Nick of Time

by Ted Bell

  “Handsomely, now, handsomely!” cried McIver, pale blue eyes raised aloft, watching for the luff of his mainsail, spinning the ship’s wheel lightly through the tips of his fingers. You could feel the effect of the mighty press of canvas aloft, feel it singing, shuddering throughout the huge wooden boat, feel it through your feet, Nick realized, you could feel it in your toes!

  Nick watched the spectacle of McIver’s performance in awe; here then, and there was no other word for it, here then was a mariner. Here, then, was a warrior.

  Ramming? All standing at the Merlin’s helm held their breath in anticipation of the captain’s next move. It would not be unlike the great sea warrior McIver to attempt any maneuver at all. He had no qualms about ordering a tactic with even the slimmest chance of success if he felt it would ultimately serve the cause of victory. Stiles looked nervously at the rapidly diminishing distance between the two vessels.

  “Captain, sir!” he cried. “With respect, sir, the barky can’t survive a—”

  “Ready about, Mr. Stiles?” McIver whispered to the loyal first lieutenant standing at his side. “On my signal, sir.” And again McIver’s hands were a blur, spinning the great wheel with his fingertips, his blue eyes focused on some point directly amidships of the French seventy-four.

  “Ready, aye!” Stiles shot back, gladly relieved to learn of the impending tack, his eyes riveted on sail trimmers in the rigging, whose eyes were in turn focused on the rapidly diminishing angles of the two vessels.

  It was the trimmers, standing barefooted on lines along the yardarms, who would now determine when the barky would stop and where. Everything hinged on their ability in the next few seconds. Sharpshooters high in the rigging of both vessels continued their deadly work and Nick was shocked to see a man standing just to the right of him fall to the deck without a sound, a small fountain of blood bubbling at his belly. Two Marines whisked the poor fellow below without a word. It shocked Nick to realize he’d probably never even learn the man’s fate.

  Still, Merlin continued to bear down on Mystère and the anxious crews who lined the rails on both warships braced for the collision. The silence at the helm was a roar in Nick’s ears. He braced for the terrible, inevitable collision. On both ships, an unspoken question. Was the Englishman at the helm mad?

  “Mr. Stiles, you may fall off five degrees, please, and back the main, on my signal, sir. Another fifty yards, sir. Steady as she goes.” The captain was whispering repeated directions softly under his breath and Nick took a deep breath, bracing himself against the mizzenmast halyards. What was the captain thinking? A devastating collision was now clearly unavoidable! Nick saw a Marine next to him squeeze his eyes shut in fright. If the Marines were afraid …

  Inside a hundred yards now and closing at full speed. Nick looked aloft at the Merlin’s clouds of sail, white and full of wind and drawing against the rich blue of the sky. He saw a single white tern circling high above the top royals and marveled at the bird’s serene indifference to the bloody tragedy unfolding just below.

  “Look alive, sir!” McIver whispered harshly, and Nick thought for a wild moment the captain was addressing him. “Mind your helm!” McIver had turned the helm over to his first officer so that he might concentrate on the multiple instant decisions he had to make in the next few seconds.

  “Alive, aye,” Stiles said quietly, gripping the wheel, his eyes on the sails and the scant few yards that separated the two giant warships. Nick closed his own eyes then. He didn’t want to see it.

  “If you please, Mr. Stiles,” he heard the captain say, “back the mainsail now, and prepare to heave to. We’ll take her up alongside now.” McIver, a tremor of excitement lifting his voice now far above a whisper, now shouted, “Easy now, easy, on my order—heave to, sir, now!”

  The Merlin had been sailing at hull speed straight for the Mystère’s starboard midships and had closed to within less than fifty yards! Nick still doubted a collision was avoidable, but at the last possible instant he heard McIver cry out, “Back the main and hard to starboard! Heave to, boys, heave to! I want her dead stopped in forty, thirty, twenty—douse all sail now!”

  Nick opened his eyes.

  Merlin steamed ahead, then staggered as the trimmers doused her canvas, as she lost her wind, as the cry “Heave to!” echoed across the water. The relief and the peace, however, were but momentary.

