Game of Bones

by David Donachie

  ‘I need a speaking trumpet, Pender,’ he said, ‘to call on him to strike his flag.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ Pender replied, as the anchor cable began to straighten, evidence that he’d found good holding ground.

  ‘Let her run a bit more!’ he shouted. ‘I want to get good and close.’

  ‘He’s got men ashore, Capt’n,’ shouted Pender, pointing to several heads sticking up over the gorse bushes that provided a windbreak for every piece of level ground. Some of them had muskets, which they were training on the British ship. Harry responded by holding up a finger to feel the stiffening breeze. Not even a marksman could achieve much using a musket at over a hundred yards, especially with such windage.

  Time stood still, a seeming age which was in fact no more than a few minutes. Harry, as the cable went slack, gave the order to put a brake on the anchor cable, and a simultaneous one for the men at the stern to secure the spring, with the crews of the starboard carronades to be released from other duties and told to stand by, aiming their shot into the sea.

  ‘Let fly the topsails!’

  Gently, as the anchor bit into good holding ground, Bucephalas slowed, until with the anchor cable rising out of the water, she came to a halt. The sound of the tidal flow running by her hull was mixed with that of the creaking cables as they took the strain. Down below, men pushed on the capstan to bring in the spring. Slowly the ship spun broadside on and Harry, lifting his telescope, looked right ahead to where Tressoir stood on Lothian’s quarterdeck.

  ‘Pender, get the men up from below and man the guns. Topmen, get out of the rigging in case he fires off a warning salvo.’

  Harry stepped forward and raised the speaking trumpet, at the very moment that Tressoir did the same. The Frenchman beat him to it by a whisker, his voice floating across the two hundred yards of bright water that separated the ships.

  ‘You said, Captain Ludlow, that should we meet again I would not be able to beat you.’

  ‘And any small amount of sense will show you that I was right. I am now going to demonstrate the lethal nature of my firepower.’

  He nodded to the carronade gun captains, who pulled their lanyards at the same time. The two guns roared out a spit of orange flame and black smoke, shooting backwards on the fixed rails of their carriages. The balls hit the water some twenty-five yards from the Lothian’s larboard side, sending up twin founts of water that, with the wind, was carried across the merchantman’s deck to drench everyone aboard.

  ‘And I, in turn, must do likewise,’ Tressoir shouted, as the last of the white water fell back into the sea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE CRASH of gunfire seemed to come from all around the ship. Every man aboard threw himself to the deck. Fired from fixed platforms, at short range, the chain-shot from the land-based guns ripped through the upper rigging, cutting sails, slicing ropes, and smashing spars in a maelstrom that made Harry wonder if he’d been attacked by a ship-of-the-line. The gorse bushes he’d seen had no innocent purpose. Every one was a gun emplacement, each cannon fully manned by what could only be the bulk of Tressoir’s corvette crew.

  In the lull between their first salvo and the second, Tressoir opened up with canister from the Lothian, small deadly iron balls that scythed across Harry’s deck. As well as maiming and killing it kept heads down. Harry, on his knees, was stunned into silence, as all around him parts of his rigging was falling, some into the sea, but even more on to the netting above his head. The gunners at least had stayed at their posts to respond, and standing up to check their target they caught the full blast of Tressoir’s fusillade. Men were spinning away from the side, only two of his guns firing off their shot.

  ‘Axes!’ Harry shouted, getting to his feet. Pender had anticipated the command and grabbed a pair of topmen to help him cut the cable. ‘Dreaver, Fellows, get another axe and help Pender. Price, Hillyard, get below and release that damned spring. And never mind what damage it might do, just get it loose.’

  They were in mortal danger, in truth defenceless against these reloaded cannon. It was no mass salvo now. Each gun was carefully aimed, some at the base of the masts and those with a better angle at the join between the sternpost and the rudder, where the metal pintles and gudgeons held the coppered rudder assembly to the ship. If they lost that they couldn’t steer. But no action Harry or his crew could take would do much to distract the gunners enough from their tasks. Only escape would save them, and for some reason the Frenchmen had themselves provided the lifeline.

