A Falcon Flies (85 page)

‘Mr Tippoo!' Mungo's voice cut through the cacophony of gale and shouted orders.

‘Captain Mungo!'

‘Bring up the first deck of slaves.'

‘We deep-sixing them?' Tippoo asked, for he had served before under slave captains, who, when capture by a naval vessel was imminent, would deep-six their cargo of blackbirds, drop them overboard, chains and all, and rid themselves of the most damning evidence against them.

‘We'll chain 'em to the weather rail, Mr Tippoo, with the woman.' Mungo used neither Robyn's title nor her name. ‘Make the limejuicer think a spell before he opens fire.' And Tippoo let an explosive chuckle of laughter come bouncing up his throat as he bounded away on those thick bowed legs, to get the gratings off the main hatch.

‘
S
ir!' Denham's voice was incredulous, shocked. ‘Sir!'

‘Yes, Mr Denham,' Clinton answered him quietly, without lowering his telescope. ‘I have seen it—'

‘But, sir, that's Doctor Ballantyne—'

‘And black slaves.' Ferris could hold his tongue no longer. ‘They're chaining them to the rail.'

‘What manner of man is that Yankee!' Denham burst out again.

‘A damned clever one,' Clinton answered him quietly. He was watching the woman he had come to rescue through the glass. He could already recognize her features. Her eyes seemed too large for her deathly white face, her sodden and rumpled clothing stuck to her body. Through a rent in her blouse he could see the pale skin of her shoulder and upper arm gleaming with a pearl-like lustre in the sunlight.

‘Mr Denham,' Clinton went on speaking. ‘Warn the crew that we will be receiving fire in about five minutes, and we will be unable to return it.'

He watched the ranks of naked black slaves still coming up on to the clipper's main deck and taking their place along the rail, their gaolers fussing about them, chivvying them into place and securing their chains.

‘We are fortunate in having a gale of wind, so we will be exposed to fire for a short period, but warn the men to lie flat upon the deck below the bulwark.'

Black Joke
's fragile eggshell plating would give some protection at extreme range, but as they closed with the slave ship, he could expect even grape shot to penetrate their sides. One blessing, they would be spared the lethal flying splinters that were so much dreaded in wooden ships.

‘I am going to lay her alongside the Yankee's stern,' Clinton went on. That way she would be exposed to the clipper's broadsides while the two ships were bound to each other. ‘But she stands taller than we do. I want your best men with the grappling irons, Mr Denham.'
Huron
's main deck was ten feet higher than the gunboat's. There would be nice work ahead when they leapt the gap, and scrambled up
Huron
's stern with its pronounced tumble home.

‘By God! She's running out her guns. She means to fight us after all,' Denham cut in, and then, penitently, ‘I beg your pardon, sir.' He excused himself for the interruption and the blasphemy.

Clinton lowered the telescope. They were so close now that he no longer needed it.

The clipper had six light cannon on each side of her, mounted on the main deck. The barrels were almost twice as long as
Black Joke
's own heavy carronades. However, the bore of the muzzles was much smaller in diameter, and as Clinton watched, they began to train around towards him, one at a time beginning at the stern.

Even without the glass, Clinton could make out the tall lean figure in the plain blue jacket moving at a deceptively leisurely pace from one gun to the next, laying each of them personally, gesturing at the gun crews to strain on the tackles and traverse the long cannon on to their target.

Clinton saw St John reach the bow gun and make a careful adjustment, working over it a few seconds longer than he had the others, and then he leapt to the clipper's bulwark and balanced there with the assurance of an acrobat against the rudderless hull's unpredictable movements.

The scene engraved itself upon Clinton's mind, it seemed so theatrical, like the cast of a stage production lined up at the end of the performance to receive the applause of the spectators. The file of naked black bodies, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with their arms extended in unison, like the trained chorus, their wrists locked to the teak rail by the slave cuffs. Then the principal, the figure of the woman, slim and somehow delicate and tiny in their midst. The bodice of her dress, a buttercup yellow, was a gay spot of colour that drew Clinton's eye irresistibly. It was a distraction that he could not afford at this moment.

