He settled on the topgallant yard beside Adams and focused the glass to weather. Lovely ship, he thought. And she really was. The steeve of her bowsprit, the sweep of her sheer, the degree of tumblehome, it all worked together to present an image of strength and grace, the famed work of the French naval architects, from the nation that had given the world Versailles and Notre Dame. And like those famed edifices, the French navy, as Jack understood, was looked on by the radicals as some leftover from the Ancien Régime, a suspect thing.
The corvette was running with a bone in her teeth, carrying much the same sail as Abigail, though, sailing with the wind betwixt two sheets, she had studdingsails set to weather and to lee. Fight or flee? Jack thought. Here was the question. Was it worth cracking on and making a run for it? The only way they might succeed with that plan would be to keep the Frenchman astern until nightfall, and then do some clever thing to shake them. He looked to the west. The sun was at least six hours from setting. L’Armançon was at most an hour away from having Abigail under her guns.
“I guess that’s settled, then,” Jack said out loud.
“Pardon, sir?” Adams said.
“It’s nothing. Keep an eye on her, Adams, let me know of any changes she makes, changes to sail or course, anything.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Adams said as Biddlecomb swung down to the topgallant shrouds and began heading back to the deck, the shrouds sticky and warm under his hands, the tar and varnish mixture growing soft under the wicked sun. He climbed around the crosstrees and down the topmast shrouds. His feet were on the edge of the maintop and he still had not yet decided if he would do the mature thing, the thing he knew he should, but did not wish to do.
Oh, damn it all, he thought, then stopped and swung inboard. “Mr. Wentworth?” he said, trying for a conversational tone. Wentworth, still leaning against the mast, looked up, pretending to have not realized he was there.
“Captain?” he said. He climbed to his feet. Jack looked to see if there was any sign of soreness, any impediment to his movement in the wake of the wound he had delivered, but he could see none. Wentworth was standing easy, with the athletic grace he generally displayed. His sandy hair was bound back in a queue and he wore just a linen shirt and breeches, with wool socks and his now battered shoes. He looked more like a sailor than he did the macaroni who had come aboard. Jack had seen that sort of transformation before. The sea had a way of doing it.
Jack hesitated because he had not decided what he would say, out of the various things he wished to say. He wanted to ask Wentworth what he knew about Frost’s intentions, and how he knew it. He wanted to ask if he knew anything at all about who Frost was. He wanted to tell Wentworth he had probably been right all along, though that one was pretty low on the list of statements he wished to make.
He could not decide, and he could not stand there like an idiot any longer, so he said, “That’s L’Armançon to weather, as you may have guessed. I imagine we will engage her. If you would care to take your place in the maintop with your rifle again, I would be grateful. You did great execution the last time.”
Wentworth nodded his head. “Thank you, Captain, for saying so.” His voice was less rigid and formal than it had otherwise been since the duel. “I would be honored to help in whatever way I can.”
They remained silent for a few seconds, neither man knowing what more to say, so Jack mumbled, “Very good…,” found the ratline on the futtock shroud with his foot, and continued on the deck.
Frost was aft, of course, though his presence was really starting to grate on Jack, just as Wentworth’s had. “L’Armançon, I’ll warrant!” he said, delight in his voice.
“L’Armançon, indeed,” Jack said.
“Should we clear for action, Captain?” Frost said next, which Jack found supremely irritating. If he said yes he would be allowing Frost to take control. But if he said no he would just sound petulant, since they did need to clear for action, and he would have to give the order anyway, a minute or two after that.
“We’ll clear for action when I give the order, Mr. Frost,” he said and Frost took the hint, stepped back, removed the grin from his face, and said, “Of course, Captain, of course.”
Jack managed to drag it out for another five minutes, examining the set of the sails, scrutinizing the corvette to weather through his glass, passing a word with Tucker. At last he said, “Mr. Tucker, let us clear for action and send the men to quarters.” He said it softly and could not deny the thrill that he felt in saying those words, a burgoo of exhilaration, fear, uncertainty, and resolve.
Tucker turned, shouted down the length of the deck, “Clear for action! All hands, clear for action, there!” Jack wondered if Tucker had ever said those words before. He doubted it.
