Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead

by Sean Thomas Russell

The men continued to bail, though it was heavy work in a boat rising and falling and rolling as well.

  ‘Mr Wickham,’ Cooper said, standing in the crowded boat. ‘Might I draw your attention to these boats downwind of us? They appear to have called a parliament, sir.’

  Wickham twisted around and, there, a mile off, a group of fishing boats had congregated, but there was no sign of active fishing.

  ‘What do you think they are about?’ Ransome asked. The lieutenant had pulled himself over the transom and was seated on a thwart, water washing about his buttocks.

  ‘I doubt they have gathered to plan our rescue,’ Wickham stated.

  Cooper trained Wickham’s glass on the distant boats. ‘More like crows, perched on branches, trying to decide if they can eat us or not. Half an hour ago a boat set off for the Saints with all haste – it did not appear to be loaded down with fish.’

  ‘If they begin to draw near, Mr Cooper,’ Ransome ordered, ‘fire a warning shot.’

  Wickham asked for his glass and fixed it on the distant islands. The Saints were an odd little outpost of France. There was no sugar production, nor any wealth to speak of, so slaves were rare. The French occupants were employed in fishing and market gardening, but there was a small fortress, Wickham thought, and certainly a French garrison.

  ‘Mr Ransome,’ he said, lowering his glass. ‘I think we should get underway as soon as humanly possible. I believe we shall have French soldiers coming our way as swiftly as it can be arranged.’

  ‘Damn Sir William and this entire enterprise,’ Ransome muttered, clearly exhausted and out of patience. ‘We shall find ourselves in a French gaol yet.’

  This spurred on the efforts of the men bailing, and buckets of water splashed over the side with a speed Wickham would not have thought possible in the heat. An old sailing adage ran: ‘There is no pump so efficient as a frightened man with a bucket.’

  Even so, a boat the size of a frigate’s barge held several tons of water and it had to be emptied out one bucket at a time, which, no matter how frightened the bailers, could not be managed quickly.

  Ransome shifted on his seat and beckoned Wickham near.

  ‘We lost eight when the boat capsized,’ he said quietly, ‘two of them woman and three children.’

  ‘I am very sorry to hear it,’ Wickham whispered.

  ‘I believe the stern was thrown up on a steep sea and the rudder left the water. There was naught we could do.’

  ‘It was bad luck, not poor seamanship, I am quite certain,’ Wickham replied. ‘No one is to blame for it. This is a dangerous crossing for overloaded, open boats. We have been lucky not to do the same ourselves.’ Wickham waved a hand at the distant fishermen. ‘Even they turn over occasionally, who sail here almost every day of the year.’

  ‘It is kind of you to say, Wickham, but it was the boat under my command that capsized and people under my care who were lost. There is no one else to blame …’ The young officer looked entirely miserable, sitting drenched to the skin, his hat lost, hair plastered tight to his skull.

  ‘We all knew this crossing would be dangerous, but we had no choice. To try to hide on Guadeloupe would have resulted in capture – and the guillotine for the royalists. Every one of them would have made the choice to attempt the crossing. Do not doubt it.’

  Ransome nodded, but Wickham did not believe his words provided much comfort.

  The bailing continued for some time, the sea occasionally breaking over the boat and replacing water that had so recently, and at great cost, been thrown out. Handling the bucket required two hands, so the men in the boat were constantly being thrown off balance as the boats rose and fell, which slowed the process terribly. Finally, Wickham sent other men into the barge, who knelt and steadied the men bailing, and the water level in the boats dropped much more quickly.

  The French passengers were ill and frightened, the children exhausted and crying. Everyone was overly hot and not a few peevish. Dominica, which had been in view since the sun had risen, seemed never to grow nearer.

  ‘Sail to the north, Mr Wickham,’ Childers reported, and pointed off toward the western edge of Guadeloupe.

  Wickham retrieved his glass and gazed at this distant vessel – not an easy task aboard a small boat on such seas.

  ‘Is it our captain?’ Ransome asked.

  ‘I can make out course and topsail. Whether it is a schooner or a brig I cannot say. It is, at the moment, shaping its course toward us, so we shall know soon enough.’

