The French Prize (29 page)

And just as the ships were rolling into the proper alignment, the helmsman on the larboard side stepped forward, arm outstretched as if reaching for something, and in that instant he broke the line between muzzle and target and Wentworth gave a little smile and squeezed the trigger. The smoke whipped away and Wentworth saw the larboard helmsman knocked sideways and the starboard helmsman blown backward as the spinning .62 caliber round passed through the first man and lodged in the second.

“
É
galit
é
, fraternit
é
, ou la mort…”
Wentworth said. “Sorry, gentlemen, I seem to have made the choice for you.”

As he watched, it seemed to Wentworth that the result of what he had to admit was a spectacular shot was nonetheless quite out of proportion with the loss of two miserable French sailors. The officers were suddenly running around the quarterdeck, the other sailors aft were running around, everyone was waving his arms in the French manner. The wheel was spinning out of control and the ship was checked in her turn to starboard and began swinging back the other way. One of the officers spun around and grabbed at the wheel. Wentworth saw two seamen run up and take the places of the men he had dropped, but that did nothing to check the chaos on deck.

Then Wentworth heard shouting below him, on
Abigail
's quarterdeck. He looked down. Biddlecomb was back on his feet and he was shouting orders in that tarpaulin jargon of his and the Abigails, like the Frenchmen, were all rushing about like ants in an overturned mound. Wentworth wondered what exactly he had done. More surprising still, he found he was relieved to hear Jack's voice, to know that so brash and unsophisticated a blade was once again in command.

 

20

“They have lost steering,” Jack said out loud, and to no one in particular. All that had happened seemed mixed up in a great amorphous swirl of events: the hellish raking from the guns, his being struck down by the section of bulwark and lifted again by Maguire, the mizzen sail coming down, the Frenchman falling off. He could not think clearly enough to form a coherent thought beyond that one statement.

But this was too good, like an unanticipated gift. Even if this sea fighting was some brave new world, Jack had long ago developed an innate sense for ships and the way they moved and the way they were able to move. He could look at the Frenchman, at
Abigail
, at the wind and sea and know in his gut how they might maneuver in relationship to one another. Even if he had not learned to anticipate where an enemy might wish to go, he could see exactly where he
could
go, and where he could not.

Whatever problem the Frenchman had experienced to make them falter in their turn would buy the
Abigail
a minute or two, no more. “Burgess!” Biddlecomb called out. “Burgess, lay aft!” As he spoke it occurred to him he did not know if Burgess was alive or dead, but the boatswain came charging down the deck, clambering over the mizzen sail.

Jack looked up toward the mizzen top. The throat of the mizzen gaff was still in place; just the peak halyard had been shot through, dropping the sail to the deck.

“Burgess, we are going to come about and we'll need all hands, but once we do you must get the mizzen set as quick as ever you can.”

“Aye, sir,” John Burgess said and said no more, racing for the foredeck, there to take up the headsail sheets.

Abigail
was full and by on a starboard tack, moving away from the French ship, which had now fallen to leeward of her. Once the Frenchman got himself straightened out and was in her wake again, then they would be no better off than they were. He had one chance now, only one, but this time it did not depend on naval tactics, of which he knew nothing, but seamanship, of which he had made his life's study, brief as that might be.

“Hands to stays!” he shouted. “Mr. Frost, I will require your gun crews, but once we have come about you may have them back to engage with the starboard battery! Lacey, relieve Mr. Tucker at the helm. Mr. Frost, I shall need you to tend to the fore clewgarnets, Mr. Tucker will show you where they are.”

They moved fast, Tucker, Maguire, and Burgess to the foredeck to handle sheets, bowlines, and the fore tack, Tommy Willoughby and Adams as well as a couple of ordinaries amidships attending to the main tack and topsail bowlines, with second mate Lucas Harwar to see the lee fore and main braces clear and ready for letting go. Israel Walcott shuffled at twice his usual speed to the foresheet and Barnabus Simon tended the main.

