Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead (40 page)

Even if the lookout were correct in his distances, the frigate had not yet turned far enough that guns could be brought to bear. The only good thing Hayden could think of was that it would be very unlikely the privateers could see the frigate was being turned.

“Captain Hayden!” Gould's voice reached him from somewhere forward. “I can just make them out, sir.”

Hayden all but ran down the deck to the forecastle, where he found Gould standing on the rail, gazing out to larboard.

“Can we traverse guns and bring them to bear, Mr Gould?”

“Not yet, sir. Not quite.”

Hayden climbed up onto a gun carriage and stared in the same direction as the midshipman. Smoke yet whirled languidly about him, but then, off in the dark . . . movement.

“I see them!”

Very quickly, Hayden gauged the position of his ship, how quickly she turned, and then the speed of the enemy's boats.

“Shall we prepare to repel boarders, Captain?” Gould asked softly.

“It will be very close, Mr Gould. Keep the men at the guns a little longer.” Hayden jumped down off the carriage and crossed the deck, climbing onto another carriage there. The vague little breeze did not hold its course for a moment together but came most of the time from the north-west, so the smoke was eddying behind the starboard topsides. Hayden could see nothing here.

“
On deck!
Two hundred and fifty yards, Captain.”

Hayden cursed almost silently. He realised then that if the smoke cleared, they would only be given a single clear shot, and then new-made smoke would obscure the sea again. As it was, the boats would soon be too near to be fired upon, as the guns could be lowered only a small degree more before they would come up against the sills.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the smoke began to clear, as though someone drew back a curtain, but an inch at a time. Gould ordered a gun traversed to its furthest degree. The gun captain sighted along it and shook his head.

“Not yet, sir,” he reported, then aimed his gun a little lower.

As the curtain of smoke drew back, the flotilla to either side came into clear focus, the men sending the boats on with long, powerful strokes. A small star of flame appeared on one of the boats and the report reached the frigate a moment later, but the boats were not yet within musket range.

Gould turned from his position at the rail and raised an eyebrow towards the gun captain, who dutifully sighted along his gun again.

“Almost there, sir.”

Hayden suspected the privateers were saying the same.

The captain of the starboard chase gun stood tall suddenly. “We have a shot, Captain.”

“I wish to keep the ship free of smoke until all the guns can be fired at once. Do not fire until I give you the order.”

The man made a knuckle but was clearly disappointed. Left to their own devices, the hands would ever waste shot and powder.

The small current pushed the ship, little by little, even as the boats drew nearer, a few feet to each thrust of the oars. Hayden envied the men in the boats, who drove towards the frigate under their own power while he was forced to wait upon the whims of a dilatory current.

“Sir?” the captain of the first gun said. “I believe we can risk a shot . . .”

Hayden walked back to the next gun aft and sighted along it. Quickly, he went and called down to the gun-deck. “Mr Wickham? Can your guns be brought to bear?”

“Very nearly, sir.”

“Inform me the moment they can.”

Hayden could feel the tension on the ship, the men urgently wishing to fire their guns, the captain holding them in check. The silence on both decks was so complete that Hayden thought he could hear the ticking of his watch, even within its pocket. How slowly it measured time!

“Captain Hayden . . .” came the voice of Wickham out of the darkness. “We have a shot, sir.”

Hayden raised his voice only the smallest degree. “On my order . . . fire!”

Both batteries exploded in flame and smoke, the blast assaulting the ears, disturbing the very air. It was not uncommon for gun crews to need more than one shot to find the range—powder was ever varied in its strength—so Hayden wondered if there was any chance they might get their shot near.

The crews set to work immediately, reloading and running out the guns.

He gazed up and called to the lookout, “Aloft, there! Did we hit a single boat?”

“One to larboard, sir. Most of our shot went fifty yards long.”

Hayden looked down onto the gun-deck. “Did you hear, Mr Wickham? Fifty yards long and the boats draw nearer by the moment. Lower your guns and fire again.” He gave the same order to the captains of the upper deck guns, and in a moment the heat of a second volley swept up and over the ship, smoke so dense that Hayden could not see thirty yards.

