Rennie at once snatched off his hat and held it high, and at the same moment bellowed:
‘Starboard battery, fire!’
‘God’s love, what have we done?’ James, under his breath, as
BANG BANG BANG THUD-BANG
THUD-BANG BOOM-BANG
The deck timbers jarring and vibrating, fiery clouds rushing out from the ports. The sulphur stink of burned powder.
And miraculously – as James saw it – no shot went home. Spray shot up astern of the thirty-two, and a rock face beyond her was twice struck in a distant scattering of fragments, but nothing else.
‘Re-e-e-lo-o-o-oad!’ Echoing along the deck.
Rennie braced his knee against the breast-rail, his glass raised.
‘Only let him think what he is doing.’ James, again under his breath. ‘What they are both doing. Let them desist, before it is too late.’ Confidently, aloud:
‘Well, sir, that will teach the fellow. Thank God neither of us has injured t’other.’
Now, from the mainmast crosstrees, a lookout’s shout:
‘De-e-e-e-ck! Sail of ship to the e-e-e-e-ast!’
Rennie immediately swung his glass eastward, and saw the ship emerging from behind a jutting rocky spit, her masts and sails first, then her bowsprit and hull.
‘It is Terces!’
Again Rennie swung his glass toward the frigate, and:
‘Yes, yes, I see what they are about, by God. The frigate will engage me, while Terces slips away west to the open sea.’
Another shout from the lookout aloft:
‘Sail of ship to the we-e-e-e-st!’
It was the Danish brig returning, her colours clear against the background of rock and steep slopes. Rennie focused there a moment, then lowered his glass and with a triumphant glare at James:
‘There, d’y’see! I am rushed at from all sides, Mr Hayter!’
From the waist now:
‘Starboard battery ready!’
Rennie again held his hat high. ‘Fire as they bear!’
James gave an inward sigh, and in his head: ‘Madness . . . bloody madness.’
The brig, as if by a prearranged design, tacked south-east in the fjord, using the thirty-two as a shield, toward the approaching Terces.
‘How in God’s name could they have arranged such a plan between them?’ muttered James. ‘How – when they could not have signalled to Terces in this remote place?’
‘Why don’t our guns fire!’ Rennie demanded, leaning over the breast-rail. Before he had finished speaking:
BANG-BANG-BANG BANG-BANG-BOOM-BANG
Through the boiling smoke, further flashes from the opposing frigate, and this time her twelve-pound roundshot did not all fall wide. Four of her shot struck Expedient, but even as they did eight of Expedient’s heavier shot struck the Danish vessel. This onslaught of iron, flying at 1,000 feet per second, did terrible damage to the smaller, lighter ship. Her foremast, hit low above the deck, sagged in the shrouds. The forestay drooped, carrying down with it the preventer, and tearing the crowsfeet out of the tilting top. The mast, broken through, fell away and crashed over the starboard side, crushing hammock cranes in a tumbling confusion of rigging, yards and canvas. The ship lost way. A moment of shocked silence, then the racketing, buffeting sound of the guns reverberated along the fjord, followed by screams.
Screams which James now perceived were close by, in Expedient. He had fallen to the deck without recalling how that had happened. Had he been knocked down? Blood dripped into his left eye, obscuring his vision. He wiped it away, clapped on to the still intact breast-rail and hauled himself up on his legs.
Rennie had not moved from his position, and looked exactly as he had a moment before, except that his hat had gone from his head. He was peering intently through his glass at the frigate, and seemed oblivious of the damage to his own ship. James looked down into the waist, and forrard along the starboard side, and saw injured men, smashed timbers, a gun carriage tipped on its side. To Rennie:
‘With your permission I shall make an inspection of damage, sir.’
‘That damned Dane is damaged, that is what counts.’ Rennie, lowering his glass at last. ‘He is crippled, in truth, and so cannot distract me from my pursuit of—’
‘De-e-e-e-ck!’ From aloft. ‘The brig and Terces approach us together from the east!’
James now looked to the east through the clearing smoke, and saw the Danish brig and Terces heading straight for Expedient.
