This was a strange thing. I went to the side to look. The two hulls working together in the swell were grinding some of the fellows up. Others were trying to swim through a pack of sharks that thrashed about in the pink foam. They weren’t doing so well. The men weren’t, I mean. The sharks were making out like Billy-o.
Dead men lay everywhere underfoot. I looked at them as I made my way aft. Most of them were mulatto soldiers, but every now and then I saw a man I recognized. Along the way I ran into Doc, our one-eyed cook, hopping along with a big iron skillet in one hand and his peg leg in the other.
“Hello, sah, Mr. Graves,” said he. “I done lost my laig!”
“Really?” says I. “Where did you see it last?”
A ferocious scowl crossed his face. “Now, if I knew dat, would I aks yo’ about it?”
“No, I guess not. But, tell me—do you recollect when you last had it to hand?”
“Why, sho! Some ob dem uppity colored men tried to hide in my galley when it got too hot for ’em on deck. Talkin’ French at me—some fellas just don’t know dey place, I expect. ‘Sacker blue to yo’ too,’ says I, an’ I busts ’em on de haid wit’ my skillet in one hand and my laig in da uvver.”
He transferred his scowl to the peg leg in his fist. The fat end had some gobs of gore on it and a few tufts of black hair. “Why, lookit dat! My stump was itchin’ me sumpthin’ fierce, an’ I unshipped ’er so’s I could have a scratch. I done forgot. Here, hold dis.” He handed me the skillet, which was decorated in the same way as his peg leg, and strapped his leg back on.
“Dat’s mo’ like,” he said, stomping it more comfortably into place. “Now yo’ just gimme back dat skillet an’ I gon’ find me some mo’ haids need bustin’, I tell you what.”
He rolled off toward the fo’c’s’le, yelling out to Horne to guess what just happen’, hee hee, while I continued toward the quarterdeck.
The aftermost starboard guns were playing merry hell with the Rose-red Cunt. Her mizzen and main had come down, and she could only lie before the wind as she tottered off to leeward with her stern toward us. Her rudder had been shot away, and her stern gaped like a witch’s maw. A crowd of musketmen stood at her taffrail, trying to shoot our gunners, but our six-pounders kept a-roaring and the crowd kept a-dwindling.
I spotted Juge on the quarterdeck. As I ran up the steps, a runty sailor with a white scar across his nose gave me a frantic look and said, “If ya please, sir—”
“One moment,” I said. “Name’s Brodie, ain’t it?”
“Aye sir. The cap’n—”
“In a minute, Brodie.” Brodie, that’s right, I thought. David Brodie, quartermaster. One of the Irishmen. “Can’t you see I’m trying to talk to the major?”
“Bonjour, mon ami,” said Juge. “You decide to join us at the last, hein?” He raised his musket and shot a man off the bowsprit. A sailor took the musket from him and handed him another.
“That bastard Quilty strapped me down, else I would have come sooner,” said I. “Have you seen Captain Wickett?”
“If ya please, sir,” said Brodie, at the word capitaine. “But ’tis himself the captain I’m speakin’ of, who has been felled by a murderous blow, sir!”
I looked around. “You don’t say. Where is he?”
“Taken below just this minute, sir,” said Brodie. “Still breathin’. Just stunned there, I’m supposin’, but ya never seen such a look on a man’s face.”
Well, what the hell did he expect me to do about it? “Say, Brodie,” says I. “Ain’t you supposed to be at the helm?”
With a guilty look he said, “Well, aye sir, and so I am.”
“Then hop to it. Look, the wind is bringing the frigate around broadside of us. Mind your helm, man! We don’t want her laying alongside!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Having solved Brodie’s problem for him—nothing like duty to bring a man to his senses—I turned to take a look along the deck. There was Mr. Rogers down in the waist, calling for fend-offs as the Faucon wallowed sideways toward us. Her jib boom bowed as it strained against our mainmast. I thought someone ought to tell those poor chaps they’d better get off the bowsprit—it was going to get a good shaking in about a minute.
