She turned to leave the bridge and took one last glance as she did so to where silhouetted against the sunset was the French ship that had destroyed them.
She was picking up survivors from the other vessel, but Cordelia realised that the St. Jude was drifting from them out of gunshot.
Hurriedly she went below to pull the sheets from the beds in the cabins.
She had an armful of them when she heard a step behind her and turned to see Vella.
“Vella, help me.”
She saw that his hands were trembling, but his voice was quite steady as he said,
“Give me the sheets, Mistress, I will tear them for you.”
“Thank you, Vella.”
He must have hidden somewhere safe while the battle was raging and she was thankful that he at least was unharmed.
She went back on deck and put a tourniquet on Mark’s leg above the knee.
She was tightening it when he opened his eyes.
He looked at her and she thought that for the moment he did not realise who she was, as he asked weakly,
“Are – we –afloat?”
“Yes,” Cordelia answered.
He closed his eyes again as if the effort had been too much and now Vella helped her pull off his stocking and she bandaged the terrible open wound in his leg.
She wondered as she did so if she would be able to save his leg or whether he would lose it.
She thought how he would hate to be a cripple, but it was better than being dead.
“We must release the tourniquet in about fifteen minutes,” she said to Vella and saw that the linen she had bandaged him with was already crimson.
She moved to the side of the Baron.
She thought at first glance that he was dead. Then when Vella had helped her to pull off his coat she realised that he had only been struck in the shoulder.
“A sharp-shooter, Mistress,” Vella informed her, “not cannon.”
“The bullet must still be there,” Cordelia said automatically.
But there was nothing she could do except try to stop the bleeding and make the Baron comfortable. He was semi-conscious and groaning.
Vella fetched a pillow from one of the cabins that he could rest his head on
Cordelia lost count after that of how many men she bandaged and how many men she and Vella pulled from under the sails, some of whom had suffered nothing worse than being hit violently on the head by the wreckage as it fell.
All the time the ship was swinging in the seas and as dusk fell Cordelia realised that the sea was rougher than it had been earlier in the day.
Now the seas were splashing over the sides soaking the wounded men in their spray and Cordelia was also wet through as she tended them.
She kept going back to Mark to release the tourniquet and the last time she had done so he was conscious.
“You should not – be doing this,” he said with difficulty.
“I am unhurt and so is Vella,” she answered. “If we tend the men now – we can save the lives of many of them.”
She did not tell him that she had spent much time bandaging men who had died before she could do anything more for them.
Where a man’s limb had been hit by a cannonball, it was dirty and remembering what her mother had told her Cordelia sent Vella below to find some spirit.
“It is easier to die from dirt and infection than from the wound itself,” Lady Stanton had said in her soft voice. “I have been told that Admiral Nelson used raw spirit on the men who were wounded in his ships and saved many lives that way.”
When Vella had found what was required, because she was certain it was important, Cordelia undid Mark’s bandages, poured raw spirit over the terrible wound on his leg and dressed it with new bandages.
The pain brought him back to consciousness and he gave a cry before his self-control forced no more sound from his lips.
“I am sorry, Mark,” Cordelia said, “but it will at least prevent the wound from becoming gangrenous.”
Mark did not reply and she knew that he was biting on his lip. Then he held out his hand towards the bottle of brandy and when Vella passed it to him he drank from it.
“There is wine below,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Give the men as much as they can drink. It will dull their suffering.”
“I should have thought of that,” Cordelia said and continued bandaging.
A little while later Vella staggered up on deck carrying a dozen bottles at a time to distribute to all the men capable of using their hands.
The gun crews on the lower deck also required Cordelia’s attention.
The atmosphere below was stifling. There was the bitter smell of powder from the guns, the stink of blood and of fear.
There was also the creaking and groaning of timber, the wash of the sea, the drag of the sails and the moaning, blaspheming and vomiting of the wounded.
Vella distributed tots of rum and, when Cordelia bandaged the half-naked bleeding seamen, those who were conscious looked at her open-mouthed.
No man expected a woman, and a lady at that, to be occupied with the filthy work of nursing.
To look after wounded men was a man's work, allotted to those who were ordered to do it on account of their incapacity for other jobs or as a punishment for a bad record. One of the wounded who was little more than a boy said to Cordelia,
“Be I a-dyin’, Mum?”
After she had reassured him, he whispered,
“Only me mother cares for me.”
Another ship's boy not yet fifteen who was wounded in the arm kept saying,
“I were not afraid! I were not afraid!”
“Of course you were not,” Cordelia said gently.
It had now been dark for a long time and she had been forced to work by the light of two flickering lanterns before finally she found that there were no more patients needing her immediate attention.
There were still a number of the dead lying about on the deck and now two of the men who had only been stunned by a falling mast helped Vella to commit them to the deep.
As they did so Cordelia heard them murmur,
“Réquiem aetérnam dona eis, Dómine – Eternal rest give unto them, O Lord,” over each body.