‘Sir, I think that Terces has no intention to slip away. She means to attack us, with the brig in support.’
Rennie stared east and did not reply, and then:
‘Sir . . . sir, if you please?’ Mr Glaister, one of the midshipmen, had appeared at the waist ladder. Rennie heard his voice and distractedly looked down at him.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Leigh is injured, sir.’
Rennie looked east again, and: ‘Is he badly hurt?’
‘He is lying in the upper deck by the capstan, sir.’
‘Yes yes, what are his injuries?’ Rennie, lifting his glass to peer at the advancing ships.
‘I . . . I do not know, sir. He is in a dead faint on the deck.’
‘Mr Hayter.’
‘Sir?’
‘Go to Mr Leigh, and discover his condition. If he is gravely injured, I will like you to take his place as first, immediate.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Report back to me, right quick. We must fight our way out of this damned fjord.’
‘Ay-ay, sir.’
James jumped down the ladder behind the midshipman. The after part of the upper deck was a scene of confusion. Hanging smoke, sprawled men, great damage. One of the starboard guns had been destroyed, smashed off its carriage and the muzzle cracked wide by a direct hit. Lieutenant Leigh lay abaft the capstan, on his back. His left leg was caught up under his right, and he appeared lifeless.
‘Leigh! Leigh! Can you hear me!’ James, on his knees beside him.
There was no response. James now saw blood seeping dark through the shoulder of the lieutenant’s coat. He lifted the standing collar, and saw the shirt beneath was a mass of glistening blood. He put two fingers to the pallid neck, and detected a pulse.
‘He is alive. – You there! And you! Carry the first lieutenant below to the surgeon in the cockpit!’ And as the two seamen approached through the hanging smoke: ‘Take care, he is wounded severe. Cheerly now, lads. – Mr Glaister.’ Getting up on his legs, and turning.
‘Sir?’
‘Reload, Mr Glaister. Jump now.’
‘Ay-ay, sir.’
As James jumped up the waist ladder he became aware that the ship was tacking to larboard. Calls, shouts of command, yards bracing, and the ship swinging round. His head came level with the quarterdeck. An explosion of splinters and a shock of blasted air greeted him, and he ducked his head just in time to preserve it.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK-CRACK
The Danish brig’s four-pounder great guns. James ran aft.
A further shock wave and eruption of splinters, and long lethal fractured staves, as Terces loosed a broadside of carronades. The deck trembling under James’s feet. The air full of whirling, slashing fragments.
BOOM BOOM BOOM THUD-BOOM
THUD-BOOM B-BOOM
The sound of that broadside, instantly after.
‘Why don’t our goddamned bloody guns fire, in the name of Christ!’ Captain Rennie was now at the starboard rail of his quarterdeck. Catching sight of James as he came aft: ‘Mr Hayter, y’will order the—’
His words drowned by Expedient’s reply, which had been made in spite of the confusion and disarray James had witnessed on the upper deck. Shattering din, the air choking dense with gritty, sulphurous smoke, and the deck jarring under their feet. The added numbing din of the quarterdeck carronades.
The Danish brig, veering away on the larboard tack, was caught amidships by thirty-two-pound roundshot from Expedient’s
carronades, and eighteen-pound shot from her long guns. Caught and smashed with terrible force. She lost way at once, the water all about her rippling with the shocks running through her hull.
Expedient continuing to swing wide on the larboard tack. The creaking and groaning of timbers, stays, braced yards. A voice bellowing:
‘Re-e-e-lo-o-o-ad!’
James’s own voice.
He turned, and stared in wonder as a ragged window opened in the drifting smoke. A sudden entrancing view of the fjord far to the east. Dark cliffs, green wooded steeps, and the snow-streaked grandeur of the mountains beyond, all reflected with extraordinary clarity in the glassy water. Wind crawled across the water, dissolving the reflection, smoke whirled and obscured the view as the ship swung, and the moment of magical beauty was lost.
‘Where are my junior lieutenants!’ Rennie, bellowing through the last of the smoke, which wafted away as Expedient steadied on the new tack.
