Tenacious (17 page)

soaked them to form barricades in the fighting tops for the marine musketeers. A party was at work on the
sauve tête,
the netting spread twelve feet high above the deck to protect against rigging shot to pieces falling from aloft.

The boatswain and his mates were methodically laying out essential damage-control gear—rigging stoppers and lengths of line that could be secured above and below a severed rope to restore its function. Jigger tackles were becketed up under the hatchway coaming, canvas and twine ready to repair important sails at hand, as were grappling irons to hold an enemy alongside while they boarded. Kydd smiled wryly:
Tenacious
would probably be the smallest man-o’-war in the line—any boarding would likely be in the other direction.

He glanced aloft at the massive lower yards, tons in weight.

Chain slings were rigged to support them should the tye blocks at the mast be shot through, and the braces to heave round the yards were augmented by preventers and pendants to handle the heavy spar if cannon fire knocked it askew. From forward he heard the reassuring sound of grinding steel as the gunner’s party put a final edge on the tomahawks, cutlasses, pikes and other edged weapons.

Down the main hatchway it was a different kind of bustle.

Cabin bulkheads were knocked away and officers’ personal effects were struck below in the hold. He saw his own cabin dis-mantled, the desk where each day he had faithfully written his journal taken bodily by two seamen to the hatch, preceded by his cot and chest. Renzi’s cabin was treated in the same way, and when the long wardroom table had been disassembled and carried away there was nothing to spoil a continuous sweep of the gundeck right to the stern, the torpid eighteen-pounder gun with which he had familiarly shared his cabin now awakened and readied for fighting.

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On the gundeck more preparations were in train. The gunner had unlocked the grand magazine and stringent fire precautions were in force: fearnought firescreens and leather fire-buckets were around each hatchway and in the magazines lanthorns were put in sealed sconces. Wearing felt slippers, those inside this area would make up cartridges and pass them out to the chain of powder monkeys, who in turn carried them up to the guns. Kydd shivered at the fearful thought of being confined here in a blazing battle, with no knowledge of the outside world, the tons of powder in plain sight their only company.

He moved forward and saw Renzi, who gave a grave nod before turning back to a quarter gunner with orders. Images of Camperdown flashed before him. This place was not named “the slaughterhouse” for nothing: within hours it would be a hell of smoke and noise, smashed timbers and screaming. And after sunset the dim gold of battle lanthorns would be the only light they had to fight the guns.

The preparations continued. Spare gun-breeching ropes and tackles were laid around the hatchways and arms chests for boarders were thrown open on the centreline. Gun captains returned from the store with a powder horn, gunlock flints, pouches of firing tubes, all the necessary equipment to bring the great guns to life. Finally, the decks were strewn with sand and galley ash, then wetted. This would not only give a better grip for the men at the gun tackles but help them retain their footing in blood.

Kydd’s last stop was the orlop, where the surgeon made ready and the carpenter gathered his crew. As part of battle preparations, the men held in irons there were released, given full am-nesty for their crimes in the face of events of far greater moment.

He was about to go down the ladder when a breathless Rawson dashed up. “Signal, sir. ‘Prepare t’ anchor by the stern.’ ” His eyes were wide.

“Thank ye, I’ll be up directly.”

By the stern? Had Rawson misread the signal? He hurried back to the poop, pushing past the busy swarms and snatched up the signal log. There it was, and repeated by
Orion
and others.

“Mr Kydd,” Houghton called from the quarterdeck.

“Sir?” Kydd hurried down the poop ladder.

“Do you not understand Sir Horatio’s motions?”

“Er, t’ anchor by the stern? Not altogether, I have t’ say, sir.”

“Then, sir, mark the enemy’s position. They are anchored in line along the shore away from us
and directly down the wind,
I’ll have you note. Without doubt the admiral wishes to advance on them from there, then lay his ships alongside an enemy and stay—in short, to anchor. But should we anchor in the ordinary way, by the bow, then as is the way of things we will rotate round to face the wind and—”

“O’ course! We’d be cruelly raked until our guns bear again.”

