Hawthorne nodded, his eye fixed on the sea before them. ‘If you wish it, Captain, I will endeavour to speak if I believe your emotions are clouding your judgement.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hawthorne.’
‘I am honoured, Captain Hayden, that you would ask me.’
The matter, then, was left to silence.
Twenty-nine
Two men had been lost to the Yellow Jack, and the captain and two boat crews were prisoners of the French, but, beyond those not insignificant calamities, Archer was beginning to count their cruise a success. The cruising grounds had proven richer than anyone expected, and though they had not taken a single prize which, on its own, would bring a man wealth, smaller prizes had been numerous enough that officers and hands were well content.
The weather had been excellent, the cold, English winter a broad ocean away. The West Indies, Archer had begun to think, could be something of a paradise but for the Yellow Jack and the war.
The hands worked about the ship, kept busy by the officers, and the watch below gathered here and there in the shade of the sails to discuss how best to squander their prize money upon return to England’s shores.
Along the deck, Archer saw Mr Barthe staring aloft and speaking to the bosun, who nodded agreeably. The two had become a society of mutual respect in the last months. Archer missed poor, unlucky Franks, but it was a great comfort to have such a capable bosun. Barthe spotted the acting-captain as he approached and touched his hat.
‘Captain Archer,’ he said, with barely a trace of irony.
‘Mr Barthe. Do we have trouble aloft?’
‘Chafe, Captain,’ Barthe informed him. ‘Nothing a properly positioned thrummed mat will not address.’
‘Chafe has become like a troublesome relative, one who constantly requires a little propping up, a little fluffing, to keep her happy.’
‘On deck!’ came a deep-voiced cry from aloft. ‘Sail, south-by-east.’
‘Can you make her out, Adams?’ Archer called to the lookout, chafe and thrummed mats forgotten.
‘A two-sticker, sir. Schooner, looks like. Sailing north, Mr … Captain Archer.’
‘Let us shape our course to intercept her,’ Archer said to the sailing master.
‘Aye, sir.’
Archer walked aft and called for his glass, which soon revealed the smudge of sail, heeled well over and showing no signs of running.
‘They must have seen us by now,’ he muttered.
‘She looks very swift, sir,’ Maxwell observed.
‘Indeed she does. Which is why she shows no fear of us. Despite her truncated length, we would never catch her close on the wind, and her master appears to know it.’
‘Could she not be British, Captain?’
‘It is not impossible, though here … unlikely. We shall see. We will show her our colours if it appears she might outrun us.’
The ensign was arranged on deck and made ready to send aloft. It was entirely possible this little ship was Spanish or a neutral – American ships plied these waters in great numbers, and ships from the British colonies further north traded here as well.
The two vessels approached each other and, when the schooner was distant some mile and a quarter, she sent British colours aloft and made the private signal. Archer ordered this answered and hauled their own ensign aloft. Within half an hour the two ships hove-to within hailing distance and the lieutenant in command of the smaller ship swung out a boat and came aboard the Themis. Archer recognized him from Barbados, a thin, young officer with an oddly stooped carriage for someone so young.
‘I have orders for you from Admiral Caldwell,’ he said, after pleasantries had been exchanged.
‘For Captain Hayden, you mean,’ Archer responded.
‘No, sir, for you. Captain Hayden sailed from Barbados several days ago and I have been searching for you or Sir William … or any of the frigate captains ever since.’
‘Captain Hayden was not captured?’ Mr Barthe interjected.
‘No. He managed to escape Guadeloupe in a captured French schooner, with most of the men accompanying him, I am told. Caldwell sent him off in this schooner with orders I was not privy to.’ He handed a sealed letter to Archer. ‘And I was sent to deliver these to Sir William if possible, but if not to any commander of a British frigate.’
‘Well, you have managed that,’ Archer replied. ‘What are you to do now?’