She still had a bite in her. One of the eight-pounders on her fo’c’s’le, with its muzzle depressed to its limit, was slowly but steadily beating in our deck—and the starboard timbers too, I guessed, with the shot passing right through us. We’d be treading water soon if we let her keep that up. Someone should do something about it.
I looked around—at Brodie manning the tiller, at Juge firing his muskets with a sailor loading for him, at the gun crews busy with the swivels, at the powder monkeys running back and forth with their wooden cartridge boxes, at the Marines potting away at the enemy’s quarterdeck—and it seemed to me that I already knew what was missing. Something important.
“Shit and perdition,” I said, as I recalled what it was. “Juge, où est le capitaine Wickett?”
“Captain Wickett, he is downstairs.” He squeezed off another shot. “Did you not hear the commotion? That—” He pointed. “That whatever-it-is fell on him.”
The topmast cap lay on the deck. One corner of it was smeared with blood, and the deckbeams beneath it were cracked. I looked up, blinking as if waking from a dream. The main-topmast was gone—no, there it was, floating alongside. The only canvas we had left was the fore-and-aft mainsail, and Peter had brailed it up before commencing the action. Topsails only, when possible, in a brawl; too much chance of a burning wad setting the canvas afire, elsewise.
“Well, then . . .” A shock of bitter shame hit me as I looked at Peter’s blood on the topmast cap. Nothing like duty to bring a man to his senses, I thought. I was the first lieutenant. With the captain below, that left me in charge. “You men,” I shouted to the starboard swivel-gun crews, who’d been popping away at the corvette drifting down to leeward. “Leave her go. Out gaff mains’l, lads! Let go the brails! Man the clew outhaul!”
They gaped at me, the ninnies.
“You heard me!” I stepped to the pinrail and cast off the lines for them. The crack of the sail flapping in the breeze brought them back to their senses.
“Haul taut!” I was in fine voice; brass trumpets weren’t in it. “Haul out! That’s well your mains’l!”
I found Peter’s dented speaking trumpet and stepped to the break of the quarterdeck. There was Rogers down in the waist, still busy with the fend-offs. Setting the mainsail would take some of the pressure off him. “Mr. Rogers! Mr. Rogers there!”
He threw a look over his shoulder and then turned to stare at me.
“Captain Wickett has fallen,” I said. But that sounded too final. Peter would brace me up for talking like that. “He is only injured, I believe. I am in command until he returns to the deck. Now cut that goddamn jib boom away before it yanks our mainmast out!”
“But she’ll lie alongside us, Mr. Graves!”
“So she will. Grapple onto her when she does, and haul us right up alongside her. Give her a broadside then, double-shotted and damn the timbers. Get your quoins out and fire up through her deck. Then away all boarders—I’m taking every man jack across with me.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Where’s Mr. Klemso?”
“Dead, sir.”
I looked forward. Horne had finished chopping through the foremast. It rolled along the gunwale and fell into the sea with a splash, and the schooner’s bow lifted as if rising from the dead. The sudden motion cracked the Faucon’s jib boom lengthwise, shaking men off into the sea, and then snapped it clean off at the base. Our rigging was still snarled with hers, but so much the better—we could use it to pivot.
“Mr. Horne! Come here.”
“What happens?” said Juge.
“We’re going to take the Faucon. Everyone is going across. Are you with me?”
“Bon sang! Of course I am.” He chuckled. “I had thought—but never mind what I thought
.”
Horne brought his ax with him. Good and good, thinks I. “Mr. Horne,” I said, “gather up the ferociousest, crotch-kickin’est, eyegougin’est fighters we got. Keep with me and Major Juge here. I aim to take that frigate.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Go.” I raised my speaking trumpet again. “Starboard battery, cease firing! Cease firing, I say. Cutlasses and tomahawks, boys, every one of you. We’re going hunting for Johnny Crappo.”
“But sir—” one of them began.
