“But this is marvelous! The glory will be ours alone, ha ha!”
“Have you always been a lunatic? You don’t know what we’re getting into.”
“Feh.” The look of disgust he gave me exactly mirrored how I felt about myself. “Why don’t you run along to bed now, as Monsieur Quilty orders. As for me, I shall find a way to make myself useful.”
Already I could see the L’Heureuse Rencontre corvette silhouetted against the starry sky ahead. Her captain would have noticed instantly any change in Croatoan’s position—once he was sure she was safely out of the way, he’d let us catch up or even turn on us. She and the transport, the not entirely toothless Faucon frigate, stood a much better chance of arriving unnoticed if they could shake us now.
“Mr. Rogers,” said Peter. “Pray come a point to starboard.” “A point to windward, sir, aye aye. To the braces there, some of you men.”
As we settled on our new course, trying to edge around upwind of the chases, Peter said, “Clear for action, please.”
“All hands!” cried Rogers. “Clear for action!”
That was my line, I thought, but no one had even acknowledged my presence. I stepped up to Peter and saluted. “Present and ready for duty, sir.”
“Get off my quarterdeck, sir!” he said. Then he added in a gentler tone, “I may need you later, Matty, but for now I think it best was you to stay out of the way. Mr. Quilty advises me that you are very ill.”
Men scurried around striking everything below that wasn’t needed on deck—which included me. Quilty appeared out of the bustle and grasped me by the arm, intending to march me off to bed like a little boy being sent to his room.
“I will not go down into the cable tier, Mr. Quilty.”
“Then you’ll come into the sick berth with me.”
“No—you’ll be needing every inch of deck space soon enough.”
“Shush!” He gripped my arm tighter. “You know better than to talk like that. Very well—go to your cabin and stay there.”
I sulked on my cot in the dark—all lights having being extinguished except the battle lanterns on the deck—and listened to the happenings in the various parts of the schooner. I could hear the Marine drummer boy beating “To Quarters,” and the rumble as the guns were cast loose and run out. I even imagined I could hear the squeaking as the quarter-gunners screwed the flintlocks into the six-pounders. I definitely heard Master Gunner Schmidt mutter in his beard, “Ja, ve goink to catch hell this time, by golly by gumbo” as he made his way down into the depths of the magazine.
He said it quietly to himself, not knowing anyone could overhear him. I, on the other hand, had expressed my doubts quite clearly—to anyone who spoke French, anyway, but I marveled that I had spoken about it at all. It wasn’t exactly pusillanimity, that odd word for cowardice, but such talk was expressly forbidden under penalty of death “or such other punishment as the court shall adjudge.” Yet it made me wonder about myself, and if I wondered about myself then surely someone else would, too—Juge, for instance, and perhaps even Peter.
Then Peter called for silence fore and aft, and all I could hear for a long time was the rush of water past our hull. I opened my scuttle and looked at my watch in the dim light. Nearly nine o’clock—about an hour since Block had lost his topgallant mast. Surely he was underway again by now, unless the falling spars had done the Croatoan some further mischief. In that case it might be hours and hours before he came wallowing up under jury rig, if he came at all.
Two bells struck. I got a pair of pistols out of my chest and loaded them in the dark. I felt around and hooked them alongside the death’shead sword and dagger on the belt that hung at the head of my cot. I lay down again, trying to find a soft spot for my head. The bandages itched. I wanted to tear them off and feel a hat on my head again. I got MacElroy’s hat down off its peg and lay with it on my chest.
A distant boom rolled across the water from ahead and a bit to leeward. My cabin was on the leeward side, the aftermost wardroom cabin on the larboard side, but I couldn’t see anything out the scuttle. The angle was wrong, and the scuttle was too small to stick my head through. I peered at my watch again. Nine fifteen. Peter called for the sail trimmers, and we came up another point, close-hauled now and thrashing to windward. My hanging cot bucked around like a bee-bit mule. Two more guns, closer this time, and then the thump and rumble of an answering gun overhead. The noise hurt like hell, and I wrapped my pillow around my skull. Then I thought I wouldn’t want to be found with my head down and my ass in the air, and forced myself to stretch out on my bunk. That way if anyone came in they might think I was asleep. “Nerves of steel, mate,” they’d say. “So unconcerned he was, he slept right through the fracas, ha ha!”
