Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead

by Sean Thomas Russell

  ‘We have luck on our side again, it seems,’ he told Hawthorne, as the marine appeared on the quarterdeck. ‘They must have run in too near, realized they were almost in the surf, jibed all standing and carried away gear. They have anchored to effect repairs and we can rake them as often as we are able.’

  Almost broadside to the waves, the schooner rolled terribly, so their fire would have to be timed perfectly. Steady men had been made the gun captains and Hayden had cautioned them to hold their fire. It was his intention to come as near as he dared to the cutter to make the most of their small broadside and reduce the chance of missing. The silhouette of the enemy vessel was almost lost against the darker island, but Hayden could see it, even with the sails off her.

  They ranged in at speed, the brisk trade pressing their little ship on, and then as they passed, on the roll, Hayden ordered the guns fired and the 3-pounders kicked back, spewing smoke and fire. There was distress aboard the French ship, he could hear, but then, as Hayden was about to call for sail-handlers, the French cutter swung to larboard, turned broadside to the seas and carried toward the surf line.

  ‘My God!’ Hayden said to no one, not quite able to believe what he saw. ‘We have shot away her anchor cable …’

  Aboard the French cutter, all thought of defence was given up, even though their broadside came to bear upon the schooner. Men scrambled to make sail, though he could see numbers yet aloft undertaking repairs.

  ‘Can she make sail, Captain?’ the helmsman asked. ‘Had she not too much damage to her rig? They would never have anchored in such a place otherwise.’

  ‘I do not know …’ Hayden watched as the ship was carried into the surf. The mainsail crept slowly up, luffing and snapping, the gaff only half under control.

  Hawthorne had stepped away from his swivel gun and came to the rail beside Hayden. ‘Can they sail out of such a place?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Only if God has taken notice.’

  But all deities appeared to have their attention elsewhere that evening, for the French ship was carried into the surf and in a moment had found bottom, her mainsail not yet raised. Her decks tilted wildly toward the beach as she was driven higher with each wave. Hayden had been aboard a ship wrecked some distance from the shore, though in harsher conditions than these – a late-spring gale – and he knew the horror of it. There might be fifty men aboard the cutter and, if lucky, half might survive. Boats could be taken through the surf and perhaps back out again, though much would depend upon the nature of the shore. Was there a landing place?

  Where, for that matter, were his own ship’s boats and their crews? How many of them had been lost?

  ‘We have no boats to send to their aid …’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘No,’ Hayden replied, ‘but we shall stand by until daylight. Let us hope this cutter is driven ashore. If she comes to rest some distance out … well, God have mercy on their souls.’

  The castaways stopped at the shadowy edge of the bush and turned to look seaward where the flashes and reports of guns had originated.

  ‘Is it Captain Hayden?’ someone asked.

  No one knew the answer. The chasing ship – the vessel they had seen closing all the long afternoon – had no doubt found the cutter, and she was not a French privateer, that was clear. She was British or perhaps Spanish, for the Spaniards plied these seas in numbers.

  ‘What shall we do?’ someone asked. ‘We cannot stand here. The French have launched boats.’

  ‘Tarry but a moment,’ Ransome ordered. ‘Let us see what will happen now. I believe the boats will return to their ship if they can. They will not risk being left ashore should their ship make sail.’

  In the darkness it was difficult to see what went on, even a few hundred yards distant. The rigs of the ships tended to be more visible than the hulls, which were lost against the dark sea. Starlight glittered dimly off the moving waves and the breaking crests were palely visible. Wickham would have given anything for a nightglass, but they had only his single glass remaining and it was of little use by darkness.

  Something changed in the appearance of the French cutter, and voices were carried to them over the sound of breaking seas. For a moment Wickham was confused by what he saw, and then he realized. ‘She has swung broadside to the seas! Her cable has parted!’

  ‘Are you certain, Mr Wickham?’ Ransome asked.

