Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead
Page 37
The first boat came neatly alongside amidships, and, with a cry, the men began scrambling for the upper deck, where Hayden’s mixed crew of Spaniards and British sailors fired upon them and then set to work with pikes and cutlasses, attempting to throw them back.
A boat came alongside the quarterdeck, and Hayden chose the largest man he could see and shot him in the chest. He tossed the pistol down and drew his cutlass with one hand and his second pistol with the other. For a moment it seemed that the French would not gain the deck, but then they broke the Spanish line amidships and came pouring over the side. Instinctively fearing the enemy would get behind them, men turned away from the rail, and the French then broke the line in several places.
Hayden was forced back, and it was parry and thrust and hot work all around. Having been schooled by a marine captain as a midshipman, Hayden never drew back his blade to slash, for whenever a man did, Hayden would put the tip of his blade into his chest. With the blade always pointed before him, he could parry as needed and thrust when opportunity presented itself.
Hayden threw himself to the side to avoid a pike, tripped on a body, and went down hard on his back. Immediately, a man was upon him with a dagger and would have done for him, but Hayden managed to deflect his first blow and then shoot him through the chest. Pushing the man aside, he found his sword, which he had dropped to fend off the attacker, swept up the man’s dagger, and staggered up, bleeding from his right arm somewhere.
“Captain! Captain!” a cry came from aloft. “The privateer . . . she is bearing down on us, sir.”
For a few seconds, Hayden did not comprehend what the man meant, and then he saw it. The ship anchored nearest them had slipped her anchor and was bearing down on them on the current, broadside to the flow with all her gunports open.
Hayden was along the deck and down the companionway in an instant. Here he found a few Spaniards, bearing wounded to their surgeon. “Leave them!” he ordered in Spanish. “We must cut our bower cable—this very instant!”
The men hesitated only a second and then gently set the men on the deck and hastened with Hayden. They were hewing the cable with axes in a moment, and then it let go with a sudden snap.
Hayden gathered them all to him. “When the ship is broadside to the current, cut the spring. Do not take the chance of its fouling. Cut it right at the gunport.”
The men hurried aft.
Hayden went up the ladder to the deck, two steps at a time.
He was allowed only a second to assess the battle, which was yet being contested all along the deck, and then two men were upon him with cutlasses. They had been properly tutored in the weapon’s use and neither drew back to slash, which might have given Hayden an opening. Instead, they trapped him against the break to the gun-deck, one feinting while the other attempted to make the killing thrust. Twice, Hayden avoided being run through with a quick sidestep.
“Again,” one of them said in Breton. “But feint and then kill him.”
Hayden had no time to bless his Breton family: The first man feinted again, and as Hayden parried he threw the dagger, left-handed, at the man’s face, parried the second man’s thrust and ran his blade three inches into his chest, then drew it out in time to parry a thrust from the first. It was now one-on-one and Hayden began to force the man back, parrying and retreating. He ran the edge of his blade up the man’s forearm, cutting arteries and tendons. The man dropped his sword and went down on one knee, clutching his wounded arm.
Hayden hovered the point of his blade at the man’s neck. “Ask for quarter,” he said in Breton, surprising the man overly, and, without hesitation, the man did.
Snatching up the man’s blade, Hayden turned back to the fighting, which, he realised, was over everywhere but on the quarterdeck. Spanish and British sailors corralled the privateers, while all around, the silent lay still upon the deck, and the wounded moaned and cried out. Wickham passed, leading a company of English and Spanish to the quarterdeck. Hayden went to the rail and leaned out. The spring had been cut and the frigate was drifting with the current. At that instant, guns fired from the nearby privateer, shot hissing through the rigging.
Hayden climbed up onto the rail and turned back to the deck. “Where is Captain Serrano?” he shouted in the brief silence after the guns fired.
There was muttering and whispering, and then Serrano appeared, his coat gone and his right arm bound in a bloody dressing.
Hopping down from the rail, Hayden went to him. “You are injured, Captain . . .”
“It is nothing,” Serrano insisted. “Shall we man the larboard guns, Captain Hayden?”
“Immediately, if you please.”
Serrano began calling out orders in Spanish. Men hastened to the guns in an orderly manner, which Hayden approved heartily. Gunports creaked open and the rumble of wooden wheels rolling over the deck planks came to him. Ransome appeared, looking rather done in, but intact, as far as his captain could tell.
“Are you hurt, Mr Ransome?”
“No, sir. I seemed to be in the thick of it, though, and if the French had not surrendered I might have fallen to the deck from exhaustion.”
“It was bravely fought, all around. I want you to take charge of the gun-deck. This is our ship, and I don’t want the Spanish losing sight of that.”
“Aye, sir.” Ransome reached up to touch the hat that he had not, until that moment, realised was gone. He crossed to the ladder, his gait a little wandering, as though he had received a blow to the head and was not quite recovered.
Hayden sent a man below to carry up his night glass, but before it arrived, the privateer fired a second broadside and this one did considerable damage to their rig and sent four or five men plummeting to the deck.
