A Falcon Flies

by Wilbur Smith

  Satisfied, Mungo turned away, shot one glance over the stern to make sure that the gunboat was still falling away behind the limping clipper, then let his gaze linger a moment longer on the thick hawser that was secured to the port stern stanchions and ran through the fairlead to the bobbing whaler that Huron was dragging half a cable’s length astern. The whole complex arrangement of the wind and sails and drogue was critical and unstable, the slightest change might upset it. He decided he could not risk hoisting another square inch of canvas, nor could he send a party below to rig a jury tackle on the useless rudder until the fire was brought under control.

  He lit a cheroot, frowning with concentration over the simple and familiar task, and then he raised his eyes to look directly at Robyn for the first time since she had come up on deck.

  For a second they stared at each other, and then Robyn looked astern at the ugly little gunboat that was still plugging along after them.

  ‘I keep making the mistake of trusting you,’ Mungo said beside her.

  ‘I only made that mistake once – with you,’ she replied, and he inclined his head slightly, accepting the riposte.

  ‘How did you get into the steering gear,’ he began to enquire, then snapped his fingers irritably at his own oversight. ‘Of course, the inspection hatch. Yet, your ingenuity, Doctor, has been of no avail. Your friends still cannot hold us and as soon as it is dark, I will have the rudder cables repaired.’

  For the last minute Mungo had been studying her face, oblivious to the sea and the ship and the gale. He did not see the fresh squall racing down upon Huron.When it struck, there was no helmsman to hold her. She saw the flash of alarm in his eyes, the realization of danger. His voice, as he yelled an order down the length of the deck, had for the first time the crack of fear in it.

  ‘Get the sails off her, Mr Tippoo. Quick as you can!’

  For the squall had upset the nice balance of Huron’s drogue and sail. The ship lunged forward sharply, the long bellied length of cable trailing astern lifted itself above the broken surface of the sea, straightening and coming under such strain that the seawater spurted from the hemp cords in tiny feathery jets.

  The empty whaler, with her tarpaulin cover still lashed down over her in an attempt to keep her dry, was at that instant canted steeply over the crest of a breaking swell. The shattering impact transmitted by the taut cable to her bows pitched her forward and heaved her clear of the crest, so that for a moment she was airborne, like a leaping porpoise and then she struck bows first and was snatched below the surface.

  For an instant Huron staggered to the enormous increase in drag upon the trailing cable, and then the whaler disintegrated in a boiling flurry of white disturbed water. Her broken planking popped to the surface and the cable freed of its wearying weight flicked high in the air like the tail of an angry lioness. Without restraint, Huron gibed fiercely, spinning once more across the wind, and this time being blown flat, her tall bare masts swinging over almost parallel to the sea’s surface.

  The lee rail dug deeply into the sea, and the water came aboard her in a sweeping torrent, like a bursting dam wall.

  It caught Robyn and hurled her against Mungo St John’s chest; if it had not done so, she would have been carried overboard, but he caught her to him and held her as they were tumbled down the steeply canted deck – and then Huron was righting herself again, the water cascading off her in silver spouts.

  She wallowed helplessly, taking the gale-driven seas on her beam, her desperate rolling accentuated by the pendulum of her high bare masts, but at least that drenching wall of sea water had poured into her hull through every opening and had extinguished her fires on the instant.

  Mungo St John dragged Robyn by the wrist across the flooded deck, sloshing and slipping knee deep with loose tackle slithering and floating around them.

  At the break of the poop he stopped, both of them panting for breath, their clothing and hair streaming sea water, the deck heaving and dropping crazily under them so he had to cling to the weather rail for support. He stared across at Black Joke.

  The race was run. The gunboat was crowding down upon them exultantly, so close that he could see the cannon protruding from her open ports and the heads of the gunners above the bulwarks. Her challenging flag hoist still flew in her rigging, gaudy and gay as Christmas decorations. She would be up to the wallowing clipper in minutes, long before Mungo could ever hope to get his ship sailing again.

  Mungo shook the water from his sodden dark locks like a spaniel coming ashore, and he filled his lungs.

