The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  “Helm’s a’lee!” Lacey, a good hand at the wheel, turned the ship up into the wind, fast but not too fast, not enough to check her forward momentum. On the foredeck the headsail sheets were let go, the jibs and fore topmast staysail flogging in the breeze. Up, up into the wind Abigail turned until the wind was blowing directly upon the leeches of the square sails and those began to flog as well.

  “Rise tacks and sheets!” Hands heaved away at clewgarnets and the corners of the foresail came up in a jerky fashion, with Frost heaving on the larboard side and looking incongruous in his long blue coat and breeches. The Frenchman fired, and before Jack could turn and look he saw the streak of the ball passing six feet above the deck, clipping the smokestack off the caboose in its flight but doing no more damage.

  He wanted to turn and see what the enemy was about, but this was the crucial moment, the ship passing through the eye of the wind, the moment where missing stays or not would quite literally decide life or death.

  “Mainsail haul!” The mainsail’s lee brace and the crossjack’s weather brace were both let go and hands laid into the lines on the opposite sides. The main and mizzen yards swung around as the wind caught the sails on the foremast aback and pushed the bow through the wind. The Frenchman fired again. Jack felt the deck jump underfoot as the roundshot hit the side of the ship. Happily there was no one below, because Abigail’s thin scantlings could hardly even slow the flight of the shot, much less resist it.

  He looked forward again and felt the breeze on his face. The bow was through the wind, the backed foresails pushing it around. Jack opened his mouth to shout an order and the Frenchman fired and the mizzen sail, still draped over the quarterdeck, jerked and an ugly hole appeared in it.

  “Let go and haul!” he shouted. Abigail was through wind, she had not missed stays despite the loss of her mizzen, and now she was falling off on the larboard tack. “Steady, meet her!” Jack shouted at Lacey. He looked over the starboard side. While the Frenchman was flailing about they had effectively sailed around him, and now Jack found himself looking at her stern, close enough that he could see the blue-coated officers on her quarterdeck, the name L’Armançon painted across her transom, and the delicate glass of the great cabin windows below it.

  You’ll not have those for long, I reckon, Jack thought, then called out, “Gun crews, lay aft! Mr. Frost, starboard battery, if you please, fire as you will!”

  The men who had been pulled from the guns left off what they were doing and tumbled aft and John Burgess followed behind to see to the fallen mizzen. Jack lent a hand as they pulled the canvas free from the ordnance. The Frenchman was turning up into the wind, trying to follow Abigail around, but Jack kept his ship falling off, sticking to the Frenchman’s unprotected stern, turning downwind as he turned up, the two ships turning together.

  Frost came huffing around the cabin roof with the smoldering match in his hand. He did not bother checking the aim of the gun; the Frenchman was so close that aiming would not be required. He brought the match down on the vent and the gun roared out, the noise stabbing Jack’s inner ear like a thin blade, and the fine stern windows of L’Armançon were blown apart. He saw one of the blue-clad officers jump in surprise, a reaction that struck Jack as not being particularly officer-like.

  Frost was on to the next gun and Jack called, “A bit more elevation, Mr. Frost! Destroying their great cabin will be of no help to us!” Frost nodded and one of his men thrust a handspike under the barrel and heaved it up. Frost pulled the quoin halfway out and the barrel was set down again. Frost touched the match to the priming and the gun went off, loud as the first. Half L’Armançon’s taffrail blew apart and the roundshot took the head clean off the starboard helmsman and continued on, tearing a sizable section out of the mizzenmast.

  “Dear God!” Jack shouted, forgetting again to maintain the quiet stoicism of a proper ship’s master. The image was frozen there, like the ghostly vision of a candle flame imprinted on the eye; the helmsman’s back, checked shirt, a black tarpaulin hat on his head, and then his head was gone and Jack was sure he’d seen a spray of blood, the jagged neck, and then the body was tossed forward by the impact.

  “Dear God…” he said again, softer, to himself.

