The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  “It becomes clear to me, sir,” said Connor. His cup rattled in his saucer. “Er . . . has either of you seen Franklin? I must find him at once.” He thrust his cup and saucer at me. “You gentlemen will excuse me.”

  Rogers and I shared a look after he’d left. “Well, he left in a hurry,” said Rogers.

  “Yes,” I said. I grinned. “For a man who was as cool as a cucumber a minute ago—”

  “Don’t say he’s all of a sudden in a pickle,” said Rogers. “Don’t.”

  Peter stepped over from the windward rail. “Let us give him the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “It is a passenger’s right to skip below if there be a fight.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But he’s a dead shot. We might need him.”

  “A shy man does not shoot straight,” said Peter. He glanced aloft at the sails, at the dimples and eddies that marked reefs to either side, and at the ever-shortening distance between us and the corvette. “Regardless, I am sure the War Department has bigger plans for him than to get his brains dashed out in a minor action.” He touched wood. “Which with luck no one will remember anyway.”

  We all looked up as the lookout in the maintop sang out: “Deck there! Boats in the water!”

  “Where away and how many?” called Peter.

  “Just for’ard o’ the starboard beam, sir. Three of ’em, heading right for us.”

  “Anything to larboard?”

  A pause. “Nay, sir.”

  “Run out the starboard guns,” said Peter, but I was already leaping down into the waist. “Hold your fire until you are sure they mean to board,” he called after me. “Or if the Rose-red Cunt fires upon us, of course.” Peter spoke excellent French. His calculated mispronunciation of the name sent a wave of laughter through the men.

  “Aye aye, sir! Cast off your guns, starboard side!”

  Mr. MacElroy was waiting for me. A quick look around told me he had everything in hand for once.

  “Good lad,” I said, and he beamed. “Mind your hat.” But he was on to me and I missed. Aft, dimly, I saw Jeffreys and his crew fitting the swivel guns into their mountings on the quarterdeck rail. That had been my job not too long ago. “Open the ports,” I said. “Run out your guns.”

  The sky beyond the hills was turning pink. I could see a launch now, filled with men, and the shapes of perhaps a pinnace and a jolly boat behind it. The launch turned at us, crossing in front of the pinnace. There was a clatter of oars, and some choice words in French.

  My gun captains held their fists in the air. “Main battery,” I called, “ready for action, sir!”

  “Very well,” said Peter.

  Pale streaks in the corvette’s rigging caught my eye—her topsails tumbling home. She was getting underway.

  “Why not shoot now, sir?” said MacElroy. “They’re well within range.”

  “Hush.” I raised my hand, and he grabbed his hat. “We ain’t out of the harbor yet.”

  Port Républicain was French territory in name, but in fact it was Toussaint’s. After Paris had appointed him head of all military forces in the colony, he had openly assumed control of the treasury and the civil affairs of its principal cities, while maintaining the fiction (we hoped) that he was still loyal to France. Although we fought French ships on sight on the open sea, there were some niceties about whether it would be legal to fire on them in their own waters. War had never been declared between us.

  “Mr. Graves!”

  “Sir!”

  “Do not mind the boats for now. Aim for L’Heureuse Rencontre. If she fires, you may return the honor.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The corvette surged forward, as if to yank her anchor from the ground on the fly. A daring move, a dangerous move, but the right one under the circumstances—except for the grapnel line that Horne and I had laid across her cable the night before. She suddenly yawed like a horse fighting the bit as she strove to break free of it. Then the grapnel line snapped and she swung the other way, only to be snubbed up short as she came to the end of her cable. Her topmasts shuddered from the shock.

  The gun captains stared at her like hungry hounds as we crossed her bow. If we fired now, we’d smash her from stem to stern.

  MacElroy gave me a pleading look. “We could rake her, sir!”

  I clenched my hands together behind my back to calm myself. “Could ain’t is, Mr. MacElroy.”

  “Oh, sir!”

  The blood pounded so hard in my head that I barely heard him. I snuck a glance at the quarterdeck. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, I thought.

