I think there is some good in most men, at least in those brought up among decent people, although some Englishmen seem to take pains to discourage Americans in that belief. To me Sir Arthur Ransome seemed to be such an Englishman; and I wondered where I could stow that green-faced nuisance before he offended my crew with one of his ill-considered remarks, and so got himself thrown overboard. Even as I did so he came to me, radiating offensiveness. “Look here, Nason,” he said, in that whiny voice of his that set my teeth on edge.
“Captain Nason to you,” I told him, feeling savage from anxiety as well as from the discomfort in my shoulder. “For God’s sake, hold your tongue till we’ve put ourselves in order!”
“Owl” he said, stiff and contemptuous, “Lady Ransome asked—”
“She’s not hurt?” I snapped, conscious that the very thought made the deck seem to lurch beneath me.
“She wishes to be of assistance to your surgeon in the cabin,” he said, staring at the clotted splotch on the shoulder of my shirt, so that I was reminded to put on my coat again. “I couldn’t myself: very squeamish stomach on the water.”
I thanked him as well as I was able. The cabin, I told him, was no place for a woman; and we could somehow make out by ourselves. I never had any doubt that Sir Arthur Ransome thought me a boor; and just then he was no doubt entirely right, though I tried to console myself by thinking he had never had to supervise the making of a preventer stempost and rudder.
The fog was growing steadily lighter. Directly overhead was a patch of blue sky. The cat’s-paws were steadying, so I knew we would soon have a breeze from the west. The boats were coming back from the wreckage of the Gorgon; and men were swarming in the rigging of the Chasseur like snails on eel grass. Her bowsprit was in place once more, though the bobstays and shrouds were not set up; a new foretopgallant yard had been swayed onto the cap, and the main-boom had been fished. I tried to make out Boyle through the glass but couldn’t find him.
Jeddy came over the side while we were reeving guys through the preventer stempost. “It was the Gorgon,” he said. “Those people from the Chasseur, they say they’ll make you King of Maine when we get home.”
“Well,” I told him, “I’d rather have their rudder, so we’d be sure of getting home. How many did you pick up?”
“Seventeen. The Chasseur’s boat got about thirty.”
“Any officers?”
“No; only seamen and petty officers.”
“Any wounded men?”
“No; they sank.”
“Is Boyle all right?” I asked him.
Jeddy looked at me thoughtfully. “They got hit pretty bad, I guess; but Boyle, he only got a bullet through that gray beaver of his.”
I think the thought of Rowlandson Drown lying on the deck came to both of us at the same time, because Jeddy coughed and cleared his throat and said we couldn’t all be lucky; then turned away quickly to attend to the Gorgon’s men.
A patch of sunlight showed on the water near us. Ripples lapped against our side, and it occurred to me that if my luck were what it should be, the fog would have held on and the breeze held off for another hour.
“How long, boys?” I asked the men rigging the tackles on the rudder.
One said twenty minutes; another an hour. A man screamed in the cabin, so I knew Jotham Carr must be taking off an arm or a leg. It came to me that he lacked practice in such matters: that it would be better for me to help him than to stand on deck with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. I had no more than started for the cabin when I saw the Chasseur wear to the north before a light westerly breeze. I thought Boyle was coming down to see what he could do for us, and I was wishful of seeing him; but it seemed strange he should wear to the north when we lay southwest of him.
I saw him crowd on his studding sails, holding steadily to his northerly course; and so rapidly did he leave us under this press of canvas that even while I gazed blankly after him, the figures on the Chasseurs quarter-deck faded to specks and then to pinpoints.
Jeddy came and stood beside me, looking after her. “Well—” he said. “Well—” And with that he launched into a string of curses that he never got out of any book, not even one of Tobias Smollett’s. It was in the midst of his cursing, when he had become so involved and fanciful that the men at work on the rudder sat back on their haunches to stare up at him, that the man at the masthead shouted “Sail!”
