by Hunter, Seth
“A curious match nonetheless,” remarked Imlay, raising his brow.
“Curious enough for Sir Charles to disown her,” admitted Tully. “And I was brought up in a fisherman’s cottage until, I regret, my father was drowned in a storm—the fate of many a Guernsey man. My mother, being impoverished by this event, felt compelled to apply to her family for relief. Which they were pleased to grant in my case but not, alas, in hers . . .”
His tone continued light but there was that in his eyes that betrayed a more serious view of this neglect.
“I was then but five years old and was not permitted to object to the arrangement, so I was removed to my grandfather’s house and raised as a gentleman.”
“And your mother,” inquired Nathan, moved, despite himself, to ask so personal a question.
“I regret to say died within the year. My grandfather I remember was good enough to attend her funeral. He was not a particularly malicious man. I remained with him until I was sixteen when I ran away to sea and sought my own advancement—as a smuggler. Or, as we in the Channel Isles prefer to call it, a free trader, the which I have remained ever since.”
“Well,” said Imlay, “that is a story to surpass any of our own tales of the Americas, is it not, Mr. Keeble?”
“That it is,” said Keeble, who had doubtless heard it before and whose eyes had begun to glaze over a little from drink. “To the free trade,” he slurred, raising his glass.
And so they drank to the free trade and Nathan hoped that his red face might be mistook for the effects of alcohol rather than shame.
Upon the completion of dessert they summoned the Smalls to join them in a glass and to thank them for such a delightful feast, whereupon Imlay transferred his interrogation to Mrs. Small. She revealed that she had once been cook to the Comte de Bolbec until the Revolution took away her employment and her employer’s head. She now had ambitions, she said, to open a restaurant in London.
They drank to her success.
“Though I hope you will not be in too much of a haste to leave us,” Nathan implored her. “And we must discuss your remuneration—if you are to assist Mr. Small in the galley,” he added tactfully.
When they had gone, he and Tully took a turn upon the deck. The wind had slackened somewhat and backed to the southwest and Nathan expressed a belief that if it remained there they might attempt to leave harbour upon the morrow.
“For we may keep it upon our larboard quarter until we are clear of Cap d’Antifer,” he proposed. “Indeed, if it holds it may take us clear across the Channel.”
Tully nodded but he seemed uncertain.
“Or is there something I have overlooked?” inquired Nathan politely.
“No, sir, it would work as neat as kiss my . . .” He forbore to complete the sentence but added with a frown, “If only the wind does not move once more to the west and we find ourselves with a freshening breeze upon a lee shore and the tide on the turn.”
Chapter 22
Cap d’Antifer
It worked as neatly as Nathan had hoped until they were ten miles out to sea and a little to the east of the Meridian.
He had taken every precaution against the heavy weather. The hatches battened down, guns tethered cow fashion: swung round and lashed fore and aft across the ports. The anchors secured with double ring and shank painters. Reliever tackles hooked on to the tiller and hands detailed to man them. Tarpaulin placed in the weather rigging to give the watch a little shelter from the wind and lifelines rigged to give a handhold to the men working on deck.
But Nathan could not command the wind. And at a point some five miles off Cap d’Antifer, Tully’s fears were realised.
The shift was announced by a sudden lull and then a violent gust from the west that took the mainsail aback and hurled the barky on to her beam ends, sending most of those on deck sprawling into the scuppers in several feet of rushing water. If the two helmsmen had not been lashed to the wheel, the same fate would have befallen them and the vessel would undoubtedly have foundered. But as the wave passed and the sea rushed out through her scuppers, she came back on a more or less even keel and they spun the wheel until her head came round three points to the northeast with the wind once more on her quarter. The danger was averted for the time being but they were now headed almost directly towards Cap d’Antifer and unless the wind backed or some helpful deity intervened they could not escape running upon the headland. To make matters worse the breeze was not constant. At times it would shift back a point or two so they were effectively scudding under their single reefed mainsail, barely keeping ahead of the following sea. At other times it would fall away entirely leaving the sail flapping against the mast with a very great danger of being pooped: the sea breaking over the stern and raking the deck, carrying all before it.
Nathan clung to the lifeline they had rigged across the deck, wondering what he could do to avoid disaster, with only himself to blame for the folly of putting to sea in a near gale. And all for Citizen Danton, the Bull of Arcis: a cut-throat Revolutionist whose idea of peace was doubtless to put all Europe under the power of France and install the guillotine in Whitehall to quell dissent. Nathan braced himself against the canting deck as the stern lifted, lifted at an impossible angle, plunging the flying witch at her bow deep into the sea and hurling the water back over her hoary locks so that he thought she would never rise. And then slowly, laboriously, almost groaning, up she came, streaming water, the long bowsprit pointing like an admonition towards the black sky he had not heeded. And the grey seas heaving all around them and the air filled with white foam and the incredible noise . . .
Now here came Tully, making a staggering run from the rail and clutching on to the lifeline next to him and shouting in his ear. Something about the sail.
“What? I cannot hear you. Say again!” Nathan volleyed back into the streaming face.
