The French Prize (45 page)

But it did not appear that that would be a problem. The Frenchmen were still struggling to get sail on, and they were being set downwind much faster than
Abigail
. It was not necessarily a matter of seamanship. The loss of the bowsprit and fore topmast was much more significant than the damage
Abigail
had suffered. Now
Abigail
, with sail set and making way, was nearly holding her own, fighting to windward to keep off Guadeloupe's lee shore. The corvette was fighting the same fight and losing. The lookout had kept an eye on her for as long as he could, calling down occasional reports, but now he had lost sight of her.

“Very well!” Jack shouted up, “”You may lay back to deck!” A gang of men came staggering aft. Walking was becoming markedly more difficult with the wild motion of the ship and the stumbling exhaustion that all hands were feeling. The men had a lee cloth in their hands and they began to lash it up into the mizzen rigging, a luxury Jack had not expected but one for which he knew he would be grateful. And he knew he had Tucker to thank for it.

Another figure came aft, barely seen, and Jack realized it was nearly full dark.
Abigail
's bow rose up, hung there, plunged down, and the water ran inches deep along the deck, rushing like a receding tide to the leeward side. William Wentworth pulled himself to the quarterdeck by the lifeline.

“Captain!” he shouted, the word more like a greeting.

“Mr. Wentworth!” Jack called back. Wentworth had his oilskin coat on, but half of it seemed to be hanging in tatters. “Your coat has suffered some injury, I see!”

“Ah, the Frenchies, damn their revolutionary eyes! Put a ball right through my sea chest. This coat got off easy compared to some of it!”

“I'm sorry to hear that!” Jack shouted.

Wentworth shrugged, the gesture barely visible. “Casualty of war!” he said, then added, “It would seem we're in for yet another nasty night!”

“May be worse than the last!” Jack shouted back. “But shorter!” Along with the deteriorating visibility, Jack saw that it was becoming more difficult to speak. There was water in the air, some rain, some spray.

“How do you know that?” Wentworth asked.

“The barometer! Recall, I told you about it, second night of the voyage! When it drops fast, it means the blow will be short but strong!”

Wentworth nodded. He was silent for a moment. “Captain, I wanted to say, I'm sorry about that incident back at Antigua! I have a notoriously short temper, and maybe have become a bit prickly on the matter of honor. Or I've come to like dueling too much, that can happen, you know!”

“Never think on it, Mr. Wentworth!” Jack shouted. “In all decency I should say you were probably right all along!”

Both men fell silent once again thoroughly embarrassed. “Is this normal, all this dirty weather we've managed to find?” Wentworth shouted at last, certainly to break the silence as much as anything.

“We are at sea, Mr. Wentworth! There is no such thing as ‘normal' at sea!” They were silent again, and then Jack added, “But we do seem to have had our share of foul weather! And this business about being shot up by a French man-of-war, that is not what I would call normal, in my experience!”

Wentworth nodded. Jack reached up and grabbed on to one of the mizzen shrouds, an ingrained gesture, and Wentworth steadied himself on the lifeline. And then the note in the rigging rose an octave, the
Abigail
heeled far to leeward, then farther still, and the brunt of the storm rolled over them.

 

29

Wentworth remained where he was and Jack remained where he was but neither tried to speak, because the effort required was too great.
Abigail
rolled hard to leeward, held there, shipping green water over the lee rail like a dipper in a scuttlebutt, tons of water. Then she stood again, slowly, the groaning and popping audible even over the shrieking wind. The water cascaded across the deck as the ship righted herself. It hit the fife rails and masts and combings and the legs of the men clinging to the lifelines like surf on a rocky shore, jetting high and foaming white around the obstacles.

The water gushed from the scuppers and through the gunports, partially blocked by the big guns thrust out and lashed in place. It rolled back across the deck and out the gunports on the other side.
Abigail
seemed to Wentworth like a man struggling over a rough road with a heavy load on his back.