  ‘I am. Look! She is rolling and thrashing. They attempt to raise the main.’

  ‘Never will they sail out of there,’ one of the hands asserted, and Wickham thought he was likely correct. If they could not make sail immediately, they would be in the surf.

  ‘Whatever led them to anchor so near?’ someone asked, but no one replied. Clearly, it had not been by choice.

  Wickham started down the beach and in a moment was standing with the waves dying about his ankles. There was shouting out among the seas now, distinct from the voices carried from the ship. For a moment he stared, and then, there on the back of a wave, he made out a boat being frantically rowed out, away from the shore.

  He turned back toward the people still standing at the margin of the wood. ‘Do you see? The boats are attempting to return to their ship. They have given up on us.’

  En masse, the castaways hastened across the beach and gathered in a line where the seas died.

  ‘Mr Wickham.’ Childers broke the silence. ‘That ship is in the surf. There can be no doubt.’

  ‘I believe you are correct,’ Wickham replied.

  A terrible cry reached them – distress from every soul aboard – and then an odd lurch from the French ship. She seemed suddenly to stop in her progress toward the shore, and Wickham thought her deck was slanted heavily toward the land.

  ‘Hard aground,’ one of the hands declared. ‘There is no saving her now. The seas will drive her up the beach and there will be no getting her off without a dead calm to allow it. Otherwise, she is a loss there.’

  ‘Mr Ransome?’ Wickham said softly to the lieutenant. ‘Should we not empty our boats and launch them if we can? We might preserve some lives this night if we act smartly.’

  Ransome nodded. ‘All able-bodied men to the boats. Mr Wickham, can you ask the French to search along the shore? We will need our oars.’

  The boats lay half submerged and were being battered back and forth by the seas. They would soon have been damaged, left to the whims of nature. Water was thrown out by the bucket until each was light enough that all the men together could roll her on her side and pour the remaining water out. Sweeps had been gathered off the beach, and now were shipped. Most of the French were left ashore but helped launch the boats into the surf, wading in waist deep and steadying each one until a sea passed beneath and then the boat was shoved out bodily on the ebbing wave.

  Immediately, they met a sea and dug in to crest it, for if the first few seas could not be surmounted the boat would be tossed back ashore.

  It took everything the men aboard could muster to pass over those first few waves. Wickham and a young Frenchman had manned the aft sweep and pulled for all they were worth.

  After the initial seas, the waves grew less steep, though they were commonly as high. Childers was at the helm and steered them unerringly toward the stricken French vessel, Wickham was certain. He did not need to glance over his shoulder to ascertain their course, though he was constantly curious as to their progress.

  ‘How distant is she, Childers?’

  ‘Some way off, sir. I can make her out quite clearly, even by starlight.’

  Over the sound of the surf – a constant low thunder in which no individual breaking wave could be discerned – apparitional voices carried to them, now and then, barely within the range of hearing so leaving Wickham to wonder if he imagined them. He realized, as he rowed, that he grew tired more quickly than he should, and knew this was exhaustion. Desperately, he needed sleep and a few days’ rest to recover his strength. All the men were in the same state, he was certain, and yet had forced their way ou
t through the seas breaking on the beach despite barely having the strength to stand.

  ‘Can you make out the French boats?’ he asked Childers, who stood to look over the seas.

  ‘One, I believe, Mr Wickham. No … there is another. Both making their way back to the ship, the first all but there.’ He was silent a second, his knees flexing to keep his balance in the rough conditions, done as easily as a dancer. ‘I do hope these men are steadier than those of Les Droits de l’Homme, sir.’

  A memory of Franks’s boat being overwhelmed by panicked French sailors and being swamped and turned over … and lost. Their poor bosun, who had volunteered to take the boat through the surf, a victim of the chaos in the French Navy. And here they were again, taking a boat to rescue the same, barely governed sailors – sailors who believed in ideas of liberty and equality, both noble sentiments but with no place upon a stricken vessel where only order would save lives.