  ‘Mr O’Brien, a pair of slave cuffs here,’ he bellowed, and Robyn, who had never heard him raise his voice, was stunned by the volume of sound that came up out of that muscular chest. She was still dazed and confused as she felt the cold kiss of iron on her wrists.

  Mungo snapped the cuff on her left wrist, took two swift turns of chain around Huron’s rail and then snapped the second cuff on her right wrist.

  ‘I have no doubt your friends will be delighted to see you – in the cannon’s mouth,’ he told her, his face still set with anger, the rims of his nostrils white as bone china. He turned from her, running his fingers through his dark curls, throwing the hair back from his forehead and eyes.

  ‘Mr O’Brien, muskets and pistols to every hand. Run out the guns and load with ball, we’ll change to grape as the range closes.’ The mate shouted his orders as he ran, and the crew scattered from the futile task of attempting to bring the clipper under control. They stumbled across the wave-swept deck, dodging fallen and broken tackle, hurrying to arm themselves and to man Huron’s guns.

  ‘Mr Tippoo!’ Mungo’s voice cut through the cacophony of gale and shouted orders.

  ‘Captain Mungo!’

  ‘Bring up the first deck of slaves.’

  ‘We deep-sixing them?’ Tippoo asked, for he had served before under slave captains, who, when capture by a naval vessel was imminent, would deep-six their cargo of blackbirds, drop them overboard, chains and all, and rid themselves of the most damning evidence against them.

  ‘We’ll chain ’em to the weather rail, Mr Tippoo, with the woman.’ Mungo used neither Robyn’s title nor her name. ‘Make the limejuicer think a spell before he opens fire.’ And Tippoo let an explosive chuckle of laughter come bouncing up his throat as he bounded away on those thick bowed legs, to get the gratings off the main hatch.

  ‘Sir!’ Denham’s voice was incredulous, shocked. ‘Sir!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Denham,’ Clinton answered him quietly, without lowering his telescope. ‘I have seen it—’

  ‘But, sir, that’s Doctor Ballantyne—’

  ‘And black slaves.’ Ferris could hold his tongue no longer. ‘They’re chaining them to the rail.’

  ‘What manner of man is that Yankee!’ Denham burst out again.

  ‘A damned clever one,’ Clinton answered him quietly. He was watching the woman he had come to rescue through the glass. He could already recognize her features. Her eyes seemed too large for her deathly white face, her sodden and rumpled clothing stuck to her body. Through a rent in her blouse he could see the pale skin of her shoulder and upper arm gleaming with a pearl-like lustre in the sunlight.

  ‘Mr Denham,’ Clinton went on speaking. ‘Warn the crew that we will be receiving fire in about five minutes, and we will be unable to return it.’

  He watched the ranks of naked black slaves still coming up on to the clipper’s main deck and taking their place along the rail, their gaolers fussing about them, chivvying them into place and securing their chains.

  ‘We are fortunate in having a gale of wind, so we will be exposed to fire for a short period, but warn the men to lie flat upon the deck below the bulwark.’

  Black Joke’s fragile eggshell plating would give some protection at extreme range, but as they closed with the slave ship, he could expect even grape shot to penetrate their sides. One blessing, they would be spared the lethal flying splinters that were so much dreaded in wooden ships.r />
  ‘I am going to lay her alongside the Yankee’s stern,’ Clinton went on. That way she would be exposed to the clipper’s broadsides while the two ships were bound to each other. ‘But she stands taller than we do. I want your best men with the grappling irons, Mr Denham.’ Huron’s main deck was ten feet higher than the gunboat’s. There would be nice work ahead when they leapt the gap, and scrambled up Huron’s stern with its pronounced tumble home.

  ‘By God! She’s running out her guns. She means to fight us after all,’ Denham cut in, and then, penitently, ‘I beg your pardon, sir.’ He excused himself for the interruption and the blasphemy.

  Clinton lowered the telescope. They were so close now that he no longer needed it.

  The clipper had six light cannon on each side of her, mounted on the main deck. The barrels were almost twice as long as Black Joke’s own heavy carronades. However, the bore of the muzzles was much smaller in diameter, and as Clinton watched, they began to train around towards him, one at a time beginning at the stern.

