by Seth Hunter
It was not until the smoke had cleared that Nathan was able to see the damage they had done. The hollow shot fired by the carronades was designed to break up on impact, showering the enemy deck with wood and metal. But at such close quarters it had punched jagged holes in her hull, knocking several gunports into one. The devastation on the gundeck must have been dreadful. Some of the guns had fired back, but not many, and Nathan could see no obvious signs of damage aboard the Swallow.
Someone on the schooner’s quarterdeck – Lisle himself, perhaps – must have finally realised what had happened and ordered the helmsmen to bear away. She answered well enough at first, but the Swallow was still coming round with the wind, gathering pace as she did so, and the two vessels were running side by side when the corvette fired her second broadside.
If Nathan still entertained a prejudice against carronades, he suspended it for the duration. At close range they gave the little sloop almost as much firepower as a ship of the line – which presumably was the purpose of installing them in pre ference to long guns. Mr Wallace was dancing with glee or astonishment – or both – and Nathan was about to issue a sharp reprimand when he remembered that this was the first time the man had seen his precious ordnance fired in anger. Thankfully, George Banjo was dashing from breech to breech, in that curious gait beloved of gunners, like a large ungainly bird, unused to walking, constantly doubling at the waist to peer through the gunports or check a powder charge or a flintlock. Lamb was doing the same thing, up with the forward guns, and Lieutenant-Captain Belli – where was Lieutenant-Captain Belli? Then he saw him, or rather what was left of him, stretched out on the gundeck with half his head missing and two of his Russians wailing over the ruin. Nathan opened his mouth to shout at them to carry him below, and then snapped it shut. They would not understand him, nor would they be able to carry the officer below, not unless they took a half-dozen men from the guns.
The Meshuda was drawing away from them now. Nathan doubted if she was a faster sailor, not with the wind on her beam, but the Swallow was still struggling to gain momentum from her standing start. Lisle clearly sought to take advantage of this, for instead of veering further to leeward, the schooner began to turn into the wind, and Nathan saw that he planned to cut across their bows and rake them with his remaining guns.
‘But two can play at that,’ Nathan said to himself. He grabbed the sailing master by the shoulder to catch his atten tion, for they were both deafened by the guns, and shouted instructions in his ear. Tully heard enough to have the gun crews racing across the deck, and they already had the larboard guns run out and aimed as the Swallow cut across the schooner’s wake. This time the smoke was blown forward and Nathan had a clear view of the effect, as one by one his cannonades discharged into the Meshuda’s stern.
The first six were double-shotted and at that range they simply blew the stern apart, smashing through the windows and the ornate gilt scrolling and hurtling the length of her gundeck. The next six fired grapeshot – 200 musket balls to every gun, released from their canvas bags at the moment of firing. Nathan could see clear through the gaping holes, and even in the fury of battle he winced at the havoc they had caused.
But ironically it was the 6-pounders on the quarterdeck that did the most damage, for one of them carried away the helm, killing or maiming the two quartermasters and cutting the cable between wheel and rudder so she could no longer steer.
The Swallow came up on her starboard side and Nathan ordered his men to hold their fire, willing the schooner to strike for it was plain that she could not bring her broadside to bear. Lisle’s men were still firing back with the swivel guns in the tops – and with some effect, for they were firing straight down onto the corvette’s exposed gundeck. Men were going down like skittles and with a shock that was like a physical blow, Nathan saw that one of them was Lamb. He started forward but Tully reached the boy first and lifted his head gently from the deck.
‘Load up with chain,’ Nathan ordered, almost sorrowfully. ‘Maximum elevation.’ And they fired the next broadside into the masts, clearing the marksmen out of the tops and tearing through the rigging like a gale through a forest.
And so the Meshuda drifted, rudderless, her sails in tatters, onto the bank.