“Ready about!” Jack shouted. His voice was loud, his tone commanding, but there was no note of excitement, trepidation, or panic in it. He could wish for a bit more speed, and he could wish for the mizzen to help kick the stern around, but he had neither, and he likewise did not have a moment to spare worrying about it.

“Helm's a'lee!” Lacey, a good hand at the wheel, turned the ship up into the wind, fast but not too fast, not enough to check her forward momentum. On the foredeck the headsail sheets were let go, the jibs and fore topmast staysail flogging in the breeze. Up, up into the wind
Abigail
turned until the wind was blowing directly upon the leeches of the square sails and those began to flog as well.

“Rise tacks and sheets!” Hands heaved away at clewgarnets and the corners of the foresail came up in a jerky fashion, with Frost heaving on the larboard side and looking incongruous in his long blue coat and breeches. The Frenchman fired, and before Jack could turn and look he saw the streak of the ball passing six feet above the deck, clipping the smokestack off the caboose in its flight but doing no more damage.

He wanted to turn and see what the enemy was about, but this was the crucial moment, the ship passing through the eye of the wind, the moment where missing stays or not would quite literally decide life or death.

“Mainsail haul!” The mainsail's lee brace and the crossjack's weather brace were both let go and hands laid into the lines on the opposite sides. The main and mizzen yards swung around as the wind caught the sails on the foremast aback and pushed the bow through the wind. The Frenchman fired again. Jack felt the deck jump underfoot as the roundshot hit the side of the ship. Happily there was no one below, because
Abigail
's thin scantlings could hardly even slow the flight of the shot, much less resist it.

He looked forward again and felt the breeze on his face. The bow was through the wind, the backed foresails pushing it around. Jack opened his mouth to shout an order and the Frenchman fired and the mizzen sail, still draped over the quarterdeck, jerked and an ugly hole appeared in it.

“Let go and haul!” he shouted.
Abigail
was through wind, she had not missed stays despite the loss of her mizzen, and now she was falling off on the larboard tack. “Steady, meet her!” Jack shouted at Lacey. He looked over the starboard side. While the Frenchman was flailing about they had effectively sailed around him, and now Jack found himself looking at her stern, close enough that he could see the blue-coated officers on her quarterdeck, the name
L'Arman
ç
on
painted across her transom, and the delicate glass of the great cabin windows below it.

You'll not have those for long, I reckon
, Jack thought, then called out, “Gun crews, lay aft! Mr. Frost, starboard battery, if you please, fire as you will!”

The men who had been pulled from the guns left off what they were doing and tumbled aft and John Burgess followed behind to see to the fallen mizzen. Jack lent a hand as they pulled the canvas free from the ordnance. The Frenchman was turning up into the wind, trying to follow
Abigail
around, but Jack kept his ship falling off, sticking to the Frenchman's unprotected stern, turning downwind as he turned up, the two ships turning together.

Frost came huffing around the cabin roof with the smoldering match in his hand. He did not bother checking the aim of the gun; the Frenchman was so close that aiming would not be required. He brought the match down on the vent and the gun roared out, the noise stabbing Jack's inner ear like a thin blade, and the fine stern windows of
L'Arman
ç
on
were blown apart. He saw one of the blue-clad officers jump in surprise, a reaction that struck Jack as not being particularly officer-like.

Frost was on to the next gun and Jack called, “A bit more elevation, Mr. Frost! Destroying their great cabin will be of no help to us!” Frost nodded and one of his men thrust a handspike under the barrel and heaved it up. Frost pulled the quoin halfway out and the barrel was set down again. Frost touched the match to the priming and the gun went off, loud as the first. Half
L'Arman
ç
on
's taffrail blew apart and the roundshot took the head clean off the starboard helmsman and continued on, tearing a sizable section out of the mizzenmast.

“Dear God!” Jack shouted, forgetting again to maintain the quiet stoicism of a proper ship's master. The image was frozen there, like the ghostly vision of a candle flame imprinted on the eye; the helmsman's back, checked shirt, a black tarpaulin hat on his head, and then his head was gone and Jack was sure he'd seen a spray of blood, the jagged neck, and then the body was tossed forward by the impact.

