The Midshipman Prince (11 page)

      
Making it worse, Walker could imagine what those flashes and bangs meant. With this flash, a British seaman would fall to the deck with a 12-inch splinter sticking out of his left eye. With that boom, a French seaman would have his right arm torn off by a round shot. With another flash, a British man would never see his children. Boom again and two French brothers would die.

      
FLASH-BOOM! FLASH-BOOM! FLASH... BOOM! Walker could not stand to watch it, nor could he take his eyes off it. It was like watching gods hurling lightning bolts at each other.

      
The two ships that had broken off from Grave’s center division had now arrived on the scene and the intensity of the battle increased in fury and volume as the other French ships also joined in. To those who were in the middle of it, it was an unending stream of horror
 

      
It continued like that for over an hour before Graves finally lowered the “line ahead” signal leaving just the “Bear down and engage.” Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.

      
The
Shrewsbury
reeled out of the battle in shreds. Her main topmast was tilted at a crazy angle. She had so much rigging blown away that what was left of her sails looked like laundry being hung out to dry. Her starboard side, the side facing the French, was punctured by so many shot holes that it was hard to make out which holes were gun ports and which were gaps caused by the French gun fire.

      
The next ship in line, the
Intrepid
, wasn’t in much better shape. Her rigging too was in ruin; in addition, her rudder was torn to pieces. In short, the
Intrepid
was out of control and being blown by the prevailing breeze toward the French fleet where she would almost certainly be taken captive.

      
The bow sprit on the
Montagu
had been shot away, which caused her main topmast to snap and hang over the side acting like a sea anchor, spinning her around so she was facing in the wrong direction. The
Princessa
was about to lose her main topmast; and the
Ajax
and
Terrible
were listing at crazy angles, a sure sign that they were taking on water rather badly.

      
“Another signal from the flag, sir. It’s our number and says, “Assist...” Smith paused while he leafed through the back of the signal book where it showed every ship in the Royal Navy and their identification numbers. “Assist
Shrewsbury
, it says.”

      
“Very well,” Captain Hudson replied. “Mr. Smith acknowledge the signal. Mr. Rooney, get us there.” Rooney started barking orders to the sail handlers and the
Richmond
leaped off station like a greyhound being taken off a leash.

      
“Mr. Smith, make signal to the
Shrewsbury
. “Can we assist?”

      
Almost immediately, the
Shrewsbury
sent back: “Need medical help.”

      
Captain Hudson passed the word for Walker and Susan Whitney and was surprised to see Walker already on the main deck watching him. He and Susan arrived on the quarterdeck just as Rooney pulled the ship up next to the
Shrewsbury
, backed sails, and stopped her exactly where he wanted her to be. It was an amazing feat of seamanship that would have drawn openmouthed admiration from anyone who saw it, were not those same people fighting to keep their ship, and by extension themselves, alive.

      
“Walker, the
Shrewsbury
needs medical help. You and Miss Whitney, gather together whatever you need and off you go.”

      
“Captain, I am
not
a physician.”

      
“I am well aware of that, sir; indeed, you’ve made that fact abundantly clear on several occasions. But that ship over there needs our help and you, God help us, are the best we have to send. Now, get your buttocks into that boat they are putting over the side, or I will...

      
“Yes, sir. Sorry sir,” Susan chimed in while literally dragging Walker away from the captain and down the ladder to the main deck.

      
“Walker, would you please just shut-up for once. The captain has no choice but to send us.
No choice
, do you understand?”

      
“But...”

      
“I said, just shut-up. The
Shrewsbury
is a 74-gun ship with over 600 people on board. They are going to have a physician and a surgeon on board, possibly two surgeons—real ones—plus a host of surgeon’s mates. They need help. All right, fine. We go over, give them a hand here and there, and come back in a couple of hours. All right? Now, just relax.”

* * *

      
He and Whitney arrived on the
Shrewsbury
to a scene of total carnage. On the main deck, just before the fo’c’sle, bodies were piled up like firewood, presumably to get them out of the way. Some were missing arms or legs, some had huge wood splinters sticking out of them at odd angles, and others did not seem to have anything wrong with them at all. They were just dead.

      
Walker turned to see a number of starboard guns that had been blown off their carriages by direct hits, their gun crews lying on deck as if still hoping to service the gun in death as in life. He had special trouble taking his eyes off one man who had been crushed when an exploding gun landed on top of him. It was obvious that the gun had been red hot from firing and the man had not died immediately. He felt gorge forming in his throat and looked away.

      
Numerous holes had been blown in the
Shrewsbury
’s side—holes of random size and placement, and so many that it reminded Walker of a large slab of Swiss cheese. When he looked up, he could see the main topmast had broken off and was about to fall either on deck or overboard, depending on how far over the ship was listing when it finally let go. Every sail on the ship was in tatters with ball and grapeshot holes in them. Lines and shrouds of all kinds were parted and flapping in the breeze so that Walker had no idea what was still holding the fore and main masts up. Beneath his feet was the sand and water mixture they always put down on deck before battle, and Walker wondered where on earth the
Shrewsbury
had gotten all that red sand to mix in with the standard brown. He then realized it was not red sand.

