The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  The boarding sea smashed against the mainmast, against the mizzen, buried the fife rail in tumbling foam, hit the guns with a terrific force, burying them, too, rolling over them, sinking Biddlecomb and the helmsmen up to their waists, Wentworth on the weather side up to his knees. The Abigail staggered like she had taken a blow to the head, righted herself in a groggy roll, shed the seas from her decks with a waterfall sound.

  Wentworth let out his breath, which he realized he had been holding. Biddlecomb was shouting to the helmsmen. The ship began to rise again on the next wave and suddenly Wentworth caught a motion to leeward, like some great animal waking up. Biddlecomb saw it too, looked over quick, and above the wind Wentworth heard him shout, “Oh, damn my eyes!” as they both realized in that instant that the aftermost gun had broken clean out of its lashings.

  12

  A loose cannon … William had heard that expression often enough, had used it himself. It meant someone who was unpredictable, a danger. But he had no idea of the real implications of the term. Until now.

  The water poured off Abigail’s deck as the bow climbed on the next roller, and the gun, which certainly weighed above a ton and was mounted on wheels, began to careen aft, rolling downhill, as it were. Biddlecomb allowed himself a second or two at most to evaluate the situation, then he ducked under the lifeline and stumbled toward the gun, slipping, falling, pulling himself up.

  Stupid bastard, what does he hope to achieve? Wentworth thought but he, too, was moving in that instant. He let go of the shroud and the ship rolled and he felt his feet come out from under him as he went down, slamming shoulder-first into the deck. He tried to push himself up but the motion of the ship held him flat. He had a sudden vision of being run over by the cannon, but remembered that the skylight and the raised overhead of the great cabin were between him and it.

  He put his hands against the wet deck planks and pushed and then the boarding sea rolled over him, swirling him away, tumbling him like a toy boat in a stream. His mouth was full of salt water and his legs and arms flailed for something to grab. He slammed into some unyielding thing, felt the sharp pain in his side from the impact, but he grabbed it and held on as the water drained away. Some sort of low wooden device with a heavy rope wrapped around it. He felt a hand on his collar and before he quite knew what was happening he was lifted to his feet. He grabbed hold of the bulwark and the helmsman who had picked him up said, “Keep a weather eye out for them boarding seas!”

  He nodded and looked toward the leeward side. Biddlecomb was splayed out over the skylight and the big gun was rolling forward. It slammed into one of its mates and staggered to a stop and Biddlecomb pushed off and went after it.

  Wentworth’s head cleared and he waited until the ship was more upright, then raced forward, grabbing the lifeline and ducking under it. The bow rose and the gun began careening back again and he jumped up on the raised cabin top as Biddlecomb leapt onto one of the stationary guns and the great iron brute rolled past, knocking the wheel off another gun carriage and slewing sideways.

  Wentworth’s hand fell on the rail around the mizzenmast. There were coils of rope there that seemed to be serving no purpose so he snatched one up and found the bitter end. He was no mariner, no jolly jack-tar, but he had considerable experience with horses, some of them quite wild. He leapt as the gun slammed to a stop, took several turns of the rope around the muzzle, and held tight.

  “Belay that! Belay it!” Biddlecomb shouted but Wentworth could only shake his head to indicate that he did not understand. Then the bow plunged down again and the gun rolled away and the rope tore through Wentworth’s hands, which were naturally soft and made softer still by the constant soaking of the past hours. He shouted with pain and let go and the gun slammed forward again, smashing into the middle gun and threatening to tear that one free as well.

  Where in all hell is everyone? Wentworth wondered. Why are we bloody all alone? And then he realized that the rest must still be aloft, and the helmsmen unable to let go of the wheel. There was no one else.

  He picked up the rope again, ignoring the burning agony of his palms. “If it rolls away it’ll smash through the side!” he shouted to Biddlecomb.

