A Shot Rolling Ship (22 page)

The galley, once she was close, let fly the sheets on her scrap of mainsail, and raised her starboard sweeps, gliding round in an arc to come between the British warships and what might be her capture. Again that was indicative of a less than honest motive and the sweeps were not boated;
they stayed out, there to manoeuvre the vessel and her prow in a way that no square rigged ship could hope to match. Well-trained vessels such as these could turn in their own length, and cock a snook at the wind on an unruffled sea.

Ralph Barclay had to be careful everything on his deck was made to look as if he was really going to heave to, speed slowing and the rudder swinging the frigate so it would heave to opposite the north/south facing galley, all the men on deck seemingly engaged in unimportant tasks. The bang made both him and his wife start, but it was just a brass swivel gun saluting his pennant. Only it was for Ralph Barclay a different kind of signal, that and the fact that he dare not heave to completely, for it would take too much time to get under way again.

‘Go to the cable tier NOW Mrs Barclay.’ As Emily obeyed this command, her husband said. ‘Mr Glaister, if you please.’

The Premier was no slow West Highlander at that moment. The speaking trumpet came out from his back and a stream of orders followed. The waisters ran to the falls and hauled tight those sails already set, while the gun crews were at their weapons, ports opening and cannon run out in a matter of seconds. The helm was down as more sails cascaded from the yard, dropped by topmen who had raced aloft, and with that wind HMS
Brilliant
began to move more swiftly, with the rudder pushed hard over to take the frigate past the stern of the other vessel.

‘Fire.’

There was no aiming, without cannon balls it was not necessary. What Ralph Barclay was after was sound, fury and smoke, enough of the first to convince those on the galley’s deck that he was firing at them, enough of the second to ensure their gunners kept their heads down for a few seconds, with the third obscuring what was happening on his deck. Trouble was, it obscured the other deck as well, but he could well imagine that the Algerine was spinning round on its sweeps, running out loaded
bow-cannon
to retaliate. Behind him Gould had come round swiftly on a southerly course to take him past the galley at long pistol shot range, in the hope of avoiding damage from those same weapons.

The breeze whipped the smoke forward off his deck and he could see the oars in the water, biting to bring the galley round and aim its cannon, now poking out through open ports, but he was sailing better now, his bowsprit already beyond the point where the stern had been. And on the opposing deck they would have realised that no shot had come with his own broadside and that would put doubt in their mind. If they delayed the order to fire for half a minute, he would be damn near clear. The cannon were run in and properly loaded this time, for he knew he might need some roundshot, the only nagging thought being that he had no idea how quickly that galley could make way through the water at full tilt. With her great mainsail drawing on a following wind and sweeps to boost her speed, she might have the legs of him.

Aloft Ben Walker, having beaten young Martin up the
shrouds for the first time, was very pleased with himself, cackling to the boy that he would have to learn to shift if he was to be an upper yardsman. On the end of the mainmast he was pounding the canvas to loosen and drop it so that it would fully draw. Suddenly the air was alive with roundshot, and a hole appeared beneath his feet, but it was a following ball that hit the yard and, smashing through the timber, blew him off, too fast for the hand of Martin to grab and save him. The ship was heeled over, and had he not been propelled sideways by the blast he would have smashed into the deck. As it was his momentum carried him just past the scantlings and into the deep blue water.

Going under, he was vaguely aware of the coppered bottom of his floating home sliding by, but immersed he did not hear Martin’s scream of man overboard. Ben Walker could not swim, so by the time he resurfaced, carried up only by his own natural buoyancy, spluttering and blinded by seawater, the ship was nearly past him. The latticed hatch cover, grabbed by a couple of his shipmates at Martin’s shout, and slung as close to him as possible, actually landed within reach of his arm, and with a couple of panicked kicks, Ben got a hold on it. It was from there that he watched the decorated stern of HMS
Brilliant
disappear, the last thing to go past his nose, some ten feet distant and totally unreachable, a boat full of clacking and fearful chickens.