  The gun crew, well trained after the week or more of Frost’s relentless badgering, was hauling the first gun back out, having reloaded it with creditable speed. In the moment of relative quiet Jack could hear orders shouted out along the Frenchman’s deck. What was being said he could not tell because the distance was too great, his hearing was dulled by the cannon’s blast, and they were speaking French, which he did not.

  But he had a good idea of what they were saying, one of two possibilities. Either they were going to tack and try to chase Abigail around, come behind her as she came behind them, or they were going to wear around and try to engage that way. Abigail was hanging on their stern like a dog nipping at a bull’s ankles and they had to shake her. But they would not be able to shake her, of that Jack was fairly certain. Because he had seen their seamanship, and it was not exceptional, and his was.

  “Keep bringing her around, steady on,” Jack said to Lacey, then shouted down the deck, “On the braces…” But he got no further before the aftermost gun went off, fifteen feet from where he stood, blotting out all other sound. The Frenchman’s spanker boom was cut in two, the bulk of it falling to the quarterdeck, and Jack thought it might even have hit one of the officers on its way down.

  L’Armançon continued her turn, her bow swinging to windward. Looking down the length of her deck, Jack could see her headsails flogging as the sheets were let go.

  Tacking, then, he thought. The Frenchman was taking the bolder of his possible courses, turning through the wind, risking getting caught in irons.

  “Stations for stays! Ready about!” Jack shouted. If the Frenchman was going to tack, then they would have to tack as well, keeping right on his stern quarter where he could not hit back with his big and numerous guns.

  “Mr. Frost, leave off the guns until we’ve come about!”

  The gun crews dropped their tools and scrambled forward to take up sheets, braces, bowlines, and clewgarnets. “Stand ready, Lacey, we’ll follow them around,” Jack said, his eyes on the Frenchman’s stern as the bigger ship turned up into the wind. The quiet seemed unnatural, the familiar sounds of water and ship out of place. Then Jack heard a crack from aloft, a sharp sound, as if something under strain had parted, but before he could turn and look he saw the remaining helmsman at the Frenchman’s wheel pitch forward and the wheel begin to spin out of control. Jack looked aloft. Wentworth was there, in the maintop, still looking over the barrel of his rifle, lifting his head from the firing position to see through the small cloud of smoke that was quickly whisked away to leeward.

  Wentworth … Jack thought. He had completely forgotten about the man. That was a damned lucky shot …

  Luckier, in fact, than Jack even realized. With no hand on the helm, L’Armançon slowed in her turn to weather, her square sails shivering, her jibs flogging, the momentum of her turn dying with every foot. They would miss stays. They would turn into the wind and stay there, sails aback, immobile.

  “We’re going to heave to,” Jack said to Lacey. “Stand ready to put your helm a-lee.” He shouted down the deck, “We shall heave to, main topsail to the mast! Rise tacks and sheets! Heave away the weather main braces! Helm’s a-lee!”

  Many a crew that Jack had known would have been stunned into paralysis by that quick shift of orders, but these men were too good for that, and they did not hesitate a second as they acted on these new commands. The main yards came slowly around, the main topsail and topgallant flogged as the wind struck their leeches, and then lay quiet as the wind got on their forward face and pressed them back against the mast. Abigail slowed as the way came off her, and then she stopped, fifty yards from L’Armançon’s larboard quarter, L’Armançon with her sails in disarray, flogging in the wind, the ship motionless, her crew r
unning fore and aft and shouting as they did.

  “Mr. Frost! Man the starboard battery, if you please!”

  Once more the gun crews came rushing aft and took up their positions. All three guns had been left loaded and run out, and in the odd quiet Frost’s voice seemed overloud as he ordered the aftermost gun levered around, the elevation adjusted, then touched off the powder. He could hardly miss at that range, and he did not, the ball plowing into the bulwark around the quarterdeck, striking it lengthwise and tearing out a great long section in its flight.

  Frost was already on to the second gun, fired that as well, and another shark bite was taken out of the mizzenmast. The crew of the aftermost gun had begun ramming home a new charge when Frost fired the farthest forward, the shot striking the mizzen chains with a screech of rending iron. The mizzen channel blew apart in a cloud of splinters, twisted bits of metal flew fore and aft, and several shrouds swung free.

