Nick of Time

by Ted Bell

  Hawke looked out at Billy’s position, nodded, and the three of them went aft to find the captain.

  Nick kept expecting to feel afraid, but was aware only of a growing sense of excitement. He saw the bluejackets lashing huge rolls of thick canvas to the rails all along the port side. To what end? he wondered. And he saw that the main deck was curiously empty of sailors or Marines, and then he remembered Stiles saying they needed a trick or a miracle. Apparently they’d decided not to count on miracles.

  “Ahoy there!” he heard the captain shout, his voice ringing with good cheer at the sight of Nicholas on deck. “Fine day, ain’t it, young McIver? Glad to see the medico’s nostrums has you up and about, lad. I am truly overjoyed!”

  He was standing by the helm on the quarterdeck and next to him stood Mr. Stiles and a group of scarlet-coated Marines. Nick was most happy to see Stiles, another escapee from sick bay. The captain raised his long brass glass and swung it round to Mystère, spinning the little focus ring with the raised letters “NM.”

  “And so we find Mr. Blood returns!” the captain said loudly. “He’ll find us in better health than he left us, Mr. Stiles! Strike our colors, Lieutenant!”

  “Colors, sir!” Stiles replied, and they all looked aloft as the red and blue Union Jack fluttered down from the main top-mast.

  “Haul the Spanish ensign to the masthead if you please, Mr. Stiles,” McIver said.

  “Haul away, aye!” Stiles cried.

  And they watched as the Spanish flag was hauled up on a halyard to replace the British, snapping in the breeze, to flutter at the top of the mainmast.

  “What’s going on?” Nick whispered to Stiles out of the side of his mouth.

  “A masquerade party, Nick,” Stiles whispered back with a smile. “A little trick the captain’s preparin’ for Bill. We ain’t showin’ him our true colors; instead we’re dressing the barky up to look like a pretty Spanish señorita. See how all three masts is raked sharply aft in the Spanish fashion? Try to lure old Bill over close without him firin’ them magical cannons of his. Here, put this on.”

  He handed Nick an odd-looking little sailor’s cap, the floppy kind Nick knew the Spanish sailors wore. Nick noticed that they were all wearing them, even Captain McIver who had shed his blue officer’s coat for a simple white blouse and a floppy cap.

  “What’s next?” Nick asked.

  “Well, about now Billy’s masthead lookouts will be reportin’ a small Spanish galleon swimmin’ in their direction. That’s the way our aft-raked rig will appear in their spyglasses from this distance,” Stiles said. “And since Billy’s expectin’ to meet up with just such a barky today, he may well credit it.”

  “What about when he gets in close?” Nick asked. “We won’t look so much like Spaniards then.”

  “Aye, that’s what them rolls of canvas lashed to the port rails is for. A señorita’s costume disguise for the whole barky!” Stiles said and turned to the captain. “Let fall the portside canvas now, sir?”

  “If you please, Mr. Stiles,” said McIver, and on Stiles’s order the crew cut the ropes. The thick canvas rolls unfurled all along the port side of the Merlin, from the rail down to the sea. Nick went to the rail to watch and saw that the canvas had been carefully painted with a blue and gold checkerboard pattern over blue topsides to resemble the side of a Spanish galleon. He noticed that the gun ports had all been painted to appear closed, adding to the deception.

  Behind the painted canvas, the Merlin’s real gun ports were open, her cannons ready to be run out, and he saw gun crew-men gathering the canvas tightly to the hull and lashing it there to help the illusion. From a distance, Nick now saw, the Merlin would appear to be something she surely was not, a pretty blue and gold Spanish galleon!

  Nick returned to the helm a few minutes later, smiling. It was a devilish good trick and it might just work! He saw that a dark-haired stranger with a full black beard had joined the officers at the helm. He was wearing a royal blue greatcoat with shiny silver buttons and a yellow sash across his chest, in the Spanish style. A blue and gold three-cornered hat perched atop his black curls. Then Nick saw that Stiles had his flint-lock pistol stuck in the middle of the man’s back.

  “Allow me to present Señor Enrique Velasquez!” Stiles said to Nick, bowing deeply and smiling. “Formerly a spy for the Spanish crown and recently promoted to captain of this here barky!” So, Nick thought, they were using the Spaniard as a decoy captain!

