The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  We are becoming far and away too informal aboard this damned bucket, Jack thought, but he was not sure how to stuff that cat back into the bag, so he said, “It’s a ship, Mr. Wentworth.”

  “Well, yes, but what sort of ship, Captain? Privateer? Some marauding buccaneer?”

  “One can’t be certain, at least not from this distance, and with never a flag flying,” Jack said, drawn once again into giving more explanation than he cared to give. “But my guess is that she is a man-of-war of some description.”

  “Indeed? But whose you cannot tell?”

  “I cannot. Until she shows a flag or hails us or draws close enough for us to see if her men are mustachioed.”

  “Oh,” Wentworth said. “So what will you do?” From the deck far below they heard the ship’s bell ring out, eight times.

  “I believe I will have dinner,” Jack said. He climbed down ahead of Wentworth, allowing Wentworth to observe and copy the manner in which he did so. Had Wentworth not been with him, Jack would have slid down a backstay, but he did not want to encourage Wentworth to try that trick. One had to place one’s feet just so to avoid tearing flesh from hands, and Wentworth had had a good flensing there already.

  They made it to the deck unscathed, though predictably Wentworth’s stockings were shredded and his breeches beyond hope of salvation. His shoes, too, would never see another cotillion in Boston’s finer homes. Wentworth seemed not to care, or indeed even to notice.

  There was nothing Jack wanted more at that moment than to disappear into the great cabin, to dine alone, unwatched, free from the ship’s company, who were waiting for him to decide on a course of action. But somehow, because of the situation they were in, this odd vessel out to windward, its intentions unknown, and the intimacy his passengers had forced upon him, he felt compelled to invite Frost and Wentworth to join him. Jack had always craved the autonomy he believed command would provide. The master of a vessel at sea, he thought, could do as he wished, at least with regard to such things as who would share his table. But now he was finding that that, too, was an illusion.

  Twenty minutes later they were seated at the crowded table in the diminutive great cabin. The enthusiastic Wentworth of that morning seemed to have been left on deck, and in his place was the Wentworth with whom Jack was more familiar; disdainful and ironic. Indeed, he seemed to elevate that attitude to new heights, as if embarrassed by his earlier, unseemly enthusiasm, as if he hoped to wipe it away with some notable unpleasantness.

  The meal, to be sure, was a thing worthy of disdain. Anything Maurice had prepared prior to the voyage was long gone, and though much of the excellent cabin stores Virginia had laid in remained, much had been ruined in the storm. In any event, Walcott had no idea what to do with any of it other than boil or fry it, so boil and fry he did.

  Jack was famished, and not too particular in his tastes, so he tore into the meal with relish. Frost made a noble effort, but Wentworth gave the offering a cocked eyebrow, poked at it with a knife, and then poured himself a glass of wine. “Dr. Walcott seems to have discovered some hitherto unknown species of meat, and then charred it beyond all recognition,” he observed. “Such a loss to the world of natural science.”

  “So, Captain,” Frost said, gesturing with knife and fork, “this fellow to windward, what do you make of him? Now that we have some privacy?” Jack had hoped to maintain the taciturnity he thought proper for a ship’s master, but Frost would not be put off.

  “Well,” Jack said, “It is hard to tell, of course, I never did get a proper look at her, but she looks to be a man-of-war to me.”

  Frost nodded and considered that. “Man-of-war? Indeed. No indication of whose man-of-war she might be?”

  “French, perhaps?” Wentworth said. “Captain Biddlecomb didn’t do me the honor of offering the use of his glass when we were aloft, so I could not see, but was there a guillotine on her quarterdeck, at all, captain? That’s how you can tell. Or perhaps heads rolling about the deck?”

  Frost gave Wentworth a sharp look. He turned to Jack. “Not sure which would be worse, French or British. British, they might press half your crew. French are taking prizes, but it’s the privateers, you know. A man-of-war, she’ll leave a merchantman alone. However the Directoire feels about America’s carrying trade, I don’t reckon they’re ready to start a war.”

