by Seth Hunter
‘It is the French,’ said Joyce when Nathan reached the quarterdeck. ‘They are coming out.’
Chapter Fifteen
The Chase
Nathan’s appearance on deck was greeted by another rippling broadside and in the fierce, flickering light Nathan saw them. About a mile to the south-east, outlined against the night sky. Two of them at least, under full sail, and he had no reason to doubt the others were there, still hidden in the darkness towards the shore. It looked like they had tried to break out to the south on the flood tide, hugging the coast as closely as they dared, but they had been spotted, probably at the last minute, by the Bombay in the mouth of the river and she had moved to intercept them. And now there was a running battle to the south, with the Bombay engaged at close quarters with the lead ship, which must surely be the big French frigate, the Forte.
By the curse of fortune, the blockading squadron had been on the starboard tack when the French came out, nearing the top of their long loop to the north. So they were a good mile or so from the action when the Bombay fired her first broadside, and the distance lengthening with every minute until they could come about. Aboard the Pondicherry there was a frantic sense of urgency, the air filled with the fiendish wail of boatswain’s pipes and the decks packed with running men as the off-duty watch tumbled up from below. Tully had four men heaving at the helm as the bows began their laborious journey through fifteen points of the compass and Joyce was bellowing with all his considerable might, as if the power of his lungs alone could trim the sails.
Nathan watched in a fever of impatience, hugely frustrated by his inactivity. In the Unicorn he would have swung the ship’s head right up into the wind and beyond, until the sails filled on the opposite tack, and she would have been hurtling into battle by now, clearing for action. But the Cherry was not the Unicorn, and Tully would not risk laying her in irons. So he let her fall right off, swinging her fat stern to the wind.
Slowly, slowly the bows came round. Nathan had never seen anything so slow, not so much Hannibal as a great lumbering elephant; it was all he could do to restrain himself from adding his voice to Joyce’s, for all the good that would do. But at last they were round, the sails luffing and then filling on the larboard tack with a crack that echoed the sound of the distant guns.
Tully was already calling for more canvas. The sailing master, Mr Olafson, aimed his speaking trumpet at the tops, and the marine drummer – but no, Nathan had to remind himself, they had no marines – the drummer of the 12th Foot, was beating to quarters. But they had fallen way, way to windward, further even than Nathan had feared. He could not see Tully’s face in the darkness but he knew how he must be feeling, for his last command had been the Bonaventure, a fast French corsair they had taken off Corfu, and she could have turned on a sixpence. They had near a mile and a half now to make up, and the battle was still moving away from them. Worse, and to Nathan’s despair, the rest of the squadron was following them round as if they were still on blockade duty, maintaining their course until they reached the exact position from which Pondicherry had begun her own turn. Nathan raged inwardly as he watched them, sailing steadily ahead in their perfect line but away from the battle. It did not matter if they reached the battle like a mob on the rampage, so long as they reached it as fast as they possibly could.
‘Can you believe it?’ he said aloud as his impatience got the better of him. ‘Why do they not turn?’
‘They think you mean them to keep the line,’ said Joyce unhappily.
‘Obviously,’ Nathan snapped. ‘But is there not one among them who realises it is not the line that matters but the bloody battle?’
‘We could fire a gun,’ said Tully.
But Nathan feared a gun would only confuse them further. The Antelope was already beginning to wear with the Cornwallis coming up behind her; it was best now to let them be. But the Cherry was still coming round and she was about to cross the loop, just abaft the Eagle. Nathan grabbed the voice trumpet off the master and ran up onto the poop, a lone figure at the weather rail with the Union flag streaming out behind him. He raised the trumpet to his lips and shouted with all the force at his command, if not quite the full venom: ‘Mr Foley there!’ Foley, you damn fool, you whoremongering son of a bitch … ‘Turn! Turn now! Turn at once!’
But it was useless. Pissing into the wind. The Eagle sailed serenely on. But then he felt Tully’s hand on his shoulder and he saw the ship behind her breaking out of line, her bows turning to starboard. The little Comet. Nathan watched anxiously lest she be laid aback, but she continued to swing round, right into the teeth of the wind. Further, further, until the slack sails filled out and she was on the larboard tack, about a cable’s length off their weather side and pushing ahead of them already, towards the distant battle raging to the south.
‘Good man!’ Nathan cried. Cutler, of course. One man, at least, with a mind of his own.
The Stromboli, the last ship in the line, went sailing on in the wrong direction as if she had all the time in the world. And to be fair, she had little reason to hurry. The bomb ketch was about as useless as her skipper in this kind of a battle.
The Pondicherry was moving well now, with the wind on her quarter, but she was far, far too late. The guns had fallen silent – there were no more broadsides to guide them – and they came up on the Bombay alone in the darkness, lit by nothing more than the great lantern at her stern and the tiny glow of her binnacle light. But there was enough light in the sky for them to see the state she was in. She had clearly had the worse of her encounter with the Forte and the brigs must have given her a pasting as they went by. The French had been firing high, as was their wont, and most of the damage they could see was aloft, but if it had spared the lives of the men, it had made a hopeless shambles of the ship. Nathan took in the shattered rigging, the torn and flapping sails, the mainsail yard hanging all cock-a-hoop like a ship in mourning, and most of her mizzen gone over the side, a great sea anchor holding her by the stern. She looked like a hulk on washday. But as the Cherry passed by, Nathan saw men with axes hacking to free themselves from their unwanted anchor, and Commodore Picket in the light of the stern lantern, doffing his hat in a courteous bow and then waving it to urge them on, his mouth opening and closing in soundless exhortation.