“Give me a whisper of wind,” Hayden muttered to no one in particular.
Hawthorne and a Spanish lieutenant had taken charge of rounding up prisoners, and the wounded Spanish and English were being borne down to the surgeon before the wounded privateers had their turn.
The frigate’s guns all fired at an order from Ransome, which was repeated by Gould on the upper deck. Whether they did any damage to the privateer, Hayden could not tell through the darkness and smoke. With no wind, the cloud of smoke remained stationary, hanging over the water in a thick mass as the current carried the ship slowly away. The cloud obscured the enemy vessel, which, carried on the same current, was travelling at precisely the same speed, the distance between the two ships neither growing nor becoming less.
Hayden’s night glass arrived and he quizzed the darkness with it, but the mass of smoke hanging over the water hid her quite effectively.
“Aloft there . . .” he called out. “Did we do any damage to that privateer?”
A second of silence, and then an English voice: “Sir . . . Much of our shot fell short.”
“By what distance?” Hayden called up.
“A cable length, sir.”
Hayden went to the waist and called down into the darkness of the gun-deck.
“Did you hear, Mr Ransome?”
“A cable length shy, sir. We are elevating guns, Captain.”
“Fire when you are ready, Mr Ransome.” Hayden stared up into the rigging. “Aloft . . . have you a night glass?”
“We do not, Captain.”
“I will have mine carried up.”
Gould sent a man scurrying Hayden’s way, and he swiftly bore the valuable glass up to the lookout. Hayden wished to go aloft himself, so he could assess what the enemy was doing, but did not want to cede the deck to Serrano.
Ransome called out again, and the larboard battery hurled fire and smoke into the night. The smoke hung so thick about the deck that Hayden could hear men coughing from all points. For a moment an unnatural silence overspread the ship and then the lookout called down.
“On deck! Our fire struck home, Captain.”
He stood at the rail while the gunners plied their trade. It was soon obvious that the Spanish gun crews were not nearly so efficient as the British, whose rate of fire was almost double that of the Spanish and never less than three for two.
It was a strange battle, the two ships drifting down-current, firing, through dense clouds of smoke that hung in the air, at an enemy who could barely be glimpsed.
With direction from aloft, Hayden was able to concentrate his fire so that much, if not most, of it found its mark, while the fire from the privateer was far less effective, much of it passing overhead, some landing in the water, short.
Using numerous eighteen-pound balls, Hayden made up two “anchors” and deployed them, one at the stern and one at the bow. When the frigate exhibited a tendency for either her head or her stern to get a little ahead, the “anchor” was deployed long enough to slow that part of the ship and keep the frigate square to her enemy. All the while, Hayden glanced aloft and watched for the smallest signs of wind.
Scrivener appeared with a Spaniard bearing a rolled chart.
“You appear terribly grave, Mr Scrivener,” Hayden observed, beckoning the two men forward.
“I have been consulting with the frigate’s master, sir.” He nodded to the man and introduced him. “My Spanish is less than perfect and his English is not up to my Spanish, but the charts and a pointing finger are the same in all languages. The sailing master believes we might very well be swept up onto shoals within the hour, sir.”
Hayden had ordered all deck lamps extinguished, so the three repaired below, where they unrolled the chart in the dim light of a lamp.
The Spanish sailing master tapped the chart. “We anchored here, Captain Hayden. The current in this channel can vary from one to as many as four knots, though at this time of year I would estimate it to be two knots.” He put his finger on a conspicuous reef. “Therefore, we must not be too distant from the reefs that lie off this island.”
Hayden gazed at the chart only a moment. “We cannot go aground. Given a little wind, the enemy would be upon us of an instant.”
He looked quickly along the gun-deck, where the crews went about their business. The guns had been traversed a little aft at the directions of the lookouts.
“How certain are you of our position?” Hayden asked.
The two men glanced at each other. “Quite certain.”
“How near to the reef do you dare to take us?”
The Spaniard blew air through his lips in a small explosion. “Well, Captain, I should not like to risk going too near. It is dark, the speed of the current not precisely known . . .”
“I understand,” Hayden said. He looked around. “Find Captain Serrano and bring him to me, if you please.”
Hayden went back up onto the deck, where the gun crews were also hard at work. Again he looked for signs of wind, but found none.
A moment later, the sailing master appeared with Captain Serrano, the two deep in conversation. Before Hayden could speak, Serrano began.
“I do not think it wise to risk going near these reefs, Captain Hayden.”
“It is not my intention to go any nearer, Captain Serrano. But here is what I intend to do. I will fire every gun on the ship at once and create an impenetrable cloud of smoke. Immediately thereafter, we will drop anchor and swing head to wind.”
“But they will rake us, Captain, three times, perhaps.”
“Only if they see us. Either they will pass close by to starboard, whereupon we will rake them, or they will tangle in our bowsprit, swing alongside, and we will board. How many men do you think this privateer carries?”
“Not so many as we, I should think,” Serrano replied, “but I am not even certain which ship it might be, nor was I ever aboard her.”
“But do you believe their numbers greater?”
