Mean Sun (11 page)

Our first sight of land appeared as little more than a string of lint on the horizon. For two days Mr. Grimmel shadowed the landfall at a safe distance. On the third day we edged closer as we neared Fuzhou Bay. A long column of clouds appeared at sunrise on peaceable march eastward in an otherwise flawless sky, suffused with color around their edges and deep into their bosoms; lavender, then lavender damasked with pink and fiery gold. At the head of this army the clouds on point had their bellies slit open as if by a sharp saber, and a rainy mist was falling like a ruby curtain toward the earth, which was roasting with reds and yellows. As if to verify my own delight, I glanced about the rail at the awed faces of my comrades, all of us lit by this marvelous palette.

Sharply rising mountains soon appeared, sweeping pinnacles chasing toward the horizon. One hue would settle over them and vanish so subtly that the eye had not time enough to take it in before the next was unfolding and already dissipating. Finally the green stayed, set off by the silky black shadows of the beaches.

In composition it was a sunrise unlike any I’d seen in England. And for an instant my heart rejoiced with the anticipation that my dreary world had new expectations. I thought of Lord Douglas’s advice that I must succumb to my new life. The spectacle before me was a door bidding me to enter.

“That’s China, Mr. Wren,” whispered Mr. Heath, who stood smiling beside me at the rail. “Fuzhou Bay. Isn’t she a sight?”

A cry came down from the lookout.

“Smoke two points off the larboard!”

We followed our noses and discovered that the smoke was coming from a ship, which was beating lifelessly against a jagged line of rocks near shore. The belly was smoldering, heaving black
locks into the wind. The exposed hull was shot through with cannonballs.

I was ordered to the bow where Captain Hearne, Mr. Whitehead and Lord Douglas stood.

“There is your
Lark
, Lord Douglas,” said Hearne in a calm voice. “Hellish bad luck, my lord.”

Greyson was peering through the captain’s glass with a look of rising anguish.

“We must see what’s aboard her, Captain,” said he, snapping the glass closed. “We’ll need a boat.”

“What was aboard her?”

“The details for Amoy’s fortresses,” declared Greyson with growing urgency. “We must get them. I will lead the search party myself.”

Hearne’s eye swept cautiously about the bay. There was not a ship in sight.

“Very well, before we abandon this adventure,” said Hearne, “you’ll have your look.”

“The mission will not end here, Captain,” replied Greyson hotly. “Plans or not, we will press on.”

Captain Hearne called out the leadsmen to guide the
Sovereign
as close as we could to the
Lark
without scraping bottom. A boat was lowered and Greyson and six other men began to row toward the smoking ship. With one of the men remaining in the boat, Greyson and the others climbed aboard the vessel with grappling hooks and disappeared within. We waited as half of an hour passed with no sign of Greyson and his party.

“We are in an exposed position here,” Hearne remarked. “We may require those royals after all, Mr. Whitehead. We may need to send every spare man aloft.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” responded Whitehead. “Mr. Wren, you’ll get your first taste of the yard arm today.”

At that moment a cry came down from the lookout.

“Ship on the horizon!”

Hearne turned his glass on the horizon.

“Could be a trader, sir.”

“That’s no trader, Mr. Whitehead,” Hearne shot back. “She’s a warship, a frigate,” Hearne replied, adding with a cynical note: “Our Dutch friends.”

“Look, sir—she runs!” said Whitehead.

“Nay, she doesn’t run,” said Hearne, lowering the glass. “Frigates are the eyes of the squadron. Her duty is to find the enemy and report back. She’s on us, Lieutenant!”

A pistol shot was given to warn the boarding party to return. The man in the boat heeded the shot.

Mr. Whitehead sounded the order to prepare to sail. Within seconds our topmen, including myself, were scaling the trembling ratlines. Higher and higher I climbed, hand over hand, seeing only the next fading rung before my fingers.

“No stumbling, lads!” Whitehead sang out to the climbers. “Keep steady! Your necks depend upon it!”

With my whole being tremulous with fear, I reached the lofty royals, which were nearly beyond my shaky grasp. I had seen this operation a thousand times on all the other sails and understood the task. The sail booms on the royals had to be unhitched at the pole hoops, swung out and secured. This required two men. The others would shin out on the boom, and then fan out on the foot-rope; on orders, they would slip the gaskets and we would unfurl the sail. I breathlessly watched as my valiant comrades took hold of the yardarm and began to fan out along the swaying ropes. The foot-rope dipped and swayed, would draw itself taut of a sudden, then go limp again, with dreadful volatility. One blunder would mean annihilation. The fright inside me acted like a knife, slitting the cords of my brain to the rest of my body, so that my limbs seemed helplessly independent. The men on deck far below me were as featureless as sparrows.

“Move out, my friend,” said one of the topmen behind me in a kindly voice. “Lean into the boom and rest yourself by your armpits, then reach your feet out until you feel the braid of the rope. Don’t lift your feet away from it. Slide your feet along.”

I took hold of the yardarm and pulled myself up to the armpits, as he instructed. I then reached out my naked feet to find the rope, but found myself flailing wildly.

I shouted to the fellow behind me in shameless panic.

“I can’t find the rope! I can’t find it!”

“Hold steady, lad,” he replied.

Finally, as if of its own accord, the rope found my feet and I followed the others out toward the mast. A second pistol shot sounded, and I glimpsed over to see that only a few of the men who’d made up boarding party had returned to the boat. Greyson was not among them.

When we were all in position one of the men shouted down that all was ready.

