by Debra Daley
‘It’s the shape of the Vindicator, Mr Guttery, if I am not mistaken.’
Captain McDonagh lowers the glass and narrows his gaze at the western sky. Scowling clouds have assembled on the horizon around the embers of the day and the wind has grown blustery. There is a sharp, salty smell in the air. The captain shouts up at the masthead man to loosen the foresail and shake out the reefs.
The chasing cutter draws ever nearer.
All at once a derisory little noise like a fan being cracked open sounds from her port side and a puff of smoke blooms like the head of a dandelion. Something whistles overhead and clatters among our rigging. We are under fire.
‘Take cover below,’ Captain McDonagh shouts at me, ‘unless you want to be killed!’
A second volley whines across our foredeck and tears holes in the jib that Dubois is busy reefing.
I skitter down the companionway, more wary of the captain’s wrath than I am of the Vindicator’s iron shot, and crouch between the stove and the coal bunker. I sense the Seal continuing to double and tack. Every so often her timbers shudder at the impact of the Vindicator’s guns. She still feels sluggish, not at all like her usual racy self, and I can hear the gasping action of the valves in the bilge pump amid the tumult above. Jim is not at his post. He has gone aft where the mechanics are at work at the foot of a bulkhead.
A shot lands directly overhead, showering my head with dust and splinters. I scramble away from the debris, squeezing past the barrels and bales in the hold towards the forepeak, although there is no reason why it should be any safer there. In fact the movement of the boat is more tumultuous in the bows. I tip up and down as if on a rocking horse as the Seal shakes with each strike of the big waves and seems to reel.
By God, I believe she is listing. And what is that seeping across the floor?
‘Jim!’ I cry, retreating from the dark stain at my feet. ‘We are taking on water!’
‘A stop-water has rotted,’ he shouts. ‘It has let water in the hull and we cannot repair it on the run like this.’
‘Will the cutter take us? They are revenue men.’
‘So they are.’ Jim shrugs.
It had not occurred to me that Captain McDonagh might not carry the day. Am I to fall now with such ease into the hands of the law? Damnation, but this life of mine is a cross-grained one!
Jim says, ‘Our master and the Vindicator have a history, they do. You can be sure that Captain McDonagh will parley to give himself up afore he loses the Seal – and the Vindicator will be pleased enough to clap him in irons, in particular if it cause no risk to themselves. Lieutenant Blake may run a quick vessel but he don’t have the stomach for a stoush, not with the McDonagh, he don’t.’
Making an effort to suspend my anxiety, I hoist myself through the hatch. The decking has been peppered by shot – and the black-hulled Vindicator is standing off to starboard of the wallowing Seal.
Captain McDonagh salutes the revenue commander, who has struck a triumphant pose on his foredeck in a tight-wrapped blue coat. The revenue boat has lit its lanterns in the gloaming, which adds to its aura of celebration. Fearful of being seen, I observe from the shadows.
Captain McDonagh calls across the strait between the two vessels, ‘My compliments, Lieutenant. You see our vessel is in disorder.’ He makes a flourish with his hat. I notice then that the Seal’s crew are at their battle stations. Each of the swivels is manned and Mr Guttery and Mr Robinson have their pistols crooked in their arms. Jim was right. The captain is offering to surrender himself to the Vindicator’s commander in lieu of a fight. ‘Think on it,’ Captain McDonagh booms. ‘You may take the Seal, but not before we’ve blasted a good few holes in your vessel and your crew. Or I will come across now in my tender.’
The lieutenant shouts something in reply, but his words are blown away by the wind and Captain McDonagh responds with a showy open-palmed shrug. Now the lieutenant confers with his first mate and they crane their heads at the sky. A great crowd of bleating seagulls is flying overhead, making for the coast, and the furious clouds have formed a thunderhead.
All at once, Captain McDonagh pulls me forward.
My alarm at being touched by him is confused with some other undefined feeling, that makes me grow turbulent – and I try to shake myself free. But he grips my arm more fiercely, and shouts, ‘Let me sweeten my offer with this little runaway! She has been up to no good, I warrant, and it will reflect well on you to bring her to justice!’