Jeddy stopped abruptly. The men flew at their work again. We made out the sail, far to the northward, beyond the Chasseur. I realized instantly that the Chasseur had seen it first and set off at once to intercept it; and I thought to myself that this is the way of it, often, when a friend seems to go off unfaithfully on other affairs, so that we curse him and soon thereafter lose him as a friend.
What the sail might be we couldn’t tell. It looked to me like a ponderous craft. I had my suspicions, and they were such as to give me an empty feeling in my stomach and a coppery taste in my mouth; for I had no desire that our cruise should end here in the gray waters of the Channel, with us caught like a rabbit lurching and squeaking in a trap.
I could see Boyle holding straight for the sail, and knew he would do what he could; but I also knew we must make a try at helping ourselves. If she should indeed be an enemy, as I suspected, she might turn off in pursuit of Boyle if only she could see us under way. It was this, I was sure, for which Boyle was hoping.
The hole in our mainmast had been fished, and a new topmast swayed up, fidded, and stayed; so that nothing stood between us and safety except our rudder. Due east, if my reckoning was good, lay the Island of Jersey, largest of the Channel Islands. With a light westerly breeze, provided we were able to maneuver, we could turn the Ransomes adrift close to the island and be safe on the Norman coast in the little harbor of Carteret or St. Germain-sur-Ay before sundown.
I thought about it; then called Jeddy and ’Lisha Lord to the quarter-deck. The Chasseur was hull down, but the strange sail, which she had not yet reached, showed the tops of her bulwarks above the water. We needed no word from the man at the masthead to tell us that a ship of this size must be a seventy-four—a ship-of-the-line; and since America had no war craft larger than a forty-four-gun frigate we knew she had to be a Britisher.
“Well,” I said, “we’ll try steering with the sweeps, unless somebody knows a better way. If we can keep before the wind for five minutes she may run off after Boyle.” They said nothing, but stood staring into the north. As we watched, the Chasseur hauled her wind and went off to the northwest, to windward of the seventy-four. We peered and peered, hoping to see the seventy-four go off on the same tack after her, though we knew no seventy-four ever built could sail half as fast as the Chasseur.
“Some of these seventy-four captains,” ’Lisha said, “they ain’t so bad. Either they’re moss-backed old pigs, not fit for eating or killing or anything else, or they know their business.”
There was a dull, distant thud, more of a throb in the air than a thud; then another; but the seventy-four came .straight on. ’Lisha grunted. “Threw a couple thirty-six pounders at random! He knows his business.”
“Get out the sweeps,” I told them. “Run ’em through the stem ports.”
We made sail and wore around. As we came before the wind the sweeps seemed almost to hold her steady. She got fresh way rapidly, held on her course for half a minute, then yawed suddenly to larboard.
“Starboard!” Jeddy bawled. The men at the sweeps pushed hard at them. The Lively Lady shivered a little, wallowed back toward her course, hung for a moment, then yawed again and broached to.
The seventy-four may have been three miles off; but so accurately was she pointed that if she kept on as she was, her stem would slice us neatly in two, unless we could take ourselves out of her path. The Chasseur had come about and shot past her to windward, and now wore across her bows once more. Boyle, we knew, was armed only with long twelves, whereas the seventy-four must carry thirty-six pounders or forty-two
pounders: consequently it was clear to us that there was nothing more for him to do. Yet he would not give up. He hove a shot at her as he passed her bows: then tacked twice in quick succession, letting off a gun each time, though he could no more hurt the lumbering hulk that surged contemptuously on her way than a woodpecker could hurt the side of a house.
Rowlandson Drown’s assistant had been a gangling young man from Quincy in Massachusetts, one James Combs. At Rowlandson’s death he had become ship’s carpenter; and it was he who straightened up from the rudder, shouting, “Get her over.” With ’Lisha Lord and Jeddy climbing around and among them like two inquisitive cats, the men put this rough machine overboard, then lashed the upper part of the preventer post to the brig’s stempost, and bolted the two together to keep the false stempost from rising up or falling down. There were men under the stem, working half submerged, with one or two entirely under water at times.
