by Diane Carey
They laughed, and together climbed the lower shrouds a few ratlines up and hung there, to get a better view of their prey. On the deck, Steven Sigsby wrapped his hand in a gun truck line and tried to pull it.
“Steven, don’t wrap your hand,” Boyle instructed.
“Oh?”
“Never wrap your hand in a line.”
“Oh.” The boy uncoiled the line from his wrist and hand.
“Sorry,” Dieter muttered. “He should know that by now.”
Under his breath Boyle said, “All I could see were his broken fingers dangling before my eyes. You know, Gordon was right about the sea.”
“I don’t remember what he said.”
“It’s the bottleneck for controlling the land. Who controls the seas, the land must do his bidding. Britain knows that.”
“He said that?”
“That’s why Napoleon will eventually collapse.”
“Why do you think that? He’s making his way to London, via Moscow.”
“That’s what I mean. This invasion of Russia. He’s bitten off a huge land mass. Unless he can move supplies from port to port at sea, he can’t keep a grip on all that land. It makes me think.”
“About … attacking Napoleon?”
“Why not?”
“By yourself?” Dieter made a mirthless chuckle of both alarm and concern. “Thomas, control your ambition, eh? Just for the next two hours.”
“How’s the crew bearing up?”
“Excited. Maybe some shivers.”
“Fear?”
“I don’t think so …”
“What, then?”
“Well, they’ve never fired a gun at another human being before last month. Some liked it, some not.”
“Nobody had to sign on,” Boyle told him. “They’re seasoned now. They’ve shot and been shot at in a rousing battle.”
“A twelve-minute battle,” Dieter reminded. “Two shots, both out of range.”
Boyle strained upward a bit. “Look—she’s hull-up. We’re gaining. Thank God for light airs. She must be fully loaded. I can see her stern … no name board. He’s trying to stay anonymous.”
“That means they know there’s been a declaration of war.”
Boyle turned and called, “Marines, on deck!”
Below the weather deck, a muffled shout answered and there was a sudden clamor of boots on the companionway steps. Armed Marines in red jackets came piling back up onto the weather deck, led by their captain, a meaty disagreeable Irishman named Robert Cascadden. No sooner was Cascadden himself on the deck than he crossed paths in a narrow place with Tommy Ring, who clearly tried to give him berth, and the two men shared a long and bitter glare as the Marines formed up along the rail.
Boyle leaned toward Dieter and asked, “What’s that about?”
“I think Tommy called Cascadden a cornshucker.”
“What’s that mean?”
“No idea.”
“Well, he’s Irish. You could call him ‘sweetie’ and he’d hear ‘fire-crotch lepercoon.’”
“Want me to have a word with’m?”
“They have to work it out themselves or it’s not worked out.”
Boyle jumped down to the deck and put his attention where it wanted to be.
“Bear on her stern. Raise ‘heave to and wait for my orders.”
As Dieter opened the flag box and sifted for the right signals, Boyle addressed the crew.
“All right, boys, listen! Stand by your lines and guns. For the second time we will engage in the business of privateering for ourselves and our nation. By these acts we weaken the resolve of those who would dictate their oppression upon our free trade. Know that they are no longer our rivals in trade, but our nation’s enemies. Be steady, follow orders, and remember … every ship wants to be a privateer!”
The schooner boiled with anticipation. From the ensign halyard flew the signal flag ordering the prey ship to cease his forward progress and wait for Boyle’s orders, but the other ship responded only by turning more sharply away.
Clement Cathell, armed with his explosion of sun-bleached hair, clean-shaven face, and eternal smile, and his powder boys popped out of the hatches and scrambled up and down the deck with pretty good efficiency, carrying buckets of gunpowder and toting round shot, systematically supplying the carronades, but placing the buckets amidships where they wouldn’t catch a spark when the guns were fired. Or so everyone hoped. The guns were already loaded, needing only supplies on deck to load them again, a portent of trouble literally on the horizon. More buckets were dipped into the sea for sponging the barrels. Thus began the gut-twisting struggle of waiting.