“But sir, but sir,” I sneered. “But sir, what? ‘But sir, you’re an addlepated looby, standing there in nothing but your shirt’?” That got ’em grinning. “So ye think I’m a cackling loon, is it? Well, listen here, my bully boys. Them troops in that transport can’t afford to let us live, and they won’t leave us go till they’ve killed us all. Look at ’em there!” I looked too. They lined the Faucon’s rail, firing away like Old Harry with their muskets. “Now look at me! I’m mad, sure enough—fightin’ mad. Them’s sojers over there—they don’t know squat about a sea fight. I aim to learn ’em what happens when ye catch a rattler by the tail!”
That got ’em laughing.
“Besides which, they’re bound to shoot me first!”
That got ’em cheering.
“Now get over to the larboard bulwarks and keep your heads down till you get the word. Mr. Rogers, what’re you about? ’Vast heaving with the fend-offs!”
“Sir!”
The mainsail had brought us up into the wind, where we hung straight as a weather vane. The Faucon swung around like a closing gate. The boobies over there hadn’t had sense enough to stow their hammocks as bulwarks nor even to raise their boarding nets. Speaking of which—
“Drop the la’board boarding nets!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Now, Brodie!” Our stern swung toward the frigate’s side. “That’s well your helm!” I raised the speaking trumpet. “Mr. Rogers, grapple on—” A ball clanged off the trumpet, and I turned to see Connor on the Faucon’s quarterdeck with a smoking pistol in his hand. “—Like lightning, now!”
The grapnels swung through the air and hooked in the frigate’s rigging and along her rail. Willing hands tailed onto the lines and hauled us up alongside her. We rode too low for her guns to reach us. In the weird silence I heard the bubbling of water between the hulls, and then a hollow thunk as we struck.
“Lash on all a taunt-o! Now fire them guns!”
Seven double-shotted guns roared out. Seven spouts of splinters erupted beyond the Faucon’s high sides.
Glory, she’s bigger’n houses, I thought, looking up at her. The mulatto musketeers had ducked away from the rail. “You men with muskets,” I called. “Shoot any man who shows his head. Again, Mr. Rogers!”
The gun crews reloaded with a will and ran their guns out again, right up against the Faucon’s timbers and angled to tear holes through to the sky. Again the guns roared, and again the fountains of splinters shot up from her deck.
“Now, my jolly lads! Boarders away!”
Shirttails flapping and tallywhacker swinging, I leaped to the gunwale and launched myself into the void.
I landed in the Faucon’s mainchains with a surging mob behind me. I turned to urge them on, but some enthusiastic soul grabbed my legs and hoisted me ass-over-ears across the rail. The mulatto who caught me seemed as surprised as I was. I gave him a knee in the nutmegs and hauled out my sword. The Rattle-Snakes crowded in behind me, so close I couldn’t get my hand up to use my blade. I cleared some room by firing a pistol into a man who blocked my way.
Then here was Horne with his ax, felling a man with each blow. He had the biggest jacks in the crew with him. “Follow me!” says I, letting them go first. “Make for her quarterdeck.”
With tomahawks, cutlasses, handspikes—whatever they’d thought to grab—they laid ’em low on either hand along the gangway. To my right, down in the waist, I saw Mr. Rogers and his party snapping at the heels of a confused mass of soldiers trying to get down the forward hatchway.
Horne moved aft with his boys, scattering the enemy before him.
I grabbed Juge’s arm and pointed: “We take the quarterdeck!”
“Mais oui!” He pushed past me with his sword up and a horrible grin on his face. We played a ferocious game of tag with the mulattoes around the mizzenmast, Horne and his boys sweeping the deck as they went. Then the soldiers were leaping over the quarterdeck rail down into the waist and heading for the safety of the hold.
“Mr. Horne! After ’em!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
I looked around our sudden oasis of quiet. Juge and I were the only living men on the quarterdeck. “To the captain’s cabin,” said I. “Let us see if Connor yet lives.” We trotted down a short flight of steps into the waist and found a pair of doors leading aft. A fallen spar and a mass of canvas blocked the one on the right. Juge yanked open the one on the left. It opened into a dark corridor. A familiar figure stood at the end of it.
“Why, Mr. Connor,” I said, and fired my second pistol. He snapped a ball past my ear before ducking out of sight around the corner. I heard a door slam.
