The Guardship

by James L. Nelson

  When the pirates attacked they would know to avoid the Sarah and Kate. And they would know to attack the Plymouth Prize. Marlowe would see to that.

  The masters of the ships in the convoy had wholeheartedly supported this idea.

  The Capes were still in sight, low and black, when the sun set behind them and Marlowe allowed his disgruntled men to take off their dresses. He gave them each two extra tots of rum, which did much to mollify them, and settled the ship into her nighttime routine.

  They stood on through the dark hours with a fair breeze and Polaris two points off the larboard bow, just one of thousands of stars on the great dome. The convoy spread out to lessen the chance of collision, and the rising sun found the fleet covering many miles of ocean.

  Rakestraw in the Sarah and Kate and Marlowe in the Plymouth Prize spent the chief of the morning getting them back into some kind of order.

  “Oh, that stupid son of a bitch!”

  Marlowe pounded the rail in exasperation as the merchantman he was trying to herd into line suddenly tacked across the Prize’s bow, forcing her to fall off to avoid a collision. It had been that way all morning, and Marlowe had endured about all that he could when the man at the masthead called down a thankful distraction.

  “Deck there! Northumberland’s in sight, hull down and running with all she can set!”

  Indeed, Marlowe thought. King James had orders not to rejoin the convoy for one hundred leagues unless it was to report the presence of some danger, and pirates were the danger they were most likely to encounter. And if he was pushing the sloop that fast, Marlowe reckoned, then pirates it must be, and trying hard to overhaul him.

  “Mr. Middleton, a white ensign to the foremast head and a gun to windward, if you please,” he called out. That was the signal he had arranged with Lieutenant Rakestraw. It meant that pirates were about, and that he should act his part as man-of-war while the Plymouth Prize assumed her own disguise.

  The second officer made the signal and it was acknowledged, and Marlowe eased the Plymouth Prize closer to the pack of merchantmen, just one more among many.

  It took the Northumberland an hour or so to run down on the convoy, and per his orders King James hauled up to the Sarah and Kate first and reported to Rakestraw before running down to the Plymouth Prize.

  The sloop passed the guardship’s windward side about a hundred feet away, then swooped around like a gull riding a strong breeze and fell in alongside. King James, standing on the quarterdeck, looked like the Moor of Venice with his cutlass and pistols, his head bound in cloth, his loose shirt snapping in the breeze.

  “They’s pirates, sir,” he called, disdaining the use of a speaking trumpet, his voice clear like a musket shot. “Ship rigged, two hundred ton or thereabouts. They come about when they sees us and chases us, cracking on like madmen. I reckon they should be visible now, mebbe hull up!”

  At that very moment the lookout aloft reported the strange sail, calling down that topsails and topgallants were visible to the southeast and coming up fast.

  “Well done, James,” Marlowe said. “And mind you keep clear when the iron starts to fly.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, clearly intending to do no such thing.

  “Very good. Carry on.”

  King James bowed at the waist and then shouted out an order, and the Northumberland sheered off with that grace of motion she always displayed when well handled, like an expert dancer.

  Bickerstaff, who had just gained the quarterdeck, watched the Northumberland sail off, then turned to Marlowe and said, “Buccaneers, is it?”

  “So it would appear. Nothing else would explain their behavior.”

  Marlowe stepped up to the rail that ran along the break of the quarterdeck. Most of the Plymouth Prizes were on deck, and most looking aft, waiting for word of what would happen next. They were a more confident tribe than the one Marlowe had led to Smith Island, but not so used to a fight that they regarded it with disdain.

  “Listen here, you men,” he shouted. “You all heard what James had to say. If those are pirates yonder we have to lure them to us, and then give them the greeting they deserve. You know what to do. Let us clew up the sails and get to it.”

  And get to it they did, for during the time that the Plymouth Prize had ridden at her anchor waiting for the convoy to assemble, Marlowe had drilled them again and again until they could carry out his plan with no thought at all, which was all the thought he wanted from them.