Every time they spoke the beautiful words of the Requiem Mass the two Maltese crossed themselves.
The sea was still getting up and growing rougher and Cordelia sent Vella below to bring up hammocks and blankets for the men who could not be moved, while a small number were carried down to the lower deck.
It was, as they came back from taking down a man who was only slightly injured in the arm, that Vella came to Cordelia and said in a low voice,
“The ship is filling with water, Mistress.”
“Can nothing be done about it?” Cordelia asked.
He shook his head.
“There is no one to work the pumps and there is already several feet of water in the hold.”
Cordelia glanced towards Mark.
They had made him as comfortable as they could with pillows at his back and blankets over him.
Cordelia knew that he should not be moved for fear that his leg would start to bleed again.
She was aware that he had already lost a dangerous amount of blood and there was a great crimson pool beside him on the deck.
“Don’t tell the Captain,” she murmured,
Vella shook his head.
She told him to take no more men down below, feeling that seamen would rather die in the open than like rats in a trap.
She felt very tired, not only from her labour in tending the wounded but also from the pitch and roll of the ship and the force of the wind which made it difficult to move about.
It blew her hair around her face and strands of it were being whipped against her cheeks.
Desperately in need of the comfort of his presence, Cordelia sat down beside Mark.
His eyes were closed and she wondered in a sudden panic if he had died.
She put out
her hand to touch his forehead and as she did so he murmured,
“We are taking in water.”
She wondered how he knew and felt that it must be instinctive.
“A little,” she answered. “We are not sinking yet.”
'You are not afraid?”
“Not when I am with you.”
She moved a little closer to him and slipped her fingers into his.
Then she put her head down on his shoulder and thought that if they had to die she would rather die beside Mark than alone or in a Maltese prison.
The ship was pitching and listing heavily to port because of dragging its sails and Cordelia reasoned this was why she was not taking in water as quickly as she otherwise might have done.
The holes would be in her starboard side above the waterline but not out of reach of the heavy seas.
There was no moon tonight with a cloudy sky and occasionally they could see the stars.
The rocking of the ship was almost hypnotic and Cordelia must have slept from sheer exhaustion.
When she opened her eyes, the night had gone and although the last stars glimmered faintly above them the dawn was breaking.
She sat up quickly and looked at Mark.
He was awake and his eyes met hers.
It was then, as they looked at each other, there was a sudden terrifying crash and the whole ship heaved and shivered and then heaved again.
Cordelia gave a cry of fear and fell back against Mark.
“We have struck a rock,” he muttered almost as if speaking to himself.
Now there were a number of voices shouting and crying out. Cordelia pulled herself to her feet and saw that Mark was right.
The ship had been dashed by the seas against the rocks at the foot of a high barren cliff looming above them.
It looked bleak and desolate and there was only the shrill cry of gulls and the sound of breaking timber as the ship moved and heaved as if in pain as the seas hit her.
Cordelia looked at the cliffs and realised that it would be impossible even for an able-bodied man to climb them, let alone the wounded lying wet and semi-conscious on the deck.
Vella came running up onto the poop.
“Where do you think we are, Vella?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders expressively.
“Perhaps Sicily, Mistress, I don’t know, but the ship will not last long. I must try to get you onto the rocks so that you will be safe!”
“Thank you, Vella – but I will not leave the Captain.”
“But, Mistress, you are young and unharmed. It would be a waste to die when I can take you to safety.”
Vella was knotting a rope as he spoke.
Cordelia shook her head.
“No, Vella – I will stay here. But you save – yourself. It is only right that you should do so.”
She saw Vella look indecisive and, so that she should not make him feel that he was honour bound to stay with her, she went back to Mark’s side and sat down on the deck.
It was impossible anyway to stand, for the ship was shivering and breaking with every sea that struck it.
“What is happening?”
Mark’s voice was strong and she knew that he had fully regained consciousness.
""I am afraid there is nothing we can do,” Cordelia answered.
He made an effort as if he would sit up, but she put her hand on his shoulder to hold him still.
“Do not move,” she said. “It would be impossible to get ashore or to climb those cliffs.”
“You could try.”
She smiled at him.
“I prefer to stay with you.”
“You have to be saved! You must be saved!”
“There is no chance of that,” Cordelia answered gently. As if to show the truth of her statement a huge wave seemed to throw the St. Jude so violently against the rocks that part of the bow came away and was swept off by the sea.
“I am not afraid,” Cordelia told him. “I love you, Mark, and we shall be – with David.”
She bent forward as she spoke and kissed his cold cheek and even as she did so she remembered David reading to her at Stanton Park.
He was always reading about the history of the Knights, but sometimes she did not listen very attentively.
Yet now she remembered a story when the galleys of the Order were nearly swamped by the high seas.
“The sailors,” David read, “recited the Gospel of St. John with such fervour that the waters quieted down almost immediately.”