  “I can’t say I agree,” Wentworth said, refilling his glass for the third time by Biddlecomb’s count. “It seems to me they’ve had such a jolly good time killing one another that now they will insist upon exporting their liberté, égalité, et cetera, et cetera to the rest of the world at the point of a bayonet.”

  “Mr. Wentworth,” Frost said, exasperation creeping into his perpetually cheerful tone, “you are no great friend to the French, I take it?”

  “The cheese-eating, duplicitous, Gaulish, papist French? Not really, no.”

  “Well,” said Frost, “I will not ask Captain Biddlecomb his opinion, as such things are not the proper topic of civilized discussion.”

  Wentworth raised his glass. “To civilization. May we see it again.”

  Jack was not listening in any meaningful way. He was focused instead on the skylight above their heads and any word that might come filtering down through it. Unthinking, he sawed at his meat with his knife, lifted it to his mouth, and chewed it laboriously as he listened for any report from aloft, his mind sifting out the meaningless sounds of his guests’ discourse. And so Jack was perfectly prepared to hear Lacey’s voice come ringing down from the main topgallant, shouting “Deck, there! Ship to weather’s falling off! Oh, there she goes! Looks to be making right for us!”

  Jack was on his feet in a flash, knocking his chair over, and was halfway to the door before it hit the deck. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he called over his shoulder, but by then he was too far along to be heard.

  18

  For all his time at sea, Jack was still astounded at how quickly things could change. The moment before Lacey’s shout from aloft they had been peaceably sailing in company with some unknown man-of-war. Now, as he emerged into the sunlight of a Caribbean afternoon, less than a minute after the hail from on high, certainly, he found his ship and men under genuine and immediate threat.

  The man-of-war was hull up from the quarterdeck, had been for some time, but it was appreciably nearer now than when Jack had led the way to dinner. More significantly, it had altered course by seven points of the compass, so that rather than sailing a near parallel track with Abigail it was sailing almost directly at her, making for the nearest point where their paths would intersect. She was setting studdingsails, and Jack thought, A Frenchman, then … though he did not know why he thought that, and he was too occupied with his own ship to wonder.

  “Hands to the braces! Burgess, fall off, there!” he called to John Burgess at the helm. “Come around to south by east!”

  “South by east, aye,” Burgess shouted, spinning the wheel as the lee braces were cast loose, the weather hauled upon, with Wolcott hurrying out of the galley to attend the foresheet.

  “Stuns’ls, aloft and alow!” Jack shouted, and he had not breathed the last syllable of that order before the men were leaping into the shrouds and racing aloft.

  Studdingsails … Jack looked across the water at the man-of-war, closing fast. They were just sheeting home the fore lower studdingsail on the leeward side and he realized that that was how he knew her to be French. He had seen British men-of-war flash out studdingsails, and it was a wonder to see, the speed and precision, like a magic trick, one moment they were not there, the next moment they were. In comparison, this fellow was slow and awkward, the sails coming out in no particular order, as if the topmen were setting them as the mood struck.

  Could be Spanish … Jack thought, but a Spaniard would have no reason to come swooping down on a poor Yankee merchantman that way, nor would they be so sloppy in setting sail. The tales told in the various ports in the Atlantic carrying trade were of a French navy infested
with republican thinking on the lower decks, and any man who had spent any time at sea could guess how well that would work, and what the end result would be. And here it was, on display.

  “So, a Frenchman, Captain, by the looks of it,” Frost said. Jack had not seen or heard him come on deck, but he was standing just behind and staring in the same direction Jack was, the same direction every unoccupied eye aboard was staring.

  “By her actions, and the way they get the stuns’ls on her, I would think so,” Jack said. “The dog, she’s been inching closer to us for hours, and fool that I am, I just let her.” Those last words came out more bitter than Jack had intended, but they reflected well the way he felt, his anger at his own naïveté. I am like a boy playing at being a ship’s master, he chided himself.

