Post Captain (37 page)

A furious, savage cheer from the Polychrest. 'Another, another,' he cried. 'Another and she strikes!'

But her colours were flying still, her wheel was unhurt, and on her quarterdeck Captain Dumanoir waved his hat to Jack, shouting orders to his men. To his horror Jack saw that the Polychrest's cursed leeway was carrying her fast aboard the privateer. The Frenchmen, all but the gun-crews, were massing in the bows, some two hundred of them.

'Luff up, Goodridge...' and his words were annihilated by the double broadside, the Bellone's and the Polychrest's, almost yardarm to yardarm.

'All hands to repel boarders - pikes, pikes, pikes!' he shouted, drawing his sword and racing to the forecastle, the likely point of impact, vaulting a dismounted gun, a couple of bodies, and reaching it before the smoke cleared away. He stood there with twenty or thirty men around him, waiting for the grinding thump of the two ships coming together. Through the cloud there was an enormous shouting - orders in French - cheering - and now far astern a rending, tearing crash. Clear air, brilliant light, and there was the Bellone sheering off, falling off from the wind, turning; and the gap between them was twenty yards already. Her mizen had gone by the board, and she could not keep to the wind. The fallen mast lay over her starboard quarter, hanging by the shrouds, acting as a huge rudder, swinging her head away.

'To your guns,' he shouted. The Bellone's stern was turning towards them - a raking broadside now would destroy her.

'She's struck, she's struck!' cried a fool. And now the lack of training told - now the disorganized gun-crews ran about - match-tubs upset, shot, cartridge, swabs, rammers everywhere. Some men cheering, others capering like half-wits - guns in, guns out - Bedlam. 'Pullings, Babbington, Parker, get those guns firing - jump to it, God damn you all. Up with the helm, Goodridge - keep her bearing.' He knocked down a little silly weaver, skipping there for joy, banged two men's heads together, compelled them to their guns, heaved one carronade in, ran another out, fired it into the Bellone's open stern, and ran back to the quarterdeck, crying 'Bear up, Goodridge, bear up, I say.'

And now the vile Polychrest would not answer her helm. Hardly a sheet of her headsails remained after that last broadside, and all her old griping was back. The helm was hard over, but she would not pay off; and the precious seconds were flying.

Malloch and his mates were busy with the sheets, knotting like fury: here and there a carronade spoke out -one twenty-four-pound ball hit the Bellone plumb on the stern-post. But the privateer had squared her yards; she was right before the wind, and they were separating at a hundred yards a minute. Before the headsheets were hauled aft, so that the Polychrest could pay off and pursue the Bellone, there was quarter of a mile of open water between them; and now the Bellone was replying with her stern-chaser.

'Mr Parker, get two guns into the bows,' said Jack. The Polychrest was gathering way: the Bellone, hampered by her trailing mast, yawed strangely. The distance narrowed. 'Mr Parslow, fetch me a glass.' His own lay shattered by the fife-rail.

'A glass? What glass, sir?' The little pale dazed face peered up, anxious, worried.

'Any glass - a telescope, boy,' he said kindly. 'In the gun-room. Look sharp.'

He glanced up and down his ship. The bentincks holed like sieves, two staysails hanging limp, foretopsail in rags.

half a dozen shrouds parted: jibe and mizen drawing well, however. Something like order on deck. Two guns dismounted, but one being crowed up and re-breached. The rest run out, ready, their crews complete, the men looking eager and determined. A great heap of hammocks in the waist, blasted out of their netting by the Bellone's last broadside. The wounded carried below, skirting the heap.

'The glass, sir.'

'Thank you, Mr Parslow. Tell Mr Rolfe the bow carronades are to fire the moment they can be run out.'

Aboard the Bellone they were hacking at the starboard mizen-shrouds with axes. The last pair parted, the floating mast tore clear, and the frigate surged forward, drawing clear away, going, going from them. But as he watched, her maintopmast lurched, lurched again, and with a heavy pitch of the sea it fell bodily over the side.

A cheer went up from the Polychrest. They were gaining on her - they were gaining! The bow carronade went off: the shot fell short, but almost hit the Bellone on the ricochet. Another cheer. 'You'll cheer the other side of your faces when she hauls her wind and rakes us,' he thought. The two ships were some five hundred yards apart, both directly before the wind, with the Polychrest on the Bellone's larboard quarter: the privateer had but to put her helm a-lee to show them her broadside and rake them from stem to stern. She could not come right up into the wind with no sails aft, but she could bring it on to her beam, and less than that would be enough.

