I killed Charlie…
Garret dug in as hard as he could. It felt like the wooden deck was going to rip the soles of his feet off. The guys in front of him were sweating and straining. It would have been hard enough without the increasing swells. Kearsarge, all three hundred and seventy-five feet of her, was beginning to rock gently before the approaching storm.
An officer called directions further down the deck. “Ho! Hold up there. You men, swing your end of the liner.”
Garret gritted his teeth and dug in harder. Tears tracked his cheeks.
“Steady!” yelled a familiar voice. It was Chief Greely.
Kearsarge had lower freeboard than Arethusa, which mean Kearsarge’s main deck was closer to the water, so the liners had a downhill slope from Arethusa to Kearsarge. They were restrained from zinging down the ropes and killing half the men on Kearsarge’s deck by the innumerable ropes wrapped around them and strung through the superstructure of both ships. The rope to which Garret clung was one of a few stabilizers wrapped around the ends of the liners to make sure they didn’t rotate horizontally as they rolled. As he and the guys in front of him backed onto the deck, the block and tackle through which their rope was wound squeaked, and the closest end of the near liner straightened out again.
The rocking of the ships with the swells was beginning to stretch the rope webbing, tightening and loosening it rhythmically. Cursing redoubled.
Winches whined on both ships, donkey motors labored, and the ropes groaned. Everyone did their job, so some of the ropes unwound this way, others that way, and the liners crept slowly towards Kearsarge’s deck.
Suddenly, Garret and the guys in front of him were jerked off their feet. A gentle surge had just rolled under Kearsarge at the same time Arethusa sank into a shallow trough, pulling all the ropes taut between them. They fell to the deck and were dragged towards the side. The guy who was first in line was sliding much too fast and at an odd angle, so he hit the edge of the scupper, one foot first. Garret heard the guy’s leg break, a sharp crack like a distant rifle report.
The guy screamed as his shin buckled and white bone erupted through the skin. He and the guy behind him were yanked overboard. Garret’s wolf strength was useless as the rope whipped all five of them towards the sea, but as suddenly as it had begun, the dragging force slackened and they slid to a stop. Arethusa rose majestically before them, slackening the ropes. The swell beneath her had saved them. Arethusa’s stern beginning to swing towards Kearsarge.
Garret and the three guys still on the deck scrambled to their feet and hauled back on the rope, caring nothing for the liners, but praying the guys over the side had hung on to the rope.
“Hang on Willis,” someone was yelling. “Hang on!”
They had hung on. Both of them. Garret and the others dragged the first two back onto the deck. The guy with the compound fracture was still screaming. As soon as he was back on the deck, he dropped from the rope like a poisoned leech. He rocked back and forth and wailed, clutching his ruined leg.
“Somebody get him out of here!” the guy in front of Garret bellowed. Two sailors who had just stumbled out of the citadel grabbed the injured man. One of them was wearing a wrinkled uniform that had been recently wet. The other was smaller and covered with soot. It was Twitch and Theo. Garret let the rope slip in surprise.
“Theo—!”
The guys in front of Garret gasped in protest. He grabbed the rope and hauled back again. Twitch and Theo dragged the screaming guy with the broken leg back from the edge. Theo’s movements were crippled up and his face was white, but he didn’t slow.
Twitch jumped on the rope behind Garret. “Right behind you, Lover Boy,” he growled, throwing his weight on the line.
Out in front of them, their liner had spun to the side, and the other liner was listing badly. It looked about to slip out of the ropes and be lost in the sea. Arethusa’s stern continued to swing as the swell rolled past at an angle. It was like watching a mountain swing round. Garret could have sworn he felt Kearsarge hunker down and brace herself.
Everyone on both ships fed the ropes out as fast as the winches would go, and both liners rolled towards Kearsarge’s deck, the far one wobbling crazily. They weren’t fast enough.
“Cut it loose! Cut it loose!” someone was yelling.