In the naval service, Jack understood, there would have been drums beating and boatswain’s calls and all sorts of martial sounds, but aboard the merchantman they had only the strong voice of the mate.
But it was enough. The men, who had been anticipating the order, leapt to, casting off the gun tackles, laying out sponges, crows, handspikes, and rammers, getting fire buckets ready, spreading sand on the deck. The new men had sailed aboard Abigail for all of five hours but they showed the discipline and training for which the Royal Navy was so well known, and fell to their tasks with ease and familiarity. Jack had assigned them to the guns, mostly, because they knew far more about such things than did the Abigails, and the Abigails knew far more about sailing their ship than did the British jacks. To weather and lee they were heaving the guns in, drawing the tompions, casting off the lead skirts over the vents.
Meanwhile John Burgess saw chains rigged to the yards, and extra braces rove off. The Abigails hoisted the new launch up and over the side to tow astern, unwilling to make the dumb mistake of leaving it on deck this time. No hammocks were stacked in hammock nettings because there were no hammocks or hammock netting, nor was there netting to stretch above the deck to protect from falling debris, or a gunner to retire to the magazine or a carpenter to get plugs for shot holes, because Abigail, for all her fine armament, was still a merchantman.
A minute before, the deck had been the epitome of a merchant ship at sea in fine weather, the men moving about with a busy but unhurried quality. With one order all that changed as the men plunged into the job of getting the ship ready for a fight, of putting her in the proper state for battle, a battle for which they had been preparing since the day they arrived in Antigua. It was a wonder to Jack that not one of the original Abigails had pointed out that this was not at all what they had signed aboard for.
Too caught up with the drama of the thing, Jack thought, shaking his head at what blockheads such men could be. Irony was sometimes a foreign language to him.
“Cleared for action, the men are at quarters,” Tucker said, his voice faltering as he was not sure if that was indeed what he should say, and likely feeling a bit silly using such naval parlance.
“Very good, Mr. Tucker,” Jack said. He looked out to windward. L’Armançon was a mile and a half away, and the two ships were closing fast. He looked aloft. Wentworth was in the maintop, rifle in hand. He had not seen him go back up there. There were others as well, some of the new hands from English Harbur with muskets cradled in their arms.
Frost must have sent them up, Jack thought, but Frost was keeping his distance and Jack did not wish to call him over to ask. He turned back to Tucker. “In ten minutes or so we’ll clew up the courses and get stuns’ls in, leave the rest of the sails set. I want the guns on the starboard side depressed just a bit below the horizontal, if you follow me.” He suspected there was some more technically proper way to express this, but what that might be he had no idea.
“Aye, sir, just a bit below horizontal,” Tucker said, apparently understanding.
“We’ll man the larboard battery, make it look as if we’ll be engaging that side. Then, as we get close to L’Armançon, very close, we’ll come about, just spin on our heel, and the men will cro
ss quickly over to the starboard side as we’re coming about, do you see, starboard guns will be run out and ready, and we’ll give them that broadside as we pass. They’ll be quite surprised, I should think.”
Tucker was smiling. “Good plan, sir!” he said, and Jack found his approval a comfort, despite the fact that Tucker knew even less about such things than he did.
Twenty minutes later, looking through his glass, Jack could clearly make out individuals on the Frenchman’s deck, the white shirts of the men, the blue coats of the officers. As he watched, the perfect smooth domes of the Frenchman’s fore and mainsail collapsed and flogged and the clews rose up as those lower sailed were hauled up to the yards.
“Mr. Tucker,” Jack said, “let us get the stuns’ls in and clew up the courses.” He said it calmly, slowly, hoping to disguise the fact that he had completely forgotten about it until that moment. The speed dropped off and the Abigail stood more upright as the canvas was reduced. The men stood silent at their guns, the sail trimmers ready at the braces and bowlines. Frost was forward of the mizzenmast, supervising the three guns aft. A petty officer from the English Harbour men was in charge of the forward battery.
