Again Hayden braced his feet and pushed. And again. The mine was not two yards off now. Another heave and it was all but home. A final push, and it brought up short. Quickly, he made it fast and then clung to a barrel a moment, gasping and shaking from the effort. Childers got the boat under control and brought the bow up to Hayden.
The lamp, closed to let no light out, passed from hand to hand forward, and the man in the bow held it, waiting for Hayden to regain his strength. He forced himself to put a foot on one of the narrow boards that made up the frame, and very, very tentatively put his weight upon it, hoping all the while the mine would not turn over. It heeled to his weight, but all the ballast in the barrels resisted him and it stayed more or less upright.
He was dripping wet and dared not open the bung or handle the match cord for fear of getting it wet. As he perched there, trying to think how he would dry at least one hand, a cry came from directly above his head.
“Les Anglais! Les Anglais!”
Immediately, a musket fired and the man in the boat’s bow fell back, his lamp falling into the sea with a splash and disappearing. Fire was returned from the boat, which began to drift aft on the current. More men came running to the transom rail and began firing, and Hayden crouched low and pressed himself up against the transom planks, the overhanging stern hiding him from the men above.
Childers ordered the rowers to take up oars, and the desperate men sent the boat off to larboard, seeking the protection of darkness. Hayden did not know how many had been hurt—and they were being fired on yet.
Footsteps came thumping across planks almost overhead, and a man leaned out the transom gallery window a few feet above Hayden’s head and fired. With all haste, he set to reloading, and when his gun emerged again, Hayden stepped up on one of the barrels, grabbed the startled man’s arm, hauled him half out of the window, and clubbed him several times over the head with his drowned pistol. When he was utterly still, Hayden reached the sill and pulled himself up and then swiftly in. There was no one else in the cabin, and Hayden dried his hands on the abandoned bedclothes in a swinging cot and snatched down the lantern.
For a second, he hovered at the window, listening. Childers had steered the boat to larboard, and most of the men on the deck above had moved to that quarter, where they were still shouting and firing muskets. Even so, Hayden hesitated. He was about to go out of the window, bearing a lantern, which would almost certainly reveal him to the enemy. He would have to carry the lantern in one hand and climb with the other, which he realised would be all but impossible.
Hayden looked around the cabin in desperation, and his eye lit upon a pistol lying on the floor near the man he’d clubbed to death. It must have fallen from his belt. He seized it, checked that it was loaded, made certain the flint was both new and firmly in place, and went to the cot. He tore a piece of sheet free and wrapped the pistol in it before shoving it into his belt, then went again to the window.
He glanced up to see if anyone looked his way, but could not be certain. No one had spotted the English mine, it seemed, and with a deep breath he lowered himself out of the window. It was far enough down that he was forced to drop the last foot onto the centre barrel, which held the powder. Half falling from that, he landed on one of the lower barrels and managed not to go into the water altogether. He paused there a moment, still, but when no cry went up he went to pull the bung from the powder barrel, when he realised he had left too much water there.
Carefully, he unwrapped his pistol and used the cloth to dry the barrel head, then pulled the bung. He fished out the match cord, positioned the bung so that it covered most of the hole, and then added the damp cloth to this, covering the hole completely but for the tiniest hole where the match emerged. Balancing himself, he held the cord in one hand and the cocked pistol in the other. For the briefest second he hesitated, took a long deep breath, then aimed the pistol at the cord, which dangled a few inches from his hand, and pulled the trigger.
He turned away from the smoke for an instant and then opened his eyes, which were swimming from the flash. The match burned! Gingerly, he pulled the cloth away, expecting all the while that the powder would light and blow him to his final glory, but it did not.
He slipped into the water, took a few deep breaths, and then submerged, swimming as far as he could dead down-current and then surfacing as silently as he was able. He floated on his back, breathing and not letting his feet break the surface as he kicked. He went under again and swam until the need for air drove him up. He then began to swim quietly, desperate to get away. He glanced back once, and though there were men on the quarterdeck firing into the dark, it did not seem to be at him, nor was there any sign that the mine had been discovered.
Hayden had not swum very far when there was a flash and then an unholy explosion. He was propelled forward briefly and felt as though a massive fist of water had landed a blow to his entire body. He spun around in the water, holding up an arm to protect himself, and saw what appeared to be the entire transom of the ship explode in a monstrous moment of fire.
Hayden could not tear his eyes away and hovered there, treading water, watching the stern of the ship heave up and then settle and immediately start to go down.
“My God!” he muttered. “We have done for her.”
Fire consumed the transom and burned in the rigging and furled mizzen sails. Hayden could see men on the deck picking themselves up.
“You must launch boats,” he heard himself say.
But the French did not yet seem to comprehend their situation. And then there was a mad rush to the boats. The ship, however, was going rapidly down by the stern, sinking ever lower as water rushed in. Hayden was certain they would not have a single boat over the side before the ship slipped beneath the surface.