It was too late for that. As Arethusa’s stern swung closer, her bow tried to swing away, pulling all the ropes on that end tight, especially the steel cables on the bottom of the web. They were a heavy gauge, almost the size of Garret’s wrist, and they were every bit as strong as their size would suggest. But against the weight of two battleships, the cables might as well have been chaff.
With a sound like Zeus cracking a whip against the sky, the forward cable failed. The part of it that snapped back Kearsarge’s way took out ten feet of her deck rail, shearing the steel as easily as mowing wheat. Only the bo’sn’s mate was standing close. The tail strands of the cable carried the whistle out of his hand without breaking his skin.
Arethusa’s crew was not so lucky. The severed cable whipped back like a giant boa constrictor made of manila fibers. Had the sailor been standing two feet to the left he would have been untouched. Had he been standing two feet to the right, he would have felt only a passing breeze. But he was at his post, hanging on grimly to his assigned rope. The recoiling cable hit him across the chest too fast to see. It cut him in two. His legs flipped back into the bulkhead behind him. The steel was sprayed red.
Someone near Garret was suddenly sick. Garret heard it splattering on the deck.
Kearsarge rose and Arethusa sank, mercifully halting her approach.
“We gotta get these ships apart right now,” Twitch growled through his clenched teeth. To the northwest, thunder boomed. The storm was building.
More shouts gathered around. Grunting, straining, and swearing, a dozen guys appeared beside Garret, shoving a long wooden cradle across the deck on hastily applied smears of grease. It was the cradle Garret and his friends had built a few days ago. Veins stood out in their necks and forearms as they forced the heavy wooden contraption into place.
Garret and the guys fed their line out as best they could. Dozens of other sailors did the same on their various ropes, and their liner reached the deck rail. More commands were being shouted on the upper deck, but were lost to Garret underneath another clap of thunder from the approaching storm. One of Kearsarge’s powerful deck cranes began to whine, and their liner lifted out of its rope net.
“Let go!” Greely ordered. Garret, Twitch, Theo, and the rest did. The rope whipped from their hands. Along the deck, several other groups did the same, and the liner rose free over the rail, suspended in the crane’s ropes. The guys manning the wooden cradle reached up for the pipe. Garret, Twitch, Theo, and the rest rushed to help.
The winch whirred again, lowering this time, and dozens of hands guided the forty foot long piece of metal down into the cradle. It landed with the booming thud of an object much heavier than it looked. Like the shells of the Brahmanda Astra, Garret had no idea what metal the liners were made of.
A few seconds later, another thud echoed off the citadel. Both liners were down. Across the heaving expanse of water, British sailors and officers were untying or simply hacking off lines as fast as they could.
On the Kearsarge, officers and petty officers were yelling in an overlapping cascade of orders.
The only order Garret heard clearly was, “Double lash the cradles to the bits, use whatever rope is in your hands!”
Since the rope they’d been holding was lying partially on the deck and wasn’t needed anymore, Garret and two other guys grabbed it and started lashing the nearest end of the wooden liner cradle to the nearest “bits,” the pieces of flanged metal that studded the main deck for the purpose of securing cargo. Over and around and through they wound the rope, lashing the liner tightly into the cradle, and the cradle to the bits. Dozens of other men were doing the same alo
ng its length.
The Northwest sky was as solid as a coal bank, and it was bearing down on them. Arethusa was already a quarter mile off and moving fast, her bow cutting thick foam from the sea as she left them.
Garret jerked his cleat knot tight around the bit and then moved to secure the excess rope, but Twitch had beaten him to it. As Garret stood, he caught sight of the other liners, shorter and smaller in diameter, lashed to their own cradles closer to the bow. The rest of the crew had done that while Garret and Twitch were still in the brig.
Two guys struggled past Garret. They were carrying a thick, heavy pile of folded canvas with brass grommets. Garret jumped in and grabbed a corner. They were headed for the front of the forward turret.
As the three of them struggled under the weight of the heavy canvas, Garret glanced at the liners, then at the turret towards which they were heading. There were four liners, the same as the number of guns in the forward turret. The two largest liners looked like they would just fit within the massive thirteen inchers, and the two smaller liners appeared about the right size to slip down inside the barrels of the eight inchers.
