Jack Frake

by Edward Cline

  He remembered the first time he had seen England from this vantage point, from the deck of the Ariadne, in the dead of night, long ago. For some reason he could not now explain, he felt a desire to shout “Huzza!” as he did then, but here in the daylight, to celebrate some bigger perspective. At the same time, he knew that he was not leaving something behind — something he had learned from the two figures on the cliffside — but taking it with him. In the next instant, he realized that he could measure the difference between what he was then, on the Ariadne, and what he was now. Then, he had celebrated the actual proof of the accuracy of some lines and colored shapes on a globe. Now, he could celebrate the actual proof of the shape of his own soul, a shape he was beginning to become aware of for the first time.

  He did not shout “Huzza!” Instead, he placed a hand on his chest, near his heart, in possession of the greater thing he was, in a last salute to the men he knew once possessed themselves in the same precious manner, and in dedication to what was possible to himself.

  A while later, as he roamed the deck to familiarize himself with what would be his home for two months, he heard a voice behind him. “Look, Mama! It’s Jeremy Jeamer! He’s Redmagne’s friend! They saved us from the bad men!”

  Jack Frake turned around and saw a man, a woman, and little Etain McRae. Too engrossed in his own thoughts, he smiled briefly at the girl, but noticed the woman looking at him with an interest that went beyond curiosity about his iron collar. She seemed to know why he was wearing it. He felt that she wanted to speak to him, but she glanced at her husband and turned away. He learned later that she was Madeline McRae, the girl’s mother, and early in the voyage she managed to take him aside and ask about her governess. He told her what he knew, or rather, what he had heard from prisoners’ talk in Falmouth Prison: that a woman’s body was found floating in the Channel in the vicinity of Tragedy Point, and that it was said to be that of the woman who called to Redmagne at the gallows.

  Madeline McRae dabbed an eye with a handkerchief. “I was afraid of that,” she said in a French accent. “I knew it had to be that.” She reached into her purse and gave Jack Frake a silver coin. “This is but a token of my thanks, Mr. Frake. I cannot repay you or your friend for what you did when my daughter was on the coach last summer. But you will be welcome at my house in Caxton any time.”

  * * *

  But for two storms, it was an uneventful crossing. Early one morning, however, a month and a week into the voyage, the Sparrowhawk vanished into a vast fog bank which stretched from horizon to horizon, north to south. When it re-entered the sunlight, twenty minutes had passed when the lookout reported sails emerging from the phenomenon behind them. Ramshaw came up from his cabin and studied the distant ship with his spyglass. He exclaimed to his sailing master and the lieutenant of marines, “It’s the L’Fléau, blast it! Robichaux’s following our wake! Full sails, Mr. Cutter! Tell the crew to take gun stations! Get the passengers down below, and give a gun to any one of them that’s willing to fight!”

  Out of the fog crept L’Fléau, a privateer commanded by Paul Robichaux. L’Fléau was a full frigate with forty-five guns of comparable size to the Sparrowhawk’s, and a crew of three hundred composed of Frenchmen, Irishmen, Spanish and Dutchmen. Robichaux, who carried letters of marque from Louis, the King of France, had made a career of harrying English merchantmen, seizing their vessels and cargoes, and holding their crews for ransom. French jails were full of prisoners he had taken over a period of five years. Even though England was no longer an active belligerent in the War of the Austrian Succession, English shipping was fair game to French and Spanish privateers.

  “She’s giving chase,” said Ramshaw. “She’ll catch up with us soon.” The privateer followed the merchantman for half an hour, each minute bringing it yards closer to the Sparrowhawk.

  As L’Fléau’s sails came closer, Ramshaw called the Huguenots to his cabin and advised them that it was best that they stay below, and not take up arms. But the Huguenots would have none of that. “We are going to freedom,” said the spokesman for the group. “It would be folly not to want to fight for it when it is so close.”

