by Jay Worrall
Charles cut him off. “If you don’t like it, you can bloody well complain to the Admiralty. In the meantime, if we don’t get some goddamned steerage soon, none of us will live to see England again. Take your men to the fucking tiller room.” The lieutenant stared at him wide-eyed for an instant, then nodded, collected his men, and marched them off in the direction of the aft ladderway.
Out of the corner of his eye, Charles noticed another Spanish three-decker edging around from behind the San Nicolás’s bow for a clear shot at the Argonaut. My God, when will it stop? He recognized her as the San Josef, 112 guns. She towered over the San Nicolás and from the Argonaut looked like a mountain, masts seemingly reaching to the clouds. She was about halfway clear when her forward guns fired. The roundshot and grape ripped through the marching marines. The young marine lieutenant died instantly along with about half of his charges.
The mizzenmast, already much weakened, snapped with a loud crack at deck level and came crashing forward, braces, stays, yards, blocks, tackle, and all. Charles barely had a chance to duck before something heavy and solid swung down on the end of a rope and hit him a glancing blow to the side of his head. In a stunning blaze of pain, he dropped like deadweight to the deck. Instinctively, he scrambled to his feet on unsteady legs, tripped over a line, and fell again. The second time he gingerly pushed himself to a sitting position, where he struggled to penetrate the wool that seemed to have filled his brain. The huge San Josef was nearly clear, looming over Argonaut’s stern—beautiful, terrifying, and ready to finish off his crippled ship.
Charles stared, holding his breath as one by one the three decks of cannon were run out. He vaguely noted that San Josef ’s mizzenchains had fouled themselves on the San Nicolás’s catheads by the bow. It hardly mattered. In an instant she would unleash at least fifty guns, including the thirty-six-pounders on her lower deck, and blast the beaten Argonaut to matchwood. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest and his hands began to shake uncontrollably. After a moment that seemed unending he exhaled and then breathed in again. He waited. Inexplicably, the massive thing neither fired nor moved nor even attempted to free herself from her sister. There was a brief commotion on her upper deck and what sounded like musket shots, but he couldn’t see what it was. Then San Josef hauled down her colors. Charles stared, dumbfounded. After a moment a slight figure in a British naval commodore’s uniform appeared at the quarterdeck railing, yelled something Charles couldn’t make out, and waved his hat.
Charles struggled to stand, but it took too much effort. He eased himself back down, wiped clear some blood that had run into his eye, and waved back.
TWO
CHARLES TRIED TO WILL HIS SENSES TO WORK. A THROBBING, splitting pain burned in the left side of his head above the temple, and for an instant he wondered if he were dead or alive. Had he really seen a British naval officer at the railing of the San Josef, or had he imagined it? There was no one there now. He had to be alive; it wouldn’t hurt so badly if he were dead. At least he didn’t think so.
In stages he became aware of the increasingly distant and isolated exchanges of cannon fire as at least some British warships pursued the scattered rear of the fleeing Spanish fleet. So he was alive and the commander of the Argonaut, or what remained of her. He tried to guess at the damage the ship had sustained. That she had been cruelly battered there was no question. Not a mast was standing, and he sensed from the sluggish way she rolled that she had taken on a great deal of water. Christ, his head hurt!
“Well, this is a fine way to spend St. Valentine’s Day,” Daniel Bevan’s familiar voice sounded behind him. “Decided to sit down and take the rest of the day off, I see.”
Charles half-turned and smiled thinly at his friend. The movement brought a fresh stab of pain. He tentatively raised a hand to the area just above his ear to feel for the wound. “How bad is it? The ship, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s bad, very bad, Charlie,” Bevan said, kneeling beside him. He brushed Charles’s hand away and with both of his own carefully tilted his head to examine the injury. “We’re dismasted, without steerage, and sinking. But look at the bright side; it could be worse.”
“How? Ow!” Charles chirped. It felt like Bevan was poking at the side of his temple with a boarding pike.
“Hold still, you sissy. It would be worse if we’d already sunk, of course. Then you’d have to learn how to swim.” Bevan released Charles’s head and stood. “You’ll live to fight another day, Charlie. The Admiralty will be awfully sorry to hear it, though.”
