by Hunter, Seth
Nathan looked for Tully. But he had already taken command in the waist and he had most of the men from the boats hacking and heaving at the wreckage. Nathan saw the Irish giant Connor among them, picking up a great piece of spar and chucking it overboard as if it were a log or a lump of peat you might throw on the fire.
Where was Maxwell, the second lieutenant? His station was with the guns directly below the quarterdeck and Nathan could hear them firing still; he could even feel the reverberations under his feet, if it was not the shock of French round shot hitting the hull.
“Mr. Lamb!” Nathan called over to the youngest of his midshipmen, who appeared to be commanding the quarterdeck guns, though it was doubtful if the men could hear a word he said and did not need to; they all knew what they had to do and at near point-blank range it was no more astonishing than to load and fire, working like automata, white eyes staring from smoke-blackened faces, kerchiefs tied around their ears against the noise, worming and sponging, breaking open the cartridges from the wooden cases and ramming them down the muzzles of the guns, ramming the shot down after them and then standing back for the gun captains to do their work before they ran forward again. And the guns so hot, the sweat sizzled and spat off them and the slush on the wheels of the trucks all melted, so they screamed like banshees on a night out. Nathan raised his voice to its maximum level. “Mr. Lamb!”
At last he heard and looked about him—a brief expression of pure astonishment—and then came running up touching his hat.
“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know you were back.”
As if Nathan had been on a stroll ashore.
“My compliments to Mr. Maxwell and I would be obliged if he would give me a damage report.” Then as he turned away: “Mr. McGregor, I would be obliged if you would distribute half your men among the guns and set the rest to help clear the decks. Mr. Holroyd, let me know the state of the forecastle guns and who is commanding them.”
And all the time wondering if he should haul down their colours that were still flying at the stern, still remarkably immune from the mayhem on the decks and in the rigging. Was that not the most useful, honest thing to do: to bring this slaughter to an end?
But first he crossed to the rail to see what the Virginie was up to.
At first he could see nothing for the smoke but then a window opened and there she was in a glare of blood-red sun, apparently unharmed and most of her sails set, her hull apparently intact and all her guns pointing towards him but not firing any more, not a single one and … By God she was turning away! Incredibly. Her yards coming round and dropping off from the wind.
Why? When she had them at her mercy. But his relief was premature and he damned himself for a fool. It could only be to wear round and come across his stern. One raking broadside to finish them off. And it would, too. But did she have the space to do it? The Unicorn was moored in about twenty-five feet of water in a kind of trench with her bows pointing towards the westernmost edge of the island and the seabed rising steeply at her stern so that in calm, clear water you could see the bottom. Was there room for a frigate to get past without grounding? Nathan strongly doubted it—but she was going to try. He would have to swing round on the spring cable to meet her—but how had Pym moored her? He looked for the hawser and saw it leading off through one of the after gun ports on the larboard side. If Pym had used a dolphin or a kedge anchor they could pivot the stern round it …
But what if the French had a different plan? To wear round and come alongside. Fire one more broadside at point-blank range and then board. That is what Nathan would have done. He looked back at her, calculating the distance, expecting to see her bows crossing the wind and swinging back towards them but she was leaving it very late, impossibly late. All he could see was her stern. Why was she not coming round? And then a chink of light appeared in the dark storm clouds of his brain. She was not turning. She was running.
Impossible. He said it again, shook his head at such an absurdity. But still she ran on. Out into the open sea. The gap between the two ships visibly widening. And then as he stared, clutching the rail in an anguish of hope, her sternchasers fired. Two blossoms of orange flame flowering almost simultaneously. Aiming high again at what was left of the Unicorn’s foremast. A parting shot.
But why had she run?
Nathan looked to the southeast, looking to find a sail, a fleet of sails: the only possible explanation for this sudden withdrawal on the point of victory. And then he knew. No sail. No fleet. Just the biggest, blackest cloud he had ever seen. It filled the horizon to the southeast, reaching towards them and climbing high, so high and vast it was like the mushroom cloud of a genie he had seen emerging from a bottle in one of his childhood story books. Save that it was shaped more like an anvil than a mushroom: a massive black anvil advancing towards them as if Vulcan himself had hurled it across the ocean.
“Hurricane.” Pym’s voice, almost conversational, at his ear. Then, in case Nathan did not know the meaning of the word, “Tropical storm. Had one a month or two ago, off Cuba. Never thought to see the like of it.” Staring at the great black wedge of cloud as if it was of only passing interest. A diversion from darker thoughts.
“Mr. Pym …” Nathan’s voice was a stranger to him, oddly husky, his tongue felt as if it was stuck in his throat. But Pym had turned away and walked back to his station by the shattered wheel where he stood, as before, with his hands clasped behind his back and his chin jutting forward.
“Please sir, Mr. Maxwell sends his compliments.” Young Lamb was back, breathless from his mission below. “And wishes you to know he has nine guns that are still capable of firing, but that he can use all the men you can spare him, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lamb.” It meant nothing now. The guns did not matter any more. Only the sails.