James found his voice. ‘Mr Trembath is forrard, sir. I have not seen Mr Tindall.’
‘Haven’t seen him? Why ain’t he at his station!’
‘Likely he has fallen, sir.’
Rennie brought up his glass to look at Terces, which now had altered course to close again with Expedient. Rennie beckoned to James, who joined him at the rail.
‘We must allow Terces to escape, thinking she has destroyed us at last. Our ruse of thick smoke clearly did not hoodwink Captain Broadman, last night. Accordingly, we must devise a more effective method of deceit.’
‘Sir, should not we take thought of the consequence of this. Aside from the—.’
‘The consequence?’ Over him. ‘The consequence is that Captain Broadman will believe us, on this occasion. He will think we cannot pursue him, any more.’
‘No, sir, I meant – the consequence of this action entire. We have fired upon two Danish ships of war, in their own waters, and severely damaged them both.’
‘Good God, James.’ Severely. ‘They have damaged us. I did not wish to fight them. They wished to fight me. Well well, be it on their own heads, then, the consequence. No sea officer of the Royal Navy may allow his ship to be attacked with impunity. It is his plain duty to defend his ship, and his people, and his king.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Politely correct. Aware of the absurdity of such an exchange in the middle of a fierce sea action.
‘We will run.’
‘Eh?’
‘Are ye deaf with the guns, Mr Hayter? We will run away!’
‘Are not we to fire at Terces again?’
‘We will loose off a few guns, ragged and ill-aimed, and go about – looking very clumsy and unseamanlike, then make a dash for the open sea.’
‘The frigate is coming about!’ One of the lookouts still aloft. ‘She is preparing to fire!’
‘What! God damn the fellow! Ain’t he took enough of a pounding?’
The answer came in gun flashes along the port strakes of the battered Danish thirty-two as she came beam-on to Expedient at a distance of a third of a mile.
The drone of roundshot, and the sound of the guns across the water. Explosions of spray. Buffeting echoes. And Expedient was not hit.
But the Danish brig, which Rennie had ceased to consider, was now astern of Expedient, drifting and apparently helpless – except that she had one long brass chaser, her most accurate gun. This gun she now fired. The nine-pound roundshot struck Expedient’s rudder, and smashed it off its pintles.
Rennie was distracted by the frigate, and at first did not notice what had happened, until Expedient began to drift. A gust of wind caught her stern, and she veered toward the northern shore of the fjord, and a steep rocky eminence.
Captain Broadman in Terces now saw his chance, even as Rennie was not yet wholly aware of Expedient’s helplessness, and that his plan of deception had become harsh fact.
‘She don’t respond to the wheel!’ The helmsman, in terrible consternation, as if talking of a living creature. ‘The tiller rope has broke, or a tackle sheave!’
‘Nay, it is the rudder!’ One of the carronade crewmen had hung far out over the tafferel to look. ‘The rudder itself is smashed!’
BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
Terces’ carronades.
Rennie saw Expedient’s tafferel disappear in a spasm of disintegrating timber. The man who had been leaning there became a fleshy doll flung up in a violent tumbling arc, arms and legs flailing limp, and away to larboard out of sight. The punching crash of fragmented glass. Shocks and shudders through the body of the ship.
James, momentarily thrown off balance by the shock wave of a carronade ball flying within eighteen inches of his head, stumbled and fell, was deaf and half-blind, and found himself on his knees, his hands thrown forward on the sand-strewn deck.
The gusting wind now on her larboard quarter, Expedient veered drifting beyond the rocky eminence, and came in toward a low, rocky beach. A grinding crunch as her keel slid along a submerged arm of rock, then she floated clear, bottomed again briefly, drifted further in, then went aground with a series of shuddering jolts. Stays, shrouds and braces slackened and tautened and stretched gnarling as the ship finally came to rest, miraculously not listing, her starboard beam exposed to the fjord.
