Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (3 page)

“Down the helm,” Charles yelled through cupped hands at the quartermaster as soon as he saw that at least one of the outermost topmen had nearly reached his position at the end of the spar.

“Ease the clews,” he heard Winchester call to the hands on the lines. “Haul the reef cringle.” As
Louisa
came up into the wind, the sails shivered, then flogged, losing their tension. “Haul the buntlines”—this to force the canvas to spill its wind. The men balanced on the yardarms furiously fisted in the head of the sail to tie off the reef points.

“Haul the clew lines and belay,” Winchester shouted, to retighten the foot of the sail and secure the lines.

“Up helm and catch her,” Charles called to the quartermaster, signaling by making circles in the air in case he couldn’t be heard. The bow quickly fell off the wind; the shortened sails volleyed loudly and began to draw.
Louisa
lay over under the renewed pressure and resumed her struggle to hold her place against the howling wind and surging sea.

Charles cautiously left his relatively secure perch by the lee rail and climbed the deck toward Eliot and the ship’s wheel, bent almost double against the pressure of the elements. He could feel the ship riding somewhat easier under the reduced pressure of sail, but still pounding through each oncoming crest.

“What do you think, Mr. Eliot?” he asked, shouting each word separately to be certain he was understood.

“Aye,” the master’s disembodied voice intoned. Eliot, in his glistening rain gear, stood in the center of the deck with one hand resting casually on the binnacle. “She’ll do for the present, and we’ve plenty of sea room. But the wind’s only just starting, unless I miss my mark. It’ll be worse before it gets better.” Almost as he spoke, a stronger gust shrieked through the shrouds, raising their timbre to a higher pitch.

Out of the corner of his eye, Charles noticed his elderly steward, Timothy Attwater, struggling up the ladderway and clutching a bundle that Charles took to be his own wet-weather covering. He became conscious that he was soaked to his skin from the rain and spray and the dunking he had taken.

Charles spoke loudly: “I am going below, Mr. Eliot.”

“What?” Eliot shouted back, bending closer and with a hand cocked beside the hat where his ear should be.

“I’m going below,” Charles yelled into the cupped hand. “Call—if— change—sail.”

“Aye,” the master said, and turned his attention to the men at the wheel.

Charles took a last look at the newly reefed topsails and saw that they were already taut to the point of straining under the force of the wind.
They’ll do for now,
he thought.

“I’ve brought yer boat cloak, sir,” Attwater shouted from close beside him as he shook out the heavy tarpaulin garment. The wind instantly caught the cloth, standing it out sideways, then effortlessly snatched it from his grasp and sent it sailing out over the sea like a misshapen bird. There was such surprise and then disappointment on his steward’s face that Charles laughed. “Come, we shall go below,” he said.

Once in the relative calm of his cabin, Charles gratefully allowed Attwater to help pull off his dripping uniform. He toweled himself dry and put on fresh clothing all the while holding on to a bulkhead to balance himself against the wild movements of the ship. Then he took down his chart for the Mediterranean below Toulon, unrolled it on the dining table, and began to study their position relative to the nearest bodies of land.

A loud knock came at the cabin door. “Yes,” Charles shouted.

A marine sentry stuck his head through the doorway. “Begging your pardon, zur. You’re wanted topside.”

“Thank you, I’ll be there directly.” He quickly pulled on an old sou’wester, covering himself as much as he could.

Abovedecks, he saw that the sky was more like night than day, with low, roiling clouds racing toward the southeast. The rain lashed at them in curtains. White-topped swells heaved masses of windblown scud across the decks at regular intervals. He found Eliot and four of his men by the wheel, in addition to Lieutenant Talmage and a miserable-looking Midshipman Beechum, all covered in their bulky wet-weather gear. A glance upward told him that the double-reefed fore and main topsails were straining dangerously, and their yards bowed. Talmage crossed from the weather rail as Charles appeared.

“Wind’s increasing. I thought it best we reduce sail, sir,” Talmage shouted above the gale.

