Tide of War (27 page)

“I am all right, sir. I have just come from the cockpit.”

The cockpit. What must it be like down there.? He should send Gabriel and what others he could spare to help the surgeon—if only to hold the victims down while he worked on them with knife and saw.

But Baker had other priorities. “We must cut the cables,” he insisted. “Rig a jury mast, run to the northeast.”

Yes. Quite. Save that they would run upon Ship Island within the
hour. Or one of the other islands in that grim chain between the Gulf and the Sound. There was not the slightest possibility of reaching open water in the state they were in and Baker must know it. They had to find shelter. But where?

Then he saw Desmarais.

He had stayed to guide them back to the
Unicorn,
he and his fellow, Joseph Bonnet, and to claim the reward they had been promised and now he was standing near the rail watching Nathan with a curious expression, as if interested to know what he would do now, as if it did not affect him one way or another. And yet he was no more immune from the power of the hurricane than any of them. Unless …

“We must find shelter,” Nathan instructed him. “We need to find a bay, a deep anchorage with some kind of a … a breakwater.” It was almost laughable. He heard the mocking cries of a seabird. Ship Island was the best they could do. This was it. There was nowhere else.

But the Indian was not laughing.

“There is the Isle of Good Feasting,” he said thoughtfully.

They found it on the chart, though Des Barres had given it a different name: Turtle Island. A scrap of land about three miles from their present position just off the northern shore of Ship Island, almost enclosed by the horns of a small bay.

“How high is it?” Nathan asked the guide.

A shrug. “It is an island.”

“But … does it have trees?”

“But yes, it has trees. And many birds. Also turtles. And alligators. That is why we call it the Isle of Good Feasting.”

Nathan followed the line of soundings from their present position to the island. Twenty, twenty-two … It was just possible.

But Baker was shaking his head, repeating his mantra. “In my opinion our only chance is to head for the open sea.”

Nathan caught Tully's eye but for once it was uncertain. He knew the rule as well as Baker. As well as Nathan.

“I know, Mr. Baker. I know. But we cannot reach the open sea in our present state. I believe we must try for shelter and judging from
the chart, Turtle Island is the best that is on offer.” He turned back to Tully. “We need a staysail from the foretop to the bowsprit.”

Tully nodded and was gone.

“And we will steer by the tiller ropes,” Nathan instructed Baker. But the sailing master was looking beyond him and Nathan turned to see Pym standing in the open doorway. His face was still masked with blood but there was intelligence in his eye—and suspicion. And anger. He looked at their faces and then at the charts on the table.

“What are you doing?” he said.

Nathan told him as briefly as he could.

“Madness,” said Pym.

Nathan saw Baker's appalled, embarrassed countenance. “Mr. Pym—” he began.

“Pure bloody madness. And no more than five minutes back on the ship.”

“Thank you, Mr. Baker, that will be all. Mr. Pym, I will speak with you later.” As if it was more than the remotest of possibilities.

When he reached the quarterdeck, the Angel Gabriel was waiting for him with the news that Frankie Coyle was dead.

I
T BEGAN WITH THE RAIN.
Such rain as had convinced Noah of his divine purpose. A rain to cleanse the world of sin. Certainly it cleansed their bloodied decks within minutes of leaving the mooring, sluicing the carnage overboard through the scuppers in a pinkish torrent but continuing with such violence as if to erase the decks themselves and all that was upon them. Nathan fought his way up into the bows as they staggered around the tip of Ship Island under a reefed fore course and the scrap of a staysail Tully had set. He could barely see or breathe for the deluge and a stream of water poured from the front brim of his hat as if it had determined upon an alternative occupation as a gutter. He snatched it off in the hope of seeing better but it was impossible. Earth and sky had dissolved in a world of water.

He clung hard to the lifeline as the crippled vessel rolled, for without her masts she rolled, as Tully had put it, like a drunken whore in the Haymarket, but she
was
moving and, as one might say of the whore, more or less upright and in the desired direction, with the wind obligingly off her quarter and not yet savage, though Nathan had no illusions about its true nature. He just prayed it would not reveal itself until they reached the Isle of Turtles: if they could find it in such conditions.

