A Sea Unto Itself (19 page)

 
“Lay the foresail against the mast, Daniel,” Charles said. “We will come to and wait.”

“I thought we were going to turn away,” Bevan said.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re daft,” Bevan said, but went to give the orders.

Charles moved forward to call to Winchester in the gundeck. “You may man the port side battery,” he shouted down. “Do not run them out until my order.”

Winchester smiled broadly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgement.

Cassandra hove to and backed her foretopsail, her broadside toward the advancing enemy. Raisonnable and her frigate passed in opposite directions a mile and a half and more ahead. The frigate came on, straining into the wind, kicking puffs of white spray from her bow as she breached the crests. Charles wondered what her captain was thinking. Surely he remembered their previous encounter where Cassandra could have been taken easily, had the weather cooperated and he not been called off. He would probably still be angry about it, and confident of success. He had no reason not to be confident, even overly so. Charles watched the approaching ship carefully, particularly for any change in the angle of her sails. He guessed that the French had expected him to turn away and run as he had before. Soon it would be clear that he intended to remain as he was. What would her captain decide then? With the wind firm from the north he could only continue on or fall off to the southwest to meet Cassandra beam to beam. If he was cautious he would make the maneuver early; if he assumed Cassandra's handling to be as lubberly as before he might wait until the last moment. Charles hoped he attempted the bolder plan.

The enemy warship continued steadily closer—eight hundred yards, four hundred, her hull cleaving the sea. Charles could see that she had run out her guns on her starboard side. She was within range of his own cannon, but too far away to for the kind of certainty he wanted. The first broadside should come with as much shock as possible. He would wait until he could expect every shot to tell. Charles realized that he was not as assured as he had felt only moments before. His stomach tightened. Despite all their practice, the crew were untested in any meaningful way. For an instant he thought that if he were to be killed he would leave Penny widowed and their child fatherless, never having known him. With an effort he forced the thought away. He judged the frigate to be at a half-cable’s distance. “We will present, Daniel,” he said.

Bevan relayed the order. Gun ports flipped upward and the rumble of trucks growled in the air. Charles could feel their vibrations through the deck. How would the French captain react to the appearance of Cassandra's guns? The answer came immediately; the frigate’s mizzen boom came over and her yards began to brace around. “Fire!” he shouted.

The cannon roared in a single gratifying explosion, the smoke swirling across the bulwarks and out to sea in a low, drifting cloud. Charles saw only one or two waterspouts as the barrage pounded into the frigate’s bow. Her bowsprit jerked convulsively near the beak, then angled sharply downward, throwing the jibs into confusion. “You put it off too long,” he muttered, as if speaking to the frigate’s captain. “You thought we’d be easy, didn’t you?”

“Sponge out,” Sykes screamed excitedly at the quarterdeck gun crews. Charles heard a call come down from the tops, unintelligible in the shouted orders and struggling seamen on deck.

“Mr. Aviemore,” he said without hesitation, “get you up the mainmast.” The boy left at a run before he had finished.

The frigate continued her turn, bringing her broadside to bear. Both ships fired together. Round shot screamed across Cassandra's decks. A number crashed against the hull, others struck the sea or flew through the rigging. Charles judged his own salvo had told to better effect. The men swarmed over their weapons with a will. The quarterdeck carronades barked first, soon followed by a half dozen of the twelve-pounders on the gundeck leaping inboard on their carriages. After the briefest of intervals the six-pounders and the remainder of the main armament loudly emptied themselves.

The Frenchman’s more disciplined broadside exploded outward in an eruption of black smoke, orange tongues showing through, as the last of Cassandra's died away. Six or seven of the French round shot, he thought, struck home. A loud crack came from close over his head where a ball found the mizzen boom, snapping the spar midway along its length. The mizzen sail bellied loosely, spilling its wind. “Trim the foresails to keep her balanced,” Charles said to Bevan.