Seeing that his attempts were useless, evidently, Boyle had left the seventy-four and was coming down on us under a cloud of sail. Behind him the seventy-four, less than two miles distant, towered upward like an iceberg, glistening white and no less pitiless and dangerous.
The men worked at the tackles like figures in a nightmare, slower than anything I had ever seen; and I was so desirous of getting free of this enormous black-stemmed vessel and the triple fine of guns along its side that I was hard put to it to get enough air into my lungs. I stood silent, my hands clenched tight in my pockets and the nails biting into my palms. The machine was done at last, so that Jeddy set up a shout from larboard and ’Lisha from starboard.
With two men handling the larboard tackles and two the starboard tackles of our makeshift rudder, the Lively Lady wore slowly around. She made as though to yaw; then held steady and slipped more and more rapidly through the water, to the south, straight away from the seventy-four. She was a mile off by now, a tremendous big ship, making the Chasseur, close astem of us, look like a pilot boat. As we picked up speed she fired a gun. Jeddy laughed and waggled his fingers at his nose. “Growl, you black bitch!” he said; and indeed there was a look about her of a big black dog showing white teeth at us, in a rage at having a dinner snatched from her jaws.
The Chasseur came up under our lee, her crew swarming along her bulwarks and high on her ratlines, bawling and hurrooing at the top of their lungs, and waving their hats and hands until the whole brig seemed aflutter. Boyle was perched on his aftermost long gun, but his bell-topped beaver was not on his head, so that he did not make us one of his fine sweeping bows. Instead of that, he reached up his hands, tightly clasped together, and shook them at us without a word. It occurred to me he might be feeling the same tightness in his chest and throat that I felt—a tightness that came from knowing him to be safe and grateful for our help—and so be averse to attempting any speech.
He dragged out his gray silk handkerchief, blew his nose violently; then smiled and nodded at me. I thought he was about to say something; but even as I cupped my ear with my hand I saw him cast a quick glance at our foretopmast and stand staring at it, his mouth half open. At the same moment I saw the heads of all his crew swing upward as if drawn by one string, so that every eye on the Chasseur was fixed on our foretopmast.
I needed nothing more to know that we were done: not even the ripping, splintering crackle that followed immediately as our new foretopmast gave way two thirds below its head and toppled to leeward; nor yet the second crash following close on the heels of the first when the foremast, weakened no doubt by the break during the engagement and by this additional strain, broke off close to the deck.
A hissing groan went up from the decks of the Chasseur as she shot ahead of us, and as we veered around, dragged by the wreckage. There was a queer, absent-minded look on the faces of our crew and of Jeddy and ’Lisha as they stared at the wreck of the foremast, almost as though they watched a cat sleeping on the deck or some similarly harmless and familiar spectacle.
Boyle, I saw, intended to speak us once more. He came into the wind, then wore around, starting to circle us. The seventy-four, still a mile astern, lumbered relentlessly on her way. I turned my eyes from her, knowing I would see enough of her before the day was done.
“Work fast,” I told Jeddy. “Get out boarding axes and cut all rigging. Lower away the boats. Get the prisoners on deck and into the boats, and the wounded too.”
Boyle ran under our stem, his crew as silent and watchful as though we were strangers.
“Do anything!” I heard him shout. “Anything! Prisoners? Can I take prisoners? Any belongings? Can I take anybody? Anything?”
There was the least possible chance that one boatload of people had time to pass from us to the Chasseur.
I turned to look at the Bansomes and Captain Parker. There was a smug look about Parker and Sir Arthur, for which I could not blame them; but Lady Ransome’s face I could not see, because she was sitting on the deck, with Pinky still in her arms, and was too busy with him to notice me.
“No, indeed, thank you,” Sir Arthur said, in answer to my unspoken question, and I remember how mislikable I found his pronunciation of “thank you,” which was “think yaw.” “No, indeed! We’ll stay where we are!”