  “Damn the side, let it go!” Biddlecomb shouted back. “We must stop it from—”

  He managed to say no more than that. The ship hit the trough and twisted and rolled and the seas came crashing aft and Wentworth and Biddlecomb could do no more than hang on to keep from being swept away. Then the bow began to rise and the gun began to roll aft, smashing into the raised hatch, bouncing off, moving faster as the deck slanted steeper and steeper. Biddlecomb leapt forward and looped a rope around the gun’s cascabel and Wentworth got his rope around the muzzle again, and he saw that rather than hold the rope, Biddlecomb twisted it around a substantial-looking wooden beam, letting the wood take the strain, not his hands.

  “Belay your line! Tie it off!” Biddlecomb shouted and Wentworth looked desperately around for something to tie it to. The line on the cascabel came taut, the great gun tipped and pivoted on the steep wet deck. Wentworth tried to hold his line but even if his hands had not been flayed he would not have been able to do so, and he let it go before it did further damage to his flesh.

  The gun twisted on the line Biddlecomb was tending, the barrel cleared the raised overhead, spinning under its own weight. In the binnacle light Wentworth could just make out the looks of terror on the faces of the helmsmen and then they released the wheel and leapt clear, larboard and starboard, as the cannon swung around and smashed into the wheel, two tons of gun and carriage hitting the fragile steering gear and smashing it to kindling.

  “Damn it!” Biddlecomb shouted and he dropped the line and ran aft. “Grab up the relieving tackle!” he screamed as loud as he was able, and he could just be heard above the wind. Wentworth looked around. He did not know what relieving tackle was. And then he realized Biddlecomb was calling to the helmsmen, not him.

  Abigail fell off the wave and her bow came down and the gun staggered and swayed and lifted on its two left wheels. It hung there for an awful moment and then toppled over, hitting the deck with an impact that Wentworth could feel in his shoes, even with all the other shuddering and banging of the ship in the seaway. With palpable maliciousness the gun began to slide forward, swinging around as if reaching out for Wentworth’s legs. He glanced up but Biddlecomb was yelling at the helmsmen and pointing forward and paying not the least attention to the gun.

  Wentworth leapt up as the ship rolled under him and he came down on the cabin top. The rope he had made fast to the muzzle was still there, and as the barrel swung toward him he jumped over it, snatched up the rope, and leapt back to safety.

  Abigail was twisting and rolling in a way she had not before, turning sideways to the seas, the monstrous waves coming not so much on her bow as right amidships, and the ship in turn rolled further and further and the strain came on the rope as the gun reacted to the increasing slope of the deck.

  But now Wentworth was ready. He jumped from the cabin top, clawed his way to the weather rail, the deck becoming more vertical, and just as the gun was starting to build genuine momentum in its slide he wrapped the rope around the beam that was the opposite number to the one Biddlecomb had used. The line came tight, the beam creaked under the weight, but the gun ceased its downhill slide.

  Wentworth looked for Biddlecomb, hoping to share his triumph, but Biddlecomb was nowhere to be seen. Has he abandoned his post? Wentworth thought, but a motion above caught his eye and when he looked up he could just make out the figure of a man—Biddlecomb, he was sure—clinging to the mizzen shrouds above his head, one hand holding the shroud, the other flailing out with a knife, cutting the lines that held the sail lashed tight to the mizzenmast. With each line he cut, more and more of the sail, the mizzen sail, Wentworth believed it was called, spread to the wind, flogging and beating.

  Abigail continued to roll. This was not like before, the dip and rise with the seas moving u
nder. She was going over now, with the defeated feel of a ship that would not be coming back up. Wentworth clung to the weather shrouds and tried to keep his feet. The rope holding the gun popped and the gun slipped a few inches and Wentworth knew that it would not hold for long.

  More ropes, more ropes … he thought, as coherent an idea as his mind could form. There was another, right under his hand, and he grabbed it up and let go of the shrouds. He half tumbled and half slid down to the gun. His shoes came hard against the carriage and stopped his plunge toward the lee scuppers. He wrapped the rope around the wheels, around the barrel, then turned and crawled back toward the weather side, crawled up the steeply slanting, wet deck. He clawed at the pin rail, pulled himself up. He hauled the slack out of the rope as best as he could and wrapped it around the beam where he had tied the other.

