The French Prize (18 page)

“Hey, ho!” Wentworth caught on to the rhythm. “Hey, ho!” On that note they hauled away, the wildly beating sail coming under control. The
Abigail
was standing more upright. Wentworth had one foot on the deck now, one on the side of the raised overhead. The water was up to his waist but it was swirling away, rushing aft, crashing over the transom and the taffrail, spewing from the gunports.

“Hey, ho!” He had no idea why they were pulling this sail out, but they were, and it seemed to be helping. Then there were more hands on the rope, men swarming around, and Wentworth saw that the tarpaulins had come down from aloft and now they were putting their weight into the pull. Biddlecomb left off hauling and Wentworth did as well and soon the sail was hauled out, the line made fast.

Abigail
's motion was much improved, her bow turned partially toward the seas, which broke around them and sometimes over them, sending the familiar rush of water along the deck, but she did not seem in danger of turning over, and she was not making so wild a corkscrew motion. He heard Biddlecomb use the words
lie to
and he guessed that was what they were doing, stopping, as it were, in the middle of the storm, letting the ship ride like a cork over the terrible waves.

And with that, Wentworth sensed the worst of the emergency had passed. A gang of men went forward, more went aft to examine the shattered helm. No one was steering because there did not seem to be anything with which to steer. Biddlecomb, quite distracted by the many things that required his attention, finally noticed William once again at the mizzen weather shrouds. He took a step toward him. “Thank you, Mr. Wentworth, for your help,” he said. William nodded, a humble acknowledgment of the fact he had doubtless saved the ship. Then Biddlecomb turned and made his way aft to the rudder head, leaving Wentworth to feel, though he would never articulate it, that more might have been made of his quick thinking and thoroughly seamanlike actions.

*   *   *

For two days they remained lying to as the storm blew itself out, and Jack Biddlecomb did not like to think on what a close run thing it had been. Such disasters, or near disasters, in this instance, were rarely the result of one big blunder. They were the result of little mistakes built upon little mistakes, like piling stones on a board when those worthies of old put someone to death by pressing.

He had, without a doubt, held on to the fore topsail longer than he should have, making every inch of progress he could on the proper course before he was forced to turn and run with a deep reefed foresail and main topsail and the wind betwixt two sheets. A bully driving captain he, eager to be known as a bold young blade, willing to keep the ship on her course long after more timid souls would have had her scudding. He had nearly killed them all in proving himself such a fine fellow.

And because he had held on to sail for so long, it called for nearly all hands aloft to take it in, and aloft they had been when the gun, the cursed gun, had torn free of the bulwark. That, at least, could not be laid at his feet. The lashings, which he had inspected, had held, tight and true, while the ringbolts put in by those poxed dogs in Philadelphia, who called themselves carpenters, had torn clean out of the side.

Wentworth had made a decent try of helping, Jack would not begrudge him that. But if he had had the sense to belay his line rather than trying to hold it in his soft, bare hands, trying to stop two tons of wood and iron from careening around the deck, then it might not have taken the helm clean out. And not just the helm. The damned thing, the damned vicious beast had smashed through the helm and taken out the tiller behind it. If the tiller had been spared they might have steered with the relieving tackles, but there was no more than a bare stub left projecting from the rudder head, and no relief to be found.

And thus, in a matter for thirty or forty seconds, the ship had gone from a vessel riding out a brutal storm in relatively good order to one with steering gone, turning sideways to the massive seas, rolling on her beam ends and beyond, with a two-ton cannon charging around the quarterdeck and all hands up aloft, save for two seamen and some macaroni of a landlubber.

They that go down to the sea on ships, and do their work on great waters …

Jack had never been aboard a ship that had come that close to rolling clean over. Lucas Harwar and John Burgess had been at the helm and he sent them forward to haul up the weather clew of the foresail while he set the mizzen in hopes that that balance of sail would turn the ship like a weather vane into the wind.

