Little Lost Lambs at the Post

by Harold Lamb

  "Why?”

  Swiftly, the girl sprang up. "Why—why? Am I only a voice to you, Nick? How tired I am of seeing the sick and wounded men, like animals. I would have gone away with you on your trading bark. Why? I will not tell you. You don’t love me enough. Then listen, Master Nicholas, while I betray the secrets of my people. I will betray them very clearly. The Empress Catherine, who is above all my boyarinas, craves a victory over the Turks to win the Black Sea, and she coaxed and hired Paul Jones to win the victory, but the credit of it must belong to Potemkin, who is secretly her husband—who craves to be decorated with the high Order of Saint George, after a victory which General Suvarov and Admiral Jones will win for him.”

  "Anya!” begged Nick.

  "Your Yankee has pleased Potemkin in many ways, but chiefly by the letters he writes to a—a Thomas Jefferson, and the like, saying that it is delightful to serve under such a prince.”

  "But his letters are sealed.”

  "With wax, easily to be softened and cut. I know, because I was asked to read them to the Kuraginskaya and the Marshal.”

  With his ears pricked for Anya’s words, Ivak had not noticed how the sky lightened in the east with the early-summer dawn. The headland took shape in white sand and he was staring down into the gulf, cleared of mist by the sea breeze.

  The water of the gray gulf had a strange appearance. Many sails moved over it toward the Dnieper’s mouth, and among them he recognized the triangular headsail of the swift kirlangich.

  After a moment, he said, "Eh, Nicholas, the Turks come.”

  From the carriage they looked at the gulf. All three of them realized that the mist still veiled the river, where the Russian seamen watched, and that no one else was on the headland to sight the Turkish fleet attacking.

  No one said anything when Ivak turned the horses and lashed them to a gallop down the slope. They crashed through the mud of Kherson’s alleys, where only drowsy sentries walked. At the deserted pier, Ivak pulled in the horses and dropped into his skiff. Taking up the oars, he waited. Then, beside him, Anya dropped, falling and holding to the thwart. When Ivak tried to pull her up, to lift her back on the jetty, she fought him.

  Her eyes blazed and she cried, "I am going with you!” Nick dropped beside them, pulling the Cossack back. Her set face turned up to him. "I want a chance to live.”

  The boy gripped her arms. Thrusting off with the boat hook, he took an oar from Ivak and began to pull with all his strength.

  The Vladimir lay at anchor still, but awake and clamorous. Nick, fearful for Anya, guided her up the ladder, through the swinging lanterns into the stern cabin, which they found deserted, with Jones’ sword of honor lying on the half-finished chart. He told her to lie down in the berth.

  Over the trampling of feet and the shouting they heard the "clank-clong” of the anchor chain coming up. Not they nor Ivak knew what it meant to be on a ship of the battle line. Quickly, docile again, Anya folded her hands and sat on the edge of the berth, saying, "I will pray to Saint Vasily.”

  Into the cabin charged Brigadier Alexiano, looking for Paul Jones and shouting that the Turks were coming. Staring at the motionless girl, he choked, "We will all be slain! They will board us! How can we prevent?”

  As he ran out, Ivak nudged Nick, begging the cub to come and help Jones speak. At the break of the poop, where hussar officers were rushing past peasants lugging powder sacks, Jones stood above the wheel with Korsakov, with Alexiano gesturing at them.

  Sighting Nick, Jones called instantly, "Mr. McRae, kindly bid the brigadier put on his coat! He’ll not set foot on this deck without his coat!”

  Bewildered, Alexiano stumbled below, and then the hussar officers, who had caught the contagion of his fright, went about their tasks again. For Paul Jones, when he saw the anchor up, gave out swift orders through Nick to Korsakov to let down the sails, so the wind could push the Vladimir. Slowly, the Vladimir began to march forward into the gulf.

  When he remembered to climb the ropes to his post on the platform up the hindmost mast, Ivak could see around better. The wind hauling to the north-northeast was clearing the mist away.

  Down the channel where Jones had measured the water the ship was moving faster. Leaning over the rail of their platform, Ivak and the Don Cossacks watched with interest. Having loaded their muskets, there was nothing else for them to do. It would be bad back there, Ivak knew, if the Turkish fleet got up the river with its guns among the ferries and camps of the army at the arsenal.