He struggled back to the quarterdeck. Baker was at the con, steering by compass alone—what he could see of it for the rain—with a line of boys relaying his directions to the men at the tiller. And the rest of them clinging to the lifelines or what rigging was left to comfort them. Pym, Maxwell, Tully, Holroyd, Lamb … the remnant of Nathan's officers, as helpless as he. It was impossible to take soundings. All they could do was follow that line of numbers on the chart and hope Des Barres had got them right and they had not changed since he first made them some twenty years before. Nathan looked for Desmarais and saw him squatting in the scuppers with a tarp held over him, apparently content to let others do the navigating though only he knew where the hell they were supposed to be heading.

And now a shout from Mr. Lamb, clinging to the flagstaff at the stern. “The boats, sir!”

Nathan ran to the rail. The ship's boats were strung out in a long line astern, for without the yards they had no means of hauling them aboard. But they should have covered them with canvas or tarps, for now they were awash with rainwater. They piped all hands and managed to haul the gig aboard but there was no saving the others, and as they filled up they acted like a great sea anchor dragging at their stern.

“Cut them loose,” Nathan ordered bitterly, and he stood there and watched them fall away into the mist of rain. More guilt, more evidence of his gross incompetence. With the boats they might have made their way ashore before the sea grew too great and though he lost the ship he would at least have saved the crew. He made his way back to the starboard rail and resumed his hopeless vigil, searching for some solid outline in that shifting palette of washed-out blues and greys. Ship Island was barely a half-mile off their starboard bow according to the chart, but you would never have known it and they dared not venture closer for fear of grounding.

He became aware of a presence at his side. Desmarais, still holding the tarp around his head and shoulders like a shawl, peering through the torrent. What at? What landmark was he searching for—and
how could he hope to find it in such a flood?

“Now,” he said. He flung out an arm. “We must go in. Towards the shore.”

Nathan stared to windward, clawing the water from his eyes. What shore? He could not possibly see a thing. But it was a little late for doubts. He gave the order, saw the astounded face of Baker, turned back to the rail … And there it was—a line of white surf and sand, if it
was
sand, about two cables' lengths off their starboard bow.

Desmarais was running forward spinning along the lifeline like a spider on a web and Nathan followed more cautiously with his speaking trumpet. The Indian had shed his cloak and was clambering up into the bows, clinging precariously to the forestay. Jack-of-the-Marsh he may be but he seemed as entirely at home on the sea and if he had taken to the air, Nathan would not have been entirely astonished.

“There!”

Trees. A long line of trees, bending under the torrent of rain like reeds swept by hail. The
Unicorn
seemed to be heading straight for them but then Nathan saw the gap in the line of breakers. It was like the mouth of a river but then he saw that it was a channel between Ship Island and another, smaller island—little more than a reef—a cable's length off their larboard bow. Dangerously close, with the waves smashing against the rocks, or whatever material it was composed of, and rising high into the air as if in fury at the temerity of such an insignificant piece of sand and shingle to stand in the way of the mighty sea.

Nathan turned back to face the quarterdeck and raised the speaking trumpet to his lips. “Port your helm!” He heard the order repeated to the men down below at the tiller ropes and slowly, painfully slowly, the bows came round to starboard, the hands slipping and sliding on the streaming decks as they struggled to haul in the sheets. Ridiculous. To manoeuvre a ship this size in such waters, in such a storm. Pym and Baker were right. They should have made for the open sea.

But the
Unicorn
edged her way ponderously, laboriously into the channel between the two islands—and there it was. His breakwater. A long line of trees almost at the water's edge. But not mangroves as he had expected. Pines. How had they got here? Birds must have brought the seeds from the mainland to mix with the rich mud and the sand. It did not matter how they got here. They were pines and they had stood the test of time and tide and whatever else the weather could hurl at them.