Nathan could see nothing of the French. All he could see was the Comet’s stern lights in the distance, but even as he looked she fired with one of her bowchasers. The flash was too small, too brief for Nathan to see what they were firing at, but presumably the Comet could, unless they were firing blind into the darkness.
And so they began the long chase to the south. The Comet in the lead and the Cherry hurrying after her with every scrap of canvas she could carry. The Antelope passed them within the hour, and vanished into the murk to windward. The other three ships were presumably labouring behind. Nathan could see nothing of their quarry. He could only hope that the two fast brigs would give him some warning if the French changed course.
They must be following the line of the coast southward, but sooner or later, if they were heading back to the Île de France, they would have to break to the south-west. And if the squadron stayed on their heels, if they did not let them get too far ahead, this would give the Cherry a chance to bear down on them. A small chance, fast diminishing. And yet Nathan dared not lose them. He felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. He would be blamed for letting the French reach Mangalore and now he would be blamed, with more justice, for letting them leave. Certainly he blamed himself. Why had he not set the squadron to cruising south of the river? It was obvious that, with the wind from the north-east, this was the direction the French were going to take. But Nathan was ever wary of the obvious – a consequence of his own devious nature.
But if the French had broken to the west, he would have been left beating against the wind. At least with the squadron to windward there was that small hope of catching them. What he should have done, of course, was place the Pondicherry in the mouth
of the river, not the Bombay. But it was no good bewailing his past errors. What he should be doing was figuring out the route the French were most likely to take to the Île de France and how to stop them getting there.
He and Tully spread out the relevant chart and studied it as best they could in the light of an overhead lantern. The Île de France was to the west of Madagascar, about 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean.
‘So if this is their destination, sooner or later they will have to bear to the south-west,’ Nathan mused. ‘But probably not for a while. If they change course now, or in the next twenty-four hours, they will have to thread their way through the Laccadive Islands.’ He pointed them out on the chart, a long chain of pearls strung along the southwest coast of India, the original homeland of the seamen they called Lascars. ‘More likely they will head further south and make for the Mamala Channel.’ He indicated the gap between the Laccadives and the Maldives, a little further to the south, between two and three hundred miles off the tip of India.
‘It is certainly what I should do,’ Tully agreed. ‘If I were heading for the Île de France.’
‘Where else could they be heading?’
Tully shrugged. Nathan sighed. This, of course, was the problem. There were many other ports along the South India coast – Alleppey, Cochin, Calcut, Trivardrin – any one of which could provide them with a temporary haven. Or they could seek refuge in the Maldives themselves – a series of atolls spread over several hundred miles of ocean. They had been claimed by the Dutch until the fall of Ceylon two years ago. Now, presumably, they had passed into British hands. Although, as far as Nathan was aware, none of the locals had been concerned in this transaction, and very few of them could have ever met a Dutchman, or an Englishman. He was fairly sure there was no English presence there.
‘The fact is we have no idea where they are heading,’ he admitted. ‘All we can do is stay in the chase.’
They stayed in the chase all through the murky night, heading ever southward, following the stern lights of the Comet and the occasional discharge of her bowchasers into the darkness. The Cherry was moving fast, by her own standards – between eight and nine knots – with the wind steady on her larboard quarter, but they were constantly having to compensate for that exasperating drift to leeward. All ships had such a tendency of course, but Nathan had never known it so extreme as with the Cherry.
‘They should have fitted her with a pair of reins and a bit,’ he remarked to Tully after yet another correction when they lost the Comet for an anxious half-hour.
Towards the end of the middle watch the wind freshened to such an extent that Tully was obliged to take in canvas as fast as he had been putting it out, and they were heeling so far to leeward the lower gunports were permanently under water. Dawn broke over a heaving sea, the air filled with so much spray and flying spume they lost the Comet altogether, at least from deck level, and they were only reassured of her presence by the lookouts high in the tops. There was no sign whatsoever of the French, or the rest of the squadron, not even the Antelope. It felt like madness, hurtling through an increasingly violent sea in pursuit of an invisible foe with Mother Carey’s Chickens skulking and skittering to leeward.
Then, a little after six bells in the morning watch with Nathan thinking about his breakfast, the situation changed. There was a cry from the foremast lookout, relayed from the waist and up to the quarterdeck. A strange sail, two points on the larboard bow behind the Comet and closing. It could be the Antelope, or one of the other ships of the squadron, but Nathan feared the worst. The flash and rippling roar of the broadside confirmed it. One of the French ships had slipped behind in the darkness and come up on the Comet’s stern.