Jack no longer needed the glass to see the figures moving about L’Armançon’s deck. A minute or so more. All this effort, all this worry, leading up to this inevitable moment: two ships converging on the open sea.
“Stand ready…” Jack shouted. L’Armançon’s forward-most guns would bear, he wondered why they did not fire. A hundred yards separated the ship. Half a minute more.
The first time they had met L’Armançon Jack had been unable to give the order to engage but he felt no such hesitancy now. “Helm’s a’lee!” he shouted and the helmsman turned the wheel and Abigail flew up into the wind. “Let go your headsail sheets! Mainsail haul! Gunners, shift sides, now!”
The headsails made a thundering sound as they flogged in the wind, the foresails came aback, pushing the bow around, and like a herd of spooked cattle the gunners abandoned the larboard battery and charged across the deck to take their places on the starboard side.
“Let go and haul!” Jack shouted as Abigail settled on the new course and L’Armançon came charging down on them, fifty feet off the starboard side.
“Fire as you bear!” he shouted and the foremost gun on the starboard side went off with a great roar, the jet of flame visible even in the brilliant sun, and a hole was punched right through L’Armançon’s bulwark, dead center between two gunports.
The next gun fired, the ball hitting the Frenchman’s hull and lodging there. The next smashed two deadeyes on the main shrouds, and still the Frenchman did not respond. Then, in the instant before the fourth gun went off, Jack heard, clear as birdsong, an order shouted down the length of the Frenchman’s deck and L’Armançon fired her entire broadside, six twelve-pounders fired from forty feet away, level at Abigail’s deck, and Abigail’s guns seemed like puny toys in comparison.
Jack had time enough to see the first jets of gray smoke and then a ball hit the bulwark just forward of where he stood and his world was knocked aside in a storm of shattered wood and splinters and smashed planks from the new-built sides. He was aware of putting his arm up, of being lifting off the deck, of the agony of coming down hard. He could hear shouts and high-pitched screams. His head spun and for an instant he thought, genuinely thought, that it was a dream, that it was all too unreal to be a waking moment.
He pushed himself up with his arms, felt a pain in his side. There was a splinter like a long knife sticking out, and without thinking he grabbed on to it and pulled and screamed in agony as the wood came free and the blood began to spread across his shirt.
The deck was a ruin. One of the guns had upended and the screaming was coming from the man, one of the British sailors, who was caught under it. His mates were working at the barrel with crowbars and handspikes. Beyond him the bulwark had been beaten flat, the windlass, so recently moved, no more than debris. Ropes hung loose and swayed with the roll of the ship.
Jack realized that the motion was wrong, the ship did not feel right underfoot. He looked up. They were in irons, the bow pointing right into the wind, the sails aback. He spun around. There had been only one man at the helm, and he was down, knocked to the deck by splinters, alive or dead Jack could not tell. “Mr. Tucker! Get forward, get the sail trimmers to back the jibs! You there, Maguire,” he called to the Irishman, who was captain of the aftermost gun but one, “get on the helm!”
He looked over at L’Armançon. She had sailed clean past and was rounding up behind Abigail, which meant they would be firing into the stern, a bad situation for a ship with a lower gun deck, but the merchantman did not have much below decks to hit. His cabin, Jack knew, would be destroyed, but if that was the worst of it he would be happy.
“Sail trimmers! Brace the foresails for a larboard tack! We’ll cast to starboard!” He could see there were more dead and wounded than he had thought, great frantic patches of wet blood on the deck.
The fore yards swung around, the sails came aback, the bow began to fall off to starboard as L’Armançon’s guns fired again, one after the other, destroying the great cabin windows below Jack’s feet. He had a vision of the stern rail blowing apart the last time they were in this circumstance and every bit of him wanted to move forward, out of the way of any flying debris, but he fought that urge down, remained where he was, clasped his hands behind his back. He could feel the blood from his wound, warm and sticky and spreading over his side, just opposite the place where Wentworth had cut him.
Now I shall have matching scars, he thought and resisted the insane urge to giggle.
