Graves came running aft along a gangway. “Run out, sir?”
“No.” He looked up as another ball fanned above the deck. “Load the starboard battery. Double-shotted and with grape for good measure.” He ignored Graves’s puzzled expression and added to Foley, “if we must fire it will have to be the one broadside. You have been below yourself. You know we cannot indulge in close action with the hull filled to its brim with sick men.”
Foley looked away. “I am sorry, Captain.”
Bolitho studied him gravely. “Do not be. My orders said little of fighting. Transportation was the ideal arrangement.” He forced a smile. “Unfortunately, the Frenchman has not read them also!”
He turned to watch the wounded being carried to the opposite side, while Graves and Yule, the gunner, supervised the slow loading of every starboard gun which was not impeded by either passengers or cargo.
Graves came to the ladder eventually and called, “All but four guns loaded and ready, sir.” He broke off with a gasp as the air overhead came alive with a long-drawn-out shriek, as if a thousand devils had been freed from the sea itself.
Rigging and shrouds jerked savagely, and men ducked holding their hands above them as torn cordage and several severed blocks hurtled amongst them.
Bolitho gripped his hands together behind him still tighter until the pain helped to steady him. Langridge shot, as used by the big Bonaventure . It was vicious and very dangerous. Consisting of fragments of iron bound together, it could cut away rigging and tear down spars with ease. But unlike chain-shot, which was more generally used, it could also do terrible damage to men otherwise hidden by gangway or bulwark. The Frenchman obviously wanted to dismast Sparrow and take her and cargo intact. The gold would pay for many requirements in the future, and Sparrow would make a valuable addition to the enemy’s fleet. It had happened before. Within the hour he might see it happen again. To him.
The bow-chaser threw out a spurt of smoke and the Sparrow’s main course burst open with a searing explosion, the great sail ripping itself to a hundred fragments in the wind even before the enemy’s iron had finished falling alongside.
Bolitho could feel the difference instantly, the heavier motion between each lift and plunge, the increase of turns on the wheel as Buckle’s helmsmen fought to hold her on course.
Yet again that demoniac scream of whirling fragments, the thud and clatter of failing rope and halliards. Men were working feverishly far above the decks to make good the severed rigging, but the frigate was much nearer, and as Bolitho swung round he saw three of her foremost guns belching fire and smoke, proof that she was overhauling rapidly to bring more of her armament to bear.
Balls shrieked and whimpered overhead and one ripped through the mizzen topsail with the slap of a whip against wood. Men yelled and cursed to control it as once again the wind explored the damage, tearing the shot-hole in an uneven gash from head to foot.
Bolitho gripped the rail hard. If only there was sight of a friendly sail, anything which might make the frigate lose heart or change tack even for a few moments.
He saw a ball skipping across the wave-crests, its progress clearly marked by the leaping feathers of spray; winced as the deck jumped beneath him as the shot slammed into the lower hull.
From below the gun deck he heard muffled cries, and pictured the sick and wounded, some with limbs only just cut away by Dalkeith, enduring the menacing roar of gunfire, the increasing accuracy of each successive shot.
Bethune came running from the ladder. “Captain, sir! The general wishes to be kept informed . . .” He ducked as a ball burst through the taffrail and hurled two seamen in a tangle of writhing limbs and horrifying spurts of blood.
Bolitho turned from the sight. He had been speaking to one of them just minutes ago. Now he was less than a man. Nothing.
“Tell the general to stay below and . . .”
He broke off as with a splintering crash the maintopgallant canted over, the sail whipping madly in a web of parted rigging, while the yard itself snapped into equal halves before pitching towards the deck. Men ran in confusion until the avalanche of wood and cordage had draped itself over the larboard gangway to trail alongside in a maelstrom of spray. A man, it must have been the lookout, was hurled bodily to the topsail yard, and even above the din Bolitho heard his shrill scream, saw him roll over and fall the rest of the way to the gun deck.
Another ragged burst of cannon fire, and Tilby dashed amongst the struggling seamen, his arms flailing as he pushed and drove them with their axes to free the ship from its torn rigging.
