For Love of Country (25 page)

“
Fire! In sequence!
”

A tongue of orange flame lashed out from
Falcon
's foremost starboard gun, vomiting a shower of white sparks in its wake. The foredeck was enveloped in a gray cloud of acrid smoke that quickly carried off
to westward as fifty balls of half-pound grapeshot streaked eastward. Screams rent the air: Arab sailors and marines caught in the path of the deadly outpouring reeled backward on deck or plunged from the rigging. Moments later a second blast delivered a second payload of grape, the effect of a giant blunderbuss fired at point-blank range. Again the screams, again the sickening plunge of men from aloft, some, lifeless, falling like stones, others with arms and legs flailing wildly until they splashed into the sea or crashed onto the deck below. A third gun roared in perfect synchrony, sending a wheeling mass of chain-shot end over end, humming and whirling into the enemy's mizzen shrouds, digging iron teeth deep into hempen rope, slicing through the lee shrouds, causing the mizzen to teeter perilously back and forth.

As
Falcon
swept past, the xebec fought to reverse her position, to bring the wind behind her and shape a course to westward. Richard held his glass on her stern. He could see scores of confused and excited men, one—the captain—waving frantically toward the larboard guns, then up to the rigging, then to the foredeck where sailors were struggling to lower the huge square sail from its yard. The crew was having a hard time of it, Richard noted, his lips pursed tight in satisfaction.

“There goes the element of surprise,” Agreen commented, as awed as Richard by the effect of a murderous broadside without one gun answering. “Now they know we're serious.”

“Rely on it.” Richard scanned the waters with a naval officer's eye.

Forward aboard
Falcon,
the gun captains had ordered their crews through the evolutions that would have the three larboard guns reloaded in less than a minute.

To westward, perhaps a quarter-mile away, the other xebec rushed to enter the fray. She had doused her square sail and was sailing under her two close-hauled lateens.

“Bring her about, Agee,” Richard ordered. He was envisioning a course in his mind that would take them on a reverse S, up between the two xebecs, first dispatching the one to windward before looping to westward to challenge her approaching sister. He estimated he had five minutes, no more. “Lay her fifty yards to leeward of our friend the
rais
.”

Agreen ordered
Falcon
around on the opposite tack, on a course one point west of north.

Ahead, the wounded xebec was making headway to northwestward, toward her consort. If she maintained that course, however, she would
be exposed to a rake on her bow or stern, at
Falcon
's pleasure, since the schooner had every sail drawing and could maneuver at will. The
rais
had to make a choice: either allow his ship to continue westward in the hope and prayer of joining her partner to pass the baton of battle, or turn, now, to present her larboard broadside to the oncoming schooner. Richard was banking that he would do the latter and stay in the fight, motivated less, perhaps, by duty and honor than by fear of the dey's wrath if he should fail him.

Falcon
was but a cable length away when the xebec swerved to southward, unleashing her broadside as she did so. It was an onslaught as ill timed as it was ill managed. A single 6-pound round shot hit the schooner, punching harmlessly through the foresail and then the mainsail a few feet behind it before plunging into the sea astern.

The xebec was helpless now, at least for the time it took to reload her guns. With her square sail raised and a damaged mizzenmast, she could not wear ship and present her starboard battery.

The second xebec had closed to within two hundred yards.

Richard saw his chance. With
Falcon
on her northerly course, she came broadside to broadside with the wounded xebec and unleashed her starboard guns. Flames shot out from her forward gun, then her middle gun. But the results were negligible. On this round, the xebec's top-hamper was empty of sailors, and those on her deck had taken cover behind the bulwarks, just as Richard had suspected they would.

He walked quickly to the after gun, where the iron bolt of the fire-arrow had been thrust into the muzzle from outside the gunport. Its wasp nest of muslin and the combustibles it contained lay snug against the railing, its long chains with their barbed hooks at the end dangling down toward the sea. At Richard's command, Blakely leaned out from the starboard bulwark and touched the hempen mass with a sizzling linstock. Instantly it burst to life, a bright yellow ball of fire. Richard took the linstock from Blakley, blew hard on the end to stimulate the flame, then stepped aside and settled the glowing tip on the touchhole.