He looked aloft, knowing it was hopeless. The mainmast stripped of its yards, the mizzenmast and the foretop gone, the bowsprit alone intact, pointing like a spear towards Ship Island, their likely graveyard.
They still had the fore course. That last salvo from the sternchasers had missed its target. He supposed if they rigged a staysail they could just about run before the wind but they would be running the wrong way—straight for that Devil’s Jigsaw of a coastline to the north.
Their only chance was to head for the open sea, as the Virginie had. That was why she had so abruptly broken off the battle, to give herself a faint chance of finding sea room, leaving her crippled adversary to the mercy of wind and waves.
Lamb was still there, waiting for his orders.
“Tell Mr. Maxwell he is to cease firing and to join me on the quarterdeck with as many men as he can muster.”
“Sir.” Another voice. Baker, the sailing master with his head bandaged and his arm in a sling.
“You are hurt, Mr. Baker.”
“I am all right, sir. I have just come from the cockpit.”
The cockpit. What must it be like down there.? He should send Gabriel and what others he could spare to help the surgeon—if only to hold the victims down while he worked on them with knife and saw.
But Baker had other priorities. “We must cut the cables,” he insisted. “Rig a jury mast, run to the northeast.”
Yes. Quite. Save that they would run upon Ship Island within the hour. Or one of the other islands in that grim chain between the Gulf and the Sound. There was not the slightest possibility of reaching open water in the state they were in and Baker must know it. They had to find shelter. But where?
Then he saw Desmarais.
He had stayed to guide them back to the Unicorn, he and his fellow, Joseph Bonnet, and to claim the reward they had been promised and now he was standing near the rail watching Nathan with a curious expression, as if interested to know what he would do now, as if it did not affect him one way or another. And yet he was no more immune from the power of the hurricane than any of them. Unless …
“We must find shelter,” Nathan instructed him. “We need to find a bay, a d
eep anchorage with some kind of a … a breakwater.” It was almost laughable. He heard the mocking cries of a seabird. Ship Island was the best they could do. This was it. There was nowhere else.
But the Indian was not laughing.
“There is the Isle of Good Feasting,” he said thoughtfully.
They found it on the chart, though Des Barres had given it a different name: Turtle Island. A scrap of land about three miles from their present position just off the northern shore of Ship Island, almost enclosed by the horns of a small bay.
“How high is it?” Nathan asked the guide.
A shrug. “It is an island.”
“But … does it have trees?”
“But yes, it has trees. And many birds. Also turtles. And alligators. That is why we call it the Isle of Good Feasting.”
Nathan followed the line of soundings from their present position to the island. Twenty, twenty-two … It was just possible.
But Baker was shaking his head, repeating his mantra. “In my opinion our only chance is to head for the open sea.”
Nathan caught Tully’s eye but for once it was uncertain. He knew the rule as well as Baker. As well as Nathan.
“I know, Mr. Baker. I know. But we cannot reach the open sea in our present state. I believe we must try for shelter and judging from the chart, Turtle Island is the best that is on offer.” He turned back to Tully. “We need a staysail from the foretop to the bowsprit.”
Tully nodded and was gone.
“And we will steer by the tiller ropes,” Nathan instructed Baker. But the sailing master was looking beyond him and Nathan turned to see Pym standing in the open doorway. His face was still masked with blood but there was intelligence in his eye—and suspicion. And anger. He looked at their faces and then at the charts on the table.
“What are you doing?” he said.
Nathan told him as briefly as he could.
“Madness,” said Pym.
Nathan saw Baker’s appalled, embarrassed countenance. “Mr. Pym—” he began.
“Pure bloody madness. And no more than five minutes back on the ship.”
“Thank you, Mr. Baker, that will be all. Mr. Pym, I will speak with you later.” As if it was more than the remotest of possibilities.
When he reached the quarterdeck, the Angel Gabriel was waiting for him with the news that Frankie Coyle was dead.
CHAPTER 13
Hurricane
IT BEGAN WITH THE RAIN. Such rain as had convinced Noah of his divine purpose. A rain to cleanse the world of sin. Certainly it cleansed their bloodied decks within minutes of leaving the mooring, sluicing the carnage overboard through the scuppers in a pinkish torrent but continuing with such violence as if to erase the decks themselves and all that was upon them. Nathan fought his way up into the bows as they staggered around the tip of Ship Island under a reefed fore course and the scrap of a staysail Tully had set. He could barely see or breathe for the deluge and a stream of water poured from the front brim of his hat as if it had determined upon an alternative occupation as a gutter. He snatched it off in the hope of seeing better but it was impossible. Earth and sky had dissolved in a world of water.
He clung hard to the lifeline as the crippled vessel rolled, for without her masts she rolled, as Tully had put it, like a drunken whore in the Haymarket, but she was moving and, as one might say of the whore, more or less upright and in the desired direction, with the wind obligingly off her quarter and not yet savage, though Nathan had no illusions about its true nature. He just prayed it would not reveal itself until they reached the Isle of Turtles: if they could find it in such conditions.