  Biddlecomb was back on deck. He half slid down to the cabin’s raised overhead, used it to break his slide, then scrambled aft. He climbed onto the smashed remains of the helm, reached up to the boom above his head, and yanked a coil of rope from a cleat there. With a deft move he tossed the rope so it payed out straight and draped over the cabin top.

  “Haul on that, Wentworth, haul for all you’re damned worth!” he shouted, his voice cracking with the effort, and then Biddlecomb laid into the rope, heaving it out with quick jerks, and inch by inch the corner of the flogging mizzen sail was dragged snapping and beating to the end of the boom.

  Wentworth once again slid down the deck, stopping himself on the cabin top. He snatched up the rope and shouted in pain, confident the wind would whisk that show of weakness away. He pulled as hard as he was able, but Biddlecomb looked over his shoulder and shouted, “With me! Hey, ho!” and as he said “ho!” he jerked the rope.

  “Hey, ho!” Wentworth caught on to the rhythm. “Hey, ho!” On that note they hauled away, the wildly beating sail coming under control. The Abigail was standing more upright. Wentworth had one foot on the deck now, one on the side of the raised overhead. The water was up to his waist but it was swirling away, rushing aft, crashing over the transom and the taffrail, spewing from the gunports.

  “Hey, ho!” He had no idea why they were pulling this sail out, but they were, and it seemed to be helping. Then there were more hands on the rope, men swarming around, and Wentworth saw that the tarpaulins had come down from aloft and now they were putting their weight into the pull. Biddlecomb left off hauling and Wentworth did as well and soon the sail was hauled out, the line made fast.

  Abigail’s motion was much improved, her bow turned partially toward the seas, which broke around them and sometimes over them, sending the familiar rush of water along the deck, but she did not seem in danger of turning over, and she was not making so wild a corkscrew motion. He heard Biddlecomb use the words lie to and he guessed that was what they were doing, stopping, as it were, in the middle of the storm, letting the ship ride like a cork over the terrible waves.

  And with that, Wentworth sensed the worst of the emergency had passed. A gang of men went forward, more went aft to examine the shattered helm. No one was steering because there did not seem to be anything with which to steer. Biddlecomb, quite distracted by the many things that required his attention, finally noticed William once again at the mizzen weather shrouds. He took a step toward him. “Thank you, Mr. Wentworth, for your help,” he said. William nodded, a humble acknowledgment of the fact he had doubtless saved the ship. Then Biddlecomb turned and made his way aft to the rudder head, leaving Wentworth to feel, though he would never articulate it, that more might have been made of his quick thinking and thoroughly seamanlike actions.

  * * *

  For two days they remained lying to as the storm blew itself out, and Jack Biddlecomb did not like to think on what a close run thing it had been. Such disasters, or near disasters, in this instance, were rarely the result of one big blunder. They were the result of little mistakes built upon little mistakes, like piling stones on a board when those worthies of old put someone to death by pressing.

  He had, without a doubt, held on to the fore topsail longer than he should have, making every inch of progress he could on the proper course before he was forced to turn and run with a deep reefed foresail and main topsail and the wind betwixt two sheets. A bully driving captain he, eager to be known as a bold young blade, willing to keep the ship on her course long after more timid souls would have had her scudding. He had nearly killed them all in proving himself such a fine fellow.

  And because he had held on to sail for so long, it called for nearly all hands aloft to take it in, and aloft they had been when the gun, the cursed gun, had torn free of the bulwark. That, at least, could not be laid at his feet. The lashings, which he had inspected, had held, tight and true, while the ringbolts put in by those poxed dogs in Philadelphia, who called themselves carpenters, had torn clean out of the side.

  Wentworth had made a decent try of helping, Jack would not begrudge him that. But if he had had the sense to belay his line rather than trying to hold it in his soft, bare hands, trying to stop two tons of wood and iron from careening around the deck, then it might not have taken the helm clean out. And not just the helm. The damned thing, the damned vicious beast had smashed through the helm and taken out the tiller behind it. If the tiller had been spared they might have steered with the relieving tackles, but there was no more than a bare stub left projecting from the rudder head, and no relief to be found.

