The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  Mouse bounced and jumped around them, his face glowing, his skewed eyes looking off in all directions. “Let me do it! I can do it—”

  The two men brushed by him, ignoring him, and went to the locker at the foot of the mast. Pieter opened it with the key on his belt and bent over the folded cloth inside. Mouse pulled on Jan’s arm.

  “What can I do? Tell me, Jan—I want to do something!”

  Jan removed his arm from the boy’s grip. “Don’t bother me now.”

  Pieter straightened, the long red pennant they had made in Plymouth unfolding from his hands. He clipped it to a halyard on the mast and ran it up to the top. Mouse danced around him.

  “Can I do it? Let me do it!”

  “’Sblood,” Pieter snarled. “Get this little devil away from me!”

  Jan grasped the boy’s shoulder. “Look, Mouse, we need someone to go up onto the lookout and watch for signals from Lumey. Will you do it?”

  The boy’s face went bright red with eager excitement. He nodded vigorously and leapt into the rigging, climbing like a monkey toward the mast top, where the red pennant fluttered now.

  “Good,” old Pieter said. He reached for his pipe and tobacco. “We’ll keep a northwesterly course as long as the wind holds. With luck she’ll blow fair all morning. The main thing is to keep the Dons well off the French coast so that Lumey and Sonoy and the others can slip around behind them and steal the weather.” He tipped his head back, his beard jutting out over his collar. “I don’t like the looks of the sky, boy-o.”

  Jan said nothing. They had gone over and over the plan; he thought Pieter was talking to ease his soul. The sky was clear enough, a few low clouds along the horizon, but nothing to be afraid of. Anyway the ship sailed very well in wet weather. The pungent odor of his uncle’s pipe tinged the air and Jan moved away a few steps.

  “Well,” Pieter said, “let’s to it.”

  Jan walked the few paces up the deck to the wheel. “Hands to the braces! Ready to make sail.” With a flourish he pulled free the rope that lashed the wheel. Pieter went by him, up the three steps to the stern deck, to con their course.

  The crew raced around the deck, their bare feet nearly soundless on the worn boards. The mainsail and the jib went up with a rattle of salt-stiffened canvas. At once the nimble little ship answered the wind. Pieter felt her tremble under his feet like a hunting dog that hears the horn, and the sea chuckled against her side.

  Jan, on the main deck below him, took the ship up a few points higher in the wind, let her fall off a little until the sails luffed, and laid her back on course, all as Pieter had shown him, to get a feel of how she was today, how the wind and the sea suited her. Pieter fought against a smile. Jan was a good sailor. The old man sucked the tobacco smoke into his lungs, enjoying the heady taste. The crew obeyed his nephew as well as they did Pieter—better, some of them, since Jan could knock them down, and Pieter could not.

  He knew the guns better than Pieter; he had been at practice, while they waited for the Spaniards, and Pieter had seen him blow empty wine tuns out of the water at the distance of a cable length—no small feat, all things considered, although the guns the Spanish had been kind enough to install in the Wayward Girl were the best Pieter had ever seen and had made even Lumey envious.

  Jan could shoot and he could sail, but one thing Pieter could not give him. The old man raised his eyes again to the gray lowering sky. The sun had risen but no blue showed through the veil of clouds, and near the eastern edge of the world the sky was black as mourning.

  Jan took nothing seriously that he could not control himself. Pieter shook his head. Only time would teach him that.

  Their work today was easy enough. The Spanish galleons were sailing up into the Channel, the wind over their sterns and their course laid for the Low Countries. The Wayward Girl, handier at sailing off the wind, would play with the huge ships like a dog with a phalanx of bulls, teasing and taunting, drawing them on. If the Spanish did nothing else, the Girl would keep them occupied while the rest of the Beggars got behind the galleons. With any luck, the Dons would lose their tempers at the baiting and try to close quarters with the Wayward Girl, and then Pieter meant to maneuver them out of formation, so that when Lumey came the four galleons would be helpless to act in unity, and easy victims of the swift and well-armed Dutch fleet.

