The Hawk

by Peter Smalley

  'Shall we find out our speed, sir?' Richard Abey, very quietly, by James's side.

  'Very well, Mr Abey, thank you. I should estimate not above three knots, but we may as well discover it as near exact as may be possible.' Whispering.

  'Aye, sir.' His hat quietly off and on in the feathery dark. Presently: 'Two knots and a half, sir.'

  'Thankee, Richard. We will remain on this tack half a glass, then go about.'

  The rippling wash of the sea, and the splash of a fish half a cable to starboard. All sounds both muffled and oddly echoing in the engulfing mist, as if the wide expanse of the sea were artificially enclosed beyond the vessel by a great unseen wall.

  James waited in vain for the glow of the rocket, suffusing the mist away to the south. No sign came. There was no glow, no pink-diffused bursting of stars. He waited, and presently:

  'Where the devil is the signal?'

  'Is it the Lark, sir?' Richard Abey, thinking James had seen something.

  'Nay – I do not know what has happened.' Half to himself, shaking his head. 'The boat should have worked near to the Lark by now, and fired the rocket to give us her bearing.'

  'Are we to attack her, sir?'

  'Our task is to take her, Richard. Take her, and her master.'

  'Is Captain Rennie aboard her?'

  'He is in the boat. In least, he ought to be in the damned boat.' A deep breath, and he let it out – and made his decision.

  'We will go about, Richard. Say so to Mr Love – very quiet, now.'

  Hawk came about, silently, and the helmsman at the tiller steered her toward the place James thought and felt the Lark must be, to the south-east. He could not wait longer. There was little enough wind now, the merest zephyr in the wafting fog, and Hawk was seriously delayed in her approach. Her shrouds and stays dripped with moisture as she drifted through the laden air, her canvas hanging nearly limp. James ordered men to the sweeps.

  'Cheerly now, lads! But quietly, too.' A fierce, hoarse whisper.

  Nearly a glass, and by now James was deeply dismayed. No hint of a boat, or of the Lark. The man in the chains with the lead sent back his soundings by a boy, to be whispered in James's ear. Likewise the lookout in the bow, standing and peering into the mist. James paced from windward to lee and back, tearing his hat from his head. Peered into the dense darkness, desperate for the merest glimmer of light, the smallest sign, anything.

  At last the mist lifted, abruptly lifted, became threadbare – and cleared. The open, darkly glistening sea, the broad swell stretching away on all sides – and nothing more. No Lark. No boat.

  James lifted a hand to the back of his neck, his hat at his side in his other hand, flapped hard against his thigh.

  'Christ's blood . . .' To himself. '. . . I am a blind fool. I did not see the bloody rocket in the mist, it was too thick. And in course as soon as it was fired, they did not tarry. They made sail at once.'

  'Sir?' Richard Abey.

  'Why should they wait?' A quick glance at his mid, keeping his voice instinctively low. 'They have took Captain Rennie, and run! Oh, why did I allow the foolish man to persuade me!'

  'Sir?' Abey again, risking his commander's wrath.

  'Well?'

  'Should we – should we not chase, sir?'

  'Aye, Richard, aye . . . but where? That is the question!' Dashing his hat to the deck.

  James stalked aft, paused, stalked forrard. Midshipman Abey dared say nothing further, and stood well clear of his commanding officer, mutely waiting. James retrieved his hat, brushed moisture from it with his sleeve. Breathed forcefully through his nose, as if to force a decision from himself. He lifted his head, and saw the lookout's boy approaching.

  'Light ahead, sir!' Urgently whispering.

  'Thank God!' Urgently whispered in turn, peering ahead. 'Where away?'

  'Away to starboard, sir. About half a league distant.'

  James brought his short night glass from his coat, and found the light. Focused the refracting lens. And saw that it was a stern light, its glow faintly illuminating the tafferel not of a cutter, but of a much larger vessel.

  'Nay – nay – that ain't the Lark.' Lowering his glass with a sigh. 'That is a ship.' He shook the head, then raised the glass – from habit raised it – and attempted to make out the name of the ship in the subdued glow of the light, enhanced by the lens. Saw a boom, vangs, a spanker, and chase ports, and surmised that here was a small single-decker, a small frigate – what the French called a corvette. Lowered the glass. Frowned.