  “Signal flags on the enemy red frigate, sir!” came a shouted voice from the masthead signalman who’d returned aloft with a spyglass to the rigging above. “He signals ‘What boat? ’ ”

  “What boat then, Señor Capitán?” Stiles asked Velasquez, prodding him with the pistol.

  “¿El Condor, señor?” the man said, full of anger and loathing for his humiliating predicament. “Or, is it El Diablo? I forget, you know I—”

  “Five seconds, señor,” Stiles said, sticking the pistol up under the man’s jaw. “Is about how long you’ve got to live.”

  “Condor.” Velasquez said raspily. “¡Es El Condor, señor!”

  “Aye,” McIver said, and thought about it for a moment. “Send him ‘El Condor out of Catalonia,’ ” Captain McIver shouted aloft, and saw the proper signal flags run out immediately.

  “He signals ‘Welcome Condor! Rendezvous?’ ” said the lookout, and Stiles and McIver smiled broadly at each other. So far, it was working. The fact that Billy wasn’t already firing his nitro-powered long-range guns meant the illusion was holding up. At least for now.

  “Where’s Gunner and the crew?” Nick whispered to Stiles. “Where are all the bluejackets and Marines?”

  “They’re massed belowdecks, waitin’ for a signal,” Stiles said. “No more talkin’ now, lad, unless you speak español. Sound travels far across water.”

  They could see Billy’s red topsides clearly now—he was closing fast. In his rigging, the black skull and crossbones known as Jolly Roger flew, and the upside-down English flag. He had all his gunports open and they could see the gun crews at each station. They hadn’t run them out yet. Blood might be fooled, but he wasn’t taking chances, either.

  “I’ll hold fire until your signal, Captain,” Stiles whispered to McIver.

  “Aye, Lieutenant,” he replied in a hushed whisper. “My signal will be ‘God save the King!’ ”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Nick could see Billy tacking cautiously closer, not willing to commit, but clearly drawn in by the blue and gold topsides and the aft-raked Spanish rigging. Billy had furled his stun-sails and royals now, and slowed the big seventy-four considerably. Nick could sense the presence of many enemy eyes watching them through spyglasses high in her rigging. The others must have felt the same because everyone pulled their Spanish caps down farther around their ears. Nick noticed that the sun had climbed about two hands over the horizon and that Billy was sailing right into its blinding glare. It was probably why he had not yet seen through the painted canvas draping Merlin’s hull.

  A little miracle, Nick thought, and he’d take it, with God’s blessing.

  “Easy, lads, easy,” McIver growled in a low whisper. You could feel the tension round the helm as Billy’s flagship hove into view. She was now less than a thousand yards distant. She was magnificent there in the full light of the rising sun, with bright pendants streaming from her three mastheads and billowing clouds of white sail above her crimson hull. Even slowed, she was still heeled well over, and throwing foaming white water to either side of her cutwater.

  A glorious sight, but it felt to Nick as if every one of her seventy-four gleaming cannons would soon be aimed at his heart. It was hard to believe that such a breathtakingly beautiful vessel was bent on his personal destruction.

  Below the quarterdeck, where Nick stood, he could hear the stamping and impatient murmurings and the jangling of swords of hundreds of anxious sailors and Marines, waiting for the signal to fire the rows of cannons hidden behind the ca
nvas and eager to race up on deck and engage the enemy.

  Gunner, in a brilliant strategy devised the night before, had put all the working guns on the port side and heaved the disabled ones overboard. Merlin could now only fight one side, but she’d be much quicker and more nimble than the big first-rater, a heavy seventy-four.

  “¡Hola! Hola!” A shout of hello from a hand aboard the huge Mystère came drifting across the water. They were hailing the Spanish captain. Stiles again jabbed the spy Velasquez in the back with his hidden pistol and the startled Spaniard returned the shouted greeting.

  “¡Hola!” Velasquez cried.

  “¿Buenos días, señor! Esta El Condor?” said the Spanish voice, floating across from the French warship.

  “¡Sí, aquí es El Condor!” Velasquez shouted in return, and the big red frigate tacked once more and crept in ever closer. Surely they could see the false paintwork now! But, no, she kept coming.

