The French Prize

by James L. Nelson

  But he was there on other business, and he turned to face Mr. Frost. The butt of one pistol was jutting out of Frost’s coat pocket and he was tamping down the wadding and shot in the second.

  “I said ‘Begone,’ and still you let yourself in like you are the damned admiral of the fleet!”

  “Mr. Frost, whatever you are planning, sir, it has no hope of success. Will you shoot Biddlecomb and Tucker? And then what?”

  “This is none of your affair!” Frost thundered. “You arrogant, spoiled, cocksure little whelp! This business is more important than you could even imagine! The very life of our nation, sir!”

  Wentworth had not been certain until that point what he would do, but being called an arrogant, spoiled, cocksure little whelp had settled the issue for him. But he was still curious.

  “Oh, but I can imagine, Mr. Frost,” he said. “I know more of this than you might think. I know that it was your intention all along to steer Biddlecomb into fighting the Frenchman. Son of the Federalist leader Isaac Biddlecomb attacking a vessel of the French navy, initiating war. The bellicose designs of the Adams administration on display for all the world to see.” Frost had not written that last part in his letter to Oxnard, of course, but Wentworth guessed it was the reason. He could think of no other.

  Frost looked as if he had been struck with a buggy whip. “Damn your eyes, how do you know that?” he demanded, confirming Wentworth’s hypothesis.

  “I am kept informed, sir, well informed. But, pray, how did you arrange it so you yourself would not be killed in the fight? And how would you be let go from the prison to which we were all bound?”

  “If you know so damned much, you should know that as well,” Frost said. “And if you do not, then by God you’ll not hear it from me.”

  Wentworth nodded. He was only going to get so much, and no more, but he continued to prod.

  “When the Frenchman failed to take this ship, you had the idea that Biddlecomb might actually beat them in a second fight, is that correct? If you saw to her being better armed and manned? You thought that would be an even greater show of Federalist aggression.”

  Still Frost remained silent, but the flush in his cheeks was like a signal lantern that Wentworth was correct.

  “Then tell me this,” Wentworth said, “why do you not wish for Biddlecomb to rescue L’Armançon? They are doomed if he doesn’t tow them off, and you are a great friend to the French, are you not?”

  Frost slipped the pistol’s rammer back into its slot under the barrel of the gun. He seemed to be regaining some equilibrium. “This is bigger than a single ship, or the lives of the men who sail her. This pup Biddlecomb wants to play the grand naval hero, and Adams will crow to the world about what a friend he is to all nations, the son of his man Isaac Biddlecomb saving the very ship that attacked him.” With that Frost smiled, actually smiled. “After all of our careful planning, the irony of such an outcome would be more than I could bear.”

  Wentworth nodded again. “I understand. But before you do anything rash, there is something I think you should see.”

  “What?”

  “Something Captain Biddlecomb has secreted in his cabin. I saw it only by accident. But I think it might change your perception of this entire matter.”

  Frost cocked his head, then cocked his pistol. “Very well, Wentworth, you lead the way.”

  Wentworth stepped out of the big cabin and moved aft. The great cabin door was jammed and he had to put his shoulder to it to swing it open. When he did, he was stunned at what he saw. The aft windows, that elegant wall of glass, were blown out, and only a line of jagged frame and sundry shards around the periphery were left. The hanging cot was shot in two, the sideboard was in several pieces and tossed around the room, great holes in the walls provided an unobstructed view of the sea beyond. Everything was wet, and half an inch of water rolled back and forth on the deck.

  He stepped further in and Frost came in behind him. Frost held the gun low but it was unambiguously pointed at Wentworth. “What is it, then?” Frost demanded.

  Wentworth crossed the cabin to the settee below the aft windows and removed the plank that made up the seat, revealing the storage space beneath. “There,” he said.

  “What?” Frost said.

  “There. Come have a look.”

  “Lift it up,” Frost said.

  “I can’t lift it, it’s nailed in place,” Wentworth said. Frost crossed the great cabin to Wentworth’s side. He peered down into the settee. In the storage space sat a wooden box of what was once a decent set of china before the Frenchman had put a ball through it and turned into potsherds.

