The Hawk

by Peter Smalley

  'Mr Dumbleton!'

  'Sir?'

  'I have changed my mind. We will go about, if y'please, and head south in pursuit of the corvette.'

  'Aye, sir! Very good!' His hat off and on, with enthusiasm. 'Mr Love! Stand by to go about!'

  James peered again through his glass, braced himself as Hawk swung in a swift, heeling arc to head south, and: 'Mr Abey!'

  'Sir?' Coming aft from one of the forrard carronades.

  'We must outrun the Lark, now – if we can. However, if she should gain on us we must turn and fight, at the last possible moment. In that event I will like you to be ready with your larboard battery to fire as we go about. You apprehend me?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'You will so angle your carronades on their transverse trucks as to bring them to bear when we are yet at an oblique, impossible angle of fire – as Lark will read it. You see?'

  'I do, sir.' Nodding eagerly.

  'Thus you will be able to fire on the Lark well before she is able to fire at us, because her long guns cannot be brought to bear. Your purpose, in fact your design entire, is to dismast her.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  'Smash me her mast, Mr Abey!' This largely for the benefit of the crew, to encourage them.

  'I will, sir.'

  James put his hand on the youth's shoulder. In a quieter, more confidential tone: 'Now then, Richard, I am depending on you, this day.'

  'I will not fail you, sir.' Earnestly.

  A nod from James, and the midshipman went forrard, his heart lifted, his whole being filled with the responsibility placed upon him.

  Less than half a glass, and:

  'Lark gaining on us, sir!' From aloft.

  James peered, gauged the distance, and gave no command.

  A few minutes more, and:

  'D-e-e-e-ck! Lark gaining rapid upon us!'

  James again employed his Dollond, nodded once, waited a moment, then:

  'Mr Dumbleton! Hard-a-starboard! Mr Abey, larboard battery stand by!'

  Moments of creaking, spray flying, heeling change, and as Hawk came off the wind on the new heading, her five larboard carronades were trucked at a sharp angle in the ports.

  Midshipman Abey waited, poised like a wild animal about to spring – and loosed his battle howl:

  'Larboard battery! Fire! Fire! Fire!'

  BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM

  The great multiple concussion shook the Hawk from stem to stern, to the fierce song of rushing ball. Smoke ballooned and eddied across the gritted deck.

  At two cables, even at an acute angle, Lark was a very considerable target, and three of Richard Abey's roundshot found their mark. One smashed the bowsprit and rendered her headsails useless. Two struck her mast.

  A moment of washing quiet as the sound of the guns fled away over the sea. Lark appeared to pause, as if uncertain of her purpose. She faltered, still uncertain, and then with a rending rasp her topmast fell, and crashed in a tangle of ropes, yards, and sagging canvas.

  A roaring yell of triumph from Hawk's crew, ringing across the water.

  'Mr Dumbleton! Mr Love! We will tack ship, and head south!'

  'Aye, sir.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  'Mr Abey! We will reload the larboard battery with grape!'

  Hawk swung again to the south, leaving her opponent smashed and broken, riding the wind-ruffled swell.

  By now the corvette was well ahead, her sails getting small against the sky.

  The coast of France just visible on the horizon to the south, and Hawk, sailing with the wind one point abaft her starboard beam, had caught up the corvette, and was nearly within range. Lieutenant Hayter had preserved his original tactics intact in his head. His scheme was to attempt to shatter the corvette's rudder, then to lay in close alongside and rake her with grape. He would have to risk a potentially devastating broadside from the corvette's six-pounder great guns, but his own roundshot – fired at and through the corvette's stern – would already have wrecked not only her rudder; they would also, he believed, have battered gun carriages and injured men, smashing through the stern gallery and all the way through to her forecastle.

  'Aye, it is a great risk, Mr Dumbleton.' In answer to the sailing master's obvious concern. 'Sea actions always involve risk, do not they?'

  'One broadside of ten guns, sir – even if only half of her roundshot slammed home – would cripple us entire. We are only a very little light cutter, after all. Certainly I can lay you close alongside, but the – '

  'Then that is all I ask of you, Mr Dumbleton.' Over him. 'If I am killed I hope that you will raise a glass of good claret to my memory.' He saw the sailing master's shocked expression, and at once regretted his flippancy. 'Belay that. It was a damned foolish thing to say. We all risk our lives today, and I beg your pardon.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  The wind steady, and a strong swell running. Hawk pitched steeply, and as she righted herself – twin orange flashes from the corvette's chase ports.

