Once, Harry thought, he had followed the same god. But now … misery and anger were so intermingled in his mind he could not tell where the one ended and the other began. Pa, dead. Charlie, dead. Ma and Jenny and Rory, virtually sold into slavery. Lizzie, abandoned … oh, Lizzie, to have held her in his arms was the crowning glory of his life. To have known that she loved him, and now … to think of her, abandoned on that empty beach. She might as well have taken her own Ufe; there was little else for her to seek.
‘There was a considerable scene with Landais, only hours before you returned,’ Dale was saying. ‘The commodore was for relieving him of his command, but the other captains, and indeed, the French members of our very crew, would not allow this, and so he was left powerless. I understand a similar incident took place on his previous voyage.’
‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘John Paul does not truly have the gift of leadership. He is as brave as a lion, but can only hurl himself at an enemy and presume that his men will be similarly inspired to follow him. Just as he believes that every man under his command should be inspired with his own single-mindedness …’ his mouth twisted. ‘Which he reserves the right to relax when he chooses.’
‘Nonetheless, the last incident clearly left a singular impression on his mind,’ Dale said. ‘And now this …’
‘So he vents his anger on the one man in the fleet who would follow him anywhere,’ Harry said. ‘The man who saved him from the consequences of his last intransigence. There’s humour for you.’
‘You will at least not be tried at sea,’ Dale said. ‘But in France, and before Mr Franklin. Can you not regard that as a measure of the captain’s feeling for you, despite all?’
‘Such generosity,’ Harry remarked. ‘And Landais? Where will he be tried?’
‘I have tried to explain, Harry, that Captain Landais …’
‘Will not be tried at all, because the crew will not permit it,’ Harry said. ‘I am a dolt for forgetting that. And of course, my crime is so much greater than his.’
‘He brought a goodly amount of loot from that East Indiaman,’ Dale pointed out. ‘As well as those prisoners — more men to be exchanged for our own.’
‘And I brought a prize of value only to myself,’ Harry sighed. ‘Well, tell me this, Richard: how soon do we make France?’
‘Not for some time. We are now in the Irish Sea, steering north.’
‘The Irish Sea? North?’ Harry started, as much as his chains would permit. ‘He does mean to assault Dublin after all, to save my family? My God, Richard, I will forgive him anything for that.’
‘He does not mean to assault Dublin, Harry,’ Dale said sadly. ‘It is simply that word of our attack on Waterford, and even more, the sinking of the Indiaman, has got about, and there are cruisers waiting for us in the Channel. Captain Jones has decided to throw them off the scent by making north and rounding Scotland, to return to France by the North Sea.’
‘But that way home may take us weeks,’ Harry protested.
‘That is very probable. But do you not think that is all to the good, as it will give his temper time to cool? It may even lead to a reconsideration of the situation ere we regain France.’
Time for his temper to cool, Harry thought bitterly. But what of my temper? And what of Ma, and Jenny, and Rory? And Liz? He had no doubt of a fair hearing from Franklin. And with freedom would come the opportunity to act, to achieve something, to save one of those he held dead from the wreckage of his rashness. But several weeks … there was an impossible situation.
Yet one which had to be endured. Dale kept him informed of what was happening, to them, at least. The squadron sailed up the Irish Sea and through the Minches, with a fair southerly wind. At least John Paul’s manoeuvre had confused the British, and they sighted no ship apart from the coasting trade between Ireland and the West of England. This apparently caused fresh friction between Landais and the commodore, as the Frenchman was all for sailing off in chase of these defenceless prizes, and on more than one occasion did so, while John Paul persisted on his course. To what purpose, Harry wondered? Was this much vaunted cruise to consist of a single successful raid, and thence home again? Was that the way to make Old Glory feared? Surely his target was this coastal shipping, which he could utterly disrupt, while still remaining ahead of his pursuers. Or was he so uncertain of the support he would receive from his subordinates that he dared risk nothing?
