By the Mast Divided (41 page)

‘Am I right in saying the only option we have is to get back aboard
Brilliant
?’

Looking round the faces, Pearce could see that such an option appealed to Burns, Martin Dent, Dysart and Rufus, but not to Charlie Taverner or Michael. And it certainly did not appeal to him. What was also obvious was that the latter pair had no other suggestion to make. The misery of the thought provided no other solution.

‘We need a boat,’ Dysart insisted, clearly aware of the reluctance of the pressed men. ‘But as to getting back aboard
Brilliant
, why I doubt she would still be about. Even if he has cut out that privateer, Barclay can’t hang about here. He will luff up for the convoy and rejoin.’

‘Without looking for us?’ asked Charlie.

Dysart didn’t answer – he didn’t have to. A man like Ralph Barclay, with no Lieutenant Thrale and no cutter in evidence, would assume them lost, and write them off as dead in the execution of their duties. He was not the type for a sentimental search to see if they had survived.

‘My aunt might ask him to search,’ said Burns, without much conviction.

‘Your aunt?’ Pearce asked, confused.

‘The captain’s wife.’

Pearce was mildly surprised at the information and had to force himself to think of the present. His voice was full of irony, as he challenged the Scotsman. ‘So what you’re saying Dysart is that not only do we need a boat, we need one that will get us to England? Will another frigate do?’

Even wounded, Dysart could summon up some venom. ‘Anything that can step a single mast will do, and anything bigger will not, ’cause you lot are as useless as Barbary monkeys.’ He calmed down a bit, taken with the problem. ‘A small fishing smack can manage, telling you lot what tae do, but better than that would be something no much bigger than the gig, as I say it has tae step a mast. If
Brilliant
be still aboot then come the morning we might spy her in the offing. Happen she’ll respond tae a signal.’

Dysart went on, weaving, to Pearce’s way of thinking, as much of a fantasy as he had when he was talking about the French treatment of prisoners. The fact that he quite liked the man did not blind Pearce to the 
thought that the Scotsman was so wedded to storytelling that he could talk himself into anything. What was more worrying was the way he seemed to be able to convince the others that stealing a boat was not only possible, it was easy, as easy as putting to sea without food and water, and, if they did not find
Brilliant
or some other British ship, of sailing up the French coast in sight of land till they reached the Dover narrows, where they could just port the tiller and sail in, ‘nae bother’.

‘And where,’ Pearce asked, trying to inject some sense into things, ‘are we to find this miracle boat?’

‘We’re no mair than a long walk from one, Pearce, and you ken it. Just as ye ken, that wi’ you knowing the Frog lingo, you are the man to go look for it.’

Dawn revealed three corpses on the strand of what was now a long, deep and benign beach: Thrale and two marines were only identifiable by their coats, the old blue one of the lieutenant and the red ones of the marines, all three nearly shredded to rags by the rocks and the seabed. The bodies, particularly about the head, were in a worse condition than the clothing, evidence of the violence of their death. Pearce and Michael O’Hagan climbed the rose-coloured rocks which, with the tide slack, were now clear of any water right to their base, bar the odd wind-ruffled pool. The very peak, shaped like a chimney and smoothed by eons of time, was inaccessible to them, but they got high enough for a good view out to sea, and Michael was able to lift Martin Dent even higher so that he could scrabble onto the top.

Further out, waves broke over black boulders, that last night had been under their keel, yet between them and the shore was nothing that denoted danger. How could this small, sandy cove, lying like a horseshoe in the centre of the rocks, be any kind of hazard? Yet it had been just that; the whole mass of water had been white, the spume had flown everywhere, and the sucking sound as the waves retreated, loud enough to mask the cries of the drowning, had been like the sound of hell incarnate.

Somewhere out at sea they would be mourning the loss. Barclay’s wife would very likely be crying for her nephew. Would she shed a tear for Pearce? Would she even notice that he was no longer aboard? Lutyens would, and Pearce wondered what he would have made of the man in other circumstances. He had his father’s capacity for debate, and Lutyens had come across, as he recalled their sparring conversation, like a man who enjoyed the cut and thrust of that activity. Like a thought dragged from slumber, he had a sudden memory of talking about Plato, Spartans and Ancient Greece, without being sure why.

‘Surgeon Lutyens conjuring up what happened, would no doubt quiz me about Charybdis,’ he said suddenly.

‘And what,’ asked Michael, ‘is that when it’s about?’

‘Part of the twin sea hazards of antiquity, Michael, a sea monster called Scylla, with six heads and a ring of barking dogs, very close to a whirlpool big enough to consume a ship whole. Odysseus and the
Argonauts had to sail between them to get home from Troy.’

‘Would that be anywhere near here?’

Pearce laughed. ‘No one knows. According to Homer it took Odysseus ten years to reach his home island, and there is not a scholar born who could lay out his route.’

‘God pray it does not take us ten years.’

Putting out of his mind the thought that somewhere out in that water were the bodies of dozens of other men, Pearce shouted up to Martin, ‘What do you see?’