In threes and fours the faster guns fired again in their deafening roar. Charles noticed that those manned by the Americans were among the quickest. Unaccountably, this pleased him. He studied the French frigate with care. There was noticeable damage to her bulwarks and railings. He was almost certain that one of her main deck twelve-pounders had overturned or been otherwise damaged, and had not run out with the others the broadside before. On the other side of the coin, Cassandra was also knocked about, both to her hull and rigging. He had surprised the Frenchman with his improved gunfire, but the enemy showed no sign of distress. She was well fought, he decided. Having begun, he very much wanted to finish the thing quickly.

Aviemore appeared suddenly beside him, pulling on his sleeve. He had almost forgotten all about the boy and the message from the lookout. Before the midshipman spoke he looked beyond the enemy frigate and knew what it was. “T’other warship’s hauled her wind,” Aviemore squeaked out, his voice rising ever higher in pitch in his excitement. “She’s turned back toward us.”

Bevan, who overheard the report, cleared his throat. “We’d best leave it go, Charlie,” he said. “We’ve made our point.”

In the distance, through the frigate’s tangled rigging, Charles again saw the seventy-four’s full length, in the process of wearing around. Signal flags flew from her masts. He didn’t want to accept it. “Not yet,” he answered. “The seventy-four won’t be up to us for almost an hour. The frigate might strike before then.”

“No she won’t; not with the bigger one coming up. Even if she did there’d be no time for us to board her. And, if we lose a mast in the meantime, the other will run us down at her leisure.”

The French frigate enveloped herself in smoke as all her guns fired together. The tops in the mainmast lost half of its deck in a shower of splinters as at least one ball struck it, severing a number of the futtock shrouds. The main topmast promptly canted to port, but thankfully did not fall. That was enough. Charles knew Bevan to be right. He’d wanted to contest the frigate, he’d done it, and the result was a draw. It would be foolish to try for more. “Damn all,” he said under his breath, then reluctantly to his lieutenant, “All right, we will break off.” He tried to turn his mind to the new problem—disengaging from a close-fought gun duel was no easy thing.

“Wait,” Bevan said. “Look.”

With smoke still clearing across the frigate’s decks Charles saw her yards come around and her topmen scrambling up the shrouds to loosen more canvas. She had also decided, or been ordered, to run. Her head fell off with the wind as she wore back toward her companion. As the stern showed, he saw her name: L'Agile. Cassandra’s cannon fired off a final broadside in a prolonged tearing series of explosions. A number struck the frigate’s after structure, smashing in a pair of the windows across the stern, others sending up spouts of water close alongside. The gun crews then stood by their weapons and cheered.

“Cease firing,” Charles said. He knew he should be satisfied. Cassandra had acquitted herself well enough; the French had turned away first. He had made his point; his honor and that of his ship had been redeemed. He looked around him at his quarterdeck to survey their damage. Some railing and hammock netting had been beaten away, and an off-side carronade lay broken, its slide shattered and the barrel upset on the deck. He saw two men lacerated by flying splinters sitting propped against the binnacle, waiting to be taken below. He turned back to Bevan. “The butcher’s bill?”

“I’m guessing it’s not too bad. A half-dozen or so injuries; Mr. Owens will say for sure. The lookout in the tops had a near religious experience when a goodly piece of his platform disappeared, fortunately not the bit he was standing on.”

“House the guns and stand the men down,” Charles said. “Start the repairs immediately. I’ll hear the carpenter’s, boatswain’s, and surgeon’s reports as they have the time. For the moment, I think it best to stay where we are until we see what those other two decide to do.”

If the larger French warship continued to beat into the wind toward him, Cassandra would have to turn and run. But Charles doubted she would. The seventy-four had never shown any special interest in the smaller English ship. Still, he watched with relief as Raisonnable took the frigate under her lee, and then wore again to resume her former course.