  Even without the glass, Clinton could make out the tall lean figure in the plain blue jacket moving at a deceptively leisurely pace from one gun to the next, laying each of them personally, gesturing at the gun crews to strain on the tackles and traverse the long cannon on to their target.

  Clinton saw St John reach the bow gun and make a careful adjustment, working over it a few seconds longer than he had the others, and then he leapt to the clipper’s bulwark and balanced there with the assurance of an acrobat against the rudderless hull’s unpredictable movements.

  The scene engraved itself upon Clinton’s mind, it seemed so theatrical, like the cast of a stage production lined up at the end of the performance to receive the applause of the spectators. The file of naked black bodies, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with their arms extended in unison, like the trained chorus, their wrists locked to the teak rail by the slave cuffs. Then the principal, the figure of the woman, slim and somehow delicate and tiny in their midst. The bodice of her dress, a buttercup yellow, was a gay spot of colour that drew Clinton’s eye irresistibly. It was a distraction that he could not afford at this moment.

  The American seemed to be watching Clinton, seemed to have singled him out from the group of officers, and even across the wide stretch of water that still separated them, Clinton was aware of the mesmeric pull of those golden-flecked eyes, the eyes of a predator, a leopard perhaps, poised with a lithe and patient grace upon the bough above the waterhole, awaiting the moment when the prey moved beneath him.

  At the level of Mungo St John’s knees were the heads of his gun crews, little knots of pale tense faces, contrasting starkly with the quiescent rank of black slaves. They crouched over their weapons, and the long slim barrels were reduced to small dark circles as Clinton stared directly down the bores.

  There were men also in Huron’s rigging, roosting in the cross-trees of the yards and masts, and the long barrels of their muskets were clear to see against the backdrop of the wind-driven sky. They would be picked marksmen, Huron’s best, and their preferred and special target would be the small group of officers on the gunboat’s quarterdeck. Clinton hoped that the clipper’s wild action in the gale would throw out their aim.

  ‘Gentlemen, I advise you to take cover until we can bring the ship into action,’ he told Denham and Ferris quietly, and felt a little prick of pride when neither of them moved. It was the tradition of Drake and Nelson not to flinch from the coming storm of fire, and Clinton himself went on standing at his ease, hands clasped at the small of his back, calling a small adjustment to the helm as Black Joke drove in eagerly, the terrier going for the hold on the bull’s nose.

  He saw the American move his head, a final judgement of range, considered against the clipper’s rolling and beside him Ferris murmured the age-old blasphemy which Clinton this time could not find it in him to resent, for it was also a part of the great tradition.

  ‘For what we are about to receive—’ said Ferris, and as if he had heard the words, the American drew the sword from the scabbard on his belt, and raised it above his head. Involuntarily all three naval officers drew breath together and held it. Huron was at the bottom of her roll, her cannon pointing down into the sea close alongside, then she was coming up, the barrels rising – levelled, and the sword arm fell.

  The six cannon leaped together, in perfect concert, and the startling white gusts of smoke shot fifty feet from her sides, completely silent, for the sound had not reached them, and for a fleeting part of a second they could believe that Huron had not loosed her broadside.

  Then the very air beat in upon them, shocking the eardrums, seeming for a moment to suck their eyeballs from the sockets with the vast disruption of air caused by passing shot, and close above Clinton’s head a stay parted with a whiplash crack.

  That was one ball high, but under Clinton’s feet, the deck jumped with the multiple impact of ball into her, and the hull rang like the strokes of a gigantic brass gong.

  A single ball came through at deck level. It struck a burst of sparks from the steel hull, like Brocks fireworks at Crystal Palace, brilliant orange even in the strong sunlight, and the hole it tore through Black Joke’s plating was fringed with bare jagged tongues of metal like the petals of a silver sunflower.

  A seaman in striped vest and baggy canvas breeches, who was kneeling behind the bulwark, took the ball full in his chest.