  Beside him the Little Alexander plowed through the swell, with the four other frigates keeping a ragged line. Behind them nine small sloops and shallops darted around, having no need to fear the shoals. But no gunboats followed from the flotilla commanded by Nassau, although the Vladimir signaled for them to do so.

  Ahead of them, the enemy sails—three times as many as the squadron’s—clustered about the larger ships. Already Ivak could make out that the Turkish vessel with three masts and three rows of guns leaned oddly on one side.

  "How bad?” he asked.

  "Is it not enough,” demanded the Don Cossack, "that we have only hussars to give orders to the gun crews, and a captain who bellows, with his shirt out, to handle the reins of the ship, but also a commander who is afraid to march?”

  Before Ivak could answer, the ropes shook and Jones swung himself over the rail of the top, followed quickly by Nick. For a moment the slender Yankee swept the gulf with his glass. As he did so, white puffs showed against the enemy frigates and drifted to leeward. The roar of cannon came over the water and the air whined around the Cossacks.

  Jones pocketed his glass and laughed, pointing out where three of the largest Turkish vessels had run aground—where feluccas like the kirlangich swarmed around them, trying to work them off. The Turks had been unable to navigate the Liman during the darkness and mist in their attempt to surprise the fleet in the river.

  "Good luck for us!” he called out. "The dancing has begun, lads!”

  And he disappeared down the ropes. Nick, in the act of following, gasped and gripped the shrouds. Below him, the man who had been at the wheel lay huddled against the bulkhead with blood running from his torn body.

  "Did you hear?” said Ivak to his mates. "It’s the dancing that begins.” It seemed to them that a commander who could make a joke at such a time had smelled powder before. But such dancing they had never seen. The enemy broadsides flamed nearer, and splinters flew like spray from the mast above them. The enemy were firing from heavy cannon, to which the carronades of the Vladimir could not reply as yet. An explosion rocked the Little Alexander when a fire shell crashed through her deck into the magazine. Her masts toppled over and she rolled on her side like a dying horse.

  That was not the full of the calamity. The Vladimir only rolled slightly in the wash of the explosion, and marched on. Below Ivak, the gun crews, stripped to the belt, grew wet with sweat under the impact of sound around them. They felt the strain of waiting without working their guns. Watching them, Ivak heard Alexiano shout an order, and the echo of an answer come from the bow. Jones had not understood the brigadier’s order, but he turned instantly at the rattle of the cable running out.

  Ivak saw what Alexiano had done. To stop the ship, the brigadier had let go the anchor when the Vladimir was under full sail. With a shout to the others, he squatted by the rail. There was a splintering forward as the chain, running to its end, tore out the rail. The ship’s snub bow came around, the sails tore at the yards, the mast jerked and a spar smashed down by Ivak’s head. Helpless, the ship swung to her anchor in the center of the enemy craft.

  Sharp in sunlight, Ivak saw them—how the three-decker lay canted so that the guns could not fire—how Jones, a tiny figure, pushed Alexiano back from the rail and signed with his arm until the guns of the Vladimir began to roar on both sides, all the shots finding marks in the ring of enemy craft.

  Then the haze of smoke rose around the mast. For a while the masts of the enemy stood over the
smoke, turning this way and that. Through them passed the raking yard of the kirlangich. Then the smoke rose higher. When he could see nothing, Ivak went down the ladder of ropes to ask for orders and to find out what was happening. Waiting until he sighted Nick by the rail below, he jumped down. As he did so, something ripped along the rail, tearing into the wood. Nick dropped to his knees, bleeding from the head.

  When he tried to lift him, Ivak found that Nick could not stand, and that blood was covering his eyes from a tear along the forehead where a splinter had struck. Getting his shoulder under the boy, he carried him down and into the stern cabin.

  There, in the murk of smoke, he blundered over unfamiliar wreckage. The stern windows had vanished into a great opening. Anya’s voice called his name, and she came out from the berth at the side, to reach for Nick.

  "Put gunpowder on the tear outside, and brandy inside him, girl, and he will be dancing again,” Ivak said.

