Ship of Fire (11 page)

“Oh, I can't pen a good line of ten-syllable verse to save my life,” he said. “The play was all speeches and sallies. Sword fights, you know, actors running on and off stage in red stockings.”

“I do wish I'd seen it,” I said, sincerely.

“Look, Captain Foxcroft is watching us.”

The ship's master was indeed looking on, his arms folded as he stood in a corner of the quarterdeck. The strong wind stirred his mantle.

“Let us pretend that I shall act as your advisor,” said Sir Robert in a gentle tone, “just to deceive our worthy captain.”

Perhaps I hesitated, because Sir Robert added with a smile, “Good Thomas, I shall do nothing to offend you. I am dying from the elements I have brewed and bubbled in my study, as you see. I hope to be killed after I've sent a hundred enemy to the Devil.”

Chapter 24

“Do not set a cup down, sir,” Hercules instructed me patiently, “unless you have finished drinking from it.”

I would forget, and my cider would spill, knocked over by the plunging of the ship. In weather so heavy we ate in our own quarters, stock-fish—mummified cod—and ship's bread of rye and wheat, along with apples and pears, and all the beer or cider we could pour into our bellies.

Every knife seemed alive, and nothing remained where I had put it down. Jars lost their pewter lids, and flasks tossed on their shelf.

“Have you been to sea before, Hercules?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, sir, on the
Mountjoy
, which sank.”

“She was shipwrecked?”

“She was a much used wine-ship and rotten, and off Ostend she went down.”

This was a great tale to be offered in one breath, but it certainly increased my respect for Hercules.

“You will tell me next,” I said, “that you sank to the bottom and drowned, except some hero saved you.”

“No, sir,” he said in a matter-of-fact sing-song, “a ship's boat took us off and we were preserved, except for those who died.”

“Are many children taken to sea?”

“Sir, the Admiralty pays our parents and we learn the trade of seamen.”

I was shaken by the sudden death that awaited every mortal on a warship, and wondered that children should be so exposed to danger.

“Besides,” Hercules was saying, “being small we fit the crowded ship life, if it please you.”

I asked how old he was. Hercules confided that he had seen eleven winters—I had reckoned him very much younger.

“And now that I am a surgeon's boy,” he continued, “some day I'll grow to be surgeon's mate, and, if it please the Admiralty, some day I may set splints and drink my wine spiced, just like a gentleman surgeon.” He caught himself, and put a hand out to a chafing dish that was dancing its way across our tabletop.

“Unless I'm wrong, sir,” he added questioningly, “to dream of such things?”

Our ship crashed into seas over the coming days, the admiral commanding the captain to crowd on canvas, and the mariner who was manning the whipstaff—the device that worked the vessel's rudder—was often thrown off his feet by the force of the waves.

Even as I mourned my master, a succession of drenched and shivering seamen limped into the surgeon's cabin presenting dislocated shoulders, hobbling sprains, and black eyes where tackle had broken loose and smashed into the men trying to secure it. The cook himself, a stout man with tufted eyebrows, presented a broken thumb. The stubborn stock pot had once again leaped from the sputtering fire—“cold soup all over my knave of a galley-mate.” I set a splint, and was entirely sincere in wishing him the speediest recovery.

Our first shipboard patient, Davy, his hand bandaged, often accompanied the injured with praise and reassurance, recounting how his finger had dropped into the waiting bowl with “a merry note, like a little chiming bell.” He showed the mangled digit to his friends, suspended in a green-glass jug of spirits of wine—my master had long emphasized the keeping of specimens.

Days passed, wet and cold, with no sign of our fleet.

Jack Flagg confided to me that under any other officers the crew might have been apprehensive, but under Admiral Drake, “We would sail singing ‘hey-ho' into the teeth of Hell.”

Later I would wonder if my friend had some gift as a prophet.

Chapter 25

Late on the afternoon of our tenth day out, a cry came down from our top castle, the viewing platform high on the mainmast.

“A sail, dead ahead!”