  Merlin’s intentions were now clear, she would board, and the enemy gun crews went to work again with a will. Great flashes of flame erupted every second and French cannons sent chain shot into the rigging and cannister shot and grape shot screaming across Merlin’s decks. The air was full of lead and death and choked with smoke and the cries of the newly wounded. Nick didn’t even realize that he was screaming too, urging the Merlin on as they drifted into Mystère, almost within spitting distance now, and crews on both sides firing and screaming and wanting at each other’s throats.

  And Merlin, her helm hard over, spun beautifully at the last possible moment, her bowsprit nearly tangling in Billy’s mid-ships rigging. Having dumped her wind, momentum carried her forward and around until she was now yardarm to yardarm with the enemy vessel, perfectly positioned to board the party of Marines still forming up on her main deck!

  The two warships were now ghosting toward one another, the gap of water between them a matter of feet and inches, and narrowing rapidly.

  Nick heard a great cheer go up from the masses of men forming up on the main deck and saw a few redcoats leap up onto the breastworks on the Merlin’s boarding side and raise their cutlasses into the air. The Merlin’s crew surged forward with an ear-splitting yell. The scarlet coats were pressing forward, ready to go up and over the side as soon as the two vessels came close enough to rub shoulders and the grapnel hooks secured the boats together.

  Only a few feet now separated the two vessels, and the crew of each for some reason abruptly ceased fire and simply stared at each other across the narrow gap of water, men lining both rails staring with a terrible mixture of fear and unbridled malice. To Nick, that silence seemed as loud somehow as the roar of cannons.

  Nick felt a dull, jarring thud as the two ships met. A brilliant chill went up his spine as he looked into the face of the enemy. There were too many emotions at once for him to fathom. But they all shared a single name:

  War.

  Nelson the Strong, Nelson the Brave, Nelson the Lord of the Sea.

  To his surprise, Nick found that he was repeating his chant rapidly to himself, over and over, somewhat breathlessly. “Board her, lads! Board her now!” Lieutenant Stiles was screaming to his officers from the rail, and Nick saw that the two warships were now bumping and touching, shoulder to shoulder. He felt the whole ship shudder under his feet each time the two big vessels collided.

  Then a monstrous cry went up on both sides and the men of the Merlin surged up and over the breastworks and Nick saw the mass of shouting Frenchmen rise up in response, saw their striped shirts and caps and the flashing cutlasses and pikes in one hand, pistols in the other. They fired the pistols first, then threw the useless weapons down or at the enemy, there being no time to reload in the heat of battle. And to his horror he saw that the stripe-shirted enemy sailors were not only repelling the Englishmen trying to board Mystère, but that scores of them were leaping down onto Merlin’s deck and slashing the English marines as they waited to board. He saw a large number of the French who’d broken through now making for the quarterdeck where he and the captain stood.

  The Marines guarding the helm fixed their bayonets and lowered their muskets.

  “Repel boarders!” McIver screamed at his officers. “Beat ’em back, lads!” he said, pushing two Marines aside and pulling his cutlass from the scabbard. Then he was leaping down from the quarterdeck rail, wading into the very thick of the battle on the main deck. Nick watched his namesake smash into the massed French boarders, a cheer rising in his throat. Captain McIver didn’t mind repelling a few boarders himself, it seemed, w
hile he spurred his officers on. He saw the captain leap up onto the breastworks over the bodies of two dead Frenchies, waving his cutlass, shouting at his men to press forward, Lord Hawke among their number.

  But, shockingly, it seemed to Nick that the men of the Merlin had now lost their will, been beaten back, their attempt to board the enemy vessel thwarted. French sailors now mounted the breastworks seemingly at will, and, save the brave English captain fighting now almost single-handedly, leapt unchallenged to Merlin’s deck. For the first time that day, Nick felt truly afraid.

  He felt the reassuring hand of Stiles on his shoulder.

  “Easy lad, easy,” Stiles said. “Your friend Lord Hawke knows a thing or two about this dreadful game, I see!”