Martin, from his elevated position, could see him, and knew at least, on that hatch cover, Ben could float. But he also knew that Ralph Barclay would not heave
to for the sake of one man, for to do so would risk the ship. Instead of going down on deck, as he was ordered, the youngster climbed to the masthead, so that he could keep an eye on a man with whom he had wanted to be friends, paying no attention, as everyone else on the ship was doing, to the attempts by the Algerine to put roundshot into
Firefly
, which suffered in the sails as her consort had done. Nor did he pay attention to the galley coming round sharply on those sweeps, huge mainsail set, to begin a pursuit. His only thought was that with three ships close by, not one had any care for a solitary sailor in distress, who would surely drown if he did not die of hunger and thirst.

It was a quarter of an hour before Ralph Barclay relaxed, sure that he could out-run the galley, and to aid him the sea was getting up on a hot wind coming off the Mahgreb shore; being choppy it was helping him and hindering his opponent. He listened intently as Glaister reported the damage, the end of the mainmast gone, the odd spar carried away and one man lost overboard, in all a very satisfactory outcome and ahead of him was that fleeing merchantman, which he was sure, with he and Gould well spread out to cover a lot of sea, he would catch the next day.

‘Are you hungry Mr Glaister?’

‘A little, sir.’

‘Damn me, sir, I am more than that. My belly is rumbling. I wonder if you could send someone to ask my wife if there are any leftovers from our missed dinner?’

The Algerine gave up the chase long before nightfall, leaving both warships to eat up the sea miles, until four bells in the night watch, when they hauled their wind and reversed their course. The calculation was that the merchant vessel, hopefully unaware of what had happened in her wake, had been told to hold her own course until a certain hour, then come about to rendezvous at a prearranged point, for they had been sailing due south when first spotted, so it was a fair bet, looking at the charts, that the home port they were aiming for was either Oran or Mostaganem, Algiers itself being too far to the east.

Stood to at dawn, they spotted her hull up as the sun rose, and the chase began, not that the outcome could be in any doubt and that was removed completely when the merchantman let fly her sheets. Within minutes there was a boat over the side and a single mast stepped, that followed by a triangular sail. Through his telescope Ralph Barclay watched the men piling into the boat, thought he caught a flash of white, saw them brace their sail tight, and set off due south to the shore which lay over the horizon.

‘They have abandoned her, sir.’

‘They have, Mr Glaister,’ said Ralph Barclay sadly. ‘Please ask Mr Lutyens to be ready to go aboard, and Mr Glaister, ensure that while we are alongside, my wife does not come on deck.’

The merchantman, a large fully laden Levanter as Ralph Barclay had suspected, wallowed on the swell, and they approached in what was an eerie silence. The deck itself was clear if not clean, and hooked on he went aboard
himself, with Lutyens making a pig’s ear of crossing the two bulwarks and having to be aided over by two sailors. Most of the bodies were below, in the crew quarters, their throats cut from ear to ear, and so recently that the cramped space was awash with fresh blood. Clearly they had been kept aboard as prisoners to sail the ship.

The Master, likewise, was dead in what had once been the luxuriously appointed cabin, and he had endured more, his face bloated with bruising, his breeches round his ankles for purposes Ralph Barclay had no desire to think about. In the side cabin there was evidence of female occupation, clothing, a mirror, hairbrushes and the like. That explained the flash of white; it had been a woman forced into that boat. He had a sudden vision of his own young bride and what that woman, probably the master’s wife, must have suffered already. She would suffer more, there was no doubt of that, and the captain of HMS
Brilliant
, not a deeply religious or caring man, nevertheless said a silent prayer for her.

‘Not one alive,’ said Lutyens. ‘Why?’

‘Death means they are not able to bear witness to piracy. There was a woman taken alive.’

‘Is there a reason why they let her live. Surely she can bear witness as well as any man?’

‘Mr Lutyens, if she is fair and plain skinned she will be sold to some harem in the interior, never to be heard of again. If she is not fair, she may well end up scrubbing Musselmen floors with a daily beating to make sure she does her work.’

‘We could not go after them and rescue her?’

‘No. For then they would slit her throat too.’

Leafing through the manifests, he realised just how valuable a cargo this vessel carried, saffron and vanilla, the first the most precious of spices, but many more all the way down to peppercorns, and silks, the whole certainly not less that a hundred thousand pounds in value. But he could not rejoice, and felt it would be gross to even begin to think about his own share of so rich a prize.