Charles began shaking again, partly as a reaction to the intensity of the battle and partly from the cold that seemed to seep into his bones. Bevan removed his uniform jacket and draped it around his friend’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said, pulling Charles to his feet. “The admiral may come to visit, and we can’t have him find you sitting on your duff, bleeding all over the deck. It ain’t professional.” Charles stood unsteadily and leaned on Bevan’s broad shoulders for support. The tangled remains of the nearly destroyed ship were more evident from an upright position—his ship. He was responsible. “Oh, Lord,” he muttered, “the navy’s going to have my arse for this.”
“No, they’re not,” Bevan said earnestly. “You’ll be a hero. The navy always loves a long butcher’s bill. Shows you take your work seriously.” He led Charles over to a raised hatch cover and helped him sit on it. “All right, Charlie, you stay here. I’m going to fetch someone to come and fix you up.”
“Wait.” Charles grabbed Bevan’s arm. “How many?”
“Don’t know yet; we still have to count. The numbers will be high, though. But that’s what happens when you throw a tiny sixty-four in front of the whole Spanish navy.” Bevan gently pulled himself away and left to find someone to fetch the ship’s surgeon. Charles watched a party of sailors forward attempting to rig shearlegs so they might sway up a spar and lash it as a jury replacement to the stump of the former foremast. The midshipman he had left in charge of the gundecks—Winchester something, he remembered—seemed to be directing the effort. He noted that the younger man was working alongside the seamen, even grabbing a line and heaving on it himself. Most officers, especially midshipmen, relied on orders backed up by very real threats of punishment to get the men to do their duty. His attention was diverted as parties of crewmen appeared here and there, clearing wreckage and starting repairs. Four marines, probably all that were left, systematically moved across the deck from one body to the next, separating the dead from the still living. Some they dragged unceremoniously to a central location midships; others they lifted onto litters and carried below. He could hear the incessant clanking of the ship’s pumps as they labored to keep the Argonaut from sinking.
After a short time Bevan reappeared with the surgeon, a grizzled figure with a deeply veined nose, and an equally dissolute assistant who doubled as the ship’s barber. They wore long aprons, now far more red than white, and their hands and arms were likewise splattered with fresh blood. Both men smelled strongly of rum, and Charles had a clear idea of what they were doing while the battle was in progress.
“This won’t hurt a bit, sir,” the surgeon said, roughly tilting Charles’s head to the side and sponging a dank, vile liquid that stung like fire over his wound. “Hold still, you’ve got a nasty cut there.” The assistant produced a mug of frothy shaving soap and a straight-edged razor. He tilted Charles as far over to the side as he would go without falling, daubed soap liberally from ear to crown and into one eye, and began scraping at Charles’s temple with the blade.
From this position Charles heard Bevan say, “Look bright, Charlie. We have visitors.” Charles opened his unsoaped eye, and, from his position bent double sideways, he saw the ship of the line Excellent heave to and back her sails on the Argonaut’s lee side. Her gig was already in the water and pulling across. Charles recognized the gray-haired, slightly rotund form of Cuthbert Collingwood, the Excellent’s captain, in the bows. Collingwood was a senior post captain wi
th a long and distinguished record. Bevan quickly left to greet him.
“Let me up, damn it,” Charles demanded. “I can’t see anyone like this.”
“It’ll be just a minute longer, sir; not half a minute,” the surgeon replied, forcing Charles’s head lower still. “All we have to do is sew you up. Don’t you worry, you won’t feel nothing.” The stab of a very large, very dull needle into the flesh on the side of his head would have made him jump if the barber/surgeon’s mate hadn’t anticipated it by clamping Charles in a headlock. “God damn, you whoreson sodomite, let me up!” he demanded, to no avail. He heard more than saw (“Keep your head down, you puppy, we’re almost there.”) Captain Collingwood come aboard and bellow, “Who’s in charge here? Where’s Captain Wood?”
“Captain Wood is dead, sir,” Bevan’s voice answered smartly. “Lieutenant Edgemont is in command. This way if you please.”