‘I shall continue to look for Sir William for a few more days and then return to Bridgetown.’ The young man lowered his voice. ‘Before I sailed, a rumour had begun to circulate that Mrs Hayden had been abducted by her brother and perhaps a French spy.’
‘That sounds very dramatic,’ Archer said. ‘Was there any truth to it?’
The young officer shrugged. ‘I cannot say, sir, but the rumour was believed to have begun with the admiral’s servants.’
For a moment the three men stood awkwardly silent.
‘Have you any idea where I might find Sir William or the other frigates?’
‘Cruising east of the French islands. They planned to watch the passes between.’
The lieutenant nodded. ‘I should be about my business, Captain, if you have no further need of me?’
‘By all means. And good luck to you.’
A few moments later Barthe and Archer retreated to the captain’s cabin and Archer opened the admiral’s orders, which were addressed to Sir William Jones, Captains Oxford and Crowley, and himself.
I have discovered, beyond reasonable doubt, that the Comte de Latendresse is not a loyal ally of our King and adherent to the royalist cause, as we believed, but is, in truth, a Jacobin spy who has played us false. De Latendresse, through the agency of Don Miguel Campillo, has come into possession of information regarding a Spanish frigate sailing from Vera Cruz to Spain bearing silver. Captain Hayden and I believe that de Latendresse and Campillo have engaged ships to intercept this frigate belonging to our Spanish allies, very likely in the New Channel of the Bahamas. I have dispatched Captain Hayden in a schooner to find and warn the Spanish of this plot. As there is a very real danger that he will not intercept the Spanish vessels or that he will arrive too late, you are to set out immediately for these waters or toward any place that subsequent intelligence would indicate, to warn our allies or protect these ships from predation by enemy vessels. If you find yourself in company with Captain Hayden you are to place yourself under his command until such time as he sees fit to release you.
Archer passed the letter to Barthe, who stood fidgeting nearby. He took it to the window and angled it to the light, his face growing more serious with each sentence.
His hand, holding the paper, dropped down in apparent anger. ‘Then it is Campillo and that Frenchman who abducted Mrs Hayden.’
Archer shrugged. ‘So I would assume. I am relieved beyond words to learn that our captain and shipmates are not in a French gaol, but where we might find him in this maze of islands I cannot say.’
Thirty
For several days they followed the privateer convoy, into the Old Channel of Bahama and along the coast of Cuba. The fickleness of the trade, highly uncommon at that time of year, continued to plague them, making an already difficult feat of pilotage even more dangerous.
Whether the privateers would pass through the Windward Channel or continue on became a question hotly debated. For his part, Hayden did not know what they would do. Clearly, they would want to get their prizes as far away from the Spanish islands as quickly as they could manage, but the Windward Channel saw a great deal of Spanish traffic and might be more dangerous even than the course they were on now.
Hayden went aloft often and watched the ships they followed. A privateer went first, then the frigate Hayden believed bore both the bullion and the passengers, Mrs Hayden among them. In the rear came the second Spanish frigate, so a powerful vessel always separated Hayden from the main prize. This arrangement never seemed to vary, no matter how often he went aloft to quiz the convoy.
Two nigh
ts before the Windward Channel was reached, the winds fell so light that the schooner lost steerage and Hayden was forced to anchor lest the current sweep his vessel on to a reef. It was a particularly dark night with ragged cloud passing over – high up where the wind had retreated. Hayden took his nightglass and climbed to the topsail yard. It required a moment but he found the privateers and their prizes – nearer than he expected.
He leaned over and called quietly down to the men below. ‘Pass the word for Mr Wickham.’
A moment later the midshipman climbed on to the topmast yard, and Hayden immediately passed the young man his nightglass.
‘There away,’ he said, pointing. ‘Do you see?’
Wickham gazed a moment. ‘Yes, sir. I can make them out clearly.’
‘Which ship is in the rear?’
Wickham continued to hold the brass tube to his eye. ‘I cannot be certain, Captain. It has ever been the frigate with the missing topmast, sir.’
‘But you cannot be certain …?’
