The French Prize (30 page)

Frost was already on to the second gun, fired that as well, and another shark bite was taken out of the mizzenmast. The crew of the aftermost gun had begun ramming home a new charge when Frost fired the farthest forward, the shot striking the mizzen chains with a screech of rending iron. The mizzen channel blew apart in a cloud of splinters, twisted bits of metal flew fore and aft, and several shrouds swung free.

Frost hustled back to the first gun, linstock held high, the match glowing. Jack could see the French crew rushing about, backing the jibs, bracing the mainsails back to a starboard tack in a desperate attempt to get the ship to fall off, to gather way so they could turn their broadside on their tormentor. Jack wondered how long he could keep this up, how long he could hang on the Frenchman's stern. He was like a man riding a tiger—safe where he was, but if he tried to get off he would be torn apart.

And then he saw
L'Arman
ç
on
's mizzenmast leaning to one side.

*   *   *

Until the moment when both helmsmen were shot, by a single bullet, no less, Captain Jean-Paul Renaudin was feeling relatively optimistic about things.

The American was well handled, he was quite willing to admit that, and even with all the men he had aboard
L'Arman
ç
on
he could not get his studdingsails set or taken in as quickly as the little merchantman. But that would not matter, because, indifferent as his crew might be, Renaudin knew he could coax considerably more speed out of his corvette than the Americans could ever find in their tubby vessel.

Bar
è
re had told him the Yankee would mount six pounders, and by the sound of it, he was right. The Americans had made their one bold move: turned, fired, wore around and fired again, and for their effort they managed only to take out
L'Arman
ç
on
's jib stay, certainly far short of the result for which they had hoped. That, and someone had shot
Enseigne de Vaisseau
Lessard, who had been amidships supervising the guns. The Americans might have thought that the death of the young officer was a wicked blow, but in fact it was something of a relief to Renaudin to be rid of that inept fool.

What the Americans' plan might have been beyond that, Renaudin could not imagine. He had to admire their boldness, bordering on stupidity, in trying to fight back against such odds rather than striking when the first bow chaser went off. As deftly as this Yankee shipmaster might handle his vessel, however, he clearly did not understand the most basic aspects of ship-to-ship combat. He had sailed off, leaving his stern exposed to
L'Arman
ç
on
's full broadside, and Renaudin had taken advantage of that, firing from so close that his gunners could hardly miss.

The Americans' mizzen sail was brought down, and Renaudin could see the Yankee's rails were well torn up. There seemed to be no material damage beyond that, but no matter. It would be simple enough to keep alongside the American or athwart her hawse, and beat her, weak-sided, frail, poorly armed thing that she was, into bleeding submission.

“Now see here,
Citoyen
Renaudin,” said Bar
è
re, standing at Renaudin's side. On so small a vessel as
L'Arman
ç
on
, the first officer should have taken charge of the guns, but the little man chose instead to stand beside Renaudin on the quarterdeck during the action and offer his wisdom concerning a sea fight, wisdom he had garnered from serving several years in the carrying trade.

It further annoyed Renaudin to think that if Bar
è
re had been in his proper place, it would have been him, and not Lessard, who had taken that bullet. If it had been Ren
é
Dauville killed in Bar
è
re's place, Renaudin would have been truly furious.

Bar
è
re was still talking. “We are not to ruin them with a single broadside, they must get their shots in, it must seem as if they have put up a good fight, do you see?”

Renaudin ignored him. He would not bother asking why they had to enact this charade, because he knew Bar
è
re would only give some cryptic and unhelpful answer involving the wishes of the
Directoire
. More to the point, Renaudin's mind was occupied with handling his ship, calculating course and speed and what this American might do next, how quickly they might stay or wear, and how easily
L'Arman
ç
on
might draw alongside. Any part of his mind not given to that task was taken up with self-loathing at his own cowardice, that he would allow himself to endure this humiliation rather than take the honorable way out, which at this point could only mean shooting Bar
è
re in the head and then stepping unflinchingly up to the guillotine.

“
Citoyen
, do you attend?” Bar
è
re asked, peevishly.

“Yes, yes,” Renaudin said. “Well, they've gotten their blows in, Lessard is dead, might we knock them on the heads a bit?”

Before Bar
è
re could answer, Renaudin turned to the second officer, Lieutenant Dauville, and said, “We will bear up now, bring the larboard battery to bear. Shift some of the men over to the gun crews on that side and send the sail trimmers to the braces.” If they did not turn they were in danger of losing the weather gauge and the advantages that went with it.

“Aye, sir,” Dauville said and relayed those orders to a boatswain's mate, who put his call to his lips and trilled the command, then moved forward, shouting out additional orders. Bar
è
re was nearby, shifting nervously. He opened his mouth to speak again when Renaudin interrupted once more, quite on purpose, telling the helmsmen, “Bear up now, bear up, follow this Yankee dog around.” The helmsmen, one on each side of the big wheel, put the helm slowly a-lee and
L'Arman
ç
on
came closer to the wind as the yards were braced around to meet the new course.

“See here,” Bar
è
re said, barely able to contain himself, when the helmsman on the larboard side, seeing something amiss in the binnacle box, apparently, stepped forward, arm outstretched. And then he was flung aside as if swatted by the hand of God, and behind him the second helmsman fell back, his eyes wide, a great and spreading wash of blood on his shirt.

It happened so fast, and was so completely unexpected, that for a second Renaudin could do nothing but look with confused wonder at the two men sprawled on the deck. The wheel, which had been nearly hard over, began to spin back the other way and
L'Arman
ç
on
faltered in her turn. Renaudin leapt across the deck toward the unmanned helm as Bar
è
re fairly shrieked, “The helm! Get the helm, damn your eyes!”

