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by Diane Carey

  Chasseur slowed as she came up on the schooner’s larboard beam at cannon range. The expanse of water between them glittered a silvery blue, and there were dolphins jumping in childlike delight. They loved the company of ships, loved to run before them and teach their offspring to ride the bow waves. For a moment he let his mind drift, consumed by the spectacle of watching a gaff-rigged privateer sailing. Surely it was the most beautiful sight under heaven. Trimmed on a reach now, the St. Lawrence’s sails move like wings of a butterfly. He rarely got a look at his own ship from the water, and never underway. This was a treat.

  A banner fluttered up a flag halyard leading from the main peak of the other ship. At first Boyle saw a muddled flash of blue and white. He waited for the red stripes and the blue star field. Instead, what unfolded and whipped before him was red, white, and blue in completely the wrong order. It flew from the ensign halyard of that other ship and slapped him in the face.

  Dieter roared, “Union Jack! God damn it!”

  Before Boyle could respond, flanks of red-jacketed Royal Marines popped up from behind the bulwarks of the St. Lawrence and drew rifles to their shoulders.

  “Get down!” he cried and plunged for the deck.

  Almost as one being his crew ducked. The eruption of enemy fire blew over their heads, engulfing Chasseur in rifle smoke. Only the few yards between the two ships prevented the volley from being devastating.

  There was blood on the deck under Boyle’s feet now. Someone was injured here, probably more than one. He followed the stream of blood and saw an unrecognizable corpse lying on the deck with its arms and face blown to gore. He had no idea who that was.

  On the St. Lawrence, the captain threw his straw hat down and shed his jacket, revealing a blue-and-cream Royal Navy uniform. The gun ports opened and suddenly a half-dozen guns showed their maws at the Chasseur.

  “Fire!” the other captain shrieked.

  St. Lawrence’s guns tore into Chasseur’s side, pummeling the chain-wales. Two of the fore shrouds snapped, and the main sheet, far back on the stern, was cut to pieces. The mast wobbled. Chasseur rocked bodily sideways and faltered as if she were stumbling down stairs.

  Swinging free, the huge main boom swept across the deck as the ship rocked sideways.

  “Heads down!” Thomas Coward shouted, just in time. Getting hit in the head by an uprooted tree could do as much damage as a cannon. “Get a preventer on that!”

  He and three others raced to regain control over the boom.

  “Chan’els are smashed!” Mooran yelled.

  “Thank you,” Boyle acknowledged.

  “Reload!” the English captain shouted to his gun battery. His men were dangerously quick at it. Then he turned to his helm officers and made a hand signal.

  “We should run!” Isaac Webb called to Boyle.

  Boyle was uncharacteristically silent. Isaac was right.

  “Tom!” Dieter demanded, stomping an imaginary foot.

  That was all it took. Boyle had spent enough time to know that tone from a chief mate. Shaken from his astonishment, he made the biggest gamble of his life.

  “Fight!” he answered.

  “Fight, aye!” Dieter bellowed. “Battle-stations!”

  A charge of energy ran through the shock-stricken crew. They were glad of it. Some shouted their energetic approval, and they changed from raiders to defenders of their nation.

  Along the starboard length of Chasseur, gun ports scraped open. The tilted deck rattled as the men put their shoulders to the trucks and ran the guns out.

  The other ship twisted sharply and came toward them, as if she meant to ram Boyle’s ship. Chasseur shot past the schooner’s bow. Instantly Boyle saw the new danger—the other captain was trained in war maneuvers and knew what he was doing. Ramming wasn’t the plan.

  Vernard warned, “Rake!”

  St. Lawrence was moving in behind Chasseur, to a position from which she could slaughter whole flanks of Chasseur’s men by firing balls down the length of the deck—a devastating maneuver of war that terrified Boyle just to think of it, and here it was about to happen. If they succeeded, the damage would be irremediable.

  “Helm up!” Boyle shouted. Desperately seeking eye contact with the two boys at the helm, he made a wild circle with his right arm and pointed to their larboard.

  Wide-eyed, Sigsby and Low cast off the lazy tackle and leaned on the working one. Given the circumstances the boys moved with remarkable speed, faster than the sail handlers could possibly respond. St. Lawrence was crossing behind them, about to cross the T, with her starboard broadside positioned to rake Chasseur’s deck. If she succeeded, the boys at the helm would be the first to die. Deadly fire would rush from the stern forward.