  'Why is she hove to, I wonder, at night?'

  'The fog, sir.' Richard Abey, thinking he had been asked a direct question.

  'The fog has lifted, though.' Distractedly, and again he brought up the glass, peered a moment, lowered it. 'Who is she?'

  'Perhaps she is a smuggler, sir, waiting for just these conditions – the fog dispersed – so that she may steal inshore.'

  'Nay, Richard, she is too large a vessel for a smuggler – and a smuggler would surely use the cover of a mist to creep close in.'

  But again he raised his night glass, and caught in the lens the image of several men crowding upon the quarterdeck of the corvette, their faces illuminated a moment in the light of the opened binnacle. One of those faces produced in him a sharp intake of breath, and:

  'By God, that is the captain!'

  'The captain of the vessel, sir?'

  'Captain Rennie! They have got him a prisoner there aboard her!'

  The binnacle light was now shut off, but not before James saw in his sensitive, enhancing lens that Rennie's chalk-white face was streaked with blood, and that he was supported in a half-fainting condition between two of the men.

  'Mr Abey! Mr Love!' His fiercest whisper. They attended on him.

  'We will hoist out the boat, as quiet as mice, now. Boat's crew to muffle thole pins. I will go into the boat myself. Richard, you will remain and take the conn in my absence. Should I not return within one glass and a half – forty-five minutes – you are to assume command of Hawk and make for Portsmouth. Mr Love, I want five extra men, your strongest and stoutest. You and they will come with us in the boat. Every man to be armed. – You there, boy.' To the lookout's boy.

  'Aye, sir?'

  'Find the cook and ask him to provide you with a can of blacklead from the stove. We must all blacken our faces. – Quiet there!' A furious husk as a fid was dropped forrard with a dull clatter.

  In the boat James settled himself in the stern sheets with Mr Love, his face blackened. As the boat's crew gave way, he began to feel distinctly odd – and then felt a return of the debilitating weakness of body and spirit that had followed on his wounding in the action against the Lark: a wave of nausea washed through him, rising from his swirling guts into his swimming head. He attempted to stand, and found he could not keep his legs. He lurched, gripped the gunwale, attempted to steady himself and to fight off dizziness, but to no avail. He slumped forward on the thwart with a groan.

  As a child James had been inclined to walk in his sleep, an affliction that greatly alarmed his mother, who feared that he could march blithely out of his bedroom window and plummet to his death. Bars were fixed at the window, until his father Sir Charles saw them there, and heatedly objected:

  'I will not have the boy imprisoned in the house! Are we living at the Clink, good heaven? Nay, nay, I will not allow it. The bars are to be removed at once.'

  'But you know that he walks asleep.'

  'Madam, it will not do. The boy ain't a madman. Only madmen are confined so.'

  'But surely, dearest, it is – ' 'Did not y'hear me, madam! – Knox! Knox!' To his butler. 'Summon Tobias Hodge, Knox, and ask him to bring his tools. I have a job for him.'

  And so the bars had been duly and patiently removed by Tobias Hodge, the estate carpenter – who had patiently installed them at Lady Hayter's request – and James left to his troubled dreams without their protection. Nor was his door to be locked at night.

  'The boy mus
t be let alone,' his father had said. 'Certainly it is true that Nature protects the somnambule, and thus we need have no fear.'

  'I have never heard of that, dearest. Where is that wrote?' Lady Hayter had felt obliged to be defiant and vigilant in defence of her son's safety. Sir Charles had not been swayed.

  'The King's own physician has said it, madam. I do not presume to know better.'

  And there the matter had rested – even though James had not.

  On one occasion he had waked to find himself in a field, in dense mist, just at the grey glimmering of dawn, bemused but not at first frightened. Until a monstrous shape loomed out of the vapour, dark and terrible, thudding, growing huge.

  'Oh, help! Help me!' Backing away from the awful shape, that breathed in rushing snorts, a dragon, a behemoth, come to crush out his life.

  'He-e-e-e-elp!'