  They clewed up the sails and the guardship stopped dead in her wake, then they raced forward and aloft. First they struck the spritsail topsail yard, then pulled the little spritsail topmast out of the trestle trees at the far end of the bowsprit and let it hang from a tangle of rigging in a most unsightly fashion.

  They did much the same to the fore topgallant mast and yard, and left them both hanging high over the deck in a great mess of rope and spar and canvas. It took less than ten minutes, and in that time they had managed to create an impressive amount of wreckage aloft.

  They reset topsails just as the last of the line of tobacco ships passed them, leaving them behind, a damaged vessel unable to keep station, bucking in the small chop churned up by the fleet’s passing.

  From the deck Marlowe could just make out the Sarah and Kate through his glass. Rakestraw had her right on station, a glory of bunting waving in the morning breeze. And to leeward of her, in two great columns, sailing large with all plain sail set, was the tobacco fleet, running their easting down.

  But the pirates would not be interested in a close-packed, well-armed and -escorted convoy. Not when there was a single merchantman wallowing astern, her spritsail topmast and fore topgallant mast and yard obviously carried away in some collision in the dark. The convoy and the man-of-war would leave her to her fate; they could not stop for one ship.

  “Those gentlemen who are designated ladies, pray get in your dresses,” Marlowe called down into the waist.

  Bickerstaff was silent as he stared at the wreckage aloft. At last he spoke. “This is a dangerous game you play, Marlowe. Have you thought it well out?”

  “I have. I cannot imagine that they will attack an escorted convoy when—”

  “No, not that. I mean this game of capturing pirates.” He glanced around the quarterdeck. They were alone on the weather side, and only the helmsmen and the quartermaster were to leeward and they were out of earshot. “Have you considered what will happen if one of them should recognize you?”

  “I have. I have considered it well,” Marlowe lied. The truth was that he had not really considered it at all. He had only some vague thought that anyone who might recognize him would be killed in battle, or put to the sword afterward. “I cannot imagine that anyone would believe the word of a pirate, particularly one with so obvious a reason to want to sully my good name.”

  “Perhaps. But proof is not always necessary to ruin one’s good name. That was true in London, and I find it is doubly true in the colonies. The mere suggestion of something untoward is often enough.”

  “Well, then,” Marlowe said with a forced smile, “let us see that any such a person is killed in battle. But recall that it has been some time, and these people do not tend to live so long.”

  “Perhaps” was all that Bickerstaff said.

  For the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon the convoy sailed on and the pirate closed with them. Marlowe took a glass and climbed up into the maintop and from there scanned the horizon and scrutinized the approaching vessel. It was not unusual for a pirate to have two or three ships, but that villain had only one. A big one, to be sure, bigger than average, but still only one.

  Once the pirates had closed to within a mile or so of the convoy, Rakestraw crowded sail onto the Sarah and Kate and charged after them, an enraged bull going after the dog that had wandered into his field. Ensigns and banners and jacks of all description flew from various parts of her rig and Rakestraw fired great guns right and left, making quite a show of it, though he
had no hope of hitting anything. He was not really trying to. He just wanted the pirates to know whom they should avoid.

  “Ladies, come along, we need you aft,” Marlowe shouted down the scuttle to the half-dozen young men who were quite purposely procrastinating about getting into their dresses. This set the tribe laughing and hollering, as Marlowe knew it would. It was cruel of him to tease them thus, and he knew it, particularly as they were only following his orders, but it helped to ease the building tension on the Prize’s deck. Besides, Marlowe enjoyed a good laugh as much as any man before the mast.

  At last, to many a cheer and off-color suggestion, the six men sauntered aft and the guardship’s disguise was complete. Marlowe ordered up the rum.

  “On deck! Pirate’s sheered off from the convoy!”