  Peter aimed his speaking trumpet toward the boats. “Hissez pavillon!” he shouted. “Show your colors!” He leaned forward, the cords standing out on his neck. “Stand off, or I fire!”

  The men in the boats answered with a yell and a snap of musketry.

  The captain of number-three gun reached for his lanyard. “Don’t you dare,” I growled, and he guiltily snatched his hand away.

  “Corporal Haversham,” Peter said. “When I give the order, have your Marines shoot the steersmen if they can.” Then: “Wait for it, Mr. Jeffreys. Wait for it . . .”

  The corvette had turned to starboard to lay herself alongside us. The light from her battle lanterns sparkled on the water as her larboard ports opened.

  I counted the guns as they poked their snouts out: she carried sixteen guns, nine-pounders, from the look of them. We had fourteen 6-pounders. French shot weighed about ten percent more than ours, giving her a broadside weight of, say, eighty pounds of metal to our forty-two. Near enough odds, I thought: with so many of her men down in her boats, she’d have trouble maintaining a decent rate of fire. If we could get off three broadsides to her two, we’d be . . . Shit and perdition! We’d be thirty-four pounds short.

  Her side lit up as she fired. The sea flattened between us, and the air was filled with a frightful roar. The bulwark shattered in front of me. Splinters moaned through the air. Something spun me around. Mr. MacElroy tottered beside me, flapping his arms. Blood fountained from his neck where his head had been.

  I wiped gore out of my eyes. “Fire!” Our guns boomed in a rolling volley. “Stop your vents!” Seven leather-covered thumbs came down on the touchholes. “Sponge your pieces!” I skidded in something greasy. “Get that out of the way,” I snapped, and someone dragged MacElroy’s body away. “Load! Double shot your guns with grape shot over all!”

  The powder monkeys handed out cartridges and ran below for fresh ones. The loaders rammed the charges home. The sidemen tailed onto the tackles and ran the guns out again.

  “Fire as you will!”

  The guns leaped and bellowed. Powderboys came and went. The sweat gleamed on the gunners’ backs as they wormed the smoldering residue out of the barrels. I forced myself to stroll down the line, thumping a shoulder here, yelling encouragement there. I found a hat and picked it up.

  Here was Samuels, commanding the two forward guns. He hollered something at me and held up four fingers. I shook my head. I couldn’t hear a damn thing. “Four rounds, sir!” he shouted in my ear. “Four rounds an’ they ain’t replied! Ain’t it fine?”

  Then the corvette spat flame and smoke. I braced myself for a blow, but shot howled high astern of us. And our guns no longer fired. I turned around, hot to kick someone’s pants for him, but the guns were traversed as far aft as they could be, and nothing lay before them but empty sea.

  “Where the hell she go, sir?” said Samuels.

  There she was, off our starboard quarter and drawing astern. “Captain,” I called, “the guns no longer bear.”

  “Very well, Mr. Graves. Helm there, one point to larboard.”

  That couldn’t be right—we were turning away from her. I jumped up into the main shrouds, out of the smoke, and realized what Peter was about. The jagged tips of a reef burbled past our starboard side. I was startled to see it was full morning, with the risen sun sending God-rays through the clouds. I could see L’Heureuse Rencontre as clear as a paintin
g. She seemed to be glued in place on the water, canted a bit to one side.

  A powder-grimed sponger peered over the rail. “She run herself on a rock, by Joe!”

  The swivel guns, filled with buckshot and scrap metal, popped steadily on the quarterdeck. The Marines made good work among the boats with their rifled muskets. So did Mr. Connor, who apparently had thought better of himself than to hide in the hold. Screams rose close astern—not screams of bloodlust, but screams of failure and woe.

  We cleared the Princes and made the open sea, leaving bits of men and boats bobbing in our wake. I led the men in huzzaying, till I noticed the hat I was waving was MacElroy’s.