He watched in fascinated horror as a gun, broken loose by the explosion, rolled and then tumbled down the slanting deck, taking with it men who could not get clear in the press. The ship began to roll onto her starboard side, a great wounded animal going to ground, but this one would never rise again.
Men began to slip into the water as half the deck went under. One of the boats was manhandled upright and floated off from the sinking vessel, with men leaping aboard and others clinging to the gunwales. The mizzen rigging burned yet, the flame casting a stained hellish light over the scene.
“I never meant to do this,” Hayden whispered to no one. It was, he realised then, the truth of war—men endeavoured to bring destruction to the enemy, but, once achieved, they then looked in horror upon their own accomplishments. One looked in horror upon one’s self.
He treaded water, floating high above the earth, watching as a hundred men or more began the slow fall towards the earth’s surface. What kind of man could murder a hundred of his own kind?
Only the forecastle of the sinking ship remained, and there was enacted a scene of such chaos as he had never witnessed, men climbing over their fellows to keep from the sea. Others were shoved over the bulwarks, and then those were pushed over behind.
A burning ship’s boat came drifting by the stricken ship and he realised it was one of their fire boats, still afloat, carried by the sea. It was a macabre sight, sliding by the sinking ship, as though it had come to cast light on Hayden’s own handiwork, like a rebuke from some higher power.
Aboard the ill-fated ship there was such keening and howling, as though these were not men at all but some wild beasts trapped and about to give up their lives. And then Hayden saw two small boys, holding hands, leap down into the sea, where they disappeared beneath the surface. For a long moment he watched, but they never surfaced again. Hayden realised that he wept silently.
“Captain Hayden!” came a cry out of the darkness. “Captain Hayden . . .”
“Here!” he called back. “I am here.”
“Where away, sir?”
“South! Row south!”
A momen
t later, a boat came gliding out of the dark and he was being helped over the side by many hands.
“It worked, Captain,” Childers pronounced, as Hayden tumbled down onto a thwart.
For some few seconds Hayden could not reply. “I never meant to sink her with so many souls aboard.”
“They are privateers, sir,” Childers replied. “They have been raiding our commerce and causing all manner of mischief.”
“For which we might send them into our prisons and later exchange them for our own people, but we would not execute them.”
Childers was struck dumb by this. Clearly, he had been elated by their success—which had been far greater than they expected.
“It is a war, sir,” Childers said, almost under his breath, glancing at the men who lay upon their oars.
“Perhaps mankind’s most wicked contrivance. Row me back to our ship,” Hayden demanded, and then, more softly: “How did our crew fare?”
“Four lost, sir. Three wounded.”
“I am mortally sorry to hear it.”
“Look!” One of the rowers pointed towards the stricken ship.
A boat appeared then, and a second. The boats from the other privateers had come. Hayden did not want to see what happened next and turned his head away. The oarsmen set to their sweeps, and Childers put his helm over to take them back to their Spanish prize.
It seemed to Hayden then that, if he managed in the end to have Angelita back, all the joy and goodness of their marriage would be fouled by this one act—to have murdered so many to have her returned. It was unspeakable.
They were soon alongside the ship, and passed up the wounded first, before Hayden climbed over the side, a puddle forming about him where he stood, watching the hands come up onto the deck.
Gould came hurrying up. “We have done for that privateer! Congratulations, Captain!”
Hayden gave the smallest nod in reply. As he turned to make his way down to his commandeered cabin, he found Hawthorne before him.
“An accident of war,” the marine said, as though he knew Hayden’s thoughts. “Nothing more. Never was it intended. Just misfortune—almost freakishly so.”
“I do not think the French will believe it so innocent. Our names will be black among those people—my mother’s people. Even my own family will turn away from me. It was a monstrous act, Mr Hawthorne, a monstrous act, and it will haunt us until the day death knocks at our doors.”
Sleep did not come to Hayden that night. He wanted nothing more than to remain in his cabin, alone, and speak to no one, but he was afraid the French would desire revenge upon them for this terrible act, and he returned to the deck and paced his private section.
So distraught did he find himself that he was left muttering to no one.
“Never was it my intention to sink them,” he whispered. “To disable them, yes, but never to murder so many.”
This thought seemed to possess him, and he repeated it over and over as it echoed in his mind. “An accident of war,” Hawthorne had called it, but Hayden wondered now how he could not have realised what would occur. Had not Reverte even suggested as much? To ignite so much powder so near to the ship’s weakest point . . . What other result could it have had? Why did he not comprehend that? Was his mind so clouded by emotion that he had not been able to perceive that obvious truth?
Ransome and Reverte prepared the ship for an attack by boats, but the stars blew into the west and no attack came. It left Hayden and perhaps others to a long night of self-recrimination.
Wind and a thin, grey light reached them at the same instant, as though the morning were pressed on by the breeze. Pennants began to stir, flutter, and then stream. Hands were called to make sail and to break out the anchor.