We yawed to leeward and rolled off our starboard broadside. We continued the turn, wearing right around in a circle, and fired off the seven guns on the larboard side as well. I copped another squint through my scuttle.
L’Heureuse Rencontre, her hull lit from below by the glowing foam in her teeth, was perhaps half a mile away—say eight hundred yards, which was well within range of her guns. Then a happy thought struck me. The French wouldn’t risk a formal declaration of war by letting their ships be used to land troops on American soil. That meant the men in the Faucon would be renegados, just like Connor. Probably soldiers manned her guns; sailors were harder to come by than soldiers, and they’d be busy sailing the ship anyway. Not that French artillerymen weren’t any good—they were just about the best in the world— but they weren’t used to firing from a moving platform, and most of ’em were probably puking their guts out with mal de mer. But the corvette was another matter altogether.
She presented her beam. Then her side lit up all at once, which cheered me considerable. Her firing in salvo meant her captain didn’t trust his gunners to hit anything on their own.
“Ya!” I said, thumbing my nose. “Ye lubbers couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a—”
Then my cabin exploded.
Something heavy lay across me. As I gave the something a shove, I realized it was my cot—what was left of it, anyway. The rest of it had been knocked to flinders. I kicked it off and sat up. Above my head was a jagged hole. It was right below where I’d been lying. Oak splinters from the impact had torn away the partition between my cabin and the wardroom, as if a giant shotgun had been fired off in there. It gave me an excellent view right across the breadth of the schooner to where the ball had smashed in the opposite partition and exited through a matching hole on the other side. I could see moonlight shining on the water over there.
I yanked my boots on, slipped my sword belt over my shoulder, and stepped into the wardroom, where I stumbled over a pile of planks that once had been our table.
We completed our turn and settled again on the starboard tack. Water slopped in through the hole in my cabin.
“Ahoy the carpenter!” I found the companion and hauled myself onto the main deck. “Pass the word there—we’ve been holed on the waterline!”
Chips, the carpenter, bustled up with a maul in his hands. His two mates had their arms full of wooden shot plugs. “Where away?” said he.
“My cabin. There’s another hole on the starboard side, in the master’s cabin, but it’s above water yet.”
“Well, get out the way then, sir,” he said. “By your leave,” he added, as he and his mates shoved past me.
I ran up to the quarterdeck and found Peter. “Beg pardon, sir—”
“Why are you not in the sick berth, Mr. Graves?”
“Mr. Quilty allowed me to go to my cabin—”
“Then why are you not in your cabin?”
“Ain’t got no cabin to be in, sir. We been holed twixt wind and water on the larboard side, and another hole higher up to starboard.”
“Are we taking on water?”
“Some, sir, so long as we stay on this tack. Chips is already dealing with it.”
“Very well. Mr. Rogers, I have the conn. Send s
ome men to the pumps.”
Rogers touched his hat. “Aye aye, sir, and I’ll have a look below as well. Mr. Horne,” he said to the burly bosun’s mate, “get some men on the pumps until you’re relieved.”
We tacked, the schooner bringing the eye of the wind across her bow as prettily as ever. With the wind on the larboard beam, she heeled over enough to raise the hole out of the water. Peter and I peered over the side at it. Already Chips had stuffed the hole with my nice wool blankets and was pounding a plug into place.
Peter looked up as L’Heureuse Rencontre fired again. The balls shot the depths with weird green streaks as they plunged around us. “Not even in what charitably could be called a pattern,” said he. “It was luck not skill that guided that ball. But I should like to have a greater distance between us.”
He should have chosen his words more carefully. The corvette turned away, cracking on sail as she ran north after the Faucon, while we had to keep to eastward until Chips had finished his repairs. The thumping of his maul below decks echoed the thumping in my own head. Then I was lying on the deck looking up at Peter looking down at me.
Nineteen
A great roaring awoke me. “Great guns!” says I, trying to sit up. Something prevented it. I looked down along my body. I had a sheet over me, and three leather straps had been buckled athwart the sheet. Lashed down like a loony, by God! Some son of a bitch had put me back in the sick berth.