      
Walker had seen blood and bodies before, but nothing like this—nothing even remotely of this size or savagery. He thought he was numb by the time he and Susan had been led down to the orlop deck to the cockpit where the surgeons had set up what passed for a hospital.

      
Arriving in the cockpit was like experiencing a scene from Dante’s Inferno. His eyes had not adjusted to the dark of the lower deck so initially the only senses that were truly working were his senses of smell and hearing. His nose revealed the odor of rum mixed with the coppery smell of blood. His hearing, however, revealed a series of low moaning sounds as if he were in a darkened pen with a small herd of cattle.

      
“Make a hole, there. Come on, damn you. Get out of the way. Your turn’ll come.” Walker looked up and saw a young seaman crossing the room, his front covered in blood and carrying an arm that had just been detached from some hapless soul.

      
In the center of the room, several large trunks had been pushed together to form an operating table. A surgeon was hunched over it, busy sewing up the former owner of the limb he had just seen being carried away. Bodies were strewn all over the place, some quiet, some moaning softly, and some vigorously calling for help.

      
Closest to Walker was a man whose right thigh had been torn off close to the pelvis by a round shot and his right arm was shot to pieces. The stump of the thigh presented Walker with a large slab of mangled flesh to view. Most amazing of all was that the man was very much alive, awake, and coherent. He was waving his shredded arm in the air and calling out to anyone and everyone to help him. No one would, of course. The man was as good as dead, as there was nothing that could be done for injuries that severe. The surgeon’s mates were needed to help those who had at least the possibility of living.

      
As soon as the stricken men saw Walker entering the room he was assaulted on all sides by fresh melancholy cries for assistance by the wounded and dying, coupled with pitiful moans and wailing from men convulsed with fear, pain and despair. Hands, sometimes only stumps, reached out to him. He felt himself start to panic, turned toward the cockpit hatchway, took a step, tripped over a body, and fell to his knees. He looked down to see a man who had been near a powder charge that had gone off prematurely. His clothes were in tatters and his face looked like a steak that had been left too long on the grill. It was more—WAY more—than Walker could bear and to his horror he threw-up all over the man. Curiously, the man didn’t say a word. He just briefly looked at him as if to say: “That’s all right, mate, nothing can happen to me now that’s worse than what’s already been done,” and continued to stare off into the distance calmly awaiting death.

      
Walker rushed for the orlop deck ladder and ran up the stairs as if the furies of hell were chasing him. He got to the gun deck paused for a second to find the gangway ladder, ran up those stairs and finally lurched out on deck. Finding an unoccupied area, he rushed to the side of the ship, leaned over, and screamed. He finally slid down the bulwark until he was seated on the deck cross-legged, his head in his hands. His breathing was labored and his eyes, filled with tears, were seeing nothing.

      
He didn’t know how long he had been in that position when he felt someone sit down beside him and put an arm on his shoulder. It was Susan Whitney. She had on an apron that already had spots of blood on it. She, of course, had dived right in as soon as they arrived on the orlop deck. After a while, when she could not find Walker anywhere below deck, she surmised what had happened and followed him up.

      
“Susan, I am sorry. I just can’t do this,” Walker choked out.

      
“I know. It’s not easy, especially your first time.”

      
“No, you don’t understand. I can’t do THIS anymore,” he said waiving his hand around him. “Any of it. None of it. I don’t fit. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t know what to do; I don’t know what not to do; and I don’t know how to get back to my normal life. I want out, Susan, and I don’t know how to get out. I only know I can’t do it any more.” Walker’s eyes began to mist over.

      
Susan Whitney said nothing for a while.

      
“I don’t know what to tell you, Lucas; but, whether you belong here or not seems pretty irrelevant to me.”

      
“What do you mean?”

      
She hesitated for a moment. “I am not an educated person like you or Mr. Smith; so I can only speak plainly. I was always taught that all of life’s problems are one of two kinds—those you can do something about, and those you can’t. You ignore the things you can’t change, and work like the devil on the things you can.

      
“Look, you were aboard a ship that was wrecked in a storm, right?”

      
“Right.”

      
“So, if there’s nothing you can do about that. It goes on the ‘I can do nothing about it’ pile.

      
“You are a member of the ships company of the HMS
Richmond
, right?

      
“Correct.”

      
“Can you do anything about that?”

      
“No, apparently not.”

      
“So that follows the previous problem onto the ‘I can do nothing about it’ pile.

      
“You are the ship’s surgeon on the
Richmond
, right?”

      
“Yes... against my will.”

      
“No matter. You
are
the ship’s surgeon. Can you do anything about that?”

      
“No.”

      
“And there’s where you’re wrong, because you can
choose
. You might not have had control of Captain Hudson’s appointment, but you can choose whether you want to be a good surgeon or a bad one.”