Under Enemy Colours

by Sean Thomas Russell

  “Fore-topsail brace, larboard side, shot away. ”

  “Main topsail hanging in her gear, Mr Philpott.”

  “Main starboard shrouds in a hell of a mess, sir,” whispered the bosun.

  “Will they stand, Mr Plym?” Philpott asked.

  “May’est, in this little breeze, sir.”

  “We’ll jury-rig what we can, Mr Plym. Reeve a new fore-topsail brace, to begin. That sail will be needed.”

  “Lash the main topsail yard to the rigging,” Hayden whispered up to the men. “Let’s not have it coming down on our heads.”

  The yards were braced around and the sails filled. The ship seemed to hover, like a gull on the wind, and then began to make headway. In a moment there was a burble of water along her hull—three knots, or so Hayden guessed. He kept glancing up nervously at the main, expecting it to go over the side at any moment.

  Wickham popped out of the after companionway. “We’re making no water, Mr Hayden, as far as the carpenter can tell.” He came and stood by the wheel. “But we’ve one sizeable hole in the hull, three feet above the water line.”

  “Tell the carpenter to show no lights while he makes his repairs, even if we have to hang some old sails over the side.”

  “I already did, sir. He grumbled, but I explained that if our light were seen he’d have a few more holes to bung, maybe in his gut.”

  “Well said. Now take yourself out to the end of the jib-boom with a night glass, if you please. See if there is a brig or a transport somewhere before us. It wouldn’t do to collide with one in the dark.”

  Wickham jogged forward, disappearing in a few paces. Hayden could no longer see the bow of his own ship, for the stars sank into cloud and the fog was growing thicker by the moment. The breeze now was off the shore—almost due east—perfect for the Frenchman trying to make L’Orient before the British ships could overhaul them. Hayden took off his waist coat and half-covered the binnacle, smothering what little light there was. He could only just make out one of the compasses now, but was steering by the wind largely, anyway.

  “Now, if my waist coat doesn’t catch fire,” he muttered.

  One of the midshipmen appeared, his arm in a sling. “We have a bit of coloured glass we can slip into the binnacle, Mr Hayden. I’ll put the other light out. Can’t be seen at ten yard, then.”

  “Yes. Do that. How fares your arm?”

  “A few stitches. The doctor says not to use it for a week. Be right as rain, I’m sure.”

  Overhead, he could hear men working in the rigging. A line was carried aloft to haul up cables to replace the main shrouds that had been shot away. The men were working in almost complete darkness, but knew their little ship from keel to truck. Monkey fists thudded to the deck and crewmen fastened to these the materials needed for repairs, the bundles disappearing up into the darkness.

  A shadow with Mr Philpott’s voice appeared. “Shall I have you relieved at the helm, Mr Hayden?”

  “If you please, Mr Philpott.”

  A quartermaster’s mate took the helm, and Hayden fetched his waistcoat from the binnacle, where the middy had shipped a piece of smoke-stained glass to dim the compass light.

  “Where is the frigate that fired upon us?” Hayden asked. “Can any see her?”

  The lookouts all reported that she had been lost in the darkness and fog. A distant glow, bearing north-west by north, was almost certainly a light upon the Île de Groix.

  “Are you familiar with these waters?” Hayden asked Philpott.

  “Moderately so. Presently, we are in open water, perhaps six leagues south of L’Orient. The glow in the north-west is the light on the southern tip of the Île de Groix. There are sizeable fortifications there. To the east, the coast forms a long arc tending north then curving round to the west. But then, you likely know all this.”

  “On such a close night it is reassuring to hear another agree with one’s own perceptions. If we do not catch a Frenchman in the next two hours, Mr Philpott, I fear we shall be forced to give up this business.” Hayden searched the sky for a moment. “It seems we are in for a change of weather. This land breeze will die away and I would expect a wind from the south-east—perhaps a small gale. A little sea room would be welcomed.”

  Hayden made his way forward along the darkened deck. A distinct thud sounded a few feet ahead, followed by many curses and much muttering by the men on deck. It was a mallet fallen from above, it appeared.