  Deadly as their attentions might be it was a mistake to fire their guns individually. Harry, running for the wheel, miraculously intact, knew that well. If they’d kept to their devastating salvos, even badly aimed, he would have been forced to strike, just to avoid the annihilation of the crew. But under this sporadic bombardment he could begin to sort some order out of the terrible chaos. And given a chance to draw breath, discipline told. These men had sailed and fought together for two years. During that time, hardly a day went by at sea without Harry Ludlow ordering an hour’s practice on the guns. The dividend of such training now came to the fore as each unhurt or unoccupied member of his crew went where they could be of some use.

  The wounded gunners were replaced and the undischarged cannon now fired. Ignoring what was happening elsewhere, a section of the crew had gone to man the bow and stern chasers, firing them high at the platforms containing Tressoir’s cannon. And because they were practised they were good, sensible enough without any orders to drag their own canister out of the magazine and return to their enemies a dose of their own medicine. On deck Harry, ignoring everything that flew or dropped past him, walked along to calm the gunners, an anxious eye on Pender and his men, swinging their axes by the starboard hawse-hole.

  ‘One salvo for those sods on the East Indiaman!’ he yelled. ‘Carronades to sweep the quarterdeck clear. Then reload, and as the ship swings take every one of those emplacements on whichever side the guns are loaded. Let the bastards have a taste of real gunnery.’

  They were ready, crouched down behind the bulwarks, impervious, like Harry, to what was going on around them, which included roundshot, musket balls, canister, deadly shards of splintered wood, and the writhing bodies of their own wounded mates. Harry raised his arm, looked to the last spot where he’d seen Tressoir, now invisible through the smoke, and bellowed, ‘Fire!’

  This was no rippling broadside, with one gun preceding the next, but the complete thing, and the recoil made the ship’s timbers groan with the strain. The anchor cable went at the same time, and the ship swung round, bows pointing towards the Lothian, the stern still attached to the spring. The gun crews rushed across the littered deck and manned the starboard guns, fingers eagerly pointing to those of their enemy they thought they could hit. Harry was still looking at where their last volley had gone. As the smoke cleared he saw that the very piece of wood that had sheltered the Lothian’s quarterdeck had gone. He opened his mouth to yell in triumph when the musket ball took him across the back.

  He fell forward, more from the force of the blow than any pain, landing once more on his knees, this time fighting for breath. Two of his men abandoned their gun, grabbed him, and hauled him aft towards the wheel, their captain screaming at them to belay and get back to their posts. Pender, amidships, hacking at some fallen rigging with his axe, saw what was happening, and ran to assist. By the time he arrived Harry had got hold of the wheel and was trying desperately to haul himself upright.

  ‘Get back on your damned guns, or we’ll all die.’

  ‘Capt’n,’ said Pender, taking his arm to support him.

  ‘Forget me!’ Harry gasped, for the first time feeling the searing pain of his wound and the warm blood running under the waistband of his breeches. ‘Just fight the way you always do. You don’t need me.’

  ‘Carrick,’ said Pender to one of the gunners, at the same time as he was examining Harry’s back, ‘get below to the cockpit and fetch up the biggest bandage you can
find.’

  Harry was hunched over the wheel, clutching the spokes to try to stay upright. He heard the ripping sound as Pender tore the ragged remains of his blue coat. That was followed by the linen shirt as well as his servant’s yell for a bucket of sea water.

  ‘It’s mostly a flesh wound, I think, but deep enough to show your bones. You’re bleeding bad.’

  ‘To hell with it, Pender.’

  ‘How do we get out of here, Capt’n?’

  Harry raised his head, to look aloft at what he had left in the way of topsails. It was precious little, certainly not enough to take them out on the wind that was blowing through the channel, and unquestionable death for any topman who went aloft to attempt it.