In a half hour the ships were within two thousand feet of each other and the captains were able to look into each other’s eyes while their crewmen hopped about them like ants with each of a series of small and devious course corrections. Boyle tried to be a gentleman about it, tried to approach the merchant ship without firing a shot, posturing clearly to board her, coming in from upwind of her and parallel to the hull in an attempt to steal her wind, only to have the other captain swing the square sails around just enough to twist away at an angle Boyle wouldn’t have expected the heavier vessel could even manage while fully loaded. The distance between the two began to widen.
“Knows his ship,” Boyle muttered. “Then we’ll take him to leeward.”
The other captain was maneuvering so that the wind stayed behind them and Comet was forced to maneuver in following wind. It was risky, considering that the schooner could jibe and correct and come about quicker and was just plain faster, but so far the other had kept himself out of gun range.
“Lee helm,” he finally said. “Tops’ls only. Scandalize.”
“Lee helm, Isaac,” Ring called aft.
“Lee helm, aye,” the helmsman repeated.
“Scandalize the main!” Ring could call out louder now, because the changes in the sail handling would be obvious anyway.
“Trim to fighting sail,” Boyle ordered. “Shout it right out.”
“Trim to fighting sail!” Ring called.
This time there was no shuffle to grab the sheets and braces and main peak halyard. This time only the men assigned to each line handled each line. This was part of the drilling—not just guns and shooting, but sail handling. The studdingsails, topgallant, and jibs dissolved into laundry and, empty of the wind, fluttered in frustration. At the top of the mailsail, the long gaff spar drooped, spilling wind out of the main. Now Comet was free of the force of that mainsail, so her stern could turn, and free of the jibs, so her bow could turn. Propelled only by the foresail and the square topsail in the middle of her body, the schooner could wheel on a dot. She wheeled like an attacking eagle and bore down.
Eighteen hundred feet … fifteen hundred … men huddled by their guns, holding glowing linstocks and blowing gently on them to keep them burning, each man itching to fire first yet also afraid he might be called to do that. They weren’t killers. Not yet.
The square-rigger in front of them suddenly raised two flags—English banners. So she was declaring herself finally. No sooner than the flags shimmied up on their ensign halyards did the starboard guns erupt in a skull-pounding race of explosions.
A black monster of smoke enshrouded the other ship.
“Down!” Boyle shouted.
Boyle crashed to the deck, dragging Steven Sigsby with him, and prayed everyone else had time. His innards quaked. Absurdly he realized this was the first time he had ever been shot at, within range anyway. The same for everyone else. What a feeling—a kind of orgasmic shock.
The sea on the Comet’s larboard side blew upward in a silver fan, splashed over the rail and soaked him, then immediately scrambled down the deck and out the scuppers like a terrified animal. The gunners in the other ship had aimed too directly, no arch, hitting a swell instead of the Comet.
“All right, then,” Boyle muttered and jumped to his feet. “Larboard nine, fire!”
“Fire in the hole!” Cl
ement Cathell shouted as he touched the linstock to the fuse.
The nine-pounder long gun on the larboard beam fizzed, then roared. Boyle clutched the shrouds and waited to see what happened. There were only seconds to check the distance, seconds before the other ship reloaded. They’d been foolish enough to fire all their guns at once, a critical mistake. Boyle knew those were seconds for him to use. Nine-pounder gun, eighteen hundred feet or less—
The Comet’s round shot landed in the water also, but was just a foot short of the other ship’s hull, actually striking almost under the angled stern. She might have taken some damage below the waterline, but Boyle had a splinter of instinct that said no.
“Clement, adjust the angle.”
Cashell and two crewmen quickly adjusted the quoin on the gun truck while the boy Sigsby reloaded. They knew how to do this just from the drilling, but firing at an actual target—well, anybody could hit water.
“Larboard carronades, fire!”