Nathan ran up the ratlines to the foretop and braced himself against the futtock shrouds as he struggled to hold the glass steady. For some frustrating moments he could see nothing but the heaving grey-green mass of sea, but then he caught a glimpse of sail and focused on the French ship. She was the Forte. Even at this distance he could just make out the long row of gunports. Tully had edged the Cherry two, perhaps three, points into the wind and they were beginning to close on her, but they were still a half-mile or so distant when they saw the frigate cut across the Comet’s stern and rake her. Twenty guns, most of them 24-pounders, firing at point-blank range into her stern. The brig seemed almost to stagger with the force of the blow and her mizzenmast came crashing down across her gun deck bringing the spanker boom with it and a mass of billowing canvas. Her ensign was gone too, so she could not haul her colours even if Cutler was minded to surrender, and the Forte came sharply up in her lee, keeping pace with her as they ran to the south, and firing at will.
Nathan was no more than a spectator in this fight, and it was a fight the Comet could not possibly win. The mainmast followed the mizzen and then the foretopmast. Nathan could not see if she was firing back – but she was heeling over so far to leeward he doubted if Cutler could bring a single gun to bear. The Forte had backed her mizzen to keep from racing ahead and the two ships were almost dead in the water with the Cherry closing rapidly. The end could not be long delayed, but when it came it was worse than Nathan’s worst imagining. Through the smoke of battle he saw a flicker of flame on the Comet’s gun deck, too broad, too sustained to be from her guns. Even in these conditions, with so much spray in the air, it had enough combustibles to feed upon, and there was a violent explosion as it reached the cartridges for the nearest 6-pounder. The Forte fired again and again into the smoke and flames. It was no more than the Swiftsure had done to the burning French flagship at Abukir, but L’Orient had been a great monster of a three-decker with over a hundred guns and both ships had been locked in mortal combat. There was something particularly chilling about the Forte’s action when it was perfectly clear that the Comet was out of the fight, and Nathan was in as cold a fury to pay her back for it. But she fired one final broadside and then clapped ahead, leaving her opponent burning fiercely along half her length with the strong wind fanning the flames that were likely to consume her.
The Pondicherry had made up a lot of ground during the fight and she was barely a cable’s length off the Comet’s starboard quarter when the flames reached her magazine. She had loaded up with forty barrels of fresh gunpowder in Bombay and the explosion was like a starburst on the ocean, a boiling blister of red, white and orange fire that was just as suddenly gone, leaving nothing but the memory seared on Nathan’s shocked retina, and a black pall of smoke already shredding in the wind. He felt the blast in his swaying perch in the foretop and the air was filled with a black rain of debris. A great splinter of mast came down like a spear just off the Cherry’s plunging bow and there was human debris, too, that made him sick in the stomach. Not a single member of the brig’s crew could possibly have survived such a blast. Cutler and his fifty-two officers and men were gone in an instant.
Nathan had known how vulnerable the brig was, out on her own in front of the squadron, and his bitter self-reproach was matched by a savage desire for vengeance. But it was a wish that was unlikely to be granted, for the frigate was moving steadily away from them, and at an angle that made it impossible to fire a single shot worth the powder. He could see Joyce up forward frantically trying to point one of the 12-pounders, but it was as far up against the gunport as it could go, and from Nathan’s vantage he could see that they did not have a hope in Hell of hitting her.
Even so, an alternative plan was forming in his mind. On their present course, the Cherry would cut across the frigate’s stern well within firing range. Unfortunately, she would be to windward, heeling so far over that even the guns on her upper deck would be pointing into the sea. But if they were to cut back again, with the wind on the opposite quarter, there was a slim chance of raking her – a very slim chance, indeed, for the frigate would be so much further away by then, and if the French saw what he was about, they had only to alter course themselves to deny him even the satisfaction of a long shot. But it was surely worth a try.
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He returned as swiftly as he could to the quarterdeck. Tully was at the weather rail staring out after the departing frigate with a look that mirrored Nathan’s own feelings on the subject, and the younger officers were staring at Nathan as if he had recently joined them from a travelling fair. It was possibly the first time they had seen a commodore sliding down a backstay in a near-gale, he reflected, but any satisfaction he might have derived from this was swamped by more urgent considerations. He explained his plan to Tully who grasped it with his usual alacrity.
‘Pass the word for Mr Joyce,’ he said to Blunt. Then he barked a series of instructions to the acting master and the men at the helm that had the Cherry’s bows edging even further into the wind and heeling so far to leeward that there was a danger the seas would break over her gunwales, never mind the lower gunports.
They were making their first pass across the frigate’s stern, at a distance of about a cable’s length, when Mr Vivian, who was commanding the quarterdeck 6-pounders, began to shout out and point towards the chase. His voice was so thin, the wind so strong, neither Nathan nor Tully could hear what he was saying at first – but he seemed to be indicating something at the frigate’s stern. The rudder broken loose? Another fire? Then Nathan saw the object of his interest. A pale figure outlined in one of the stern windows, just below the huge tricolour streaming from the flagstaff. The window was open and it was apparent, even at this distance, that a woman was standing, or rather crouching there, braced against the window frame, and that she was practically naked.
‘What in God’s name … ?’ Nathan looked at Tully to share his bemusement. ‘Is she mad?’