  “You up there!” one of the waisters hissed. “Drop another like it and I’ll be up to pound your little toes to flats. Do you hear?”

  “Captain on deck,” a man near Hayden announced, and the argument died away.

  Hayden stepped carefully among the men working in the waist, and in a moment was on the forecastle. They seemed to have sailed out of the fog—or perhaps the land breeze was driving it back. “Wickham?” he whispered.

  “Here, Mr Hayden,” came the middy’s voice from somewhere out in the dark.

  “Any sign of our quarry?”

  Wickham came in along the bowsprit, landing nimbly on the deck, his natural agility unhampered by the darkness.

  “Can you see in the dark, Wickham?”

  Wickham chuckled. “Not quite, sir, but I flatter myself that I manage better than most. I think there is something in the distance. Do you see? Half a point to starboard and perhaps a third of a league distant …”

  Hayden tried to part the darkness, first with his naked eye, then with his night glass. “A lantern,” Hayden said. “Is it a lantern?”

  “That’s what I thought, sir. It blinks in and out as though obscured from time to time by sails or rigging.”

  “Or men upon a deck,” Hayden said.

  “That would likely mean she’s coming our way, sir.”

  “Precisely so.”

  “Is it the Themis, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Wickham. If it was the Themis that fired on us, Hart was not carrying two lanterns high on the main mast, so perhaps this is he.”

  “He’s turned back, then.”

  “So it would seem, unless a ship from L’Orient could have been carried here on this wind.”

  “It’s been blowing two hour, sir. At four knots that’s eight miles.”

  “Slip back along the deck. Tell every one to make not a sound. Enemy ship in the offing. Ask Mr Philpott to alter course to the west.”

  Wickham reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “Ship dead ahead!”

  Hayden whirled around. “Go, take the helm. Not a word of English from anyone.”

  Hayden cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, “Navire droit devant! À tribord toute!”*

  From out of the darkness came shouts in French, and as the Lucy veered to larboard, the bow of a large ship loomed over them. Hayden began cursing the ship in his most colourful French.

  An officer with a lantern in hand appeared at the rail.

  “Pourquoi voguez-vous toutes lumières éteintes?”† he demanded in a broad Provençal accent.

  “Une frégate anglaise nous a tiré dessus,” Hayden complained. “Look what a ruin she left us in.”

  “Where is she now, this frigate?” the man called.

  “Lost in the darkness two leagues astern, thank God.”

  As the ship passed, the man hastened along the deck so that they still might speak. Hayden kept pace, hurrying aft. At the taffrail the Frenchman stopped, still holding his lantern aloft.

  “How many were there? How many frigates?”

  “Two or three, a sloop, and a sixty-four-gun ship,” Hayden called.

  The officer swore, and in a moment the gloom swallowed him whole.

  There was not a sound on the Lucy for a long time, and then Philpott said under his breath, “Bless your linguistic gifts, Mr Hayden. They had guns run out.”

  “Yes,” Hayden answered. “They’d heard the cannon fire, no doubt. I think we should stand out to sea, Mr Philpott. Who knows how many French ships have put out from L’
Orient.”

  Men were sent to their stations to trim sail and brace the yards, course set to take them out into the deep Atlantic.

  Twenty

  The sun cleared the horizon, pressing back the cool night. A small breeze, east-south-east, brought the ships beneath the transitory shade of a passing cloud. Around the horizon, a dense, distant fog hung low over the sea, obscuring all but the highest terrain of the French shore. The Lucy appeared at the centre of a bubble of blue—sea and sky—surrounded by a thick, frosty haze. At the rail of the little brig-sloop stood Philpott, commander again, watching Hayden’s cutter rise on the dimpled swell as it made its way toward the Tenacious. In the raw light of the new sun, Philpott’s face appeared haggard and pensive. It had been the kind of night that aged a man—even a very young one.

  Philpott’s crew swarmed over the little brig-sloop, putting her shattered rigging to rights as she rolled and heaved on the slow, ocean swell. To the east, a similar scene of feverish activity was being re-enacted aboard the Tenacious, and upon the French frigate as well, for Bourne had put a prize crew aboard and taken her out to sea.