  Frost hustled back to the first gun, linstock held high, the match glowing. Jack could see the French crew rushing about, backing the jibs, bracing the mainsails back to a starboard tack in a desperate attempt to get the ship to fall off, to gather way so they could turn their broadside on their tormentor. Jack wondered how long he could keep this up, how long he could hang on the Frenchman’s stern. He was like a man riding a tiger—safe where he was, but if he tried to get off he would be torn apart.

  And then he saw L’Armançon’s mizzenmast leaning to one side.

  * * *

  Until the moment when both helmsmen were shot, by a single bullet, no less, Captain Jean-Paul Renaudin was feeling relatively optimistic about things.

  The American was well handled, he was quite willing to admit that, and even with all the men he had aboard L’Armançon he could not get his studdingsails set or taken in as quickly as the little merchantman. But that would not matter, because, indifferent as his crew might be, Renaudin knew he could coax considerably more speed out of his corvette than the Americans could ever find in their tubby vessel.

  Barère had told him the Yankee would mount six pounders, and by the sound of it, he was right. The Americans had made their one bold move: turned, fired, wore around and fired again, and for their effort they managed only to take out L’Armançon’s jib stay, certainly far short of the result for which they had hoped. That, and someone had shot Enseigne de Vaisseau Lessard, who had been amidships supervising the guns. The Americans might have thought that the death of the young officer was a wicked blow, but in fact it was something of a relief to Renaudin to be rid of that inept fool.

  What the Americans’ plan might have been beyond that, Renaudin could not imagine. He had to admire their boldness, bordering on stupidity, in trying to fight back against such odds rather than striking when the first bow chaser went off. As deftly as this Yankee shipmaster might handle his vessel, however, he clearly did not understand the most basic aspects of ship-to-ship combat. He had sailed off, leaving his stern exposed to L’Armançon’s full broadside, and Renaudin had taken advantage of that, firing from so close that his gunners could hardly miss.

  The Americans’ mizzen sail was brought down, and Renaudin could see the Yankee’s rails were well torn up. There seemed to be no material damage beyond that, but no matter. It would be simple enough to keep alongside the American or athwart her hawse, and beat her, weak-sided, frail, poorly armed thing that she was, into bleeding submission.

  “Now see here, Citoyen Renaudin,” said Barère, standing at Renaudin’s side. On so small a vessel as L’Armançon, the first officer should have taken charge of the guns, but the little man chose instead to stand beside Renaudin on the quarterdeck during the action and offer his wisdom concerning a sea fight, wisdom he had garnered from serving several years in the carrying trade.

  It further annoyed Renaudin to think that if Barère had been in his proper place, it would have been him, and not Lessard, who had taken that bullet. If it had been René Dauville killed in Barère’s place, Renaudin would have been truly furious.

  Barère was still talking. “We are not to ruin them with a single broadside, they must get their shots in, it must seem as if they have put up a good fight, do you see?”

  Renaudin ignored him. He would not bother asking why they had to enact this charade, because he knew Barère would only give some cryptic and unhelpful answer involving the wishes of the Directoire. More to the point, Renaudin’s mind was occupied with handling his ship, calculating course and speed and what this American might do next, how quickly they might stay or wear, and how easily L’Armançon might draw alongside. Any part of his mind not given to that task was taken up with self-loathing at his own cowardice, that he would allow himself to endure this humiliation rather than take the honorable way out, which at this point could only mean shooting Barère in the head and then stepping unflinchingly up to the guillotine.

  “Citoyen, do you attend?” Barère asked, peevishly.

  “Yes, yes,” Renaudin said. “Well, they’ve gotten their blows in, Lessard is dead, might we knock them on the heads a bit?”

  Before Barère could answer, Renaudin turned to the second officer, Lieutenant Dauville, and said, “We will bear up now, bring the larboard battery to bear. Shift some of the men over to the gun crews on that side and send the sail trimmers to the braces.” If they did not turn they were in danger of losing the weather gauge and the advantages that went with it.

