By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  Cornelius Gherson had been terrified before sitting down but the words he was listening to made him shake even more. Selected with the rest of Number Twelve Mess to go ashore, Pearce excepted, he was searching desperately for a way out, because all he could envisage in his imagination was his body riddled with musket balls, pierced by endless pikes, slashed by dozens of cutlasses, or torn to shreds by a cannon shot. The thought that Pearce could escape such a fate merely by being the victim of a flogging made him furious. His dilemma was made doubly hard by the need to appear ardent, for all around him the crew of Brilliant was engaged in bloodcurdling threats against those they would meet this night. Molly, who had spotted his dread as easy as anyone with eyes, was having great fun stoking his fears.

  ‘Mind, not every man I ever served with was as hearty for a fight as this crew. Seen men run below when it gets too warm on deck.’

  ‘Must be hard to live with that, Molly,’ hissed Foley, ‘knowing that when it came to it, you ain’t got the liver for a scrap.’

  ‘Run below,’ said Gherson, with a wholly false laugh. ‘No one can do that tonight.’

  ‘Some will duck out for certain,’ Molly replied, ‘when the fur begins to fly. Being dark, no one will see.’

  ‘They say there are three parties going in,’ Gherson asked, his voice eager, ‘which one do you reckon will be the hottest?’

  ‘Roscoe’s, no doubt, with old Taffrail alongside him.’ Taffrail was Lieutenant Thrale’s nickname, due to him being as deaf as the posts that made up the stern rails. ‘Barclay’s gone and given hisself the easy part, I reckon.’

  ‘How so?’

  Molly had to think hard to make it sound convincing. But Gherson was a willing fool, quite capable of believing that the crew of the privateer, ‘would be ashore most like’; that Roscoe and Thrale were facing cannon behind stone, which ‘was a damn sight worse than wood’; that with a tide like the one in these parts, a cut hawser would see them sail out ‘as easy as kiss my hand.’

  ‘I want to take your place, Ben.’

  Ben Walker fixed his messmate with those bright, bird-like eyes, examining Pearce’s face as he tried to figure out why he was being asked to stand aside, to let Pearce go in his place. He had been picked out as the one in their group most content to be at sea, yet surely with the wit to see what was in store for a goodly number of those going into action. Ben’s silence had marked him out for Pearce as a thinker, and in his experience such men were less ruled by the excitability common to the herd.

  ‘You ain’t fit for it,’ he drawled.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Pearce insisted, more in hope than certainty.

  ‘I’m not afeart.’

  ‘No one says you are, Ben. But I have something to gain by going, and you do not.’

  Ben Walker wanted an explanation – it was there in his expression, but Pearce had no intention of giving him one. Let his own mind work on what he might lose or gain; if that was insufficient, he would lean on young Rufus, then Gherson, who would certainly try to extract a money fee.

  ‘Trust me, Ben. Just like you I have secrets. I see it as no business of mine to pry into yours, but if you want to share confidences…’

  Pearce left the rest up in the air, and was relieved when Ben said, ‘We’ve been put under that deaf old arse Thrale.’ Clearly revelation was not an avenue he wished to go down.

  Neither Pearce nor Ben knew the details; they were confined to the officers and leading hands. But the outline of tonight’s business was common gossip. ‘I know, just as I know faces and names mean nothing. Thrale will be content if he has the number of men required, that is if he has the wit to count.’

  Ben Walker looked at the deck planking, his head moving from side to side as he ruminated on what Pearce had asked. ‘Would what you are asking for be the act of a friend?

  ‘Yes, Ben, it would.’

  ‘I count you as a friend. The way you looked after Abel. Well.’

  Pearce had to fix his face then, because that openly stated sentiment touched him deeply. ‘I am grateful for that.’

  Walker nodded. ‘Then as a friend, and for Abel’s memory.’

  Sea chests had been hauled out of the holds and opened so that those who needed shoes and coats could get at them. In the crush and confusion of forty men identifying their property no one had paid any attention to Pearce as he found the one that contained his possessions, taking out his half-length boots and his collarless coat. He felt immediately that the weight was wrong, and, plunging his hand into the inside pocket were he had left his purse, he discovered it to be empty. A silent curse was all he could employ – there was no time for speculation – his money was gone, and he had to be gone as well to avoid discovery.