A third shot sounded below. Minutes passed and I kept my cheek straining into the yard to keep my balance. I was afraid to look to the right or the left. When I finally did, I saw Greyson and his men rowing back to the
Sovereign
.

Jacob Hearne was a man of moods and extremities. An absence of occupation was his great enemy and boredom his hell. In war, when the drums are beating high and the battle flags unfurled and the howl and hiss of combat is all about; in this unbearable, compressed air men can become slaves to the furies of passion. Jacob Hearne was no slave, but met those passions with a tranquil heart, for as the pressure of the atmosphere rose, the weight of his courage increased by the pound inch. His voice never sounded fear nor rose in emotion, but became the clarion call to all under his command. This was Hearne at his most noble.

Out of the haze on the horizon seven warships appeared, square away, and tacking down hard against the ocean breezes. Yards of sea shot up beneath their bows. Behind the leading frigates, three trim third-raters were backing the advance.

“Pack on sail, boys!” bellowed Hearne. “We need every inch of muslin! Let fall the main sails!”

One, two, three—main, mizzen and fore mains fell and cracked in glorious procession without a jam-hitch or a bight. The
Sovereign
tugged forward and gained speed.

“They close on us!” a voice somewhere behind me cried out.

The order was given and suddenly I could hear the pop of canvas all about me. The spread of the sails blinded me to everyone below. A shot from the eager frigate sounded and a cannonball ripped a hole in our topsail. I did not see them, but three more cannonballs went ringing past me, by size, sounding out like notes on a trumpet. I could hear chaotic voices hard by against the beating of the wind and sail.

“Scoff the iron, men!” Hearne shouted from somewhere. There was a lull as we waited Hearne’s order. Then it came: “Royals—Let fall!”

We slipped the gaskets from the bunting and shoved the sails over, leaning out head over heels by our waists. The newborn sails swarmed and roiled and gasped wildly in the drafts, then, miraculously, they snapped and sneered. Downy sail swallowed me. More calmly now, I edged back to the mast.

I could not see the blue sea or the sky, but I knew both were rushing past, for the
Sovereign
lifted her prow defiantly and took flight on angels’ wings. Through a flapping wedge in the sheets I descried one of the third-raters striving to cut us off. We shouldered past her. As we passed her prow, Captain Hearne raked her bow with a clean volley, shattering her figurehead and severing two of her jibs.

The Dutch squadron sloughed in our wake, receding all the while until they disappeared into the broth.

Chapter 9

Amoy

All senior officers were summoned to the captain’s cabin, along with Lord Douglas. I was ordered to attend and make a report of the meeting, which hinted its seriousness. Nothing had been salvaged from Lord Douglas’s expedition to the Lark. Hearne was impatiently rapping his fingers against the table as everyone assembled. His eyes were as hard as flint. Before Greyson could take his chair, Hearne was on him.

“My lord, you boarded the
Lark
, a poor choice to begin with, and then you had the temerity to ignore our warning shots.”

“I didn’t ignore them, Captain,” replied Greyson in a deferential voice. “I didn’t hear them.”

“You alone?” pressed Hearne. “Three shots!”

“I alone, yes, Captain. I was below deck.”

“Your delay nearly caused the lives of this crew, sir,” said Hearne. “This voyage is your wager, but we will not—”

“The King, sir, is—”

Hearne hammered his fist against the table, cutting Greyson off.

“My ship and these men are not the stake in your game!” Hearne fired back. “My entire career has been blighted with men like you. Grasping
merchants
! Men without conscience or humility. What drives you, Lord Douglas, is ambition of the lowest sort. You have emptied your spirit with greed and now need to fill it at our cost. We are in the great pond, just you and I, sir. I can drop you into it whenever I choose. Do you comprehend me?”

“I comprehend you, Captain,” returned Greyson, but his resoluteness of spirit did not at all appear shaken. One sensed wheels were turning and calm stratagems hatching. He was a man of business indeed.

“You will be confined to your quarters until further notice.”

Lord Douglas looked about the room at the others, then offered a genteel bow.

“Very well, Captain.”

Greyson left, and after a moment’s silence in which Captain Hearne collected himself, he leaned his head into his hand and spoke.

“This fellow has become a bone in my throat, gentlemen,” said Hearne. “I’m too old a dog to be diplomatic. I have always believed that truth cuts the straight and narrow.” He lifted his eyes to us with a glint of embarrassment. “But a captain should always hold his tongue. I apologize to you all, gentlemen.”

“No need to, sir,” declared Mr. Brooks.

“Thank you, Mr. Brooks,” replied Hearne. “Well, friends, the maps to the placement of the fortresses of Amoy were with the
Lark
and are now not available to us. What say you if we abandon this mission and hunt higher ground?”

Mr. Whitehead was the first to speak.

“I believe, Captain, it would not weigh in our favor to concede.”

“What would we concede?”

“Captain, we are all sailors,” answered Whitehead. “We appreciate our position, but we adhere to our professional conduct. At this point I believe we would be contravening orders.”

“I agree,” said Grimmel. “They’d go hard on our crew. Lord Douglas is a tenacious fellow, Captain. He’d see to that.”

“It is conceivable, gentlemen, that we will be walking into a trap, you understand.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Grimmel. “It is a risk, but we have no choice.”

Hearne shook his head: “I do wish you fine fellows had a braver captain.”

“We have you, sir,” remarked Grimmel with a grin.

There was a smattering of good-natured laughter.

“The crew performed well today,” said Hearne. “Tell them so…Well, to Amoy, then, you all say?”

“Aye, sir” sounded the chorus.

“It is resolved, “declared Hearne. “To Amoy.”