The response took too long. The men were somehow surprised by the order to actually fire all at once. Cathell himself grabbed a linstock from the stunned man holding it and lowered it to a gun’s touchhole and the other men were shaken out of their stupor and touched their linstocks to the fuses.
Poom poom poompa poom—five fat carronades blew their tops off at once and the whole body of Comet rocked sideways away from the blasts, then staggered to regain her footing in the swells. The helmsman had to fight his way back
Two of the five shots slammed into the brig’s side, disintegrating the planks amidships. With so little support on the main mast now, the other captain was forced to trice up his fores’ls and try to stop using them. Suddenly there was a squid-like creature of smoke obscuring the view of the other vessel, enough to disguise the report of three guns firing back at the Comet. Another splash, and this time a thunderous strike on the gunwale below the rail, which broke and took a kevel cleat with it as if some big shark had taken a bite.
“Damage to the gun’l,” Dieter called.
Several men were moving. No screaming, no pain, yet. They gathered themselves and began, more nervously this time, to reload.
Shot, and shot at. Ice broken.
“Captain?” It was Cascadden, his face red with anticipation.
“Not yet,” Boyle answered.
Frustrated, Cascadden and his Marines crouched on the deck and waited with their muskets loaded and their stomachs knotted. How many of them, too, had never fired a shot at a living person? Untested, how would they perform?
“On the fores’l brails and sheets, stand by,” Boyle called. He calculated the shifting of the ship under his feet, the slight heel of the deck, and ordered the fore brailed up for a few seconds, then almost immediately sheeted out again. The men worked together, slacking the brails as the sheets were hauled. The big sail, with its free-foot and no boom, was able to open and close like a curtain and almost as fast.
The schooner paused at the top of a swell, then jumped and skated downward as the sail filled again. Boyle waited, watched, felt, then ordered, “Starboard brails, peel off.”
The starboard men’s arms spun as they brailed up, pulling the sails away from the wind and spilling air. The schooner fell into a trough, turned slightly, and with one hand Boyle quickly signaled Isaac Webb at the helm, who adjusted the tiller as the signal instructed. Immediately he ordered the fore sheeted out again to catch the wind and sheeted over just a foot or two.
“Brace over,” he ordered, and the square tops’l swung around. The ship heeled sharply, climbed a swell, and he ordered the fore filled again.
With each of Boyle’s finely tuned orders, the wind either caught or released the sails, the ship’s position in the water pivoted a little this way or that, not just closing the distance to the other ship, but making use of the attitude of those swells to change the angle of approach. Boyle kept the bow from smacking into a swell head-on, which would’ve taken way off the ship, instead causing the vessel to flow nearly parallel to the swells and use the swells as slides. Comet magically gained speed every time the fore was set, then slipped down each chute when the sail was brailed up. In, out, in, out, this way, that … with the stays’l pulling the ship along up front, until Boyle was where he wanted to be.
“Fire the nine!”
To his left, Cathell was ready at the only remaining loaded gun on this side. The nine-pounder long gun blew a funnel of black smoke and made a hell-shocking boom. The solid shot slammed into the side of the brig, blew straight through the planks, out the other side, and took out the corner of the main deckhouse. Someone on the other ship wailed pitifully—a man in blistering pain.
Cathell and the powder boys jumped up and down at their good aim.
Through burning eyes Boyle saw the brig turn sharper and begin moving away at a new angle. The Comet was lighter, sweeter in the water, the brig more loaded down, but the brig also had two masts of square sails and could catch more wind. Boyle ordered the Comet on her best running course for these airs, yet still could only parallel the brig’s skillful movements and tight, subtle course corrections. Again he fired his carronades and the long gun, and again was answered by another broadside. Again the shots scratched temptingly at each hull, but this time the carronades ripped several lines of the brig’s rigging, and that was almost as good as a punch in the side. The shredded lines danced as the brig tried to swing away, to put its stern to the schooner and make a smaller target. As she turned, she fired off another two shots before losing the ability to aim at the schooner. She had no stern gun, so relied on her broadside guns.