  Chasseur began to turn upward into the wind. Would she be quick enough?

  With a violent jump to her left, Chasseur dug her keel into the water and reared like a stallion. Her stern pressed downward and plumbed for the bottom. Into cold foam the amidships rail disappeared. Men stumbled and crashed into the bulwarks. Overton Addison almost went overboard, but caught himself on a kevel cleat. He hung there upside down with his legs in the sea. Boyle himself staggered headfirst into the mainmast pins. When he came up, his head was bloody. He felt the pounding of his heart in his ears.

  Chasseur leaned hard and surged forward, her square sails catching the wind. Again the other ship was forced to run with the wind behind her, something the British crew managed poorly. They didn’t understand schooners. Boyle called to Sigsby and Low. “Don’t collide!”

  Dieter shouted orders to the sail handlers to brace around and trim. The squares wheeled against the sky, fluttering madly. Chasseur lost its grip on the water and bobbled. Suddenly the two ships were broadside to broadside again, but they had switched sides. The gunners and men with small arms rushed from the starboard rail to the larboard rail, tripping over each other and spilling the coiled halyards all over the deck. Without being coached, the gun crews ran out the larboard twelves.

  With Chasseur’s square rig suddenly her advantage, Boyle shouted, “Back the heads’ls!”

  Deprived of their chance to rake Chasseur’s decks, St. Lawrence could do nothing as Boyle’s ship dropped speed and kept side by side. Lacking the Americans’ experience, the Englishmen had no idea how to regulate the speed of their captured schooner.

  Boyle spun to the gun crews. “Tear the rigging apart! Forward guns, fore mast! Midship guns, main mast! Fire at will! Small arms, fire at will!”

  Though the commands seemed general, he counted on his men. They knew how a schooner worked and how to disable one. Take out the sheet blocks, and the sails were useless. Punch holes in the heads’ls, put balls through the stays, crack the booms, destroy the bowsprit, shatter the deadeyes.

  The other ship, though, was filled not with merchant sailors, but with trained seamen of the Royal Navy and armed Royal Marines. Those men had to be targeted, and that was the job of the small-arms men on Chasseur.

  The twelve-pounder guns growled. Smoke and the stink of black powder suffocated the crew. Boyle jumped onto the main rail and strained to see. The smoke twisted away, revealing St. Lawrence. The single thunderstroke had demolished its rigging and pulverized the sails.

  “Reload!” Dieter called angrily. He was red-faced with fury that they had been caught unprepared. Whether he was angry at his own crew or the other ship’s crew for fooling them, Boyle couldn’t tell.

  They heard the cry, “Fire!” from the smoke-shrouded enemy. The bark of the British long guns carried the Royal Navy’s mark of excellence and generations of practice. Men fell in torment from the brutal hammering. Chasseur rocked bodily.

  “Fire!” Dieter shouted. His voice was reassuring—Boyle thought he had lost his mate to that blast.

  All but one of the larboard guns were ready and blew their volcanic guts at almost the same time with ruinous accuracy. A God-shocking whomp rocked both ships. It was like being caught inside a flexing muscle.

&nbs
p; The gray side of St. Lawrence exploded in three places. Flying wood took the bottom of the fores’l away. Severed lines danced in the air. British sailors and Marines flew backward from the concussion, dismembered by hot iron balls and fragments of the rail and bulwarks. Above the howling wounded, the tattered fores’l waved wildly, completely out of control. Blood spilled from the scuppers, draining down the outer hull in red stripes.

  Above their heads a deep-throated cracking noise drew many terrified eyes. Boyle peered upward. The main topmast of St. Lawrence leaned far over, cracked at the doubling like a big fractured bone, and threatened to fall, held up now only by the stay, which wouldn’t hold for long.

  “Small arms, fire!” Paul Mooran’s words were swallowed by the popping of discharging muskets, rifles, and pistols. Narrow funnels of gray smoke blew across the water to the other ship. On the schooner, a dozen red-jacketed Royal Marines crumpled.