He looked down the deck. The man under the toppled gun had died and his mates had abandoned him and the other gun crews were busy loading and running out. L’Armançon had come up on a starboard tack and Abigail was casting off onto a larboard tack and the space between the two was opening up. For a wild moment Jack considered running for it, but there was no point; even poorly handled, the French corvette was faster than the merchantman by a couple of knots, and it seemed to Jack that the Frenchman’s ship handling and gunnery was much improved from the last time they had crossed paths.
“Let go and haul!” Jack shouted and Abigail swung off the wind and her sails filled and she gathered way once again. He turned to Maguire on the helm. “Keep her coming around, we’ll get the wind right aft.” He looked astern. L’Armançon was also turning, falling off, so soon the two ships would be sailing side by side, right downwind and about fifty yards apart.
That’s no good, no good … Jack thought. That first broadside had showed him the absolute folly of going up against a ship that mounted guns twice as powerful as his own, with scantlings a third again as thick. He kept seeing the image of that six-pounder ball lodged in L’Armançon’s side. It had not even pierced her hull, while L’Armançon’s twelves seemed to go through Abigail as if she was made of wet paper.
And then the ships were broadside to broadside and L’Armançon started in again, firing at Abigail’s already crippled starboard side. Roundshot screamed over the quarterdeck and like a magic trick the head of one of the British sailors disappeared. One moment it was there, the next it was gone, and his knees buckled and his headless body slumped to the deck and Jack thought he might vomit.
Round after round slammed into Abigail’s side. A ball struck amidships, just below the starboard gunwale, and Jack saw it burst from the larboard side in a swarm of shattered planking, passing right through the hull and plunging into the sea. The Abigails were firing back now, and Jack could see some of the shot strike, saw a respectable hole shot through the after side of the mainmast, but he could see no damage beyond that.
“Keep coming around, Maguire, keep coming around!” Jack shouted. “Sail trimmers, starboard tack!” If he kept turning, then he would present his ship’s bow to the enemy, which at least would make for a smaller target. Abigail was turning to starboard and Jack could see L’Armançon turning
to larboard so the two ships were coming bow to bow, fifty yards between them, and Jack had another idea.
“Hold her there, Maguire!” he shouted. “Sail trimmers, stand by!” The smoke was thick like a fog, or nearly so, a heavy morning mist, and the guns belched more and more even as the breeze whipped the old smoke away.
“Fall off, Maguire, fall off! Sail trimmers, square up!” Maguire turned the helm the other way. Abigail stopped in her turn to starboard and began swinging back to larboard, downwind, turning to cross L’Armançon’s bow. The Frenchman checked in her turn as well, turned back to meet Abigail, but it was too late to stop the American from crossing ahead of her.
“Bear up now, just a point!” Biddlecomb shouted to Maguire and Maguire, good hand that he was when sober, turned the wheel. But he was a merchant sailor, not a man-of-war’s man, so he felt he had the right to say, “Sir! We’ll be aboard her!”
“Not full aboard her, Maguire!” Jack shouted, then thought, Dear God I hope not!
They were close, very close, L’Armançon coming down on Abigail as Abigail tried to duck under her bow. Jack saw the tip of the Frenchman’s jibboom stretching up over his foredeck. The forward-most gun of Abigail’s starboard battery fired and he saw L’Armançon shudder and then the jibboom passed between the forestay and the foremast and fouled and the ships were locked together.
“Mr. Tucker! Hands up in those fore shrouds, cut that Frenchman’s headstays!” Jack shouted, but some of the British sailors were ahead of him and already scrambling up the starboard fore shrouds, axes and cutlasses in hand, hacking away at the Frenchman’s rigging. The second and third gun in the starboard battery fired and the two ships drifted together in their weird grappling dance.
L’Armançon’s fore topgallant stay swung free, cut through by eager hands, and the guys that offered support to the jibboom were hanging limp. A figure in a blue coat appeared on the heel of the Frenchman’s bowsprit and headed outboard, sword in hand, a gang of seamen behind him. He made it as far as the cap of the bowsprit before jerking backward as if suddenly coming to the end of his leash. His arms flailed out and he fell with an audible splash into the sea and the men behind him, discouraged by this, turned and raced inboard again.
The French Prize Page 31