  “Aye, sir,” Dauville said and relayed those orders to a boatswain’s mate, who put his call to his lips and trilled the command, then moved forward, shouting out additional orders. Barère was nearby, shifting nervously. He opened his mouth to speak again when Renaudin interrupted once more, quite on purpose, telling the helmsmen, “Bear up now, bear up, follow this Yankee dog around.” The helmsmen, one on each side of the big wheel, put the helm slowly a-lee and L’Armançon came closer to the wind as the yards were braced around to meet the new course.

  “See here,” Barère said, barely able to contain himself, when the helmsman on the larboard side, seeing something amiss in the binnacle box, apparently, stepped forward, arm outstretched. And then he was flung aside as if swatted by the hand of God, and behind him the second helmsman fell back, his eyes wide, a great and spreading wash of blood on his shirt.

  It happened so fast, and was so completely unexpected, that for a second Renaudin could do nothing but look with confused wonder at the two men sprawled on the deck. The wheel, which had been nearly hard over, began to spin back the other way and L’Armançon faltered in her turn. Renaudin leapt across the deck toward the unmanned helm as Barère fairly shrieked, “The helm! Get the helm, damn your eyes!”

  Renaudin kept clear of the spokes, spinning at lethal speed, and used his palm to slow the turns until he had control of the wheel. One hand on a spoke, he turned and looked forward. L’Armançon had fallen back to her original course, running downwind of the American, and the American, no fool, was taking the opportunity to get to windward of her. “Beaussier! Ouellette!” he shouted to the seamen tending the lee main brace, “come and take the wheel!”

  With the new men at the helm and Barère shouting something or other, Renaudin stepped forward and looked down the length of the deck. The hands were still at stations for bracing around, half the gun crews had moved to the larboard side, ready for L’Armançon to turn and bring those guns to bear. There was a collective look of confusion. No one had any notion of what was happening.

  “Man the starboard battery!” he shouted, and then, when no one moved, “Starboard, damn you, starboard!” But they only looked at him, uncomprehending.

  “Fire as you can, starboard battery!” That last seemed to move them, and the men who had gone to reinforce the larboard side returned to the starboard and began to reload the guns with acceptable alacrity. Renaudin turned to Beaussier on the helm. “Helm’s a-lee, easy now.” Forward again. “Sail trimmer, brace up, starboard tack, brace as she comes around!”

  “He’s tacking, the Americ
an is tacking!” Barère shouted, his voice pitched a bit higher than before.

  I can see he’s tacking, you little puke, Renaudin thought, but in another part of his mind he was considering what the American was playing at. He had expected him to run off as fast as he could to windward, in the hope that his ship was quicker on a bowline than L’Armançon. But he was not. He was coming about and he would cross to windward and if, please God, he missed stays he would be done for as L’Armançon followed him around.

  To starboard, the faster of the gun crews were running out, and first one, then two of the guns went off. Renaudin watched the shot fly across the American’s deck, but he said nothing because he was content to let them shoot high. It was his most profound hope that they would bring down one of the merchantman’s masts, which would end this quicker than anything.

  The American turned up into the wind, the headsails were let go, the main and mizzen yards braced around. Renaudin wished with all his heart that they would miss stays, that they would find themselves pointed helplessly into the wind, motionless and vulnerable, but he could see they would not; they would turn nimbly from starboard tack to larboard, even as his own ship was struggling to get headway enough to follow them around.

  “Damn them!” Barère shouted. “Very well, Citoyen Renaudin, you may bring them to now, you may defeat them as soundly as you wish.”

  “Thank you for that kindness, Citoyen,” Renaudin said. Unfortunately, the path to such a victory was not as obvious as it had been even five minutes earlier. The American had come about and was taking position on the starboard quarter, at a place where none of L’Armançon’s guns would bear, and Renaudin had a good notion of what would come next.

  And it did, just as he had imagined, the American’s starboard battery firing into L’Armançon’s unprotected stern. The first gun went off fifty yards away, loud, but not so loud that Renaudin could not hear the glass in his aft windows shattering, the sound of the roundshot doing untold damage to the great cabin he had so finely fitted out over the long and dull commission. He saw Barère jump in surprise, was certain the man’s feet had cleared the deck, and he smiled.