One of the two shots flew wild over the schooner’s bowsprit, but the second tore high, right at the square tops’l, and severed both braces to shreds.
“Whore that!” Dieter snarled, glaring upward.
Now or never.
“Captain Cascadden,” Boyle called, “rake that deck, if you don’t mind.”
Cascadden tried to jump to his feet quickly, but stumbled on stiff legs, shouting, “Marines! Ready! Aim!”
An awful pause—most, now all of the Marine detachment arranged themselves side by side, and brought up their muskets, which caused each man to turn to the oblique, like an archer drawing a bow. The formation seemed to shore them up mentally. Resolve showed in their faces now, thinly masking their inner quandaries.
“Fire!”
A breathy, shaggy blast rumbled down the rail. The balls seemed to travel together, side by side, like the Marines, through their own smoke on a mission of their destiny. Each ball had only one life, this moment, forged for its own fate and the fate of one man somewhere at the end of its flight.
A singular long moan rose from the deck of the other ship, shrouded now in smoke, human voices in pain and shock. The airs were light and the smoke cleared slowly. Boyle watched impatiently the most important single thing in his life right now—the English royal standard hanging from its staff on the brig’s stern. The flag waggled as if it were sick, and fainted downward.
On the schooner’s deck, a short blast rang. Another musket. It was Cascadden himself, discharging his own gun.
Boyle swung around. “You cock, they’ve struck!”
Cascadden seemed shocked, then called, “Cease fire!”
But everyone already had ceased.
Boyle craned to see what was happening on the brig. Was it over? Or would someone on the other ship take offense and answer the wild shot?
Silence. Shorn lines hung useless on both ships. The brig’s rigging was in tatters.
“Dieter,” Boyle croaked, needing to hear a voice if it were only his own.
“Yeah?”
“Check damage.”
“Sure.”
But a second or two went by before he roused himself.
“Deploy the boat,” Boyle added. “Tommy, get on the tackle fall yourself.”
Somebody responded, and the crew began to rouse themselves and to realize they had won. No one cheered or dishonored himself in any wa
y. Several men stiffly moved to the dory boat stowed on the amidships deck and made the gantline to it. The work cleared their heads, gave them focus, and in short order the dory boat was floating and Boyle climbed in, along with Hooper, two Marines, and a man to row.
After the Marine guard secured the brig’s deck, he boarded the smoldering deck and immediately stepped in a smear of blood. Boyle looked down at his foot and paused indelicately at the sight, but managed to rouse himself and hoped no one noticed.
He forced himself to walk across the bloodied deck, through the shredded lines and splinters of destroyed planks, to where the captain of the brig sat amidships on a deckhouse top, unable to stand because of a devilish leg wound.
“You are the captain,” Boyle said, just to be clear, since the two of them had been watching each other for over an hour and knew who was in charge. But there was always the chance of a mistake.
“I am,” the Briton responded. He was a man of middle age, perhaps forty-five, with a short silver beard sparkling with sweat, no moustache, and a head completely hairless. Upon his head was a white dome of skin where he normally wore a hat. He pressed a hand to his leg wound, but allowed no pain in his face.
Boyle stood back a pace to allow the man some room to move his legs. “You should’ve heeded my signal to heave to.”
“It was my duty to resist.”
“This vessel is English in origin?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I am an American cruiser in a time of war with England. I will capture English vessels, if I can, that are on the high seas, the common highway of all nations. The high seas, rightly, belong to America as much as any other power in the world and I am determined to exercise the authority I have been given by the president and Congress of the United States of America.”
“You’re a pirate, Captain,” the Englishman said, unimpressed. “A dishonorable pirate. You fired on us after our standard was struck. It’s reprehensible.”
“That was a mistake,” Boyle said quickly. “The man couldn’t see through the smoke.”
“He’s a liar.”
“That’s for me to judge.”