  “Well, if he fooled you, he fooled us all,” Frost said kindly. “I’m no stranger to these waters, nothing like, and I did not suspect. But see here, you still reckon her for a man-of-war, or might she be a privateer?”

  “I’m not so sure, now,” Jack said. “If she’s a privateer, she’s a damnably big one.” Fast schooners or brigs were more often the choice for privateers; they were cheaper to build, cheaper to man. To see a privateer as big as what the British navy would call a sloop-of-war, or the French would call a corvette, was unusual. But not unheard of.

  “She is big, for a privateer,” Frost agreed. They were quiet for a moment, watching the onrushing ship, now directly in their wake and about a mile and a half distant. “And fast, I fear,” he added at length.

  Jack nodded. Fast, indeed … The Frenchman’s studdingsails were set and drawing now, to weather and lee, aloft and alow, just like Abigail’s, which had been set with considerably more alacrity. But this distant ship was longer on the waterline than Abigail, which would make her faster, and being French-built they could count on her having a finer entry and a cleaner run aft than the apple-bowed, stubby American merchantman built to haul a maximum of cargo at a reasonable but not remarkable speed. Jack looked up at the sun. It was late spring and they were well to the south. Darkness would not be on them for many hours.

  It is only a matter of time … he thought. They could not outfoot this damned Frenchman. They could not lose him in the dark

  “Your papers are in order, I would assume,” Frost said. “Bills of lading, clearing manifests, invoices?”

  “Yes, the papers are in order,” Jack snapped. He was fully engaged in self-flagellation, and he did not need any prompting from Frost to do it better.

  “And your rôle d’équipage, of course,” Frost added.

  Jack felt a sensation in his stomach that was much like what he imagined swallowing a grapeshot would feel like; a sudden and unnatural weight, nausea, the certain knowledge that something was terribly wrong. The rôle d’équipage! How many times had he pestered Oxnard for it? And every time Oxnard had assured him he was pulling it together, and in the end he had sailed off without it.

  “You do have a rôle d’équipage, do you not?” Frost asked, sensing something was amiss, because Jack was not at all the stoic, unflappable character that he wished himself to be.

  “No, I do not have a damned rôle d’équipage,” Jack said. “Oxnard … Mr. Oxnard had said repeatedly he would take care of that, but in the end he forgot. As did I.”

  “Oh, dear…” Frost said. They remained quiet for some time, watching the man-of-war in their wake plunging on, relentless and fast. Jack felt a slight veer in the wind and he ordered the braces trimmed just so, but it was pointless and he knew it. Even if the Frenchmen sailed their ship like a Portuguese bumboat she would still have a knot or better on the Abigail. If she did not carry any spars away—unlikely in that wind—then she would be up with them in just a few hours.

  “If she is not a privateer,” Jack said, “then perhaps she is not on the lookout for a prize. Perhaps her intent is not hostile.” He wanted to confer with Frost now, wanted the older man’s input and suggestion, this friend of the Abigail’s owner, he was happy to look on him now as Oxnard’s surrogate. Jack wanted Charles Frost to take the cup from his hand, or at least help him bear it, and he loathed himself all the more for feeling that way.

  “This looks to be the actions of a ship bent on taking a prize,” Frost said, his voice lower now, conspiratorial. “We don’t know what has happened. New orders from Paris? We may be in full-fledged war with France, for all we know.”

  Jack nodded. Frost was not offering much in the way of comfort.

  “But see here, Captain,” Frost said, speaking lower still and taking a step toward Jack. “I have no say aboard this ship, I know that. But Oxnard and I are friends, and we talked of this quite a bit these past months, so I think I know his mind. This…” He nodded toward the Frenchman astern. “… this is the very reason he put those guns aboard your ship. The reason he asked me, if I was to take passage with you, if I would train your men in the use of them. Oxnard does not want to lose a ship, and her men. He wants to make a stand. And that, my boy, is why he wished you to take command. Because he knows a fighting man when he sees one.”

  Jack did not take his eyes from the Frenchman. He waited for the inevitable reference to his father, the apple not falling far from the tree, chip off the old block, like father like son, et cetera, et cetera, but Frost apparently had said all he meant to say on that point, and said no more. It was Jack’s turn to speak.