Standing at the starboard rail, his face streaked black with burned powder, his coat torn by splinters, Captain Rennie stared out at Terces, and:
‘Well now, Captain Broadman, y’have a choice, sir. Close with me, and destroy me, or make good your escape.’ As if mildly reflecting on what could be done in his garden today, weather permitting. ‘I must tell you, however, that if y’do venture close, I shall be obliged – contrary to your expectation – to destroy you, you damned pox-addled wretch.’ A little emphatic jerk of his head, and a breath. ‘Mr Hayter!’ Raising his voice.
‘Sir?’ James, his hearing returned, heaved himself up on his legs.
‘Starboard battery reload, and triple-shot your guns.’
‘We have lost near half our starboard guns, sir. With resp—’
‘Kindly do as you are told, sir. Reload!’
‘Ay-ay, sir.’ And he ran down into the waist.
Minutes passed, and Terces tacked closer, then a little closer still.
James, on the damaged upper deck, called hoarsely to the crews at the remaining guns: ‘Ready, now, lads . . .’
On deck Rennie lifted his glass, and saw a figure on Terces’ quarterdeck raise a hand. A moment. Another moment. And Terces went suddenly and rapidly about, yards bracing, and heeled away close-hauled toward the west.
Rennie, softly to himself: ‘He thinks me done, the villain. He will discover different, by God. He will discover different, another day.’ A nod, a sniff, and presently he lifted his glass again, and saw that both the heavily damaged frigate and the brig had sent out boats ahead, and were being towed away. Murmuring as he lowered the glass: ‘And that is wise in them, too, by Christ.’ Turning. ‘Mr Hayter!’
James appeared at the ladder. ‘Sir?’
‘We will stand down, and find out the damage to the ship – and the people.’
*
The rock face behind the narrow stony beach rose, pitted and rough, and scattered across with sparse green vegetation, to a sharp black peak several hundred feet above. Expedient lay stuck fast below, a pistol-shot from the shore. A narrow gorge ran between this peak and the next, and through the gorge roared and tumbled white water, which fanned out a little further east across the pebbly shore in a rapidly flowing stream. Rennie could see other white waterfalls half a league east, on the dark far side of the fjord. The high snows were gradually melting in the temperate spring air.
The nearest settlement of houses and barns was perhaps another half-league beyond the waterfalls. To the naked eye they were a few red and white blobs ranged across the sloping ground. In Rennie’s glass they were clearly defined as well-kept little farms, perhaps eight or ten of them, and there was a small dark elaborately carved wooden church, with steep gabl
es and spire.
‘They cannot have failed to see and hear the action we was engaged in.’ Rennie lowered the glass. ‘Almost certainly they will be hostile to us, should they decide to venture closer in boats.’
‘Yes, sir, you think so?’ James felt able, now that Rennie had spoken to him, to go aft to where the captain stood near the smashed, gaping hole that had been the tafferel.
‘Alert Lieutenant Harcher, so that he and his Marines are always aware of the danger posed to us from natives ashore.’
‘Natives, sir?’
‘These fjord-dwellers are primitives, James, I am in no doubt, scarcely more civilised than the cattle they tend.’
‘You did not see their church, sir?’
‘Yes yes, I saw it.’
James made no further comment, but instead simply made a neutral movement of his head, not quite shaking it.
‘Ye don’t agree they are savages, hey?’
‘I hope they are not, sir, for all our sakes.’
‘Well well, I shall not fire on them, if they do not give me cause.’ A sniff. ‘Ye’d better tell me what Adgett says, now.’
‘Well, sir, we have suffered no great damage to the hull timbers, so far as Mr Adgett can judge, since there is no serious leak. It is probable we may have lost part of the false keel when we scraped over the rocks, and our copper may very likely have been damaged also. I should like to send a man diving down to look, with your permission.’
‘Have not ye made up a working party already, Mr Hayter, and chose a man to go diving down? I am surprised that was not your first activity of assessment.’
‘We have a great deal of repair to carry out on the upperworks, sir.’ Nodding at the smashed tafferel. ‘We are short-handed. A further difficulty is that the fjord water is damned cold. Cold enough to make a man insensible if he remains immersed beyond a minute or two. I felt it was my duty to ask your permission first, before risking a man’s life.’
The Pursuit Page 18
