by Jan Needle
“You are in breach of English law,” he began. It sounded ludicrously pompous. One of the Frenchmen seemed to smile. Will said stiffly: “In any way, the action is not over yet, not by a long shot.”
“And it would need a long one, cher monsieur;” said another
Frenchman, his English almost accentless. “The sad thing is that there were shots at all.”
We are at war, thought William, angry with himself. That’s what I meant to say. But Céline was shaking her head from side to side, looking white and weary.
“Blaise Leopold is dead,” she said. “There are dead on your side, also. Mr Bentley, we do not wish to chain you up. We need your word is all, yours and your colleague’s. Monsieur…?”
She was talking to Kershaw, who stood silently beside him.
“My name is Kershaw,” he said. “You have my word. I knew of your Monsieur Leopold. I am sorry for his death. A fine seaman and navigator.”
They all stared at him. Céline’s eyes, suddenly, were filled with tears.
“Thank you,” she said. “He was. And Mr Bentley? Your parole?”
“You have it,” he said. His mouth was stubborn. “But our action is not lost. Not yet. If it comes on hot again, the word is void. Is that agreed?”
Nobody smiled, but after a moment, there were nods.
“But it is lost,” said one of the Frenchmen. “It is too late for you.”
*
The men on Biter, it appeared, were not of his opinion but of Bentley’s. When he and Kershaw made the quarterdeck once more — as an act of courtesy it was made open to them — she was still just visible in the gathered gloom, and she was making canvas. Their vision of her, and hers of them, was made possible by a rising moon, which the Frenchmen must have cursed, and the fact that the north-wester clouds were running down the coast but, by some quirk, were disinclined to roll out across the sea, obscuring the light. It was a spring-tide moon, almost full, and in the next hour it climbed into the sky like an enormous lamp, imparting stark beauty to the rolling seas that were breaking white into the distance. By the end of that hour the English brig, her damaged gear replaced or repaired, had grown a full suit, including studding sails. It was going to be a race. Things might not be lost completely, after all.
“She is a stiff-built tub,” said Kershaw, with a sort of grudging admiration. “Not many of her size could carry that press in this wind.” He glanced at Bentley with an odd gleam in his eye. “How long before she carries something away, do you reckon? Those Deptford riggers are infamous, you know.”
Will, upset and irritated by the whole damn circus, thought levity was out of place, so did not answer. It was hard to tell at such a distance, but to him it seemed that Biter was gaining fast. On the foredeck of the lugger, men were working hard at rigging a jury mast.
“Mark you,” said Kershaw, “if we should stay in close, it won’t be many hours before our brig will need deep water, will it?” Again the strange look. “Or have you not studied the charts for hereabouts?” The sense of irritation grew. Will had not studied any charts for much too long and, strangely, somehow felt that these “were not his waters.” He countered with a question he thought rather pointed.
“Mr Kershaw, how square you this with what you told me earlier? That Lieutenant Kaye would not bring off this action? That somehow it was a blind to leave poor Sam alone?”
“I did not say that, I think.”
“You did, sir! Quite plainly, sir!”
Kershaw shrugged his one good shoulder. He was very calm, and very confident, no trace now of his normal nervous reticence.
“I do not imagine Kaye would be so venal as to want him dead deliberate,” he said. “Although he might, if the stakes were high enough. That is, if Mr Holt were like to see there enough people he might later know. No, what I meant was Kaye had chose to do this run, to attack this lugger on information he had received, because on the face it was an act of duty and of bravery, that would not in actual fact come off. While on the beach at Sussex, men he might have had an interest in would be unmolested, save by your lonely friend. What I chose not to tell you, sir, was why. A case, let’s say, of loyalty divided.”
“And?”
“And what? And was I wrong? Look at those French sailors there. In half an hour, let’s say, they’ll have the foresail up again. Will Biter hold her then? Will you take a wager? But Mr Kaye looks increasing patriotic, don’t he? He’s fighting to the very, very last.”
“No,” said Will. “I’m asking for a further explanation. Of loyalty divided.’ Or what you chose not to tell. It is my uncle, isn’t it? You are suggesting my Uncle Daniel and Lieutenant Kaye are… are what? Are something to the smugglers? Are involved in what is to happen on the Adur beach? I do not think so, sir. I do not think so.”
