The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  “Don’t believe it, sir,” said Jack. “On a small ship such as this, the master must wade in more than aboard some grander vessel, but don’t mistake this for any sort of democracy. When we are at sea, this is as great a tyranny as you will find in the Christian world, and I am the absolute tyrant.”

  “Ha! A benevolent monarch, I have no doubt!” Frost said.

  “Well I am pleased to hear it,” Wentworth said dryly. “With all these French notions spreading like a pox across the country, one never knows. Hah! French pox, there it is.” He waved Simon over, who was lurking by the forward bulkhead, and signaled for his glass to be refilled.

  “A ship cannot be run in that manner, Mr. Wentworth,” Jack said. “There needs a chain of command that is not questioned.”

  “Nor can a country be run in that manner,” Wentworth replied, after taking a healthy sip of the port. “There is a class of men who are born to lead, and a class who are born to follow. And yet here we are, with the middling sort snatching at the reins of power, every self-important shopkeeper, every blade who farms a few pathetic acres thinking himself worthy to be a senator.”

  “Now, sir,” said Frost, “surely the War for Independency was not fought so we might replace one aristocracy for another?”

  Wentworth shifted his gaze toward Frost with a look that Jack thought was part suspicion and part—a large part—intoxication. “The War for Independency? Made officers of men quite unworthy of the rank, and now those officers would put themselves over the rest of us. I wish to God they had all gone back to the plow, as Washington did. Most I wish would have stayed there. That rascal Jefferson would do well to keep to his farm, spouting off about the injustice of slavery as his darkies tend the fields.”

  Jack, like his father, was no fan of Jefferson, and when he thought on it, which was not often, he tended to lean toward the Federalist camp, with its belief in the strength of the new federal government and a strong navy. So, apparently, did Wentworth. Where Frost stood, Jack could not tell. He seemed most concerned that a battle between political factions not break out in the great cabin.

  Having spent half his life on shipboard, Jack understood hierarchy as mankind’s central organizing principle. But a growing number of Americans loathed the Federalists, and suspected them of trying to create a British-style aristocracy in America. Jack and Wentworth were ostensibly on the same side of this political divide, but listening to Wentworth reminded Jack of why it was so easy to despise the Federalist faction. Even he was ready to take offense.

  “Men unworthy of the rank of officer?” Jack said. “Would you put my father in that company?”

  “Your father?” Wentworth said. “You have a father? You didn’t seem the type.”

  “You don’t know who my father is?”

  “No, should I?” Wentworth asked. “I believe you said you were from Rhode Island.”

  “His father—” Frost began but Jack cut him off.

  “He was an officer in the war. Naval officer. One of your middling sorts, elevated well beyond his natural station.”

  Wentworth lifted his glass. “I congratulate you and your family then, sir, and I am delighted to find you so elevated. Liberté, Égalité, and all that.”

  “Pray, sir,” Frost said to Jack with a tone that suggested a desire to change the subject, “but why do you look at the barometer so? Forgive me, but I could not fail to notice you stealing glances in its direction. I would be sorry if we were such dull company as to make it so fascinating. I dare say, if you were looking at the clock the same way I should be worried.”

  Jack smiled. He was not aware that he had been glancing at the barometer, any more than he was aware of monitoring the goings-on on deck. It was a lovely mahogany instrument crafted by the renowned Jesse Ramsden of London, its long cylindrical body gimbal-mounted and swaying with the roll of the ship. It had been a present from his father, given to him just a few days before he sailed. Its polished beauty alone might have been enough to attract his attention, but it was in fact the fall of the glass, not the aesthetic quality of the instrument, that had gained his notice.

  “Forgive me,” Jack said. “The conversation has been delightful in the extreme, but there is nothing that can command a shipmaster’s undivided attention, save for his ship. And I’m afraid my eye has been drawn to the steady fall of the glass this hour or more.”

  “Falling quickly, is it?” Wentworth asked. “I once knew what that meant. ‘When the glass goes high…’ No. What is it you tarpaulins say, now?”