The bow rose up again as the sea passed under, plunged down in a welter of spray, water jetting up on either side. She rolled and scooped another sea and once again the tidal surge crashed across the deck. Wentworth looked at Jack, a dark shape by the mizzen shrouds. Lightning flashed and in the same instant thunder cracked like the cannon blasts of their fight with
L'Arman
ç
on
, but much louder, much sharper, more frightening.

Jack was looking aloft; in the flash of lightning William saw him, contemplating the sails. Here was the calm he had seen during that first awful storm, so far beyond anything Wentworth had ever experienced. Then, as now, Jack looked as if he might be considering a painting hanging on a gallery wall.

Wentworth had seen storms of course, several worse than this one, but always from the solid foundation of his Beacon Hill home. Save for the few occasions when he had been caught in the rain, a storm had never caused him any real discomfort. It certainly had never caused him to think he might be dead within a few hours.

That was what made this unique. The storm was tossing them, rolling them, making the ship pitch wildly. They were part of the storm—the wind, the seas, the lightning, the ship, they were all part of this mad world. The storm was not an academic consideration, and Wentworth, for once, not a disinterested observer. This storm could kill him, could take the
Abigail
to the bottom or pile her up on the shore of Guadeloupe, and that made Wentworth as interested as a man could be. The same had been true of the fight with
L'Arman
ç
on
and Wentworth wondered if it was also the reason for his growing addiction to dueling. He was like a man waking up.

Jack let go of the shroud, grabbed the lifeline, and stumbled forward, the water breaking around his legs. In the odd flashes Wentworth could see someone, he thought it was John Burgess, going from gun to gun, taking hold of the many, many ropes that bound them to the sides, and pulling to check they were still taut. Jack waited for the ship to stand more upright, then leapt across to the midships gun, and grabbed hold as the ship rolled off to leeward.

With every burst of lightning Wentworth could see Jack frozen in a different pose; arm pointed toward the sails, arm pointed to the bow, both hands grabbing on the breech rope of the gun to keep himself from being swept away. And then he was heading back to the quarterdeck and the lightning showed Burgess and a gang of men at the pin rails, the men on the leeward side sometimes waist deep in the boarding seas as they cast certain lines off the belaying pins and grabbed hold, swaying with the rolling of the ship.

They are clewing up the mainsail!
William thought. He had been watching the men at work long enough now that he understood these basic operations, and he was secretly proud of that. Jack had paused on his way aft and was taking one of the thicker ropes off … not a belaying pin … Wentworth struggled for the word.
A kevel!
he recalled, and then realized he could be of help here, and not just a passenger standing dumb and useless on the quarterdeck.

He shuffled forward, knee deep in water, then made the leap to the weather rail, grabbing hold of the ring behind where Jack stood. “I can tend the … main sheet!” he shouted, the name of the rope coming miraculously to mind just as he needed to speak it.

Jack turned and looked at him, water streaming down and filtering through the stubble on his unshaved face. William could see the indecision, the internal debate as to whether the useless passenger could be trusted with this task. “Very well!” he shouted at last. “Pay it out as they clew up! Don't let it get away from you, but don't hold it fast and make those poor bastards work too hard!”

Wentworth nodded. He almost said “Aye, aye,” but he could not summon the nerve, so he said, “I understand, Captain!” and took the line from Jack's hand.

Jack made a lunge for the lifeline and almost missed as the ship took an unexpected roll and hit him with a rush of water that knocked him sideways. But he hung on, and soon he was moving aft and Wentworth turned to his assigned task.

He understood in principle what he had to do; as the hands at the starboard clewgarnet hauled that line, which would pull the starboard corner of the sail up, he had to ease the main sheet, which held the corner of the sail down. Presumably he had an opposite number on the larboard side. The main sheet was still wrapped in a figure eight around the top of the kevel. He had to unwrap it enough that he could let it slip free as the sail went up, but not so much that he could not hold it and keep the sail under control. It was the sort of thing that seemed very simple when he watched others do it, but appeared much more nuanced now that he had to do it himself.