“I should have thought it best to do it before now,” Charles replied crisply. He cast a glance at Eliot and received an irritated shrug in response. He guessed that there had been a disagreement between the two men, and wished that his lieutenant would have just followed the sailing master’s advice.

“Didn’t want to disturb you before it was necessary,” Talmage explained.

“Better sooner than too late,” Charles answered. “Call the hands.”

While Talmage turned to call the orders through his speaking trumpet, Charles made his way up the deck toward Eliot. “What do you think?” he shouted next to the master’s ear.

“The wind keeps picking up. We should have taken the topsails off this quarter hour past. Something’s bound to carry away.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “We’ll heave to and put her under a storm jib and the maintop staysail.

“Mr. Beechum!” he yelled, gesturing at the young midshipman.

“Yes, sir?” Beechum said as he arrived skidding down the deck.

“Get below and inquire as to the cook’s plans for supper. Ask him how much prepared food he has on hand and how long it will last.” The galley fires would have been extinguished as soon as the storm hit, for fear of the embers spilling out, so dinner would have to consist of cold boiled beef and whatever else the cook had the foresight to have on hand.

“Aye-aye, sir,” the boy said, and turned to leave.

“Beechum,” Charles called him back.

“Yes, sir?”

“Has anyone seen anything of the rest of the squadron?”

“We saw one, sir,” Beechum answered. “About one bell ago, maybe two miles awindward during a clearing in the squall. Can’t be sure, but Eliot thinks it was
Emerald.
Looked like she’d lost her foremast. Don’t know where she is now, though.”

“And
Pylades
?” Charles asked carefully.

“No, sir, not a thing. Not since it began to blow.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. “Now, report back to me what the cook says.”

Charles stayed at his place by the lee rail for several hours, through the first dog watch and into the second. While it was light enough to see them, he anxiously watched the few sails the ship carried, and studied the relentless procession of ever growing waves, blown white at their crests, passing angrily under
Louisa
’s bow quarter. He felt the heave and tremble of his ship’s frame through the deck as she fought the elements. Beechum relieved one worry by reporting that the cook had enough prepared beef and pork on hand to last “two, maybe two and a half days if we go easy.” Charles sent back an order that the portions be cut to three in four.

He could feel through his shoes the rattle of the chain pumps as the hundreds of gallons of water that had seeped in through the hatches, decks, and hull were laboriously forced up out of the bilge and back into the sea. Mostly, he tried to guess where the wind and current were taking them. How much leeway was
Louisa
making? With the weather off the starboard bow, she was pointed more or less westerly, but her actual course could be anything from true south to south-by-east. He knew that the island of Sardinia was the biggest worry. Cape Falcone, the northern tip of the island, lay under 150 miles to the southeast when the storm had hit; Cape Sperone, near the southern extremity, bore perhaps 225 miles south-by-southeast. He could do the sums in his head. If they were making three knots leeway, it might take between two and three days to come up with the mountainous shores of Sardinia immediately under his lee. A storm such as this could easily last three days. In any event, he told himself, it hardly mattered, except to make their course as southerly as possible in hopes of missing the island entirely. The coast of Africa was at least another 150 miles farther to the south. Few storms lasted that long.

He also wondered about Admiral Nelson and the remainder of the squadron. The relatively small frigates and Bevan’s tiny brig would be scattered widely and blown to who knew where, should they survive at all. The three seventy-fours had been more tightly grouped when the wind hit them. With their greater size and weight, they would be able to ride out the weather more easily and might even be able to stay within sight of one another. Whatever their situation, it would be days, weeks possibly, before all of them would be able to reassemble and continue with their mission.

At the second bell in the second dog watch, Attwater appeared out of the fading daylight to urge him to come below for his supper. “It ain’t right for you to not have nothing in you,” he insisted. “Wouldn’t young Mrs. Edgemont not be ’appy if she knew.” Charles relented and went below. As his steward helped him out of his bulky covering and set him at the table, his mind turned irresistibly toward “young Mrs. Edgemont.” Penny, her face, expressions, laughter, her tenderness were never far from his mind or heart. They had been married these four months now. It seemed only yesterday that they had celebrated their wedding day at his home in Cheshire. That had been the one day they were together as man and wife before he was ordered back to sea.

