Those inside heard a tirade of French that meant nothing to them, followed by slurred but clear English, as John Pearce ordered away the imaginary mate of a captured East Indiaman. The last thing they heard, again incomprehensible, was Pearce assuring a couple of citoyens who had finally opened their shutters that it was nothing with which to concern themselves and that they should go back to bed. That done, he came back inside, to find the sentry trussed and gagged with the shreds of his own shirt. Michael was standing over him, the bayonet that had been on the man’s belt now in his hand, his powder horn and cartridge case over his shoulders. The only thing that had not changed were the Frenchman’s eyes, which were those of a fellow still convinced he was about to die.
‘We wait,’ Pearce insisted.
‘Why?’ demanded One Tooth.
‘Let those who looked out settle.’
Pearce stood by the open door for several minutes, the trembling returning as he wondered at his own audacity, while simultaneously questioning where the inspiration had come from to act as he did. When he was sure it was totally quiet he came inside and beckoned to One Tooth.
‘Michael will go ahead, and fetch the rest of our party. You should leave in small groups to keep the noise down, and no running for the noise will echo off the alley walls. It is down to the end and turn right for the quay, but stay in the dark until we are sure we can get a boat to take us out to the ship.’
One Tooth looked amazed. ‘You mean you ain’t yet got a boat?’
‘No, I dammed well have not,’ Pearce growled, looking round the assembled sailors, who were of all shapes and sizes. He was thinking that if they were like the man who appeared to lead them then he, like their mate, would be tempted to leave them behind. ‘Now, I want to know who are your fighters, because they are the ones that we will have to put aboard.’
‘You’ll be with us,’ said the round, pink-faced fellow called Dusty who had first come to the window. ‘And you is Navy.’
‘You know the ship, we don’t. We think there is somebody in the main cabin but we can’t be sure.’
‘All day,’ moaned One Tooth, ‘and that is all you’ve discovered.’
Pearce lost it then, and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt. ‘If you want to hang on to your last fang, mate, you will stow it.’
‘There you go again,’ said Michael, moving into separate them, ‘sounding like a tar.’ He had to stand foursquare before One Tooth, who looked set to take Pearce up on his offer of a scrap. ‘And don’t you go threatening to clout anybody. That, John-boy, is my job.’
One Tooth was no fool. Pearce he might be able to match but this Paddy towering over him was way too much of a handful. His whole body changed shape, the shoulders dropped and his head tipped, smiling to one side as he said, ‘We shouldn’t be a’squabblin’ boys. We’s in this together, is we not?’
‘Right, give us a layout of the ship, and let’s decide who is going to do what.’
Getting twenty-five men down the alley in what should have been silence tested Pearce’s patience even more. They sounded, to his sensitive ears, like a herd of bullocks that had found a hole in a fence and run for freedom. But they made the quay without incident or alarm and joined Michael and the others, whom he had brought into the darkness of the alley.
‘There was some shouting to the ship,’ said Taverner. ‘God knows what they were saying, but a boat has come in.’
A sudden noise made Pearce edge out, to see a group of four men stagger from the now-dark front of the tavern, two holding each other upright, the others looking in need of the same support. They lurched towards the water’s edge, occasionally stopping for a drunken exchange of insults, and lowered themselves with little skill into the small boat. A bored-looking oarsman sat hanging on to the sticks, looking balefully at his inebriated companions.
‘Did that fellow in the boat see you?’ he whispered to those behind him.
‘If he did,’ Taverner replied, ‘he paid us no heed.’
‘We didna try to hide,’ Dysart added, ‘like you said, we acted normal.’
The oarsman cast off with some difficulty, for his shipmates insisted on helping. They rowed noisily and aimlessly out into the midstream. Pearce could hear the sober one cursing his mates to let him row, but they paid no heed and it took an age for them to get to entry port on Lady Harrington, which they clattered into in a fashion that seemed designed to wake everyone aboard. The time they took to get on to the ship was even longer, took several attempts and just as many fallbacks, before they crawled on to the deck followed by the disgruntled fellow sent to fetch them.