“Here! Now!” Desmarais screaming in his ear as if Nathan could stop the ship like a canoe, by digging his paddle in the water and spinning round. But Tully had his men along the yard hauling up the course and the frigate wallowed in the choppy seas in the lee of the island with just the staysail to hold her off the shore. Nathan could deal with choppy. If choppy was the worst it could do.

They dropped anchor and sent the gig out with hawsers to make them fast to the trees. Pym's face was twisted into the semblance of a gargoyle spouting water.

“To moor in such a sea? It is pure—” But then he caught the look in Nathan's eye and did not finish. He did not have to. Madness it surely was, but what else was he to do, having brought them thus far? If they did not moor they would drift upon the shoals. But if they moored and the sea grew great they would be broached and the ship would founder.

He had to trust his breakwater.

“I think, Mr. Pym,” said Nathan, “we may pipe the crew to dinner.”

A mere pretence at calm but it gave him some small satisfaction to see Pym's expression. It was a cold scrap of a meal, of necessity, with the galley fires dowsed, but they had the last of the fresh bread with a cheese brought from Havana that almost resembled Cheddar with apples and onions and a portion of plum duff which though even stodgier than usual without the benefit of a hot custard was helped down with a double ration of grog and generally found welcome. As meals went it would never have suited Mrs. Small but recent events had reduced her absence to a very small item in Nathan's list of regrets. He helped his own portion down with a bottle of Captain Kerr's claret which he
shared with Tully in the privacy of his cabin, past caring if it smacked of favouritism or not.

“What do you think?” he asked him as the
Unicorn
tugged and strained at her moorings. “Speak frankly. Have I done the wrong thing?” He did not add “again.”

“There was little else you could have done,” Tully assured him. “We would never have survived in the open sea.”

Nathan wondered if he meant that or was merely said in kindness. “Is there anything more we can do?”

“Not that I can think of,” said Tully. “Only hope that the sea does not break over the island and swamp us.”

They went up on deck. The rain had eased somewhat only to unleash the full passion of the wind. It screamed through their sparse rigging and slammed into their raddled hull, forcing her to leeward as far as the protesting hawsers would allow. But the fibres held and the trees that held the hawsers held and the sea did not swamp them, for all its passion.

Nathan remained on deck throughout the night, huddled in his boat cloak, his eyes staring into the darkness towards the invisible breakwater. He felt that only the force of his will would maintain it there, that if he relaxed his concentration for a moment the sea would sweep it away and them with it. He felt every moan and groan of the hawsers like a man upon the rack. He spoke few words. Declined offers of sustenance or warmer clothing. In truth it was warm enough for all the howling of the wind. Halfway through the midnight watch the carpenter came with reports of sprung timbers and eight inches of water in the well. Nathan set all hands to working at the pumps. They worked all night.

A little after six bells in the morning watch the wind eased dramatically and then dropped away altogether. Nathan looked up at a hole in the raging clouds and knew it for the eye of the storm. It was a comfort to see a patch of clear sky and stars. A reminder that Order prevailed in some corner of the universe if not his, and remained entirely unmoved by the unruly world below. Then the black clouds
wiped them from his view and Chaos resumed her tumultuous sway.

In the grey dawn they saw that the sea had broken right over Ship Island some three or four cables' lengths beyond their stern. But their breakwater endured: preserving them in their own little eye of the storm. It endured until a little before noon by which time they could see nothing of Ship Island beyond the small horn of the bay, just the tumultuous, victorious sea reclaiming its own.

Then, before Nathan's astonished, anguished gaze the horn appeared to disintegrate and the sea came roaring through. It came rushing towards them led by a massive wave at least as tall as their broken foremast, curling at the crest. Nathan was running to the rail calling for axes, grabbing one himself and hacking at the nearest rope when it hit them. Half drowned in the scuppers, clinging to the tackle of the starboard carronade, he felt it lift them like a log and knew they had been torn from their moorings. He felt the speed of their passage through the water, felt the bows coming round to the north, had some vague notion of what was happening to his ship even as he fought for his own poor life … And then they struck.