“This is for you, Caleb,” he breathed. “And for you, Ashley.”

A puff of smoke burst at the hole just as a flame of powder raced down the priming quill into the heart of the gun where a powder canister had been rammed down to the breech. The powder exploded, propelling the gun carriage backward in a screech of wheels and the fire-arrow forward in a straight shot at the enemy, its flight purposely slowed by a half-charge of powder. Its entire four-foot length seemingly
awash in flame, the arrow streaked toward its target like some ancient fireball hurled by a Crusader's catapult at a Saracen fortress.

The arrow struck the main lateen sail abaft the spar, halfway up, its iron tip piercing through, its barbed hooks grabbing hold of canvas and wood with the tenacity of an eagle's talons clutching a frightened prey. The arrow's flight jerked to a halt and the fire in its soul reached out to consume everything around it, setting off a conflagration that threatened the very life of the xebec.

Richard had a hard time tearing his eyes away from the rapidly spreading flames. “Bring her off the wind!” he shouted to Lamont at the tiller. He pointed at the approaching xebec. “Sail directly at her!” To the gun captains: “Reload the starboard guns! Handsomely now, you men!”

The second xebec was almost upon them. They had less than a minute before a second engagement that everyone aboard
Falcon
realized would not be as one-sided as the first.

The first volley came sooner than Richard expected. Swinging suddenly onto a more southerly course, the xebec unleashed her larboard battery just as
Falcon
's gun crews were scrambling across the deck.

“Down! Everyone down!” Richard screamed, as ten guns roared almost as one. A perfectly timed broadside—half the guns aimed high, at the rigging, the other half aimed level, at the schooner's deck—pummeled
Falcon
with round-shot. His warning came too late. To his horror, Richard saw four men fall amidships, Phineas Pratt among them. Then a shot struck the mizzen with such force that it took out a chunk of pine near the base, launching splinters of wood into the air with the fury of precisely aimed lances. One long, jagged splinter harpooned Nate Tremaine in his left side, beneath his ribs. The old sailor dropped to his knees, remained there a moment as if in prayer, then collapsed face-down onto the deck, blood running in a red rivulet from his mangled torso toward the larboard scuppers.

When Richard seemed momentarily stunned by what had just happened, Agreen stepped forward and bellowed, “Starboard guns!
Fire!
”

Falcon
's starboard guns returned fire just as a thunderous explosion astern stunned the sensibilities of survivors on both sides. The fire on the first xebec had burned down to the magazine. Where moments before a vessel had struggled for life, only open water remained.

“Reload!” Agreen cried out.

“Both arrows in the larboard guns!” Richard shouted, back in command. He looked hard at Agreen. “We have one chance, Agee. One chance only. We have to make it count.”

Agreen nodded. He understood perfectly what Richard intended.

Both vessels were back on course, sailing right at each other. The outcome would be decided in a half-minute.
Falcon
was sailing to the northwest, the xebec to the southeast. They were bow to bow, each making good speed despite the cut on the schooner's mizzen. Richard stood hard beside Agreen near the tiller. He stared darkly ahead at the death or redemption, or both, fast approaching his command.

The span of water separating the two ships narrowed to seventy feet. Sixty feet. Richard unsheathed his sword . . . fifty feet . . . and raised it high in the air. Still the two vessels came at each other, the bowsprit of each aimed directly at the other like two medieval knights jousting full-tilt from opposite ends of the lists, lances out, winner take all. At twenty-five feet Tom Gardner set the two remaining wasp nests ablaze, seconds before Richard sliced his sword downward.

“Up helm! Bring her off! Starboard guns . . .
Fire!
”

An unholy discharge of flames, smoke, and shot erupted from both vessels at once, as the xebec veered into the wind the instant
Falcon
fell off it. Grape and langrage screamed into
Falcon
's rigging as round-shot pulverized her bulwarks, smashing through them, launching shards and splinters in all directions, deep into wood and canvas and the flesh of men staggering backward from the brutal impact. A block crashed to the deck near Richard, followed immediately by a broken topsail yard and, moments later, a silent serpent of rope. Agreen was down, though in the stinging smoke Richard could not determine where he was hit or how badly he was hurt. Others, too, succumbed to the maelstrom of iron balls and wooden spears that lasted but a few seconds yet seemed, to those alive aboard
Falcon,
a purgatory without end.