Back on deck he called over to his own ship. ‘Mr Glaister, sort out a party to take charge of the prize under the command of the Third Lieutenant. He is to take the ship into Gibraltar and hopefully he can pick up the fleet from there and return to us when they join.’

‘Aye, aye sir.’

‘And tell Mr Mitcham he can borrow the sailmaker for an hour or two. As to canvas and balls to weight the victim’s shrouds, I’m sure there is enough aboard for the necessary burials.’

Griffin
was cruising off the north coast of Brittany to cover a route that would be taken by St Malo privateers looking for quarry, and was by now settled into a tedious routine of ploughing a box on the charts that would, Colbourne hoped, intercept them either on the way to their hunting grounds or their prizes coming in, sent back lightly manned to the corsair’s home port. But as usual, all they had seen for days, apart from one large and intact British incoming convoy, were neutral merchant vessels that were happy to heave to for inspection and, quite naturally, this did not please the men. It was curious for Pearce to listen to the loud and clear moaning of the crew through the canvas rather than to be part of it, and even although it was nothing like the pitch it had been with his encouragement, it gave him some idea of how uncomfortable it must have been for Short, Bailey and the captain.

Other discomforts came from lack of knowledge and constantly interrupted sleep, but by reading Bailey’s books on seamanship he began to get some idea of how a ship worked: what was meant by a bowline, the number of points free on a compass a ship could sail into the wind, a better understanding of leeway and how it affected a ship’s course, and even the currents of the waters in which they were sailing, tidal flows that changed predictably over the lunar cycles throughout every twenty-four hour period, based on the time at Dover. What was less helpful was the disinclination of either Colbourne or Short to add to that educative process, which left him to find out a great deal for himself, but never before he had exposed his ignorance.

And daily, indeed hourly, he gnawed on the guilt associated with what had happened in Paris, sometimes finding himself near to a feeling of hate for his father for burdening him with such a responsibility, welcoming any diversion that took his mind of the events of that day. If anything had been said about him to the rest of the crew, it had been done so out of his hearing, but the change in attitude was quick. Really, Pearce knew, all he needed was O’Hagan on his side, for although the crew did not go in fear of him – he was no bully – they did respect his prowess with his fists, so were not inclined to dispute with him. Besides that Michael was, quite naturally, a bit of a bellweather for others; people trusted Michael O’Hagan or disliked him, and there were few of the latter. Charlie, for a while, tried to remain distant, as if to imply he was
considering before making up his mind, with Rufus, as befitted his nature, dithering one way then the other, but within two days they had fallen into line, not yet chatty and friendly, but not glaring and suspicious. The rest of the crew began to josh him in a gently disparaging way, which Pearce knew was not ill-intentioned merely by the tone.

Apart from his every instruction being carried out in a normal way, the most pleasing thing was the isolation of Gherson. Clearly, feeling deserted, Michael had not let the crew know of the theft of his letter. Just as obviously, with their friendship re-established, he had done so now and the sod was on the receiving end of kicks shoves and much spitting, for there was nothing worse to a sailor than an onboard thief, the irony being that Pearce, if he saw any of this, had to intervene to protect him. The reaction of Colbourne was surprise, which led to a command once more, right after the crew’s breakfast, to attend upon him in his cabin.

‘You are a slippery fellow, are you not?’ Pearce declined to answer, he just met the lieutenant’s eye. ‘And full of yourself to boot. You dare to try and stare me down, which is insubordinate.’

‘It would be of some help, sir, if you could write down what is and what is not an offence, so that I may learn. I cannot feel that to decline to reply to what seems like an accusation can be seen as that.’

‘The solution for me, Pearce, is to have aboard inferiors who know their place.’

‘The ability to command the men…’

Colbourne interrupted him then, but he was no longer looking at Pearce, he was looking at his deck, his shoulders set in a crabbed, stubborn way, almost as if he was talking to himself. ‘I should have handed you over to the magistrates as soon as I found out who you were. I am too soft.’

‘And now, sir, you are too late.’

It was the wrong thing to say, which Pearce knew as soon as it left his lips, for Colbourne slapped the desk. ‘Do not talk to me, man, as though you are my equal. You are aboard on my sufferance, in the lowest station a man can hold and still call himself a gentleman.’

