His son had disputed the contention, on the very good grounds that there were men of high education and full bellies, surrounded by servants to see to their every comfort, well warmed by blazing fires and devoted families, who behaved like ravenous monsters. Incarcerated in Fleet Prison, they had found it necessary to take turns in sleeping to avoid being robbed of all they possessed, which stripped the scales from young John’s eyes, and his thinking had not altered with their subsequent flight. In the latter stages of their gentle arguments John Pearce was wont to point out to old Adam that being in Paris, in the midst of revolution going from euphoria to bedlam, they were surrounded by events which supported his argument. What did he face here?
‘We are crowded into an eighteen-foot cutter with supplies insufficient to keep us alive for very long. We have two choices, to drift around in the hope of rescue or to head east for land.’
‘That bein’ where?’ asked the man who had first spoken, his question producing nods in the others: clearly they were happy to see him take on the role of spokesman. Pearce concentrated on him, searching his face to try to discern the kind of man he was. The nose was flat as if it had been hit often and hard, the eyes were brown and small under heavy black brows, they topped by a flat forehead. Yet the look was not one of threat, more of enquiry.
‘France.’ Beside him Pearce could feel Michael shifting sideways to get his right hand free, something that did not go unnoticed: those small brown eyes flicked slightly and the brows knitted a fraction, though it was impossible to tell if that was caused by the answer or the Irishman’s movement. ‘Might I enquire as to your name?’
‘My mates call me Polly, and I can’t say the word “France” makes me happy.’
That name, with the obvious hard look of the man, nearly made Pearce smile, but that would be, he knew, unwise. ‘Then, Polly, if I may be permitted to call you that, I have to tell you that I do not feel competent to suggest any other course.’
‘You not bein’ a true lieutenant, like?’
‘You know?’
The positive reply was accompanied by nods from the rest of the tars. ‘It be a habit to find out about folk, Mr Pearce, an’ you bein’ you, that weren’t hard, it being special, like, that you was the prankster of the fleet.’
‘Leghorn?’
‘An’ the ladies thereof.’
‘I’m curious to know if such a reputation flatters me or damns me?’
‘Neither one nor t’other, but what happens to us here might have a bearing on that.’
‘So if I ordered you to row east, I might not be obeyed?’
‘Depends on if you is certain or not.’
Why do I think I like this man? Pearce thought. There is no passion in his speech, he is not trying to guy or overbear me, just asking the questions that are in every one of his shipmates’ minds.
‘If you know about me at all, it will not surprise you if I say I am not the man to navigate you to safety and I am of the opinion, formed by standing on the deck of the ship and seeing nothing even on a busy route, that to hope to be picked up by a passing vessel is too risky to contemplate. I would therefore suggest, since I am in no position to command…’ Pearce paused as Polly nodded: they both knew this cutter was a republic. ‘My view is the only safe course is to seek the nearest land.’
‘And I go with that,’ said Michael.
‘As will your two mates, Paddy, but I doubt Mr Pearce would mind if we stick in our ha’penny worth.’
‘Not at all.’
Polly raised his voice. ‘Seems right to me, lads, but it is up to you to speak your piece if’n you dispute it.’ The murmuring was low, no man prepared to speak other than to his nearest neighbour, this while Pearce was fixed by those small and unblinking eyes. After half a minute, Polly spoke again. ‘Seems, as is common, none of you have a voice, so I say we go with what the officer suggests.’ Again no one spoke up, so Polly added another opinion. ‘Then we’d best get our backs into it, mates, and say thank Christ that the way the sea is running is in our favour.’
Aboard the pinnace, there was certainly no republic: there might be a lieutenant and a midshipman aboard but there was also Ralph Barclay, and for all his infirmity and being in constant pain, he was still a senior post captain. With the cloud cover he decided on a direction of sailing by the location of the rising sun, as well as the north-east current which was common to this area, a good enough course until the sky cleared, hopefully at night, where the north star would help to guide them home.