  ‘You’re mad,’ whispered Michael O’Hagan, as, minutes later they queued on the moonlit upper deck for their weapons. ‘Mind, I never doubted that was true.’

  Those were no words that a man in a trough of doubt wanted to hear – no money made what he contemplated even harder – so when Pearce emphatically replied it was as much to steel his own resolve as to answer the Irishman. ‘That Michael, is the coast of France.’

  ‘It might be the gates of Hell.’

  ‘Pearce?’ demanded Dysart, peering as he identified him. ‘What in the name o’ Christ are you doing here?’

  ‘You wouldn’t deny me the chance to fight would you?’

  Dysart gave him an arch look. ‘I wouldna have thought this one yours.’

  ‘It’s in my blood,’ Pearce insisted.

  Dysart had been given a length of linstock, which he began to wrap round his waist as Pearce elbowed his way to the pile of weapons, where he selected a tomahawk and a vicious short-bladed knife. Returning to join the two Celts, he added, ‘They know all about fighting Scots over yonder, and they hold us to be mad in battle. The French even have an expression for it, le furieux ecoissais.’

  Dysart grinned, juggling the flints that would be used to spark the slow-match, before stowing them deep in his pocket. ‘Christ, Barclay will bust a gut if he finds oot a man he flogged in the morning was fit tae fight the same bluddy night.’

  ‘Then let’s hope it is something the surgeon cannot cure.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Dysart replied, before adding. ‘Taverner, Dommet, get that wee barrel of gunpowder.’ Dysart then looked back at Pearce. ‘So you might no just be going for a mad battle?’

  Pearce just put a finger to his lips, as the command came to get the boats over the side. There was a nervous moment when Lieutenant Digby spotted him, his raised eyebrows testimony to his surprise. The pair locked eyes, before Digby nodded, then looked away.

  ‘Where’s Corny?’ asked Rufus.

  ‘Gherson,’ Charlie Taverner snorted, probably hiding in the heads. ‘The way he was shitting himself it be just as well.’

  ‘Happen he’s learnt his lesson from the other night,’ said Rufus.

  ‘Don’t go wagering anything on that,’ Taverner replied, as he went over the side into the boat.

  Stiffly, Pearce followed him down.

  ‘A trip around the bay,’ hooted Michael, as he came last, by his loud proclamation taking any curious eyes off Pearce. ‘Now, would we not have paid good money for such a treat, and here we are getting it for free. Sure, it’s a grand life.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The first strokes of the oar had made Pearce wince, but the constant movement slowly warmed his muscles, which caused the pain to ease into a dull ache. It was there, it was nagging, but thankfully it was bearable. Ridley and Costello had done him a great favour with their bogus, lightweight cat, and he had to believe that such a thing could not have been carried out without the connivance of the Bosun himself. Sykes, who had hauled him out of the water off Deal but declined to hand him over for punishment had to be in on the secret. Kemp had been kept away from that cat o’ nine tails. Maybe Sykes had made sure the other warrant officers shared his sentiment.

  Reflecting on that, Pearce was obliged
to acknowledge that there were good men in King George’s Navy as well as bad, just the same as existed in all walks of life. It was wrong to judge the whole by the likes of Barclay, Kemp and Sam Devenow. Time aboard might have revealed more kindness than contempt, and he would have made friends for sure, because all his life, in all the situations in which he had found himself that is what had happened. But it was not a notion he wished to put to the test – if he never saw another sailor in his life he would rest content. He turned his thinking to ways of getting away from this crowd of fighting men once ashore, adjusting what he had planned previously to the new condition he now found himself in – pennilessness.

  The moon disappeared behind a large cloud, and the party in the cutter was thrown into near total darkness, with only the silver edging of the overhead black mass showing any light. When the moon did reappear, after what seemed an interminable gap, to bathe the sea in a pale glow, none of the other boats, which should have shown as silhouettes, were visible. Nor could they hear the sound of dipping oars, any coughing, the clink of metal or a voice checking for their presence.