  “But the French sailors, they—”

  “It’s a feint, Nick,” Stiles said, bending to shout into his ear. “A ploy, lad! The captain and Lord Hawke is only luring them Frenchies aboard afore they commits our main body of boarders. See them now! The French officers think we’ve—”

  A huge roar went up then from the Merlin and Nick saw the Frenchmen fall back as Lord Hawke himself leapt up to the breastwork to join McIver, followed by an enormous swelling mass of red-coated Marines! Like an angry swarm of bees, the Merlin’s men now rose up and over, slashing with pikes and cutlasses and firing their pistols point blank into the enemy before them, driving the striped shirts back to their decks or into the sea. A surging tide of Englishmen, which seemed to have the immutable force of nature behind it.

  Nick climbed up onto a mizzen halyard block for a better view of the action, and his heart leapt in his chest as he saw his friend Hawke, England’s greatest swordsman, fending off three of the bloody striped shirts at once! Lord Hawke had let one get behind him but he whirled at the last moment and fired his pistol into the man, blowing him backward into the gap between the two warships and into the sea. He whirled again, disarming one man and running the other one through. Nick soon lost sight of his two friends as Hawke and McIver leapt into the snarling mass of humanity on Mystère’s deck, but he was thankful to see at least ten redcoats right behind them as the two determined Englishmen waded in, no doubt in search of the quarterdeck and Billy Blood.

  “Huzzah! Huzzah!” Nick cried, waving his Spanish cap and wishing he could be at Lord Hawke and the captain’s side when they at last encountered Captain Blood. But he’d made a solemn promise to Hawke to remain at the helm and he intended to keep it, even though he no longer enjoyed the protection of the captain. He wondered how long the ring of Marines surrounding the helm would hold.

  “Nick! Behind you, lad!” he heard Stiles shout. “They’ve broken through!” Nick whirled around to see.

  Four of them! A small gang of French swabs had somehow broken through the ring of Marines on the quarterdeck and were coming his way. He saw the lead one raising his arm in a throwing motion and then an ugly steel dagger thudded with a loud thump into the mizzenmast barely three inches from his right eye!

  Nick saw the man who’d thrown it laugh and raise his cutlass to summon the others forward. His bald head and face were horribly disfigured somehow, as if he had blood red scars around his eyes and nose, but as he got closer Nick saw that it wasn’t scars, it was a grisly tattoo of some kind. Like snakes slithering round his eyes and up his nose.

  Snake Eye!

  Billy’s strange companion at the Greybeard Inn!

  Nick, in desperation, yanked the still-vibrating dagger out of the wood and saw the tattooed Frenchie smile a horrible grin, red rings dancing around his eyes.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur McIver!” Snake Eye said to Nick, calling him by name in a thick French accent. “We meet again! I bring compliments of Captain William Blood! He said I’d find you here and he is still willing to trade your flea-bitten dog for this object in your possession. If you refuse, I have orders to bring the object itself to him along with your head!”

  “I refuse,” Nick said, and the words were out of his mouth before he could take them back. Jip was worth more to him than a thousand golden orbs.

  “Allons!” the tattooed one shouted, and the gang of ugly swabs began closing in on the boy.

  “Hello, Snake Eye!” Stiles said to the tattooed swabbie. “Which I was wonderin’ when I’d see your ugly face again.” Stiles leapt in front of Nick and raised his cutlass.

  “Kill these English dogs!” Snake Eye screamed savagely. He motioned for his mates to attack, but they hesitated. Perhaps they too had met Lieutenant Stiles before, Nick thought.

  “Up on me shoulders with you, Nick!” Stiles said, standing just below where Nick still clung to the mizzen, standing on a block. “We’ll make short work of this paltry lot! Take this cutlass and watch me back, will you now lad? Hop on! We’ve seen ’em before. They ain’t much!”

  Nick took the cutlass and jumped down from the mast onto Stiles’s broad shoulders, straddling his head as they waded toward the Frenchies. Stiles, slashing the air with one hand and challenging them to advance, shot one who was getting a little too close and then threw the spent pistol into the face of Snake Eye who howled in pain and fell to the deck.

  Two of the others had crept up behind them and Nick whirled, slashing out with the heavy cutlass and lifting their hats for them. Stiles then spun about and in one blow knocked both their swords away, but Nick saw another dangerous turn of events just behind them.