Instantly, the moon went behind a thick stray cloud and they were plunged into total blackness. When it lifted, thirty seconds later, Kershaw had moved to weather and was talking to two of the Frenchmen who had been in the cabin with Céline. They were talking intimately, and William wondered, sickly, if their conversation were in English or in French. Then, on the foredeck, a cry went up, hands clapped on to the halliard, and the forward lug began to rise. Another spell of blackness, longer than the last, and when the pale moon glow came down again, the sail was risen. As it was sheeted in, the lugger was lifted by a rolling crest, and drove vibrating through it, throwing white water wide from both sides of her stem.
The mast up near its break was badly sprung, so no attempt had been made to extend it to its proper height again. It had been fished and tightly parcelled, and a block stropped on to take the halliard. Perhaps fifteen feet of height was lost in all, so the sail was reefed to the second set of points. With the wind astern she balanced badly, and when she’d settled down was nowhere near her proper speed. Will, on his own by choice for some long time, stared at the Biter in the milky moonlight until she shimmered in his eyes. She was carrying her canvas well, despite the wind felt as if it were growing all the while, but it was impossible to tell if she was losing ground or gaining. At this rate, the chase might last for ever.
In his concentration he did not hear footsteps, and he jumped when Céline spoke behind his ear. Her voice was strong and calm, but rather troubled.
“A stern chase is a long chase is what French seamen say,” she said. “Or is it the English, I get mixed sometimes. Do you think she’s catching us?”
He looked at her with curiosity. She had a strong face, with deep, dark eyes. She was very serious, which he found peculiar, in a woman. Although, he remembered, Mary Broad was like it, also. Not like women were supposed to be. Then he thought of Deb, and his stomach clenched with pain and fear. Deb, he knew, was very likely dead. Most likely.
“You do not reply,” she said. “I don’t know why I tell you this, because you won’t believe me. The Navy do not chase us normally because they know. We are not in the normal way of smuggling. This boat, her captain Blaise Leopold, God rest his soul. Sometimes we bring Englishmen from France. Sometimes we carry English people there. But you don’t believe me.”
He had heard this before from Mary, and in truth he knew no longer if he believed, and did not care. He thought of Sam alone on the beach, and he thought of Deb, whose whereabouts God only knew. The night was wearing on, and he was full only of doubt and pain. A cork in a maelstrom, that’s how he saw himself. He was tossed and thrown about, and whoever had control it was not him. He felt hopeless, forlorn, alone. He would not reply because he could not.
“She’s getting closer,” said Céline, still calm and quiet. “Do you know these waters? Do you know the Goodwin Sands? Look there, up out to larboard. Look, there ahead. We need poor Blaise now, this was his element.”
The tide was running south, and fast, the wind was north-westerly and brisker all the time, the black clouds spreading from the coast. The sea they ran in was rolling comfortably, smoothed by the blast but still whitecapped and flecked with foam. But
up ahead ran seas that made a complement to the lurch of fear her words had wrought in him. He did not know the waters, but he knew the Goodwins by repute, as what seaman did not, however ignorant of detail? By ill repute. The killer sands.
“Ah,” said Céline, at his side. “He has agreed it seems, he is on deck again. Now, sweet lord, we must give thanks for that.”
Will turned, and all his fear that Kershaw was a traitor was confirmed. With two others of the officers he had emerged from the after scuttle and taken up position beside the helmsman. He had no chart in hand, but pointed out across the starboard bow.
“Now treachery,” breathed Bentley, but the woman responded sharply.
“He will save your life,” she said. “Would your Captain Kaye do that? Or that of your luckless friend he has abandoned? Even now he’d drive us on them, if we allowed him opportunity. If we stand clear he will come up with us, what’s more. Mr Kershaw has been persuaded to give us all some chance, that’s all.”
True it was that Biter was drawing close. In the increasing wind she still could hold her canvas, while the lugger, with too much astern and not enough ahead, was developing a tendency to yaw and wallow. But Will had seen the brig brought on like this before.