“Dear God…” he said again, softer, to himself.

The gun crew, well trained after the week or more of Frost's relentless badgering, was hauling the first gun back out, having reloaded it with creditable speed. In the moment of relative quiet Jack could hear orders shouted out along the Frenchman's deck. What was being said he could not tell because the distance was too great, his hearing was dulled by the cannon's blast, and they were speaking French, which he did not.

But he had a good idea of what they were saying, one of two possibilities. Either they were going to tack and try to chase
Abigail
around, come behind her as she came behind them, or they were going to wear around and try to engage that way.
Abigail
was hanging on their stern like a dog nipping at a bull's ankles and they had to shake her. But they would not be able to shake her, of that Jack was fairly certain. Because he had seen their seamanship, and it was not exceptional, and his was.

“Keep bringing her around, steady on,” Jack said to Lacey, then shouted down the deck, “On the braces…” But he got no further before the aftermost gun went off, fifteen feet from where he stood, blotting out all other sound. The Frenchman's spanker boom was cut in two, the bulk of it falling to the quarterdeck, and Jack thought it might even have hit one of the officers on its way down.

L'Arman
ç
on
continued her turn, her bow swinging to windward. Looking down the length of her deck, Jack could see her headsails flogging as the sheets were let go.

Tacking, then
, he thought. The Frenchman was taking the bolder of his possible courses, turning through the wind, risking getting caught in irons.

“Stations for stays! Ready about!” Jack shouted. If the Frenchman was going to tack, then they would have to tack as well, keeping right on his stern quarter where he could not hit back with his big and numerous guns.

“Mr. Frost, leave off the guns until we've come about!”

The gun crews dropped their tools and scrambled forward to take up sheets, braces, bowlines, and clewgarnets. “Stand ready, Lacey, we'll follow them around,” Jack said, his eyes on the Frenchman's stern as the bigger ship turned up into the wind. The quiet seemed unnatural, the familiar sounds of water and ship out of place. Then Jack heard a crack from aloft, a sharp sound, as if something under strain had parted, but before he could turn and look he saw the remaining helmsman at the Frenchman's wheel pitch forward and the wheel begin to spin out of control. Jack looked aloft. Wentworth was there, in the maintop, still looking over the barrel of his rifle, lifting his head from the firing position to see through the small cloud of smoke that was quickly whisked away to leeward.

Wentworth
 … Jack thought. He had completely forgotten about the man.
That was a damned lucky shot …

Luckier, in fact, than Jack even realized. With no hand on the helm,
L'Arman
ç
on
slowed in her turn to weather, her square sails shivering, her jibs flogging, the momentum of her turn dying with every foot. They would miss stays. They would turn into the wind and stay there, sails aback, immobile.

“We're going to heave to,” Jack said to Lacey. “Stand ready to put your helm a-lee.” He shouted down the deck, “We shall heave to, main topsail to the mast! Rise tacks and sheets! Heave away the weather main braces! Helm's a-lee!”

Many a crew that Jack had known would have been stunned into paralysis by that quick shift of orders, but these men were too good for that, and they did not hesitate a second as they acted on these new commands. The main yards came slowly around, the main topsail and topgallant flogged as the wind struck their leeches, and then lay quiet as the wind got on their forward face and pressed them back against the mast.
Abigail
slowed as the way came off her, and then she stopped, fifty yards from
L'Arman
ç
on
's larboard quarter,
L'Arman
ç
on
with her sails in disarray, flogging in the wind, the ship motionless, her crew running fore and aft and shouting as they did.

“Mr. Frost! Man the starboard battery, if you please!”

Once more the gun crews came rushing aft and took up their positions. All three guns had been left loaded and run out, and in the odd quiet Frost's voice seemed overloud as he ordered the aftermost gun levered around, the elevation adjusted, then touched off the powder. He could hardly miss at that range, and he did not, the ball plowing into the bulwark around the quarterdeck, striking it lengthwise and tearing out a great long section in its flight.