  “Very good,” Marlowe called aloft, then swung his glass outboard. The pirate ship, which had been closing with the convoy, had hauled her wind, running from the great bluster being made by Mr. Rakestraw and the Sarah and Kate. “I’ll reckon they see easier pickings,” he said to Bickerstaff.

  “Mr. Middleton,” he turned to the acting first officer, “let us have a couple of men out on the bowsprit pretending to repair that spritsail topmast and a few more aloft pretending to work on the topgallant gear.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Marlowe looked around the deck. The Prizes had finished quaffing their liquid courage. “Mr. Bickerstaff, you’ll see to our defense?”

  “I should be delighted.”

  Bickerstaff rounded up the men and positioned them in accordance to the plan they had devised. Marlowe found it quite amusing to watch him, in his fussy, pendantic way, enlighten the crew as to how best they could slaughter a murderous enemy. But the men had come to respect Bickerstaff, thanks in part to the fine drills in sword and pistol that he offered, but due mostly to his timely arrival and hard fighting at Smith Island.

  As demurely as the schoolchildren with whom Bickerstaff had spent a majority of his adult life, the men of the Plymouth Prize loaded pistols and sharpened cutlasses and readied the great guns for that first, crucial broadside. All but two of the cannon, lardboard and starboard, were loaded with grapeshot, and over that was packed nails, broken glass, odd bits of iron, whatever potentially lethal projectile could be found.

  In the same manner they loaded the six small cannon, called falconets, mounted on the rail. Then the men squatted down behind the high bulwark, out of sight, and waited to be attacked.

  “Listen here,” Marlowe shouted down to the men in the waist. “When these sons of bitches come up with us they’ll no doubt be making some noise, yelling and banging swords and chanting and such. They call it ‘vaporing,’ and it can be damn frightening, but it’s only noise, d’ya hear? Don’t let it unnerve you, because it means they’re all crowded on the bulwarks, which is what we want.”

  Rakestraw hauled his wind and rejoined the convoy ten minutes after the pirate ship had sheered off. A minute after that the pirate wore around and turned his bow toward the Plymouth Prize. They looked as if they might tip over for all of the canvas they had aloft, and they closed quickly with their chosen victim.

  “Very good, Mr. Bickerstaff. First gun, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir,” Bickerstaff called, and relayed the order to the gun captain of the forwardmost gun on the starboard side. The captain touched off the powder in the touch hole, and the gun went off with a roar.

  The pirate ship, though coming up fast, was still out of range of even a long cannon shot, and the ball plunged into the ocean one hundred feet short. Then the gun crew slowly reloaded and fired again, creating the illusion that the Plymouth Prize did not have enough men to fire more than one gun at a time, and that none too quickly.

  Marlowe smiled and shook his head. The guardship would appear as pathetic and weak as a lost lamb, firing her round shot into the sea. And there was nothing that wolves loved more than a pathetic and weak lost lamb.

  A quarter mile away the pirates opened up with as much broadside as would bear. Round shot whistled through the rigging and one or two even slammed into the Prize’s hull, but there was little damage done and no one was hurt. The pirates did not want to sink their victim. That was the last thing they wanted. What they hoped to do was frighten their victim into surrender.

  And it seemed to be working, for the men crouching behind the bulwarks were starting to get wide-eyed, their fear all the greater for their not being able to see the enemy.

  They might even have panicked had it not been for Bickerstaff, strolling casually up and down the deck, giving them word of what was happening and reminding them of their duty. He would do well to remind them of the riches that they might win, Marlowe thought, but Bickerstaff was not aware of that part of the operation, and Marlowe was not looking forward to his finding out.

  The pirates were two cables off when they began their vaporing.

  It started soft, one man upon the quarterdeck banging the flat of his sword against the rail in a slow and steady rhythm, then another, and a third with two bones in his hands that he beat together. Soon they were joined by someone with a drum, beating along with the steady thump thump thump thump thump, and then another with a fiddle who sawed the bow across the strings in a series of short, staccato shrieks.