‘Nothing.’

The boy might be a pest, but he was nimble and he had the best eyes of them all. There was no sign of HMS
Brilliant
on the horizon, nor of any boat that might be looking for a sign of them, and though time and turns at sleeping had led to a more sober appreciation of what was and was not possible, it was undeniable that a look into Lézardrieux could do no harm and might do some good. What Pearce found interesting to measure, as they gathered themselves for the long walk along the line of trees that fringed the beach, was the degree of faith each had in the notion.

On dry land again, Charlie Taverner was almost cheerful, and kept insisting that ‘something would turn up’. Rufus, who had great faith in Charlie, was carried along by that notion, though unable to show any optimism on his worrier’s face. Dysart, in pain from his broken arm, had set his stall out with his tale-telling and was very much of the positive wing. It was impossible to know what Burns thought because he was determined to remain as inconspicuous as possible, lest someone remind him that, as a young gentlemen and midshipman, he had the responsibilities of an officer and should be leading the enterprise instead of trying as hard as possible to bring up the rear. Martin Dent, Pearce reckoned, was too busy to say anything, wondering whether being rescued by a man he hated obliged him to change his tune. Only Michael O’Hagan looked at it rationally. It was a chance and no more than that, and it would be foolish not to explore it.

The only one who had no faith at all in their rescue, as they spied the first signs of human habitation – lines of smoke rising into the cold morning air behind a dilapidated and seemingly deserted stone bastion – was the man who insisted they get into the trees and out of sight, the man who stayed on the beach, trying to make his hair, his face and his sea stained clothes look half respectable, the man who would have to carry it out, and who could not make up his mind what to do if he did.

The remaining officers and crew of HMS
Brilliant
had stood to quarters at dawn with a greater degree of concentration than had attended that ceremony on most mornings. Depleted by their losses, those who had taken part in the cutting out operation were exhausted from their efforts. Each aboard was aware that the French might try a stroke of their own, hoping to catch the British frigate unawares, when she was too busy licking her wounds to be prepared for a battle. It was a long wait – interrupted only by the ship going about at every turn of the half hour glass, with the early-March sky not beginning to lighten till after six, two hours knelt by the cast off guns, with the cries of the wounded and those being attended by the surgeon welling up from the cockpit below. No crack sail drill attended the ship’s manoeuvres – each time
Brilliant
wore it was in a wide and gentle arc, for there were too few hands now to work the cannon and the top hamper with anything like speed and efficiency.

Each cry from below tore at Ralph Barclay’s core, every moan an audible reminder of the depth of his failure. His Premier, Roscoe, was clinging to life by a thread, having taken a musket ball in the chest; his second lieutenant was missing along with the whole of his raiding party who had never even made his rendezvous; and he himself had returned to his frigate with half the crew of the longboat bearing wounds of varying degrees of seriousness, having left behind in that inlet two dead sailors and his marine officer, Holbrook, with half his head blown away. The total bill, if Thrale did not show up, was a loss of twenty-eight men either dead or missing, and a dozen wounded. He had heard of fleet actions where the butcher’s bill on a line of battle ship had been lighter than that!

Ralph Barclay stood silently straining towards a shore he could not see, with Digby, now acting as Premier, in company, praying that he would hear a cry to tell him Thrale had returned. On the forecastle and the main-deck, midshipmen were carrying out the duties of commissioned officers, taking acting-lieutenant rank, overseeing what guns they could man, and which mute sailors would work them. The lack of chatter was nothing to do with discipline. Ralph Barclay reckoned it was more to do with a degree of disenchantment – the mood of men who had talked up and mentally spent the money to be made from the capture of the privateer and the Indiaman, only to have that dream snatched away. Now they were mourning mates lost, or thanking their lucky stars that they had not been chosen to participate in such a fiasco.

Try as he might, Ralph Barclay could not see how to compose a despatch that would put what had happened in a favourable light. From
the moment he had left the convoy to pursue that privateer he had been on the very fringe of his orders. If Roscoe survived he would be loud in his declaration that the chase should have gone to Gould in
Firefly
. How could he explain that, never mind losing her at night, he had rediscovered her in the morning cutting out one of the ships he was tasked to protect – and a valuable East Indiaman at that? To have chased her and failed to come up before they found a safe anchorage would not read well either. A frigate should have the heels of both a barque and an Indiaman, and his attempt at cutting out had been a failure.

‘Can I stand the men down, sir?’ asked Digby.

Lost in his thoughts, Barclay had not noticed that the sky had gone grey enough to give a sight of the empty sea around
Brilliant
. He stood, without replying, until the lookout above called down that he had caught the first glimpse of the shore, which in this light would be no more than an indistinct line of a darker grey than sky and sea.

‘Make it so, Mr Digby.’

‘Permission to remove the members of the raiding party from normal watch duties?’

Something of Ralph Barclay’s old self resurfaced then. ‘What an odd notion, Mr Digby. Is this not a ship of war?’

