The French Prize (25 page)

He did not break stride as he continued on up the main topmast shrouds. To his disappointment, he could feel in the vibration of the rigging that Wentworth was just below him, having apparently had no difficulty at all in negotiating the climb around the top.

Up he went, with the topmast shrouds coming closer together as they converged on the masthead, and then up and over the main topmast crosstrees and up the topgallant shrouds, even closer than those of the topmast and twisting under his weight. The motion of the vessel as she plunged along close hauled was more pronounced at that height. The topgallant sail, topsail, and mainsail were billowing out, hiding the starboard side beneath their smooth press of cloth, and forward, the foremast held the same pyramid of canvas.

He felt the topgallant mast jerk as Wentworth came up over the crosstrees and climbed up below him, until his shoulders were level with Jack's feet. Not only had the climb presented no difficulty to Wentworth, but to Jack's great annoyance he realized that Wentworth was not breathing as hard as he was.

“All well, Mr. Wentworth?” Jack asked.

“Very well, Captain, very well, indeed.” He was smiling. Jack was not sure he had ever seen him smile.

But that was all the time Jack had to spare for William Wentworth of the Boston Wentworths. He took two steps more and then stepped onto the slings of the main topgallant yard, on the weather side, Lacey having retreated to the leeward side on Jack's arrival.

“There, sir,” Lacey pointed off to weather. Jack followed his finger. A ship, and not so distant now. Hull up from that height, and her topgallants would soon be visible from the
Abigail
's deck, if they were not already. Jack reached for the telescope that was hanging by a strap around his shoulder, put it to his eye, and twisted the tube to bring the ship into focus.

He looked first at the peak of the gaff, the mastheads, looked for a flag of some sort, some mark of nationality, but there was not a bit of bunting to be seen. Not so odd;
Abigail
had no flag flying, either. Half the Western world, it seemed, was at war, international alliances and hostilities a convoluted mess, and there was every reason to not advertise one's country of origin, at least until one knew who was in the neighborhood.

“No change of course, Lacey?”

“None, sir. Steady on, just like us. Sailing lower than us, like you can see. Since I first seen her, she's closed quite a bit. Four or five miles, I should think.”

Jack nodded. The two ships were sailing at nearly the same speed down the legs of an acute angle, and somewhere out ahead was the vertex of that angle, the watery point where they would meet. He could ease
Abigail
's helm, sail further off the wind, widen rather than narrow this angle. He could turn and run. But every mile he lost to leeward would have to be made up with a hard slog to weather, and he did not care to lose an inch if he did not have to. And this fellow was posing no threat. Not yet, at least.

Jack swept the glass over the distant ship's top-hamper. Main topsail and foresail were whiter than the rest, newer, Jack guessed.
The old suit damaged in the late storm, perhaps?
he wondered. Perhaps.
Poor seamanship? Inadequate crew?
Perhaps.

He ran his glass along the hull, slowly, a tricky business holding the distant ship in the telescope, a moving target that he was observing from a moving platform, but he had years of experience in doing just that, and the object in the primary lens did not waver. Like
Abigail
, she was on a larboard tack, and he was looking at her starboard side, which meant that she was heeled toward him and much of her hull was hidden from his view. Still, there was a quality to her, the shape of her hull, the steeve of her bowsprit, the flat cut of her topsails, hardly any roach at all in the foot.

“Well, Captain, what say you?”

Jack nearly jumped in surprise, so focused was he on the ship in his glass. He thought at first that Lacey had asked that impertinent question, a shocking breach of shipboard decorum, but when he looked up sharply at Lacey he saw only horror on his face. Then Jack recalled Wentworth, who had climbed high enough to see over the topgallant yard. He stood with feet on the ratlines, elbows on the yard, just a few feet from where Jack was perched. “What can you make of her?” Wentworth persisted.

We are becoming far and away too informal aboard this damned bucket
, Jack thought, but he was not sure how to stuff that cat back into the bag, so he said, “It's a ship, Mr. Wentworth.”

“Well, yes, but what sort of ship, Captain? Privateer? Some marauding buccaneer?”