  Snake Eye, blood streaming from his broken nose, had found five more bloodthirsty comrades and they were closing in a circle around Stiles. Nick could see Snake Eye’s tattoo clearly now, two thick red serpents descending down his forehead and coiling around his eyes, one of which was an empty black hole. The snakes then encircled his bloody nose and, to his horror, Nick saw that when the man smiled, the triangular heads of the two red serpents rose up and slithered into his nostrils!

  So this finally was the murderous face of the enemy, Nick thought, so this was the true face of evil and death and war. No matter what happened now, he thought, at least he’d seen the genuine article in Snake Eye.

  “Down and run for it, Nick!” Stiles shouted, realizing that he could never fend off this quarrelsome bunch with the burdensome weight of Nick on his shoulders. “And get below with you, Nick! Too hot on deck for young lads who’s attracted the personal attention of Billy Blood this morning!”

  “Run! Run where, sir?” Nick cried, looking around them. They were completely surrounded by grinning Frenchmen and Snake Eye was advancing one inch at a time, his one murderous eye riveted on Nick!

  “Aloft!” Stiles shouted, catching sight of the dangling rat-lines just above Nick’s head. “Up the mizzenmast with you!”

  Nick got to his feet on the lieutenant’s shoulders and reached upward just as Snake Eye lunged forward with a shout. But Nick couldn’t reach the hanging ratlines!

  “Jump for it, lad! Now!” Stiles said and, sheathing his sword, he pushed Nick upward with both hands, feinting back as Snake Eye took a vicious cut at him with his cutlass. Nick caught the dangling rope with one hand, stuck Bill’s dagger in his teeth and shot up the ratline like a scalded cat, having now learned a thing or two about getting aloft quickly.

  Up the mizzenmast he went, pausing for a moment to look down. He saw Stiles whirling and slashing with a fierceness he could scarce credit in his friend and saw the Frenchies circling him, a pack of cowardly dogs, howling for blood.

  From this height, a third of the way up the aftermost mast on the deck, he could see the entire battle. Although many of the gun crews were dead or wounded, the air was roiling with thick black smoke and cannons on both vessels were still firing at point-blank range, chain shot into the rigging, and lethal cannister shot across the decks. There was now a pitched battle raging on Mystère’s main deck, and he saw Lord Hawke and McIver fighting back-to-back in the very thick of it, though he could not tell who was getting the better of it. He heard something, a grunt, just below him on the mizzenmast and looked down.

  Snake Eye was racing up the miz
zenmast ratlines after him, a dagger in his teeth.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Nazis in Hawke Lagoon

  · 8 June 1939 ·

  U-BOAT 33, HAWKE LAGOON

  Afine hard rain was falling inside Hawke Lagoon when the ugly snout of the U-33 broke the surface. Der Wolf had finally penetrated Hawke’s lair. As the sub surfaced, Hobbes was sure everyone around him could hear his heart pounding inside his chest. He was so close now, so very close. If only his luck would hold.

  Hobbes took one last look around in the muggy heat of the U-boat’s control room, memorizing every aspect of it, recording it mentally for the lads of Advanced Weapons, in case things did not work out quite as he planned. The big blond bosun handed them each black rubber ponchos and they slipped them over their heads, Kate smiling at Hobbes and how silly he looked. Hobbes ruffled her red curls and gave her a big wink. Her performance aboard U-33 rivaled the finest ever seen on any West End stage. She had put her trust and her fate in her new friend and Hobbes was fiercely determined to prove worthy of that faith.

  “Got your cat, my dear girl?” Hobbes asked, the two of them standing at the foot of the conning tower ladder.

  “Right here, Father!” she replied, and opened her poncho to reveal Horatio cradled in one arm.

  “So, Mr. Lighthouse Keeper,” Captain von Krieg said cheerfully, “are you ready to pay your friend, the famous Lord Hawke, a surprise visit?”

  “Ah, yes, Angus,” added Little Willy gleefully, “it’s always exciting when friends drop in unexpectedly.” Hobbes saw a strange light in the SS colonel’s eyes and hoped he saw it for what it was, only the glittering dream of future glory. He turned to face the captain who was pulling his black poncho over his head.

  “I must remind you, Captain von Krieg, to do exactly as I say when we reach the dock,” Hobbes said levelly. “The security measures here in the lagoon are extraordinary, as I have told you, both lethal and ingenious, and you must all follow my instructions to the letter.”