I gasp in amazement at this cruel and utterly unexpected betrayal.
‘What are you saying?’ I cry. It must be a ploy, surely. He of all people would not hand me to the custody of the preventives. But without a glance at me, although he holds me fast, the captain orders the Seal’s tender to be lowered. He bows in the direction of the Vindicator’s commander to acknowledge that the deal has de facto been struck.
‘The devil take you, you dog!’ I gasp, struggling violently, kicking and flailing, to get away. But his hand circles my wrist like an iron manacle.
Captain McDonagh lowers his head to mine and says in a hoarse voice, ‘I told you, I have not escaped the noose all these years by being a man of sentiment. I will do what I must to win through.’
‘Rot in hell, McDonagh!’ I shout.
Suddenly sheet lightning blanches the sky. Gulls shriek in panic and whirl in confused circles. The darkened air fills with a ticking sound. It builds, tick-tick-tick, and erupts in a boneshaking crash of thunder.
Captain McDonagh turns to Mr Guttery, who has been watching us with his impassive stare, and says, ‘With luck on your side, you will manage to reach Inishmore, man. The preventives will want to run for shelter and will not send a prize-master after you.’
Then he chivvies me towards the rope ladder that has been hung from the gunwale.
I quail at the prospect of capture, yet where is there to go but down. I climb the rail and find a handhold on the swaying ladder and descend, my feet groping for a hold on the rungs, my silks waving madly in the gusts as if trying, uselessly, to signal for help. Below, the rowboat bounces up and down on its tether.
Captain McDonagh arrives close on my heels, and as he leans forward to set the oars in the rowlocks he looks into my face with a strange, frank expression and says, ‘Have no illusions. This is the villain I am.’
‘Yes,’ I hiss in anger, ‘I see who you are.’
The captain lays into the oars with a short, hard action, and away we go. I am angry, but more than that I feel forsaken. I watch the Seal begin to limp away and with it the possibility of some kind of freedom. I know myself at this moment to be completely alone in the world.
The Vindicator is near. Its lieutenant stands at the rail of the foredeck with a pistol in his hand, although the deteriorating weather, full of misty spray and imminent rain, must be a deterrent to his powder and to the ammunition of the guns trained on us.
We rise up and crash down uncomfortably in the choppy sea, but Captain McDonagh has a way of varying his stroke to get over the waves. Through a combination of pull and drift he brings us alongside the Vindicator. He ships the oars, and deckhands reach down with their grappling hooks and push our bow in against the hull. The lieutenant leans over to get a look at us. He has a screwed-up face and the darting ogle of a nervy man. As the rope ladder drops down from the cutter, he aims his pistol at Captain McDonagh – or alternately at the captain and at me, since the sea is tossing us around and the distance between the crests is becoming shorter. The wind clamours and complains, and the lieutenant twitches at the frequent streaks of lightning. As I begin my ascent, an almighty clap of thunder makes my ears ring. My skirts are fluttering so hard they sound as though they are beating a tattoo against the air, and I find it an effort to progress up the ladder. I tighten my grip on the ropes for fear of being thrown off into the sea, while thunder rolls in the sky and blue lightning flashes with fury.
Good God, what was that? The most awful crack of light and sound as though the go
ds had tossed a grenade at us from behind their black bastion of clouds. Has the boat been struck by lightning? Something has caused consternation on the deck of the Vindicator. Difficult to make out anything with my hair flying in my eyes and my petticoat threatening to tear itself to pieces in the gusts. I almost wonder if I might slide down the ladder and plead with the captain to take our chances in the rowboat. The thought is accompanied by a quick glance below. What is that shape in the gloom? It almost looks as though the captain has cast off. I twist around to get a better look. Yes, he has! There is the tender on a crest, all whipped by spray and mist, and now it has sunk out of sight into a trough.
What a rotten deluder. What a cowardly cheat he is to leave me stuck on this punishment vessel. Damn him, by God!