“We’re gonna sleeve down the guns,” Twitch said grimly as he grabbed the opposite corner of the canvas heap and helped them hurry along.
“For the Brabbity Baba,” Garret mumbled.
“Brahmanda Astra,” Twitch corrected quietly as he reset his grip.
“What?” grunted one of the other guys.
Twitch just shook his head and didn’t reiterate. Together, they stepped around a couple guys who were pulling the last few ropes tight across one of the eight inch liners. They arrived at the front of the forward turret beside the windlass housing. The anchor wench itself was a steam powered contraption the size of a Model T situated on the deck beneath them, but the housing for it, into which the port and starboard anchor chains were wound across the deck, was a metal bunker about waist high, situated beneath the thirteen inch barrels. Perfect for unfolding a large canvas.
“On three,” growled the red faced guy nearest Garret. “One, two, three.”
Together, they heaved the canvas stack over onto the housing. It hit like a pile of dead bodies. As if Sweet Cheeks’ corpse had been carelessly stuffed in there somewhere. Garret climbed across the starboard anchor chain, the links of which stood thigh-high, and helped them spread out the topmost canvas. The thirteen inch gun crew was waiting inside the turret. The ports through which the windmill-sized barrels protruded were so large that the gun crews could almost have squeezed out onto the deck between the guns and the underside of the turret.
The ports were so large in fact, that Kearsarge and her sister ship, Kentucky, had canvas bucklers, such as the one they were hastily unfolding now, which had to be fastened over the gun ports in bad weather to keep the waves from flooding the turrets.
With Twitch’s quick directions, they got the first buckler laid out and oriented correctly. Just as the four of them carried it forward, someone with a bearish Russian accent bawled, “Belay those bucklers!” It was Mr. Sokolov, the gunnery officer. “Use all the line you can find to rove the decks, rails to stanchions, on the double!”
A gaggle of twenty or so men scrambled to follow the order, but as soon as Sokolov turned his back, Garret looked around for Theo. He was gone, and so was Twitch. Garret scanned the teeming mass of sailors on deck, slamming things, lashing things, or carrying canvas bucklers away and grumbling because Garret wasn’t helping anymore.
Orders flew thick and fast on the main deck.
“Double lash all boats!”
“You there, lay down and secure the davits!”
“You men, start leading out fire hoses!”
“I don’t care what the manual says, don’t plug the scuppers, we’re headed into a storm!”
Garret slipped past a couple of guys and started weaving his way through the rovings that Sokolov had ordered. It was best not to be on deck at all during a storm. The best plan was to get to your station, lash yourself in if necessary, and not move a muscle. But sometimes men had to move across the deck while the ship was pitching wildly. Roving the deck was the best way to keep from getting your ass washed overboard.
The wind was kicking up, flecking Garret’s face with moisture from the incoming storm. Garret kept looking for Theo. Twitch had him by the bulkhead. Garret sprinted to them, pretending he didn’t hear Chief Greely calling his name. Garret had to adjust his stride to counter the increasing pitch of Kearsarge’s deck.
Theo was doubled over, holding his ribs, crying with pain. Garret ran up to them as a gust caught Theo’s cover and whipped it away.
“What is he doing here?” Garret yelled to Twitch over the wind. “We’ve got to get him back down to the brig!”
“We can’t,” Twitch said. He pressed his lips in a line and nodded over Garret’s shoulder.
Thunder rolled again, but this time it sounded different. Garret turned. Instead of the open, storm-green ocean Garret expected to see, he saw another ship. She was barely visible, but since he was standing on the deck, that mean she was no more than five or six miles away, putting both ships well within the range of one another’s heavy guns. She was running as hard as Arethusa, but towards Kearsarge instead of away. Thick trails of smoke were clearing from the attacker’s bow. The odd sounding thunder hadn’t been thunder at all. It had been gunfire. Big gunfire.
