The French Prize (34 page)

Wentworth could see the men leaning a little closer in, more interested now that the discussion had turned to the topic of their profession, and he knew he was about to disappoint them. “Forgive me, gentlemen, I'm a passenger aboard
Abigail
and remarkably lacking in knowledge, even for a landsman, but I'll relate what I can.”

He started in, describing the fight as best he could, from their first sighting of the Frenchman to their sailing off with the battered enemy in their wake. The officers asked a few questions, but Wentworth's stumbling, partial answers discouraged them from asking any more that required expertise of a maritime nature. But he managed a credible recounting, suitably humble, of the part he played, firing from the “maintop,” savoring the use of one of the few nautical terms he remembered.

“Ho!” said one of the officers, “you made a one-man contingent of marines! Well done!”

“In a sea fight we will station the marines in the tops,” Chandler explained, “to fire on the enemy's deck. I would we could equip them all with small arms from Jover and Belton.”

“Jover and Belton or not,” one of the others said, “that's a damned fine shot. And to take out the helmsman just as they were rising tacks and sheets, or so I gather from your description, well, I dare say that won the day for you.”

“Just like a Frenchman, ain't it,” another observed, “to have but one man at the wheel during a sea fight?”

The others nodded. Wentworth thanked them for their kindness. He did not tell them about shooting the two helmsman with a single shot. He feared they would not find that entirely credible, just as Biddlecomb clearly had not.

Wentworth's original plan to go shooting was lost in the languid, pleasant afternoon and evening, eating, drinking, conversing, and Wentworth had all but forgotten about it when Chandler asked, “Say, William, were you off for a bit of hunting when I so rudely stopped you?”

“Yes, I suppose I was,” Wentworth said, recalling those intentions like some long-ago dream. One of the other officers snorted.

“Best of luck to you. Not a damned thing on this island worth shooting at.”

“Maybe we should stock the hills with some Frenchmen,” another suggested.

Chandler, an avid hunter, had to second his fellow officers, but he offered to meet Wentworth the next day so that they might go shooting together, an arrangement that Wentworth accepted with pleasure.

Wentworth was back on the quay just after sunrise the following morning, and as he approached the stone barracks Chandler appeared, wearing a white linen shirt and straw hat similar to Wentworth's. He had no rifle or powder horn, which struck Wentworth as odd, until two seamen appeared from the dark interior behind him. One carried a rifle, powder horn, shot bag, and a haversack that bulged with some unseen contents. The other carried two haversacks, the straps crossed over his chest, and some other odd-shaped item bound in a cloth and resting on his shoulder.

“William! Good morrow! Here, let my man carry your gun and such!” He took the rifle from Wentworth's hands and passed it to the seaman, who shouldered it beside the gun he already carried. “Mind that gun, Kipfer,” he said, “it's a Jover and Belton, worth more than you'll see in wages and prize money this year, I'll warrant.”

“Aye, sir,” Kipfer said, giving the weapon a loving pat, and Wentworth thought,
This naval service, this seems a damned fine, civilized occupation …

“Good man with guns, Kipfer,” Chandler said to Wentworth. “Mine is a Wilkinson, a decent gun, but you've inspired me to bring the Jover and Belton next commission. Thigpen there has our dinner,” he continued, nodding toward the second man, “along with a couple of bottles of a passable Bordeaux. One of the few benefits of being stationed in the West Indies, you know. Surrounded by Frenchies. They won't fight, damn their cowardly hides, but they'll sell us wine quick enough.”

Chandler led the way across the dockyard, then along a narrow road that ran into the interior of the island, finally turning onto a path that led up to the higher ground. He explained as they went that there was virtually nothing to hunt on Antigua save for the feral goats, but they could be quite wily, as was their nature, and that made them worthy adversaries.

They spent a few hours circling up into the higher country as the sun climbed aloft and the day grew hotter. Chandler located a small herd of goats with his pocket telescope. They worked their way to leeward of them, but the herd spooked and ran, and they were another hour in getting back up with them. Finally, from seventy-five yards, hidden by the scrubby brush, they dropped two respectable bucks, firing almost simultaneously.