  “‘When the glass goes high, let your sails fly, when the glass goes low, you’re in for a blow.’ I believe that is the bit of doggerel you are searching for.”

  “Ah, yes!” Wentworth said. “What poetic blades you are! And the glass goes low, you say? Is it falling fast?”

  “The glass is indeed getting lower,” Jack confirmed, “but not at any great rate, which is more worrisome. You see, when the glass falls quickly, it means you will see a violent storm, but one that will soon pass by. But when it falls slow, as it is doing now, it means we may be in for a nasty time of it, a storm of some duration.”

  “Well, then, we must see all is secured in our cabins, what, Mr. Wentworth?” Frost said.

  “I shouldn’t think that will be much of a problem for me. I didn’t find room for above half a dozen items in my closet. My cabin, I mean. A long and nasty storm, you say, Captain?”

  “It seems likely. But do not fear, Mr. Wentworth, Abigail is a sound ship.”

  At that Wentworth smiled, as genuine a smile as Biddlecomb had ever seen on the man. “Oh, I am not afraid, sir,” he assured Jack. “I think I would take the thrill of a near drowning over the slow death of a monotonous ocean voyage. Perhaps even an actual drowning would be preferable.” He signaled for Simon to refill his glass, and Jack wondered that anyone could be so bored after being under way for just a bit more than two days. If Wentworth did not find the foul weather sufficiently thrilling, would he throw himself overboard before they even raised Barbados? Jack knew that he could do no more than hope.

  10

  Dinner over, William Wentworth made his awkward way around the table in the ridiculously small, cramped great cabin, thanking Biddlecomb with all the enthusiasm he could muster for that tedious affair, which was not much.

  He wondered vaguely where the dinner had come from. A rabbit fricassee and asparagus soup that was really quite good, certainly beyond the abilities of anyone he had observed aboard that wretched boat. Well beyond the abilities of those who could only facetiously be called the cook and steward. If Wentworth had been able to bring his own wine, and dine alone, he might have actually enjoyed it.

  Having spent an hour and a half in the cabin, nearly choking on the smoke produced by Biddlecomb’s noxious seagoing cigars, he felt the need for a turn on deck and some fresh air before he could return to the cramped but blessed privacy of his cell. He made his way down the alleyway onto which the great cabin opened, the walls of which formed the inboard side of his and Frost’s cabins, then up the companionway and through the hatch to the weather deck.

  He was not steady on his feet, and moved from handhold to handhold to avoid taking an ignominious tumble. He had consumed quite a bit of wine, a bottle cumulatively during dinner and the better part of a bottle in his cabin beforehand, fortifying himself for that ordeal. But still he had to guess that this was not all the doing of the alcohol, that surely the motion of the ship had changed, and not for the better.

  When he emerged on deck he found that the milky white sky of the morning hours had been replaced with something altogether more threatening. The sun was lost behind a thick cover of clouds, a variegated blanket that was gray in places and in others closer to black. The sea was gray as well, a dull pewter stretching off in every direction, the mounting chop crested with whitecaps that roiled and flashed clear to the horizon. When Wentworth had last been on deck the Capes were just astern of them, but now land was nowhere to be seen. It was
a bit unsettling.

  Having been born and raised in Boston, to a father who owned a fleet of merchantmen, William was familiar with shipping, or at least that part that involved the ship being tied to the dock and discharging a cargo. He had never actually been to sea, save for a few short coasting voyages. Never beyond the sight of land. Other than knowing what ships looked like and a smattering of nomenclature (which he didn’t really care to know, since a familiarity with words like “yardarm” and “windlass” had such a tradesman quality about it) he knew nothing of the ways of the sea. That put him at a terrific disadvantage on shipboard, and William Wentworth did not generally enter into situations in which he was at a disadvantage.