  But there was no help. He was alone in the field, trapped in the mist, as the great creature inexorably advanced, tall, lumbering, towering over him as he stumbled backwards and fell. He had opened his mouth to scream again, sucked in a lungful of cold morning air . . . and found himself staring up at a curious shire horse, that stood peering down at him in equine surprise. Its mild eye rolled a little as James sat up, and it took a backward step, snorted, twitched a little, then lumbered away, trailing whorls and eddies of vapour, and was lost.

  This memory was in James's head as he found himself gripped under the arms, and helped into a seated position again, in the boat. As he had in the misted field he sucked in a lungful of cold air – sea air – and came back into himself, and the watery present.

  'Are you quite well, sir?' An anxious Mr Love, whispering at his side. The coxswain also peering at him anxiously.

  'Yes, yes, I am perfectly hale.' He murmured it with confidence, remembering to keep his voice down, and stood up in the stern sheets to give the declaration emphasis. Blood drained from his head.

  'Very good, sir.' Doubt remained in his subdued voice, and James heard it, dimly.

  'Have ye a flask, Mr Love? I have forgot mine.'

  Mr Love passed James his flask, and James took a pull of neat spirit, swallowed, coughed, and handed the flask back. And noticed now that they were not moving, that the doublebanked boat's crew rested on their oars.

  'Why have we ceased rowing?' To Mr Love.

  'We wished to know if you was unwell, sir. It did not seem right to proceed if you – '

  'But I am not unwell, Mr Love.' To the crew: 'Give way, there!' in a hoarse whisper. The men at once began rowing again, quietly and in a steady rhythm, the padded thole pins muffling the oars.

  'Sir?' Mr Love, persisting. 'It was not just your health, sir – only the fog has come on again.'

  James, fighting off a further wave of dizziness, sat down without properly hearing this last.

  'Eh? What'd y'say, Mr Love?' Blowing out a breath, sniffing in another, peering away into the darkness. 'Where the devil is the ship?'

  'The fog has drifted in again. But we are headed correct, sir, to find her. She is hove-to.'

  'Damnation to that. We must go careful, else fall upon her without warning and give ourselves away. – Lay on your oars, there!'

  And the boat again drifted to a stop on the wide sea. Soon they were altogether enveloped in the dense, rolling bank.

  'Well, then, Captain Rennie, you have had your "breath of air" on deck, as you wished. And now it is time for you to pay for it, with information.'

  'I have told you – told you all I know.' With an effort, since his wrists were again bound with twine behind him, and his ankles bound. He was again kneeling on the forrard platform of the orlop in the corvette, in the glow of lanterns. The place was narrow, the timbers hard under his knees. On either side, cramped storerooms and lockers. The stink of the bilges in this French ship was repellent to him, but his tormentors seemed scarcely to notice it. Their concentration was wholly upon him.

  'Come now, Captain Rennie.' The same slightly accented voice, the same man he had encountered before, when he had been seized in the inn at Portsmouth and taken to the house outside. The same softly persuasive tone, now utterly menacing. 'Come now, if you had told us everything, and we knew that to be true, why should we continue to press you, hm?'

  'Press me? Is that what you call this damned torment?' The last word exhaled in an exhausted huff. Torture was exhausting. His head pained him savagely, as if the back of his skull had been split to the brain pan, the wound gaping and burning in the foul air. He closed his eyes and tried to pray. The pain in his head, in his wrist, and in his kidneys – where his relentless interlocutor had struck him repeatedly – precluded prayer. No words of supplication would come.

  'Do not sleep, Captain Rennie.' Rennie felt his head jerked up by his sparse hair, the roots nearly torn out. Again the fiend's voice:

  'Wake up, if you please. Wake, and answer me. Why did you overpower the boatman?'

  Rennie dragged open his eyelids.

  'Your clumsy pretence of loyalty to our cause has lowered you in my estimation – you know? Abbaissez! Imbécile!' All softness gone. 'What did you throw overboard, from the boat?'

  'You are mistook . . .' His head sagged as the fellow let go. 'The boatman attacked me. He tried to strike me with the boat's anchor, and it fell . . .'

  At any and all cost he must not admit the truth. That he had torn free his blindfold, knocked the boatman senseless in a sudden lunging attack with an oar, and then attempted to fire the rocket. That the rocket – damp with his sweat and with seawater soaked through his coat – had failed to ignite, and that he had been forced to throw it over the side when the boatman regained his senses and grappled with him.