  ‘Drift,’ Harry croaked. The pain was intense now, his control of his limbs uncoordinated. ‘We must get close to the Lothian. That will make them cautious with their fire. Stern or bows, but not amidships, with the bowsprit right on one of Tressoir’s cables.’

  ‘Cut the cable?’ Harry just nodded. ‘We’re drifting already, Capt’n. The spring is gone.’

  Harry wasn’t listening, he was too busy thinking. ‘Fire every gun on the ship at it. If that fails board Lothian with axes and cut it. But break the damn thing.’

  ‘Bandage, Pender.’

  ‘Thanks, Carrick. Hold the captain upright while I bind it round.’

  Harry’s protests that seeing to his needs was a waste of time were ignored. The men he led were carrying out their duties, doing what needed to be done without any help from him or Pender. But that could alter at any second, and without a word being exchanged they all accepted they would need Harry Ludlow upright and in command if they were going to get out of this scrape alive.

  ‘It will only slow the bleeding,’ Pender whispered in his ear, as he tied the knot. ‘It’ll take a needle and thread to stop it proper.’

  ‘Rum!’

  Harry lifted his head at that word, to see the one-legged Willerby standing there with a tankard, as calm as a day on the green, as if there were no shots nor shells, not to mention blocks, pulleys, and shards of wood, flying in all directions. Two of his guns were hit at once, though with luck only on the wood of the trucks, but it was enough to slew them uselessly sideways, their splinters adding deep cuts to bodies smashed by moving metal. The whole of the deck was covered in blood, and most of the guns that could still fire were doing so with reduced crews. The loss, in men and firepower, was ruinous.

  ‘Get off the deck, Willerby.’

  ‘This rum will help set you up, Capt’n. Very least it’ll ease the pain.’

  Harry, even wounded, knew better than to argue with Willerby. He grabbed it and drained it down, gasping at the strength of the mixture. ‘Now get below. The men will need you more than they need me after this is over.’

  Willerby grinned and ducked down the companionway like a man with two good legs. ‘The old rum never fails a sailor.’

  Bucephalas was drifting crabwise, the current carrying her towards Lothian. The fire from the East Indiaman was infrequent now, while that from the shore had lessened considerably as the guns on the privateer’s deck engaged in individual duels. But someone was in command, and had the means to signal his desires, since the shore-based cannon ceased their duelling and started to fire in unison. Even with fewer guns it was like the first salvo, deadly in the sheer quantity of shot that came aboard. But this time the target was moving—not much, but enough to make the victims of this renewed barrage feel that at least they had a chance.

  Harry could hear the men coming to the quarterdeck to report, each one talking to Pender rather than himself, a sorry litany of more men wounded and guns rendered useless. He was looking to larboard. Over the shattered bulwarks he could see the outline of the Lothian clearly now, still square on and blocking the channel. He tried to move the wheel but he lacked the strength.

  ‘Pender, help me. Get her rudder round so that she’s bows on.’

  ‘Can’t be done, your honour. Rudder’s near shot away. You can see the top part hanging off. Not even the relieving tackles have any purchase.’

  ‘Then get me on to the guns. I’ll aim the damn things myself.’

  There were only four cannon left. The rest were dismounted or smashed, including one of the carronades. Even those that had survived were surrounded by dead or wounded men, not one cannon able to muster a complete crew.

  ‘Who’s loaded?’ Pender called, a cry to which two of the captains responded. He helped Harry to the nearest gun, taking the rammer himself to heave it round on instruction so that it was pointing well forward, aimed at the Lothian’s stern cable. ‘Any men spare,’ Harry gasped, ‘load the rest of the cannon. This is likely to take more than one shot.’

  Harry was kneeling, peering through the gun port, calling for inch changes to the aim and elevation. Satisfied, and ignoring the pain, he stood up, swaying back and forth as he pulled the lanyard. Pender dropped the rammer and leapt forward as he did so, and was just in time to save Harry’s legs from being smashed by the recoil of a ton of metal. Eyes screwed up in pain, his captain didn’t see how close he came to success, with a spout of water shooting up right at the point were the cable sank beneath the water.