  BOOM-BANG

  Roundshot rushed the length of Hawk's deck, missing everything except a halyard, which snapped apart as if cut by a giant invisible knife. Shouts of alarm along the deck.

  'Steady!' bellowed James in his loudest quarterdeck.

  A shroud-humming, sea-scudding moment, spray flying, then:

  'Starboard your helm! Starboard battery, stand by!'

  The heeling turn, and Richard Abey:

  'Starboard battery – fire, fire, fire!'

  Five carronades thudded in sequence, and five eighteenpound roundshot hissed away across the sea. One went wide and ploughed into a lifting wave in an explosion of spray. Four went home. The corvette's rudder was smashed from its pintles, and dashed in jagged pieces into the sea. The stern gallery imploded with a heavy crunching crack, glass and timber punched inward, and men screamed horribly beyond. The tafferel disappeared, and the chase ports, in a disintegrating blast of timber and iron. Gun carriages tumbled askew. The mizzenmast trembled, the spanker boom swung and fell, vangs, blocks, stays whipped and coiled and snarled over the side.

  More screams. Sea-shadowing, drifting smoke. The singing wind.

  'Mr Dumbleton! Lay me alongside her!'

  Hawk close in by the corvette, to starboard of the halfcrippled ship. And now came the corvette's reply. Six guncrews had survived of the ten in the starboard battery, and they fired almost as one.

  The flashes of the guns were so close, and the concussive thuds, that the shock waves buffeted men on Hawk's deck, even as the six-pound roundshot slammed into her side. She took the full crushing force of that flying metal, shuddered her whole length, and James knew at once that she had suffered grave wounds. The sea swirled over her deck, her larboard rail smashed away, the hammocks gone, and two of her larboard carronades. Men lay bloody and broken, with pulped limbs and torn heads. Some cried out for their mothers. Others moaned. A powder boy stood breathless and unable to move, his chalk-white face streaked with blood, his eyes staring in terror.

  The stink of burned powder, and burned flesh. The stink of terror emptied bowels. The stink of death.

  James picked himself up off the deck, deafened, halfblinded by smoke, and:

  'Larboard battery! Fire! Fire! Fire!'

  BOOM BOOM-BOOM

  A storm of grapeshot across the corvette's deck, clipping, cutting, smashing, thudding. One of the hailing shots smashed off a man's hand at the wrist as he raised it to his head. Another punched a hole through a man's chest, spraying his lungs and half of his shattered spine out through the back of his shirt. The overall effect of those three rounds of grape was calamitous to the corvette's people, and to the ship herself. Over half of her guncrews were dead or shot down and dying. The roundshot had done frightful damage, and now the grape had smashed and mangled what remained.

  'Marksmen in the tops!' James bellowed. 'Shoot into her waist! Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill!' All compunction gone. No sympathy left for the seamen in the corvette, that were his mo
rtal enemies, now.

  Crack! Crack!

  from aloft.

  And now Midshipman Abey's voice, striving for steadiness:

  'Re-lo-o-o-o-oad!'

  'Belay that, Richard!' James. 'We will board her, and find Captain Rennie! Boarding party to the forecastle! Mr Love! Grappling irons on deck!'

  Crack! Crack!

  again from the tops. The shots smacking into motionless flesh on the corvette's deck.

  'Cease firing! Cease firing!'

  The moans and cries of the dying on both vessels. The whipping of the wind. The lifting slap and slop of the sea along the wales. Dr Wing on deck, his face set, his eyes fixed on the first man he reached, who lay on his back with blood bubbling from his mouth, and sucking and bubbling from a hole in his side.

  'We will leave you to do your best for them, Doctor.' James, a hand to Wing's shoulder as he passed him, going forrard.

  They found Rennie shackled in the corvette's orlop, in the noisome bedlam of injured and dying men that the sweatsoaked, bloody-armed ship's surgeon was attending to. Mallet and chisel were brought from the carpenter's store, and the shackles broken off. Rennie was conscious, but dazed and parched and greatly reduced by his ordeal. Blood had dried on his scalp and face, and lay congealed in a ring at his neck and shirt.

