‘What’s wrong?’ asked Cavan, snapping him out of his reverie.
Killigrew forced himself to smile. ‘Nothing. I was just thinking, that’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘Merely reflecting on human nature.’
‘Oh.’ Cavan shrugged.
The afternoon watch wore on. The ship’s bell tolled the half hours, marking the slow dragging of time, with a lifetime between each bell. Killigrew could see the tension etched in every line of Cavan’s young face, and at last he tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Relax. Put the slaver from your mind. A watched kettle never boils, and a watched slaver is never overhauled.’
‘That’s easy for you to say, sir. Dash it, how can you be so cool-headed at a time like this?’
‘A naval officer is cool-headed at all times, Mr Cavan. It’s a question of self-control. There’s an old Chinese proverb: Any man who would conquer the world must first conquer himself.’
The hands were clearing the deck for action by the time Killigrew emerged on to the quarter-deck just before four o’clock. The bedding stowed on deck was now draped over the rails to provide some protection against flying splinters in case the enemy opened fire on them.
The brig was less than a mile off the port bow and the Tisiphone continued to overhaul her. ‘Still no sign of any colours, sir,’ said Killigrew, eyeing the brig through the telescope.
‘All right,’ said Standish. ‘Let’s see if we can wake them up, eh? Fire a blank shot, Mr Jeal.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The gunner made his way to the bow-chaser on the forecastle.
One of the disadvantages of paddle-steamers was that the paddle-boxes on the sides took up so much space it was impossible to fit them with a broadside. To counteract this, the navy equipped them with bigger guns. The Tisiphone had three guns in all, two thirty-two-pounders and the bow-chaser in the forecastle: a sixty-eight-pound pivot gun.
A silence fell over the decks of the Tisiphone, just as if they were about to engage in a gunnery exercise. The gunner and his crew loaded the sixty-eight-pounder with a blank cartridge and primed it with a friction tube. They then raised it to its maximum elevation. The gunner’s mate took the lanyard in his hands while the gunner glanced back to where Standish stood on the quarter-deck.
Standish nodded.
‘Fire!’ ordered the gunner. His mate jerked back the lanyard and the sixty-eight-pounder boomed, belching a great mushroom of pale-grey smoke from its muzzle.
The brig ran an ensign up her jackstaff. ‘She’s showing her colours, sir,’ called the lookout.
‘Can you make them out?’
Killigrew already had the telescope raised to his eye. ‘Claiming to be a Yankee, sir.’
‘Don’t they all?’ sighed Standish.
The brig showed no signs of stopping. Within half an hour they were within six cables – two-thirds of a mile, just within the extreme range of the sixty-eight-pounder – of their quarry. ‘Ask Mr Jeal to give them a warning shot,’ Standish ordered Cavan.
‘Yes, sir. I mean, aye, aye, sir.’ The midshipman saluted and scurried the length of the deck to the forecastle.
The gunner and his crew sponged out the gun, loaded her with a cartridge and a sixty-eight-pound round shot, over eight inches in diameter. The gunner’s mate inserted a fresh priming, the crew aimed it at a spot in the water alongside the brig: they were too far away and at the wrong angle to fire the traditional shot across the bows. ‘Ready.’
‘Fire!’
The pivot gun boomed and the shot screeched through the air towards the brig. It ploughed into the water on the starboard side of the vessel. The message to the crew of the brig was clear: You are within range of our guns.
‘Is she heaving to?’ called Standish.
The lookout was silent for a moment as he peered through his telescope, waiting for some indication of the brig’s next move. ‘No, sir. She’s bearing away.’
The brig’s bows went about; she turned four points to starboard so that she ran south-west with the wind right astern.
‘Stay with her,’ ordered Standish.
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The quartermaster span the helm, mimicking the brig’s turn. But now the brig had the wind full abaft and the paddle-sloop began to fall astern.
‘That’s odd,’ remarked Killigrew.