  When the ship had closed to a cable length one of the brigands amidships, a big man with a long black beard, began to chant in a voice like a thunderclap, “Death, death, death…”

  The chant was picked up by the others, who flocked to the rails on the quarterdeck, forecastle, and waist, and clung to the shrouds and the channels, screaming, chanting, beating the sides with swords and cutlasses, steadily increasing the tempo, the whole terrible sound shot through with the bang of pistols and the high-pitched shrieking of the pirates.

  Marlowe watched, transfixed, as they came on. He was carried away by that terrifying sound, the mesmerizing, steady rhythm, coming faster and faster, louder and louder, as the pirate ship ran down on them. It was the most frightening sound in the world.

  He gripped his sword with a sweating palm, swallowed hard, tried to turn his eyes away, could not. The vaporing carried him off, bringing up old terrors like silt swirled up from the bottom of a deep pool.

  He had heard it before, heard it from all sides, knew the great surge of brutal energy it brought to the pirate tribe, knew the resultant horror. He had learned it all, how to be victim and tormentor, had learned it from the devil himself.

  It was that devil he feared. It was not rational, he knew. That devil was just a man, and there were no other men Marlowe feared. He had bested him once. Most likely he was dead. Marlowe assured himself he had no reason to fear that man. But the vaporing brought it all back, and he could not shake it.

  At last he tore his eyes from the pirates crowding their rail and looked down into the waist of his own ship. The devil was dead. He had to be. This was not him.

  He hoped that his men would not panic, that Bickerstaff could hold them together. But he could see they were being swept up by the terror of the thing. The vaporing. The sound of pending death.

  Chapter 20

  CAPTAIN JEAN-PIERRE LeRois stood on the quarterdeck rail, sword in his right hand, his left hand on the backstay, steadying himself. And he felt steady, he felt very steady, and completely in command of himself and his ship as the Vengeance closed with this poor unfortunate who had had the temerity to fire upon them.

  He was all but sober, having drunk just enough to prevent the shaking, to keep the screaming to a minimum.

  And his authority, for the moment, was absolute. That was the way it worked in the sweet trade.

  The crew of a ship might make decisions by vote during normal times, but when they went into battle the captain’s word was law, obeyed without question and without hesitation. Combat was not a time for democracy. As long as they were in a fight, LeRois was in command.

  The vaporing was growing louder, building in intensity as they ran down on the crippled
merchantman. The entire company of the Vengeance was crowded on the larboard side, screaming, pounding, firing pistols, ready to run alongside and pour onto the deck of their victim.

  LeRois felt the excitement building, ready to burst out of him, the way he used to feel when he was with a woman. He opened his mouth and joined in the screaming, letting his hoarse voice mix with the layer upon layer of sound that swirled in his head.

  They were going to murder these sons of whores, tear them apart. Not only had they failed to strike their flag at the sight of the Vengeance, a great effrontery, but they had fired on them as well, which was not to be tolerated.

  There were women aboard. LeRois had seen them through his glass. They might provide days of amusement for his men.

  “Hoist up the pavillon de pouppe, the black ensign, now!” he shouted to the men below him on the quarterdeck who were tending to the huge flag draped over the taffrail. LeRois always waited until the last second to break it out. He knew that the sudden appearance of that flag, with its leering skull and twin swords and hourglass, would wipe out any vestiges of bravery left in his victim’s crew, any hint of defiance not quashed by the vaporing.

  The men on the quarterdeck hauled away, and the big flag lifted up the ensign staff and snapped out in the breeze. The death’s-head seemed to laugh as the cloth twisted and buckled in the wind.

  The screaming built toward a crescendo, careening around in LeRois’s head, and he opened his mouth and joined in again.

  Half a cable length. There were not above a dozen men on the victim’s deck. Those working aloft had come back down and, incredibly, were firing at the Vengeance with small arms, as if they wanted to inflame the Brethren more, as if they wanted their own deaths to be as horrible as could be imagined.