  “What is it?” Frost asked and Wentworth grabbed his wrist, pushed the pistol aside, grabbed a handful of Frost’s breeches with the other hand and flung him out the stern window.

  Or at least he tried. Frost’s leg hit the edge of the settee and he fell, coming down on a jagged bit of window frame. He screamed in agony, twisted his head, looked right at Wentworth, swung the pistol around, and fired.

  Wentworth jerked his head to the side as he saw the gun coming his way. The shot made a huge sound in the confined space and Wentworth heard the buzz of the ball as it tore past his ear, inches or less away. He grabbed Frost’s boots and hefted them up, tilting Frost aft. Frost made a strangled sound. He seemed to be caught up on the broken window frame. Then, whatever was holding him let go and he tumbled out of the window and hit the water astern.

  He was gone in the white wake, gone for some time. Wentworth wondered if he could swim. A moment later he saw an arm waving madly, much farther off, an arm, no more, and then that went under and he saw no other sign of Charles Frost.

  No, I guess he can’t, Wentworth thought. He listened for sounds from the deck above, some shout of, “Man overboard!” or some such, but he heard nothing. They were too engrossed in their noble effort to save French lives.

  * * *

  Jack was trying to get a feel for how Abigail would handle in the steep seas as they worked their way downwind when the gun went off. He was standing by the helm, gauging the motion of the ship as she rode the waves. He waited until the bow came down in a trough, the sails shivering as the seas blocked the wind, and then rose up again. The bow began to mount the next wave, the tip of the jibboom spearing the oncoming roller, pulling free and shedding a trail of salt water like a dagger pulled from a victim, dripping blood.

  “Now, Maguire, fall off!” Jack said.

  Maguire spun the wheel. Abigail’s bow turned gracefully off the crest of the wave, and then, just as the ship might have gone broadside to the seas, Jack said, “Come up! Meet her!” Maguire spun the wheel back and Abigail turned back, bow into the sea, ready to meet the next roller. In the process she had dropped farther to leeward, closer to the wallowing corvette astern.

  “That went well,” Jack said.

  “Aye, sir,” Maguire said but he did not sound as sanguine as Jack did. The question of course was whether that evolution would get them down to L’Armançon before L’Armançon piled up on Guadeloupe, and if they did get down to her, could they pass her a line? Was her company still intact enough to take their part in her rescue?

  And then a gun went off, right under Jack’s feet, a pistol by the sound, and it made him jump. “What in all hell was that?” he demanded but everyone on the deck was staring around with dumb looks on their faces. “Mr. Burgess,” he said to the boatswain, “get below and see what that was about!”

  “Aye, sir,” Burgess said and headed forward. Abigail was coming up on the next wave and Maguire fell off again as the bow reached the crest, hardened up as the ship plunged down into the trough. They were meeting the next wave when Burgess reappeared, Wentworth following behind, a grim look on his face.

  “Well, what was that?” Biddlecomb demanded, but Burgess just turned to Wentworth for an answer.

  “Mr. Wentworth?” Jack asked.

  “Mr. Frost’s dead, I fear,” Wentworth said, and he sounded genuinely trouble
d.

  “Dead? Dear God!” Jack said. “What…?”

  “Killed himself. I went below, looking for him. He wasn’t in his cabin, but I saw the door to your cabin was open so, forgive me, I looked in. He was there by the window, just sitting on the settee. He had a pistol. I pleaded with him not to do it, but…”

  “Dear God!” Jack said. “Was it … was it my … discourteousness?” He was horrified to think that he might have been the cause of this, him and his temper.

  “No, no!” Wentworth said. “Never think that! He looked me right in the eyes and he said, ‘Wentworth, I failed. I had a task, an important task, and I failed.’ I asked him what he meant, but he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The shot knocked him right back, out the window.”