They found their vanquished quarry on a spot of hill that enjoyed an unparalleled view of dipping valleys and the higher, scrubby green hills of Antigua rising and falling like ocean swells to the north, the ring of white beach, the great spread of blue sea beyond. Not the heavy, serious blue of the deep ocean but a lighter, more benign, warmer blue. Far below they could see English Harbour and the great bulk of the
Warrior
at her moorings. With Chandler's glass Wentworth could see
Abigail
, now hove down and listing at an unnatural angle.

Chandler ordered Kipfer to field dress the goats and Thigpen to lay out dinner; it was past the dinner hour and they were in as fine a spot to dine as they could hope to find. In the center of Thigpen's bundle, it turned out, was a ham, cheese, and the Bordeaux. Plates, silver, and glasses appeared from his haversack and soon the two of them, Wentworth and Chandler, were enjoying a pleasant meal, which was shared equally with the sailors, who ate some distance away.

“This is quite the business you fellows are about, I dare say,” Chandler said, turning his carving knife back on the ham. “It's been all the talk around the barracks, though the dear Lord knows those old women need something to talk about.”

“What business do you mean?”

“Why, this business of arming your merchantman, putting all those guns on her. There's been quite a bit of speculation as to how much hard money is being laid out for all of that.”

“Hard money? It was my understanding that the dockyard superintendent was helping of his own volition. That he was eager to help anyone who planned on doing violence to the French.”

Chandler chuckled at that. “That seems damned unlikely to me. Dockyard superintendents are a corrupt lot, but this fellow here could teach a course at Oxford on how it's done. He can barely move himself to help His Majesty's ships if there's no gain in it for him, let alone a Yankee, beg your pardon.”

Wentworth extended his pardon with a nod.

“No,” Chandler continued, “your captain must have paid him well for all that
mat
é
riel
, and the help, to boot. I wish we could get
Warrior
attended to with that alacrity. Wallace—he commands
Warrior
—Wallace won't pay a sou to ease things along, and so we sit and ground out on our beef bones.”

“Indeed,” Wentworth said, taking a sip of the Bordeaux, which was better than Chandler had represented.
Did Biddlecomb bribe this dockyard cove?
he wondered. He probably would have no moral qualms about doing so, nor did Wentworth necessarily think he should. But did he have the ready money? Was it Oxnard's money?

Not Biddlecomb … Frost
, he realized. Frost was the one who had arranged for the work at the dockyard, the guns, the additional crew.

“But tell me,” Wentworth continued, feeling his way along, “surely you fellows are not adverse to our going out and tangling with these damned Frenchmen?”

“Never in life,” Chandler said. “But … and I say this because I know you are a passenger, and thus none of this is your doing … but we think you're mad to try it.”

“Mad? Why?”

“Well, because the French ships here, the privateers or whoever you might meet, they are heavily armed and well manned. This
L'Arman
ç
on
is a man-of-war, by God, and you are not. She will certainly be on the lookout for you. Sure, I can't say I hold the French navy in any high esteem … they're a damned sight better than they were a few years ago, but still they are a bloody floating circus … but that notwithstanding, they are still a navy ship, do you see? And you a merchantman.”

“Certainly,” Wentworth said, not sure if he should be feeling a wounded national pride, “but pray don't forget we beat them before.”

“You escaped before. If you had beat them, they would be floating in the harbor down there with the Stars and Stripes wafting above the Tricolor. No, it was some damned fine seamanship from what I can see, and some excellent small arms fire…” Chandler raised his glass in salute and Wentworth raised his in return. “But if you stand up to them broadside to broadside, you'll certainly lose.
L'Arman
ç
on
does not mount six pounders, she mounts twelves, she has a crew twice as large as yours, even with these new hands you're getting. Her scantlings, that is, the thickness of the planks in her sides, and much greater than yours. Your six pounders will likely bounce right off.”