Mr. Burrows approached after a time with a lengthy list of needed repairs, the most serious of which were shot holes in the hull between wind and water, and the mainmast tops which would have to be replaced before the topmast shrouds could be repaired. Similarly, William Baker, the boatswain, presented a seemingly unending enumeration of cut lines and cables which he insisted on going through item by item. The main thing Charles took away was that a suitable replacement for the cracked mizzen boom could not be obtained until they reached Cape Town; sistering a smaller spar along its length would do for now. The surgeon’s report confirmed what Bevan had told him earlier. In all, Charles considered, he had gotten off relatively lightly. It could have been very different if he had come under the guns of the seventy-four.

Late in the afternoon Cassandra resumed under easy sails, keeping the French in sight, their hulls just over the horizon. In the morning the enemy had vanished, even to the lookouts in the masts. Consensus among the officers on the quarterdeck was that the pair had turned south during the night in order to shake Cassandra from their wake. Charles had no argument with this. He wondered again where the French warships might be bound that the senior captain in the seventy-four would keep the frigate on such a tight leash. There must be some urgency about his orders. For the first time he considered the possibility—just the possibility—that their destination was the Red Sea to aid this General Bonaparte’s supposed conquest of India. It seemed to him improbable. There were a dozen more likely places they could have orders for, but it was not impossible.

CHAPTER SIX

“You may begin the salute, Mr. Sykes,” Charles said, pleased in spite of himself at the growing extent of land off the starboard bow. Cassandra passed Green Point, her ensign streaming from the main peak, her recognition signal and number on the signal halyards. The forts and settlement of Cape Town revealed themselves in a low line beneath the forbidding slopes of Table Mountain. She sailed large, under all plain sail, on a tack that would easily clear the headlands at the entrance to the harbor.

“Fire the first,” Sykes ordered gravely. The near most quarterdeck six-pounder boomed out its powder charge, the sound echoing back from the heights beyond the bay.

“One . . . , two. . . , three,” Charles heard the midshipman count out under his breath. At “five,” he announced, “Fire number two.” The gun captain yanked the lanyard to the flint lock and the next gun jumped inward. Coincident with the third gun firing off, an embrasure of the closer fort emitted a cloud of smoke, beginning its return of the ceremonial greeting. Charles saw a number of John Company ships, the large armed merchantmen of the Honorable East India Company, moored in the harbor. It being March, a late-summer sun shone down, pleasantly warming the afternoon air. Raising his long glass, he watched the pilot boat push off from the waterfront to guide them to their anchorage off the port. It was an agreeable little place to make landfall, he decided. The Dutch buildings seemed somehow both familiar and strangely foreign with their narrow fronts and curiously embellished gables. The colony had been taken from Holland four years before after the Low Countries had fallen under the dominion of France.

Charles noticed that a number of the crew had gathered along the lee rail of the gangway in their best clothing in anticipation of leave to go on shore. He wasn’t comfortable about this and had not decided whether to allow them to do so. The men had behaved themselves reasonably well over the past weeks and had shown marked improvement during the most recent encounter with the French. The bickering and arguments had trailed off—or at least he thought it had—there had been few incidents reported to him in the interval. It would be appropriate, expected even, that he reward them with time ashore. There would be some who would take the opportunity to run, he was sure, especially among the Americans. It would be awkward to search them all out and escort them back to the ship. He looked again at the men by the rail, talking among themselves while staring at the port. It wasn’t a particularly large place, he decided; rounding them up shouldn’t be too much trouble.

The harbor cutter approached and Charles ordered that the courses be taken in and the ship heaved to so that the pilot might safely board under their lee. There was some grousing among the topmen sent aloft, a number of whom had to be called away from the railing. Cassandra drifted a little past the cutter, which had to reverse its course to catch them up. Charles frowned at the lapse. He was embarrassed at this new display of inept seamanship, but decided not to make an issue of it. Bevan could apply minor punishments as he saw fit; no real harm had been done, aside from inconveniencing the pilot.