‘Not every one of our foes is drunk,’ said Pearce.
‘We have to move swiftly,’ insisted One Tooth, ‘or we’ll forfeit the run of the tide.’
‘A minute or two more,’ said Pearce. ‘Let them get below.’
If it was a minute or two it seemed an eternity, one in which Pearce wondered why he was making all the decisions, a task he had assumed would cease once the crew of the Harrington gained freedom. But they were like his shipmates, quite happy to let him assume the responsibility. Why? Fear or habit, he could not tell, and decided right now it didn’t matter – if no one else had a clear purpose he did! Finally the French sailors and their drunken exchanges were no more, and the whole area was again silent. Pearce, feeling very vulnerable, with One Tooth behind him, moved out to the edge, looking at the ship and the water in between, but mostly at a pair of boats tied up to the side of the Indiaman.
‘That cutter by the entry port will do nicely to get us out of there,’ whispered One Tooth, pointing to the larger of the pair. ‘The jolly boat they just used is too small.’
Pearce pointed further down the estuary, to where the fishing fleet was gathered, some on lines that would allow them to be dragged in. ‘What about one of these fishing smacks, they’re tied to the shore.’
‘Too risky, mate! Lots of fisher folk will have a dog chained on board at night. That’s how they keep them secure and make sure no bugger steals ’em. Only have to set one of them barking and they’ll all be off, raising Cain and their owners. No, the cutter be best.’
‘Would I be right in thinking you can swim?’
‘Never in life, brother, water is mortal to mere flesh. Can’t any of your lot oblige?’
‘Well, I hope when we get aboard you damn well know how to sail a ship,’ Pearce growled.
Pearce was in the water in a minute, breasting out, the cold near heart-stopping in its intensity. Getting aboard the cutter proved impossible, the gunwales were too high out of the water and if he tried to lift himself he risked clattering noisily into the ship. Treading water, he tried to undo the painter, but the knot was too difficult. Hanging on with one hand, he got his knife out of his waistband. It took an age to slice through the rope, but it parted eventually. Lying back, he began to swim, towing the cutter very slowly behind him.
One Tooth was as grateful as ever. ‘Christ, you took your time.’
‘Shut up,’ Pearce snapped, as he stood up, water dripping from his clothing. ‘Just get in.’
The Harringtons took their places without talking. Pearce was followed by Charlie and Rufus, still carrying their cask of gunpowder. He helped Dysart aboard, took station in the prow with Michael and his musket and prepared to hand off the cutter when they reached the side of the ship.
‘Mr Burns, I want you first aboard, keeping a lookout. Get to the upper deck, and keep an eye on the cabin door.’
‘John-boy,’ said Michael. ‘Send Martin.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘If Martin wanted to betray us, he’s had all day to do it. He could do it now.’
‘Not if he wants to live.’
‘I will vouch for him.’
Both men looked at the boy, who was looking at Pearce, almost pleading to be trusted. Pearce nodded, then added, ‘Martin, you go with him.’
‘Jackets off, lads,’ hissed One Tooth, ‘and make fenders.’
/> Those not rowing obliged, removing their coats, rolling and draping them over one side of the cutter so that when it touched, side on, it did so in silence. Pearce took hold of a manrope on one edge of the entry port to hold it close, One Tooth the other. Martin, shoeless, was already gone, skipping over the side with ease and disappearing into the darkness of the deck, followed with more circumspection by Midshipman Burns. Slowly, too noisily for Pearce’s liking, the rest began to follow.
‘Rufus, Charlie, stay in the cutter with Dysart, and man the oars. If this goes wrong we might need this sod to get out of here.’
Pearce went aboard and joined a clutch of whispering sailors. One Tooth was sending some to find axes. They would go the hawser on the maindeck that held the Indiaman to the baulks, and, once the commotion started, cut the ship free regardless.
‘Two of you get yourself a place near the wheel, for once she’s free she might well run aground.’
‘Where can I get a weapon?’ asked Pearce.
