The King's Shilling

by David Starr

  “Steady lads,” says Rowe reassuringly. “Wait for it, wait for…” Before he can finish his sentence a large puff of smoke and a distant rumble erupt from the gunboat’s large cannon. My mind has barely time to register what I see when the whole world explodes in noise and fire.

  A Russian cannonball slams into the side of the ship, tearing through the wooden hull. I’m thrown to the deck with the force of the impact, my ears ringing so loud it feels like church bells are peeling in my brain.

  Our guns return fire. The noise is terrible, like thunder, like a hurricane. The deck shakes beneath me, my eyes sting from the smoke, and the acrid odour of the burnt powder envelops my nose.

  I try to stand up but a terrible pain erupts in my thigh. I collapse back down to the deck, looking to my leg to see a large jagged splinter, about the size of a belaying pin sticking out of my flesh. My breeches are stained red, with blood pouring out of me onto the deck.

  I grab hold of the splinter with both hands, and with sweat dripping in streams off my face, I pull, screaming in agony as the wood slides out of my leg. My stomach heaves, I feel as if I will faint, but know that if I do, I’ll bleed to death.

  Wood removed, I take the kerchief off my head and wrap it tightly around my leg. It staunches the blood but does little to stop the pain. I am staggering to my feet when another shot smashes into the sides of the ship, knocking me down once more. More splinters fly through the air, though mercifully none hit me this time. Others, however, are not so lucky.

  Men, whole or in pieces, lie strewn across the gun deck. Some are alive, though ripped apart by shot and splinters. Their cries are horrific: high-pitched squeals, low agonizing moans and everything in between.

  “Help me! For pity’s sake, help me!” screams someone through the smoke. Although some of Cerberus’ cannons still fire, our own is silent. There is no crew left to man it but me.

  Haggis is dead. He has taken a direct hit, his body nearly shot in half by the cannonball, his guts pouring out of his stomach, a lake of blood spreading across the deck. I can’t see the Freds, Dutch, Yankee Bill or Tom through the smoke, though they must be close by, somewhere.

  Then, at the edge of my vision, something moves. I stagger slowly through the smoke to see a shape several feet away. It is Midshipman Figg. Pudding lies slumped over, one hand to his throat, the other flopping like a fish.

  A large shard of wood sticks out of his neck, larger by far than the one I pulled from my leg. Blood pours from the wound as Figg tries to say something, but his lips move soundlessly, and I look helplessly down on him until a mass of blood bubbles out of his silent lips, his eyes roll back in their sockets. His arm falls still.

  “Trap! Help!” I tear my eyes from Figg, and as the smoke clears, I see Yankee Bill with Tom. Tom is barely conscious by the looks of things, sprawled on the deck. “Bull’s hurt! Help me get him to the surgeon!”

  I move as quickly as I can. Between the gunfire, the blood on the deck and my leg, it’s difficult, but I’m soon standing beside Bill, horrified by what I see. Tom’s right leg is nearly shot away. It hangs at an awkward angle above his knee, jagged bone sticking out of the wound.

  I wrap the wound with his kerchief, to try to stop the blood that pours out of his leg, but there’s nothing the cloth can do to fix the bone.

  “Let’s get him up,” I say. I drape one of Tom’s arms over my shoulder, and with Bill doing the same, we start to make our way to the hatch. Doctor Torrance is below on the mess deck, no doubt already busy judging by the scene of carnage around me.

  “Leave me be, and fire the gun!” gasps Tom.

  “Nae!” I say. “We’re taking ye to Doc Torrance! Ye need help or ye’ll die!”

  But Tom is having none of it. “We’ll all die if that big gun hits us again. Blow it out of the sea, Trap. Fire the cannon! Fire now!”

  “He’s right,” says Bill. “We have to do it.” The Russian gun-boat is almost upon us. We place Tom gently back onto the deck beside the cannon, with Bill wrapping another kerchief around Tom’s shattered leg, trying to stem the blood that flows like a river.

  The cannon is loaded, primed and ready to go. All that’s left for me to do is pull the lanyard and fire. I’ve seen Tom shoot on several occasions, know what to do, but have never fired it myself. I stare down the barrel, the gunship rising and falling on the waves, now less than one hundred yards away.