While Attwater placed a plate of cold boiled pork, cold pease porridge, ship’s biscuit, cheese, and a tankard of porter beer in front of him, he reasoned, as he had a hundred times, that Penny would be well cared for in the large house on his estates. His elder brother, John, had agreed to oversee Charles’s properties. There were several letters back and forth, of course. Two had arrived together shortly before the squadron had left Cádiz three weeks before. From what he could tell in between her expressions of affection and the news of his sister Ellie’s (and Winchester’s) impending expectancy, she was in good health and occupying her time looking after the welfare of their tenants. There had been no mention that she herself might be in a family way, and Charles had felt it too indelicate to ask directly.

He pushed his food around with a fork, nibbled at a few pieces of the pork, sipped at his beer, and decided that he’d had enough. Before Attwater could return, Charles donned his oilskins and crept out of the cabin to go back on deck. The sky had turned pitch dark. The force of the wind and the heaving ship made mounting the ladderway to the quarterdeck an arduous struggle, requiring him to hold on to the railing with both hands. The wind came in powerful gusts that he judged to be stronger than when he had gone below. He could feel
Louisa
labor as she took each crest, filling the air with spray. He saw Eliot standing by the wheel, lit by the dim glow of a single storm lantern on the binnacle, and crossed to speak with him.

“I was about to call for you,” the master shouted.

Charles nodded. The unearthly shrieking of the wind through the shrouds made any attempt at normal conversation impossible.

Eliot cupped his hands around Charles’s ear. “The breeze is freshening. Should take in jib.”

That would leave the foremast staysail as the only scrap of canvas flying. Charles thought of asking Eliot if it was sufficient, but decided the sailing master had probably already thought of that. Communicating the question would be too difficult anyway. “See to it, if you please,” he shouted back.

Charles continued across the deck to the lee railing, where Winchester stood watch. Another midshipman—Sykes, he thought it was—sat in a bundle of sou’wester on the deck beneath the railing, huddled against the wind and wet. Charles nodded by way of greeting to his brother-in-law, who silently touched his hat in return, and settled against the railing to brace himself. The ship’s stern swooped upward, then fell precipitously as it proceeded rhythmically from wave crest to trough.

He tried to warp his mind to the endless calculations of course, windage, currents, drift, and the eventual perils of the Sardinian coast but realized that it was all supposition leading nowhere very definite. It would be a miracle if their actual progress were in any direction other than backward and sideways. He didn’t even know where they were, except in the broadest terms: some distance south of Toulon and presumably still to the west of Sardinia; hopefully well to the west of the island.

A rendezvous off the coast of France was specified in his orders, to be used if the squadron was dispersed. The seventy-fours would probably arrive first, since they would have been the least affected by the storm. There was also the possibility that the French fleet in Toulon would use the favorable northerly wind to up their anchors and set off for whatever purpose they had in mind. Admiral Nelson would know this, and Charles suspected that he would be in a state of high agitation while he waited for the smaller ships to rejoin him one by one before he could look into the port.

When Winchester went below, he was replaced by Talmage, who took up his station by the weather rail, a respectable distance away. Charles stayed where he was, too tired to climb the inclined deck. There was nothing the first lieutenant could tell him that he didn’t already know. Alone, huddled in his rain gear with his back turned to the wind, he found his mind turning back to Penny. What would she think if she knew that
Louisa
was struggling for her life against surging seas and a howling gale, possibly to be driven against a rocky, reef-strewn lee shore? Actually, she probably wouldn’t be as troubled by his current situation as she had been after learning of the
Louisa
’s battles with the
Santa Brigida.
Even then, she hadn’t been concerned solely for his safety. One of her peculiarities was that she was of a Quaker family and held strong pacifist views. She had told him several times that she did not approve of his profession and had initially refused to marry him because of it. Charles sighed. That would work itself out in time, he told himself. She would adjust. Wives always adjusted to their husbands’ ways. He knew it to be true, everyone said so.