Tyrrell shouted, “We will have to alter course, sir!” He was yelling to make himself heard as men rushed past him, faces screwed into tight masks, their eyes blind even to the butchered corpses beside the nettings.
Bolitho stared at him. “How much water is there over those bars?”
Tyrrell seemed to think he had misheard. “At this time? Next to nothing!” He peered wildly at the sails as more jagged iron screamed amongst them.
A topman had slipped and was being suspended by his hands by two of his companions while his legs kicked helplessly in the air. Sweat, fear or a flying splinter cut the contact, and with a brief cry the man fell head over heels, seemingly very slowly, until he hit the sea by the hull. Bolitho saw him passing below the quarterdeck, arms outspread, his eyes very white as the water closed over them.
“I must risk it!” He was shouting aloud without realising it was more than a murmur. “Tack either way and that frigate will rake us!”
Tyrrell nodded jerkily. “As you say! I’ll get a leadsman in th’ chains and . . .”
Bolitho seized his arm. “No! Do that, or shorten sail, and that bastard will know what we’re about!” He shook him violently. “If I fall, you must try to take her through.”
A ball crashed into the nettings and sliced behind him. Splinters and fragments filled the air, and he saw Foley throw one hand to his shoulder where the epaulette had been torn cleanly away.
He faced Bolitho and said, “Warm work, Captain.”
Bolitho stared at him, feeling that same fixed grin on his mouth and jaw like a cruel vice. Like him, the ship was acting like something beyond control, the remaining sails driving her onwards towards the hidden menace of those hard sandbars. He was banking everything on Tyrrell’s knowledge, and the hope that the Frenchman was ignorant of his danger, or so blinded by all else but Sparrow’s closeness to defeat that he was totally absorbed.
Yet in spite of the intermittent gunfire, the responding crashes and thuds of balls striking home, he was able to see small but important details on every side.
A badly wounded seaman, his shoulder mashed to bloody pulp, was being held in the arms of a wounded soldier. The latter was blinded from some previous fight and his face covered by bandages. But his hands seemed to stand out even in all the confusion around him. Moving and calming, shielding the sailor and groping for a flask of water to ease his suffering. And Dalkeith, his wig screwed into one pocket while he knelt beside another injured man, his fingers like scarlet claws as he felt the extent of the wound, while his eyes rested on the next victim, and the one after that.
And through it all Graves walking behind the loaded guns, chin on chest, pausing only to check a particular crew or to step astride a corpse or fallen rigging.
From forward came the frightened cry, “I kin see th’ bottom!”
Bolitho ran to the nettings and pulled himself above the tightly stowed hammocks. In the bright sunlight he saw the spray bursting from the rounded bilge, trailing ropes and a complete section of a broken cutter dragging alongside. Then he saw the darting, shadowy shapes gliding deeper still, weed and rock clusters, some of which seemed to be rising towards the keel like disturbed monsters.
If she struck now the masts would be ripped out of her, and she would plough forward, grinding and breaking open to the waiting sea.
He turned to seek out the enemy. How near she looked. Less than three cables off the
quarter, her complete battery run out in readiness to finish the contest.
Buckle muttered hoarsely, “By the living God, the Frenchie’s in a safe channel!” There was a break in his voice. “The bastards have done for us!”
Bolitho looked at Tyrrell. “Get the t’gallants off her.” He could not hide the despair this time.
As the men swanned aloft to shorten sail, Tyrrell shouted, “There was nothing else you could do . . .”
He broke off as Buckle and Midshipman Heyward yelled together, “She’s struck!”
Bolitho pushed between them and stared with sick disbelief at the other ship. She had been changing tack, either because her captain had at last seen his danger or was about to rake the sloop with his first full broadside, and had struck one of the bars at full speed. Across the strip of water they could hear the jarring crashes, the awful rumble of her hull pounding aground. And as she began to slew round her foremast, followed and entangled with her main and mizzen topmasts, came down in one mighty curtain of leaping spray.
Bolitho had to yell several times to stop his men from shouting and cheering, to make them understand that their own danger was just as real.