  “On the down roll,” wheezes Tom. “Shoot on the down roll.”

  I steady my shaking hand, wipe the sweat and grime away from my eyes, and hold tightly onto the lanyard. “One shot, Duncan,” he says, his voice is so soft I can hardly hear him. “One good shot is all we need.”

  I watch as the Russian gun crew tamps down another load of shot, preparing to fire again. Others load their carronades. Any minute now fire and death will fly from their cannon. Cerberus is already damaged, goodness knows what a direct hit from this distance will do to us.

  “On the down roll.” Tom is even quieter this time. “On the down roll.” We rise gently on a wave, the cannon aimed at nothing but blue sky until we dip down into the wave’s trough, and the bow of the approaching gunboat is all I can see. I brace myself, then pull the lanyard.

  I almost forget to move as the gun rolls back, and am nearly mowed down by it. I leap out of the way just in time and before I get back to my feet I hear a great cheer from the deck. I stumble to the gun port to discover by some great miracle I’ve not only managed to hit the Russians, but I’ve blown their cannon to pieces.

  I must have hit a powder magazine as well; a great cloud of smoke and fire rises up from the gunboat, its crew now in complete disarray. I watch in detached horror as a Russian sailor, completely engulfed in flames, jumps screaming from the deck of his ship into the sea. But I don’t care about the Russians. All that’s important to me now is taking Tom to Doctor Torrance.

  “Bill!” I shout, running over to my friend. “We need to get him to the doctor now!”

  Tom looks up to me, his face ashen. His eyes are barely slits, a thin trail of blood runs out from his lips. “There ain’t much Doc Torrance can do for me now, Duncan.”

  “Just hang on, Tom,” I cry. “We’ll get ye help!”

  “Your sister.” Tom’s voice is now so soft I have to put my ear right to his face. “I was wrong about your stars. When you get back, go find her.” Tom’s eyes shut for a few seconds, his breath coming in rattled gasps. “Sorry, Duncan. This isn’t how I imagined our adventures together endin’.”

  “Ye’ll be fine,” I weep, hugging my friend tightly, knowing it a lie as the words come out of my mouth.

  “Bill! Help me lift him!” I cry, but he doesn’t move, just looks at me sadly as he stands over Tom’s still form. Tom’s eyes are open but they don’t blink.

  His chest is still, no longer rising and falling with the beat of his heart. Even then I frantically pull on Tom’s arm, trying to get him to his feet.

  “Bill! Will ye not help!”

  “I’m so sorry, Trap,” Bill says, his own eyes glistening with tears. “Tom’s beyond our help now.”

  Chapter 21

  Captain Whitby himself says I’m a hero, that I saved Cerberus. “And more than that, lad,” he says, visiting me as I’m tended by Doctor Torrance. “We won a great victory. Prometheus even launched her own ship’s boats to counterattack. We destroyed two Russian ships and captured the rest.”

  I wince as Torrance sticks his curved needle into my leg, drawing another stitch though the skin. “Thank ye, Sir. I’m honoured to have done my duty.” But in truth I don’t care about my duty, nor do I think I’m a hero. I could have easily missed the Russian gunboat, and ended up dead or shot to pieces like Tom, and so many others.

  “You see things in battle that you can’t unsee, if you know what I mean, Trap. Cannon fire can do terrible things to flesh.”

  Tom told me that. I didn’t truly understand what he meant until today, until I saw with my own eyes just what war does t
o a man. Battle is no grand adventure; it is an abattoir.

  The blood of my friends and the choking odour of gunpowder stains my clothes, my hair and my skin. The stink of war has set into my body so deep that bucketloads of sea water are unable to wash it out. I fear the smell will linger in my nostrils forever. And I was the lucky one.

  My messmates bore the brunt of the Russian attack. Haggis, Tom, and Big Fred are dead, killed by shot and splinters. They lie piled with the other dead on the main deck. There will be a funeral, similar to that of the migrants who died on the Sylph when we travelled to Montreal. There will be a few words about their bravery and sacrifice, then my friends will be tossed overboard, swallowed by the sea. Gone forever.