“One can't be certain, at least not from this distance, and with never a flag flying,” Jack said, drawn once again into giving more explanation than he cared to give. “But my guess is that she is a man-of-war of some description.”

“Indeed? But whose you cannot tell?”

“I cannot. Until she shows a flag or hails us or draws close enough for us to see if her men are mustachioed.”

“Oh,” Wentworth said. “So what will you do?” From the deck far below they heard the ship's bell ring out, eight times.

“I believe I will have dinner,” Jack said. He climbed down ahead of Wentworth, allowing Wentworth to observe and copy the manner in which he did so. Had Wentworth not been with him, Jack would have slid down a backstay, but he did not want to encourage Wentworth to try that trick. One had to place one's feet just so to avoid tearing flesh from hands, and Wentworth had had a good flensing there already.

They made it to the deck unscathed, though predictably Wentworth's stockings were shredded and his breeches beyond hope of salvation. His shoes, too, would never see another cotillion in Boston's finer homes. Wentworth seemed not to care, or indeed even to notice.

There was nothing Jack wanted more at that moment than to disappear into the great cabin, to dine alone, unwatched, free from the ship's company, who were waiting for him to decide on a course of action. But somehow, because of the situation they were in, this odd vessel out to windward, its intentions unknown, and the intimacy his passengers had forced upon him, he felt compelled to invite Frost and Wentworth to join him. Jack had always craved the autonomy he believed command would provide. The master of a vessel at sea, he thought, could do as he wished, at least with regard to such things as who would share his table. But now he was finding that that, too, was an illusion.

Twenty minutes later they were seated at the crowded table in the diminutive great cabin. The enthusiastic Wentworth of that morning seemed to have been left on deck, and in his place was the Wentworth with whom Jack was more familiar; disdainful and ironic. Indeed, he seemed to elevate that attitude to new heights, as if embarrassed by his earlier, unseemly enthusiasm, as if he hoped to wipe it away with some notable unpleasantness.

The meal, to be sure, was a thing worthy of disdain. Anything Maurice had prepared prior to the voyage was long gone, and though much of the excellent cabin stores Virginia had laid in remained, much had been ruined in the storm. In any event, Walcott had no idea what to do with any of it other than boil or fry it, so boil and fry he did.

Jack was famished, and not too particular in his tastes, so he tore into the meal with relish. Frost made a noble effort, but Wentworth gave the offering a cocked eyebrow, poked at it with a knife, and then poured himself a glass of wine. “Dr. Walcott seems to have discovered some hitherto unknown species of meat, and then charred it beyond all recognition,” he observed. “Such a loss to the world of natural science.”

“So, Captain,” Frost said, gesturing with knife and fork, “this fellow to windward, what do you make of him? Now that we have some privacy?” Jack had hoped to maintain the taciturnity he thought proper for a ship's master, but Frost would not be put off.

“Well,” Jack said, “It is hard to tell, of course, I never did get a proper look at her, but she looks to be a man-of-war to me.”

Frost nodded and considered that. “Man-of-war? Indeed. No indication of whose man-of-war she might be?”

“French, perhaps?” Wentworth said. “Captain Biddlecomb didn't do me the honor of offering the use of his glass when we were aloft, so I could not see, but was there a guillotine on her quarterdeck, at all, captain? That's how you can tell. Or perhaps heads rolling about the deck?”

Frost gave Wentworth a sharp look. He turned to Jack. “Not sure which would be worse, French or British. British, they might press half your crew. French are taking prizes, but it's the privateers, you know. A man-of-war, she'll leave a merchantman alone. However the
Directoire
feels about America's carrying trade, I don't reckon they're ready to start a war.”

“I can't say I agree,” Wentworth said, refilling his glass for the third time by Biddlecomb's count. “It seems to me they've had such a jolly good time killing one another that now they will insist upon exporting their
libert
é
,
é
galit
é
, et cetera, et cetera to the rest of the world at the point of a bayonet.”

“Mr. Wentworth,” Frost said, exasperation creeping into his perpetually cheerful tone, “you are no great friend to the French, I take it?”