  “We have six guns, and men enough to man three of them, if we have no need to trim sails,” he said, also speaking low and conspiratorial. “I could not count the men or guns aboard this fellow, but I’ll wager it’s a damned lot more than we have.”

  “Of course you’re right, Captain Biddlecomb,” Frost agreed. “And I would not interfere with your decisions. Abigail is your command, no one else’s. But I look at it this way. We can’t outrun this fellow. We have no rôle d’équipage, which, if he means to take us as a prize will give him cause, at least by his lights. But he won’t expect a fight, will he? One or two broadsides, we carry away some of his top-hamper and we’re off for the horizon, leaving Jean Crapeau knotting and splicing in our wake.”

  Jack looked out at the Frenchman, visibly closer now. He pictured the chart on his mind. They were well through the Mona Passage, with Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, which was now a French possession in any event, to windward, offering no hope of sanctuary. No sandbars in the offing; he would not be repeating that business west of Montserrat.

  “You’ll take command of the guns?” Jack said to Frost, his eyes still on their pursuer.

  “Indeed I will,” Frost said, and Jack could hear the smile in his voice.

  * * *

  Captain Renaudin considered ordering Lieutenant Barère to scrub L’Armançon’s heads.

  What would you do, you damned popinjay, you strutting little bantam? he wondered. Would he refuse a direct order from the captain? Would he tell the men that such work was beneath him, the ship’s first officer, even though they were expected to do it? Is that how a paragon of republicanism such as Barère should act?

  He watched Barère strutting back and forth across the quarterdeck as if it was his quarterdeck, looking beyond the bow at the American merchantman ahead and nodding and smiling in his insufferable, self-satisfied manner. Yes, it would be an amusing little conundrum for you, Barère, Renaudin thought.

  But of course he could not do that. He could not humiliate a fellow officer, a lieutenant in the French naval service, no matter how lowly his origins or intolerable his demeanor.

  Barère turned as if he could read Renaudin’s thoughts, except he was smiling, which told Renaudin he could not, and that there was still some place the Directoire had not infiltrated. They had been watching the American set studdingsails, an impressive display by Renaudin’s thinking. This merchantman could not have more than a fraction of L’Armançon’s crew, yet they had set their studdingsails faster and seemingly with less fuss than his own men had.

  The crew of L’Armançon was almost to
a man members of Brest’s Jacobin Club and they treated the ship as if it was a venue for their revolutionary gatherings. Renaudin would not have been surprised to hear they had called a meeting to discuss whether or not they should set the studdingsails. The evolution could hardly have been done more slowly or in a more lubberly fashion if they had.

  “The Americans have stuns’ls set, but I do not think they will outrun us,” Barère said. “An hour or so and we will be up with them.”

  “So this is our plan, Citoyen Barère? To take this American, this unarmed merchantman, as a prize?”

  “Yes,” Barère said. “But she is not unarmed. She will put up a fight.” He spoke a bit louder than necessary. Renaudin imagined he wanted the men to hear and to be impressed by the depth of his knowledge, to understand that he was a man accustomed to intrigue, privy to its inner circles.

  “I see,” Renaudin said, by which he meant that he saw several possibilities. One was that Barère was a liar trying to puff himself up. He hoped that was the case. Because if it was not, then it meant that L’Armançon was part of some great web of conspiracy about which he, Renaudin, her commanding officer, knew nothing. And Barère did.

  “But see here, Citoyen Renaudin,” Barère continued, “this is a delicate matter. I have spoken to the men about this, and I will speak to you. We must fight them, and we must let them get their blows in, let a few of their shots strike home, before we capture them.”

  “I see,” Renaudin said once more. “And why is this?”

  “The wishes of the Directoire,” Barère said, in the arrogant tone of one trying not to sound arrogant. “We play our small parts in the greater glory or France.”

  “Very well,” Renaudin said. “Then we must clear for action. And Vive la France!”