“Alter course five points to starboard!” He dashed the sweat from his eyes to peer at the compass, his mind dulled by the crash of spars and groaning timbers. “Steer sou’ sou’-east!”
With only her torn course and topsails set, the Sparrow came round sluggishly, as if she, too, was beyond reason.
Gear flapped and banged, and men clambered over the scattered debris like dazed animals in their efforts to obey the shouts from aft.
Bolitho cupped his hands and yelled, “Mr. Graves! Run out!”
The ports squeaked open, and on their trucks the guns which could he manned trundled into the sunlight. With the sloop leaning over on her new tack each cannon moved quickly down the deck until with a shout of, “All run out!” Graves stared once again towards Bolitho.
Bolitho watched narrowly, his hand lifting while he forced himself to see the other ship as a target and not a once living creature writhing in agony.
“As you bear, Mr. Graves! Full elevation!”
He saw the listing, dismasted frigate falling past Sparrow’s starboard bow, the churned sand around her beakhead to mark the extent of her charge on to the bar.
His hand came down. “Fire!”
The hull jerked and bucked as gun by gun the double-shotted charges ripped over the wave crests to smash into the helpless enemy. A few shots from swivel guns answered the first onslaught, but as the heavy balls, coupled with a full load of grape, swept into her side and decks those, too, fell silent.
Bolitho held up his hand. “Cease firing! Secure guns!” To Buckle he added, “We will wear ship directly. Nor’-east by north.” He glanced astern at the smoking wreck. “She will rest there until someone comes, friend or foe, it makes little difference for her.”
Tyrrell watched him gravely. “Aye, aye, sir.”
He appeared to be waiting for something more.
Bolitho walked to the rail and studied the men below him. Restoring lashings on the guns, working to repair damage and sort out the tangle of rigging, everywhere something was happening to prepare Sparrow for her next challenge. There was no cheering, in fact little sound of voices at all. Just a few grins as seamen discovered good friends still alive. A nod here, a casual thump of the shoulder there. Together they told him more than words.
“They’ve learned well, Mr. Tyrrell.” He saw Dalkeith coming aft again and steeled himself for the list of dead and dying. “After this they will be ready for anything.”
He handed his sword to Stockdale, who had been near him the whole time although he could not recall seeing him.
“As I will.”
8 A CAPTAIN’S DECISION
THE SPARROW’S stay at New York proved to be the most frustrating and testing time Bolitho could remember. Instead of weeks, as he had hoped, to carry out his repairs and replace stores, he was forced to wait and watch with mounting impatience while every other ship, or so it appeared, took precedence.
As the time dragged into one and then a second month, he found himself ready to plead rather than demand, beg instead of awaiting his rightful aid from the shore authorities, and from what he could gather elsewhere, it seemed that most other junior vessels were in the same situation.
Work aboard continued without pause, and already Sparrow had taken on the appearance of a tried veteran. Sails were carefully patched rather than being replaced without thought of cost. Nobody seemed to know when more replenishments were arriving from England, and those already in New York were jealously guarded or, he suspected, hoarded for some suitable bribe. The maintopgallant yard had been fished, and from the deck appeared as good as new. How it would withstand a real storm, or a chase after some blockade runner, was often in Bolitho’s mind, along with the endless stream of reports to be made, requisition and victualling lists to be checked and argued over with the supply yard, until he began to think neither he nor his ship would ever move again.
Most of the pride and excitement at running the French frigate aground, of seeing the rescued soldiers safely landed, had given way to resigned gloom. Day after day, the ship’s company endured the heat and the work, knowing there was no chance of setting foot on land unless under close supervision and then only on matters of duty. Bolitho knew the reasons for this rule were sound up to a point. Every vessel which came and went from Sandy Hook was shorthanded, and unscrupulous captains had been known to steal seamen from other ships if offered half a chance.
Since assuming command he, too, was short of fifteen men, those killed or so badly injured as to be unfit for further service.
And the news was not encouraging. Everywhere on the mainland the British forces were in trouble. In June a complete army was forced to retreat from General Washington’s attacks at the battle of Monmouth, and the reports which filtered to the anchored ships showed little hope of improvement.