“It is a trick to lure him on the sands,” he said. “The Biter draws at least two feet on us, and Kershaw knows it. It could be bloody carnage.”
The helmsman altered course at the Englishman’s direction, and the people, when they’d tended sheets, were set on to clearing boats. There were three on board the lugger, two of twenty-five feet or so, one of twenty-two. The foreyard, in dropping, had damaged one of the larger, although she still looked seaworthy enough for reasonable seas, short distances. The seas around them were getting worse as the water shallowed across the banks, though. Over to larboard they were breaking on the sands, like insane waterspouts. As a lifeboat, Will considered, she would be of fearsome little use.
On a rush of anger, he left Céline and strode across to Kershaw, who was staring out ahead.
“Sir! Are you in league with them? Have you no shame, sir! If Biter goes on ground, there will be your comrades dead! Give up the con! I order you!”
He was ridiculous, and it engulfed him. He was powerless, and it cut him deep with shame. But Kershaw’s face was fixed and tense, the muscles in his jaw standing through the skin. He did not reply.
There was a black squall coming up astern of them, and to starboard there was also broken water up ahead. Only dead before the stempost was the surface relatively flat, although even here the sea was soupy with the sand that hung in it. The moon was sinking, its light less strong, with the forward-reaching cloud fronds almost up to it. Each person on the quarterdeck eyed the squall in silent fear. Suddenly, Will hoped desperately Kershaw had got it right. Below them was the bottom, they did not know how far. The tension in his guts was horrifying.
“She is firing!”
It was Céline who’d shouted, who had seen the flash. At the instant came the report, ragged in the wind that also tore the smoke away. And the Biter; helm hard down, was rounding up to stop her headlong dash.
“Kaye’s warning us,” said Will. “A warning shot.”
“Mr Gunning,” Kershaw said, as if in conversation. “I said he knows these waters, he is a seaman born.”
“I hope you do, sir!” said Bentley heatedly, and as he spoke the lugger struck, with a stagger and a lurch that threw men — and Céline — off their feet, and with an appalling, tearing crash brought down the damaged foremast, which toppled forward almost slowly, like a felled tree in a forest, its square black sail spreading out to shroud the waters up ahead.
In the confusion on the deck, Will found his head was close to Kershaw’s, and, most bizarrely, Kershaw smiled.
“Ah, that I do,” he said. “Indeed.”
For a moment, the hull under them was firm as any jetty, but the sensation did not last for long. The wind, which may have paused in the seconds before the squall hit them, tore down with screaming intensity as the night went irrevocably black. The seas, which had lifted them along quite easily, began to strike, and pour, and rend, and swirl across the afterdeck, bursting up as driven, bitter spray as each new wave struck the stern. Will scrambled to his feet to be knocked over instantly, and shot along like garbage in the flood. He hit the mainmast, grabbed on to it, then grabbed Céline as she swept by, coughing and retching water. With the squall came rain, in gigantic, stinging lumps, and out of it, when the sea voided itself into the waist, came Kershaw crawling also.
“Let’s get that mainsheet cut,” he said, and snaked off to leeward, smiling like a dog. He’s mad, thought Will. He’s gone completely mad.
Whatever, Kershaw was too late to free the sheet, because the weight of wind in the mainsail broached the lugger, as she lifted to a sea, right round to larboard till she lay along the troughs. In a lightening of the black, Will saw the damaged boat, half full of men, lifted bodily and neatly overside, where she landed bottom downwards and bobbed as safely as a duckpond toy. Without hesitation, they made shift to ship their oars, and pulled back towards the lugger to pick up other men. By now the deck was thronged, despite appalling danger from the seas that raked it.