‘You wish to withdraw that status?’

‘No!’

Colbourne did not say so, but it was obvious to both that to return him to his previous rating would be worse than suffering him in his present one, quite literally leaving him be was the lesser of two evils. Pearce was silent too, though there was a lot that he would have liked to have brought out in the open, not least an open admission of Colbourne’s plan to pay him back in kind. That had backfired, leaving nothing but the spite with which it had been initiated, but he did remind himself of that to which the lieutenant had just alluded; he could have turned him in after he had read Lutyens’ letter, but had not done so. Whatever his behaviour since, Pearce owed him for that.

There was another reason for holding his tongue; he did not want to lose this little bit of rank. In only a few days, even with all the vicissitudes he had faced, he had taken to life aboard much more than he had as a lowly landsman.
If his berth was cramped there was some solitude; the food was no better but it was eaten out of sight of anyone but Short, and often even he was not present. He had books to read – not those he would have chosen necessarily, but there was no chance for such a thing in the space he had occupied before. It was, all in all, if far from perfect, a much better existence. Added to that was his promise to the other Pelicans; his blue coat meant he could be much more active in helping them to run.

Colbourne sat back suddenly, his face showing no sign of his previous anger. If anything he looked bemused. ‘Tell me Pearce, what future do you see for yourself?’

Was it an olive branch? Pearce could not be sure, but it was such a startling change of tack, both in manner and expression, that he was inclined to take it so. He made very effort to keep out of his reply any hint of arrogance. If it was what he suspected, the best thing to do was to meet it halfway.

‘I would be less than honest, sir, if I said I knew.’

‘The Navy?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Then let me enlighten you to some unpleasant facts.

You have this berth because of an injury to Mr Bailey, which I will rescind on his return to duty. Will he return to duty? He is not obliged to, being a volunteer, and I have no notion that he took to the life. Quite apart from that, even one so young will have realised that this is no place to be for anyone interested in advancement, so he may seek another ship and another captain.’

Pearce was thinking; six weeks, two voyages, not much time to help his Pelicans desert.

‘Maybe I will keep you aboard, but such a thing could be as much a curse as a blessing, for you cannot get anywhere in the Navy without influence. Do you have influence, Pearce? I am on this vessel, instead of a frigate or a ship-of-the-line, because I lack a patron, a senior captain, an admiral or someone with either blue blood or political power to move me up in the service.’

‘Yet you are a lieutenant are you not?’

‘I had the good fortune to be in the West Indies when I was promoted. That is a station where such things are made to fill dead men’s shoes. I have no inclination to believe that my elevation would have happened anywhere else. How can I complain, my pleas to the Admiralty for employment did not go entirely unheard.’ A bitter tone crept into his voice and his eyes ranged around his tiny space. ‘Though sometimes, when I look at what I have, I wonder whether someone has sent me to this as a cruel jest. Every time we touch the shore I send off a plea to be moved to another ship. I point out that, ideally, given the length of my service, I should be a First Lieutenant on a seventy-four, and each time we touch again, I have my reply.’

The bitter sarcasm larded Colbourne’s voice as he revealed what the replies said, staring at the deck beams above his head as he spoke. ‘The Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral have taken cognisance of your request, but fear, given the level of similar requests they
are forced to satisfy, they are in no position to oblige. You are, of course, at liberty to resign your present commission at any time of your own choosing, in the expectation that some other employment may become vacant.’

‘You are saying that I should not look to the Navy for a future?’

Pearce never got a reply, for the curtain was thrown back and Colbourne’s steward appeared. ‘Mr Short’s compliments, sir, but the lookout has espied a ship to the southeast, and he begs to give the opinion it ain’t no merchant vessel.’

Given the lack of space, Pearce had to go out of the ‘cabin’ before him, but stood aside to let Colbourne pass on the way up to the deck. The lieutenant immediately took a telescope from the rack and following Short’s finger trained it on what had been seen, not difficult as ploughing into the wind on the southerly side of their box the yards were braced right round. Pearce stood, with the southwest wind on his face, just observing.