  He stood watching the sea to the south. Now he could make out the topsails of the galleons. The wind filled the pleated sails and drove on the hulls like plows through the heavy seas. Huge as they were, they could not turn too suddenly, nor turn too far, without losing the wind and going dead in the water. He was determined to make them turn, to follow him, to join in long-range shooting if necessary. His skin tingled. As usual, when action offered, he wished himself well away from here, somewhere warm and safe, with the solid ground under his feet. And now the rain was beginning to fall. He went forward a few steps, to call to Jan to alter course, and bring the ship down on the four great galleons sweeping north.

  The four Spanish galleons sailed in a kind of wing shape, the biggest ship in the middle and slightly ahead of the others. Mouse watched them from the lookout, his heart racing with excitement. The Spanish crosses on their sails were clearly visible now from the deck. He had seen no signals from the other Beggars, but no one had called to Mouse to come down, and he liked it here, swooping and gliding through the air so far above the sea. Although now it looked as if it might rain.

  Far below him Jan stood by the wheel, a mop of yellow hair on a little block of body. From here there was no telling how much bigger he was than the other men. Mouse leaned over the platform, looking down at Pieter with his cold pipe sticking out from his face, and Red Aart by the stern guns, and Marten at the main brace on the starboard side.

  As he was craning his neck to make out his friends from this vantage point, the order came to bring the ship about; she lay over and the masthead swayed, and he had to wrap his arms around the lifelines to keep from falling.

  They sailed across the bows of the Spanish fleet, so close Mouse saw the men in fancy red and green coats, trimmed with gold, who gathered on the foredeck of the flagship. The Spanish officers watched the Wayward Girl pass by them and did nothing. Cowards, Mouse thought, watching the men in their bright-colored clothes on the high forecastle. The first drops of rain struck him.

  The wind was cutting now. He started down the rigging and remembered he had not been ordered down. If he wanted to be a sailor, he had to obey orders.

  Jan was wearing ship, to bring the Wayward Girl around for another run past the Spaniards. Mouse pulled his arms inside his sleeves to keep warm.

  The wind was rising. It sang in the rigging like pipes, and it was cold, cold enough now to make the boy shiver. The ship was slicing through the water to pass by under the sterns of the Spanish galleons. Now the rain was falling harder, thick enough to veil the bowsprits of the four galleons in a gray haze. Mouse squinted to see better. He thought the half-visible flagship was changing course, and he opened his mouth and leaned out from the lookout to yell to Jan, and then the wind whirled and swept over the Wayward Girl from the bow and took every sail aback. The ship lurched, and Mouse fell off the lookout.

  He landed in the main shrouds, but his arms were still fast in his sleeves, and he could not save himself. He screamed. In his black terror he screamed for Jan. Sliding through the heavy knotted rigging, he hit a block and bounced overboard into the sea.

  His shirt tore; with a madman’s strength he wrenched one arm free, then the other, while the icy ocean closed over his head and he plummeted down into the depths. He thrashed with his legs. The sea covered him. His lungs were nearly empty. Suddenly his head broke into the air again and he could breathe. He used the breath to scream. The ocean enveloped him to the ears. High over his head, the rail of the Wayward Girl seemed miles away, her side slipping by him faster than he could lift his arms to swim toward her. His trousers clutched his legs; he kicked out, trying to stay afloat.
The rain struck his face. The ship was passing by him, they were leaving him behind. He wailed. An instant later a rope flew uncoiling in the air toward him.

  The end slapped the surging wave in front of him. He thrashed toward it, his mouth full of salt water, and caught the fat wet round of hemp. It slipped out of his hands. He floundered through the water after it. The ship already seemed miles away, its plain round stern higher than a rooftop.

  His fingers grazed the rope again. This time he seized it with both hands and wrapped it around his waist. While he was fumbling to knot it, a boom of thunder crashed through the rain.

  A moment later something hit the water to his left, bounced over him, and fell into the sea to his right; the spray struck his face. A cannonball. The Spaniards were shooting at him. A whine of fear left him. He could not manage a knot in the rope. His hands were too cold, and now the rope was sliding through his fingers again. It swung up taut out of the sea. He dug his fingernails into the twisted fibers, lowered his head, and gripped the rope in his teeth.