A thumping ran along our side—iron balls hitting the poor Rattle-Snake. The schooner shuddered as she fired off her broadside. Amid the booming of the six-pounders I caught the high barking of the murdering-pieces along the quarterdeck rail. The enemy must be close if we were using the swivels.
I turned my head. Treadwell was rolling around in the opposite cot. “Great guns, ha ha!” says I. “Did you catch that, Treadwell? I said great guns.”
He was trying to get his bandaged leg out from under the bedclothes. It was lashed to a long splint that extended past his foot and which had gotten tangled in the ropes the cot hung from. “Yes, yes,” he said—pretty testy, I thought. “What’s happening?”
“How the hell should I know?” I squirmed under the leather straps. I spotted my pistols and sword hanging by the door. My britches and coat hung there, too. “Sounds like we’ve caught that corvette and the transport, or maybe t’other way around. Let me out of here and I’ll go find out.”
“No fear,” said he, shaking his head. “You’re mad!”
“Mad? I ain’t mad. I’m mad!” No, the word is angry, I thought.
“You’re a lunatic. How you’ve shouted this night and day.”
“Don’t be in such a pucker, Treadwell. What d’ye mean, night and day? Have we been fighting this whole time, and you just lying there?”
Fear and indignation mixed in his face. “What? No, it was quiet all day until now.”
I made about as much progress under the straps as a fly in molasses. “Say, I don’t aim to be caught abed if we get boarded. Come on now, be a good fellow and unstrap me.”
“Shan’t do it.” He got his leg free at last and hobbled toward the door.
“Hey! Come back here, sir, and be damned!”
Just then a Marine and a loblolly boy shoved in, lugging a jack whose foot was a dripping mess of splintered bone and hanging flesh. Their momentum carried Treadwell right the way back to his cot.
“Set him down handsomely now,” said Quilty, following up the rear. He leaned over the writhing man and clamped his thumb on the inside of the knee. “The tourniquet, quickly. You sir,” he said to Treadwell. “I’m glad you’re up. We’ll need your cot.” He looped the strap of the tourniquet around the man’s lower thigh and gave several twists to the screw. “You,” he said to the Marine, “help Mr. Treadwell to the wardroom.”
“And me, too,” says I, trying to make it an order and not a plea.
“No, he stays,” said Quilty, and turned back to his patient. “Blankets, now—no, double them—and lay his head on a pillow.” The loblolly boy made the wounded jack as comfortable as he could in preparation of the coming horror.
After Treadwell had gone I stared up at the deckbeams, listening to Quilty and the loblolly boy laying out knives and saws. The sailor had fainted, for which I was grateful. The last thing I wanted was for someone to scream. I might scream right along with him.
But I couldn’t not look. Quilty had wrapped some tape around the man’s calf, about a hand’s breadth below the kneecap. While the loblolly boy held the leg straight, Quilty with a wicked curved knife sliced through the outer half and then the inner half of the calf, just above the tape.
More cannon fire shook us, followed by a long tumbling sound. We’ve had something shot away, I thought. The deck canted as we came about, and then our larboard guns fired—double-shotted with canister on top, from the sound of it. Must be desperate, to overload the guns like that and fire ’em off all at once. Bad for the guns, bad for the timbers. Anguished shrieking followed the bellowing of the guns. I twisted under the straps. The guns fired and fired again, as fast as they could be loaded, and between the blasts came the steady popping of the swivels.
The loblolly boy hauled on a leather strap to draw the flesh of the upper calf farther up the bones. Quilty set to with the bone saw—zip zip zip, and off came the lower leg. He tossed it into a bucket on the deck.
Something struck us with a tremendous bang amidships, and the schooner canted over to starboard. Rammed, by Jupiter! I heard a rush of feet overhead, and Peter crying, “Boarders away!” The deck timbers above me shook—a crowd of men stamping back and forth, with the clank of steel and the snap of muskets adding to the din.
“Shit and perdition, Mr. Quilty, they’re aboard of us! Let me up!”