  A new volley blew toward them from the stumpy, powerful carronades along the length of the St. Lawrence. The coordinated hammering engulfed Chasseur in black clouds, pulverizing the ship’s side. Wooden thorns, moving at the speed of bullets, tore into flesh. In the choking smoke, Boyle felt his body fold and fly backward and slam into the back of a starboard gun truck. When he felt for the decktop and crawled to his feet, his shirt was bloody across the chest and his left arm. Had somebody been bleeding on him?

  Hoping the boys were still at the helm, he shouted, “Lay alongside!”

  The ship wobbled beneath him.

  Blinded by a veil of smoke, he called, “That’s not your course! Boys!”

  If they were dead—

  As the following wind puffed the smoke away and his stinging eyes cleared, he realized that he was on his hands and knees, staring down at bloodied deck planks. The grain of the wood was etched in red, making a strange and distracting pattern.

  No … not the wood … wood grain … this would take some scrubbing … the ships’ boys with good knees … think.

  There was a loud bonk, but not a weapon. This was wood-to-wood—a heavy, hollow clunk, then another aft, then the first one again, midships. The vessels were grinding against each other. Their pocked hulls pounded hard once, twice, cracking the chain-wales. Hard bomping noises thrummed through the ships’ bones.

  He stumbled to his feet and dragged himself along the edge of the fore decktop. Snatching a pistol from one of his own wounded—was it loaded?—he called through a burning throat.

  “Boarding party!”

  An insane thought, a more insane command with the odds so much against them. Like it or not, the British had the best-trained military force since the Romans and only a fool would deny that.

  Amidships, he stepped on a gun truck and up onto the ship’s rail. Somehow the boys at the helm were still with him and kept pressing Chasseur up against St. Lawrence’s side, despite that the bouncing vessels had no fenders. Dizzy, he wobbled but managed to keep his footing on the rail. To his pride and gratitude, the rail was crowded now with his own crew, eager to follow him onto the other ship, in spite of everything.

  Before him on the deck were dozens of dead and wounded Englishmen, piled together with arms and legs tangled and blood flowing as if from one giant creature. Groans of agony and senseless cries rose everywhere, some on Chasseur, many more here.

  He waved away a cloud of smoke. Before him at eye level, the schooner’s main mast held a gaping wound in the shape of a twelve-pound iron ball. The ball had struck a glancing blow, leaving an impression of itself notched into the mast just below the hoops. Structurally weakened, it could fall at any time. The strain of carrying the mainsail … just a matter of minutes.

  Automatically Boyle picked his way aft, raising an arm to block the shredded lines dangling in his way. Only then did he notice the blood on his sleeve, although he was unmoved by the sight of it. His head cleared as he tried to pick his way through the bodies to the one face he sought—the English captain who had caught him daydreaming. The diminutive young man was indeed still on his own command deck, sitting on an overturned gun truck. Beside him on the deck was the pulverized body of a man in a lieutenant’s jacket, with no hat and no face.

  Boyle cocked his pistol for better or worse and pointed it at the young captain’s face.

  “Stand down!”

  The captain held up a defensive hand, and obviously had trouble moving just that little. His left leg displayed a ragged wound in the flesh of the thigh. He might have pulled out a large splinter, but was now pressing his other hand to the gory wound. If he stood up, he would probably bleed to death.

  “They’ve struck!” Paul Mooran called. “Tom, they’ve struck!”

  Dazed, Boyle blinked at the flag halyard behind the captain. The Union Jack had been hauled down and was cradled in the arms of a very young boy with a wounded head. He couldn’t have been more than seven.

  “Your prisoner, sir,” the captain of the St. Lawrence offered. “We can no longer maneuver.” He made a sad motion toward the corpse at his side. “My lieutenant, Mr. Moycroft. He took the blow and saved my life. I think … someone should know that.”

  “Loyal man.” Boyle lowered his pistol. “You were out of uniform before. Doesn’t that make you a spy or something?”

  “Actually, it does. You can hang me on that basis. Or shoot me. If you don’t mind, I’d rather be shot.”

  Was he joking?

  “Tom!” Dieter appeared at his side. “The ship is ours. Are you all right?”

  “What?” Boyle looked at him.

  “You’re wounded. Look at yourself.”