  By mid-afternoon the barge was finally declared sea-ready, and the crew and occupants returned to their boat. The two vessels made sail, and were again sliding over the steep seas, the helmsmen both more vigilant and more anxious. The crew of the barge continued to bail for some time after, and Wickham could see the pails being emptied regularly over the side.

  The capsize had taken several hours to remedy, and Wickham glanced up at the sun now, wondering if they would make Dominica by sunset.

  The boats were not on the beach, where Hayden had sent them into an ambush. There was no way of knowing what had happened – if the British sailors had been taken prisoner, or, if they had escaped, how many might have been wounded or even killed. If the French ambush had succeeded and the boats were captured, the French might well have sailed them south, it being the quickest way back to Gosier.

  Hayden shaped his course down the coast, staying inshore as far as was safe. Unfortunately, near the shore the winds were even more fickle and often absent altogether. Ship’s boats could be rowed through the calms, but the schooner, though a small ship, was far too large for that.

  The coastline was empty of the Themis’s boats and their crews – just long stretches of sand backed by palms and dense forest with hardly a living soul to be seen. Pointe à l’Aunay came abreast late in the afternoon and the wind finally found them not long after. It came like a great sigh, after so many hours of drifting and frustration.

  Hawthorne found Hayden doing a circuit of the ship, and the two stopped on the forecastle for a moment to speak. Hayden had found a glass aboard and employed it to quiz the horizon at all points.

  ‘I do hope you are not finding French warships in the offing?’ the marine said.

  ‘Not at this precise moment.’

  ‘Excellent, I do need a day’s holiday from the war occasionally. A terrible admission of weakness upon my part.’

  ‘We all need such days, Mr Hawthorne, and, fortunately, the war provides many of them.’

  ‘Not so many under your command, Captain, if I may say so. You appear to follow the fighting so that we have far more than our share of it.’

  ‘Poor luck, is all I can say. Speaking of war, how do we stand for powder?’

  ‘More than enough for this war, I should think.’

  ‘That much?’

  ‘Well, perhaps I exaggerate to some small degree. Enough to see us home.’

  ‘And I thought we were about to go into the business of selling powder. Well, we shall have to make our fortunes some other way. Piracy, perhaps?’

  Hawthorne laughed. ‘When I was a boy it was my only dream.’

  ‘If every boy who ever dreamed of becoming a pirate grew up to do so, Mr Hawthorne, it would be a frighteningly lawless world.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. I understand they have all retired to Jonathan’s Coffee House, in recent years.’

  ‘They have called it the “Stock Exchange” for some time now.’

  ‘Ahh … piracy by another name.’

  ‘Not a good place for the unwary to take their morning coffee, that is certain.’ Hayden raised his glass to search the sea again. ‘Have you heard? The brig that had the misfortune to burn last night was the very brig Sir William ran aground and almost saw us all killed.’

  ‘Even war has its ironies, I suppose, Captain.’

  ‘More than its share.’

  ‘No sign of our boats, sir?’

  ‘There are many small boats to the south, but the Saints has a fishi
ng fleet and I cannot, at this distance, distinguish one boat from another.’

  Hayden handed the glass to Hawthorne, who began to search the blue. ‘You still believe they will have sailed for Dominica?’

  ‘If they survived the ambush on the beach? Yes. Where else is there for them to go?’

  ‘England does seem a bit distant …’

  One of the two marines hunkered down in the bow pointed off to the north-west of a sudden. ‘Mr Wickham! Boat, sir.’

  The midshipman, who was standing his trick at the helm, twisted around to see.

  ‘I’ll have it, sir, if you like?’ It was Childers, reaching immediately for the tiller, not so much helpful as wanting the helmsman concentrating on one thing only.

  Wickham allowed the coxswain to relieve him at the helm, and found his glass. A small vessel, perhaps a cutter, was emerging from the narrow Passe des Dames at the eastern tip of Grand Islet, the nearest of the Saints.

  Wickham lowered his glass, stood, and called over to Ransome, whose boat they were now making an effort to keep near, in case of further calamities.