  There was stunned silence on the quarterdeck. Abigail rose and fell on the next wave and Jack never even thought to turn her to leeward on the crest. Wentworth spoke again. “There were things acting, Captain Biddlecomb, things Frost was about, that we’ll likely never understand. He was playing at some game, I fear, and we were his pawns.”

  Again there was silence. The seconds ticked by. And then Lacey came aft and reported the hawser flaked out on the ’tween decks and the morbid spell was broken, because there was, at sea, only so much time that could be spent dwelling on the dead.

  For the next hour Jack continued to turn the Abigail to leeward, just a bit, at the crest of each wave. The seas were too big, the ship’s rig too compromised, to actually turn and sail downwind. If they tried, there was every chance Abigail would also lose her masts and then she and the corvette would go ashore side by side, die like lovers in a suicide pact. Jack did not care for that possibility, so instead he dropped his ship down to L’Armançon, wave by wave, yard by yard.

  They were just above a cable length away when Jack realized why L’Armançon was not drifting as fast toward Guadeloupe and her destruction as it seemed she should. He and Tucker saw it at the same time, a churning in the water like a submerged ledge, one hundred yards ahead of the corvette. Jack felt a flash of panic when he saw the white water boiling and rolling just below the surface, and Tucker cried, “What’s that? A reef?”

  Jack put his glass to his eye. He could see some dark mass in the water, and as it rose on a wave a line rose up from the sea, running just above the surface, right back to L’Armançon’s bow. “It’s a sea anchor of some sort,” Jack reported. “No wonder they’re not yet on the beach.” He studied it a bit more, waiting see what the lifting seas would reveal. It was the mainmast, the ship’s mainmast, her main yard and sail still attached, or so it seemed. When the mast had gone by the board they had managed to bend a heavy line to it and let it drift away, with the other end of the line made fast to the bitts in the corvette’s bow. The drag of the mast and gear had kept L’Armançon’s bow pointed into the wind and sea and slowed her rate of drift.

  “Good work, for Frenchies,” Tucker said. “Might have saved their hides.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe not.” The sea anchor might have kept the French ship off the beach, but it would stop Abigail from getting close enough to pass them a line. Jack could not risk the possibility of smashing his rudder into that massive trunk of wood as he tried to get down to the stricken ship. He could not risk having the shattered mainmast rear up and punch a hole clean through Abigail’s bottom.

  “We’ll get a bit closer,” Jack said at last, “and see if there’s a way around this damned wreckage. But if there’s a risk to this ship, I’m afraid Monsieur is on his own.”

  * * *

  The men of L’Armançon had done well, Renaudin had to admit as much. They had worked like mad to clear the wreckage. They had made what repairs they could to the standing rigging, set the running rigging to rights, so that the sails they set could be controlled to some degree. They had plugged the few shot holes and secured the great guns with double lashings. But it had not been enough.

  In preparing for sea, one never knows what is or is not lashed properly until that first big wave rolls the ship hard. Likewise, in preparing for foul weather, one is never sure how adequate the preparations are until the first punch of the storm staggers the ship, and then she stands up or she does not. In the case of L’Armançon, she stood up. But not for long.

  The bowsprit had been bowsed down as tight as it could be, and a new forestay set up, but that had not been enough. The seas struck the wounded bowsprit again and again, glancing blows that shifted it and loosened the lashings. They were making little if any headway, and Renaudin was painfully aware of Guadeloupe, just to leeward of them.

  The corvette was on a starboard tack, trying to claw her way out to sea, to get away from the looming threat of the island. It occurred to Renaudin that if he could tack, get the seas striking the bowsprit on the larboard side, it might knock that spar back into place before it was torn loose and took the rest of the rig with it.

  It was an enormously risky move. Tacking with an undamaged rig in those conditions was no mean feat, and L’Armançon was far from undamaged. They could wear ship, but Renaudin knew he could not afford to lose all that distance to leeward. They put their helm alee as the ship came up on the crest of a wave, and for most of the evolution it seemed as if all would be well, their improvised fore staysail bringing the bow around.