  Knowing an order when he heard one, Boyle looked down at his chest and left arm, where his shirt was streaked with blood. “Oh,” he said, unimpressed. “I don’t feel it.”

  “We don’t have a surgeon aboard.” With his usual resourcefulness, Dieter pressed a cloth to what looked like the worst wound, the one on Boyle’s upper arm. Where had he acquired a cloth in this mess? Mates.

  “Get some fenders between these ships.”

  “Fenders!” Dieter called, and left it to happen on its own. Somebody would do it.

  Boyle looked at the St. Lawrence’s captain. “You duped me. A smart masquerade, Captain. I admire your ingenuity. You caught me naked as a belly dancer.”

  “I didn’t know you could sail a square-rigger,” the young captain said. “I thought you were a schooner man.”

  “I am. But sailing is sailing and the sea is its inconstant self. It pays to be diverse. Your name?”

  “Gordon. James E. Gordon, lieutenant.”

  “James Gordon?” Dieter interrupted. “Isn’t there a James Gordon in General Ross’s assault fleet there on the Bay?”

  “That’s James A. Gordon. I’m James E. Gordon. It’s a common enough name.”

  “John, let’s have some bandages and clean cloths brought over here,” Boyle ordered. “Collect the small arms and separate the wounded from the dead, then administer relief to the wounded.”

  “Will do.”

  But before Dieter could slip away, Boyle paused and gazed down at the smoke-stained face and tousled black hair of the English captain. “Don’t I know you?”

  “You do know him.” But this was not Dieter’s voice.

  Boyle swung around. He knew the voice before he ever saw the familiar face. “Victor!”

  “Tarkio!” Dieter exclaimed at the same time, and launched himself into a bear hug at this most unlikely moment, wringing Tarkio’s blond head in his tattooed arms.

  While Dieter still had their absent shipmate in a lock, Boyle found Tarkio’s hand and held it as if to prove the other man was real and alive. “Yes, of course! That frigate! Victor! Where were you? Thank goodness our guns didn’t strike you!”

  “I was below.”

  “Bound?”

  “Bound by my oath.”

  Dieter pulled back and held Tarkio by the shoulders. “Where’s Bristow?”

  “Oh … Bristow died in the spring. Fell from the maint
op. There was nothing to be done for him. Sorry, John.”

  “God rest him,” Dieter uttered, clearly moved.

  He and Tarkio and Boyle spent a silent moment in memory of their shipmate, during which Boyle remembered he would have many duties dealing with the dead and wounded of his crew just over the rail on Chasseur. Death was part of life at sea, part of life anywhere, really. Didn’t make it any easier.

  “Let’s tend these men’s wounds,” Boyle said. “They’re stalwart foes who deserve respect.”

  Reeling with delight at Tarkio’s appearance, but still drawn away by his many immediate duties, Dieter slapped Tarkio on the back, smiled ridiculously for these circumstances, and bounded away.

  Lieutenant Gordon winced in pain, then squeezed it down and conquered it, at least for the moment. He looked up at Boyle. “Why did you decide to fight us?”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Surrender. It’s what a sane man would do when faced with a clearly superior armed force. Once again, Captain, you’ve shown yourself a provocateur.”

  “Or at least not a sane man.”

  “Once you saw that we were Royal Navy, I thought you would flee and I could run you down in one of your own privateer ships. I hoped to make a mockery of the spell-caster. Take away some of your hoodoo. You surprised me by facing us.”

  “I would not willingly have sought a contest with a king’s vessel, but when I found myself deceived, the honor of the flag entrusted to my charge was not to be disgraced by flight.”

  He glanced casually at the U.S. standard still whipping from Chasseur’s main peak. When he turned again to the English captain, the younger man and Tarkio were both looking at the flag too.

  There was something about that. Boyle let the silence speak for a few seconds.

  Finally he interrupted his own poignant moment. “How did you get an American ship that hasn’t been altered?”

  “I stopped the alterations before they began.”

  Boyle smiled warmly. “You’re a bulldog, aren’t you?”

  “Some kind of a dog, apparently.” Gordon licked his dry lips and smiled, but weakly. “I have done my best, Captain Boyle. I know that. I had every advantage. You bested me anyway. You have my congratulations. You deserve your excellent reputation.”