I clamber over the rail to the accompaniment of a report from the lieutenant’s pistol. Then comes the boom of the Vindicator’s swivel guns. I turn to see Captain McDonagh’s rowboat rising out of a trough, badly exposed to his foes. The lieutenant pulls a second pistol from his belt and aims again, but the weather has dampened his powder and his pulling of the trigger yields only a flash in the pan. In a fit of petulance he flings the errant pistol on the deck. It fires belatedly with a cracking loud bang! There is a volley of shouts – the ball seems to have narrowly missed someone’s foot – and in those few seconds, Captain McDonagh, who is rowing hard, makes valuable ground. The guns swivel and let loose their shot, but the captain, bobbing up and down in the building sea, is not an easy target. Despite his perfidy, I find I do not wish to see him killed. I believe he will get away, for now it is beginning to rain, but can there be any hope for him in a rowboat on a stormy sea?
The detonation of a gun towards the port bow makes me jump. Smoke rises lazily from the mouth of the gun. And this time when the rowboat surges up on the crest of the big, grey swell, I cannot see Captain McDonagh. Or is that a glimpse of him lying wounded, perhaps, in the bottom of the boat? He does not ply the oars at all. Where are the oars? How will he propel himself without them?
The lieutenant orders another round to be fired. The shot splatters in the sea. I do not know the range of these swivels – could it be a quarter of a mile? But what does it matter, for Captain McDonagh does not sit up. I am galled with him all over again – and then I must admit that it is not anger but distress.
Captain! Sit up! If you do not start to row, you will be swamped. With my heart in my mouth I watch the tender swing around broadside to the waves.
Pouring down now in a determined way, rods of rain pit the water. The lieutenant commands his helmsman to pursue the tender to confirm the captain’s death, but it is a course of action that grows more impossible by the second. The storm has come blustering in upon us with its mayhem, and waves are exploding around the Vindicator’s bows. The master of this vessel must stir himself to reef his sails.
I can see nothing of the rowboat.
Surely Captain McDonagh is feigning death in order to throw off the Vindicator. Surely that is what he is doing. Would not it be just like him to dissemble so? I creep forward, no one paying me any heed – the men on the foredeck are struggling with the jib. The lieutenant is leaning out amidships looking into the chaotic gloom, but even when another flash of lightning illuminates the convulsing sea, he cannot see any trace of the captain either. With an expression of irritation he turns away – there is a contretemps in the bow and he must attend to the messiness of the jib. The men brought the canvas down just as the cutter tunnelled into a wave and now the sail has slumped into the sea. Captain McDonagh, I cannot but think, would never have allowed such incompetence. Woe betide the man who let tackle drag in the water when the Seal heeled in a breeze.
I flail at a line that is tied to the mast below the boom and hold on tight against the wild movements of the boat. It occurs to me that I could not have chosen a worse place to ride out a lightning storm. Were the captain here, he would say, ‘Do you want to go to blazes, madam? Go below or must you baulk at my every command?’ I look for a binnacle but there is none. However, I will not go below. I do not trust the seamanship of this commander or his crew. The bow has come up again, but still the hands are unable to bring in the sodden jib before the next wave hits. They must hack at the rigging in order to cut the sail free.
I am concentrated on the detail of these actions – I cannot pretend to care about the wretched jib! – because I do not wish to turn my thoughts to the fate of Captain McDonagh. And yet my thoughts insist on going towards him, damn it. He is a cur, but it distresses me to think of him killed by the preventives’ shot. And the alternative is almost worse: that he is wounded and beyond rescue and bleeding to death, that is, if the flimsy tender remains afloat. The seas have risen from five to ten feet in less than twenty minutes – and the light is going now.
*
The elements have compelled the Vindicator on to a reckless course. I cannot see what is happening outside now. The lieutenant ordered me taken below-decks and one of his crew pushed me into this squalid hold. The hatch above wants a lid, and each time the boat hurtles off the top of one wave and buries its bow into the backside of the next, seawater washes through the grating. I am numb with cold, although I cannot bother myself about it, not when I consider Captain McDonagh’s fate. Senseless to reprehend him now.