“Please, let me up,” Charles begged. He saw Collingwood’s shoes and white-stockinged legs in front of him. “No, no, stay as you are, sir,” he heard Collingwood say warmly. “Don’t even think about moving on my account. I only came to convey my compliments on your stand against the Spaniards, sir, my very best compliments. Truly a heroic stand. Our success in arms today is due in no small measure to you. And your health, sir, are you badly injured?”
“He’s as fit as a fiddle, sir,” the surgeon answered. “Only a scratch. Be as frisky as a newborned colt tomorrow. That is, if the mortification don’t set in. You mark my words.” He jerked a final knot in the sutures, nodding to his assistant to release his hold. Charles straightened and shot the two of them a killing look. Then he turned to Collingwood. “You are too kind, sir,” he managed, half-rising. “I, we, were only doing our duty. We had no choice.”
“Sit, sit,” Collingwood said, motioning impatiently with his hands. “No choice but to do your duty, of course. England expects no less. Your modesty becomes you.” Collingwood paused and looked around at the desolation around him. “What assistance can I offer? Men, supplies—you have only to ask.”
The surgeon applied a poultice and then began winding a long, once-white bandage around his patient’s head. Charles used the diversion to think as rapidly as he could. He hardly knew where to start. On the other hand, he didn’t want to appear unable to manage his ship. “I’d be very grateful for any support,” he said carefully. “I’m sure our able surgeon here is overwhelmed and would welcome help.”
“I’ll see to it immediately,” Collingwood responded, half-bowing. “You’re sure that’s all? You’re sure?” When Charles nodded, he said, “Yes, well, I must return; I have matters to attend to on my own ship. I’ll have our doctor sent over as soon as he’s free. Again, my heartiest congratulations on your success, Mr. Edgemont. The navy needs more officers like yourself, and you may rest assured that I will mention it to the admiral.” He started to depart, then momentarily turned back. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot. The Excellent has taken possession of your two prizes. We will be more than happy to send them on for you.”
“Prizes?” Charles said. “What prizes?”
“The two Spanish seventy-fours, of course, the San Ysidro and San Antonio. They struck to you, did they not?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Charles answered. “I was too busy to notice.”
“Well, I noticed,” Collingwood said warmly, “and I’ll personally see you get credit for them. Good day to you, sir.”
As Excellent’s gig pulled away, Bevan turned to Charles and said, with a sense of awe in his voice, “Well, fancy that—Collingwood himself.”
Before Collingwood’s barge had returned to the Excellent, Charles saw a second boat approaching Argonaut’s entry port. After a moment, two elegantly dressed naval officers, one about Charles’s age and wearing the single epaulette of a naval commander, the other somewhat older and shorter with a commodore’s stripe on his sleeve, climbed up onto the deck. Charles recognized the slight, almost delicate-featured older man immediately as the one who had waved to him from the deck of the San Josef. He did not know who the man was, but sensed that he was someone unusually significant when he heard Bevan’s sharp intake of breath beside him.
“Who?” Charles asked softly as the two men crossed toward them.
“Captain Nelson,” Bevan whispered, standing rigidly erect. Charles immediately struggled unsteadily to his feet. He had heard of Nelson; everyone had. Some said he was the most aggressive and brilliant captain in the British navy. Others, and Charles had heard it often from less successful officers, his own Captain Wood among them, were of the opinion that much of Nelson’s fame was empty talk, inspired by the man himself to enhance his own reputation.
The two men quickly crossed the quarterdeck and stopped in front of Charles. “At last we meet in person,” the commodore said with genuine warmth. “I am Horatio Nelson, and this is my friend, Commander Edward Berry. I beg to know your name, sir.” The voice was calm, slightly high-pitched, authoritative.
“Lieutenant Charles Edgemont, sir, second on the Argonaut and acting commander,” Charles said with a tentative bow. “And this is Lieutenant Daniel Bevan, third and acting first.”
“Your servant, sir,” Bevan managed, touching his hat smartly.
“Captain Wood?” Nelson inquired.
“Killed by a sharpshooter, sir,” Charles replied.