  Despite his studied indifference to the ways of the sea, however, he found himself irresistibly curious about the goings-on on deck. The ship was tilted to one side, and the high side, the windward side, what the tarpaulins called the “weather side,” seemed to offer a better vantage, so he walked up to that side and grabbed on to a thick black rope, ignoring the tar that would invariably get on his hand, and looked aloft.

  There were two men near the top of the foremast and two near the top of the mainmast and on each the yardarms were all askew, as if something had gone very wrong with them.

  No, not the yardarms, that’s not the word … Wentworth thought. He had been corrected once in that regard. These were the yards. The yardarms were a part of the yards, the very ends, he seemed to recall. Those were the topgallant yards on which they were working.

  The Abigail bucked and plunged and rolled in the mounting seas and the tall masts described wild circles against the gray sky but the men aloft seemed to work as if they were standing on the ground. Wentworth had seen countless men working aloft but always at anchor, or tied to a wharf. It had not occurred to him how very much more difficult it would be to do that work when the ship was rolling so. If he had thought about it he would have realized that such was obviously the case, but he had never thought about it.

  The men aloft were moving fast. The yards rose and tilted until they were nearly vertical, and then together, like a choreographed dance, they were lowered away toward the deck. The main topgallant yard reached the deck first, by a matter of seconds, and a few of the tarpaulins grabbed it in their arms and eased it down the rest of the way. They let out a cheer as they did, and William realized they had been engaged in some sort of competition, foremast against mainmast, to see which could get their yard down to the deck the quickest.

  Why should they go to all this effort to take the yards down, he wondered, when one assumes they will just have to put them back up again?

  As the fresh air and the bracing wind and the occasional shower of spray cleared his head he realized that there was considerably more activity on deck and in the rigging than he had initially thought. Men were aloft with great tendrils of fuzzy rope, like enormous caterpillars, and they seemed to be wrapping them around various thicker ropes. Others were hovering around the anchors forward, though what they might be doing, William could not imagine. Surely the water is too deep for their use, he thought.

  He looked aft. Captain Biddlecomb was there, conferring with the mate, a man named Tucker, he recalled. Then Tucker nodded his head and stepped off forward, leaving Biddlecomb alone by the helm, hands clasped behind his back, eyes aloft. He had none of the supercilious look of a self-important mechanic that William had come to associate with Biddlecomb. The fellow styled himself captain though he was certainly younger even than Wentworth’s two and twenty years. He was the sort who might ape the conventions of a formal dinner with no real understanding of how such a thing was to be executed. Now, that facile look, that pretentious quality, was gone, and in its place was a look of command, and William found it intriguing.

  Despite himself he let go of the rope and stumbled his way aft. The cannons, he noticed, had been quite thoroughly lashed in place. Whereas before they had simply been run out with the block and tackle attached to their sides hauled taut and made fast, now the breechings were also hauled taut and seized, and various other ropes wrapped about and secured to the eyebolts in the bulwark.

  Better those should stay where they are, he thought, touching his hand to the cold, wet iron of one of the barrels as he passed. Biddlecomb pulled his eyes from the rigging for a mere second as Wentworth approached, enough to give a nod of the head and the greeting, “Mr. Wentworth,” before looking aloft again.

  “So, Captain, pray, is this your storm?” Wentworth asked, speaking loud over the wind.

  Biddlecomb gave him a curious look, a hint of smile playing on his lips. “This? The storm? No, sir, nothing of the kind. If a storm were one’s wedding night, this would be but the first kiss.”

  “Indeed,” Wentworth said, refusing to give Biddlecomb the satisfaction of appearing shocked at so bawdy a metaphor. He had been a perfect ass to Biddlecomb, of course, which he did not necessarily regret. He considered himself under no obligation to be kind to those below his station, and only for reasons of duty, self-interest, and social obligation was he polite to those few at or above his station. But such a policy had its inconveniences, like now, when he was looking for answers and found Biddlecomb disinclined to converse with him.

  “But tell me,” Wentworth persisted, “why are those men taking the yards down? Don’t you need them up to safely navigate the storm?”