Certainly there was nothing he could do or say to affect the situation; John Paul never came to see him. So he had to exist, in as much patience as he could manage, savagely counting the minutes and the hours, the days and the weeks, enduring the nauseating conditions of his confinement, as he ignored the jibes and threats hurled in his direction by the English prisoners, but yet beside himself with anxiety when he heard the roar of guns above his head, combined with a shrieking in the rigging which indicated that there was an action being fought in inclement weather. Dale, on his next visit, acquainted him that the commodore had at last, having rounded the Orkneys and reached the east coast of Scotland, decided on another raid, and had sailed into the Firth of Forth to attack the busy seaport of Leith on the south shore — but barely had the assault got under way than a westerly gale had sprung up to blow the squadron back out to sea again. Dale also told him that the indiscipline of the French had again wrecked their prospects, all the smaller ships in the squadron having taken themselves off to chase possible prizes, disgusted with the refusal of the commodore to be diverted from what eventual prize he had in mind. Now the Bonhomme Richard was alone again, beating south, and now too the commodore was in a worse mood than ever. ‘But depend upon it,’ Dale told Harry, ‘he means to attack some East Coast port before going home. There is talk of Whitby or Yarmouth.’
‘And I am to stay here through all that?’ Harry said. He had no more wish to fight for John Paul, but he would fight for the devil himself if he could just be rid of his chains and breathe fresh air once more — nor would he care if he lived or died. ‘Is there a man better qualified to lead a landing party, Richard?’
‘I will see what can be done,’ Dale promised. But day after day continued to pass with no word of his release, or of an assault on the coast, for that matter.
He had no idea how long this most dreadful of voyages had lasted, certainly it could hardly have been less than a month, when he heard the cry from the masthead, ‘Sail ho!’ This in itself was neither unusual nor alarming, and yet only a few minutes later he listened to the drum being beaten for action stations. The whole ship filled with the scurry of feet, the creaking of the guns being run out, and further along the orlop deck he watched men loading barrels of powder to take on deck, while others, heavily armed, began chaining the English prisoners in order to free their guards for duty, to the accompaniment of much swearing and even the occasional scuffle.
‘Hello there,’ Harry called. ‘What’s happening above?’
He had to call several times before one of the power monkeys came towards him. ‘’Tis action, at last, Mr McGann,’ the seaman said. ‘We’ve sighted a British convoy. A dozen ships, to be sure, just coming round Flamborough head.’
Flamborough Head, Harry thought. That was a promontory on the coast of Yorkshire, in the north east of England; they had made good progress since Leith. ‘A convoy!’ he said. ‘But … is it not escorted?’
‘Oh, aye, Mr McGann. There are two warships with them.’
‘And us alone?’
‘No, no, sir. The Alliance has rejoined. With the Pallas. Only an hour gone. There’s fortune, eh? We’ve all of a fleet, once again.’
The man hurried off, obviously in the best of spirits, as why should he not be, Harry thought; all the odds were at last in their favour, to gain a resounding success. He clacked his chains in utter misery. There was going to be fleet action up there, the first of his life … and he was confined below the waterline.
He listened, to the thudding of feet on the gun deck above his head, to the distant shouts o
f command, unable to discern what was actually being said, as the other prisoners were setting up a tremendous clamour. He felt the ship heel as she altered course, and tried to estimate the time. All lanterns had been doused below decks, to lessen the risk of fire, and it was getting very dark as hardly any light was even filtering down the hatchways. Thus it was all but dusk, the most difficult time of any to begin a battle — and not only because of the dark. The wind invariably dropped at dusk. It had been southerly in any event, as the Bonhomme Richard had been tacking against it ever since leaving Leith. That had to mean the Britishers had the weather gauge: the wind would reach them first, which would give them the initiative of which course to sail, leaving the Americans to follow. With a slackening breeze, and foul bottoms after so long at sea, this would be difficult — while the British convoy, in the North Sea and making north, could only be for the Baltic, which meant they would have left port a week before, their hulls scrubbed clean of weed and barnacles.