In truth, he had not thought it would work, or more accurately, he felt sure the
Abigail
would roll clean over and take them all down before the sails could have any effect. Even as he was slashing at the mizzen gaskets with his knife, Jack figured he was just killing time, amusing himself for a few seconds before that last wild ride as the ship rolled over, as he found himself clinging to the shrouds, the sea roiling around him, his own ship dragging him down. Would he kick for the surface? He could swim, an oddity among mariners, but would he have sense enough to not bother, to just take that big lungful of water that would end it all?

But that opportunity, that chance to discover what he was made of when standing on the threshold of mortality, would have to wait. Once they had hauled the mizzen out, the ship actually behaved as he thought she might, turning slowly up into the wind, shaking off the water that flooded her deck.

Two reasons now to hate the damned guns. The first, of course, was the way that one of that tribe had tried to smash every bit of deck furniture aft, and had taken the steering out in the attempt. The other was the bulwarks required to mount them. When
Abigail
had sported rails around her upper works the seas had washed right over her, unimpeded. Now the bulwarks held the boarding water in, like her deck was some sort of wooden mill pond, tons of salt water that left the ship wallowing and unresponsive as it slowly and laboriously cleared.

They had trimmed the mizzen, trimmed the main topsail, hauled up the foresail, set the fore topmast staysail and finally found the right balance of canvas that would keep
Abigail
shouldering the seas with her rudder gone. They were at the mercy of the wind and the breaking waves, driven in whatever direction the storm chose, and while Jack had only a rough sense of where on the watery globe they were, he was fairly certain that there were many hundreds of leagues of deep water between his ship and the nearest hazard to navigation.

There was no chance of moving the wayward cannon in those conditions so they trebled the lashing until there was a ridiculous amount of rope holding the thing in place, and preventing it from further movement. With that secured, they turned to the next most dire problem, which was the fact that
Abigail
had no means by which she could be steered.

In driving rain and winds that gusted to sixty knots, by Jack's well-practiced estimate, with seas still running feet deep along the deck, he and Burgess, who was a hand with tools, and Harwar and Tucker had pounded the stump of the old tiller out of the rudder head, had shipped the new tiller and rigged the relieving tackle. A four-hour job in fine weather had taken them two days, and just as the storm was rolling past and the seas returning to a human scale, they once again were able to steer the ship.

Jack had spent a majority of the storm on deck, in many instances as the only one on deck. When the ship was riding properly and no sails needed attending to, there was little reason for anyone else to be topside, save to man the pumps, which they did quite a bit. But by Jack's reckoning, the deck was where the captain belonged when the ship was in such peril, and standing watch while the others were below helped mitigate the guilt he felt at putting the ship in peril in the first place.

Two days, and then the wind began to back and blow with less force, leaving
Abigail
to wallow in a lumpy, confused sea. With the new tiller shipped and the wreckage of the steering gear cleared away, and Jack reasonably certain that no serious damage had befallen the rudder, they shook a reef out of the main topsail, set the fore topsail and foresail, and felt the motion of the ship change from something helpless and buffeted by storm to something making purposeful headway, moving of its own volition, pushing the seas aside with the insistence of life.

The sun emerged, and so did William Wentworth, though in truth he had made the occasional appearance on deck during the two days the ship had been lying to. He had stripped off the ruined, bedraggled clothes he had been wearing and arrived on the quarterdeck in a fresh shirt, coat, and breeches. He looked as if he was off to some gathering of the better sort on Beacon Hill, save for his hands, which were thoroughly wrapped in cloth bandages.

“Good day, Mr. Wentworth,” Biddlecomb said. The fact that Wentworth's hands, which he was sure had never known a day's labor, had been so terribly torn up through the man's own ignorance delighted Jack to such an extent that he found himself capable of civility.

“Good morning, Captain. We are sailing, I see.”

“Indeed we are,” Jack replied. “And if ever the sun reveals itself I may be able to determine where we are, and in which direction we must sail. How are your hands this morning? Has Dr. Walcott's salve been of any use?”

Wentworth sniffed and looked at his bandages, which were absurdly bulky. Jack was certain that Israel Wolcott, ship's cook and surgeon when required, had deliberately wrapped Wentworth's hands in that way for the pleasure of making him look ridiculous.