  Lieutenant Hayter and Mr Dumbleton helped Rennie up the ladder and on deck, where the sea air revived him a little. He turned his face to the wind, and saw the devastation all round.

  'By God, what a very bloody action, James. What is the damage to Hawk?' Glancing towards the cutter.

  'Very considerable, sir. We must get aboard, right quick. I fear other French ships may come to investigate. The French coast lies to the south, quite near.'

  Rennie peered briefly in that direction, then stared round him again at the scene of destruction.

  'You have done all this damage to the ship yourself? Just Hawk?'

  'Aye, sir, we have. It was the carronades. Damned good smashers, those carronades.'

  'And the Lark?'

  'We left her part dismasted to the north. Come, sir, if you please. We have not a moment to lose.' Helping Rennie across the bloody, grit-strewn deck through a tangle of fallen rigging and canvas, and slumped bodies. As they stepped across and down into Hawk, Rennie supported by his rescuers, he asked:

  'What of Aidan Faulk? You took him out of Lark?'

  'Eh? No, sir, we did not. Have a care as we step down off the rail, now.' Helping him.

  'Then where is Faulk?'

  'I have not the smallest notion, sir. – Mr Abey! Mr Love! Stand by to disengage and make sail!'

  Rennie held James's arm. 'You do not know?' Urgently.

  'My concern was to find you, sir, and bring you home safe to England.'

  Activity now all round them on the damaged cutter's deck. James had stepped aft to get a clear overview of his command: his rigging, canvas, guns, and people. Rennie followed.

  'Do not think me ungrateful, James. I prayed for you to come, even when I was unable to fire the damned rocket. And I thank God y'did come – thank you indeed, with all my – '

  'Did not fire the rocket!'

  'Nay, I could not. It was soaked through, and quite useless. I threw it overboard.'

  'Good God.' James stared at him, then gave a wild chuckle. 'Ha-ha-ha! Did not fire it! Then luck was with us both this day, by Christ! No wonder we was able to steal up so close to her!'

  'Eh! Steal up?'

  'Nay, never mind. Will you go below now, sir? Ask Dr Wing to look you over.'

  'Dr Wing will have more important things to occupy him just at present, I think.' Another glance round the bloody deck.

  'Please just go below to my cabin, will you? Lie in my hanging cot. Ask the steward to attend you. I must busy myself here on deck, you know.' Kindly enough, but with an urgency of tone that Rennie recognized, and ignored.

  'I am very grateful to ye, James. However, I fear that your concern for me – to the neglect of your other duties – may count against you.'

  'Count against me? – Mr Love! We will get under way! Mr Dumbleton! Lay me a course for Portsmouth! Cheerly, now!' Moving away from Rennie briskly. Risking censure, Rennie limped after him.

  The wind faltered and slewed round the ship, then began after a brief hesitation to blow from a new direction – from the south. James drew in a breath, turning his face to the wind, and was about to issue a further command, when Rennie:

  'James, will you not consider returning to the Lark? I am nearly certain that Aidan Faulk is aboard her.' 'I have no time for Mr Aidan Bloody Faulk, now. I have done what I set out to do. I have got you back safe. And our luck holds, you see. The wind has changed, and will aid us in getting clear of French waters. I must bring my gravely injured people home to Portsmouth, and the Haslar.'

  'I do see that, James. However, I think – '

  'Sir! If you please! Will you go below, now!' It was no longer a request, and as Hawk broke clear of the damaged corvette, and made sail in the freshening wind, Rennie reluctantly did as he was told.

  When James came below himself after the passage of another glass, having satisfied himself that no French ships pursued him, and that Hawk could sail unimpeded to Portsmouth, with repairs undertaken that might be managed at sea, he stepped briefly into the great cabin. He found Rennie not lying in the hanging cot, but sitting hunched on a side locker, attempting to transcribe his experiences in one of James's notebooks. He had washed his face and neck, but was yet very pale and drawn.

  'Sir, surely you are not well enough – '

  'I am all right, James, I am all right. My heart was so lifted by your arrival that I was lifted altogether. I have took the liberty of drinking some grog, and that has lifted me further.

  I am quite buoyed up.'

  'I am very glad.' A smile, a nod. 'And now I must look in on the injured men, and Dr Wing.'