For a minute or two Will was lost, drowned in another comber, and the world blacked out. Then, as lightning began to flicker, he watched the smallest boat lift off the waist-deck, scattering the men who’d cleared her from a mess of fallen gear, and swing along the lee side, still inside the bulwarks but afloat, then come for him as if a charging bull, unmanned and empty, heading to cross the taffrail and away. But as she passed him, Kershaw caught her bow-line in his only hand, swinging himself around a mast-stay to take a turn with it. As the yawls stem jerked and the hull swung in an afterwards arc over the side and in again, Kershaw let out an awful, cut-off scream as the stay bit deep into his stomach, enough to break his back. The gunwale hit Bentley low across the groin, dissolving his sight into a flash of agony, and when he saw again, the boat — with him inside it on the bottomboards — was ten feet or more beyond the lugger’s stern. Almost in it, by some miracle he could not guess at, was Kershaw draped across the bow, his trunk inside, legs out, and, clinging to the starboard side, Céline and a French smuggler.
“Help me,” said Céline. “My arm, my arm.”
But Will, try as he might, could hardly move, so violent had the blow across his stomach been. He got to them, and took her shoulder, but he had almost no strength at all to pull. The Frenchman, whose face was pale and desperate, used all his failing energy to get her higher from the sea, then, having looped her arm into the boat, lifted her leg until Bentley could pull her knee on board. Five minutes later, when Céline lay in the bottom vomiting water, the Frenchman gave up the fight, released his hold, and slipped beneath the waves. Kershaw, although he seemed to cling there, was already dead.
THIRTY
The lugger had been built of fir for speed and lightness, not long life. Over the next short, endless minutes in the lightning storm, Will saw her breaking up as she was pounded on the Goodwin Sands. He should have gone to her, to aid the desperate men, but there was nothing he could do but wait for his own death. His legs were numbed to uselessness, Céline was sitting on the bottomboards in swirling, slopping water, incapable, and Kershaw never moved. Will shipped one oar over the stern to try to get her prow into the wind and stop her filling, but the dead weight at the stem, and Kershaw’s trailing legs, made that impossible; she rolled, and rolled, and slowly filled. It would be a short time only before she was waterlogged and sank.
The blackness of the squall was of a great intensity, but the lightning play, for a time, was almost constant. In it, he saw the Biter’s boats run down on the lugger like so many jackals, but not to rend, to save. They came down under rags of sail, filled up with men, then sailed off across the wind to where Gunning had placed the ship, upwind of the banks but towards the Kentish coast to give an angle they could fight to. As the lugger’s mainmast
went overside, as she was pounded into pieces, pass after pass was made, and many men were saved. Kaye’s operation, Bentley knew, was cool, and brave, and brilliant. Whatever Céline said about their lordships’ attitudes to the lugger’s secret work, it seemed inevitable that he must he lauded for it. As he himself, inevitably, would drift to leeward to smash on the shoals, or merely be swamped, and drown.
In one long flicker, Céline was moving. She rolled on to her side, got on to hands and knees, then went forward. She kept her body low, pressing to the thwarts when she came to them, until she reached the bow. Her weight, with Kershaw’s, made the many gallons in the bilge rush forward, so the gunwale came alarmingly closer to the broken surface. Will shouted, but she did not hear, and suddenly stood up, thrust her head close to the broken man’s to check, then seized him by the shoulders, lifted, and pushed. Another shout, this one of horror and astonishment, still no response. For one instant, he was face to face with Kershaw, then he was gone. No impression of expression, nothing, just a blank. Then Céline twisted, and launched herself back towards the middle, and the yawl rode easier.
“Was he dead?” said William, to the roaring wind, but Céline was feet away, bailing with a canvas bucket, going like a foundryman. She was in a sea cloak, on her knees, feet sticking out of it and one shoe lost. The water shot across the side in a pulsing, constant stream. Jesu, thought Will; we might get out of this.
Down to the lee there was still clear water, or clearish anyway. Over to the eastward the breaking seas were worst, but to the west the boat looked to be beyond the vilest jumble. The lugger was lost to sight by now, although Biter’s top hamper still appeared in flashes, which were growing fewer by the minute. The squall was passing, although the wind was still extremely hard. Somewhere in the dark — not all that far — there lay the coast of Kent. For the first time, it occurred to him that they could get to it. Acknowledging its pointlessness, he unshipped his oar from the quarter and joined Céline down in the bilges with another bucket, despite his wrenching stomach pain. She did not speak, but he got a flash of smile. She had her tongue-tip gripped between her teeth. In five minutes of intensive labour, the bot-tomboards stood proud.