“The cheese-eating, duplicitous, Gaulish, papist French? Not really, no.”

“Well,” said Frost, “I will not ask Captain Biddlecomb his opinion, as such things are not the proper topic of
civilized
discussion.”

Wentworth raised his glass. “To civilization. May we see it again.”

Jack was not listening in any meaningful way. He was focused instead on the skylight above their heads and any word that might come filtering down through it. Unthinking, he sawed at his meat with his knife, lifted it to his mouth, and chewed it laboriously as he listened for any report from aloft, his mind sifting out the meaningless sounds of his guests' discourse. And so Jack was perfectly prepared to hear Lacey's voice come ringing down from the main topgallant, shouting “Deck, there! Ship to weather's falling off! Oh, there she goes! Looks to be making right for us!”

Jack was on his feet in a flash, knocking his chair over, and was halfway to the door before it hit the deck. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he called over his shoulder, but by then he was too far along to be heard.

 

18

For all his time at sea, Jack was still astounded at how quickly things could change. The moment before Lacey's shout from aloft they had been peaceably sailing in company with some unknown man-of-war. Now, as he emerged into the sunlight of a Caribbean afternoon, less than a minute after the hail from on high, certainly, he found his ship and men under genuine and immediate threat.

The man-of-war was hull up from the quarterdeck, had been for some time, but it was appreciably nearer now than when Jack had led the way to dinner. More significantly, it had altered course by seven points of the compass, so that rather than sailing a near parallel track with
Abigail
it was sailing almost directly at her, making for the nearest point where their paths would intersect. She was setting studdingsails, and Jack thought,
A Frenchman, then
 … though he did not know why he thought that, and he was too occupied with his own ship to wonder.

“Hands to the braces! Burgess, fall off, there!” he called to John Burgess at the helm. “Come around to south by east!”

“South by east, aye,” Burgess shouted, spinning the wheel as the lee braces were cast loose, the weather hauled upon, with Wolcott hurrying out of the galley to attend the foresheet.

“Stuns'ls, aloft and alow!” Jack shouted, and he had not breathed the last syllable of that order before the men were leaping into the shrouds and racing aloft.

Studdingsails
 … Jack looked across the water at the man-of-war, closing fast. They were just sheeting home the fore lower studdingsail on the leeward side and he realized that that was how he knew her to be French. He had seen British men-of-war flash out studdingsails, and it was a wonder to see, the speed and precision, like a magic trick, one moment they were not there, the next moment they were. In comparison, this fellow was slow and awkward, the sails coming out in no particular order, as if the topmen were setting them as the mood struck.

Could be Spanish
 … Jack thought, but a Spaniard would have no reason to come swooping down on a poor Yankee merchantman that way, nor would they be so sloppy in setting sail. The tales told in the various ports in the Atlantic carrying trade were of a French navy infested with republican thinking on the lower decks, and any man who had spent any time at sea could guess how well that would work, and what the end result would be. And here it was, on display.

“So, a Frenchman, Captain, by the looks of it,” Frost said. Jack had not seen or heard him come on deck, but he was standing just behind and staring in the same direction Jack was, the same direction every unoccupied eye aboard was staring.

“By her actions, and the way they get the stuns'ls on her, I would think so,” Jack said. “The dog, she's been inching closer to us for hours, and fool that I am, I just let her.” Those last words came out more bitter than Jack had intended, but they reflected well the way he felt, his anger at his own na
ï
vet
é
.
I am like a boy playing at being a ship's master
, he chided himself.

“Well, if he fooled you, he fooled us all,” Frost said kindly. “I'm no stranger to these waters, nothing like, and I did not suspect. But see here, you still reckon her for a man-of-war, or might she be a privateer?”

“I'm not so sure, now,” Jack said. “If she's a privateer, she's a damnably big one.” Fast schooners or brigs were more often the choice for privateers; they were cheaper to build, cheaper to man. To see a privateer as big as what the British navy would call a sloop-of-war, or the French would call a corvette, was unusual. But not unheard of.