Chapter Nineteen
The Butcher’s Bill
Nathan backed the mizzen and they lay off the Meshuda’s bow at a distance of a pistol shot, while they swabbed out the Swallow’s guns and reloaded. But there was no fight left in in the schooner, and the wailing of the wounded, carried across to them on the wind, was piteous to hear. Nathan had Cathcart hail them in English, Turkish and Arabic, calling on them to strike. And to his immense relief the green flag came down from the mizzen and it was ended.
He left Tully in command and took his barge over, with the launch and the cutter, all loaded to the gunwales with armed men for fear of treachery, but it was not guns they needed now, and all the swabs in the world would not have mopped up the blood on that benighted deck. Nathan had never seen anything like it, not even in the two great battles he had fought with Jervis and with Hood. He stood gazing around him, stupefied, at the debris of dismounted guns and shattered timbers. The bodies and body parts, the severed heads, arms, legs … And the crawling, crying wounded, the arms stretched out, the screams and lamentations, the frantic petition to Allah, Allah … Allah the merciful. And the others who simply looked at them, dully or accusingly, helplessly or with eyes filled with hate.
He remembered Mr Wallace dancing with joy when he saw the effect on the schooner’s timbers. Well, he should see the effect now on human flesh.
And yet Wallace could not be blamed for this. Wallace was as much a machine as the carronades themselves. It was the ship’s Captain who gave the order.
Nathan stumbled towards the quarterdeck, watching where he put his feet, avoiding the eyes of the men who still had eyes to see.
Imlay was already there, talking to someone – and in English – a short, stocky man with a reddish beard, dressed all in white: white shirt, white pants, even a white turban round his head, spotless white amidst all that blood and gore. Nathan stared in astonishment and something like awe, as if he had been chasing a myth all that way from Tripoli, and not a living man.
Murad Reis, Admiral of the Fleet, formerly Able Seaman Peter Lisle of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy.
He gave Nathan an elaborate bow that might have been ironic, and Nathan nodded stiffly, wondering if he should hang him now or later, for he was a deserter and a renegade – and someone had to pay for the carnage on that ship. But Peter Lisle could wait. There were other priorities.
They found her in the orlop, beneath the waterline, where she had been stowed for the duration of the battle. Louisa Jane Devereux of Virginia. Dressed, for some reason, in men’s clothing and, in contrast to Lisle, all in black, with a turban wound round the blonde tresses that Nathan had last seen hanging down from the balustrade of the American Consul’s house in Venice. Her face was less perfect now – rather grubby, in fact – and she was crouched against the bulwarks like a trembling animal, a fist pressed into her mouth and her eyes uncommonly bright. An animal, or a creature from Bedlam.
Imlay spoke to her gently. He was an American, he said, sent by her father and the President to rescue her. She was safe now, in good hands, and soon she would be reunited with her father in Naples. This was the first Nathan had heard of it, but he gave Imlay the benefit of the doubt for once.
Spiridion had rounded on Lisle. ‘Where is the other woman?’ he snapped.
The Scot shrugged. ‘Naudé took her,’ he said.
‘Naudé took her? Took her where?’
‘To Cairo.’
‘Cairo? Why?’
‘Why? You must ask the Frenchman that. And the woman.’
Spiridion leaned towards him. His voice was now almost as soft as Imlay’s. ‘I am asking you, Lisle. And by God, you had better tell me.’
He was a much bigger man than the Scot but th
ere was no fear in the man’s eyes. If anything, it was a look of bored contempt.
‘That is all I can tell you,’ he said. ‘He said he was going to Cairo and that he was taking her with him.’
‘And she went willingly?’
‘I heard no complaint.’
‘So why did you bring them here from Tripoli?’ Nathan demanded.
‘Because I was paid to,’ Lisle said simply. ‘By the Frenchman. And they made no complaint about that, either.’ He looked at the woman on the floor. ‘Not until you came along.’
‘So why did you come here?’ Nathan persevered. ‘To Abukir?’
Another insolent shrug, or perhaps it was simply disinterested.
‘Because the Frenchman wanted to come here,’ he said, ‘and he was paying.’
They made him take them to his cabin and there were the charts spread across his table – detailed soundings of Abukir and another beach called Marabut, closer to Alexandria. But nothing else. If there were any written orders, they did not find them, and Lisle claimed to be entirely ignorant of the French intentions.