He suddenly realised that the seaman’s confidence in an easy victory was entirely misplaced. But it was at least reassuring that John Paul clearly meant to fight.
He listened to distant firing, but could not decide its origin. Then the Bonhomme Richard herself trembled to the explosion of a broadside, heeling and coming upright again, while powder smoke drifted down to the orlop and tickled his nostrils. The ship heeled again as she came about, obviously tacking to bring her other broadside to bear. A moment later this also exploded, but with a separate, louder noise than any he had ever heard before, seeming to come from immediately above him, and accompanied by the most terrible shrieks of fear and pain, while the ship herself began to roll as if totally out of control.
The other prisoners broke out in an equally loud clamour to be released before they were drowned or burned to death. But had the ship been hit? He had felt no impact. He could not make out what had happened, his senses still confused by the noise and the unearthly cries from so close at hand, of men dying in the most utter agony. Yet he could smell no fire, either.
Feet slithered on the ladder, and he saw the glow of a lantern. ‘Harry! Are you there?’
‘Richard! Thank God! What the devil has happened?’
‘Two of our guns have exploded. Would you believe it? It was the commodore’s idea to double load them.’ Dale set down the lantern, produced a bunch of keys. ‘We must make haste.’
‘Whose orders, to set me free?’
‘The Captain’s, Harry. We need your strength. Quickly.’
Harry stood up, stretched his muscles, ran to the ladder, while the pleas to be released from the other prisoners grew louder and more desperate, and climbed it to the gun deck, Dale at his heels. There he paused in horror.Two of the starboard guns, adjacent to each other, had indeed exploded, with a force which had tom away the main deck above; he could look through the gaping hole at the night sky. The huge cannon themselves had been tossed about like toys, and one lay across four seamen, whose screams were those he had heard. Five men were straining to move the enormous weight, but without success.
Harry reached them in a single bound, anchored his feet on the blood wet deck, and put his shoulder to the barrel. Exerting all his enormous power, he slowly raised the several hundred pounds of dead weight,and the mangled men were dragged free. While he did so he felt the ship once again come under control, heard the shouted commands to trim the yards as she came about, and then felt her shudder from stem to stern to the accompaniment of a fresh outbreak of screams of dismay and agony. This time she had undoubtedly been hit by a broadside from an enemy, on the port side. Two more guns had been dismounted, but far worse, one of the shots had hit just above the waterline, staving in the timbers, through which sea water was starting to gush with every roll.
‘Man the pumps, Mr Dale,’ Harry snapped. He looked down at the crushed sailors. It was doubtful any of them would survive. ‘Keep firing,’ he commanded their comrades, and took the nearest ladder to the main deck, emerging just as another storm of shot swept by, this one aimed above his head to cut their rigging to shreds, and indeed it brought the foretopmast crashing down, while the main deck gunners desperately threw themselves beneath the doubtful shelter of the bulwarks.
He glared left and right, attempting to orient himself to the situation. Indeed it was quite the most remarkable scene he had ever witnessed, for a variety of reasons. It was quite dark, now, but a glorious harvest moon had already risen, and played across the water with the intensity of a beam of light. By it, he could make out, away to the north west and close to the land, a large group of ships running north before the fair wind, obviously the convoy, already having passed their assailants. Between the convoy and the Bonhomme Richard, but still several miles away, was a ship he immediately identified as the Alliance, reaching back towards them after equally obviously having attempted to cut out one of the merchantman rather than engage their escorts — and having failed. North of them, two ships were locked together hardly more than a mile away; these were clearly the Pallas and the other British escort, and from there came the sound of pistol shots and even, faintly, the echo of shouts and cheers and screams.
But closer yet, and now coming about to fire into them yet again, was a large British frigate, every bit as big as the Bonhomme Richard, and manned by a crew, Harry had no doubt, of highly trained and disciplined British tars, the finest fighting men in the world. While the American flagship, her multinational crew still dazed by the immensity of the disaster which had overtaken them, continued to wallow uncertainly.