  The sea rushed by him. His legs felt heavy. Another far-off drumroll of sound: another Spanish broadside. He was dragged up through the air, free of the water, banged painfully against the side of the ship, and dropped onto the deck.

  Someone threw a coat over him. They were running all about, shouting orders, readying the guns to fire, and no one paid much heed to Mouse. Shivering and numb with cold, he dragged himself over to the foot of the mainmast and pulled the coat around him and said his prayers, over and over, sunk in a bone-rattling terror.

  Jan saw Mouse fall into the sea, and at once he shouted to the men to throw the sails aback, to take the ship out of the wind. Wheeling, he went in a single bound up the steps to the stern deck.

  “What are you doing?” Pieter grabbed his arm.

  “Mouse is overboard.” Jan rushed to the rail; Red Aart and Marten ran up beside him, and Aart stooped for the line kept coiled by the stern cleats.

  Pieter struck the rope out of his hands. “The Spanish are all around us—forget the boy—get to the braces—sail the ship!”

  Jan flung a broad look around him. In the slanting rain, the four galleons loomed up like sea monsters from the waves, close enough that now he heard a shout from one of their decks. The flagship was closest. Her broad mainsails shivered; the great ship was coming about, lumbering around toward the Wayward Girl, and the Girl’s sails were flapping, her power gone. She lay dead in the water as a piece of driftwood.

  He gulped. A cold fear gripped him. In a moment the Spanish would be on them. But there in the smooth water of the trough of the wave was a round bobbing head, and an arm shot up into the air beside it, and he heard, or thought he heard, his name called.

  “Throw that rope.” Bending, he gathered up the snarl of line, whipped it rapidly into coils, and flung the end out toward the boy struggling in the lap of the sea.

  Pieter swore at him. Turning on his heel, he marched away across the deck. The rain was falling harder now; Jan could barely make out Mouse’s head in the dark water, but he felt a tug on the line.

  “Pull!”

  He and Aart and Marten pulled on the rope, drawing it in hand over hand. Within seconds, by the slackening of tension in the line, Jan knew the boy had lost his hold.

  “Oh, God,” Aart murmured. He beat his fist on the rail, leaning out over the stern, his face pebbled with the rain. “God, Mama, Mama, help him—”

  Jan shot him an amused look; he had never heard anyone pray to his mother before. He himself was calm now. The decision to save Mouse had driven away his fear. Swiftly he stripped off his canvas jacket and climbed onto the rail, ready to leap into the sea after Mouse.

  “He’s got it!” Aart pulled on the rope. “I can feel it—he’s got it—”

  A boom of gunfire drowned his words. All the men on the stern ducked, although the cannonballs splashed into the sea well to larboard of them. Jan leapt down to the deck again. The Spanish flagship was rolling down through the misty rain toward them, her bows splitting the seas. He grabbed the rope.

  “Heave!”

  They dragged the boy in over the stern; his face was blue-gray, and he lay gasping on the deck at Jan’s feet like a dying dolphin.

  “Trim that mainsail!”

  Jan threw his coat on top of Mouse. Still hunched over, he lifted his head to look up, up at the bows of the galleon. Beneath its bowsprit was a huge red leaping lion with gilt teeth. A musketeer leaned over the rail above the figurehead, swinging his gun around to aim straight at Jan.

  “Here!” His uncle thrust a smoking piece of slow match at him.

  Jan took the match; he lowered his gaze to the stern gun. It was loaded. Pieter, even in his bad temper, had lost no time. While the others were saving Mouse, he had brought the stern gun up ready to fire. Jan put the match to the touchhole.

  The musketeer saw, and winced back, jerking up his gun. The musket fired, venting a tiny puff of smoke that the wind tore away; and the shot went off into the sky. An instant later the cannon roared. Across the narrowing strip of water between them the ball shrieked in its passage like a woman. Jan heard distinctly the whack of the ball striking the galleon’s timbers. The rail exploded in a shower of splinters and wood dust. Jan wheeled around, toward the Wayward Girl’s mast and mainsail.

  Aart and Marten were hauling in the swinging mainsail. The wind caught it with a crack. A gust of rain lashed the deck. Jan gripped his uncle’s shoulder an instant and sprang down to the main deck, behind the wheel.