‘All hands,’ he said, as soon as he had focused, his voice strained. ‘Stand by to come about.’

‘Might I ask…’

Short never got a chance to finish his question, as Colbourne barked at him, ‘It is an enemy seventy-four, Mr Short, and he has the weather gage, so if you do not desire to spend the rest of your days in a French prison, I should get on with obeying my orders.’

‘Sail has altered course, sir,’ the lookout called down.

‘Mr Short, I want that man in chains,’ Colbourne
hissed. ‘Those sails should have been spotted an age ago. Get a better pair of eyes aloft this minute.’

The little midshipman’s old lined face looked aggrieved, as if Colbourne was chastising him and not the man at the masthead. ‘I did my best, sir.’

That was when Colbourne blew, his voice was heard all over the ship. ‘Then your best, sir, is not good enough and I doubt you know this, but we stand little chance in this vessel of outrunning a ship of the line.’ Then the voice softened, as though he was talking to himself. ‘Let us hope she is a dog, or a bottom covered in weed.’

The orders were issued and the ship came up into the wind with little grace, HMS
Griffin
behaving as she always did, and Colbourne put her right before the wind, jagging to starboard and larboard slightly to get the best out of her and setting as much aloft as she would bear. Pearce was fascinated by the air of the man, an aura of total competence as he stood rooted to the spot doing nothing but issue one order after another. Now he was training his telescope over the stern, fixed on those high sails, which he knew had altered course on spying the sails of the smaller vessel, first to close, now to pursue.

‘Mr Pearce, get the hatches off on the lower deck and men standing by with axes to start the water. Then we will need a party on the pumps, with a relief standing by.’

That party should have included the Pelicans, but Charlie Taverner looked at John Pearce in a jaundiced way that implied he was likely to be unfair, even if that was not the case. They were lubbers, and it made no sense to
put a trained seaman to a job that required no brains or ability and some brawn. Thinking himself too soft, he gave his mates the axes, and he detailed Littlejohn to lead them, that as Colbourne issued another order.

‘Set up the fire engine as well, and get the hose down to the bilges. It will speed things up. And Mr Pearce, remind anyone slacking of what fate awaits them.’

He wanted to ask questions, not one but several, but it was clear to Pearce that Colbourne would be in no mood to answer. How had he identified the other ship so swiftly, for he could only have seen her sails? If they could overhaul
Griffin
how long did they have? From his reading he had a good idea that they were being swept along by a helpful current, but a picture of the map in his head told him that and the course they were on was taking them in the direction of Guernsey, the outermost of the Channel Islands, which Bailey’s book on sailing in these waters had said was a place of powerful tides requiring extreme caution and good seamanship.

After a long flurry of activity, everything went quiet. The ship was set on its course, all that Colbourne required to be done was in place, the crew now free to look themselves over the stern at the enemy seventy-four, though all they could see was the odd tip of a brownish sail topping the horizon and the slight flash of a pennant. Looking at Colbourne, still with his eye to the telescope most of the time, Pearce wondered at his thoughts, even more so when he dropped the glass from his eye, to reveal a face full of perplexed calculation.

‘Mr Pearce, start the water, and get the pumps and fire engine going. Mr Short, I want a crane rigged over the hatches to get out our stores. I’m going below to study the charts.’

‘Bugger’s gaining on us,’ said Latimer. ‘That’s fer certain.’

Pearce heard these words as he followed Colbourne down the companionway ladder, a group of men behind him with axes in their hands, two others with the fire engine hose, the rest left behind to man the pumps which had been rigged on each side of the deck. The next drop was down into the forward hold, damp, smelly and dark. He was not sure he heard scurrying, it might have been his imagination, but he knew there were rats down here.

‘Lanterns,’ he ordered, ‘and get that deck hatch lifted to give us some air.’

‘What’s Coal Barge looking at the charts for?’ asked Rufus.

‘If I knew the answer to that I’d be in charge, not Colbourne.’

‘He’ll be looking for a landfall, mate,’ said Littlejohn, ‘someplace to run the ship ashore and burn her.’

‘Christ!’ exclaimed Charlie.

‘Anything to avoid being taken.’

‘What do we do then?’

‘Those that’s allowed into the boats can make for home once the coast is clear.’