  “Consider this, sirs,” replied Ramshaw. “If you people are taken under arms, your menfolk will be executed as traitors and your families sold into slavery in the French Indies or Barbary. But if you’re taken as passengers, you’ll be imprisoned with us, and ransom demands sent to your kin in France.”

  The Huguenot spokesman, a tall, balding educated-looking man, answered, “We are done with such options, Captain. We are prepared to accept the consequences of fighting our countrymen.”

  “So be it, gentlemen,” said Ramshaw.

  Jack Frake had trained to be a powder monkey for the aft swivel gun. It was his job to fetch powder and balls from the magazine and to help load the gun. Ramshaw’s gun crews were as well trained and disciplined as any warship’s; many of his men were Royal Navy deserters working for him for the better pay and under assumed names.

  L’Fléau drew abreast of the Sparrowhawk and began to edge closer. The wind that drove the merchantman was blocked by the privateer now, allowing the frigate to use it to close in. Jack Frake watched with the others as the privateer’s gun crews prepared for a broadside. Sharpshooters infested the French ship’s rigging and fighting tops like starlings. A man ostentatiously garbed in a gold-laced greatcoat and ruffled cravat raised a trumpet and called over to the Sparrowhawk. “Captain of the good ship Sparrowhawk! I am Paul Robichaux of the Scourge, and you know I do not repeat myself! You will be wise to surrender, or we will sink you or take you! What is your answer?”

  Ramshaw, on the quarter deck, raised his own trumpet. “I am Captain John Ramshaw, and my compliments to you! We regret to say, ‘Rule, Britannia!’” His men cheered at this reply, and he nodded to his master gunner to order a broadside.

  Robichaux did the same, and both ships fired with thunderous roars that tilted them both in the water. Most of the cannon balls bounced off of the side of each vessel, but some did damage. A lucky shot from the Sparrowhawk shattered the gammoning of L’Fléau’s bowsprit, loosening the rigging to the foremast and rendering the privateer less manageable. Another severed a length of the mizzenmast’s shrouds and a dozen sharpshooters tumbled to the deck or were forced to drop their muskets to hang on to the ropes. Shots from the privateer, in turn, crippled the merchantman’s spanker, and struck one of the “Quakers” with such force that it was ripped from its carriage and flew against a sergeant of the marines, killing him.

  While each vessel’s gun crews rushed to swab and reload, the air crackled with musket fire. Men on both ships fell, and Jack Frake’s crew tried to bring down the pilot or damage L’Fléau’s wheel or capstan. But it was difficult to hit anything as the two vessels rose and fell in the water. His swivel gun managed to fire its third shot by the time the two ships’ main gun crews exchanged second broadsides. In the cool May air his hair and shirt were soaked with sweat.

  It was an uneven battle, for while L’Fléau was able to bring to bear twenty-two of her guns, the Sparrowhawk could fire only ten. Soon, the privateer could fire twenty-one guns; the Sparrowhawk, just eight, for one of its guns had been blown off its carriage and the crew of another killed by sharpshooters. The marines, crew and Huguenot men kept up steady musket fire at the privateer, but even here the odds were in favor of Robichaux’s men, and grew better as more and more men slumped down behind the railings and sandbags, dead or wounded.

  The men of the Sparrowhawk heard the men on L’Fléau begin to laugh and shout cries of derision and victory. A shot from the privateer hit the lanyard of the merchantman’s ensign, and the banner fell to trail in the water. Through the smoke, Jack Frake saw men on L’Fléau crowd at the railing with grappling hooks, and only twenty feet of water separated the two ships. Ramshaw gave an order, and boys and men rushed from below to pass out swords, cutlasses and pistols. The captain paced up and down the quarter deck, his sword under one arm, loading a
pair of pistols. His tricorn had been shot away, and even as Jack Frake watched, a musket ball jerked one of the man’s coat-tails. He wondered if Skelly had looked like that at the Marvel caves.