I waved to Boyle to go on. “Stand by,” I called to him, “until the Lively Lady’s gone. I don’t want her taken)”
Boyle nodded vigorously; the Chasseur slipped away into the south; and to me her departure seemed like that of an old, dear friend, so that my heart was like lead.
The seventy-four was close on us: no more than a half mile away. Our prisoners were on deck and our boats in the water, and Jotham Carr was seeing to bringing the wounded from the cabin. There was only one thing left to be done. Since I wished to be sure it was done, I warned Jeddy not to strike our colors till I returned; and with that I ran forward and down into the carpenter’s quarters.
There was an old roundabout jacket belonging to Rowlandson Drown lying on the bench, where he had dropped it less than ten minutes before he was killed. I picked it up and hung it on a nail and tried not to think about it as I poured varnish over the shavings and worked with my phosphorus bottle and a match to get a light.
The drenched shavings burst into flames with a roar, and I fled back on deck pursued by a blast of heat that singed my shirt. The seventy-four, hove-to at pistol-shot distance, was like a black cliff, bristling with guns. Her bulwarks, rigging and ports were a-swarm with men—as many as can be found in Arundel and Cape Porpus put together.
At the sight of me, Jeddy pulled down our colors with such eagerness that I knew the seventy-four had been threatening to throw a shot at us if it was not done speedily.
I looked around, but could see nothing else that needed doing. Lady Ransome sat in the stem of the longboat, still with Pinky in her arms. Beside her sat her husband, his blanket full of belongings at his feet. I sent them away; then shouted up to the gold epaulettes shining above the gaily painted taffrail that we were on fire and needed boats. After that, as well as I could for the growing heaviness in my head, I took my last look at the Lively Lady.
They wasted no time getting us aboard, for a burning privateer is no welcome neighbor to any ship. Knowing the customs of our captors, I thought they would put us in that stinking, three-foot-high den in the bows known as the cable tier, and leave us to rot in the dark on the slime-covered coils of the cable. I have no doubt that if this seventy-four had been one of the ships used for transporting American prisoners, we would have received the same inhuman treatment suffered by thousands of captured Americans during the war; but it had fallen to our lot to be taken by the Granicus, Captain Wise commanding, and this Captain Wise was as pleasant and as easy to be with as any of our own great captains. Why Decatur and Perry and Lawrence and Hull and MacDonough should be quiet, companionable, polite, pleasant, thoughtful men, and the greatest of our fighters to boot, and why our incompetents should have been selfish blusterers, I do not know; but that was the truth of it. The captains I have named wo
uld not, I have heard men say, permit their crews to be whipped for offenses, and this was also true of Wise; but throughout the entire British navy of more than eight hundred ships there was hardly an officer who would not tie up any member of his crew for the smallest infraction of discipline and see his back chopped into bleeding mincemeat. I say here, in no spirit of rancor, that British naval officers, taking them by and large, were more cruel and brutal than can possibly be realized by persons who are sheltered in peaceful homes, and sleep securely on soft beds under warm blankets; so to find myself in the hands of a man like Wise was as great a surprise as to drop a hook among a school of sculpins and catch a fat beefsteak.
We were paraded before him as soon as we were aboard. He stood at the quarter-deck rail, staring down at us, a thin, tall man, possibly fifty years of age. His hair was crinkly brown, heavily shot with gray; and he had a habit of half closing his eyes before he spoke, so that he seemed about to deliver himself of an angry remark.
“I’m told,” he said to us gruffly, “that the prisoners aboard your brig were well treated, and I’m a believer in turn about. I’ll therefore put you to lodge on the orlop deck, and you’ll be in charge of your own officers until you pass out of my control and into the hands of the Transport Office. I expect orderly conduct from you, even though I’ve heard that such a thing is seldom found where American seamen are concerned. Until I’m disabused you’ll receive the same rations issued to the people of this man-of-war.”
The Lively Lady Page 19