Standish said nothing, refusing to give Killigrew the satisfaction of asking him what was odd and waiting for him to elaborate; but Killigrew knew how to play that game too, and it was Standish who broke first. ‘What is it?’ the commander asked with a sigh.
‘She must’ve known she could outpace us with the wind full abaft. Why not bear away the moment we gave chase?’
‘I really couldn’t say. Why don’t you ask her master when we catch her?’
‘Perhaps I shall.’ Killigrew snapped the telescope shut.
The gunner and his crew quickly reloaded the pivot gun and were ready to fire before the brig slipped out of range again. But there was no point in firing a warning shot – the brig already knew they were there – and a shot aimed at the vessel could only hit the hull at that range and risk killing any slaves on board.
‘We’re going to lose her, sir,’ prompted Killigrew, seeing Standish’s indecision.
‘I can see that! Tell Mr Muir to start up his engines. She can beat us with sails alone, but not with sails and steam.’
Killigrew crossed to the engine-room telegraph and signalled full speed ahead. If Standish had expected smoke to billow from the funnels and the paddle-wheels to start churning the water immediately, he was disappointed. After perhaps a minute, one of the greasy, grubby denizens of the engine room emerged on deck and tugged at his forelock. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but we’ll have steam up just as soon as we can,’ he announced in a thick Geordie accent.
‘What the devil’s the delay? Start the engines at once!’
‘Can’t start the engines with cold boilers,’ said the engineer.
‘We’ve got to light the fires in the furnaces and boil the water until we’ve got enough steam pressure, like.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Two hours maximum.’
‘Damned steam engines. More trouble than they’re worth. Just… just do your best, Mr Muir.’
They should have lost the brig then. But as soon as the vessel was two miles away, she changed back to a southerly course and the Tisiphone began to overhaul her once more. As soon as the paddle-sloop came within range, the brig ran before the wind and slipped away again. They went through this pantomime several times as the sun sank towards the horizon.
‘She’s leading us a merry dance,’ the Tisiphone’s second lieutenant remarked to Killigrew on one side of the quarterdeck, out of earshot of Commander Standish, in his aristocratic drawl. Lieutenant the Honourable Endymion Hartcliffe was the younger son of the Duke of Hartcliffe. A stout moonfaced man in his late twenties, he had a vague manner which belied the decisiveness and tenacity he could show when necessity demanded. ‘I’m inclined to think you were right, Killigrew: she is only a decoy.’
Killigrew nodded. ‘While the real slaver is getting further and further away, sir.’
‘We’d better catch them soon. It will be dark within an hour or two and they’ll easily give us the slip.’
Chapter 6
Breaking the Circle
The sun had just kissed the horizon when suddenly the engines’ valves hissed and the machinery clanked into life. The deck shuddered and vibrated beneath their feet and the paddle-wheels turned in the water, slowly at first but then with increasing speed, twenty revolutions a minute. The water beneath the paddle-boxes churned and the Tisiphone surged forwards.
From that moment it was all over. The brig turned to the south-west, but even with the wind full abaft and her sails drawing well, the moderate breeze meant she could manage no more than four knots to the Tisiphone’s eight. Within minutes the paddle-sloop was close enough to fire chain shot at th
e brig’s masts, and even as the gunner’s crew prepared to fire, the brig ran down her colours and hove to, backing her fore topsail while leaving her fore-and-aft sails set. The Tisiphone ranged alongside, stopped her engines and boxed her sails.
Standish called across to the brig – the name Leopardo was painted on the stern – and ordered the master to lower his sails and come on board at once.
‘No intende inglese.'
‘Parlez-vous français?’
‘No intende.’
‘No intende, no intende,’ Standish muttered irritably.
‘Would you like me to try, sir?’ offered Killigrew.