  When Korsakov appeared to ask the Scot to report on deck to interpret, Anya said he could not stir, but she would go. Neither Ivak nor Korsakov dared forbid her. Wrapping her shawl around her bare shoulders, Anya climbed to the quarter-deck, where Jones stood with Alexiano in the murk of smoke. So intent was the Yankee on the uproar around him that he seemed not to notice he was speaking to a woman at first.

  Anya looked helpless. "He says,” she cried, "the rudder to the weather!”

  Korsakov must have anticipated it. "Helm aweather!” he shouted, and the men down at the wheel answered. Slowly, the battered Vladimir turned and the sails began to fill. With the anchor chain cast off, the ship forged ahead again.

  Meanwhile, Jones was speaking and Anya interpreting, this time to Alexiano, pale behind his black beard, ". . . the Brigadier Alexiano to go in the cutter towed astern . . . present the admiral’s compliments to the Prince Nassau and request him to advance his flotilla to engage the enemy gunboats, which are firing from forty-two-pound guns . . . upon the squadron, which cannot approach them . . . owing to shallow water.”

  Then, really seeing Anya for the first time, Jones ordered her below. Pacing the rail, he looked from side to side into the drifting smoke. It seemed to Ivak that the smoke was thinning and that the masts of the enemy ships were farther off. They came into line, the masts, going away from the Vladimir. Heavily, with her sails pulsing and her broken timbers grinding, the Vladimir moved on after the enemy, the Russian frigates following her, and no eye to see from afar how weak she was.

  The men who watched every move of Paul Jones took comfort from the way he walked about, his small body straight, looking on all sides, as if aware of them and of all that would happen to his ship. Among themselves they began to speak of him as Little Father Jones.

  By degrees, the sounds outside the wrecked cabin changed. The light that came in the broken stem was the glow of sunset. The pounding of the guns had changed to a slow reverberation. When the deck lifted and sank to a heavy swell, Ivak’s eyes closed and he almost slept.

  Anya sat on the edge of the berth, heedless of the change, watching Nick’s sunken face. When he moved or whispered, she tried to ease the bandage that she had made for him. With a wound in the head Ivak knew a man might be on his feet again within a few hours or laid in the ground. And the girl was frightened because she had felt death to be near them that morning.

  When the impassive Korsakov appeared again to ask for an interpreter, his eyes were gleaming. "Victory,” he said. Anya prepared to go up with him, but Nick spoke clearly from the berth, "Help me up, Ivak, you son of a dog.” The boy had shivered at the first shots and the sight of a dead man; now wounded himself, he had grown accustomed. Anya, however, moaned and tried to persuade Ivak to hold Nick where he was. Instead, Ivak and Korsakov supported Nick under the shoulders, aiding him up to the deck, where Jones waited.

  The gulf itself had changed. The Vladimir plowed through the swells in the mouth of the sea. Beyond gunshot, the ridge of Okzakov stood black against the sunset. Under the bastions of the fortress huddled the surviving ships of the enemy.

  Aft of the Vladimir the four Russian frigates made a ragged line. Far back in the gulf no less than six of the larger Turkish vessels lay battered and stranded on the treacherous shoals. Around the farthest pair clustered flat craft, strange to Ivak, firing at slow intervals—the gunboats and bomb ketches of the Prince of Nassau, in action at last, when the battle had ended. For the enemy ships, already in flames, did not return Nassau’s fire.

  “Mr. McRea,” Jones instructed, "will you request Mr. Korsakov to proceed to the barge of the Prince of Nassau and to command his excellency to cease firing upon the disabled enemy? They can make no resistance, and we will have need of those frigates.” Anger broke through his voice, "They are, besides, crowded with, human beings who have already surrendered!”

  After Korsakov had departed in the last seaworthy cutter, the watchers on the quarter-deck of the Vladimir waited for the flotilla to cease its bombardment of the stranded Turkish vessels. Darkness came without a stop in the firing.

  Even after full starlight—after Nick and Ivak had gone down, to the cabin to rest, with the girl—Nassau’s fire bombs arched through the sky to set one frigate and then another on fire, and to burn or drown their crews. When Anya protested, Nick tried to explain that Jones had no other officers to send, and could not take his ships from the blockade of Okzakov or send a frigate back into the shallows.