I made my way to the main deck and joined soldiers and seamen in gazing out over an ocean alive with white caps and wind-foam, clouds parting and showing feeble blue for the first time in several days. As before, there was no sign of our fleet to our stern. The ships had been scattered by days of hard weather; although Jack had confided that the
Golden Lion
had been seen “hull up on the horizon, when the rain parted and the wind took a breath.”

Now a sail tossed on the gray seas ahead of us as men tried to guess her nationality and cargo. She was a good-sized ship, Jack murmured, and the admiral paced the quarterdeck, rubbing his hands together.

All the rest of that day our ship gave chase to this mysterious set of sails. The weather was heavy, and while it filled our canvas and drew us ever nearer to this unknown ship, the stranger made every show of not wanting to be caught.

Intercepting a privateer—a ship licensed to intercept merchant shipping—would win us her stolen cargo. Even better, the chance capture of a Spanish galleon, blown off course by this bad weather, would earn us all a share in gold from the New World.

A chase at sea, however, is nothing like a foot race, all over in the space of a few heartbeats. Hours would pass, and the fugitive ship would be only a slightly more vivid ghost on the sea far ahead, like a drawing an invisible artist was limning in, sail by sail, mast by mast. Even by the following dawn the vessel was merely a pretty phantom, still far out of range of even our most powerful guns.

But our soldiers took their morning beer-and-biscuit with a determined air, and as the weather grew more calm the pikes were handed around, and sword belts were shaken out and buckled on. Some of the pikemen powdered their hands with resin from a bucket, the sticky, chalky stuff whitening their fingers.

It took a long time even now to work our vessel into range, and a sleepy unreality had by then turned the chase into a story-tapestry unwound so slowly and so haltingly that the tale would never reach its end.

And then, by late morning, it began to end after all.

The strange ship was very much closer now, as we approached her from off her starboard quarter, rapidly closing the gap. The invisible artist had sketched in rigging and yard arms, tackles and the fine woodwork decorating her stern. A thread of smoke drifted from her hull, rising up around her in the wind.

“She's English,” Sir Robert offered in a matter-of-fact tone. “And a merchantman—by my guess a wine-ship.”

I asked the knight how he could be sure of her nationality. He explained. “Her sails are unpainted. The Spanish love crosses and lions on their canvas. And look at the prow, how simple it is, not like a galleon's great painted beakhead, sticking out over the front of the ship.”

We shortened the distance even more, the merchantman not able to continue to sail with anything like our speed. “She's English without doubt,” said the knight, “and she's been in a fight—look at the loose rigging where some attacker has cut it, and the powder burns around her gun-ports.”

Our own guns were being primed, and Jack bent over the breech of a long, golden-bronze piece on the maindeck, giving the weapon an affectionate pat. Our larger guns, on the gun deck below, had been forged with decorations, lion faces and roiling dragons, and gunners had worked hard to keep this bestiary gleaming.

To my surprise our ship flags and pennons, including Drake's personal insignia, had been hauled down, and replaced by Flemish colors.

“Master surgeon,” came the call, the admiral's voice. In my distraction, and unfamiliarity with my new duties, I did not respond at once, not until the captain had joined in, barking my name.

“Be ready to board the ship, as soon as she's our prisoner,” said the admiral with purposeful smile when I had hastened to his side. “I know this vessel, the
Barbara Grace
, a cargo ship out of Southampton. She's run across pirates, by the look of her.”

“We'll nose gunpowder soon,” said Captain Foxcroft. “Some fool is double-cracking the merchantman's stern gun.” Ramming a double charge of powder into the rear cannon, he meant, and Admiral Drake gave a laugh.

“This,” said the admiral, “will be greater sport than I'd hoped.”

A tiny human figure at the stern of the merchant ship crouched low over the stern gun with its bronze-green barrel. The report of the cannon followed by several heartbeats the flash of smoke and the sight of a shot skipping fast across the water. It crossed the sea before our bow. A few other men, tiny insects at this distance, opened gunports and ran out the round mouths of cannon.

The
Barbara Grace
vanished in the sudden burst of gun smoke, and shot screamed overhead.

Chapter 26

“Open the gunports, Captain Foxcroft,” said Admiral Drake, quietly, like a man requesting another pitcher of cider.