He struggled back to the quarterdeck. Baker was at the con, steering by compass alone—what he could see of it for the rain—with a line of boys relaying his directions to the men at the tiller. And the rest of them clinging to the lifelines or what rigging was left to comfort them. Pym, Maxwell, Tully, Holroyd, Lamb … the remnant of Nathan’s officers, as helpless as he. It was impossible to take soundings. All they could do was follow that line of numbers on the chart and hope Des Barres had got them right and they had not changed since he first made them some twenty years before. Nathan looked for Desmarais and saw him squatting in the scuppers with a tarp held over him, apparently content to let others do the navigating though only he knew where the hell they were supposed to be heading.
And now a shout from Mr. Lamb, clinging to the flagstaff at the stern. “The boats, sir!”
Nathan ran to the rail. The ship’s boats were strung out in a long line astern, for without the yards they had no means of hauling them aboard. But they should have covered them with canvas or tarps, for now they were awash with rainwater. They piped all hands and managed to haul the gig aboard but there was no saving the others, and as they filled up they acted like a great sea anchor dragging at their stern.
“Cut them loose,” Nathan ordered bitterly, and he stood there and watched them fall away into the mist of rain. More guilt, more evidence of his gross incompetence. With the boats they might have made their way ashore before the sea grew too great and though he lost the ship he would at least have saved the crew. He made his way back to the starboard rail and resumed his hopeless vigil, searching for some solid outline in that shifting palette of washed-out blues and greys. Ship Island was barely a half-mile off their starboard bow according to the chart, but you would never have known it and they dared not venture closer for fear of grounding.
He became aware of a presence at his side. Desmarais, still holding the tarp around his head and shoulders like a shawl, peering through the torrent. What at? What landmark was he searching for—and how could he hope to find it in such a flood?
“Now,” he said. He flung out an arm. “We must go in. Towards the shore.”
Nathan stared to windward, clawing the water from his eyes. What shore? He could not possibly see a thing. But it was a little late for doubts. He gave the order, saw the astounded face of Baker, turned back to the rail … And there it was—a line of white surf and sand, if it was sand, about two cables’ lengths off their starboard bow.
Desmarais was running forward spinning along the lifeline like a spider on a web and Nathan followed more cautiously with his speaking trumpet. The Indian had shed his cloak and was clambering up into the bows, clinging precariously to the forestay. Jack-of-the-Marsh he may be but he seemed as entirely at home on the sea and if he had taken to the air, Nathan would not have been entirely astonished.
“There!”
Trees. A long line of trees, bending under the torrent of rain like reeds swept by hail. The Unicorn seemed to be heading straight for them but then Nathan saw the gap in the line of breakers. It was like the mouth of a river but then he saw that it was a channel between Ship Island and another, smaller island—little more than a reef—a cable’s length off their larboard bow. Dangerously close, with the waves smashing against the rocks, or whatever material it was composed of, and rising high into the air as if in fury at the temerity of such an insignificant piece of sand and shingle to stand in the way of the mighty sea.
Nathan turned back to face the quarterdeck and raised the speaking trumpet to his lips. “Port your helm!” He heard the order repeated to the men down below at the tiller ropes and slowly, painfully slowly, the bows came round to starboard, the hands slipping and sliding on the streaming decks as they struggled to haul in the sheets. Ridiculous. To manoeuvre a ship this size in such waters, in such a storm. Pym and Baker were right. They should have made for the open sea.
But the Unicorn edged her way ponderously, laboriously into the channel between the two islands—and there it was. His breakwater. A long line of trees almost at the water’s edge. But not mangroves as he had expected. Pines. How had they got here? Birds must have brought the seeds from the mainland to mix with the rich mud and the sand. It did not matter how they got here. They were pines and they had stood the test of time and tide and whatever else the weather could hurl at them.
“H
ere! Now!” Desmarais screaming in his ear as if Nathan could stop the ship like a canoe, by digging his paddle in the water and spinning round. But Tully had his men along the yard hauling up the course and the frigate wallowed in the choppy seas in the lee of the island with just the staysail to hold her off the shore. Nathan could deal with choppy. If choppy was the worst it could do.
They dropped anchor and sent the gig out with hawsers to make them fast to the trees. Pym’s face was twisted into the semblance of a gargoyle spouting water.
“To moor in such a sea? It is pure—” But then he caught the look in Nathan’s eye and did not finish. He did not have to. Madness it surely was, but what else was he to do, having brought them thus far? If they did not moor they would drift upon the shoals. But if they moored and the sea grew great they would be broached and the ship would founder.
He had to trust his breakwater.
“I think, Mr. Pym,” said Nathan, “we may pipe the crew to dinner.”
A mere pretence at calm but it gave him some small satisfaction to see Pym’s expression. It was a cold scrap of a meal, of necessity, with the galley fires dowsed, but they had the last of the fresh bread with a cheese brought from Havana that almost resembled Cheddar with apples and onions and a portion of plum duff which though even stodgier than usual without the benefit of a hot custard was helped down with a double ration of grog and generally found welcome. As meals went it would never have suited Mrs. Small but recent events had reduced her absence to a very small item in Nathan’s list of regrets. He helped his own portion down with a bottle of Captain Kerr’s claret which he shared with Tully in the privacy of his cabin, past caring if it smacked of favouritism or not.