  ‘Fifty yards, Mr Wickham,’ Childers informed him.

  The midshipman left his French rowing partner to handle the sweep and stood to get a better view. The stricken vessel lay with the tips of her yards in the surf, her masts angled low, the deck slanted and half awash. Seas broke over her windward side and the wind howled and moaned, luffing Wickham’s coat, which was being rapidly dried by the warm trade. Wickham could see men in the rigging and up the masts, clinging to these last little islands of hope. The two French boats, which had been dispatched not so long before to hunt down the British sailors and royalists, made their way to the rigging hanging down into the sea to take off the men clinging there.

  Wickham made a quick assessment of the situation and ordered Childers to lie off the quarterdeck. ‘Five yards off, hold our place a moment and let me speak with the French. Let us hope there is an officer there whom the hands respect.’

  Childers nodded and brought the boat near in the tumultuous seas. The oars were backed a moment and Wickham found himself staring at a dozen men clinging to the windward rail, frightened beyond description. He had half a mind to pull away, for these men were past taking orders from their officers.

  Wickham pulled the pistol from his belt and held it up where all could see. ‘You will come aboard this boat one at a time in an orderly fashion,’ he told them in French. ‘The first man who jumps into my boat out of order I will shoot through the heart. We will then back our boat away and leave the rest of you here. Do you comprehend what I am saying?’ There were nods and words of acceptance. Wickham ordered the boat brought alongside and lines were thrown to the men on the French vessel.

  Wickham hoped his bluff would stand; his pistol had been soaked through and the powder drenched when they were thrown into the sea, but the French did not know that.

  ‘Line handlers,’ Wickham said loudly. ‘Be prepared to cut those lines of an instant upon my order.’

  Behind him, where the French boats were taking men from the rigging, Wickham could hear shouting and cursing, but he dared not turn to see what went on. He was determined that his boat would not be swamped by panicked men.

  The strongest French sailors formed a chain down the deck and the men slid on their buttocks, passed from man to man and then into the boat, which rose and fell with each sea, slamming now and then into the submerged rail, which threatened to turn them over. Finally, several French sailors stood upon the French cutter’s rail, in water that rose as high as their necks at times, and held the English boat off, other men steadying them.

  Men were coming aft along the windward rail and being warned to stay in their places by the other Frenchmen, who nodded to the young English officer who stood sternly, holding aloft a pistol.

  Behind him he heard what sounded like fighting, the night full of curses and threats.

  ‘Mr Wickham,’ came Ransome’s voice from out of the night. ‘When your boat is full we will take your place.’

  ‘Draw your pistol, Mr Ransome,’ Wickham called back, not turning away from the men coming aboard his boat. ‘I have told these Frenchmen that the first man to jump aboard my boat out of order will be shot and we would leave the rest of them here to drown. You must tell them the same.’

  ‘My pistols are drawn and ready, Mr Wickham.’

  When the midshipman thought he could carry no more in safety, he informed the officer present that he would return as soon as he had carried his cargo ashore. He then ordered his boat away and, loaded to the point of overcrowding, the men took up the oars and sent them toward the beach. Immediately, Mr Ransome’s boat manoeuvred to take his place.

  The distance to shore was covered in less than half the time it took to reach the wreck, for the seas picked them up and carried them along, like great hands passing them from one to the next with only a brief lull between. As they neared the beach and the waves mounted up, Wickham and Childers had a brief conversation as to how they would get their boat in without the same calamity that had befallen them before. Wickham gave careful orders in both English and French and, at a word from him, the rowers reversed their positions so that they faced forward and took hold of the oar which had previously been manned by the hands at their backs. All the oarsmen now faced forward and could back oars with all their strength.