“Tenaculum,” said he, as if I hadn’t spoke, and the loblolly boy handed him a sort of awl with a curved tip, which Quilty used to fish around in the stump. The end of the man’s leg looked just like an uncured ham, I thought, wishing I hadn’t thought that. Quilty winkled something out with the tenaculum and then used a curved needle to throw sutures around it. He repeated the process on the other side of the protruding bones, tying off the veins or arteries or whatever they were.
A grinding noise reverberated through the schooner’s timbers, and we settled upright again. “They’ve beat ’em off!” says I. “Hurrah for the Rattle-Snakes!”
“Sh-sh,” said Quilty.
A boy led a blinded man in and ran topside again. The Rattle-Snakes were yelling fit to raise Old Scratch, but among their shouting I heard a greater shouting. French shouts, coming closer as if floating down the wind.
Of course they’re floating, you ninny, I said to myself, for we’re far away at sea. There’s a lofty ship to windward and she’s sailing fast and free, sailing down along the coast of the High Barbaree!
“Stop that singing!” said Quilty.
“Who, me?” says I, surprised at the notion.
“Yes you, Mr. Graves. Hush now, that’s a lad.” He placed lint over the ends of the bones and added some small pieces of linen around the skin where it had been cut. He sprinkled flour on some more lint and packed that in, slipped some tow over the end, laid linen bandages lengthwise across and over the end of the stump, and wrapped it round and round with more linen. He finished it off by slipping a seaman’s woolen stocking cap over all. He and the loblolly boy lifted the unconscious sailor into Treadwell’s cot.
Another thump amidships, and the screeking of timber on timber as we canted over again—to larboard this time. The blinded man fell down behind the table.
“Sail high, sail low, and so sailed we-e-e—”
“Get him out of here,” said Quilty. He sat the blinded man on the table and began to wash out his eyes. “Take him to the wardroom. It’s been set to rights now, and Mr. Treadwell will keep an eye on him. They’re mates, I believe.”
“I know the way, thank’ee,” I said as soon as the loblolly boy had unstrapped me. As Quilty peeled back the bli
nded man’s eyelids, the fellow threw a punch and the loblolly boy jumped on him. I hooked my sword and dagger and pistols on my way out, humming “No quarter did we give them—we sank them in the sea, cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree!”
More men were coming down the ladder, some on their lone, some being carried. And here was a curious thing underfoot: a trail of blood, leading aft. I followed it in the gloom and came across Quarter-gunner Samuels, hunching along the wrong way with a wooden splinter sticking out of his side.
I turned him about. “Over yonder.” I pointed back the way he had come. “Straight through the bulkhead right for’ard. Can’t miss it. Here, I’ll bear a hand.”
“I thanks you kindly, Mr. Graves,” he said. We got as far as the forward companionway. There he knelt down, feeling for the bottom step.
“Light along, Samuels,” I said. “Just a little further.”
“No, sir, I reckon I’ll just set here a spell.” He lay on the steps and closed his eyes.
I touched his throat, feeling for the life in him, but I felt nothing. More wounded were coming down the ladder, and I dragged him aside. A horrid shriek came from the sick berth. I would not be going back in there for anything you cared to name, no sir. Clad in nothing but my shirt, I slung my weapons over my shoulder and ran up to the fo’c’s’le.
The foremast had been shot away about six feet off the deck. It was still attached by a tangle of rigging and lay all ahoo across the forward guns on the starboard side. I could see dead men under it. Horne stood astride it, flinging chips every which way as he labored with a broadax to cut the mast away. His stocking cap had come off, and his long crazy matted braids flew around like Medusa’s snakes as he swung the blade and yanked it free, swung the blade and yanked it free.
The Faucon’s jib boom had stabbed into the main shrouds on the larboard side, the end of it jutting abaft our mainmast above the mainsail gaff. Our guns on that side were so heated by prolonged firing that they leaped from the deck as they bellowed point-blank into the frigate’s bow. Mulatto soldiers crowded along her bowsprit, trying to reach our deck, but the murdering-pieces on the quarterdeck and our Marine sharpshooters were making it hot for them. They wavered as they tried to negotiate the narrower spar of the jib boom, and then began a-falling into the sea as more men crushed in behind.
The War of Knives Page 29