‘Don’t bother, Mr Killigrew. I’ll address them in the common tongue of the seas. Sergeant Rennie! Have your men fire at his jib halyard block.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The sergeant of marines saluted Standish and then turned to where his corporal and ten privates were arrayed on deck, resplendent in their scarlet coats and white crossbelts, their muskets already primed and loaded. ‘You heard the captain, lads. Present arms! Ready… take aim…’
‘Begging your pardon, Sarge,’ said the corporal. ‘But what’s…’
‘The block on the rope supporting the triangular sail at the front,’ hissed Standish.
‘I’ve got it,’ said the corporal, and he and his men levelled their muskets with more confidence.
Standish rolled his eyes. ‘I must have the only marines in the whole blasted regiment who don’t know a halyard from a hole in the ground,’ he sighed.
‘Fire!’ roared the sergeant. The eleven muskets boomed as one.
The rope above the halyard block parted and the jib collapsed and folded itself over the brig’s forecastle.
There was a polite round of applause from the seamen who stood idle on the Tisiphone’s deck. ‘Belay that!’ snapped the boatswain.
‘Oh-kay, oh-kay!’ the man on the brig called peevishly. ‘We give in!’
Standish raised his speaking trumpet to his lips once more. ‘May I congratulate you at the rapidity with which you have acquired a grasp of the English language?’
‘Go to Hell!’
Standish turned to the other officers on the quarter-deck. ‘Fluent, isn’t he?’
A boat was lowered from the clipper and a dozen of the sailors rowed across. Even as they were taken aboard and covered by the muskets of half a dozen marines, the Tisiphone lowered one of her cutters and Lieutenant Hartcliffe, Mate Tremaine, a dozen seamen and the rest of the marines rowed across to the Leopardo.
The leader of the men from the Leopardo brushed aside the muskets and marched straight on to the quarter-deck, heading for Standish. Killigrew quickly levelled his pepperbox at him.
The man stopped short and glared at Killigrew. He was only a couple of years older than the mate, a tall, heavily built man with dark hair and a Quaker’s beard, his upper lip clean-shaven. He wore a black frock coat and a low, round hat, his clothes dark and drab. Nearly everything about him screamed ‘Quaker’; the Society of Friends had been foremost amongst the slave trade in the first part of the previous century, until they had seen the light and become foremost in the fight for its abolition. But there was nothing Quaker-like about the eyes he now narrowed at Killigrew: they glittered menacingly in the twilight, as black and soulless as a shark’s, warning Killigrew not to underestimate him.
The man put one hand on the grip of his own pistol without drawing it from its holster. ‘Where I come from, mister, it’s not good manners to point a gun at a man unless you aim to use it.’ He spoke with the nasal twang of a New Englander.
‘I aim to use it all right, if you give me cause. Put your hands in the air.’
The man studied Killigrew, as if trying to gauge whether he really would use his gun. Something in Killigrew’s mien assured him that the mate was in earnest, for he raised his hands.
‘All right, Killigrew, that’s enough of that,’ snapped Standish.
The man turned to him. ‘You the captain?’
‘Yes. You’re the master of that brig?’
‘No. The captain’s resting in his cabin,’ the New Englander said with studied insolence. ‘I’m the chief mate.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Coffin. Eli Coffin.’
‘You’re from Nantucket?’ asked Killigrew.
‘What makes you say that?’
Killigrew shrugged. ‘Coffin’s a common name there. That’s not the sort of name one forgets in a hurry.’
‘It had better not be,’ growled Coffin. ‘What did this man say your name was? Killigrew? Well, I don’t aim to forget that name in a hurry, either.’ He turned back to Standish. ‘Now, mister, perhaps you’d care to tell me what you think you’re doing?’
‘I’d’ve thought that was pretty obvious. Stopping and searching you.’
‘It may have escaped your attention, friend, but that’s an American flag flying at our masthead. And these are American papers,’ he added, thrusting a sheaf at Standish.
The commander did not even glance at them. ‘Forged, I don’t doubt.’