Renaudin kept clear of the spokes, spinning at lethal speed, and used his palm to slow the turns until he had control of the wheel. One hand on a spoke, he turned and looked forward.
L'Arman
ç
on
had fallen back to her original course, running downwind of the American, and the American, no fool, was taking the opportunity to get to windward of her. “Beaussier! Ouellette!” he shouted to the seamen tending the lee main brace, “come and take the wheel!”

With the new men at the helm and Bar
è
re shouting something or other, Renaudin stepped forward and looked down the length of the deck. The hands were still at stations for bracing around, half the gun crews had moved to the larboard side, ready for
L'Arman
ç
on
to turn and bring those guns to bear. There was a collective look of confusion. No one had any notion of what was happening.

“Man the starboard battery!” he shouted, and then, when no one moved, “Starboard, damn you, starboard!” But they only looked at him, uncomprehending.

“Fire as you can, starboard battery!” That last seemed to move them, and the men who had gone to reinforce the larboard side returned to the starboard and began to reload the guns with acceptable alacrity. Renaudin turned to Beaussier on the helm. “Helm's a-lee, easy now.” Forward again. “Sail trimmer, brace up, starboard tack, brace as she comes around!”

“He's tacking, the American is tacking!” Bar
è
re shouted, his voice pitched a bit higher than before.

I can see he's tacking, you little puke
, Renaudin thought, but in another part of his mind he was considering what the American was playing at. He had expected him to run off as fast as he could to windward, in the hope that his ship was quicker on a bowline than
L'Arman
ç
on
. But he was not. He was coming about and he would cross to windward and if, please God, he missed stays he would be done for as
L'Arman
ç
on
followed him around.

To starboard, the faster of the gun crews were running out, and first one, then two of the guns went off. Renaudin watched the shot fly across the American's deck, but he said nothing because he was content to let them shoot high. It was his most profound hope that they would bring down one of the merchantman's masts, which would end this quicker than anything.

The American turned up into the wind, the headsails were let go, the main and mizzen yards braced around. Renaudin wished with all his heart that they would miss stays, that they would find themselves pointed helplessly into the wind, motionless and vulnerable, but he could see they would not; they would turn nimbly from starboard tack to larboard, even as his own ship was struggling to get headway enough to follow them around.

“Damn them!” Bar
è
re shouted. “Very well,
Citoyen
Renaudin, you may bring them to now, you may defeat them as soundly as you wish.”

“Thank you for that kindness,
Citoyen
,” Renaudin said. Unfortunately, the path to such a victory was not as obvious as it had been even five minutes earlier. The American had come about and was taking position on the starboard quarter, at a place where none of
L'Arman
ç
on
's guns would bear, and Renaudin had a good notion of what would come next.

And it did, just as he had imagined, the American's starboard battery firing into
L'Arman
ç
on
's unprotected stern. The first gun went off fifty yards away, loud, but not so loud that Renaudin could not hear the glass in his aft windows shattering, the sound of the roundshot doing untold damage to the great cabin he had so finely fitted out over the long and dull commission. He saw Bar
è
re jump in surprise, was certain the man's feet had cleared the deck, and he smiled.

“Monsieur Dauville!” Renaudin called to the first officer. “Stations for stays!” They would have to tack as well, follow the American around, try to get their broadside to bear and finish this impudent son of a whore off. He watched with satisfaction as the first officer drove the men to their stations, displaying the kind of discipline that could almost make Renaudin imagine he was back in the navy of the Old Regime.

The American fired again and Renaudin felt the hot wind of the ball's passing and saw it tear a nasty chunk out of the mizzenmast. He felt a warm spray and looked down at his hand and saw it was splattered with blood. He turned in time to see the helmsman, Ouellette,
sans
head, topple forward, adding to the great pool of blood already left in the wake of the two men before him.

“Someone get aft and get this man clear!” Renaudin shouted, then to Beaussier, “Helm's a-lee!”
L'Arman
ç
on
began her turn up into the wind, the hands on the forecastle, experienced men, letting go the headsail sheets. The sails flogged and the ship surged around, but to Renaudin's mounting frustration, the damned Americans followed her turn, keeping on her quarter as if secured there by some unseen cable.

The American fired again, the ball screamed past. Renaudin felt the concussion of its passing and then it struck the spanker boom, nearly at the center of the long spar. A great ragged hole was torn in the wood. The boom hung for a second as the last, tenacious fibers parted. Renaudin shouted, “Stand from under!” and he stepped forward and shoved Bar
è
re in the path of the boom just as it gave way. The heavy spar, a foot thick, came crashing to the deck, taking Bar
è
re down with it, and Renaudin thought,
Very well, I'm free from that distraction
.

Beaussier had continued to hold the helm hard over, and properly so.
L'Arman
ç
on
turned to windward like a weather vane, so far up into the wind by then that she would have to tack or get all aback. And the American, the cursed American, was still hanging on the quarter, within a pistol shot but beyond the reach of any of
L'Arman
ç
on
's great guns.

“Mainsail haul!” Renaudin shouted and he turned to give instruction to Beaussier when the man's chest seemed to explode in a spray of blood. Renaudin saw the wide eyes, the look of surprise, and then Beaussier crashed against the binnacle box as the force of the shot flung him forward and the abandoned wheel began to spin.

“You bastard!” Renaudin shouted, the curse directed at the American. Four helmsmen! They had killed four helmsmen, Renaudin had never seen the like.

And he knew in his gut what this meant. Even as he again leapt for the unattended wheel, the second time that day, he knew they were in irons. He grabbed the spokes and steadied the helm and looked forward. The headsails were flogging, the mainsails shivering, the momentum of the turn all but gone. They were stopped dead, and there was the American, still on the quarter, like one of Satan's minions sent to torment him.