  But then as Renaudin called, “Let go and haul!” the main topsail yard snapped like a twig. Rot, perhaps, or an unseen injury, it didn’t matter. The result was the same. The spar folded like a jackknife, the bow spun off the wind, out of control. L’Armançon ended up broadside to the seas, in the trough to the waves, and rolling so violently that the main shrouds tore from the channels and what remained of the rig came down around their heads.

  And when that happened, Renaudin was done. The bad luck, the misery of the Revolution, the destruction of his beloved navy, the destruction of his beloved L’Armançon, it was all too much. His ship was dead, and he saw no reason that he should outlive it. He walked aft to the stern rail, leaned against it, folded his arms, and waited for his life to end on the reefs beyond Guadeloupe’s sandy shores.

  René Dauville, however, did not share Renaudin’s wish to let it all come to an end. Once again he drove the crew beyond what any rational man would think possible. They hacked the standing rigging away, tossed topmast and topgallant overboard. They rousted out a cable from the cable tier, bent it to the mainmast and yard, and with blocks, tackles, handspikes, and the power of desperate and frightened men they sent the whole thing over the side, let it stream to windward. They could feel the tension come on the line as L’Armançon’s bow swung up into the wind and the seas, and her motion went from the gut-churning, deathly wallow of a ship broadside to the sea to the more reasonable motion of a ship riding bow to.

  Dauville came aft to report their success, but Renaudin showed little interest, and said even less. No man aboard thought their efforts would do anything but delay what was going to happen, but unlike the others, Renaudin did not wish for even those few extra minutes. Let us be done with this … he thought.

  Dawn came and the island was still three or four miles under their lee, the seas still steep, the wind still strong, but lessening. The American, the damned, damned American, was to windward, her rig still as it had been at nightfall, the main topmast shot away, fore topgallant sent down. She was making way under a close reefed fore topsail, staysails, and spanker. Renaudin glared at her. The only thing that would make his death any easier was the thought that he might take her with him. But he saw no chance of that. She was under way and would sail clear of the island, and the Americans would watch as L’Armançon was shattered on Guadeloupe’s shore.

  Then Dauville was aft again and Renaudin wondered why the man didn’t just leave him alone. “Sir, the Americans, they’re coming down to us,” he said, “they seem to be working their way to leeward.”

  Renaudin looked past the bow, heaving, rolling, and dipping. He could see the American ship rise on the crest
of a wave, dip to leeward, and then as her hull was lost from sight behind the rise of the sea he could see her straighten in her course again. Dauville was right. They were dropping downwind, yard by yard.

  “What do you think they intend?” Renaudin asked. “Do they wish to rejoin the fight?”

  “I can’t imagine that, sir. Safer for them to simply let us go up on the lee shore,” Dauville said. “My thought was…” He hesitated, sounded unsure. “… that they wish to tow us free.”

  Renaudin’s eyebrows came together as he tried to understand this. “Tow … us?”

  “Yes, sir. They are making tolerably decent way. The seas and wind are going down. My guess is they wish to pass us a hawser.”

  “How could they? In these seas, how could they get a line to us?”

  “They don’t have to, sir,” Dauville said, and Renaudin was shocked to see that his first officer actually seemed pleased with this prospect. “We’re streaming that wreckage as a sea anchor, recall? If they can get the bitter end of that rope aboard, there’s the tow line, set!”

  Renaudin saw it all play out in his mind. They would drift a boat aft, bend a messenger to the hawser Dauville had run out, haul it aboard. They would make it fast, perhaps to the base of the mainmast. They’d set more sail, claw off the lee shore with the wallowing and helpless L’Armançon towing astern. They’d tow his ship to English Harbour, American flag flying over the Tricolor. He’d be a prisoner again, but worse, he would be utterly humiliated. His pride was all but ground into dust now, what would be left when the American dragged him like a helpless baby into the arms of the British, at the end of his own hawser, no less?

  He pushed himself off the rail and stepped around Dauville and headed forward. The boatswain was there to ask a question but Renaudin pushed him out of the way. He could hear Dauville following behind, but they were amidships before his first officer asked, “Sir? Is there something I can do, sir?”