Coffin grinned triumphantly. ‘Maybe a stiff letter from our State Department to your Foreign Office will convince you.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘Oh, you’d better. Because when my government hears that a British warship stopped a United States vessel engaged in its lawful business, then there’s going to be trouble. Your government’s going to be looking for a scapegoat to save them from an embarrassing diplomatic faux pas, and guess what, my friend? You just put your head in the noose.’
Hartcliffe and his men soon returned. ‘Not a trace of any slaves on board, sir.’
‘What?’
‘We searched the whole blessed ship, sir. No slaves, no shackles, no evidence at all, rot it.’
‘What did I tell you?’ demanded Coffin, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Then why did you run the moment you saw us? Why didn’t you heave to the moment we hailed you with a blank shot?’
‘We figured maybe you were pirates.’
‘Damn you, man! You could see our British ensign clear enough, couldn’t you?’
‘They could’ve been false colours.’ Still smirking, Coffin tucked his ship’s papers back inside his coat. ‘I hear that’s a common trick in these waters.’
‘There are no pirates in these waters, Mr Coffin. The Royal Navy sees to that.’
‘Is that so? And what do you call stopping and boarding a ship illegally using the threat of arms, if not piracy?’
‘If you return to your ship you’ll find nothing’s been removed or damaged, apart from the jib halyard,’ Standish said stiffly. ‘And we’ve wasted no more of your time than you have of ours.’
‘Good day to you, gentlemen. Your Admiralty will be hearing from our government in due course.’ Coffin nodded to his men, signalling for them to follow him back down to the Leopardo’s boat.
‘She’s a slaver, all right,’ said Standish, watching the boat row back to the brig. ‘And as for that insolent swine, he deserves a good flogging.’
‘It’d take a brave man to administer it,’ said Killigrew. ‘I’ve met some dangerous men in my time, but that one…’ He broke off as a shudder ran down his spine.
‘Stuff and nonsense. You can’t tell if someone’s dangerous or not just by talking to them for five minutes. Well, I suppose you’re gloating now, Mr Killigrew? Go on, then. Tell me you told me so.’
‘Gloating isn’t really my style, sir, but if you’re ordering me to…’
Standish turned his back on Killigrew. ‘You have the watch, Lord Hartcliffe.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hartcliffe was a good naval officer, and yet somehow he could never bring himself to say ‘aye, aye, sir’. Standish, who always became fawning and obsequious in the presence of nobility, even when they were his subordinates, was not going to argue.
‘I take my hat off to you, Mr Killigrew,’ said Hartcliffe when Standish had gone below. ‘You knew it wa
s a decoy, didn’t you? And now the real slaver is far beyond our reach,’ he sighed.
Killigrew rubbed his jaw and cast his eyes to leeward. ‘Not necessarily, sir.’
‘Face facts, Mr Killigrew. She has several hours’ start on us already…’
‘We have steam up. The wind’s been blowing a steady nor’-easter at about thirteen knots all day. The other ship can’t have gone more than forty-five miles, even if she was faster than the Leopardo. And she’ll have run south-west before the wind, to get clear of our patrols as quickly as possible. I’ll bet she’s no more than fifty miles west-nor’-west of us.’
‘That’s still a deuced big lead.’
‘My guess is that she’ll stay on that course for another two days. If we headed west-sou’-west at full steam I’ll wager we’d cross her path within seventeen hours.’
‘Assuming she set out from the same point we did, more or less.’
‘Why else would the Leopardo have gone to so much trouble to lead us on a wild-goose chase?’ asked Killigrew. He nodded to where the brig’s crew were taking their boat aboard and making sail once more. ‘The other ship must’ve been out of sight of us, but within sight of the Leopardo. That would put her right on the Guinea coast. The Leopardo must’ve signalled to her somehow, telling her to stay in port until she could draw us away.’
‘I don’t know, Killigrew. It’s a big ocean out there. It’d be like looking for a needle in a blessed haystack.’
‘We can narrow down our search. After all, we know roughly where she started out from, roughly where she was headed and roughly how fast she travelled.’
Killigrew of the Royal Navy Page 10