The ‘Frenchman’, as he persisted in calling Naudé, had engaged them to conduct a hydrographical survey – he had no idea of the reason why.
Nathan did not believe him, but he did not hang him. There had been enough deaths for one day. He left him there with his ship – and the dead and the dying and the wounded. In truth, he did not know what else to do with them. The schooner was too badly holed to take as a prize so far from home, even if they could have dragged her off the bank. Had she been a French ship he might have burned her to the waterline where she lay, but he still served King George, and King George was not at war with the Pasha of Tripoli. Besides, he had the wounded to consider, and at least they had a surgeon aboard the Meshuda who looked like he was trying not to kill them.
‘What is the butcher’s bill?’ he asked Tully as soon as he came aboard the Swallow.
‘Four dead, six wounded.’
‘Four? Only four?’ It seemed impossible after the slaughter he had seen aboard the Meshuda. ‘And Mr Lamb?’
‘He is alive, but …’
Nathan made his way down to the cockpit in the orlop. He could hear the screams long before he reached it. Three men were trying to hold down one of their shipmates while Kite sawed off his leg below the knee. Lamb was half-sitting against a bulkhead with his head turned away, ashen-faced, his expression twisted in horror or pain or both. He had a blood-soaked rag pressed to his shoulder. Nathan went to him and carefully eased it away. There was an ugly hole in the skin, just below the collarbone. A musket-ball, most like. He moved the boy forward slightly to examine his back, but there was no exit wound. The ball was still inside him.
Nathan leaned him gently back against the bulkhead.
‘You will be all right,’ he said as convincingly as he could. Then, lowering his voice, ‘I will not let that butcher near you.’
He found a clean bandage and bound up the wound as best he could.
‘Just bide there a while,’ he told the boy, as if he might consider taking a stroll. ‘I will be back soon with someone who can attend to you.’
But who else was there? He could not take the surgeon from the wounded in the Meshuda, even if he was willing to leave his crewmates.
He put the question to Spiridion when he returned to the quarterdeck. But for once the Greek was at a loss. ‘You might try the fort,’ he said. ‘But I do not think it would be wise.’
Nathan did not think so either. There had already been several speculative shots from the guns in the fort. Well short and wildly off target, but he would not care to test them by going closer.
‘Your best hope is Candia,’ Spiridion told him. ‘There are a number of doctors there – Greeks for the most part, and Venetians who have fled from the French. But you will have to bribe the Turkish Governor, I think. And it could take you a week to reach there if the wind does not pick up.’
The wind had dropped almost to nothing, but something strange seemed to have happened to the sky. It was no longer blue but curiously opaque, though there was not a cloud in sight, and the sun appeared as if veiled – Nathan could look on it without shielding his eyes. Spiridion had noticed it, too.
‘This I do not like,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you had better move further out to sea.’
‘You think there is a storm coming?’
Spiridion frowned. ‘Possibly. A kind of a storm.’ He seemed strangely distracted.
‘Well, there is no reason for us to stay here,’ said Nathan. He looked around for Imlay but he was nowhere to be seen. He had not seen him, in fact, since they came back from the Meshuda with the Consul’s daughter. ‘Pass the word for Mr Imlay,’ he said to one of the boys. He saw Tully talking to Cribb over on the opposite rail and made to move towards them. But Spiridion caught at his sleeve.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ he said. ‘Will you let me have a boat, so that I might go ashore?’ He looked away towards the distant beach. ‘I think there is time.’
Nathan was bemused. ‘Time for what? I thought you said it would not be wise to go ashore.’
‘I have to follow Naudé to Cairo.’ Spiridion dropped his voice. ‘I have to find out what has happened to Suora Caterina.’
‘Ah.’ Nathan nodded. Sister Caterina. He had almost forgotten her. ‘Do you not think Suora Caterina can look after herself?’ he enquired, for his experience of her in Venice, though brief, had assured him that she was a woman of some resource.