  ‘Carronade’s ready, Capt’n,’ said a voice in his ear. They helped him to it. But this time, with a fixed carriage, there was no way of levering to change the aim. Only the drift of the ship could aid him and something in the current obliged. As Bucephalas swung slightly, Harry fell backwards, pulling on the flintlock as he did do. The gun roared out and the great 32-pound ball shot forth, smashing the stern and slicing through the cable in the luckiest shot of Harry Ludlow’s life.

  The effect on Lothian was immediate. Reduced to one cable, the current pushed her sharply towards the northern shore. Her shot was ill-timed and badly aimed, inflicting little damage. She wasn’t quite out of the way and Bucephalas crashed into her stern, taking off what little remained of the fancy gold decoration that had adorned the area around the casement windows.

  Muskets had been placed around Bucephalas’s deck when they’d cleared for action, with balls and powder. These were now discharged en masse at the enemy ship, just enough to stop the Frenchmen’s attempt to grapple the British ship fast to them with irons and prevent her escape. The gunfire from the shore had all but died away, although the odd cannon shot was still being exchanged between the ships. Smoke was billowing around, only to be whipped away by the wind, and Harry, with eyes that were going out of focus, saw Tressoir by the mainmast. The Frenchman was looking right at him. He didn’t know, in the haze, half smoke, half approaching delirium, if what he saw was right. But it seemed to his fevered brain that the bastard who’d nearly destroyed both him and his ship had on his face that very superior smile.

  ‘Give me a pistol,’ Harry croaked, as Bucephalas ground past.

  ‘There’s no point, Capt’n,’ Pender replied, grabbing hold of him as gently as he could. The bandage untidily wrapped around his upper body was soaked with blood, and judging by Pender’s previous sight of the wound if Harry Ludlow didn’t get attention he could bleed to death. ‘You’ve got to come below and get stitched up.’

  With a final groan of strained wood the ships broke free of each other, Bucephalas drifting out into the open sea, still carried on the current. Pender and two sailors took their captain below, and as they helped Harry towards the companionway he could hear his ship being restored to order: some housing the functioning guns and lashing off the damaged to stop them trundling around the deck as it began to cant with the swell, topmen going aloft to rig some sails that would put some way on the ship, waisters were working with axes and knives to cut free the damaged rigging, and someone, probably the carpenter, had sensibly put men to working the pumps. Screams rose above all the other noises as men who’d been wounded were finally shifted from where they lay.

  Harry suddenly stopped and pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Where’s Captain Illingworth?’

  One
of his supporters pointed towards the taffrail right above the sternpost, which was smashed to bits. What was left standing seemed to be covered in blood.

  ‘He was placed right by there, after you and he had words, exposed to the first dose of roundshot.’

  ‘Dead?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Carried below,’ the man replied. ‘Though I reckon a canvas sack is what he’s got comin’, with that wound.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  HARRY had never sailed with a surgeon on his books, his experience of the breed being that they were to a man drunken sots who killed more than they cured: when they’d fought these last five years James had run the cockpit and dealt with the bloody aftermath of action. But as he lay face down, with Pender working on his back, he knew that he needed a surgeon now, and not just for himself.

  All around him in the faint glim from the candlelight, men were in pain, some so deep in shock that they merely stared at the low deckbeams above their heads while their shipmates tended to their needs. Others screamed and begged for relief, the rum administered by Willerby seeming to add to their fears and suffering rather than placating them. The smell, a mixture of blood, wounded flesh, sweat, and involuntary human waste, was so overpowering that Harry Ludlow, whose own back was covered with rum, thought he would expire from it rather than his wound.

  ‘It’s the best I can manage,’ said Pender, leaning forward so that Harry could see his strained face out of the corner of his eye. ‘But the ball has lodged in the flesh of your right shoulder, very close to a bone from what I can see, and I don’t have the skill to try and dig it out.’