  His severed limbs were strewn untidily across the gunboat’s spotless deck and the ball went on to strike the foot of Black Joke’s mast, shivering it like a tall tree struck by lightning, and tearing a long white splinter from the seasoned Norwegian pine. Then, with its force mainly spent the ball rolled the length of the deck, smoking and stinking of scorched metal until it thumped into the scuppers and rolled idly back and forth. Only then, seconds after the broadside struck, did the crash of the discharge reach their ears across the turbulent waters that separated the two vessels.

  ‘Not bad shooting for a Yankee,’ Ferris grudged them, raising his voice above the gun thunder, and Denham had his watch out and was timing how long it took for the clipper’s gun crews to reload.

  ‘Forty-five seconds,’ Denham intoned, ‘and not a single gun run out again. A bunch of fairground tinkers could do better.’

  Clinton found himself wondering if it was merely bravado, or complete indifference to danger and violent death which allowed the two younger officers to chat so casually, while the seaman’s severed arms still twitched on the deck, not twenty feet away.

  Clinton was afraid, afraid of death and afraid of failing in his duty and afraid of being seen to be afraid, but then he was older than they, for despite their manly airs Ferris was a boy and Denham barely twenty – so perhaps it was not courage but ignorance and lack of imagination.

  ‘Fifty-five seconds!’ Denham grunted scornfully, as the next ragged broadside crashed into Black Joke’s iron hull, and somebody started to scream below decks, a high mindless keening like steam from a kettle.

  ‘Send somebody to stop that fellow,’ Ferris murmured to the seaman who crouched nearby, and doubled over still the man hurried away. Seconds later the screaming stopped abruptly.

  ‘Good work,’ Ferris told the seaman as he took his place at the bulwark again.

  ‘Dead, sir, he is, poor devil.’

  Ferris nodded without change of expression, and moved closer to listen to his Captain.

  ‘Mr Denham, I am going to lead the boarding-party. You are to be ready to sheer off and leave us to it, should there be any danger to the ship—’ There was a sharp fluting sound, like the flight of a giant insect past their heads, and Clinton glanced up irritably. The marksmen in Huron’s rigging had opened fire, the pop of their muskets seemed muted and without menance. Studiedly Clinton ignored them and went on issuing his final orders, raising his voice to compete with the crash and roar of shot and the strike of it into the gunboat’s hull.

  As Clinton finished speaking, Denham blurted abruptl
y, ‘It’s hell not being able to reply.’ He was staring across at the clipper whose silhouette was blurred with a bank of pale gunsmoke that even the gale could not disperse rapidly enough. ‘It’s bad for the men,’ he corrected himself swiftly, and Clinton had his answer. Denham was afraid as he was, and the knowledge gave him no comfort at all. If only they could do something, anything, instead of having to stand here in the open and make studied conversation, while Black Joke tore across the last few hundred yards of white crested sea that still separated them.

  The crash of cannon shot tearing into Black Joke’s vitals was almost continuous now as the fastest gunners aboard Huron outstripped the others. The bow cannon that the American Captain was supervising and laying was firing three times to the other’s twice, Clinton had been counting the plumes of muzzle smoke, this would be the sixth ball they sent into the little gunboat since the American had given the order to fire as many minutes ago.

  He watched the gunsmoke bloom again from the cannon’s maw, and this time the gunboat’s deck was swept as if by hail stones, but leaden hail stones as big as ripe grapes that pierced the thin steel bulwarks with pricks of sunlight and clawed chunks of wood from the main deck, a deck that was now threaded with meandering scarlet snakes of blood and slick little puddles of it that spread from beneath the inert and crumpled figures that seemed to be scattered in purposeless profusion wherever Clinton looked.

  Black Joke was taking merciless punishment, perhaps already more than she could afford, but they were close now, very close, seconds only left to go.

  He could hear the cheering of the clipper’s gun crews, the terrified wailing of the slaves who were huddled down in pathetic little heaps upon Huron’s decks, he could clearly hear the rumble of the sixteen-pounders run out against the straining tackles, and hear the shouted commands of the gun captains.

  The girl at the rail still stood rigidly erect, staring white-faced across at him, and she had seen and recognized him now. She tried to raise a hand to wave a greeting, but the iron slave cuff on her wrist hampered the movement. As Clinton stepped forward the better to see her, something tugged sharply at the sleeve of his jacket and behind him Ferris gasped.