To make the whole scene almost unbelievable, he could also see, beyond the convoy, a perfect blaze of flaring torches, almost hear the hubbub from the shore; an enormous crowd had gathered on the headland itself to watch the battle.
He ran aft, and up the ladder to the quarterdeck. ‘John!’ he shouted.
John Paul stood at the taffrail, staring at the still distant Alliance. ‘God damn the man for a cowardly bastard,’ he growled. ‘Come on, Landais. Come on.’
Harry checked by the helm. ‘Hard a port,’ he snapped, as he saw the British warship complete her manoeuvre. He had to get the Bonhomme Richard under way again: lying dead in the water she was just asking to be blown to pieces. ‘Man those yards,’ he bawled at the crew. ‘Wear ship.’
John Paul had turned at the sound of his voice. ‘You’ll give orders, now, will you?’ he asked.
‘Someone must, John, or you will lose |pur ship.’
The men were swarming aloft, eager to respond to any orders, especially when issued in so familiar a voice. The Bonhomme Richard started to turn away from the wind, but she could not escape the next broadside from the frigate, and again the balls were aimed low. Harry and Paul felt the ship shudder beneath the impacts, listened to the crackling of torn timbers, the screams of the dead and dying men on the lower deck.
John Paul’s shoulder sagged. ‘I have already lost my ship,’ he said bitterly. ‘The British shoot too fast and too straight, and my people were sorely distracted by that explosion. As for Landais, the scoundrel deserted me yet again, to go after easy pickings.
‘He is coming now,’ Harry said.
‘Aye, in time?’ John Paul said, more bitterly yet.
Dale was on deck, driving the men back to their guns, and the American vessel was firing in a desultory fashion, but doing very little damage to the Britisher, whose rigging remained intact, enabling her to sail at twice the American’s speed, and who was now wearing ship once more with stately menace.
‘What is the situation below, Richard?’ Harry called.
‘We are holed in three places,’ Dale replied. ‘I doubt we have the men to keep her afloat and work the guns. As for trimming sail …’
‘I am done,’ John Paul said, leaning on the taffrail, ‘Done, by God!’
Harry chewed his lip, listening to the command to reload from the main deck, watched the frigate bearing down on them, closer than ever before. If she loosed a broadside from that range …
>
‘Ahoy there,’ an officer on the frigate’s quarterdeck shouted, using a speaking trumpet. ‘You are sinking. I call upon you to surrender to His Majesty’s Ship Serapis!’
‘Serapis,’ Harry muttered. ‘Serapis!’
‘Do you know her?’ John Paul asked.
‘Aye. Sean O’Rourke sails on her.’
John Paul grinned. It was a savage grin, and perhaps a hopeless one. But it was like a rebirth, of the man Harry had once loved, suddenly shrugging away his gloom and despondency. ‘Then we’ll win this fight yet. Harry. But we must use our brains. Down, man.’
For as there had been no reply to the summons to surrender, the side of the frigate was again exploding in rippling flame, and the hot wind of death was breathing across them. John Paul crawled to the forward end of the quarterdeck; below him there was complete chaos as more yards and spars came crashing to the deck. ‘Mr Dale,’ he called. ‘You’ll fetch every man able to stand on deck, armed with pistols and cutlasses.’
Dale had received a bruise across the forehead, and dripped blood. But he stood to attention. ‘With respect, sir,’ he said. ‘If I take the men from the pumps we will sink like a stone.’
John Paul hesitated for only a moment. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Then release the prisoners,’ he commanded. ‘Set them to the pumps. Tell then if they do not pump they’ll all drown, and shoot the first of them who attempts to gain the upper deck.’
‘Aye, aye sir,’ Dale said, and hurried below.
‘We cannot catch her, to board her,’ Harry pointed out. ‘We have not the sails left, and half the ocean in our hull.’
‘I know it,’ John Paul said. ‘Then we must make her come alongside us.’ He ran aft, drawing his sword as he did so, and with a single sweep severed the halliard for the ensign, which immediately came clouding down on to the deck.
Old Glory Page 30