Yet she did not do so. The topmast was cut away, but still the Bellone ran before the wind. And focusing his glass upon her stern he saw why - she had no helm to put a-lee. That last lucky shot had unseated her rudder. She could not steer. She could only run before the wind.

They were coming down to the merchantmen now, broad low ships still on the larboard tack. Did they mean to give any trouble? To stand by their friend? They had five gun-ports of a side, and the Bellone would pass within a cable's length of them. 'Mr Parker, run out the larboard guns.' No: they did not. They were slowly edging away, heading north: one was a lame duck - juryrigged fore and main topmasts. The Polychrest's bow gun sent a fountain of water over the Bellone's stern. They were gaining. Should he snap up the merchantmen and then go on after the privateer? Content himself with the merchants? At this moment they could not escape: but in five minutes he would be to leeward of them, and slow though they might be, it would be a task to bring them to. In half an hour it would be impossible.

The carronade was firing two shots for the Bellone's one; but that one came from a long eight, a more accurate gun by far. A little before they came abreast of the merchant ships it sent a ball low over the Polychrest's deck, killing a seaman near the wheel, flinging his body on to Parslow as he stood there, waiting for orders. Jack pulled the body off, disentangled the blood-stained child, said 'Are you all right, Parslow?' and in reply to Parker's 'The merchantmen have struck, sir,' he cried, 'Yes, yes. See if it is possible to lace on a bonnet.' A minute gain in speed would allow him to draw up on the Bellone, yaw and hammer her with his broadside again. They swept close by the merchantmen, who let fly their sheets in submission. Even in this heat of battle, with the guns answering one another as fast as they could be loaded, powder-smoke swirling between them, bodies on deck, blood running fresh in the scuppers,. there were eyes that glanced wistfully at their prizes - fair-sized ships: ten, twenty, even thirty thousand guineas, perhaps. They knew very well that the moment the Polychrest had run a mile to leeward, all that money would get under way, spread every possible stitch of canvas, haul to the wind, and fly: kiss my hand to a fortune.

South-east they ran, the merchant ships dwindling fast astern. They ran firing steadily, first the one gaining a little as damaged rigging was repaired, then the other;

neither dared risk the pause to bend new sails; neither dared risk sending up a new topmast or topgallants in this steep pitching sea; and as they stood they were exactly matched. The least damage to either would be decisive, the least respite fatal; and so they ran, and the glass turned and the bell rang right through the forenoon watch, hour after hour, in a state of extreme tension - hardly a word on deck, apart from orders - never much more or less than a quarter of a mile away from one another. Both tried setting studdingsails: both had them blown away. Both started their water over the side, lightening themselves by several tons - every trick, device, contrivance known to seamen for an even greater urgency of thrust. At one point Jack thought the Bellone was throwing her stores overboard, but it was only her dead. Forty splashes he counted:

the slaughter in that close-packed ship must have been appalling. And still they fired.

By noon, when they raised the high land of Spain among the clouds on the southern horizon, the Polychrest's bows were pockmarked with shot-holes, her foremast and foretopsailyard had been gashed again and again, and she was making water fast. The Bellone's stern was shattered to an extraordinary degree and her great mainsail was a collection of holes; but she was steering again. This she did by a cable veered out of the stern-port, which allowed her to turn a couple of points from the wind - not much, but more than she could do by steering with her sheets. She altered course deliberately on sighting Cape Peñas, and it cost her dear: the drag of the cable lost her a hundred yards - a great distance in that desperate race -and Rolfe, the Polychrest's master-gunner, red-eyed, black with powder, but in his element, sent a ball smashing into her stern-chaser, and from dead silence the Polychrest burst into wild cheering. Now the Bellone ran mute, apart from musket-fire. But still she ran, and it was Gijon that she was running for. Gijon, a Spanish port and therefore closed to British ships, though open to the French.

Yet there were still some miles to go, and any shot that touched her mainyard or her sheets would cripple her. Now her guns were going overboard to win back that hundred yards. Jack shook his head - it would do her little good, with the wind right aft and only headsails left.