  ‘A French Navy cutter, Mr Ransome!’ he called out. ‘I cannot tell if there are soldiers from the garrison aboard, but nor can I say there are none.’

  ‘Are you certain, Mr Wickham?’ Ransome called back. ‘I have lost my glass.’

  Wickham lifted his and examined the little ship again. It was a single-masted vessel, crossing yards, a bit wall-sided, straight-stemmed. ‘Fifty or sixty feet, flying the French flag, and uniformed men aboard, Mr Ransome. From this angle I cannot tell you what guns she carries.’

  ‘Let us hope it is not us they are looking for. No matter, there is little we can do but carry on as swiftly as we dare.’

  The lassitude of the royalists dissolved in that instant and the hands were suddenly more alert as well. Neither boat dared carry more sail, but more human ballast was shifted to windward and the helmsmen became determined to squeeze every last quarter-knot out of their vessels.

  Ransome reported that aboard his boat there remained no dry powder and that they had lost most of their weapons when they were thrown into the sea. A glance at the sun told Wickham that sunset was perhaps three hours off – and the northern tip of Dominica about the same. To the north, the strange sail was clearly closing, the ship heeled to the trade and rocking over the cresting seas.

  ‘It appears we might have two Frenchmen bearing down on us, though we might hope the one to the north is nothing more than a transport,’ Wickham said quietly to Gould and Childers.

  The coxswain did not look convinced by this. ‘Will darkness reach us before either of these ships?’

  Wickham tried to gauge the speed of the closing cutter – the nearer of the two vessels. ‘It will be a close-run thing,’ he concluded.

  The sun appeared to hover on the wind, hanging in the sky and barely moving westward at all. The royalists in Wickham’s boat whispered among themselves, cast glances over their shoulders at the French cutter ranging up, and then fell to whispering again.

  Childers made a small gesture with his hand toward the French, clearly wondering what was being said, but Wickham could not hear the whispers, which were carried away on the wind. One did not need to speak French, however, to see the fear in their faces.

  Every quarter of an hour or so Wickham would quiz the French cutter in their wake, more certain on each occasion that it pursued them.

  ‘Do we dare to carry more sail?’ Wickham quietly asked Childers and Gould.

  ‘We have already had one broach,’ Gould answered quickly.

  Childers considered a moment and then nodded. ‘I agree with Mr Gould, Mr Wickham. Another broach and they will have us, without a doubt. Do you think they will overhaul us before we reach the island?’

  ‘It is always difficult to be certain of distances over the ocean, especially from so near the surface.’

  ‘Mr Hawthorne would offer to go up the mast,’ Gould said and they all laughed in spite of themselves.

  Mr Hawthorne climbed on to the foretop, where Hayden sat with an arm looped around a shroud and a glass up to his eye.

  ‘What do you make of it, sir?’

  ‘I think it is a Navy cutter, though it is yet too distant to be certain.’ He passed the glass to Hawthorne, who took his place opposite Hayden.

  The marine lieutenant stared at the sea a moment and then lowered the glass, a look of concern spreading over his handsome face. ‘The small sails that I see before the cutter … are they fishing boats?’

  ‘Some might be, but I fear two of them, at least, might be boats bearing our shipmates and perhaps some French royalists as well.’

  Hawthorne raised the glass again, perhaps hoping to see more upon a second look. ‘If our boats are out there, will this cutter overhaul them before they reach Dominica?’

  ‘I cannot even be certain our boats are there, Mr Hawthorne, but if the cutter does overhaul them, I hope their people have the wit to surrender rather than fight.’

  ‘Surely they would not take on a ship – even such a small ship – with a handful of muskets and pistols? Even Ransome has more common sense than that!’

  ‘I agree, but if the French royalists are captured, their deaths are certain. They might prefer to die fighting … The other royalists who came aboard all bore muskets, and not a few pistols as well. Under such circumstances they might not be willing to surrender.’

  ‘In which case our own people would have no choice but to fight … even were the situation hopeless.’

  ‘Exactly so.’

  ‘Certainly they must be able to see us?’ Hawthorne said, thinking aloud.