  At times Anya could hear the moaning of the wounded men below her in the sick bay. At times the cabin was lighted by the explosions back in the gulf. Tired out, she slept at last in a chair near the berth where Nick dozed.

  But Ivak, who had not even sweated during the day’s battle, was troubled by fear in the darkness. At first he thought it might be fear of the gulf, where the luminous water was stirred by the spirits of the newly dead. Then he was aware of a jingling that sounded when he moved. Lighting his pipe and propping himself among the broken beams of the stern bulkhead, he told himself the jingling was only the silver rix-dollars still loose in his pocket.

  At once he knew the meaning of the fear. Potemkin had bestowed the dollars on him; Potemkin had bribed Nick with the yellow diamond; Potemkin had sent Anya to spy upon the Yankee, and here she was where no woman should be, ensconced in the admiral’s cabin. By what hidden magic had all three of them been brought to the ship?

  So strong was the feeling that the one-eyed master of Russia was actually watching and listening in the cabin that Ivak almost threw the silver coins into the water.

  The next day was so clear, with everything good happening, that Ivak almost forgot the omens of the night. Early in the afternoon Russian troops appeared on the point of land across from Okzakov, and began to make camp. Guns came after them, and wagon trains; bright pavilions went up where the carriages of nobles halted. Through the glass it was even possible to watch several ladies descending from Potemkin’s carriages.

  The new camp lay more than a league from Okzakov’s bastions, with the Yankee’s fleet in between, so it was far out of the range of Turkish cannon; yet its own cannon protected the small craft along its shore, and very soon Nassau’s flotilla came to anchor there, so the whole point swarmed with activity. Nassau’s barge with the shining eagle rowed out from the landing to where the Vladimir was hove to.

  With a fluttering of silk skirts, the Kuraginskaya, followed by de Ligne, burst into the cabin where Jones was writing requisitions. Eh, the beauty ran to the Yankee and gripped his hands, exclaiming that she wanted to be the first to greet the victor of the battle of the Liman, and she brought with her the prayers of the marshal, who was too occupied with the new camp to come in person. And de Ligne smiled affably, echoing her praise.

  Jones’ tired eyes lighted at sight of the boyarina, and at the praise. The Kuraginskaya cooed over him until her glance fell on Anya, who had shrunk back into the shadow. She started and stared.

  "Miss Graeme of Garvock,” explained Paul Jones, "ventured to stow away on my frigate be
fore the engagement.” He was careful to introduce her as a lady, believing that she had accompanied Nick on board. The Kuraginskaya seemed pleased—more pleased than when she had seen Potemkin fondling Anya. Silently, Anya curtsied.

  "Ah,” cried the Kuraginskaya, "the poor child!” She did not seem greatly surprised, as she chattered on to Jones, asking at the very last if he had not hastened to prepare his report of the battle ... of the day that had been so glorious for the marshal and all the naval officers.

  Jones frowned, and then smiled. "Faith, madame, I have been too occupied in writing out the needs of the fleet.”

  "Of course!” She slipped closer to whisper loud, "Yet his highness awaits your report with such eagerness.” Anya stiffened at the words, and de Ligne said urgently, "Couriers must be sent to Her Majesty with the full particulars of the victory.”

  Then the Kuraginskaya cried that they must not intrude longer upon the admiral. The report could be sent ashore, she added, by the hand of Anya Graeme. "You will bring it, child?”

  Anya bent her head. "Yes.”

  "I could not ask for a fairer messenger!” exclaimed Jones.

  After the visitors had gone, it was clear that he could think of nothing but the report that he must write to the Empress he so admired. Liking, as he did, to write, he became joyful at the prospect. Yet Anya lingered restlessly, even when he took out a clean sheet of foolscap and began to sharpen a fresh quill.

  "Please.” She ventured to touch his arm. "You are not accustomed to Russian ways, are you?” When he glanced at her quizzically, she hurried on, "I must tell you, if you wish to—to be honored, put in the report somewhere that the victory was gained by the courageous leadership of the Prince Marshal. It’s customary.”

  Ivak, thinking how Potemkin had been on shore far from the action of the day before, almost snorted. He had been allowed to wait in the cabin, to carry messages. Anxiously Anya looked into the Yankee’s haggard face.