  'Before you do, James, before you do – I will like to press you in the matter of Aidan Faulk, if I may – '

  'Aidan Faulk is nothing to me, now.' Over him, curtly, the smile vanishing. 'I do not care anything about him.'

  'Don't care anything about him? Good heaven, James, ain't your commission altogether about him? Well, ain't it?' The question itself, and his tone and demeanour, all contradicting the lieutenant.

  James sighed. 'I expect so, official. However, we have long since abandoned any notion of this commission as a duty according to what was wrote out in the instructions. Everything has changed, and I – '

  'No, James, no. You will discover, I think, that Their Lordships will not see it in that light, when you come to write your despatch, and make your report. "Where is Aidan Faulk?" they will ask. "What has become of him? You have fought an action at sea, against a French ship, when we are not at war. You have smashed that ship, and took much damage yourself, in pursuit of what aim, sir? If your aim was not to bring us Aidan Faulk, then what was it, pray?" These are the questions Their Lordships will ask, will not they? Nay, James, you must return to the Lark and make Faulk your prisoner, without the loss of a moment.'

  'I am not altogether certain that Aidan Faulk was in the Lark, anyway.'

  'He was not in the corvette, was he?'

  'He was not. We searched among the injured.'

  'When I lay in the orlop my captors thought I had fallen senseless under their torture. I was not always senseless. I know that Faulk came into the corvette, and then went out of her again. Where did he go, but to his own vessel? – Will not you think again, James, and return to – '

  'And what of my injured people?' Over him, hotly. 'What is to become of them, hey?'

  'Dr Wing is the most capable surgeon in the Royal Navy, James. In the short time it will take us to reach the Lark he will bring to your injured people all the immediate succour and aid they could ever hope for at the Haslar. If they survive, then they may go to the Haslar upon our return. If not, then they would not have survived in any case.'

  James stared at h
im a long moment, was tempted to say that Rennie was ungrateful, very ungrateful, to press him so harsh – then he saw that Rennie was in all likelihood correct, that Rennie wished only to assist him, warmly assist him, and guide him to a happy outcome.

  A nod. 'Very well, sir, we will return briefly to the Lark.'

  But when the Hawk reached the bearing at sea where they had last seen the Lark, lying severely damaged, adrift – she was nowhere to be seen.

  EIGHT

  Mr Hope was yet in a poor condition of health at the Haslar Hospital at Gosport, but Sir Robert Greer had again recovered sufficient to be able to sit up in his bed and receive callers. He was with his physician, the forbearing Dr Bell, and his stout man of business Mr Purvis. Sir Robert had heard the advice of his doctor to remain in bed, and the advice of his man of business about the purchase of a parcel of land nearby; had ignored the one, and agreed with the other; had made it clear to both – as he swung his legs out of bed and gained the chair adjacent – that he expected the arrival almost immediate of another visitor – from London.

  'In little, you will like us to retire, Sir Robert?' Dr Bell sighed and closed up his bag. Mr Purvis gathered his sheaves of documents, notes and deeds, and tied them up in a leather fold.

  'Gentlemen.' From the chair. 'Good day to ye.'

  Mr Purvis went out of the door, but Dr Bell paused there, opened his mouth, and:

  'You waste your wind, Doctor, if y'seek to chastise me,' said Sir Robert, before the doctor could speak. 'I know my own capacities, I think, and how to husband them. Good day.'

  Dr Bell conceded, nodded, and retired.

  Quarter of an hour passed, then Sir Robert's servant Fender tapped at the chamber door, opened it, and announced:

  'Mr Soames is here, Sir Robert.'

  'Come in, Soames, come in.'

  Mr Soames duly came in. His journey overnight from London had not been comfortable. The express coach had thrown a wheel, the passengers had been violently flung about as the hub struck the road in a shower of sparks, and there had been the delay of two hours until the wheel could be found, and the hub repaired and greased. Soames had sat with the other passengers in a dirty, smelly, ramshackle inn, its doors opened with the utmost reluctance by a surly landlord, who would not give them anything hot to drink. Soames had arrived at Portsmouth tired, hungry and thirsty, in the small hours, had been unable to engage a room, and had sat disconsolate in the parlour at the Marine Hotel until it was time to go to Kingshill.