  Five

  Seven of us sat around the wardroom table in the heat of the afternoon watch, toying with the remains of our roasted pork, beans, and rice. We’d had plantains, too, a starchy sort of green banana that fries up gooey and sweet—better than yams, in my book. I’d taken aboard more than was good for me in the heat. So had Rogers on my left, judging by the flush in his face and the number of buttons he’d undone. A soft breeze drifted in through the hatchway and the jalousie doors of the cabins on either side, taking some of the heat with it as it exited through the open skylight. Gypsy sat on Peter’s lap, sniffing at the remains of his dinner but turning away in contempt when he offered her a morsel of fatty pork. The other ship’s cat, Greybar, lay under my chair with his tail wrapped around my ankle. The conversation wallowed in a dead calm, and I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

  Mr. MacElroy’s empty chair was as obvious as a missing tooth. As president of the wardroom and the head of the table, I should’ve invited someone, perhaps the gunner or the bosun, to take his place; but I was damned if I’d dismiss his memory so easily. I had found that my job as first lieutenant was primarily to deal with an ongoing series of minor disasters, and I should’ve counted myself lucky that an unhappy dinner was the worst mistake I made that day, but it seemed important at the time. I had been at least thoughtless to put Mr. Jeffreys opposite the empty chair, even though that was his right and proper place. He stared guiltily into his plate—though whether that was because he missed his late shipmate or because Captain Wickett sat on his left at the foot of the table, I couldn’t have said.

  Between Jeffreys and Rogers, Franklin dabbed the shine off his brow with his handkerchief. I’d intended to assign him to the gunners’ mess, but Connor seemed to take it for granted that his secretary would eat with us and sleep in one of the cabins, and so there he sat. His face was pinched around the temples, as if he’d put his goggles on when he was a kid and never taken them off again, forcing his forehead and jaw to bulge out around them as he grew, while his eyes stayed tiny and close-set. His forehead was as smooth as a polished plum, but his jaws and cheeks were as lumpy as a cauliflower. And he had a way of looking straight at you, as if he’d decided it didn’t matter a lick that he was black but he was never going to let you forget about it, neither. He had eaten and drunk his fair share, but had contributed almost nothing to the conversation.

  Not that I could think of a damn thing to say. Neither could Quilty, apparently, halfway down the table on the starboard side. Our surgeon was a man who ever had a number of things on his mind, and could talk about two things at once while juggling another half dozen in his head, but if he’d said anything more momentous during the meal than “Pray pass the salt,” I disrecall it. He twiddled his knife between the tips of his index fingers, stopping now and then to contemplate it, as if the answer to a puzzle could be found there.

  At last Peter broke the silence. He was a guest in the wardoom, but as captain he could talk about anything he chose. “Mr. Connor,” he said. “Have you a purpose?”

  Connor sat in the place of honor on my right. He leaned in front of me, the better to see past Quilty, a large man, and said, “Have I a what, sir?”

  “A purpose, man. Some reason beyond the mere fact of your existence that entitles you to eat and breathe. Greybar, for instance, that beast lurking under Mr. Graves’s chair, was cosseted on cream before his master died. Now he catches the flying fish that come aboard in the middle watch. I’m uncertain what purpose that serves beyond filling his belly, but I suppose it must serve some purpose or he wouldn’t do it.” He rubbed a finger along Gypsy’s scarred muzzle. “Gypsy, here, catches rats. Catching rats is an admirable purpose. Have you a purpose as important as catching rats, sir?”

  “Here now,” said Connor, and laughed. “You’ve gone from asking if I have a purpose to asking if I have an important one. And you forget, sir, that avoiding a cat is of great importance to a rat. Let us say I do a bit of this and that in the soldierly way. But I was under the impression—” He swiveled around to look at me as it perhaps occurred to him that I was his host and shouldn’t be shown the back of his head. “You’ll forgive my seeming to lecture you gentlemen on a subject you know infinitely better than I, but ain’t it considered not quite the ton to discuss professional matters at dinner?”