  “Three points to starboard!” Pieter shouted.

  The wind lifted the Wayward Girl up like a bird on the wing. She bent to her course and slipped away from the galleon into the rain and the mist. Jan glanced back over his shoulder. Above the stern, where his uncle stood, his pipe clamped in his teeth and his arms locked behind him, the towering masses of Spanish sail loomed up, still perilously close. But the Girl had the wind. The gap between them widened. The red crosses faded into the driving rain.

  A roll of thunder pealed across the sea; the galleon had fired its guns. Something wailed over Jan’s head, and he felt the deck shiver under his feet. His ship was hit. The topsail halyards snapped and the little sail fluttered out like a flag. A block crashed down through the standing rigging to the deck, hit the deck, and slid over against the rail.

  “Two points starboard!” Pieter shouted.

  Jan brought the ship up higher yet into the wind. Trust his uncle’s orders. An instant later he felt the wind change against his cheek. The old man had read the sky somehow and known the breeze was veering. The Girl was flying now, in spite of the damage done her by the Spanish guns. Rapidly she raced away into the gloom of the rain. Jan sighed.

  His uncle said, above him, “That was damned silly—to chance the whole ship for a fool of a boy.”

  Jan gripped the wheel, which yanked and pulled on his hands; the wind was rising, and the seas were towering up into mountains all around them. “I sent him to the lookout,” he said. “If not for me he would not have fallen.”

  “Pagh,” Pieter said. “He’s an idiot. God’s mistake.”

  Jan licked the salt from his lips. He was half-naked, and the cold stiffened his muscles; he could feel the ship beginning to lose way against the sea. A following wave broke over the stern quarter and the spray drenched him. He gasped at the chilly onslaught of the water.

  “What’s the damage?” he called back to his uncle.

  “Nothing, compared to what will happen if we don’t rig for storm running. Get the mainsail down; we’ll run under the jib awhile.”

  Jan called orders. The storm had engulfed them; there was no need now to worry about the Spanish. No time to think about them anyway. He called to Marten to take the wheel and went forward to supervise the setting of the jib.

  11

  The storm blew all night, shoving the Wayward Girl ahead of it, and when it finally gusted away into a pale calm dawn, the ship was far up the Channel, missing a few spa
rs and some of her rigging. The Spanish ships were nowhere in sight, and after such a storm the Beggar fleet was unlikely to be where it was supposed to be.

  Pieter said, “The wind’s pretty fair for Plymouth. We could look in there and see who’s taken shelter from the dirty weather.”

  The rest of the crew agreed with that, and they sailed off to the coast of England, making Plymouth Sound in three tacks.

  Plymouth was packed full of ships as a barrel of herring. The four Spanish galleons lay in the deep harbor. Poor sailers off the wind that the galleons were, yet they fared well in storms and they looked fit as they had when Jan last saw them. On the bow of the great flagship men were working to repair the broken railings. Half a dozen English and French merchantmen shared their anchorage.

  Between the waters of the Channel and these big ships, sleek and fat like hens in their roosts, lay the Sea Beggars, a crowd of small, light ships, some considerably storm battered. One at least was sinking: the John Calvin, one of Dirk Sonoy’s ships, lay to her gunports in the water, while small boats swarmed around her trying to keep her afloat.

  Jan leaned against the rail. Old Pieter was steering the Wayward Girl into port, under the command of the pilot; Jan, left idle, could turn his whole attention to the work around the John Calvin. On the other Dutch ships a constant bustle of men and small boats saw to the repairing of storm damage. On board Lumey’s ship Christ the Redeemer a complex of ropes rove through blocks at masthead and deckline was hoisting a spar up the mizzenmast.

  Jan glanced at the Spanish ships again. He thought if they were clever they would run for it now, while the Beggars were laid up.

  Bright pennants fluttered up and down the mainmast of the flagship. Signals to the other ships. Maybe they were commenting on the arrival of the Wayward Girl. At this flurry of attention from the mighty Spaniards, Jan’s chest swelled; his head grew lighter with a sense of his own gravity. He strolled over toward his uncle, handling the wheel.