‘Outside the main cabin, which is where we are headed, right after we’ve seen to the forepeak.’
Rocking on the gentle swell, ropes creaking and timbers working, the Lady Harrington made enough noise to cover the movement of twenty-odd barefoot souls as they went forward, One Tooth explaining to Pearce that the drunks should be berthed in what had been the original crew’s accommodation. The snores told him the man was right long before they reached the door. There was no point in asking where the Harringtons had got the belaying pins – they had them and used them. A series of heavy thuds induced silence in an area so familiar that they could work by sound alone.
Then they went forward, using the companionway to the upper deck, where they found Martin Dent and the two men allotted to the wheel lying just out of sight. Martin indicated to Pearce that he should have a look, and, raising his head above the level of the planking, he saw that the door of the cabin was ajar. There was light spilling out under the peak of the poop, though the bulkhead was in shadow, and the babble of conversation told him that there were a lot of people in there.
‘Martin, where’s Burns?’
‘Don’t know. He came aboard but that’s the last I saw of ’im.’
‘Damn that boy!’
‘Weapons were on the rack by the cabin door,’ hissed One Tooth.
Pearce thought of Brilliant and the pikes and weapons stored in various parts of the ship. ‘Locked?’
‘Course,’ One Tooth replied. ‘No master in his right mind would leave them undone.’
‘Keys?’
‘In the cabin, or they were. But we had ’em out to fight the Frogs.’
Michael came up beside Pearce and, nodding, aimed his loaded musket at the doorway. Crawling forward towards that yellow streak of light, Pearce realised he was trembling again – from fear or anticipation he did not know, but it was enough to make him stop for a moment, again assailed by the notion that he, who thought himself a talker rather than a doer, was not cut out for this.
Terror or desperation drove him on and he made the bulkhead in front of the cabin, then ran his hands along the wooden wall: too fast, for his hand dislodged a sword, not locked away as One Tooth supposed, but loose in its groove. The weapon clattered to the deck and the talk inside the cabin stopped abruptly. Pearce grabbed the sword by the blade – heavy and cold to the touch – and tried to scrabble away in silence towards the steps that led to the poop, just as a Frenchman came through the door, looking left and right and calling out enquiringly.
Pearce would never know if his attempt at concealment could have succeeded, because from below came a great thud, quickly followed by a second. He only found out later that the pair set to axe through the hawser, who had become impatient, had started on their task without an order to do so. It made no odds; to the men in that cabin the sound signalled danger, and a dozen of them, all armed, rushed on deck, one having the sense to let off a pistol into the air, the quickest way to give the general alarm.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Michael fired off his weapon inside the same second, and with a group to aim for he could not miss – a man groaned, spun away, and fell. Michael had the bayonet on the end of that weapon as well, but that still left One Tooth and his party unarmed against men with swords and pistols. Knife in one hand, heavy unwieldy cutlass in the other, Pearce had to attack them from the side, ghostly shapes illuminated by the moonlight, or standing in the streak of lantern light coming through the cabin door. Surprise won him a momentary advantage, and he managed to club more than slice at one fellow holding out and aiming a pistol. The hilt of the weapon served to chin another, and he could hear, as well as the continued thudding from below, a wild Irish yell as Michael O’Hagan came to his aid, musket out and blade aiming for the nearest body.
Pearce threw his knife to distract the man who wanted to shoot Michael, but not being a throwing weapon it hit him on the shoulder and clattered to the deck. It was sufficient to spoil his aim, though, and he missed with his shot, which went wide of Michael and lodged itself in one of the Harringtons, who fell back down the companionway. They were not coming on, One Tooth and his mates, which left both Pearce and Michael isolated. Martin Dent was made of better material – he had slid forward to catch hold of Pearce’s knife, and, back on his feet, staying low, was slicing away at any leg that came in range. The Irishman was jabbing away, the sheer fury of his action driving his opponents back. The sword Pearce was wielding was not one for elegance, nothing like the épées or light sabres he had learnt to use at his fencing lessons. This was more a bone-breaking club, heavy and damned difficult to use when the bearer was outnumbered. But he swung it above and around his head with gusto, trying at the same time to count the numbers he was fighting and the effect of that first warning pistol shot.