  Those that still live are grievously wounded. Little Fred is blind in one eye from a splinter, and Dutch lost a hand. They are with a score of other injured sailors, fighting for their lives. Only Bill and I escaped relatively unscathed.

  “How are you doing?” Bill asks as the needle makes another pass through my leg. “How do you feel?”

  How do I feel? I feel grief so deep I can do nothing but stare blankly into space. I feel relief as well that I survived, but it is tainted by a deep guilt that such good men were taken, while I was spared.

  How do I feel as I sit here and have my torn leg attended to while Tom and Haggis and the others lie dead? Mostly I just feel numb.

  “Almost done, sailor,” says Doctor Torrance. “Half a dozen stitches more and you’ll be right as rain.”

  “Thank ye,” I say once more, though his words ring hollow in my ears.

  Right as rain.

  Doctor Torrance is wrong about that. I’ll not be right as rain again for as long as I live.

  Chapter 22

  “We’re going home, lads,” says Captain Whitby three days after the battle. “Prometheus, Minotaur and Princess Caroline will continue to hunt the Russians, while the Cerberus has been tasked with taking the wounded back to England.”

  Back to England.

  I greet the news with a silent prayer of thanks. Finally, I will get to meet Elizabeth Fry and learn what happened to my sister.

  The announcement is met with cheers of approval from the rest of the men. Cerberus was heavily damaged in the firefight. She has been patched up by the carpenters from wood salvaged from the destroyed Russian ship, but we are in need of greater repair than can be done at sea, in no shape to fight another battle.

  “We’ll also be escorting our prizes and our prisoners back to London,” the captain adds. “The Admiralty will appreciate the additions to the fleet we’ve provided them.”

  The men “huzzah” loudly at the remark. The Royal Navy has not become the largest fleet on earth thanks only to our shipyards. Dozens of our ships, from gunboats to ships of the line, have been captured from the Danes, the French, the Russians and any other nation that dares cross us. Several of the Russian ships are still serviceable, and though they pale in size to an English ship of the line, they will make admirable additions to the Royal Navy nevertheless.

  As far as the Russian sailors go, experienced seamen are far too dangerous to simply let go. If we dropped them off on an island and left them for their own navy to pick up, they’d be back on a ship within days, threatening British sails.

  No, their future involves iron bars, most likely on one of the prison ships floating on the Thames, where they will live and die until peace is restored — if it ever is. Wars have been known to last decades.

  “We’ll need to reorganize the crew,” says Lieutenant Murray. “Half of each watch will be assigned to one of the captured ships to sail them under the command of a midshipman. A Marine contingent will be placed on board each one as well, to guard the prisoners who will be locked up in the holds. Bosun Watson will give you your assignments. Disperse! Two weeks hard sailing and we’ll be at Gravesend!”

  I stay aboard Cerberus. Though my injury is slight compared to those of some of the men, I’m not fit for my regular duties, so I’m put to work on the quarterdeck, keeping an extra eye for sails. We sail into the wind as the frigate leads the small flotilla back to England, our progress slow as we head through the Baltic, the narrow straits around Amager Island, and back into the Skagerrak.

  When we are clear of the straits, I scan the endless ocean, keeping my eyes open for any sign of mast or sail, but see no warships of any navy. In truth I only half-look. My mind swirls. I’d loved life on the ship, being part of the crew. Tom, Haggis and the other lads had become my friends, my companions. My family. But now they are almost all gone. For a while it had been grand. Now? Life on this ship holds no attraction for me anymore.

  Libby. I have almost forgotten her, too wrapped up in the adventure of it all to worry about my sister, my real family. I can’t believe I was willing to forego her, to cast her aside. I’m ashamed of myself, that it took the deaths of Tom and the others to remember what is truly important. I will find my sister. I must.

  * * *

  We sail over the top of the Jutland peninsula and enter the slate waters of the North Sea. The wind is now at our back as we bear south. I scan the sea anxiously, looking for the first sign of land. “Penny for your thoughts,” says Bill.

  “’Tis been four years since my family left Scotland,” I tell him as I look to the west. My old home in the Highlands is over there somewhere, far out of view.