‘It is, sir.’

‘Then kindly bear that in mind. Order and discipline must be maintained.’

Digby’s voice had a trace of despondency in it as he added, ‘Including the deck, sir?’

‘Very much so, Mr Digby! I fear we shall be witness to a few funerals this day. I would not sully the bravery of those who have given their lives for their country by despatching them to a sea grave from an unclean deck.’

‘And the course, sir?’ asked Collins.

Barclay looked aloft at the suit of sails, then at a course that was taking them away from any chance of being spotted from the shore. ‘What we are about at present will suffice. We must let the full daylight come so that we can make a judgement about what to do.’ That he felt the need to explain himself was a good indication of how his position had been undermined by his failure. ‘Our friend may try to run for St Malo and if he does I intend to have him. We want sharp eyes in the tops Mr Digby, for if a sail appears I want to know immediately. If you need me, I will be below in the cockpit.’

‘Our friend,’ Digby said softly as Barclay disappeared, ‘can sit snug for an eternity. We cannot.’

‘Amen,’ moaned the master.

Orders were issued to house the guns, the timbers rumbling as they were run up on their breechings to be bowsed tight against gun ports. The powder monkeys returned the cartridges to the gunner, while the gunner’s mates collected the flintlocks. Smoking linstock, there to fire the cannon should the flintlocks fail, was dowsed: rammers, swabs and wormers again lodged away and the task of sweeping up the sand that had been spread on the deck began. Forward, the cook was lighting his coppers to prepare the men’s breakfast, while on the upper deck the task of sanding, holystoning, sweeping, washing and flogging dry the deck planking was under way for the watch on duty. Below, those off duty were listening to the tales of the men who had survived, including those of that pretty landsman Cornelius Gherson, who had, it appeared, not only been in the thick of things but had been instrumental in getting the whole party out of trouble, spinning a thrilling tale of personal and collective bravery.

HMS
Brilliant
cruised the Brittany shore, more than hull down so that she was invisible from land. Only the lookouts aloft were able to spy the coastline, which was also close enough to espy a ship’s topmast, each half leg of her course taking her past the point that marked the Estuary de Trieux. It could have been any day at sea if someone could have quieted the keening sound of a man losing his arm two decks below.

Crouched low in the confined space of the cockpit, Ralph Barclay watched Lutyens work with only half a mind – most of his attention was on his wife who looked tired and haggard from a night awake and an early morning. Like Mrs Railton, the gunner’s wife, she had spent three whole hours helping the surgeon. A sheen of sweat covered her brow, wisps of hair were escaping from under her cap, and black blood stained her apron. If she had ever had a fear of gore it had gone now. Nor did the writhing figure on the table, biting so hard on the leather strap in his mouth that his neck veins looked set to burst, evoke even a blink of sympathy. The cut had been made and the saw was now rasping through the bone, too slowly for Barclay’s liking. And when Lutyens finished lopping off the arm, leaving an untidy stump and several flaps of bloody skin, Emily took the appendage off him and tossed it into the nearby tub as though it was a piece of wood for the fire.

Three bodies lay to one side, men who had come aboard alive and had expired on that table. Was that really due to their wounds or to the poor care they had received from Lutyens? Was Emily any better, having never had even a modicum of training in the art of nursing a wounded man?
She did look at him once, but it was hard to tell in that lined and tired face if there was any regard, and once more he was struck by his own inability to communicate with her. Why could he not explain to Emily his hopes and aspirations in a way that would gain her support? Why could she not see that though life at sea was harsh, authority was a necessity? No one could be safe in a ship that was a debating chamber, and sailors knew the risks they ran when they transgressed, and were well able to accept the punishment that was doled out for their misdemeanours.

Worse, as far as her husband was concerned, Emily’s cousin, young Toby Burns had not returned, and it would be his task to tell her, and no doubt to bear the brunt of a look that would lay the blame at his door. She had come down here as soon as the first of the wounded from Roscoe’s party had been brought aboard, so had no idea of what had transpired since. He recalled the boy’s face when he had been informed that he was to be part of the raid – fear and dread. Again he was in a quandary; it was his job to make a man of Toby Burns, not to mollycoddle him. If the youngster risked death in the process, then that was part of his duty. Ralph Barclay saw a young man who needed to prosper in the service if he was ever, one day, to enjoy commissioned rank. Emily, no doubt, saw the child who had visited her home to play – a little boy, frightened of heights, his fellow mids, and any thought of battle.

Lutyens was stitching his patient up and he was having the devil’s own job of getting the ligature that would allow the wound to discharge to stay inside his ham-fisted attempts with the needle. Ralph Barclay had learnt about stitching as a young man, it being held necessary that a midshipman should know how to cut out, sow and make a sail. Watching Lutyens losing his thread, or getting it wound around the wrong part of his fingers, he reckoned the surgeon would never have passed that particular test. That was a thought obviously shared by Mrs Railton, who was looking at the deck beams above her head with despair.