“Undoubtedly. And additionally—”

“With springs on th’ cables we c’n direct our fire as we please.”

“Just so, Mr Kydd.”

With one signal—two flags—Nelson had levelled the odds.

“Then you will oblige me, sir, in taking a cable through a stern chase gunport.”

“Aye aye, sir. Making fast t’ the mizzen?”

“Yes.”

Kydd saluted and left the deck, happy to have something of significance to do in this time of waiting. “Mr Pearce!” he called to the boatswain. “We have a task . . .”

It was no trivial matter, rousing out the hundred-fathom length of twelve-inch stream cable from below, then ranging it along the gundeck from where it was seized round the fat bulk of the mizzen mast, through the gunroom and out of one of the pair of chase ports. With the wake of the moving ship foaming noisily just feet below, the thick rope had to be heaved out of the stern
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and passed back along the ship’s side beneath the line of open gunports and to an anchor on the bows. The cable was kept clear of the sea by a spun-yarn at every third port ready for instant cutting loose, and at the bows it was bent on to the anchor.

Bryant approached the captain. “Ship cleared for action, sir.”

There was a taut ferocity about the first lieutenant, Kydd saw, almost a blood-longing for the fight. He wondered if he, too, should adopt a more aggressive bearing.

“Very well, Mr Bryant. There will be time for supper for the men before we go to quarters, I believe—and everyone shall have a double tot, if you please.”

Kydd called Rawson over: “Go below an’ get yourself something t’ eat, younker—
after
you’ve seen y’ men get their grog.” It would not be long before they went to quarters. The enemy was now in plain view, on the right side of a low, sandy bay fringed by date palms, and inshore of a guardian island no more than thirty feet high, their line stretching away into the distance. On the left were some higher sand hills, which Kydd knew from their rudimentary chart was the Rosetta mouth of the Nile with its distinctive tower. In the evening sun he picked up knots of people coming down to the water’s edge: there would be a big audience for the evening’s entertainment. He wondered if the famed General Buonaparte was watching, perhaps from the small medieval castle at the mouth of the bay.

He went below: the men were in spirits, rough-humoured as he remembered himself when he had been one of them, the old jokes about prize-money, the lottery of death, the exchange of verbal wills.

In the wardroom he stuffed his pockets with hard tack, an orange and a large clean cloth, then accepted his fighting sword and cross-belt from his servant. His uncle, who had provided the fine blade, was now unimaginably distant. He eased out the blued steel far enough to glimpse the Cornish choughs, then clicked it

home again and buckled it on. Whose blood would it taste first?

Or would he yield it in surrender to great odds?

As he left he felt a stab of foreboding—he was going out on deck and perhaps would never return. But he shook it off and as he reached the upper deck his eyes immediately searched out the waiting enemy.

“This is a grave and solemn moment, Mr Bryant,” admonished Houghton, breaking into the first lieutenant’s avid description of what he had once found in a captured French ship. “We shall mark it with due reverence. Pass the word for the chaplain.” At length the man appeared. “I desire to see a short service before we open hostilities if you please, Mr Peake.”

“A—a service?”

“Yes, certainly. Do you not feel it wise to seek the blessing of the Almighty on our endeavours?”

“You mean—”

“Do I have to instruct you in your duty, sir? A rousing hymn to get the men in spirit, some bracing words about the rightness of our cause, doing our Christian duty, that sort of thing. And, of course, finish with a suitable prayer calling for a blessing of our arms on this day. Steadies the men, puts heart into them. Make it brief—we’ll be at the guns in an hour.”

As he hurried along the upper deck Renzi saw a figure he recognised, clinging to the bulwarks, head bowed. “Why, what’s this, Mr Peake? At your prayers, I see,” he said. With most of the men below there were only a few curious pairs of eyes to gawp at them.

Peake lifted his face: it was a picture of misery. “I can’t do it, Mr Renzi,” he said thickly.