But Spiridion thought not; not in this instance. He did not believe she had chosen to accompany the Frenchman of her own free will. ‘And she has no friends in Cairo,’ he said. He felt it was his duty to help her if he could.
Nathan could not help wondering if there was more to this than loyalty to a fellow agent, but he knew better than to ask, or to try and talk him out of it.
‘But how will you get to Cairo?’ he asked him.
‘I will apply to the caravanserai for a mount.’ Spiridion nodded towards the stone building he had pointed out earlier on the far side of the bay on its little hump of hill. ‘I am perfectly able to take care of myself,’ he assured Nathan. ‘And of course, I will have Mr Banjo to assist me.’
Of course. Nathan could hardly keep Banjo aboard the Swallow, though he would dearly have liked to.
So he gave them a boat and wished them well, though he felt a great sense of loneliness as he watched them go, wondering if he would ever see either of them again.
He became aware of Imlay at his side.
‘I have sent Miss Devereaux below,’ he said, ‘with Qualtrough to attend to her.’
‘How is she?’
‘Very shocked, very low. It has been a terrible ordeal for her. I have put her in your cabin – I hope you do not mind.’
Nathan wondered what was wrong with Imlay’s cabin, but he let it pass.
‘The men behaved very well,’ said Imlay, looking down at them in the waist as they secured the guns, ‘do you not think?’
‘Very well,’ agreed Nathan, his mind on other things. He felt the hint of a breeze on his cheek, but not from the west. It had backed right round to the south-east. Cribb had felt it, too, and was giving orders to trim the sails.
‘And not for God, I think,’ Imlay went on, ‘nor King and Country, like your British seafarers.’
‘Some of them are British,’ Nathan pointed out.
‘But not many – and not under a British flag.’ He gazed up at the rattlesnake writhing now among the red stripes at their stern, as the wind lifted it. ‘Nor did they fight for Freedom,’ he said. He looked at Nathan. ‘So what did they fight for? Their pay – or the sheer joy of fighting?’
‘Or the sheer hell of it,’ said Nathan. He had no idea what men fought for. He wondered sometimes what he fought for. But now was not the time. He raised his eyes to the sky. It was darker; darker than it had any business to be at this time of day, and the sun a pale, veiled countenance, dropping to the west. ‘Y
ou tell me.’
‘Oh, I merely ask the question. I do not know the answer.’ Imlay beamed amiably. ‘But we won,’ he said, ‘that is the important thing. I believe you sent for me?’
‘Yes.’ Nathan told him of his intention to sail for Crete and why.
It was not well received.
‘I told Louisa I would take her back to her father,’ said Imlay. ‘In Naples.’
‘And so we will. But first we must go to Crete to treat our wounded.’
‘Well, I suppose it is on the way,’ conceded Imlay doubtfully.
Nathan left him standing there with his scowling face and crossed the deck to join Tully and Cribb. He was halfway there when a sudden gust of wind laid them hard over and he finished at a run, clutching at the rail. Cribb was already roaring at the topmen to take in sail. There was another gust, not so strong, but Nathan felt the heat of it on his face, as if he had opened an oven door.
‘Dear God,’ said Tully, staring off towards the shore. ‘What has happened to the horizon?’
Chapter Twenty
A Wind of the Desert
It was like a wall of sand rolling across the desert and into the sea. And with it came the wind.
The khamsin, Cathcart called it, a wind out of the desert. And it seemed to bring most of the desert with it.
They had barely reefed sail and got the boats aboard when it struck them. A blast from Hell that heeled them over almost onto their beam ends and then drove them before it into the open sea – at least so Nathan hoped, for it was like navigating in a fog, save that the air was thick with stinging sand. First it wiped out the sun, then the sky, then the mastheads until he could see no more than a few feet before his face. The crew staggered blindly about the deck or sought what shelter they could, neckerchiefs tied round nose, mouth, even eyes. Nathan, who had no handkerchief, could only crouch in the lee of the binnacle, with his hand clamped about his face to filter the gritty particles.