‘I am sorry to say that I am not, sir.’
Hayden considered only a moment. ‘Have Mr Ransome call all hands, if you please, silent as can be managed.’
Wickham did not ask a single question but merely touched his hat and began to climb back down to the deck. Hayden took one last look through the glass toward the distant ships, and then followed the midshipman down.
Acreages of moonlight moved slowly over the surface of the flat, calm sea, shifted here and there by passing cloud. Hayden watched them for a moment while the men streamed up from below. There was no pattern to it, he was certain of that.
Ransome, Gould, Hawthorne and Wickham gathered about him on the quarterdeck. Hayden motioned them near and spoke to them quietly.
‘We will launch the Themis’s boats, and man them for cutting-out. Arm the men, Mr Ransome, and have everyone wear their blue jackets. Let no light colour show. We will all darken our faces with burnt cork. With all haste, Mr Ransome. The moonlight wanders here and there over the sea and we want to manage all of this by darkness.’
Hawthorne remained by his captain as the others hastened off to execute their orders.
‘Are you sure of this, sir?’ he asked, with some difficulty, Hayden could tell. ‘There are half a dozen enemy ships not too distant. I should think these are odds Sir William would relish, but Charles Hayden …’
‘I hope only to take one of them and in this I believe we shall have aid. I have a special task for you, Mr Hawthorne. You will need half a dozen strong men you can rely upon …’
The boats were quickly readied and swung out, the men careful not to let them knock against the topsides or splash into the sea – these vessels might have been made of china, so carefully were they treated.
Ransome chose the steadiest men, leaving most who had come recently from their sick beds to man the schooner, which Gould would command in the captain’s absence – much to the young gentleman’s chagrin.
Down into the boats the men climbed. The darkly painted sweeps were manned, and the boats set out for the convoy which lay at anchor ahead. The men, with their blackened faces, would almost have appeared comical if their looks and manner had not been so grim.
Ransome had the cutter, with Wickham there to take his place should the lieutenant be wounded. Hayden took command of the barge. He had only two dozen men in the boats, all well armed and seasoned in such endeavours, but, even so, very small numbers. Hayden and Wickham had been observing the aftmost frigate in the convoy for several days and were both convinced the prize did not have forty privateers aboard. All the frigate’s evolutions had been executed terribly slowly and there were never enough men aloft to take in or loose sail efficiently. Prize crews were often small, and this one, he hoped, was no exception.
Clearly, the privateers did not believe the schooner sailing in their wake could be a threat to them. Hayden’s few 3-pounders did not compare to a gundeck of 18-pounders and an upper deck with carronades and chase guns. Whatever the purpose of the little schooner that dogged them, it was not to take any of the ships but likely only to follow and report where they had made port.
Oars had been carefully muffled between thole-pins and the rowers took up a cadence that allowed them to keep near-silence, oars entering the water cleanly and staying low to the surface on the return.
Hayden kept gazing around at the patches of moonlight that swept across the darkened sea, trying to gauge their speed and direction. As they moved, these patches changed shape and size, some growing, others shrinking and some even disappearing altogether. Areas of light would suddenly appear, as though a lens were uncovered in the heavens, allowing the moonlight through.
‘Avast rowing,’ Hayden ordered quietly, and a moment later Ransome’s boat followed suit.
For a long while they laid upon their oars, as Hayden watched the progress of a small lawn of moonlight that came rippling over the sea. It changed shape and size as it flowed, as though some monstrous, glowing jellyfish slipped along just beneath the surface. All the while, he glanced up at the cloud, attempting in vain to find where the cloud might send this illumination, but to no avail. The cloud would send it where it would.
Just when Hayden thought it should pass over them, revealing two boats of British sailors, it shrank a little and passed a hundred yards to the west, leaving them yet hidden by darkness. Every man aboard breathed a deep sigh and Hayden set the oarsmen to work again, bearing them on toward the anchored ships.