  Nick could see the sun glinting off the endless rows of polished brass cannons on every deck of her massive hull. Like everyone else at the helm, he held his breath. Stiles, who felt some uneasiness from the jittery Spaniard standing at the business end of his pistol, started to say something, but it was too late.

  Suddenly, without warning, Velasquez bolted forward for the port rail. Screaming like a man possessed, he started tearing wildly at the ropes that bound the canvas to the Merlin’s topsides.

  “¡Artificio! Artificio! ” Velasquez shouted across the water to the French as he ripped and tore at the lines supporting the painted canvas disguise. “¡Decepción! A trick! A trick!”

  Nick saw the largest section of canvas fall away from the rail and into the sea as Stiles raised his pistol and took aim at Velasquez, but he knew it was already too late! Stiles fired and the Spaniard crumpled at the rail, clutching his leg. A dark bloodstain spread on his breeches, but he was not mortally wounded. McIver wanted him alive for the meeting with Lord Nelson. Seeing that he was still tearing at the lines that held the canvas, Stiles raised his pistol to fire again, but the captain shook his head no. It was too late.

  The Merlin now lay unmasked, and, with the telltale black-and-white “Nelson checker” pattern now bared along her side, she was revealed for what she was, a battered English man-of-war, undermanned and undergunned and spoiling for a fight!

  There was a shout aboard Mystère and then an instant later, a roar of powder and flash of flame from Billy’s bow. A ball tore through the rigging over their heads, showering them with debris. Nick drew a deep breath. The sharp bite of gunpowder was becoming all too familiar. He heard another enemy cannon roar and Mystère came storming in under their lee now, rolling her big guns out as she came.

  A rapid series of explosions, marked by flashes of fire and booming thunder along her massive flank, almost immediately hid the big red frigate in a cloud of roiling black smoke. Nick braced himself for the incoming barrage of iron shot but, miraculously, there was none.

  The French cannons, fired in haste, had all been fired on the ship’s downward roll, and most balls pounded harmlessly into the sea. Still, the battle was now joined, for better or worse, and Nick craned his head around, fore and aft, aloft and below, starboard to port. It was as if he couldn’t possibly see enough, hear enough, feel enough. He was, he reminded himself, a hand, albeit an unpaid hand, on an English man-ofwar going into battle under the magnificent broad pendant of Horatio Nelson, the heroic victor of the Nile and St. Vincent!

  “Strike the Spanish ensign, Mr. Stiles, and show her our true colors! Haul our ensign, if you please,” McIver said, his voice barely above a whisper. As the Union Jack fluttered aloft into the sun, the captain clambered up to the top of the rail, got up on his tiptoes, cupped his hands, and delivered the resounding battle cry. He’d donned the blue coat of the Royal Navy once more.

  “God save the King! God save the King!” Captain McIver roared. “God save our bloody King!”

  “Save the bloody King!” came the roaring answering cry, from one end of the ship to the other.

  There came then a great rolling thunder of English cannon fire from the three decks beneath Nick’s feet. The entire hull shook with the enormity of it, the unmistakable fury of a rippling broadside!

  Every portside cannon was now firing in perfect sequence on an upward roll and delivering a devastating first strike! Gunner had done it, Nick rejoiced! Instantly the air on deck was full of boiling black gunsmoke, and across the water, through clear pockets in the thick smoke, the devastation was plain. Already the cries of the maimed and wounded aboard Mystère floated back across the water to Nick. Much of her upper rigging hung in limp shambles. The captain turned to him with a huge grin.

  “I’ve never seen the like of it, Nick! Your friend Gunner has done it all right, finest ripplin’ broadside as ever I saw!” And he turned back to the main deck and continued his battle cry, “At ’em with a will, now lads, England expects nothing less of you!”

  There was no indecision now, no running behind a rock. Captain McIver was taking the fight right into the enemy’s throat. With a roar of her men and a roar of her cannon, Nick heard and felt the Merlin exploding to violent life all around him. He could scarcely imagine the look of shock and rage on Billy’s face when the painted canvas had dropped into the sea, exposing the English cannons now rolled out into the sun! Velasquez’s desperate attempt to foil the plot had been too late after all! Billy had taken the bait and now he was paying the price for it.