  Pearce and his companions rowed on, only their heavy breathing audible, while Lieutenant Thrale, one hand on the tiller, swung his head all around in a desperate search for company. Seeing none, he racked the sky, finger half raised to test the wind as he tried to discern his course by starlight, his lined old face even more creased by worry. Pearce half hoped they were lost; that they would land in the wrong place. The prospect of a fight, with an intoxicating tot of rum to fire the spirit, might be exhilarating to those with no imagination, but this was no fairground bout they were rowing towards, it was an enemy who would try to maim or kill them, an enemy who would not ask the nature of his sentiments first should he be forced into a confrontation.

  ‘Can you hear that noise, sir?’ Midshipman Burns called from the prow, a tremulous note in his piping, young boy’s voice.

  ‘Where away?’ Thrale replied, tucking the tiller under his arm, hat lifted and a hand cupped to his ear.

  ‘Dead ahead, I reckon,’ said Burns. ‘Breaking water.’

  With the beating of his own heart and panting bodies around him, Pearce could hear nothing. Judging by the expression on Thrale’s face, curious, anxious but unconvinced, neither could he, but that was likely due to the degree of his deafness.

  ‘No,’ Thrale insisted, ‘to starboard. It will be the rocks Captain Barclay alluded to.’

  ‘Rocks,’ hissed Michael O’Hagan, ‘what flippin’ rocks?’

  ‘Silence there,’ barked Thrale, before dropping his voice. ‘Sound deceives at sea, Mr Burns, plays tricks upon the untried ear, the sirens of ancient times were noted for it. What seems hard by can be a league distant. Pay no heed to the noise, just keep your eyes peeled for the western beach. Lieutenant Roscoe might already be ashore. If we do not get cracking he will head off for that bastion without us.’

  He added, for the whole eight-man crew of rowers, and no doubt intended to include the fighters as well, in a voice that tried and failed to be uplifting, ‘Bend to your oars, lads, otherwise we will miss out on any glory.’

  ‘Glory,’ Pearce scoffed, softly, so that only Michael beside him could hear.

  ‘Sure,’ Michael replied, his voice just as low, ‘I been told by those staying aboard that we could all die trying to save Barclay’s name.’

  ‘The noise increases, sir,’ Burns called.

  Thrale had been trying to look at his fob watch to see if he was late, cursing the next huge cloud that had blown in to obscure the moon, but he tried a cupped hand again, then nodded, as if having finally located the sound. ‘Well to starboard, Burns, I’m sure of it, and my watch, as well as the motion of the boat, tells me we must be getting close to shore.’

  The run of the sea had changed, no longer the big, steady rising and falling swell of the open sea, but waves kicking to sharper peaks as they shelved in shallow water, lifting and dropping the prow in a more deliberate fashion. Pearce could hear the sound now, the crash of breaking water, and though he had no way of being sure, it did not sound to him as if it was well off to his right. He would have shrugged had he not been occupied on the oars, for it was none of his concern. The rowing became harder as the boat rode the increasing swell. The water was shoaling fast – sometimes enough to leave an oar free when it should be dipped, in a sea becoming disturbed enough to require the blades to back up a tiller that had become near useless at controlling the course of the cutter.

  ‘I saw a flash of white, sir.’

  ‘Come Mr Burns, even someone as green as you must know that white water signifies waves breaking upon the beach.’

  ‘It is not like that, sir,’ Burns squeaked, ‘and the noise is much louder.’

  ‘True,’ Thrale replied in a reassuring voice. ‘Perhaps we are closer to the rocks than intended – I have come off my reckoning a trifle. But be assured we will shave them and they border sand that stretches for half a mile, which will mean a slower approach than I had hoped, indeed we must bend to or we will struggle to get to the action before it is joined. Now I require no more talking, for even with the sound you allude to there may be people on shore who will hear you.’

  The sea state was growing increasingly disturbed, not just rising and falling but eddying suddenly, creating unpredictable troughs and peaks. And the sound of water breaking on rocks had risen from a distant to a very present and steady roar. Dysart spoke up suddenly, his voice anxious, but respectful. ‘I reckon there be rocks under our keel, your honour, an’ some of them might be more dead ahead that yer allowing for.’