  As the boat was lifted on the face of the wave, the men rowed for all they were worth, keeping the speed of the boat manageable. In this way they approached the beach but slowly. When the last wave before the sand picked them up, and at the very last second, Wickham and Childers unshipped the rudder lest it be broken and the boat was cast up, not too ungently, on the beach. It did slew to starboard to some small degree, but the sailors all clambered out and very quickly slid the boat up the beach, where the waves died around it.

  The Frenchmen gave thanks to their saviours and even pounded them on the back, they were so relieved to find themselves on land and not swimming for their lives. A moment of rest, and then Wickham ordered the boat turned around, which was done bodily by all the men who could muster about it.

  The British sailors took their places and manned oars again, the rudder was shipped and, at an order from Wickham, they began again to battle their way out through the seas toward their enemy’s ship, to rescue the men who had been intent on their murder not two hours before. It was, Wickham thought, the strangest irony that sailors would risk their very lives to kill their enemy and then, when an enemy’s ship was discovered sinking, risk their lives to save the men aboard. He rather thought the latter was the finer impulse.

  They had not gone fifty yards when Ransome passed them in the barge.

  ‘How many remain?’ Wickham called out to him.

  ‘Your boat shall be the last, I think. And, Mr Wickham …? Be prepared to defend your boat from the French both as you return and when you are upon the shore.’

  The idea of the French taking their boats and sailing for Guadeloupe, or some other possession, had not occurred to the midshipman and he thought it a sign of his terrible fatigue.

  ‘We shall have our pistols ready,’ he called back, largely for the sake of the French aboard Ransome’s boat, some of whom likely had a little English.

  ‘God speed, Mr Wickham.’

  ‘And you, sir.’

  The wreck lay much as they had left it, the masts perhaps a little nearer the water. The seas continued to break over it and Wickham thought it unlikely that she would ever swim again.

  ‘Mr Gould, do you have a pistol?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘Do we have any other firearms?’

  A musket and another pistol were reported; all the guns had wet powder and would not fire. Wickham ordered these distributed to the steady men.

  ‘Blackwood,’ he said to their remaining marine, ‘you will take station in the bow, and Ruston, you will stand by him. When we approach the wreck, stand and make your weapons seen. Gould and I shall do the same. Let them see that we are vigilant and that we are prepared to defend our lives and our vessel with blood, if it is required.’

  The others took their stat
ions, and an air of seriousness settled over the little vessel. None had thought of fighting the men they attempted to rescue, let alone killing any, but it was clear now that they must be prepared to do so. After all, their captain had done almost that exact thing, taking the schooner of the privateers who hunted them.

  As they neared the wreck, Wickham could make out the last of the men gathered at the stern, more grim now than frightened.

  Wickham had Childers keep clear and he gave this group the same warning before he would lay his vessel alongside. It was the same exercise again, holding off the boat and loading the men one at a time. As the men came aboard, Wickham ordered them to sit down in the bottom and crowded them all in the middle, so that they would have to overcome the oarsmen before they could reach the men bearing arms.

  That being done, he set out for Dominica for what he hoped would be the last time this night. Landing on the beach was managed as before, and they were soon wading ashore as men dashed out from the beach to pull the boat up out of reach of the breakers. Both the French and the British collapsed on the sand but, noting Ransome and several others standing with guns in hand, Wickham touched Gould on the arm and then did the same. The French, it must be made clear, had only very briefly been castaways – they now were prisoners.

  ‘Where have the French boats landed?’ Wickham asked, looking around and seeing only their own two boats.

  ‘They did not come ashore, Mr Wickham,’ Ransome replied. ‘I should think they have sailed for Guadeloupe.’

  ‘Well, they shall have a wet passage. It was difficult enough with a fair wind. I should not like to make it in an open boat hard on the wind. I wish them luck.’

  ‘They have not had much luck this night,’ Gould observed softly. ‘They would have been wise to come ashore. Better to be a live prisoner …’ He did not finish his thought, nor did he need to.

  At that moment guns fired aboard the ship that yet lay off the shore.

  ‘The private signal,’ Gould declared. ‘That is our captain.’