“I very much doubt it.”
“Then we will board if we have the chance. If not, we will weigh and drift down on them. If they strike the shoals, we will anchor and fire on them until they strike or we inflict so much damage to their ship it can never float free.”
Serrano shook his head, his face drawn tight as if in pain. “With all respect, Captain Hayden, it is a very risky plan. So many things could go wrong. We might be raked from bow to stern, they might drop their own anchor and be only a pistol shot distant. They might carry away our bowsprit and jib-boom—”
“But there are spars aboard to replace these,” Hayden interrupted the man.
“Yes, in time, that is true, but we could lose our foremast . . .”
“I do not think there is much chance of that—with so little sea running and no wind at all.”
“I simply think it is too great a risk, Captain Hayden. I say this with all respect; I have been at sea twenty years longer than you and I should never attempt such a thing.”
“And I say this with equal respect, Captain Serrano: I think the risks are smaller than you imagine. It is a dark night, we will be hidden by a dense cloud, if they penetrate our intentions and anchor, then we must have the advantage in weight of broadside; if they tangle in our rig and swing alongside, then we will have the advantage in men. If they pass us by, we will rake them and drift down until they either anchor or are swept onto the reefs. It is not without risks, I realise, but we cannot continue onto the reefs and must anchor sooner or later at any rate.”
This last argument even Serrano could not counter, though he appeared to be desperately searching for a rebuttal. The man might have been at sea twenty years longer, but Hayden wondered how many battles the man had fought, for he seemed to be the type who could envision only the disasters and never the successes.
“Station men to drop anchor, Captain,” he said, no longer able to tolerate the man’s indecision, “and to fire both batteries at once on my order. We will prepare to fight the starboard battery or board, as the situation requires.” He made a small bow—a respectful dismissal, he hoped—and turned back to Scrivener. “Pass the word for my officers, if you please, Mr Scrivener.”
The Spaniards went off and, within a few yards, were whispering to each other. Hayden watched them retreat, thinking as they went that boldness in battle was ever more preferable than caution, for the enemy almost always expected what they would do themselves. Serrano would never expect what Hayden was about to do, and he hoped the privateers were of the same mind.
Hayden lurked about the deck, listening to the orders given to the Spanish sailors. It appeared that Serrano’s lieutenants approved the plan more than their captain, for they passed the orders along with barely concealed enthusiasm, which revealed more about Serrano than the man would have liked, Hayden guessed.
Ransome, Gould, Hawthorne, and Wickham were quickly informed of Hayden’s plan and approved it most heartily. Guns were run out on both sides, and at an order from Hayden, all fired at once. The cloud this created roiled for a second from the violence of the explosion and then settled into a languid mass. For a long moment it clung to the ship, and then the ship appeared to drift away from it. Hayden attempted to calm his racing heart and counted to sixty slowly. He then gave the order to let the anchor go, which was managed with only the smallest splash, the cable running out ever so slowly. Immediately upon being snubbed, the ship began to swing.
The deck guns were then reloaded with grape—an order Hayden almost hated to give.
Shot from the privateer continued to land near, but in only a few moments Hayden noticed that most passed overhead and none struck the hull. As the ship turned, she presented a smaller target and even more shot hissed by to either side. The dense storm of black smoke continued to hang over the water, hardly dissipating, only a few tendrils reaching out towards the Spanish frigate, as though reluctant to let it go.
The boats, which lay alongside, were moved aft and streamed with the current.
“Aloft there!” Hayden called to the lookout. “Can you see our privateer?”
“I cannot make her out, Captain.”
“Inform me the moment you can.”
“Aye, sir.”
“If we cannot see them,” Hawthorne said quietly, “does it mean they cannot perceive us?”
“So we might hope.” Hayden looked up at the clouds sailing over and the moonlight knifing down through the channels between the clouds. The sea was still illuminated here and there by shafts of moonlight, but none of these drew near.
The men at the deck guns on the quarterdeck were silent and unnaturally still, as though they listened for their pursuers’ footsteps. No one knew when the privateer would appear and whether she would come through the cloud dead ahead with raking fire or if she would pass to starboard, as Hayden had predicted.
“Which do you expect, Captain,” Hawthorne whispered, “that we will rake her as she passes or that she will tangle with us and we will board?”
“I do wish I knew, Mr Hawthorne. Certainly, she appeared to be ever so slightly south of us, nearer the coast, but precisely where the current will bear her . . . Anyone’s guess would be as accurate as mine.”
“I rather doubt that, Captain. Your ‘guess’ is the one I should take most seriously.”
The two stood at the rail—“friends,” as much as their respective ranks and positions allowed, and Hayden found comfort in the marine lieutenant’s presence. He wished he felt less like he was proceeding to his own hanging, but thus were the trials of command—the captain was the individual who would be held accountable for decisions such as the one he had just made; the captains of the court-martial would be told of Serrano’s expressed reservations. Hayden hoped his youth and inexperience would not lead to a disaster here, costing many lives from both his and Serrano’s crew—there would almost certainly be a Spanish mutiny at that point.