I snatched Juge by the arm as he started to dash after him. “Easy,” I said. “He may not be the only one back here. We must check each door as we go.”
“Have you another pistol? I am embarrassed to say I have not brought one.”
“No. I fired them both.”
He shook his head. “Bon sang! This makes it a little harder.” Then he limbered up his sword arm. “It cannot be helped. Let us go!”
The powder smoke smarted my eyes. I felt my way along till I came to a jalousie door on the right. It would lead to a cabin or cabins lying between the two corridors leading aft from the waist. Or maybe the captain’s bread room, I didn’t know. I kicked it in, revealing a small cabin—the master’s or perhaps the first lieutenant’s, from the look of it. Empty. I jabbed my sword around under the cot just to be sure and then got down on all fours to have a peek. Nothing.
We stepped back into the corridor. Another corridor ran athwart the end of it. Dog me if I was going to let Juge go first. I pushed him back with my left arm and stepped around the corner—and found nothing but silence.
Two doors were set into the after bulkhead. They would lead to the captain’s quarters, one to his sleeping place and the other to the great cabin itself. I busted in the nearest door.
“Nothing, mon ami!” I said as I came back out. “Check the other corridor. There’ll be another cabin around the corner, there.”
“But what about this door here?”
“This door is mine.”
“Bon sang!” he said. “Do you send me away just as we close on our quarry?”
I grinned. “But of course.”
“Oh, but my good friend, this is not fair!”
“Is it fair that we should go two on one against him?”
“Fine,” he said. “And when he has you by the throat, I will come in to save your ham, hein?”
“Bacon, ha ha! You can save my bacon if he gets the best of me. But he won’t. Go now.”
“No,” he said. “I stand here and watch you die. Then I kill him.”
“Oh, well thank you very much. I’m pleased you have such confidence in me.”
I kicked in the door.
Connor stood right aft behind the captain’s desk, over which a silver and glass lamp hung from a chain. At his back a pair of open glass doors led out to the stern gallery, letting sunlight and a pleasant breeze fill the cabin. The door of a gun cabinet to his left hung from its hinges, and he held a heavy sea pistol in his left hand. He leveled it at my chest.
“Please come closer,” he said. “I should love so to shoot you.”
On the desk between us lay a powder flask, a short brass ramrod, and a shot bag.
I raised my sword. “If you’d finished loading that pistol, you’d’ve shot me already. Show me your blade, sir.”
“Tish t
ish, Mr. Graves. Surely you do not intend to murder an agent of the federal government.”
“You ain’t nary such a thing. You’re a traitor. You intend to raise a slave insurrection back home.”
“No, no, no, that’s just Franklin’s wild imagination at work. Good God, man, have you no eyes?” He pointed at his face. “I’m a free man of color. A nigger’s no use to me if he’s running around loose.”
“You deny it?”
“Of course I deny it. I’m an adventurer, not a traitor.” He got a calculating look in his eye. “I have an empire nearly in my hands. You’re a man of color—”
“Who told you that?”
“Pétion. You told him yourself. It’ll come out at trial, make no mistake about that. You’ll be ruined. On the other hand, now, was you to side with me . . .”
“I want no part of a slave rebellion. You seen what happened here.”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “I told you, that’s not the plan. Listen to me and I’ll tell you true. My object is Tejas.”
“What’s a tay hoss?”
“Tejas.” He gave plenty of throat to the Spanish J. “It’s a province of New Spain on the Gulf Coast. We’ll build a fort, invite Creole settlers from Lousiana, import a few thousand slaves. It’s wide open, man! Some dirty soldiers in some crumbling forts is all that stands in our way.” He raised his head at the sound of the ruckus forward. “Well, it was all that stood in the way. With a little boat and a blind eye, however . . .”
“You’re in league with the Knights of the White Hand. I saw you with MacGuffin outside the farmhouse.”
“He was a former knight. Every man has his price, and his was low.” He showed his dimples and said, “You should have seen the look on his face when I let Franklin stab him in the back with his own dagger.”
“Him! You liar. I read Villon’s letter.”
The War of Knives Page 30