barked out again, then number four. Biddlecomb stared at the Glasgow, trying to see if she was turning, if she was running out her guns or setting more sail, but he could see nothing beyond a vague shape behind the twelve yellow dots that swam in his vision.

  He blinked hard and looked down into the waist. As far as he could see, his men were working the guns like things possessed, loading and running out. But those puny six-pounders would not stop the frigate. He had to run the Charlemagne aboard her. It was the only way.

  ‘Sail trimmers, stand ready!’ he shouted, more to fill the seconds than anything. A minute more and it would be time to turn, to drive his ship into the enemy’s.