The thought of his piteous death – and the waste of his life – grieves me in spite of his treachery. He was a commander as resolute and weatherly as the Seal herself and his practicality could be trusted. I remember how he liked a ship’s rigging to have a little give in it as an aid to speed. He liked a loose-footed mainsail to fly freely with plenty of draught and power in it, although he would not abide carelessness. Yet he was not averse to granting a liberty either. And if a difficulty arose, he sprang to propose a remedy. I suppose I was just such an answer.
I am babbling to you out of fear – but you guessed that, no doubt. I am also under the influence of a peculiar calm, which accepts that I shall likely join Captain McDonagh at the bottom of the ocean before much longer. In my short life I have discovered that human beings have the capacity to entertain many different, often conflicting strands of their characters at the same time. I am reconciled to my fate. At the same time I am deathly afraid. My hands tremble, my heart races. Each assault by the sea, each roll of the battered vessel, terrifies me. Yet, when the wave has passed, optimism, incredibly, rushes into the void. I think, as death approaches, that we must keep believing, until the very last second, that we will get out of the jam.
I never knew I had such buoyancy.
It is pitch black down here. The lanterns went out almost as soon as I was cast down due to the wind and the wet and their antic movements. I sense that there is another prisoner in the hold, or a member of the crew. I keep my distance from him and cling to the companionway below the hatch. I can see nothing through the grating but a churn of greyness. How long has the Vindicator been battling this storm? More than an hour, I conject, but it seems to me that the lieutenant is losing the fight. As far as I can tell, he has tried to wrest control of his vessel from the storm by changing direction, heading into the wind. He has been hindered, however, by a mighty cross swell that bats the hull and sends the Vindicator yawing like a guzzler too drunk to stand. I fear that the swell is pushing us at a dangerous angle to the wind.
Oh, Lord, listen to that roar. I know before it breaks that this wave is calamitous. It falls upon us like a hammer on an anvil. The Vindicator reverberates from the force and tips forward at a frightening angle, her bow stuck into the sea like a skewer. Then the sea scoops us up and, among the pandemonium, objects tumbling, wild shouts, it slews us around at a desperate tilt and I nearly drop from the companionway. We are in danger of capsizing.
I must get out now!
Clawing at the grating over the hatch, although I know it has been battened, screwed down as surely as any fastening of an early coffin, I fail to make headway. My cries evaporate in the shrieking air – and are overtaken then by the
hollow sound of the keel scraping on rock and the splintering of timbers. Have we arrived at a shore or are we on a reef? Amid the crew’s frantic hubbub and the cacophony of the sea and the groaning vessel, someone calls the order to abandon ship. I hammer my fist against the grating.
All of a sudden a hand grabs my ankle. An elbow knocks me aside.
I crash from my perch and bang up hard on slimy boards. Who is it here? A cook or a carpenter – I don’t know, but he has a hatchet and is slashing at the wooden grating.
I force my way from the hold and grasp one of the mast hoops.
The Vindicator is heeling badly, the crew is fumbling with a tender to make good their escape, when all at once an eerie lull comes over the storm, as though it has lowered its head and is gathering itself for a final charge.
And, here it comes, now – the big, galloping wave that will overwhelm us.
A shudder passes through the cutter as it submits to its fate.
It is a shock to find myself thrown into the frigid sea, my mantle and skirts inflating around me like some sudden fungus.
I fear that the weight of them will drag me beneath the surface and it is with relief I hear in the darkness and confusion men’s voices and the rattle of rowlocks. I glimpse the outline of the tender and – is that a second, smaller rowboat? Yet my cries for help do not bring them near. Why do they not hear me?!
I have no idea how to keep afloat. My feet kick madly – and my shoes are lost. One hand makes a circular motion as if stirring laundry, the other fumbles at the strings of my mantle and my top petticoat and they fall away.
A wave slaps my face. I scream for help and swallow a mouthful of choking salt water. I scream again. The crew’s voices sound greatly more distant. They are rowing away and I am sinking like a stone. The percussion in my ears is the pounding of my frantic heart.
My higher self looks down in sorrow on the poor, panicked creature thrashing in the sea and can do nothing but regret that she is so very ill-equipped for her ordeal.