  “She looks a crack ship,” Wickham offered, waving a hand at the French vessel. “Not long off the stocks, I would wager.”

  Before Hayden could agree, the boat came alongside the British frigate and Hayden stood, balancing, waiting for the sea to lift him—ship and cutter not of one mind in their motion. Upon the crest, he grasped the ladder and swung his foot nimbly up as he had done many hundreds of times. In a moment he came over the rail, followed by Wickham, met there by a row of marines and a bosun smartly piping them aboard. The marines raised their muskets and fired a salute just as guns rang out from both the Lucy and the prize. Aboard all three ships Hayden was given a loud “huzza.”

  Bourne pumped his hand and a great smile spread over the captain’s face. “Welcome aboard, Mr Hayden. I believe I speak for all my officers and crew in expressing my most profound gratitude for delivering us from the French, for certainly we should all be prisoners upon Belle Île this morning if not for your swift action.”

  “The credit should be shared by Mr Philpott and the crew of the Lucy,” Hayden responded, a bit flustered by the praise. “And Mr Wickham, here, who detected the infantryman emerging from below the Frenchman’s deck only to be chased back down again.”

  Bourne shook Wickham by the hand. “You have my thanks, as well, Mr Wickham. Great powers of observation will stand you in good stead for a life at sea.” Bourne waved a hand aft. “Come down to my cabin, both of you. There are decisions to be made and I would hear your thoughts on these matters.”

  To be so included by such an officer left Wickham almost transported, but he managed to put one foot before the other. As they made their way along the deck, Bourne turned to Hayden. “I gather that was not your cannon fire last night sinking a French transport?”

  “No, sir. It was the poor Lucy receiving a broadside; we lost a man, too.”

  “I am sorry to hear it,” Bourne declared. “The brig seems quite heavily damaged for the victim of a few six-pounders …”

  “Doesn’t she though?” Hayden replied.

  Bourne’s look turned very sour, but he said nothing more.

  In the captain’s pleasant cabin the men were all seated and food and drink served by efficient servants. Hayden could not fail to note how happily these men went about their work, in contrast to the crew aboard the Themis, who all crept about in fear of undeserved censure and ceaseless humiliation.

  “Here is our present situation, gentlemen,” Bourne began, setting down his glass after offering a toast to their success and another to the King. “We are two leagues and a half distant from the French coast with an enemy frigate in our possession. Hart is nowhere in sight, though my lookout thought he detected a ship sailing north just before sunrise. She was lost in fog before any other saw her.”

  “North?” Hayden said. “That can’t have been the Themis. She was to sail south, down the coast of France and Spain all the way to Gibraltar.”

  “Well, then my man was wrong,” Bourne replied, “but Hart is still nowhere in sight and I fear has gone off about his own business and left you gentlemen behind. I can think of no other explanation for it.”

  Wickham glanced at Hayden, who had no answer for the unspoken question. Hayden was certain that Hart would leave him behind without an instant’s hesitation, but Wickham … That seemed unlikely in the extreme.

  “At least one French warship sailed from L’Orient last night. It passed us in the dark. Do you think the Themis might have been taken?” Wickham asked.

  “If she was,” Bourne replied, “Hart surrendered without even a pistol being fired, for we heard no cannonade other than the broadsides that apparently damaged the Lucy. Now, here is what I propose,” Bourne continued, not overly concerned with the fate of Captain Hart, apparently. “You will take the French ship Dragoon back to Plymouth. We will have to make up a prize crew as best we can. You have your dozen men from the Themis, and Mr Wickham, of course. I hate to take any men from the Lucy as she is undermanned as it is …” Bourne raised his hands. “I will have to make up the rest, in the absence of Captain Hart.”

  “Who will expect his share of the prize money all the same,” Hayden observed.

  Bourne’s benevolent look did not falter. “Well, Hart is gone and there is nothing for it. There are, aboard the French ship, many prisoners, though no small number took to the boats when the battle turned in our favour. But even so, there are still well over a hundred, though we killed as many.”

  “They lost a hundred men?” Wickham exclaimed.