  ‘Is that Dysart?’ Thrale growled, recognising the distinct Scots accent. ‘Talking when I have ordered silence?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ the Scotsman replied, his voice raised against the noise of the waves. ‘But ah speak for every able hand aboard, when ah say it wid be prudent tae come aboot and get tae calmer water where we can check our position.’

  Thrale barked loudly then, ignoring his own injunction to be quiet. ‘Damn your impertinence, you will speak yourself to a grating, I tell you. Rowers, bend hard, I want to be driven up that beach when we strike sand, lest we broach to and get cast back into the spume.’

  Thrale took off his hat again, and, laying it in his lap, he began to strike the crown like a cask, in a tempo that he wanted the men on the oars to replicate. Having already pulled for near an hour they were too tired to respond, which only enraged the old lieutenant, and made him strike at his hat more ferociously.

  ‘Rocks!’ Burns yelled. ‘Dead ahead.’

  If Thrale had reacted immediately they might have got clear. But instead he half-stood, swaying and hatless, peering into the gloom ahead, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he could not think of what to say. The boat was now bucking like a fickle horse in water that had no pattern to it. But the sound was unmistakable, and now it seemed to surround and envelop them rather than come from any given direction.

  ‘To larboard,’ Thrale shouted eventually, falling back to sit down and pushing hard on the tiller, ‘boat your oars. Starboard oars, haul away hard.’

  They tried to turn using one set of oars, and get the prow pointing out to sea again, but it was too late – the surf was too strong and it acted on a boat turned sideways to deny all attempts to get the head round, at the same time carrying them in further towards the shore. They were in surf now – a maelstrom that could only be a few dozen yards away from safety, but there was no choice but to let the head fall off again for they risked being be upended into the sea. Dysart started yelling to reverse the boat, in an attempt to get out stern first, setting an example himself by grabbing the end of Pearce’s oar. He, like everyone else, was now standing, trying to exert enough pressure on an oar to get them clear. Burns was squealing fearfully and uselessly, bent over in the prow, while Thrale was yelling a set of conflicting instructions that no one was listening to.

  The first rock they touched ground along the keel, a hard rasping noise, lifting
the middle of the boat and sending everyone off balance. Shouting was drowned by the noise of the crashing Atlantic Ocean as it met the French coast – not even a yell of panic-stricken fear could travel further than the next ear. That useless thought filled Pearce’s mind as he struggled to get back into position to row. This water stretched thousands of miles west, south and north – the waves that threatened them might have come from the Americas – and the old fool Thrale had managed to find one of the few spots in that mass which was deadly.

  With his back to the shore Pearce could not see what was coming. Right by his ear Michael O’Hagan was bellowing his prayers to every saint or saviour in the papist pantheon. In front of Pearce, Charlie and Rufus, having been thrown down by the grounding keel, were on their feet again, but not rowing, not attempting to regain control of their oars. Instead, they were looking past Pearce and Michael with faces full of dread.

  ‘The little shit has jumped!’ yelled Taverner, pointing to the prow in a way that made it impossible for Pearce not to look. Burns was not there now, but as the boat dropped into a trough of swirling spume he could see the flailing arms in the water as the midshipman fought to stay afloat and swim. If they had ever had a chance of getting to safety Burns’ action condemned it, for Charlie Taverner must have reckoned that the boy had seen a route to salvation and taken it ahead of the rest of the boat crew. Charlie grabbed Rufus and yelled in his ear, a second before they both went overboard. They could not swim but they took over with them one of the small barrels of powder, which, if they could maintain their grip, with the ropes that had been attached to carry it, they must believe would keep them afloat.

  Water was flying around their heads now, making it difficult to see and almost impossible to think. Voices were yelling but if they were making any sense it was being carried away on the noise of wind and water being dashed against rocks. High white sheets of spume were visible now in light of a moon carried clear of the black cloud that had obscured it. The phosphorescence made the prospect almost as light as day, illuminating the desperate degree of danger they were now in.