“Pity,” Nelson said, “but, just between us, not all that much of a loss. Wood was a bit shy when it came to battle, if you ask me. Still, he met his end like a man. Your wounds are not serious, I trust?”
“No, sir. I’ll be fine, thank you.”
Nelson looked Charles straight in the eye and extended his hand. When Charles took it, the commodore said, “I came to congratulate you on your victory, Mr. Edgemont. It was most impressive and nobly won. I greatly admire such a display of tenacity and sheer bullheaded determination. I couldn’t have done more in your situation myself. If all England’s officers showed such selfless courage as you have displayed today, we would have no fear of any enemy.”
“Thank you, sir, we were just doing our duty,” Charles answered, emphasizing the “we” in an attempt to include Bevan.
“Nevertheless,” Nelson continued, his eyes keen, “uncommon heroism such as you have displayed must be recognized. If I may say so, I have some influence with the admiral, and I will press my recommendations to him on your behalf with as much determination as you have shown toward the Spanish fleet this day. England needs every fighting captain she can find.”
“Thank you, sir,” Charles managed, swallowing hard. He knew he hadn’t done anything heroic or determined, but he was afraid that saying so would just be taken for false modesty. Searching for the right words, he came up with, “On behalf of Argonaut’s officers and men, I am most grateful.”
“And one more thing,” Nelson continued. “I was blessed this afternoon with the boarding of both the San Nicolás and San Josef. By rights San Nicolás is yours. She was already much reduced when I reached her, and in fact she surrendered as soon as our guns came to bear. We only boarded her in order to use her forecastle to reach the San Josef. You may count her as a prize to the Argonaut with my heartiest approval.”
“Thank you, sir,” Charles said. He couldn’t think of anything else to add.
“Duty calls,” Nelson concluded with a second round of handshakes, this time including Bevan, and a bow. “I salute you, sir, and look forward to serving with you in the future.” Commander Berry likewise shook both their hands and briefly offered his own congratulations. Then the two men were gone.
Charles sat heavily back down on the hatch cover with a rising sense of anxiety. His superiors clearly thought he had done something out of the ordinary. What would happen when someone discovered he hadn’t?
“A few more visitors like this and we’ll own half the Spanish navy,” Bevan beamed, not sounding anxious at all.
Charles laughed weakly. Prize money. By God, he hadn’t thought about prize money. Even with
a lieutenant’s share, three Spanish ships of the line would bring a pretty penny.
“You’re a certifiable hero, Charlie,” Bevan said, turning to leave. “But one of us has to keep the old Argonaut from going under. I should get back to work.”
“Just a minute,” Charles said. “How badly damaged is she, Daniel?”
“Well,” Bevan answered, turning serious, “we’ve been hulled more than a few times; don’t know how many holes yet, but the carpenter and his crew are working on them now. We’re down by the head, and there’s about six feet of water in the well. I’ve got every man available on the pumps, and we’re almost holding our own. As the holes are plugged one by one, we’ll start to make some headway. You know about the helm and the masts. All in all, we’re in pitiful shape.”
“The dead and wounded? How many do you reckon?”
“I’m not sure yet, exactly. I’d guess about four score killed outright, and maybe a hundred and a quarter or more wounded. A fair proportion of those will die soon, of course.”
Charles considered this. Argonaut had lost more than a third of her complement. But there were still enough to patch and man the ship if they didn’t have to fight her. “Two things,” he said carefully. “Heave the guns overboard; they’re no good to us now and the reduced weight will give us some grace with the pumps. You may also start the water if necessary. And, second, you and I are the only commission officers. What do you think about promoting one of the senior midshipmen to acting lieutenant?”
Bevan looked doubtful. “Can you do that? You’re just a lieutenant yourself. And it’s not going to help to appoint some young yahoo who doesn’t know a spinnaker from a spade.” Bevan, Charles knew well, had a low opinion of all the Argonaut’s midshipmen.
“Well,” Charles said seriously, “I don’t know if I can or not, but I’m going to. What do you think about—what’s his name, the one who was in charge of the guns at the end—Winchester something, I think.”