To add to the fleet’s troubles had come the first hurricane of the season. Sweeping up from the Caribbean like a scythe through corn it had destroyed several ships in its path, and so damaged others they were out of commission when most needed. Bolitho was able to appreciate the admiral’s concern for his patrols and prowling frigates, for the whole management of strategy along the American coast depended on their vigilance, their ability to act like his eyes and an extension to his brain.
He was thankful for one thing only. That his ship had not been so seriously damaged below the waterline as he had first feared. As Garby, the carpenter, had said, “She’s like a little fortress, sir.”
On his regular inspections below decks to watch the work’s progress Bolitho had understood the carpenter’s pride. For Sparrow had been built as a sloop of war, quite unlike most of her contemporaries which had been purchased for the Navy from the less demanding tasks of merchant service. Even her stout frames had been grown to the right proportions and not cut with a saw, so that the hull had all the added security of natural strength. The fact that but for a few ragged shot-holes below the quarter which needed the aid and tools of the New York ship-wrights his ship could sail and fight as before, made the delay all the more unbearable.
He had been to see Rear-Admiral Christie aboard his flagship, but had gained little idea of when he could complete repairs. The admiral had said wryly. “If you had been less, er, difficult with General Blundell, things might be different.”
When Bolitho had tried to draw him further he had snapped, “I know the general was wrong to act as he did. The whole of New York knows it by now. He may even be censured when he returns to England, although knowing his influence in certain regions, I doubt that.” He had shrugged wearily. “You, Bolitho, had to be the one to humble him. You did right, and I have already written a report to show my confidence in you. However, the right way is not always the most popular.”
One item of news hung over Bolitho like a cloud and seemed to torment hi
m as day by day he tried to prepare his ship for sea. An incoming brig had brought news of the privateer Bonaventure . She had fought several actions against supply vessels and ships-of-war alike. She had seized two prizes and destroyed an escorting sloop. Just as he had predicted, as he had feared. But to him the worst part was that the privateer had returned to the same area where they had exchanged shots, and had found the crippled frigate Miranda .
A handful of survivors had been discovered drifting in a small boat, some wounded or half-mad with thirst, the rest stunned by the suddenness of their ship’s end, when they had done so much to repair and save her.
Over and over again Bolitho searched his mind to examine his actions, to discover what else he might or should have done. By carrying out his orders, by putting duty before the true desire to help the damaged frigate, he had left her like a helpless animal before the tiger.
In his heart he believed he could have made no other decision. But if he had realised that the two transports were no longer so desperately needed, he also knew he would have acted differently. When he had admitted as much to the brig’s captain he had replied, “Then your Sparrow, too, would be at the bottom, for Bonaventure is more than a match for anything but a ship of the line!”
Apart from matters of duty, errands to use his presence or his purse on shipyard clerks, Bolitho refrained from going ashore. Partly because he thought it unfair when his men were penned in their ship, the size of which seemed to shrink with each passing day, and partly because of what he saw there. The military preparations were usual enough. Artillery wheeling and exercising, the horse-drawn limbers charging at full tilt, to the delight of idlers and yelling children. Foot soldiers drilling and sweating in the grinding heat, he had even seen cavalry on several occasions.
No, it went far deeper. The worsening news from inland seemed to reach just so far and then stop. In the great houses, rarely a night passed without some fine ball or reception being held. Staff officers and rich traders, ladies in full gowns and glittering jewels, it was hard to realise they were so close to a full-scale war. Equally, he knew his disgust came from his own inability to mix in such circles. In his home town of Falmouth his family had always been respected, but more as seafarers than local residents. He had gone to sea at the age of twelve, and his education had been more concerned with navigation and learning the mysteries of every eye and cleat, each foot of cordage required to sail a ship under all conditions, than the art of making small-talk and mingling with some of the bewigged jackadandies he had seen in New York. The women, too, seemed different. Beyond reach. Unlike the outspoken countrywomen in Cornwall or the wives and daughters of fellow sea-officers, they appeared to give off a power all of their own. A boldness, a certain amused contempt which both irritated and confused him whenever he came in contact with their perfumed, privileged world.
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