  'Ecoutez-moi, Capitaine Rennie.' Bending to Rennie's bloody ear, his breath on the torn flesh. 'Do not attempt to deceive me again. And do not repeat that nonsense about disguising the Lark as a vessel of the Royal Navy. Was that Sir Robert Greer's plan? His plan to capture us?'

  'No . . . no, that is my own plan, I tell you. It has nothing to do with Greer. Greer is my enemy, my persecutor. He wishes me destroyed – and I him! That is why I wish for a commission in the French Navy!' Again the huffing exhausted breath as he tried to convince them and placate them. He closed his eyes again, in futility. It was hopeless, was it not?

  'I said – do not fall asleep!' A piercing pain in Rennie's side as he was kicked in the ribs.

  'Oh Christ!' Not aloud, but screaming inside his battered skull. 'Oh, Christ Jesu, save and protect me!' The pain seared through his ribs and burned into his spine. He nearly fell forward on his face. All that sustained him now was the one small spark of hope that was still alive within him. Would James in Hawk find him – by a miracle find him? He dare not allow that spark to go out.

  The boat swung quiet and smooth, with hardly a ripple, and bumped gently against the ship's side. Mist swirled.

  'Make fast!' James's whisper.

  The man standing in the bow found a protuberance – a stunsail boom – and tied off the painter. They had approached at a greatly reduced rate – fifteen – and had found the ship by dead reckoning, or quickened luck, where they had hoped to find her, exact, looming black out of the fog.

  'Oars!' Whispered. The oars were quietly brought inboard and boated, James raised a hand, cocked his head, listened. Misty, droplet-ticking hush. The washing immensity of the surrounding sea caught in a great bell-glass of silence. James waited, and was on the point of ordering his men to board, when the stretching silence was broken.

  From beyond the corvette, on her far side, a muted hail, and the ripple of sweeps. 'Another damned vessel approaches!' James, urgently whispering to Mr Love.

  'I hear it, sir. Who can it be?'

  'I'll wager my warrant of commission it is the Lark. That is why this ship is hove-to. She waits so Lark may come to her.'

  'Then – if we remain alongside, we shall be discovered.'

  'Nay, I don't think so. Lark will likely send her own boat, and approach on t'other sid
e. We shall remain where we are, alone on this side.'

  'But if Lark should not approach on the far side? If she should approach on this, sir . . . ?'

  'Then we are lost.' James, simply. 'We must take that risk. We have no choice in the matter.'

  'Then, when the Lark and this ship have conducted their business – then we will board, sir?'

  'Nay, if we are to board at all it had better be at once, when all attention on deck is on the Lark.'

  But this proposal was at once exploded by the thudding of feet and general activity on the deck above. It became clear that the corvette was about to get under way.

  'What are we to do, sir?' Mr Love was increasingly apprehensive, as were the boat's crew.

  'Do? We will do nothing, Mr Love.'

  'Nothing, sir? Will we not be discovered at any moment?'

  All this in heated whispers.

  'No, I think not.' James, firmly. 'If as I suspect Lark merely joins the corvette to form a little squadron and proceed forthwith to France, then we will do very well simply to cut our painter and remain quiet here in our boat, lying low, until they have both made fresh way. Then we will make for Hawk at a fast rate, go aboard, and begin the chase.'

  'You – you wish to chase them both, sir?'

  'They have got Captain Rennie.'

  James, his face blackened still, stood in his working rig beside Richard Abey on Hawk's deck. He had set a course for France, in pursuit of the corvette and the Lark – now out of sight – and had again ordered sweeps deployed. The wind was very light, scarcely more than a stirring of the air, and patches of mist drifted and slowly rolled over the quiet black swell. The sweeps were a steady, rinsing pulse above the wash of the sea along the wales, and the creaking and sighing of timbers. A sailing vessel at sea has many small voices, whispering, muttering, sighing, all uttering the same message of intent: I drive, I swim, I am alive. James heard these voices, and was in harmony with them. They whispered and quietly sang in his ears, flowed in his blood as it streamed through his veins.

  'Two knots and a half, sir.' Richard Abey with the halfminute glass.