Kearsarge was more than ready to go. Her engines thundered beneath them as she pivoted and began to accelerate away. A half mile off of Kearsarge’s starboard flank, two geysers of water erupted and plumed several stories into the air. The sea hissed and shrieked in pain.
“Ranging shot,” Twitch said grimly. “She’ll be on us in a few minutes.”
“How the hell did she get this close?!” Garret yelled.
Twitch shifted his grip to better support Theo. A gust of wind from the incoming storm whipped down the deck.
“Captain wanted to finish loading the gun liners,” Twitch said simply. “He was betting they wouldn’t fire on us as long as one of their own was close.” Twitch nodded to Arethusa. She was steaming away from them at top speed, churning the sea behind her into froth. “Even if she was aiding the enemy,” he added grimly.
“Why isn’t somebody doing something?” Garret demanded, adjusting his stance as the deck angled up onto a swell. Garret glared up at Kearsarge’s massive guns, which were still and silent.
“They are doing something, and we need to be helping,” Twitch replied.
Only then did the bo’sn’s piping register on Garret’s ears. He was piping “All hands clear ship for action.”
It was the battle-call of the Navy. The main deck, which was already crowded, became a zoo. Men and officers zig-zagged everywhere, carrying things to be stowed, lashing things down. Three guys passed Garret, hauling dozens of paint cans, as many as they could carry. They made it to the edge and began opening the cans and pouring the paint overboard until a masthead ensign yelled, “Just pitch ‘em! All nonessential flammables go overboard and all—!”
He was interrupted by a crewman who caught up to him and said, “Sir, communication tests are still failing between fire control and turret one. The electricians can’t spare anyone to trace—”
Garret lost the rest of what they said under another argument about how much light rope could be spared to rig life lines that wouldn’t foul the screws.
Kearsarge herself was swinging round and accelerating as hard as an eleven thousand ton slab of armor and guns could go. Garret felt the vibrations through every inch of her, and her screws were kicking up a heavy wake.
“Breathe, Minnow,” Twitch was saying. “You’re scared and it’s making you tense up. That’s why it’s hurting so bad. I’ve got to go, but I need you to relax first.”
At last, Garret remembered something he could be doing. In the event of battle, firehoses were supposed to be connected and readied. Maybe he’d half-heard an order about that a
minute ago. A guy was trying to lug two huge coils of hose past Garret. Garret grabbed one off the guy’s shoulder and they both headed for the nearest hookups.
Kearsarge was running hard, but instead of fleeing directly away from her attacker, she was taking a tangential course which would put her directly into the storm. The pursuing ship would have clear sights on Kearsarge’s angled flank, whereas Kearsarge would only have the pursuer’s narrow bow as a target.
Damn Captain Maxwell, Garret thought as he flipped the brass buckles to lock the hose into place. Then and only then did the order pass by Garret, shouted along the decks in the fashion since naval antiquity. “Main battery crews to battle stations! Intermediate and light battery crews secure the ship!”
“That’s us,” Twitch called to him.
Garret tugged on the hose to make sure it was locked into place, then sprinted back towards Twitch and Theo. The sea itself, now an angry looking green, was beginning to lift Kearsarge bodily up and down as she ploughed ahead. The storm had built into an obscuring wall before her, covering the horizon, mounting up into the sky, dragging low over the heaving water, blanketing it with twilight and rain.
As Garret grabbed Theo’s opposite arm to support him, all of Kearsarge’s deck and superstructure lights began to go out. The Captain had ordered “douse lights,” trying to make Kearsarge less visible in the storm.
Into the darkness and swells Kearsarge went, taking all of them with her, dragging ropes in the water even as her sailors reeled them in or just cut them away.
“How long until she can fire again?” Garret asked.
“Two minutes,” Twitch said grimly. “One hit in a critical area would be enough to end us. So every two minutes we find out whether or not we live for two more.”
Chapter 20
Theo was leaning against Twitch, and it looked like Twitch was the only thing holding him up. “Lover Boy, I’ve got to go now. Take him,” Twitch said, easing Theo towards Garret. Garret caught him as Twitch dashed away, looking up at the flying bridge as he went.
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