How far apart the privateers had anchored was a concern to Hayden, as he knew the other ships would send boats or even train their guns upon the aftmost frigate if they believed it was attacked or in danger of being taken. With no wind, all the ships streamed to a small current that ran more or less toward the west, lining up the ships, bow to stern. This meant that the privateer lying ahead could train only her stern chase pieces on the Spanish frigate, unless they could clap a spring on to their anchor cable, or row out an anchor.
There had been no sign of wind for some time but Hayden knew full well it could return without the least warning. In such a case, the undermanned frigate would require all hands to make sail. Hayden was counting on there being lookouts awake, a watch sleeping below and the watch on deck largely asleep at their stations. The discipline of the British Navy – or even the French Navy, for that matter – would not be found among privateers … or so he hoped.
The only real advantage the English sailors had in this matter was surprise. No sane officer would expect the captain of so small a schooner to attempt to board a powerful frigate with five other ships anchored only a few cable lengths distant. Hayden had taken advantage of this kind of thing before. In Corsica the French had not believed it possible to carry guns to the hilltops, and so had made no defence against this – Hayden had proven them wrong. He hoped he was about to catch his enemy unawares again.
Wickham had been ordered to keep his keen eye fixed upon the aftmost frigate and warn Hayden of any untoward movement of men upon the deck. At this distance Hayden could make out the mass of the ship and lamps upon the transom, but nothing more. The posted lookouts and the guards were invisible to him.
If the British boats were spotted, Hayden hoped the lookout would cry out, thus warning the British. A smart lookout and an astute master might keep it all silent, man guns and blast the boats as they came near. Although he thought the latter unlikely, it was still in Hayden’s mind, and he continued to approach the frigate from astern, where only the chase pieces might be brought to bear.
Hayden’s thoughts were drawn back to Corsica again, where he and his men had cut out the French frigate Minerve by painting their boats black and doing exactly as they did now, slipping up on the ship from astern as silently as they could manage.
The men rowed on and the frigate came more and more into focus. Hayden felt his own stomach and muscles begin to tighten. He checked that he had a pair of pistols in his belt yet and that his cutlass would not hang up as he rose to climb on
to the frigate’s deck. His mouth was utterly dry and he would have given almost anything for a drink of water – anything that his orders would not sound as though they were formed in a mouth stuck together by fear.
Upon the frigate’s deck he saw a man pass through the illumination of a stern-lamp, but he could see nothing more than that. Hayden expected the cry to go up at any moment, but none did, and the rowers continued in their slow, steady cadence.
Ten yards distant, Hayden began to believe they would not be detected until they mounted the deck, when a voice cried out, ‘Bateaux! Bateaux! Les Anglais sont ici!’
At an order from Hayden the oarsmen dug in and shot the boats forward so that they were alongside just as men appeared at the rail with muskets. Hayden had pistol in hand and fired immediately, but did not know if he hit anyone at all. Of an instant he was climbing over the rail, pressed upward by the men behind.
He shot a man at two yards, clubbed another with his pistol before he cast it down and drew his sword. Privateers were rushing up the companionway and spewing out on to the deck, some shirtless and without a weapon.
The British were on the deck in numbers and flew at the French, screaming like madmen. Hayden saw the red coats of Hawthorne and his marines crouching and jumping down to the gundeck.
The combat was now general all across the deck, the British fighting in small knots and attempting never to allow one man to become isolated from the others. It was a melee, in which neither side appeared to be winning. Hayden stepped over fallen British sailors as often as privateers.
There was, in the darkness, no way to be certain which side was winning and which losing. Men fell, with the thud of bones and flesh on wood, but Hayden had no idea if they were British or French. He thrust his sword at a man, struck his sternum direct, and immediately drew back and put the blade into the man’s stomach, crumpling him to the deck.
There was shouting at the head of the companionway, and voices crying out in Spanish. Hayden could see Hawthorne at the head of this column and in a moment privateers were casting down their weapons and crying for quarter.
Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead Page 34