“Cannot do what, sir?”

“The captain wishes me to—to speak words of violence, to
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incite men to acts of bloodshed, and this—this I find in all conscience I cannot do, sir.”

Renzi knew the man was finished if he was unable to function as expected. It would be construed as common cowardice. “We must discuss this,” he said, taking Peake firmly by the arm and urging him below. They passed through the main-deck with its gun crews animated by grog. One called out, “What cheer, the sin-bosun—ye’ll have work enough t’ do afore we sees the sun again!”

When they arrived in the orlop the cockpit table was ready laid with shining instruments; the surgeon lifted a fearful-looking long knife, and began stropping it deliberately. Peake shied away under his direct stare.

“Mr Pybus, you’d oblige us extremely by allowing us the tem-porary privacy of your cabin,” Renzi said.

The surgeon laid down the knife. “Dear fellow, I can think of no better lair to wait out this disagreeable time. By all means.”

Renzi sat Peake on the patient’s stool. “Mr Peake, you came forward to serve His Majesty, is this not so?” There was no reply. “And now your country needs you—and in particular at this time,
you,
sir,” he added forcefully.

Peake stared at him as Renzi pressed on. “Our ship’s company—all hands—are putting their lives at peril in the service of their country and their fellow man. They look for meaning and surety, words they can carry with them in their hour of trial. Can you not feel it in your heart—”

“Mr Renzi. You are no practised hand at dissimulation, so speak direct, sir. You assume a lack of moral fibre in me, a reprehensible shyness in the face of mortal danger. Let me assure you, this is far from being the case.”

“Then, sir, what prevents you in the performance of your divinities?”

“I have referred before to my abhorrence of any man seeking to wreak violence upon a fellow creature. I do not propose to ex-plicate further.”

Renzi bit his lip. His immediate duty was to the gun crews under his command, and thence to his ship, and time was pressing.

“Do I understand that you take exception to the form of words used by the captain?”

“Of course I do!”

Renzi did not speak for a space. “Then if
your
words to the men, suitably chosen, are thereby made acceptable to you, you would feel able to deliver your service?”

Peake looked doubtful, but answered, “If they did no violence to my precepts, Mr Renzi.”

“Then to the specifics.” Renzi produced paper and a pencil.

“In fine, to which phrases do you have objection . . .”

“
Aaaall the hands!
Clear lower deck,
aaall
the hands lay aft!”

In the short time left to them before their ordeal, the men of
Tenacious
would bare their heads before their Maker to seek a benediction. With the officers standing on the poop-deck, an improvised lectern at the rail, the men assembled on the upper deck below.

“We shall begin with that well-loved hymn, ‘Awake My Heart; Arise,’ ” Bryant announced.

The fiddler stepped forward, nodded to the fife and both struck up. The men sang heartily, their full-throated roar a tes-timony to the feelings that the simple communal act was bringing. The hymn complete, the men stood silent and expectant.

The chaplain stepped up to the lectern, glancing nervously at the captain. He cleared his throat and took out his notes. “Er, at this time, you men . . .”

“Louder, if you please, Reverend,” hissed the captain.

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The chaplain looked uncertainly over the mass of faces before him and tried to speak up: “That is to say, as we sail towards the enemy, er, our mind is drawn to our forebears who in like manner faced the foe.”

Houghton’s stern frown lessened and he nodded approvingly.

Emboldened, Peake snatched another look at the paper and continued: “Yea, our antecedents of yore indeed. We think of them then—the staunch faith of Themistocles, indeed the dismay of the Euboeans at traitorous Eurybiades.” He peered at the paper once more. “Are we to be as Achilles, sulking in his tent—”

“Get on with it!” muttered Houghton. The men were becoming restless: some threw glances over their shoulders to the dark ships of their adversary.

“—while loyal Myrmidons do the bidding of others? We must always remember that this was the same Achilles who had prayed for the destruction of the Achaeans, and from it we may understand—”

“That will do, thank you, Mr Peake,” Houghton rasped.