  “Indeed, sir,” said Peter. He snatched his fingers away from Gypsy’s paw. “If, for instance, Mr. Graves there had bored us with a description of the best way to sweep for an anchor cable that someone had carelessly left lying about, or if Mr. Quilty here had endeavored to impress us with suggestions as to whether it is practical or even possible to take a vessel by boarding when it is underway, we should require either of them to put a stopper in it. But I was unaware that we were discussing professional matters.”

  “Especially was I to indulge in such advice,” said Quilty. He was sweating profoundly in his heavy green coat with its black velvet facings, and his face was nearly the color of his scarlet vest. No one was more intimately acquainted with the squalid consequences of our chosen profession than he, yet MacElroy’s death seemed to have moved him, for he had barely spoken till now. “Albeit I have spent the better part of two years at sea,” he said, “I scarcely know the best bower anchor from a—well, from the regular kind. I could, however, tell you in great detail about the effects of a three-foot oaken splinter lodging in the upper thigh, say, with its jagged edges acting as perfect barbs that prevent its being drawn out by the way it went in, or why gentlemen put on silk smallclothes and stockings before a fight.”

  “One is reminded,” said Peter, “that surgery technically falls under the ban as well. Our former captain had no qualms about what sort of conversation went on at table, and we are all filled with contrition now, I dare say.”

  “Silk?” said Connor. “Silk, for all love—”

  “Now now, sir,” I said. “After the cloth is cleared, we can broach any subject under the sun.”

  “Or the moon, as may be,” said Peter, making a sort of table of his bony fingers and resting his long chin on them. His nearly colorless eyes were fixed on Connor. “In the meantime, we may have any sort of conversation at all, so long as it does not have to do with our official business. Which is why, sir, I was so bold in the meantime as to enquire as to your purpose. You have shown me your bona fides, but you have told me almost nothing of your intentions. If I am to transport you from one foreign port to another, it could transpire that I might be held responsible in some measure for whatever it is you get up to after you leave my care.”

  “Ah, but there I have you,” smiled Connor. “Transporting me from one place to another has everything to do with official business.”

  “You have me indeed, sir,” said Peter, not changing his expression— or rather not allowing any expression to enter his face. “I should be embarrassed to have it thought that vulgar curiosity provoked me to speak out of turn.”

  “Never crossed my mind, sir.”

  They exchanged bows—the merest of nods—in their seats, and Peter slipped me the wink.

  “Steward,” I said, “clear this mess away.”

  Ambrose and his mate removed the dishes and cloth and laid out Madeira, a chunk of the least rancid ship’s cheese, and nuts. As the decanter began to make its rounds, Connor said, “I am all a-q
uiver to know, gentlemen. Why do you wear silk in battle? Must cost a fortune keeping you in battle dress.”

  “Ah, but when one observes that actions at sea are few and far between, the cost is seen to be quite small in the long run,” said Quilty. “I’m told there are admirals in the Royal Navy who wear silk every day, though they’ve never seen a gun fired except in saluting other admirals and such. A matter of style for them as can afford it, I suppose. But as to silk clothing in battle—a simple answer, really. If a man be struck by a musket or pistol ball that does not kill him outright, or require the removal of a limb—which I’m very good at, by the by: should you ever require it, be sure to see me—the primary cause of death is suppuration of the wound. That is to say, the wound putrefies from the inside, even after the ball itself is removed.”

  “And why is that, sir?”

  “Why, because of what the ball carries with it into the wound, sir. Whatever disgusting matter the ball may have come into contact with before being launched—say, the greasy film left by a Marine who has yet to learn the art of wiping his arse with oakum instead of his fingers—is quite burned away in the heat of the discharge. However, the ball generally passes through a man’s clothing before entering his body. You will no doubt have observed, sir, that a ball makes a hole in a man’s coat when it hits him?”

  “Ah,” said Connor. “And silk is less susceptible to rotting in the flesh?”

  “You have hit on it precisely. The why of it I cannot say, sir, but only that repeated observation has made a commonplace of the notion.”

  “All of which don’t matter a lick,” said I, “as we didn’t bother to shift our clothes before the engagement this morning, and not to mention which I ain’t got any silk drawers anyway.” I held up my glass. “Gentlemen, a toast.”