If he was in pain it had no affect on his ability to command, and so ingrained were the habits of the service that no one, not even the most contentious lower-deck lawyer, of which there might well be a few aboard, was going to dispute with him, and that included the way he dealt with the loss of sight of the cutter and the suggestion from the lieutenant that they should instigate a search.
‘It is unfortunate, I grant you, but we must trust to the competence of the people aboard to look to themselves.’ Seeing his inferior about to protest he added sharp words. ‘Do you see Captain Daws or any sign of the other boats?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And what, pray, does that tell you?’ Faced with no reply it was easy to nail an end to any discussion, which he did with a firm tone. ‘It tells me, sir, that the amount of drift we have all suffered is substantial. It tells me that the cutter and the men aboard her could be miles distant. If we were safe on a ship, with sharp eyes high on the masthead, your notion would be a good one, but we are not. We are able to see no further than the wave height allows us and at some risk to ourselves, therefore we are constrained by circumstances to look to our own needs.’
Overheard by all aboard, it was easy to see it as a base appeal to their collective self-interest, so Ralph Barclay saw the need to give a nod to a more Christian notion, knowing he was on safe ground.
‘Your concern, Lieutenant, is commendable and is, I am sure, shared by all of us in this boat, as is fear for our own safety. But I am no tyrant, sir. If the sentiment lies with what you say I will abide by it.’
Another voice spoke, that of a man on the oars. ‘Would we be allowed to ask what the odds are, your honour?’
The speaker received a glare in response: no common seaman should address an officer so, yet some allowance had to be made for circumstance. ‘Fellow, if William Bligh can sail a boat over four and a half thousand miles to safety, I am sure I can get us all home and dry.’
That cheered all he faced and got them nodding; he would not look sideways to his right, where sat his wife. Then the man who had posed the question spoke again. ‘Thank you, your honour, much obliged.’
‘Lieutenant, I wish to take that man’s name, for I propose that a loss of discipline will not be to our benefit. The matter can be left till we reach England, but dealt with it must be. For now, I wish you to supervise the distribution of the rations, then we must rearrange the way the boat is manned to get maximum advantage for our rate of sailing.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘You know who is in that cutter, do you not, husband?’ Emily asked, her lips close to his ear.
His reply was made with his head down, and quietly. ‘It makes no odds, my dear, it could be the devil himself or my bosom companion, my thinking would not differ. You do not comprehend that we are in grave danger, being as we are in an overcrowded boat in a bad place. Biscay is home to many a violent storm and I have to tell you if we face one we will not be likely to survive it, for we will be swamped. The wind is favourable and the sea benign for the time of year, we have a window of hope but no more, so it is imperative that we take advantage of our good fortune.’
‘Yet you did not tell everyone that?’
‘It is our spirit as well as our luck which will get us to safety. Now I must ask you to leave me be.’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Lieutenant, some men on the larboard gunnels; let us see what better rate of sailing we can achieve.’
The orders that followed saw the sail ha
uled round to take more of the wind, the weight of bodies on the larboard side used to compensate the extra pressure, with the midshipman now sat with Ralph Barclay, doing what he was told on the tiller. When it came time to tack, the sail and bodies shifted, and if it was not fast sailing of the kind Ralph Barclay had experienced as a younger man, for being overcrowded the boat was low in the water, the increase in speed was obvious by the way the bows were now creating white spray every time they hit a wave.
Rowing was hard work, requiring constant changes of oarsmen to prevent fatigue, but that same current which was aiding Ralph Barclay was even more kind to John Pearce. If he was less the experienced sailor than a man he saw as his enemy, he knew well the reputation of Biscay, for that same sainted Captain McGann had told him of its troublesome vagaries on their voyage south. He, too, knew that a storm would likely prove fatal, so the way the rowers were rotated had to be tempered by the need to achieve as much speed as possible.