‘Harringtons, move,’ he yelled, ‘or we’re all done.’
There was a curious sensation of clarity. Even as he fought, Pearce seemed to be able to see in limited light where the next and most dangerous assault was coming from, to parry it or produce a blow that wounded the attacker; this at the same time as he was calling out for assistance – and that damned trembling sensation was gone now. He could also observe that his foes had exhausted their combustible weapons. Could not One Tooth and his mates realise this – that it was sword against anything they could muster, and that these Frenchmen were sluggish? The only two who appeared were Charlie Taverner and Rufus, armed with nothing more than belaying pins, but coming up behind those fighting their messmates and using their weapons to good effect. They created a bit of space, so Pearce was able to back up to the sword rack and grab another weapon. This he slid as hard as he could down the deck so that it lay beyond the fight, and Charlie, who had seen it pass, was quick enough to go for it, then get up just in time to stop another enemy braining Rufus with his pistol butt.
Pearce was grabbing as many swords as he could, in between parrying blows, chucking them overhead or under feet, and slowly, armed, the Harringtons emerged to engage in the fight. Pearce was aware that the thudding below had ceased, which meant that either their labours had been interrupted or the ship was free of the shore.
‘Martin, below! Find out what’s happening.’
The boy slipped away, not without a jab to the groin of one Frenchman that produced a high pain-filled scream. Now the attackers outnumbered the defenders. None too soon, for wielding that heavy cutlass had exhausted Pearce, and Michael had taken several blows and was much slower in his responses than he had been at the outset. The speed with which the fighting stopped had Pearce on his knees for the first time; he had lunged at a Frenchman only to avert his blade quickly as the man dropped his weapon and put his hands up high. He lifted his head to see Charlie Taverner, Rufus and One Tooth pushing those who had surrendered against the cabin bulkhead.
‘Get the swords still in the rack,’ he shouted.
‘The hawsers are cut,’ yelled Martin Dent, only his head showing at deck level.
‘You two,�
�� shouted One Tooth, pointing, ‘get on that bloody wheel. Two more in the bows to give us a course, and the rest get capstan bars to fend us past that damned Frenchman.’
A ball took the Harrington standing next to One Tooth, hitting him on the shoulder so that he spun round and dropped to the deck. Pearce looked to Michael to load his piece, but the Irishman had already done so, and had his musket aimed over the side to return fire to the shore. Others had picked up dropped pistols and were looking for the means to reload them.
‘Charlie, get Dysart out of the cutter, but leave it lashed on just in case.’ As Charlie moved he saw Rufus on his knees, head down, and ran to lift him. ‘Rufus, are you all right?’
‘Bugger booted me right in the balls,’ he said, lifting his head with a grimace of pain.
‘And there’s me thinkin’ you didn’t have any,’ Charlie hooted, as he moved away.
Following his gaze, Pearce found himself looking into a row of angry eyes. There were eight still on their feet, not all without wounds but too dangerous to leave to their own devices. Rope them! With what? Confine them! Where was secure? The solution flew in the face of everything his father had ever tried to teach him.
‘Get up, Rufus. Gather some men, and throw those bastards overboard.’
‘Axes?’ The shout came from the bows. ‘We’ve run foul of the French mainmast rigging.’
As men rushed forward, carrying swords rather than axes, Dysart appeared with Midshipman Burns in tow. They were just in time to see Rufus Dommet, with the aid of a Harrington, heaving the man who had kicked him over the side, his yell of alarm killed by the splash as he entered the water.
‘Anyone got a loaded pistol?’ Pearce called.
‘Me,’ a Harrington replied.
‘Give it here!’
Pearce took it, went to the Frenchman nearest the side, and in his own language with the pistol at his head, invited him to jump, the task made harder when a musket ball removed a piece of the bulwark right under his nose. Oddly enough that sped the men over, and splash followed splash until the deck was clear.
By the Mast Divided Page 41