  And thus, in a matter for thirty or forty seconds, the ship had gone from a vessel riding out a brutal storm in relatively good order to one with steering gone, turning sideways to the massive seas, rolling on her beam ends and beyond, with a two-ton cannon charging around the quarterdeck and all hands up aloft, save for two seamen and some macaroni of a landlubber.

  They that go down to the sea on ships, and do their work on great waters …

  Jack had never been aboard a ship that had come that close to rolling clean over. Lucas Harwar and John Burgess had been at the helm and he sent them forward to haul up the weather clew of the foresail while he set the mizzen in hopes that that balance of sail would turn the ship like a weather vane into the wind.

  In truth, he had not thought it would work, or more accurately, he felt sure the Abigail would roll clean over and take them all down before the sails could have any effect. Even as he was slashing at the mizzen gaskets with his knife, Jack figured he was just killing time, amusing himself for a few seconds before that last wild ride as the ship rolled over, as he found himself clinging to the shrouds, the sea roiling around him, his own ship dragging him down. Would he kick for the surface? He could swim, an oddity among mariners, but would he have sense enough to not bother, to just take that big lungful of water that would end it all?

  But that opportunity, that chance to discover what he was made of when standing on the threshold of mortality, would have to wait. Once they had hauled the mizzen out, the ship actually behaved as he thought she might, turning slowly up into the wind, shaking off the water that flooded her deck.

  Two reasons now to hate the damned guns. The first, of course, was the way that one of that tribe had tried to smash every bit of deck furniture aft, and had taken the steering out in the attempt. The other was the bulwarks required to mount them. When Abigail had sported rails around her upper works the seas had washed right over her, unimpeded. Now the bulwarks held the boarding water in, like her deck was some sort of wooden mill pond, tons of salt water that left the ship wallowing and unresponsive as it slowly and laboriously cleared.

  They had trimmed the mizzen, trimmed the main topsail, hauled up the foresail, set the fore topmast staysail and finally found the right balance of canvas that would keep Abigail shouldering the seas with her rudder gone. They were at the mercy of the wind and the breaking waves, driven in whatever direction the storm chose, and while Jack had only a rough sense of where on the watery globe they were, he was fairly certain that there were many hundreds of leagues of deep water between his ship and
the nearest hazard to navigation.

  There was no chance of moving the wayward cannon in those conditions so they trebled the lashing until there was a ridiculous amount of rope holding the thing in place, and preventing it from further movement. With that secured, they turned to the next most dire problem, which was the fact that Abigail had no means by which she could be steered.

  In driving rain and winds that gusted to sixty knots, by Jack’s well-practiced estimate, with seas still running feet deep along the deck, he and Burgess, who was a hand with tools, and Harwar and Tucker had pounded the stump of the old tiller out of the rudder head, had shipped the new tiller and rigged the relieving tackle. A four-hour job in fine weather had taken them two days, and just as the storm was rolling past and the seas returning to a human scale, they once again were able to steer the ship.

  Jack had spent a majority of the storm on deck, in many instances as the only one on deck. When the ship was riding properly and no sails needed attending to, there was little reason for anyone else to be topside, save to man the pumps, which they did quite a bit. But by Jack’s reckoning, the deck was where the captain belonged when the ship was in such peril, and standing watch while the others were below helped mitigate the guilt he felt at putting the ship in peril in the first place.

  Two days, and then the wind began to back and blow with less force, leaving Abigail to wallow in a lumpy, confused sea. With the new tiller shipped and the wreckage of the steering gear cleared away, and Jack reasonably certain that no serious damage had befallen the rudder, they shook a reef out of the main topsail, set the fore topsail and foresail, and felt the motion of the ship change from something helpless and buffeted by storm to something making purposeful headway, moving of its own volition, pushing the seas aside with the insistence of life.