'On deck, there,' hailed the look-out. 'A sail on the starboard bow.'

She was a Spanish frigate, rounding Cape Peñas and bearing up for Gijon: she should have been sighted long ago, if every eye had not been fixed upon the flying privateer. 'Damn her,' said Jack, with the fleeting thought that it was strange to see such perfection of canvas, pyramids of white, after all this time staring at tattered rags: and how fast she moved!

An explosion forward - not the right crash of the carronade. Shouts, a high dog-like howling of agony. The over-heated gun had burst, killing the gunner stone dead and wounding three more - one man jerking clear of the deck as he screamed, leaping so that twice he escaped from his mates' arms, carrying him below. They slid the gunner over the side, cleared the wreckage, worked furiously to shift the other carronade into its place, but it was a slow job - ring-bolts and all had gone; and all the while the Bellone's muskets played on them in the bows.

Now they ran silently, with eager, inveterate malice; the coast drew nearer - the savage cliffs and the white water on the reefs were in view; and without a pause the animal screaming came, up from the cockpit far below.

A gun from the Spanish frigate, a hoist of signals. 'Damn her,' said Jack again. The Bellone was veering out her cable again to turn to port, to turn for the entrance to Gijon - Dumanoir must haul up a good two points, or he would be on the rocks.

'No you don't, God damn you,' cried Jack. 'Stand to your guns, there. Train 'em sharp for'ard. Three degrees' elevation. Fire as they bear on her main mast. Mr Goodridge, bring her up.'

The Polychrest swerved violently to larboard, bringing her side slanting to the privateer. Her guns went off in succession, three, six and three. Great gaps appeared in the Bellone's mainsail, the yard tilted, held only by the preventerlift; but still she ran.

'The Spaniard is firing, sir,' said Parker. And indeed a shot whipped across the Polychrest's stem. The frigate had altered course to run between them: she was very close.

'Damn him,' said Jack, and taking the wheel he put the ship before the wind, straight for the privateer. He might have time for one more broadside more before the Spaniard crossed his hawse - one chance to cripple the Bellone before she cleared the reef and reached the open channel for the port.

'Stand to your guns,' he said in the silence. 'Steady, steady now. Three degrees. For her mainmast. Make sure of every ball.'

He glanced over his shoulder, saw the Spaniard - a magnificent spread of sail - heard her hail loud and clear, clenched his mouth, and spun the wheel. If the Spaniard caught his broadside, that was his affair.

Round, round she came, the helm hard over. The guns went off in one great rolling deliberate thunder. The Bellone's mainmast came slowly down, down, right over her side, all her canvas with it. The next moment she was in the surf. He saw the copper of her hull: she drove farther on to the reef in two great heaves and there lay on her side, the waves making a clean breach over her.

'And so, sir, I drove her on to the rock before Gijon. I wished to send in the boats to burn her at low tide, but the Spaniards represented to me that she was in territorial waters, and that they should oppose any such measure. They added, however, that she was hopelessly bilged, her back broken.'

Admiral Harte stared at him with sincere dislike. 'So as I understand it,' he said, 'you left these valuable merchantmen when you could have tossed a biscuit on to their deck, to chase a blackguardly privateer, which you did not take either.'

'I destroyed her, sir.'

'Oh, I dare say. We have all heard of these ships driven on the rocks and bilged and so on and so forth, and then next month they reappear as good as new. It is easy enough to say "I drove her on the rocks". Anyone can say that, but no one has yet got any head-money or gun-money out of it - not a brass farthing. No, no, it is all the fault of this damn-fool sail-plan of yours: if you could have spread your topgallants you would have had plenty of time to pick up the merchants and then have really knocked hell out of the bugger you claim to have destroyed. These bentincks, in anything but a gale wind - I have no notion of them.'

'I could never have worked to windward of the convoy without them, sir; and I do assure you that with the Polychrest a greater spread of canvas would only have pressed her down.'

'So we are to understand that the less sail you spread the faster you go?' said Harte, with a look at his secretary, who tittered. 'No, no: an admiral is generally reckoned to know more about these things than a commander - let us hear no more of this fancy rig. Your sloop is peculiar enough, without making her look like a poxed cocked hat, the laughing-stock of the fleet, creeping about at five knots because you don't choose to set more sail. Anyhow, what have you to say about this Dutch galliot?'