  L’Fléau’s sharpshooters fired a disciplined volley at the deck of the Sparrowhawk, and the privateer inched closer to boarding range. “There’s Robichaux!” exclaimed one of the men at Jack Frake’s gun. The gun was pointing to the sky, and Jack Frake dumped a small chest of powder into the muzzle, then hefted a cannon ball into it, and packed it all in with his ramrod. As the gunner brought the weapon down and around to aim at Robichaux, a hail of musket balls peppered the aft. The crewman with the linstock fell dead, and the gunner ran.

  Jack Frake took up the linstock, then grasped one of the gun’s handles and aimed it at the strutting, laughing figure on L’Fléau. He blew on the slow-match at the end of the linstock, and as another rain of balls whizzed around him, steadied his aim, waiting for the bobbing privateer to ascend to a particular point. Something struck his iron collar, and the impact seemed to turn his bones and muscles to jelly. But he applied the linstock to the gun’s touch-hole, and an unholy halo of flame from the blast blinded him and obliterated all sight of L’Fléau.

  He had put too much powder in the gun, and the force of the recoil snapped the oaken stanchion in two and the gun flew back at him and knocked him down. He was stunned for a moment, but recovered quickly and rolled the heavy, hot iron off of his chest. He ran down the main deck and picked up a fallen marine’s musket. He could not see Robichaux.

  But L’Fléau was drawing away now. Curses and cries of panic came from the privateer. The men of the Sparrowhawk delivered a volley of musket fire into the attacker, and the crews of the remaining six serviceable guns worked feverishly to reload. On the master gunner’s command, they fired together and wrought havoc on L’Fléau, tearing open one of her foremast mainsails. One ball struck the mizzenmast, and though not powerful enough to topple it, cracked the timber so that it would be dangerous to use, for its sails were set to funnel wind to the sails of the main mast. The least attempt to move its spars to adjust the direction of the wind might lengthen the crack or even bring the mast down.

  The Sparrowhawk and L’Fléau began to drift apart. When the ships were beyond effective firing range, Captain Ramshaw appeared behind Jack Frake and touched his shoulder. “They’ll leave off now, Jack, thanks to you! You blew off Robichaux’s head, and killed his second in command! I saw it happen through my glass. They thought he was immortal.” He paused, and added with a chuckle, “So did I, for years.”

  The Sparrowhawk caught the full wind again, and soon L’Fléau was a quarter mile away, dead in the water. It did not follow. Ramshaw’s crew commenced with repairs, first clearing the decks of the dead and wounded.

  That evening, in his cabin, Ramshaw took a key from his desk and unlocked the padlock of the jougs around Jack Frake’s neck. He paused to inspect the collar, and saw two indentations where musket balls had struck it. He shook his head once in amazement, then dropped the collar on the floor. “You’re a free man, Jack. At least, on this ship you are. Damn what the officials think! They owe you their lives.”

  “Will they make trouble for you?”

  “They don’t dare. None of them volunteered to handle a musket, you might have noticed.” Ramshaw paused to drink some rum. “Well, they’ll be talking about today’s fight for a long time, in every tavern and inn on the Continent, from Stockholm to Bilboa. I heard a rumor that Louis was going to make Robichaux an admiral. He never lost a fight, you see. He was the toast of the privateers. Sailors used to murder each other just for a place on his ship. Now? Damn it all!” laughed the captain. “Every privateer on the Atlantic is going to mark my Sparrowhawk for extinction.”

  Ramshaw lit a pipe. “When we get to Yorktown, I’ll hold you aside from the other convicts. It may take a few weeks to find the right man to buy your indenture, but we’ll wait. Jack, you’re going to a new world.” The light from the lantern on his desk swayed with the ship and cast moving shadows over the boy’s face. There were still some powder smudges on it, and these were deepened by the shifting light. It was an eager, expectant, innocent face, thought Ramshaw. But in the eyes he saw intelligence and a species of wisdom that he thought would be at home in the colonies. “Yes, Jack. A new world for you. I wonder how you’ll do in it — after your eight years are finished.”