  “Seventy-some infantrymen—many of whom were caught on the gun-deck by your fire—and then another sixty-odd from the ship’s crew. An awful tally, I fear, for such a short little action. And that does not take into account the wounded, all of whom are under the care of the French surgeon and his mates—about fifty men on the sick-and-hurt list, some most grievously injured.”

  “I have never heard the like …” Hayden said, almost at a loss for words.

  Bourne nodded, his manner now sober. “It was hot work and our broadsides at such short range took their toll.”

  “Even so …” Hayden put down his fork, his appetite gone.

  “We have little time to mourn the losses—on either side,” Bourne observed. “I would like to see the Dragoon safely back in England. She is a good, sound ship, though lightly built as these Frenchmen tend to be. Even so, I can’t think of any reason why she should not be bought into the service.”

  “I will gladly sail the prize home, but I wish Hart were present to give me this commission himself. He will likely be vexed when he finds I have gone off and taken Lord Arthur with me.”

  “Hart put you under my command. In his absence, and as we cannot know if we shall meet him again, I will give you orders to take command of the captured vessel and return her to Plymouth. Hart might complain as he likes, but I will take all responsibilities, and if the Admiralty have anything to say it will be me who answers. I wish to get you under way as quickly as possible. There is, yet, a French squadron in L’Orient and they might decide to come out and take their frigate back.” Bourne turned to the midshipman. “Mr Wickham, would you mind terribly if I had a word alone with Mr Hayden?”

  Wickham almost leapt to his feet. “Not at all, Captain Bourne.” The young middy was out the door in an instant.

  “What do you make of him?” Bourne asked, nodding to the just-closed door.

  “I think he’ll be a fine officer one day.”

  “That is what I think, as well.” Bourne sat back in his chair and regarded his former first lieutenant seriously. “You believe it was Hart fired on you last night, not a Frenchman?”

  “It is difficult to be certain, but I don’t think a French ship could have reached us so soon. The wind had not long turned.”

  “You carried your lights as we agreed?”

  “We did.”

  B
ourne looked troubled, confused. “It is a damned unpleasant business, though of course not unheard of. I’ve seen friend fire upon friend of a dark night, but even so …” Bourne shook his head. “Perhaps Hart has proceeded south and you are shut of him—you and young Wickham.”

  “But when I return to England I will be without a ship once again.”

  Bourne’s expressive face showed real dismay. “I will do what I can for you, Charles. Perhaps we can find you a first lieutenant’s position, at the very least. Less than you deserve, but upon a good ship with a fighting captain the opportunity to distinguish yourself in action will become a possibility.”

  “It would be a relief to have a captain eager to fight the enemy, rather than a captain I have to contest with to engage even a lowly transport.”

  “You did the best you could in a bad situation. Taking the transport at Brest and bringing the Lucy to our rescue should gain you some attention within the Admiralty. I shall do my part to see that they do, you may rely on that.”

  “You have ever been my greatest champion, Captain Bourne, for which I thank you.”

  “It is unfortunate that I have so little influence among the Lords Commissioners. Has not one of them a daughter you might marry?” A broad smile spread over the captain’s face. “Love, pure and true, might profit you greatly.”

  “Alas, the Lords of the Admiralty do not troll their daughters at the depths I swim.”

  Bourne laughed. “Alas for us both. I have my second lieutenant on the Dragoon. She sustained some damage to both hull and rig. Not so much that we will not all receive a pretty penny when she is bought into His Majesty’s Navy.” Bourne went to a diminutive writing-desk and took up some papers lying there. He passed Hayden a sheet. “Your orders.” This was followed by several letters. “I have written the Admiralty saying that, having lost contact with Captain Hart, and having no way of knowing when he might be met again, I have commissioned you to return with our prize to Plymouth. I have also given a full accounting of our battle at Belle Île, though saying nothing of your adventures during the night. I will leave that for you to report, though you might be circumspect regarding who fired on you in the darkness. Hart’s own log should tell the tale, not that it will matter. Such things happen and are seldom grounds for even the mildest sanction. An accident of war—regrettable but impossible to prevent. I’m sure you are anxious to be aboard your command.” Bourne touched a hand unconsciously to his wounded skull, his look of benevolent plea sure wavering.