“The mainsail is losing wind in the troughs, sir.”
So it was. It was not the wind that confounded them but the waves: casting them so low in the troughs the sail could not function. And so the sea was overtaking them and there was a constant threat of being pooped. But what could they do?
“If we were to hoist the main topsail . . .” he yelled back, working out the consequence in his head. Was there not a danger of carrying too much canvas—and carrying it away? “But we must first strike the course.”
Could they do it with so small a crew—and six of them below deck working the pump?
Tully nodded his agreement. “And I respectfully submit, sir,” the effort of this courtesy at full volume making the cords stand out in his neck, “we set the foresail—and the fore topmast staysail.”
Nathan pictured it, trying to calculate the angles and the stresses. Why did this not come instinctively? Why was it always such a painful process? Was it different for Tully? Because he was a Channel Islander with webbed feet, born of a fisherman and a mermaid?
A part of Nathan urged him to leave it to Tully, to trust in his judgement, but the greater part would not let go. He could not give an order he did not understand. So he pulled him back along the lifeline, in the lee of the tarpaulin weather cloth they had spread in the mizzen shrouds to provide a little shelter from the wind. He still had to shout but at least he could hear himself think—and better expound his reservations.
“What is the point of rigging the staysail?”
If the vessel were dead before the weather, as it was most of the time, the staysail could hold no wind. He saw Tully thinking about this—or how to explain it—and possibly, who knows, resenting the necessity.
“It will prevent us being brought by the lee,” he shouted back, “and help to pull the head off the wind in the event of a yaw.”
Now Nathan understood. If the stern came across the wind, it would throw the mainsail back and bring them broadside on to the sea, sweepi
ng the decks. Likewise if they yawed: the head swinging violently towards the wind.
Nathan felt as he had when he had taken his lieutenant’s exam with three senior captains hurling hypothetical problems at him: “You are scudding under reefed mainsail off a lee shore and the wind two points on your quarter . . .” His head full of calculations and the clock ticking. But then he had not had Tully at his side.
“Very well,” he shouted. “Carry on, Mr. Tully.”
An excellent command. Carry on, Mr. Tully. Nathan watched through the water that streamed down his face as six topmen swarmed up the rigging to haul up the main course and six more lowered the fore course in its stead and then climbed even higher to let down the fore topsail while the masts described an arc of at least thirty degrees and the rain and the wind lashed at their frail bodies. Nathan could not contemplate joining them there though he longed to set an example. But he joined them to haul the sheets of the staysail aft, holding it amidships so it would exert more of a pull on the head.
He could feel the change at once. They could not outrun the waves but they had reduced their impact. They now passed comfortably under the stern instead of forever threatening to poop them.
And yet they were racing even faster to their doom on Cap d’Antifer.
Nathan stayed forward, clinging to the belfry and peering through the foam and the spray. How far? Two, three miles? His only hope was that on their present course they would just miss the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, that with the tide still on the ebb it would exert enough of a counter to the waves and they would be able to round the cape—if only by a whisker.
But then what?
The coast beyond curved away to the east but they would still be dangerously close to shore and from his memory of the chart it contained several sharp teeth that might snag them. And the tide must turn within the hour.
He fought his way aft to where Tully stood with Keeble, clinging to the lifeline by the helm, peering at the compass together with the water streaming off their sou’westers like a pair of gargoyles.
“We must go below,” he shouted in Tully’s ear, “and consult the chart.”
They darted to the hatch, pulled aside the cover, and slid down the companionway in a deluge of water.
And here, swaying towards them came Small, his rotund figure swathed in oilskin and with a sou’wester pulled low over his head for all that he was below deck.
“Ah, Small,” Nathan called out with desperate amity. “And how is your good lady? I fear we have given her a sharp baptism.”
Was it only last night that they were supping upon her Canard de Rouen, safe in harbour and merry with Imlay’s wine?
He imagined the poor woman spewing her guts out in their wretched cabin but then the figure raised its head and to his astonishment he saw that it was she—apparently none the worse for wear. It was Small who was laid out in the cabin, having taken a tumble and sprained his wrist, she informed them, and she was fetching the medicine chest and some rum to comfort him.
They wished him well and continued to Nathan’s cabin where he spread out the chart under the storm lantern that Gabriel had hung from the beam.
“If we are to round the cape,” said Nathan, “we are still in peril. Unless we can claw away.”
They both knew that with the wind in its present quarter this was an impossibility, for even if they came a mere point into the wind they would be broached and driven helpless upon the shore. And yet if they did nothing it must happen anyway, sooner or later, for there was no hope of reaching Veulettes where the coast fell away even farther to the east.
Nathan stabbed his finger at a point some ten miles beyond Cap d’Antifer where the River Valmont came down to the sea at the little fishing port of Fécamp. On their present course, even if they managed to miss the headland, they were bound to run upon Pointe Fagnet at the far side of the port. But what if they were to bring the head round and run directly up river?