  “We’ve both been away a long time, Trap. I’ve not seen Halifax myself for seven years. I sometimes wonder if I ever will again.” A silence descends until Bill asks a cautious question.

  “I know you and Bull sailed together before, and that you left a sister behind in Liverpool, but I thought your name was John, but he called you Duncan. I was wondering…”

  “Aye, my real name is Duncan Scott and my sister’s name is Libby.” My friends on board have heard snippets of my story, know I left England for Canada, but I’ve kept much of the details to myself. Until now.

  Bill and I have become brothers, bonded by war and the death of our closest friends. If I can’t trust him with the truth, who can I? “Our journey began five years ago in Loch Tay, where we were chased off our land,” I begin.

  “That is quite a tale,” he says when I’m done. “So you’ll be looking to find your sister when we get back to England,

  then?”

  “Aye. And what will ye do when we’re paid out? Ye could go back to Nova Scotia, with some silver in yer pocket.” Four days at the most and we will be sailing up the Thames. Our duty to King and country is almost over.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Bill tells me, “but I ain’t sure I’m ready to go home yet.”

  “Will ye stay in the Royal Navy?”

  “I don’t think so,” he smiles ruefully. “After Tom and the other lads getting killed? I’m starting to think there are better ways to make a living. Who knows? I may stick with you. Searching for your sister seems a lot safer than shooting cannons in the Royal Navy. We’ve had enough of danger for one lifetime, don’t you think?”

  Chapter 23

  Three uneventful days pass until the cries of “Masthead there!” echo from the lookouts in the fore and mainmasts once more. Captain Whitby hurries out onto the quarterdeck, extends his looking glass, staring intently at the sails that have suddenly appeared far to the south.

  “Well this is a surprise,” he says to Lieutenant Murray, passing him the glass. “It’s the Caledonia! What the devil is Admiral Pellew doing out here?”

  A massive full-rigged ship of the line approaches, sails billowing like clouds. HMS Caledonia is monstrous, the Navy’s flagship, dwarfing Minotaur, Princess Caroline and even Prometheus. Cannon bristle from three gun decks. A ship that size with that much armament must have a crew of a thousand men or more, I know.

  Her very name comes as a surprise as well. I did, after all, spend more than a year in a wild territory thousands of miles away called New Caledonia. Caledonia is not alone. Another frigate, almost identical in size to Cerberus, floats in
the waves beside her. “That’s the Unicorn,” I hear Lieutenant Murray say. “Captain Kerr commands her if I’m not mistaken.”

  “He does at that,” Captain Whitby responds. “I wonder what that old shark is doing out here with the Admiral?”

  “We’ll soon find out, I wager,” says Lieutenant Murray. “It’s no accident they are here.”

  When the ships are two hundred yards apart, Caledonia runs up her signal flags. “Blue and yellow checks,” says Bill. “Rendezvous. They’ll be wanting to talk to the cap’n.”

  Cerberus launches her ship’s boat, both Captain Whitby and Lieutenant Murray aboard. It makes its way to Caledonia while we wait anxiously amid decks, our tension rising.

  “All hands!” commands Bosun Watson as Captain Whitby and the lieutenant return two hours later, faces set in stone, unreadable.

  “Men,” the captain says when the entire crew is assembled once more, waiting breathlessly for word. “I know I’d said we were sailing for London, but recent events have forced a change of plans.”

  “I’ve a feeling we ain’t going back to England quite yet, Trap,” whispers Bill. Similar hushed murmurs rise up from the men. Me? I feel numb at the words.

  “Avast! Eyes in the boat!” shouts Bosun Watson. At the command, we settle down to await further word. We’re one day shy of the Thames estuary. These “recent events” the captain speaks of do not bode well. Judging by the looks on the faces around me, few of the crew are happy, least of all me.

  “Admiral Pellew himself has requested our presence on an urgent mission,” says Captain Whitby. “While the French fleet has been greatly reduced, they still present a threat to British interests.” More hushed talk. There is now little doubt our time on board Cerberus will not end anytime soon.

  “Three British merchant ships have recently been sunk in the eastern Mediterranean by the French frigates Incorruptible and Revanche. The Admiralty itself has tasked Cerberus and Unicorn with finding them.”