A short distance off, the privateers did the same. Hayden more than half expected the three remaining ships to turn and come after him, for the odds were very much in their favour, but they did not. Instead, they returned to their previous course, along the Old Channel, as though they had not noticed what had occurred the night before. Indeed, Hayden half wondered if it had not been a nightmare.
The wind, almost from the north, remained, throughout the day, froward and moody. For a time it would blow and hurry the ships on, but then it would die away so that they all but lost steerageway; then, for a few hours, it would be but a breeze, falling away and coming back like a soft breath. And then it would make with a vengeance, howling among the rigging so that the ships heeled and were in danger of carrying away spars. Sails were set and handed, and then set again, until the men were exhausted from the work.
The three enemy ships were kept always within sight, but Hayden could not now imagine how he would take one of them, let alone overcome three to find Angelita. He wondered if she knew what he had done. What would she think of a man who murdered a hundred to have her back? Would she have even the slightest desire to call such a man her husband again?
The Windward Channel was reached at dawn, and though Hayden expected the ships to continue on, passing through the Mona Channel as they had come, they instead turned down the channel.
Ransome and Reverte were standing on the forecastle when Hayden arrived, having been alerted to the privateers shaping their course to the south.
“They will draw nearer your port of Kingston,” Reverte said.
“Yes, but I doubt this channel is being watched as it was when we were enemies of your nation. It is unlikely we will meet English cruisers here now.” Ransome caught sight of Hayden and he touched his hat. “Captain. There goes our quarry, slipping off down the Windward Channel, though I cannot think why.”
“They never want to be becalmed again where the ships can anchor,” Reverte said with certainty. “They have had too many bad experiences with that. Perhaps they also think they will find fairer winds in the Caribbean Sea. Who can say?”
Employing Reverte’s glass, Hayden quizzed the ships retreating down the wide channel. It was just over a hundred miles through to the other side, past the long peninsula that grew out of the southwest corner of Hispaniola. If the winds held—and the channel did not have its name for no reason—they would be through in a day.
“We will shape our course to follow their own, Mr Ransome,” Hayden ordered, lowering the glass but gazing yet at the distant ships.
Over the course of the last day, he had felt Angelita slipping away from him, as though she were beyond his grasp now, though, maddingly, he could see the ship that bore her off as it made its way towards the horizon, where it would disappear and she would be lost to him, utterly and irrevocably.
During the afternoon a high, gauzy cloud formed, dulling the day and drawing the colour from the sea so that it appeared a drab blue and, in the distance, grey. By sunset, the cloud had become denser and drowned the stars. A black squall swept down upon them out of the dark, pressing the ship over and throwing the sails about so that they luffed and shook. The helmsman put the ship before the wind and she went racing off towards the south-west, where, fortunately, they had sea room.
Hayden went to his berth sometime after the darkness had settled in, exhausted from his lack of sleep the previous night. Even so, sleep eluded him for some time and then it was fraught with nightmares and he woke often.
As was his usual habit, he rose before dawn, broke his fast, and was on the deck before the first signs of light. All the planking was wet from rain, and the sails and rigging dripped.
Hayden stood with a hand on the binnacle, staring off into the south. Gould was officer of the watch, and he appeared at that instant.
“Where are our chases, Mr Gould? I cannot make them out.”
“Nor can we, sir,” the midshipman admitted.
“And how long have they been out of sight?”
“Two hours, sir.”
Hayden could hardly believe what he had heard. “And why did no one wake me?”
/> Gould stood, embarrassed and hesitant. “I—I do not know, sir. We expected them to reappear and then we would have woken you for naught, Captain.”
“And what is our position?”
“Perhaps five miles north-north-west of Cape Tiburon.”
“Have they disappeared around the cape?”
“We did not think them so distant from us, sir, but it is possible.”
Hayden considered a moment. “Have my night glass carried up, Mr Gould. I shall be on the forecastle.”
Hayden paced the length of the gangway to the forecastle, where he gazed a moment into the dark night. A spattering of rain was heard on the planks around, and on his coat and hat, as the wind drove it down at an angle. Hayden moved to leeward to gain some protection from the sails.
A moment later, his night glass arrived and he began a careful search of the sea at all quarters. On such a dark night the long peninsula that made up the south-western corner of Hispaniola could not be descried, which Hayden did not like overly. Currents were often unpredictable, and his ship might have been set more to the east than either of his sailing masters realised.
Ransome hurried along the gangway, pulling on a coat. “We have lost our ships, I am informed, sir.”
“Indeed, Mr Ransome. But you are not officer of the watch and had no part in it.”
“I did leave orders to wake me for any reason at all, Captain.”
“I have no doubt of it.” Hayden passed Ransome his night glass. “I cannot find even Hispaniola, let alone a ship on this dark night.”
Ransome began to quiz the sea in the same manner his captain had but a moment before.
Hayden turned to one of the forecastle hands. “Enquire of Mr Gould who the lookout aloft was when the ships disappeared.”
“A Spaniard, sir. He’s only just climbed down.”
“Find him for me, if you please.”
Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead Page 41