  ‘I am quite certain they can – but can they make out what ship we are on this point of sail? I rather doubt it.’

  ‘And the French cutter will reach them before we can?’

  ‘Yes. I am afraid they will.’

  The French cutter did not have a proper chase piece and was forced to round up somewhat to bring a forward gun to bear. This was a dangerous operation which could easily lead to a broach, and the 3-pound balls fired never threatened the British boats.

  ‘They are merely trying to see if we will lose our nerve,’ Wickham observed as a ball from the French ship splashed into the back of a wave some thirty yards to larboard and dismally short.

  He twisted around in time to see the upper limb of the sun sink into the sea; in half of an hour it would be dark – unlike in northern latitudes, where the summer light could linger almost an hour. Dominica floated upon the sea some few miles distant, just out of reach, Wickham feared.

  The royalists aboard were silent and utterly apprehensive, the gunfire from the French cutter causing them all to start. Children hugged their parents, and husbands tried to re-assure their wives, but they appeared as people being carried to the guillotine.

  Originally, their destination had been Portsmouth in Prince Rupert Bay, but now the boats were shaping their course for the most northerly point of the island, which was also the point nearest to them. If they could, they would try to land in the protection of a small point. If not, they would have to go through the surf to land, which was not to Wickham’s liking with so many landsmen aboard. Turning over in the surf was common enough with lightly loaded boats.

  Wickham took up his glass and fixed it on the distant ship, struggling to keep it in the circle of his lens, especially with his damaged hand, which now clung to things but poorly.

  ‘I am beginning to believe that is our prize, in the offing,’ he observed.

  ‘Our captain?’ Childers responded.

  ‘So I hope – pray, even.’

  ‘Then it was the French ship that went up in flames, God have mercy on their Papist souls.’ The coxswain cast an embarrassed glance at the French passengers, but none had noticed, or perhaps they pretended not to.

  Wickham raised his glass and watched the chasing cutter a moment more, then lowered it and cursed under his breath. ‘They are mounting a half-pounder s
wivel on the bow.’

  Even without his glass, and in the failing light, the midshipman could make out men on the bow of the cutter. He glanced again at the island – too distant, he thought.

  ‘Does the bottom shoal up near the shore?’ Childers asked him, tilting his head toward Dominica.

  ‘Not enough to matter to us. They will be able to sail in as close as they dare to a lee shore, and launch boats, if they so desire. If we can get ashore before them, however, they will have a difficult time finding us in the forest.’

  The newly mounted swivel gun fired and, though the ball missed its target, it came a great deal nearer than any previous shot.

  ‘Pass loaded muskets aft for Mr Gould and myself,’ Wickham ordered, and then he arranged to have men load for the two midshipmen.

  Gould and Wickham sat with their muskets aimed at the sky, waiting until the French cutter was within range – which would be too damned close, by Wickham’s estimate. He glanced again at the island, which had grown large in the growing dusk.

  ‘I think we shall have to chance the surf, Mr Wickham,’ Childers said.

  ‘Yes, I believe we have no choice. Keep the seas dead astern, Mr Childers. It is our only hope.’

  The red and bloody sunset overspread the western horizon and then began to slowly fade. The swivel gun was fired again, and the ball splashed into a wave not two yards distant from Wickham’s cutter, then shot back out at an almost oblique angle, passing just over the heads of his crew.

  Everyone aboard shifted position at once, and there were exclamations and oaths in two languages.

  ‘Stay in your places!’ Wickham ordered. ‘Restez-là!’

  Wickham felt his heart pounding and forced himself to breathe slowly. It was something Hawthorne drilled home to every man trained to fire a musket – a pounding heart will shake your hands. He began to say it over and over, silently: ‘A pounding heart will shake your hands. A pounding heart …’

  There was a flash and a puff of smoke at the French cutter’s bow, but the boat fell behind a wave at that instant. Wickham raised his own musket, trained it on the ship and pulled back the cock.

  ‘Aim for the men at the swivel gun,’ he said evenly to Gould. ‘Wait until the bow reaches the bottom of the trough, Mr Gould, then fire above the men’s heads. Or, when she has reached the crest, fire just below the rail.’