Then, abruptly, the two ships were disengaged, sailing haphazardly away from each other. It took only a short time, in this wind, for the smoke to clear. Dazed, his ears ringing, his left arm barely able to clutch the mizzen for support, Richard forced his eyes astern. As gruesome as the scene was aboard
Falcon,
that on the xebec was much worse. Both fire-arrows had found their mark. She was in irons, her bow facing into the wind, the fire in her sails and rigging spreading rapidly down toward her deck, rendering her inoperable. Men who had witnessed the fate of their sister ship tried desperately, vainly, to douse the blaze with buckets of water and a pump hose. Others abandoned ship, apparently preferring death by drowning to incineration alive.

Richard fell to his knees beside Agreen, pain searing through his shoulder. He had barely enough strength left to turn the body face up, visions of Jamie Hardcastle dying on the deck of
Serapis
flashing
through his befuddled mind. He saw a shard of wood embedded at the base of Agreen's neck and a blotch of red spreading down his shirt. He saw, too, a mass of blood on the side of Agreen's face, an inch above his left ear—a glancing blow from falling tackle, perhaps, for he could see no hole in the skull, nor feel one. Not knowing what to do next, he began unbuttoning Agreen's shirt, one-handed, to at least get to the wound and somehow stem the flow of blood. He felt a hand on his arm, pushing it aside.

“I'll see to him, Captain,” Lawrence Brooke said.

Richard gave the surgeon a look edging on hysteria. “Doctor,” he croaked, “he must not die.
Agee must not die
.”

Brooke had already gently pulled the splinter from Agreen's throat and was packing the wound with gauze. “Captain,” he said hurriedly yet firmly, “you have done your work for today. Allow me to do mine. Once I have seen to Mr. Crabtree I'll be examining that shoulder of yours. You are losing too much blood.”

It was only then that Richard looked down at his left shoulder and arm, and saw that they too were soaked in red.

“See to the men first, Doctor.”

“I'll see to them.” Brooke summoned Gardner and Howland, both staring mutely in turn at the havoc aboard their own vessel and the fiery spectacle astern. “Take Mr. Crabtree below to his cabin,” he said to them. “Gently now, lads. Easy does it.” When Agreen was gone, Brooke examined Richard's upper arm. Using a surgeon's scalpel to cut away the shredded cotton, he ran his eyes over the crimson pulp of flesh and the fractured sliver of white bone visible inside it. “You have a serious wound, Captain. You're in shock, so you may not feel the pain just yet. But you will.” He withdrew a thick white piece of cloth from his medical bag and placed it squarely over the mangled tissue. “Hold this bandage with your right hand. And don't move. I'll be back with some laudanum. I need to set that bone.”

Despite the doctor's order, Richard struggled to his knees as soon as Brooke had stepped forward to take a quick inventory of the horrors that lay ahead for him on the surgeon's table. As he did so, a fierce stab of pain assailed his shoulder and a wave of dizziness overcame him. He leaned against the starboard railing for support, peered over it.

“Shall we search for survivors, sir?” Lamont called out cautiously from the tiller.

Richard stared astern at the xebec, now drifting aimlessly, the fire in her belly burning low to the waterline.
Falcon
was too far away for
him to determine how many of her crew, if any, were floundering in the water beside her. He glanced forward. Increase Hobart lay on his back not ten feet away. Part of his skull had been blown off and his brains oozed out onto the deck. Richard tried to count the number of his own crew standing by the mutilated rigging, but even that minor effort proved too taxing. All he could draw from his wretched state was the assurance that
Falcon
had somehow prevailed and the knowledge that in victory he would have a terrible butcher's bill to pay.

“No, Mr. Lamont,” he managed to rasp. “Lay her on a course for Cape Sicié, as best you can. Apparently we have need of the medical facilities at Toulon after all.”