  Biddlecomb again turned his eyes to Wentworth. “Have you never been to sea, Mr. Wentworth?” he asked.

  “No, indeed, I have not, not beyond sight of land at any rate,” Wentworth said, surprising himself with his candor even as the words were leaving his lips. This curiosity about something as base as the seaman’s trade was unseemly, but he was not able to help himself, like a glutton at table.

  “Well, here’s how the matter lies,” Biddlecomb said, his patronizing tone so subtle it might have been missed if Wentworth had not been looking out so keenly for it. “A ship is a carefully balanced thing, the weight of her top-hamper, that is, her masts, rigging, sails, and such, the pressure of the wind on her sails, acting against the weight of her hull. In moderate weather, that balance is just right with the t’gallant gear in place, but as the wind builds we must strike it all to deck or we will be … one might say top-heavy, for want of a better term.”

  Wentworth followed Biddlecomb’s eyes aloft and saw that now the men on the fore and main were lowering those upper masts down as well. “And the next level of masts, will those also be taken down?”

  “Tops’l yards and topmasts? No, indeed. The tops’ls are our most important sails, we shall keep those for as long as we are able, though you can see they’re reefed as deep as can be. Again, the balance is the critical thing here. If we reduce the weight aloft too greatly, well, then, rather than enjoy a nice, slow roll, the ship will roll very quickly. In that case she might roll so quick she’ll roll the masts right out of her.”

  “I see…” said William, and though he had in fact only understood a fraction of what Biddlecomb said, he was not about to ask for clarification.

  “But never you fear, Mr. Wentworth,” Biddlecomb continued, “we jolly tars have it well in hand, and there is little chance that the gentleman will have to haul with the mariner.”

  With that not so subtle dismissal, and not wishing to expose himself to the possibility of insult he could not ignore, William Wentworth nodded his thanks for the information and resumed his place at the weather side. The ship seemed abnormally crowded, and he realized that rather than allow half the crew to loiter in the forecastle as was the usual custom, Biddlecomb must have ordered all the hands to work on the deck. This seemed to William a reasonable enough arrangement and he wondered that it was not more generally the case.

  After some time of watching the activity aloft and alow, William found that the motion of the ship, the heavy meal, and the wine were all conspiring to make him drowsy, so he quit the deck and made his way back to his cabin. The tiny space galled him, and he was quite certain that Biddleco
mb had purposely doubled the size of Frost’s cabin, and not his, for just that reason. He could not, of course, complain about it, as that would make him sound too petulant by half, so he resolved to endure it until such time as he could exact some revenge.

  In this case, however, he was too tired to be much upset with his sleeping arrangement, so he flopped down in his coffinlike bed and closed his eyes and soon he was quite dead to the world.

  He woke some time later to a heavy thud and a trembling that jarred him awake, as if God himself had rapped on the outside of the hull. He lay quiet, eyes open, though he could see nothing, the darkness having set in. He thought at first there was something wrong with his head, or perhaps the effect of the liquor had somehow multiplied as he slept, because everything seemed to be moving, rising up and swooping down and tossing side to side. He could hear creaking such as he had not noticed earlier in the voyage and again and again the smacking on the hull, sounding for all the world as if something had collided with the ship.

  As William shook off sleep he realized that the storm had intensified, and what he was feeling and hearing was the ship working in the mounting seas and wind. He braced himself against the sides of his bed and in doing so realized that the criblike nature of the thing, which he had considered absurd at first glance, actually made some sense.

  This is absolute madness, he thought. From the sound of it, it seemed impossible that the ship was not being torn apart by the seas. He was not afraid, of course. William Wentworth was genuinely a stranger to fear. His wealth and standing were such that he had always been sheltered from the common anxieties of life, never wanting for the basics, or the luxuries, either. He was naturally strong and athletic, which had always given him a dominance in any sort of physical endeavor. He was an expert with pistol and sword, and so those few times when his behavior had been so inexcusable as to result in an affair of honor, concern over the outcome had never given him pause. Nor had he ever been scratched by blade or ball.