‘Prayer saved the galleys,’ Cordelia thought as she raised her lips from Mark’s cheek. ‘Why did I not remember before this that prayer could produce miracles if one prayed fervently enough?’
Rising to her feet she staggered to the front of the sloping poop and holding onto the rail she looked down onto the deck strewn with wounded men.
“We are Christians!” she cried and surprisingly her voice was strong and resonant enough to ring out above the noise of the sea. “Let us pray for help, because at this moment there is no one who can save us but God!”
She took a deep breath and, trying to remember the prayers of the Order that David had recited so often, she began,
“Oh, God, who sent Your servant, St. John the Baptist, to be a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way for the coming of Christ. Through the intercession of St. John, under whose Cross we sail, save us now in our extremity and, if we cannot be saved, then let us die with the courage that the Knights of the Order have shown all down the centuries.”
There was a pause as Cordelia finished speaking, then from the men below and from the poop around her there was the murmur of,
“Good Lord deliver us. St. John, come to our aid.”
She closed her eyes because they were filled with tears.
The prayer had come straight from her heart and she was sure as she spoke that David had put the words into her mind and on her lips.
She turned to go back to Mark, needing to touch him and to know that he was there and because of him she need not be afraid of death.
Then as she turned she looked, blinked her eyes and then looked again.
Coming round the corner of the rocks, not a quarter of a mile away from where they were stranded, was a three-masted ship.
Its sails were billowing, out in the breeze and flying at the masthead was the white ensign!
For a moment Cordelia felt that it must be a figment of her imagination.
Then she knew in her heart that God and St. John had heard her prayer.
Chapter Seven
Cordelia looked at herself in the mirror and realised that her thin white gown was exceedingly becoming, but she was not satisfied.
“I am very pale,” she explained to the maid who had helped her to dress.
“You need the sunshine, my Lady. That’s why the doctor says you may go downstairs today and lie on the terrace.”
It would be a change, Cordelia thought, from her bedroom, which, while a very attractive one, had begun to seem like a prison this last week.
But the doctor had been insistent that she should not move into the outside world until she was well enough to do so.
“I have been in Naples a long time,” she said almost to herself.
“About six, weeks, my Lady. It’s August 8th today. Two months since the French took Malta!”
It had seemed like two years, because she had not been able to see Mark.
But Lady Hamilton had brought her news of him. He was better, his leg was healing, and he sent a servant to the Embassy every day to make enquiries as to his cousin’s health.
After what had been an exhausting voyage back to Naples in H.M.S. Thunderer, which had rescued them from the Sicilian rocks, Cornelia had collapsed.
She was ashamed of having been so weak, but the anxiety and terror of the battle at sea and the devastation on board the St. Jude had taken its toll of her strength.
What was more, while everything was done for her comfort aboard t
he H.M.S. Thunderer she had fought a pitched battle with the ship’s surgeon whose one idea was to cut off the limbs of the wounded men.
“Gangrene will set in, my Lady,” he had asserted positively.
When Cordelia refused to allow him to do his butcher’s work, he had stormed off to the Captain to complain of her interference.
Luckily the Captain, who was young and impressionable, was swept off his feet by Cordelia’s beauty and was prepared to agree with her rather than with the surgeon.
Five men died after they were rescued from the St. Jude, but the rest under Cordelia’s ministrations improved daily.
She insisted, despite every protest from the Captain, on herself cleaning and bandaging the wounds of the whole of the St. Jude’s crew from the Baron down to the youngest boy.
She felt that they were her personal responsibility and having saved them so far she had no intention of allowing them to die unnecessarily.
“They regard you as an angel of mercy, my Lady,” the Captain told her. “If you are not careful you will be canonised!”
“I have no wish to be a Saint,” Cordelia smiled.
Thinking of Mark, she knew that it was the last thing she wanted to be.
He ran a high fever when they were on board the Thunderer.
While the surgeon was certain that it was due to his not having had his leg amputated, Cordelia attributed it to loss of blood and being soaked by the continuous waves breaking over the ship.
He did in fact recover sufficiently when they reached Naples to make arrangements for his men to be taken not to one of the inadequate hospitals in the City but to a Monastery where the monks specialised in healing and nursing the sick.
Fortunately, as Mark knew the Abbot, this was easily arranged.
Then while Cordelia was taken to the British Embassy, he went to stay with an Italian physician, a friend of his, to whom he was prepared to entrust his wounded leg.
Cordelia learnt that the H.M.S. Thunderer was part of Nelson’s Fleet and had been sent ahead to find out what the position was in Malta and if possible to discover the whereabouts of the French Fleet.
The Captain was extremely grateful for all the information that Cordelia was able to give him.
She learnt on arrival that Admiral Nelson himself was outside Naples, desperately trying to obtain food and water for his Fleet, while the King had been forbidden by the French to supply him.
The Dream and the Glory Page 13