He was glad that those aboard had allowed him the authority to decide, though he worried as the day wore on that he had no certainty he was holding to a true course. He had set the prow to where the sun had risen to tinge the horizon but that was a pretty nebulous thing to rely on, and while he might suspect the current ran towards the shore he had no way of knowing, or any deep learning, to say if that was true.
His darker thoughts were relieved by his taking his turn on an oar, an act which got him a nod from the fellow called Polly, who, it turned out, had the surname of Parrat, which was close enough to the bird, especially spoken, to explain why he was so named. Just as he was willing to share the burden of toil, he was also well able to take instruction from the men around him, who knew how to best employ their sticks in the rolling waves, gaining as much speed from crest to trough as they could, then fighting to maintain it as they rose to the next, always careful to rest when all their oars could make contact with was fresh air.
One man – again they took turns – was tasked to stand in the prow and look out for any sign of a sail, in his hands two pieces of rope tied to the boat to make sure he did not go overboard if the cutter jibbed suddenly, but all every man employed saw was miles of deserted ocean. The winter day might be short, but it had enough hours to exhaust the entire complement, which presented Pearce with another dilemma: should they seek to row on through the night or rest? In the end it was a best guess to keep some men rowing so the cutter had way enough not to be broached, but with the minimum effort, this as the others took turns to sleep.
The sky began to break up overnight, which was a good thing, since the stars began to show, the mass of the Milky Way affording enough light to allow faces to be seen, but against that came an increase in wind and from the wrong quarter, which Pearce suspected to be the north or north-east, which made rowing into it much harder, as well as altering the run on the surface water. That meant more men had to eschew sleep and row to keep way on the boat.
He knew enough to be sure the current would be unaffected, just as he knew that what applied in terms of pressure to a deep-hulled ship did not apply to a cutter. Examining the sky, he tried without feeling much in the way of success to identify those objects Captain McGann had sought to teach him: the seven celestial bodies the older man had called shooting stars, by which he had been able to establish his position and plot a course. Failure to identify them all mattered little for what he required: all he needed was Polaris to set the prow to what he was sure was due east.
Way to the north, having made good progress throughout the daylight hours, Ralph Barclay welcomed that same clearing sky and the sight of that same North Star; his prow was set right towards it and the English Channel.
A sip of water and a couple of ship’s biscuits were not enough to provide sustenance for men working as hard as oarsmen, yet it was all they had and must be eked out. Nor was Pearce able to contemplate rest: if they tried to lie to, the wind, now strengthened, would drive them away from their hoped-for destination and that was another source of worry: Revolutionary France was not a happy place for which to aim and he knew that the coast where he hoped to make landfall was one of the most turbulent in that troubled country, even more so than Toulon.
The Vendée region had been in revolt against Paris for nearly a year, indeed he had heard himself of some of the horrors committed by both sides when he was off La Rochelle the previous autumn. Was that revolt still alive? If it was, he and his companions might be lucky enough to land in territory controlled by the so-called Chouans, the local forces fighting the armies ordered to pacify the region. Or they might land amongst the revolutionary army, which would be dangerous in the extreme.
The whole western part of France, from La Rochelle to Brittany, was reportedly soaked with the blood of the inhabitants, regardless of age or sex, as well as those sent to defeat them. The locals, led by priests and their landlords, fought with equal barbarity, showing no mercy to anyone they defeated and captured: like all civil wars it was ruthless, and pitted brother against brother, fathers against sons.
They would need great good fortune, a thought which gained something from the rising of the sun, the orange ball turning to gold right ahead of them, and so seeming to offer a prospect of salvation. It gave more than that, for the night had been bitterly cold, so the little heat they received as it rose in the sky, evident even at this time of year, was welcome. Looking into the salt-encrusted faces and red-rimmed eyes of his companions Pearce knew he would appear the same, knew that to blink brought on a sting, that to lick his lips was to be avoided, given it would only increase his thirst as he sucked in salt. And all around them was the rolling sea, nothing but that within sight as they crested each wave, no seabirds to hint at land nearby, which in turn produced gloom.