“On deck!”
the lookout sang out. “We struck two boats to starboard, Captain Hayden. One appears to be going down.”

“Do they stop to aid that boat?” Hayden called back.

“They don't 'ppear to be, sir.”

“What is the range?”

“Hundred yards, sir . . . a little less.”

Guns were being run out at that instant.

“A hundred yards, Mr Wickham . . . one last shot and then close gunports—let us fight them on one deck only.”

Guns were lowered one last time, fired, and Hayden heard the creak and slam of gunports being shut and sealed. Men came streaming up the companionway, armed with cutlasses, tomahawks, and short pikes. Some of the older hands were given pistols, and marines and seamen bore muskets with bayonets fixed. Captain Serrano and Ransome soon
had the men organised into larboard and starboard watches and spread along the rail.

“There they are, sir!” one of the hands shouted. He pointed out through the slowly clearing smoke.

And so they were, not fifty yards distant and coming straight at them.

The privateers began firing muskets, and Hayden ordered the musketeers in the rigging to return fire. Lead balls began to hiss by and bury themselves in the bulwarks. Hayden had been blessed with an active and vivid imagination, and at such times it was best to keep it well in check. To imagine being struck by one of these invisible balls was enough to give any man pause, and officers were expected and obliged to stand resolutely on the quarterdeck under the most concentrated fire and show not a sign of trepidation.

A man not ten feet distant was struck in the eye by a ball and fell to the deck like a dropped doll, never to move again. Hayden tried to swallow, but there was no moisture in his mouth.

Pulling back the cock on his pistol, Hayden raised it so that it pointed at the sky. The smoke was wafting away, finally, and the boats, loaded with armed men, could be made out clearly. They shouted and screamed threats as they came, but the Spaniards held their peace, standing in their places with what Hayden hoped was resolution. Their ship had been taken once by privateers, and that was not a comforting thought. His twenty-some steady British sailors would not be enough to fight off such numbers.

Judging the boats near enough that even the worst marksmen could not miss, he ordered muskets fired from the deck, and all around him the crack of musket fire was followed by rapid reloading. He intended to wait until the boats were alongside before employing his pistol so that there was almost no chance of wasting a shot. His second pistol he would hold in reserve; it might save his life or the life of one of his crew.

The first boat came neatly alongside amidships, and, with a cry, the men began scrambling for the upper deck, where Hayden's mixed crew
of Spaniards and British sailors fired upon them and then set to work with pikes and cutlasses, attempting to throw them back.

A boat came alongside the quarterdeck, and Hayden chose the largest man he could see and shot him in the chest. He tossed the pistol down and drew his cutlass with one hand and his second pistol with the other. For a moment it seemed that the French would not gain the deck, but then they broke the Spanish line amidships and came pouring over the side. Instinctively fearing the enemy would get behind them, men turned away from the rail, and the French then broke the line in several places.

Hayden was forced back, and it was parry and thrust and hot work all around. Having been schooled by a marine captain as a midshipman, Hayden never drew back his blade to slash, for whenever a man did, Hayden would put the tip of his blade into his chest. With the blade always pointed before him, he could parry as needed and thrust when opportunity presented itself.

Hayden threw himself to the side to avoid a pike, tripped on a body, and went down hard on his back. Immediately, a man was upon him with a dagger and would have done for him, but Hayden managed to deflect his first blow and then shoot him through the chest. Pushing the man aside, he found his sword, which he had dropped to fend off the attacker, swept up the man's dagger, and staggered up, bleeding from his right arm somewhere.

“Captain! Captain!” a cry came from aloft. “The privateer . . . she is bearing down on us, sir.”

For a few seconds, Hayden did not comprehend what the man meant, and then he saw it. The ship anchored nearest them had slipped her anchor and was bearing down on them on the current, broadside to the flow with all her gunports open.