Carefully he removed a turn from one of the kevel's horns and felt no added pressure. But the men of the clewgarnet were hauling, pulling, swaying, stumbling, and Wentworth knew he was keeping them from hauling the sail up. He took another turn off. The rope was hard to hold now, he could feel the enormous tension both from the clewline and from the shrieking wind. But his hands were tougher now than they had ever been. After having his palms flayed in the last storm while trying to hold back the sliding gun, the skin had grown back nearly as calloused as a sailor's hands would be.

He considered the pleasure of running his hands over a young lady's smooth skin and wondered how much that sensation would now be diminished. Quite a bit, he concluded, but nonetheless, like his growing understanding of the workings of a sailing ship, he took certain delight in his tough hands.

Foot by foot the line snaked through his hands and around the kevel and the men at the clewgarnets hauled it up. They fought with the line, pulling against the force of the wind, struggling to keep their balance as the boarding seas bashed against them again and again. Then the sail was up: in the seconds of illumination Wentworth could see it hanging below the yard and beating angrily, as if it was infuriated at having been brought in.

The men at the lines made them off to the belaying pins and Wentworth looped the sheet around the top of the kevel. Then the hands forward began to stumble and pull their way across the deck to the main shrouds on the weather side. The first of them stepped up on a gun carriage, swung outboard, took hold of the shrouds, and began the long struggle aloft to stow the sail. They moved like men off to be sacrificed, but Wentworth knew it was just the difficulty of climbing with so wild a motion of the ship, and not any shyness about going aloft, that made them move that way.

There seemed to Wentworth to be quite a few men, and then he recalled that they had the British hands aboard, more than doubling the crew, which would make the work of stowing the sail blessedly simpler. That fact aside, Wentworth was determined that this time he would join them. He could not stand to think he was backward in his courage, and he did not think he was, but his memory of declining to go aloft nagged at him. He headed forward now, determined to kill that ghost.

“Mr. Wentworth!” he heard the voice roll down the deck even over the wind. He turned and could just make out the figure of Captain Biddlecomb, waving him aft. He reversed direction and fought his way back to the quarterdeck, up to Biddlecomb's side.

“Well done with the sheet!” Biddlecomb shouted. “But going aloft in this weather is not for landsmen! Best keep your feet on the deck! If you can!”

Various reactions hit William like a boarding sea. Relief was one of them, he could not deny it. It was no decision of his, but a direct order from the master that kept him relatively safe on deck. But there was also disappointment, and anger. Was Biddlecomb implying a want of aptitude on his part? A want of courage? His thoughts turned, as they always did in such situations, to whether he should demand satisfaction.

Don't be an idiot!
he thought. There was not the least implication of anything in Biddlecomb's voice. And what's more, Biddlecomb was right. Proud as he might be of his gained knowledge, Wentworth had to admit he was still a landsman and would only be in the way up aloft.

“Very well, Captain!” he cried. He reached for the lifeline but Biddlecomb put a hand on his arm.

“If you wish to remain on the quarterdeck, I suggest you get behind the lee cloth here!” he shouted. The lee cloth, tied up in the mizzen shrouds, offered a modicum of relief from the rain and spray. Wentworth nodded his thanks, stepped up to the weather rail, and sheltered himself as best as he could.

It was immediately obvious, even to Wentworth, that the ship was behaving much better with the mainsail stowed. She still rolled heavily, still took boarding seas, but the water did not run so deep along her deck, and her motion had less of the laboring, desperate motion of earlier.

Wentworth remained on deck for an hour more, watching the ship plunging along, utterly unable to determine if she was making headway, sternway, or staying in one spot. She did seem to have a sort of equilibrium; the amount of sail set was enough to drive her, not enough to overwhelm her, and the seas rolled in steep and breaking but with a certain regularity to which he became accustomed. The deck was snugged down, the watch seeking what shelter they could because, for the moment, there was nothing they needed to do but wait it out.

Jack kept looking astern. Wentworth could not help but notice it, and once he himself stole a look aft but could see nothing but blackness and the occasional flash of a breaking wave, and, when the lightning came, the huge and unruly seas lit up with that strange yellow light and deep shadow.