Perhaps the captain hesitated for one moment. But then he strode, smartly enough, to the quarterdeck rail and sang out the orders.

Archery screens were arrayed now over the sides of our ship, and wood and linen screens were set up around the guns. Even more screens were being put into place between the cannon on the gun deck, when I took a glance below. Called
fightings
, these shelters would protect the guns from sparks thrown off by adjoining weapons.

I evidently could not disguise the alarm I was feeling, because the admiral took one measuring look at me and laughed. “Wear a smile, Tom. This is the lively conclusion to a merry chase.”

When I nodded speechlessly, wishing I shared his high spirits, he added, “The
Barbara Grace
is defended by a prize crew—men left to work her ashore and strip her of every penny's-worth. We don't care to risk sinking her, because there are probably hostages below-decks.”

“Are these Spanish pirates,” I asked, “or perhaps Portuguese?”

“Neither, Tom,” he said. “Our English pirates are the foxes of the sea.”

We swept down upon the
Barbara Grace
.

Our serpentines—long, narrow guns—fired over our prow as we got within smelling distance of her. And she did smell, as a random breeze swept back in our direction. Many ships had a strong odor—the ballast souring in the hold, human residue pooling in the crannies, old salt fish and seaman sweat combining to give every evidence of humanity to the wind.

I thought that firing on the rear of the merchantman was an unlikely way of harming a ship, but the admiral himself told me that the stern of a vessel is usually her weakest point, and that a well-placed ball could “pierce a captain's larder and turn him to suet.”

Perhaps the archers in our mast tops caused confusion, sending arrows far out and over the
Barbara Grace
, hitting something on the deck more often than not. Certainly many arrows were loosed, and our archers threw taunts after them.

But at last we ran up our true colors, including Drake's own personal insignia. I think it was the sight of these, fluttering from our mast tops, that crippled our enemy's resolve. The fighting men of the
Barbara Grace
soon made every show of surrender, waving scraps of sailcloth, lowering every ensign or flag she once sported. The merchant vessel turned aside to wallow forlornly in the wind.

At once a boarding party was formed, the sergeants ordering the soldiers to arms. Every man, it seemed, used coarse language, “whoreson” and “poxy.” No one said “God damned,” however, or used Christ's name in vain—Admiral Drake was famously devout and disapproved of shipboard blasphemy. No one mentioned the Devil either—certain bad luck at such a time.

I went down onto the maindeck, striding along with an assurance I wished I had truly felt. The seamen wore their long baggy breeches of gray or blue cloth, and the soldiers dressed like fighting cocks in crested helmets, bright red or yellow sleeves, and gleaming metal breastplates.

Our ship drew alongside the cargo ship and nudged her, a gentle collision but solid enough to cause the rigging to shudder. The mainmast of the
Barbara Grace
swayed, and at that moment I was sure the pirates would resist, their surrender a ruse.

These English pirates were hard-looking men, outfitted in gaudy jerkins, shot-scarred breastplates. One or two wore long mantles, the sort knights and lawyers wear in wet weather, although slashed and tattered. Their weapons, which they made a great demonstration of throwing down upon the deck, were mostly cutlasses, a broad-bladed chopping sword, along with every variety of knife.

“Admiral Drake, sir, do you remember me?” one of the pirates was calling—a man in yellow stockings and a quilted red doublet. He searched the outline of our ship hopefully, not seeing the famous commander, but calling out again, “Do you remember me, Admiral—we sailed together, under Captain Hawkins. It's Rice Catton, my lord, at your service.”

Our admiral leaned out over the quarterdeck rail.

“You remember me, my Lord Admiral, if it please you,” sang out Rice Catton, his voice trembling now with a blend of fear and hope. “We look to your famous mercy, Admiral, if God will quicken your heart to grant it.”

Admiral Drake gave a frowning smile, most chilling to see.

Chapter 27

We clambered down a tackle-stair—a gangway of knotted ropes—into the smoke-grimed vessel. I managed to make my way without falling, although Sir Robert gave me a hand as I half-stumbled onto the deck.