Hayden was along the deck and down the companionway in an instant. Here he found a few Spaniards, bearing wounded to their surgeon. “Leave them!” he ordered in Spanish. “We must cut our bower cable—this very instant!”

The men hesitated only a second and then gently set the men on the deck and hastened with Hayden. They were hewing the cable with axes in a moment, and then it let go with a sudden snap.

Hayden gathered them all to him. “When the ship is broadside to the current, cut the spring. Do not take the chance of its fouling. Cut it right at the gunport.”

The men hurried aft.

Hayden went up the ladder to the deck, two steps at a time.

He was allowed only a second to assess the battle, which was yet being contested all along the deck, and then two men were upon him with cutlasses. They had been properly tutored in the weapon's use and neither drew back to slash, which might have given Hayden an opening. Instead, they trapped him against the break to the gun-deck, one feinting while the other attempted to make the killing thrust. Twice, Hayden avoided being run through with a quick sidestep.

“Again,” one of them said in Breton. “But feint and then kill him.”

Hayden had no time to bless his Breton family: The first man feinted again, and as Hayden parried he threw the dagger, left-handed, at the man's face, parried the second man's thrust and ran his blade three inches into his chest, then drew it out in time to parry a thrust from the first. It was now one-on-one and Hayden began to force the man back, parrying and retreating. He ran the edge of his blade up the man's forearm, cutting arteries and tendons. The man dropped his sword and went down on one knee, clutching his wounded arm.

Hayden hovered the point of his blade at the man's neck. “Ask for quarter,” he said in Breton, surprising the man overly, and, without hesitation, the man did.

Snatching up the man's blade, Hayden turned back to the fighting, which, he realised, was over everywhere but on the quarterdeck. Spanish and British sailors corralled the privateers, while all around, the silent lay still upon the deck, and the wounded moaned and cried out. Wickham passed, leading a company of English and Spanish to the quarterdeck. Hayden went to the rail and leaned out. The spring had been cut
and the frigate was drifting with the current. At that instant, guns fired from the nearby privateer, shot hissing through the rigging.

Hayden climbed up onto the rail and turned back to the deck. “Where is Captain Serrano?” he shouted in the brief silence after the guns fired.

There was muttering and whispering, and then Serrano appeared, his coat gone and his right arm bound in a bloody dressing.

Hopping down from the rail, Hayden went to him. “You are injured, Captain . . .”

“It is nothing,” Serrano insisted. “Shall we man the larboard guns, Captain Hayden?”

“Immediately, if you please.”

Serrano began calling out orders in Spanish. Men hastened to the guns in an orderly manner, which Hayden approved heartily. Gunports creaked open and the rumble of wooden wheels rolling over the deck planks came to him. Ransome appeared, looking rather done in, but intact, as far as his captain could tell.

“Are you hurt, Mr Ransome?”

“No, sir. I seemed to be in the thick of it, though, and if the French had not surrendered I might have fallen to the deck from exhaustion.”

“It was bravely fought, all around. I want you to take charge of the gun-deck. This is our ship, and I don't want the Spanish losing sight of that.”

“Aye, sir.” Ransome reached up to touch the hat that he had not, until that moment, realised was gone. He crossed to the ladder, his gait a little wandering, as though he had received a blow to the head and was not quite recovered.

Hayden sent a man below to carry up his night glass, but before it arrived, the privateer fired a second broadside and this one did considerable damage to their rig and sent four or five men plummeting to the deck.

“Give me a whisper of wind,” Hayden muttered to no one in particular.

Hawthorne and a Spanish lieutenant had taken charge of rounding
up prisoners, and the wounded Spanish and English were being borne down to the surgeon before the wounded privateers had their turn.

The frigate's guns all fired at an order from Ransome, which was repeated by Gould on the upper deck. Whether they did any damage to the privateer, Hayden could not tell through the darkness and smoke. With no wind, the cloud of smoke remained stationary, hanging over the water in a thick mass as the current carried the ship slowly away. The cloud obscured the enemy vessel, which, carried on the same current, was travelling at precisely the same speed, the distance between the two ships neither growing nor becoming less.