‘A sail, I saw a sail!’
‘Where away?’ Pearce shouted, before admonishing the men, who had turned, to keep rowing as they fell off the top of the wave. Making his way forward through the mass of bodies was difficult and he was aware that having risen again the lookout had not spotted what he believed he had seen previously: was it no more than a vision caused by wishful thinking?
‘There again, I see it, the tip of a mast, no two.’
John Pearce was with him now, his arms locked around the lookout’s body to steady himself, his sore eyes straining forward, his heart beating with hope. Then he saw it as well and he shouted back to confirm the sighting, to tell his rowers to pull like the devil, which he realised as soon as he spoke was the most unnecessary command he would ever issue.
Closing with that vessel took several exhausting hours, though it was quickly identified as a two-masted brigantine of small displacement. The opinion was that whoever was aboard her was no sailor, given the top hamper was all ahoo: the square-rigged foremast had nothing but half a main course drawing, and that was clewed up at one end. It was also obvious the cutter was making more progress in closing than the sailing ship, which given the favourable wind was ridiculous. It took all of the morning and half the afternoon to get within hailing distance, which did not produce much in the way of joy since John Pearce was told, in French, by a loud and angry individual who stayed out of sight, to stay away.
‘Whoever had charge of this barky is no sailor, Mr Pearce, she’s a’wallowing not sailing.’
Pearce nodded to Polly and hailed the ship again which produced another negative response, as well as a sort of argument. He suspected the men who were relying on him wondered what was being said in the shouted conversation being carried out in a language they could not understand, but he was in a poor position to enlighten them, given they were too low in the water to see on to the deck, even when the vessel was in a trough and they were on a crest. All he had to go by was that single, irate voice.
‘I have asked them,’ he said eventually, ‘or whoever the person is doing the talking, to take us aboard and he has refused.’
‘We’s shipwrecked,’ exclaimed one of the men on the oars. ‘They’s got to take us.’
; ‘They say they won’t. We are to stay away.’
‘Then why,’ Polly demanded, ‘if they mean to leave us, don’t they sheet home some sails proper and leave us behind? Even what they have, made taut, would be enough to show us a clean pair of heels.’
Pearce cupped his hands and shouted again, his tone harsh instead of the supplicant way he had called before, which had Polly asking him what he had said.
‘I said we are coming aboard, whether they like it or not.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pearce fully expected, as the prow of the cutter was aimed at the scantlings, to find the side suddenly filled with armed men, which, given they had few weapons with which to effect a boarding, served to underline how desperate was their situation. Yet not a soul appeared and the cutter clattered to the hull with little grace, the men of HMS Grampus, with the Pelicans at the fore, fatigued as they were, leaping for the bulwarks, rasping shouts coming from dry throats. What they saw on the deck stopped every man jack of them stone dead, most before they had both feet on the planking.
The priests and nuns, some thirty in number, knelt, heads bowed, and hands clasped together around rosaries, obviously praying, the low murmuring sound of their devotions like the buzz of a hive. Michael O’Hagan immediately crossed himself, this while Pearce held up a hand to still the exclamations coming from the men he led. Slowly they climbed down on to the deck and stood in a confused huddle, not knowing what to do, until Pearce spoke.
‘Michael, how do we address folk at prayer?’
The shake of his friend’s head left little choice but to advance towards the man leading the devotions, not that he was sure it was leadership, only that he was in front and separate from the rest. Stopping before the priest he took the time to look around a deck that was untidy in the extreme, with nothing shipshape: loose ropes hung down from the masts and bits of half-unfolded canvas lay here and there. Also he thought he saw, in a stain in the unclean deck, a black shapeless mark that could be blood.
An Ill Wind Page 20