  The massive multiple explosions of the great cannons continued their endless rolling rumble beneath Nick’s feet.

  “Hear that, boy?” said McIver gleefully. “Give you joy, that’s our dear Gunner down there! Has the lads tickin’ like a fine Swiss clock! He’s timin’ our rolls perfectly, reloading on the downward, firing on the up! And, we’ve blasted old Billy a good one with that first broadside! That’ll send Bill reelin’, and no error! We’ve got a chance now, Nick, a fighting chance!”

  Nick knew it was true. If Merlin was victorious this day, it would be in large part due to that first devastating broadside. Gunner had made good on his promise. Nick hoped it was an omen of things to come.

  Captain Blood’s Mystère, reeling and stunned by the surprise attack, could only watch in dismay as the English ship tacked abruptly behind her to windward and then raked her stern mercilessly. Now Merlin came slashing toward the French seventy-four’s starboard flank, all of her forward cannons blazing. From where Nick stood, Mystère looked to be in total disarray. She was fighting back, to be sure, but it was a confused effort, bereft of any rhythm or symmetry. Merlin was running downwind now, and showing a great turn of speed.

  On board the French warship, an unhappy officer stood on his quarterdeck.

  “Mon Dieu!” said the bewildered French lieutenant, looking at the utter chaos surrounding him. “My God!”

  The first officer on the massive French vessel was in fact in a state of complete confusion. Approaching battle into a blinding sun, he’d failed to recognize the trickery of Merlin’s painted side and suffered a devastating broadside in consequence. Now he heard the cry of “God save the King” float across the water and saw the enemy tack around and into him.

  He was shocked to see all her hatches fly open and legions of shouting red-coated Marines surge up on her decks with a great cry of “Hurrah!” and begin forming up on the main deck. All around them, he saw, were bluejackets with cutlasses flashing in the sun, who now swarmed up and massed at the port rail breastworks, as everywhere English officers in blue coats urged them on. Sharpshooters with muskets were scampering up into the rigging and already firing at targets aboard his floundering French warship.

  What was Captain Blood’s plan now, he wondered. And where, pray, was the infamous captain himself? Hiding below in his cabin? Sporting with his captured English filly?

  Mystère’s stern lookout now called out a warning and the French officer went completely pale. The little English third-rater had spread all her can
vas and was bearing down on him at an ungodly speed! Surely, even the wily English captain did not intend to heave to and attempt to board the much larger vessel? That would be suicide! The French crew outnumbered the English two to one! But what else could he be thinking, tacking right up inside Mystère’s lee? Where was Captain Blood? In his cabin sipping English breakfast tea with his English mistress of course. Mais certainement!

  The French first officer found his Captain of Guns wandering the main deck in a daze. The man was bleeding from both ears and unable to speak. No wonder they weren’t returning fire! No one had given the order! The first officer ran off like a madman, ordering every crewman he saw to fire at will. It wasn’t textbook tactics, but it was effective. Finally, the French gun crews got off a deafening broadside, and the Mystère’s bow lookout smiled, happy to sniff a little French gunpowder in the air at last!

  Order restored, the big French seventy-four now turned all her starboard heavy guns on the oncoming English vessel.

  Almost instantly, aboard the Merlin, the air was full of deafening blasts and thick black smoke as the two warships now traded blows at close quarters. Murderous amounts of iron shot were now ripping into Merlin and Nick saw the devastating effect it caused all about him, especially the splintered wood that exploded inward every time a ball struck the wooden hull. For the first time Nick noticed the wet sand spread on the deck underfoot and remembered its gruesome purpose—to soak up the blood of the dead and wounded so that the decks would not become slippery with the thick red stuff.

  Merlin was coming up on Billy’s stern quarter now, and Nick could only imagine how terrible the French broadside would be. He held his breath and waited as the seconds seemed to stretch into hours.

  “Hard a’port, now, lads, hard a’port!” McIver screamed and lunged for the wheel himself, impatient with his helmsman. He put the wheel hard over and drove her straight for Billy’s midships! Nick could see the shock on the faces of the Frenchmen now lining Mystère’s starboard rail. Did the English captain now intend to ram them? Would he dare sail right into the rain of hot lead and iron they were firing?