Tully shook his head. He indicated the note at the side of the Admiralty chart:
The channels in the estuaries of the Somme, L’Authie, La Canche and Valmont are constantly changing. Passage through them should not be attempted without some local knowledge and never in unsettled weather.
“But what else are we to do?” Nathan demanded impatiently. “I think we must take the risk or run upon the point.”
Tully nodded but his face remained troubled.
They had just emerged on deck when the vessel yawed. A great sea broke over the side and they were hurled off their feet by an enormous rush of water. Nathan was swept up against one of the 4-pounders on the lee side, giving his head a great crack that blacked him out. He came to spewing water and clutching at the gun lashings; saw the two helmsmen, still miraculously holding on to the wheel; looked round for Tully and saw him a few feet away swept up against the hatch for the main hold with blood pouring from a gash on his forehead.
Then the dread shout of “Man overboard!”
Nathan dragged himself to his feet, clinging to the barrel of the gun and peering over the rail, saw the head as it rose on the back of a wave, an arm raised in desperate appeal. But it was impossible to lower a boat or to come about. Nothing they could do in that terrible sea. Nothing but throw a line which Keeble did—and the line fell short and the head was gone.
“Who was it?” Nathan yelled. He looked about the deck. Four, five men, their faces bewildered, clinging to the lifeline or the rail.
“I think it was young Frankie,” said one, “young Frankie Coyle.”
He might have known. And he was entirely to blame for it. They should never have left port . . .
Then he saw him. Not in the sea but trapped under the launch that was lashed in the waist, between foremast and main, swept there like a bundle of rags, a piece of flotsam, more dead than alive. They ran to him and dragged him out and banged him on the back until he spewed out above a pint of green water. But he was as white as a corpse, coughing and clutching at his side; his face screwed up in agony. Tully thought he had broken a rib. They carried him below and laid him in Nathan’s cot and when they came on deck Keeble shouted that it was Carter who had gone, one of their best topmen who had been safer on the yard than on the deck . . . And then he pointed over Nathan’s shoulder, his eyes staring and his arm stretched out like some biblical prophet, and Nathan looked and saw no land of milk and honey but the great gaunt prow of Cap d’Antifer, an enormous wall of white cliff and white water, the breakers dashing against the rock and hurling their spray forty, fifty feet high in the air before they fell back into the seething hell below. Cap d’Antifer, the Wrecker, barely half a mile off their starboard bow.
Nathan turned to the helmsmen, every instinct screaming for them to turn into the wind. But it was a command he could not give. They could not turn into the wind: the sea would broach them. And looking forward he saw their bowsprit pointing at the clear if turbulent water beyond the cape. If they could only hold to their present course they would clear it by a cable’s length. If only they were not sucked into that maelstrom at its foot, if only they did not yaw . . .
He bit his knuckles, skinned by his fall against the cannon, his mind forming a prayer.
And then it happened.
Some freakish devilry brought the wind across their stern and they were brought by the lee: the sails taken aback and the sea breaking over their stern, raking the deck and burying the bow deep into the trough, so deep it could never come up . . .
Nathan heard the crack, even above the roar of the breakers and the howl of the wind in the rigging and the rush of water across the deck. And when the bow came up, slowly, clawing its way up from that great weight of water, the bowsprit was broken in half, the jib boom gone and the staysail flapping helpless in the wind.
But the jib boom was not entirely gone. It was still there in a tangle of riggi
ng under their bow, dragging them round, disastrously round towards the cape. Nathan pulled himself up and staggered forward and saw Tully running ahead of him with an axe in his hand. He ran straight up the bowsprit—or what was left of it—and over the side and when Nathan reached him he was hanging from the martingale, hacking at the twisted rigging below him—until the bow sank down into the trough and he plunged down with it into the surging sea.
Nathan ran back and seized another axe from the rack by the belfry and dropped over the side to join him. Hanging from the bobstay with one hand and hacking down at the hopeless tangle of spar and rigging. And the bow plunging and rising—but not so high now with the jib boom dragging it down—and the waves breaking over their heads, hacking into spar and rope, until the sea took it away and they went up over the bow and the hands dragged them aboard more dead than alive.
Nathan clung to the rail, coughing up water and staring through rain and spray at the great white wall of chalk and water as they passed it by, a half a cable’s length, no more, off their starboard bow. But they were round it, by God, and still coming round, for Keeble had seen what he had not: that it had been no devilry but the answer to his prayer. No freakish eddy off the cliff but the wind backing to the southwest. And it held, freshened but held, and it took them off that foul shore and that murderous cape and with any luck it would take them clear across the Channel to England.
Chapter 23
the Conspiracy of Gold
Nathan considered whether to help himself to another rasher or two of the excellent bacon that lay beneath the lid of the silver dish on his mother’s sideboard but he had already consumed several along with two fried eggs, three sausages and a black pudding and he knew his mother would be counting. There had already been some harsh remarks about the amount he ate during the five days he had been back in London and he was become quite defensive on the subject. He was, as he informed her, still growing—though he had no medical evidence of this condition—and was besides striving to make up for the weight loss he had suffered while feverish from his wound.