“Oh,” Wentworth said, and could think of nothing more. He did not know enough to counter Chandler's argument, nor did he necessarily think Chandler was wrong. During the course of their conversations Wentworth had learned that Chandler had been twelve years in the Royal Navy, had fought pirates in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, had fought the French in the Channel and throughout much of the Atlantic, had taken part in the Glorious First of June. Chandler understood naval affairs, and he had no cause to mislead Wentworth, at least none that Wentworth could see.

“So,” Wentworth said at last, “what would you have us do? Surely we'd be in considerable danger venturing to sea without these new guns, and men to man them, what with the French eager for revenge.”

Chandler considered the question for a moment. “Probably the best thing would have been to make right for Barbados, before
L'Arman
ç
on
had a chance to refit, before the story was out. Too late for that. I guess was I the master, that is, master of a merchantman in this situation, I would think it best to repair as quick as ever I could and get under way, not waste time with all this gunport nonsense. Speed and seamanship will save you, not those ridiculous six pounders.”

“I see,” Wentworth said, and they fell silent, enjoying the view, the heat of the sun, the rich smells of the land.

“I'll be honest with you, William,” Chandler said at last. “I would wish you wouldn't sail with the ship when she leaves. No good will come of it, I fear. I would suggest you remain behind, but I know you are a man of honor, and staying behind is not a thing that a man of honor would do.”

“No, it's not,” Wentworth agreed.
But what
, he wondered,
what, in these circumstances,
would
a man of honor do?

 

23

If William Wentworth was not certain what a man of honor would do, he knew perfectly well what such a man would not do. And that was ironic, given that he was about to do that exact thing.

It was something to which he had given considerable thought, several days of agonizing internal argument, analysis, justification. It had started as soon as his discussion with Chandler had ended, as soon as Chandler's words, delivered almost offhandedly, began to turn over and roll about in his head.

Ignorant as he was of such things, he had taken Frost's words, and Biddlecomb's, concerning how best to deal with the Frenchman as gospel truth, had assumed that their decisions were well considered. He had assumed that the only way out of their predicament was to fight their way out, because that was what Frost had said, and he assumed they had a good chance of winning. Why else would Frost and Biddlecomb have taken that course?

But of course they were merchantmen, not navy men. It was a distinction he had not really appreciated before meeting Chandler and his fellow officers. He saw now it was possible that Frost and Biddlecomb did not know one thing about a sea fight, their high talk be damned.

When
Abigail
was hove down, the men had moved ashore, rather than try to live aboard a ship that was nearly on her beam ends. The foremast hands were housed in one of the stone barracks built for ships' companies, and the officers and Frost and Wentworth took up residence in the same building that Chandler and the others lived. It might have actually been pleasant, living ashore on a tropical island with tolerably decent company, if Wentworth's mind was not so occupied with pondering what, exactly, was taking place.

He watched closely. Not the work on the ship so much. He was impressed with the process of heaving her down, but beyond that he did not really understand what was taking place, or particularly care. Being at sea was one thing. The storm was revitalizing like nothing he had ever experienced, the fight with the Frenchman was to dueling what the sun was to the moon, but this was just labor and it bored him.

Instead, he watched Biddlecomb and Frost closely, watched their interactions, made note of who was taking responsibility for what. He dined with them, kept quiet, observed and listened. When it came to the ship, there was no question that Biddlecomb was in command. He wore the mantle of authority easily, did not agonize over decisions but concluded quickly how things would be done, when and by whom. If the talk was on fishing the mizzen or sistering a frame or adding a dutchman to a strake or whatever indecipherable nonsense was under consideration, Biddlecomb simply informed Frost of how it would be, with the ease of real command.

Frost, in turn, deferred to Biddlecomb on these questions, because, as Wentworth at least could see, they did not really matter. Frost always appeared to acquiesce to Biddlecomb's orders; he was a master at that ruse. But in truth, Frost was the one making the decisions of any importance, and Biddlecomb did not seem to quite appreciate that fact.