“Ah, yes, Dr. Wolcott!” Wentworth said. “I should be curious to know which medical school he attended, one that does not require literacy, apparently. I suspect that his ‘salve' as you call it was simply beef fat with something indescribably horrible added to it.”

It was indeed beef fat, of that Jack was morally certain, but what the cook might have added to it he could not imagine, and did not care to. “You will not be playing the pianoforte for a while, I take it?”

“No,” Wentworth said, “and happily there are no such marks of civilization about to make me long for it.”

Any further sparring was interrupted by Charles Frost, who didn't so much step from the scuttle as burst from it, as was his way. He had not been much in evidence during the storm, which was fine with Jack. Passengers were better off below in foul weather. Save for his moment of glory, Wentworth had been an insufferable pain.

“Ah, Captain Biddlecomb!” Frost said in his expansive manner, arms wide as if embracing the world. “Tops'ls are set and drawing, God is in His heaven and we are under way, I see!”

“Conditions are much improved, Mr. Frost,” Jack agreed.

Frost looked around as if looking for some familiar landmark, but there was nothing but lumpy gray sea. “Do you know where we are? Were we much blown off course?”

“I've had no opportunity for a sun sight,” Jack said, “but by my dead reckoning I don't think we've lost much ground.”

“Excellent! Glad to hear it!” He nodded toward the cannon, which still lay on its side on the quarterdeck, tied down like a rogue elephant. “This beast will be put back in its proper place soon, I'll warrant?”

“As soon as the seas are such that we can safely move it,” Jack said, “I intend to push it over the side.”

Frost frowned and his eyebrows came together, and then his face brightened again. “You are practicing on me, Captain, I perceive,” he said.

“Indeed I am,” Biddlecomb said. “As much as I would like to give it a burial at sea, it is still Mr. Oxnard's property and I will see it back in its gunport with ringbolts properly fastened this time.”

“Good, good! There's not a moment to lose!”

“Indeed,” Jack said, and then realizing that perhaps they were thinking of different things added, “Not a moment to lose doing what?”

“Why, exercising the men with the great guns! Drill, sir, gunnery practice.”

“Gunnery practice, Mr. Frost?”

“Certainly, gunnery practice. I'm sure Oxnard told you that I had a certain expertise in these matters.”

Jack searched back in his memory. Yes, Oxnard had mentioned it. Or so he thought. Either way, Frost was a particular friend of Oxnard, who was the owner of the
Abigail
and Jack's employer, and that meant Jack was not inclined to argue with the man.

“Yes, Mr. Frost, I do recall,” Jack said.

“Well good. We're sailing into dangerous waters you know, French privateers, French navy for all we know, looking for the main chance to snatch up an American merchantman. Oxnard won't have it, and I am fully in agreement. We must defend ourselves.”

“Defend ourselves…” Jack echoed.

“Exactly! So as soon as ever we can, we must get this gun remounted and we must begin exercising the men. Loading and firing, loading and firing. And then we'll be able to show Jean Crapeau what we are made of! What say you?”

 

13

Jonah Bolingbroke had been feeling like quite the clever blade, but he was feeling that no longer. Lying in a dark room, hands bound, body aching from various bruises, with no notion of why he was there or what fate might be his, it was hard to muster that cock-of-the-forecastle confidence that had generally carried him though most awkward situations.

The
Lady Adams
was bound to sail on the morning tide and he aboard her as second mate. And if he was not aboard her, as was currently the case, she would sail anyway, and leave him on the beach. He had been safe within her wooden walls, secure in the tiny closet that was his private cabin, private save for the sailmaker with whom he shared it. A cabin had once seemed a luxury beyond his dreams, but it had been his, until he decided to push his luck to the breaking point.

Second mate. That was a loftier position than he had ever aspired to, at least in the first years of his seagoing life. Eleven years old, sailing as ship's boy, his life had consisted of constant labor of the most vile, dangerous, and exhausting kind; barely edible food and not much of it; and a regular boxing on the side of the head by the various brutes in the forecastle.