The American seemed to be watching Clinton, seemed to have singled him out from the group of officers, and even across the wide stretch of water that still separated them, Clinton was aware of the mesmeric pull of those golden-flecked eyes, the eyes of a predator, a leopard perhaps, poised with a lithe and patient grace upon the bough above the waterhole, awaiting the moment when the prey moved beneath him.

At the level of Mungo St John's knees were the heads of his gun crews, little knots of pale tense faces, contrasting starkly with the quiescent rank of black slaves. They crouched over their weapons, and the long slim barrels were reduced to small dark circles as Clinton stared directly down the bores.

There were men also in
Huron
's rigging, roosting in the cross-trees of the yards and masts, and the long barrels of their muskets were clear to see against the backdrop of the wind-driven sky. They would be picked marksmen,
Huron
's best, and their preferred and special target would be the small group of officers on the gunboat's quarterdeck. Clinton hoped that the clipper's wild action in the gale would throw out their aim.

‘Gentlemen, I advise you to take cover until we can bring the ship into action,' he told Denham and Ferris quietly, and felt a little prick of pride when neither of them moved. It was the tradition of Drake and Nelson not to flinch from the coming storm of fire, and Clinton himself went on standing at his ease, hands clasped at the small of his back, calling a small adjustment to the helm as
Black Joke
drove in eagerly, the terrier going for the hold on the bull's nose.

He saw the American move his head, a final judgement of range, considered against the clipper's rolling and beside him Ferris murmured the age-old blasphemy which Clinton this time could not find it in him to resent, for it was also a part of the great tradition.

‘For what we are about to receive—' said Ferris, and as if he had heard the words, the American drew the sword from the scabbard on his belt, and raised it above his head. Involuntarily all three naval officers drew breath together and held it.
Huron
was at the bottom of her roll, her cannon pointing down into the sea close alongside, then she was coming up, the barrels rising – levelled, and the sword arm fell.

The six cannon leaped together, in perfect concert, and the startling white gusts of smoke shot fifty feet from her sides, completely silent, for the sound had not reached them, and for a fleeting part of a second they could believe that
Huron
had not loosed her broadside.

Then the very air beat in upon them, shocking the eardrums, seeming for a moment to suck their eyeballs from the sockets with the vast disruption of air caused by passing shot, and close above Clinton's head a stay parted with a whiplash crack.

That was one ball high, but under Clinton's feet, the deck jumped with the multiple impact of ball into her, and the hull rang like the strokes of a gigantic brass gong.

A single ball came through at deck level. It struck a burst of sparks from the steel hull, like Brocks fireworks at Crystal Palace, brilliant orange even in the strong sunlight, and the hole it tore through
Black Joke
's plating was fringed with bare jagged tongues of metal like the petals of a silver sunflower.

A seaman in striped vest and baggy canvas breeches, who was kneeling behind the bulwark, took the ball full in his chest.

His severed limbs were strewn untidily across the gunboat's spotless deck and the ball went on to strike the foot of
Black Joke
's mast, shivering it like a tall tree struck by lightning, and tearing a long white splinter from the seasoned Norwegian pine. Then, with its force mainly spent the ball rolled the length of the deck, smoking and stinking of scorched metal until it thumped into the scuppers and rolled idly back and forth. Only then, seconds after the broadside struck, did the crash of the discharge reach their ears across the turbulent waters that separated the two vessels.

‘Not bad shooting for a Yankee,' Ferris grudged them, raising his voice above the gun thunder, and Denham had his watch out and was timing how long it took for the clipper's gun crews to reload.

‘Forty-five seconds,' Denham intoned, ‘and not a single gun run out again. A bunch of fairground tinkers could do better.'

Clinton found himself wondering if it was merely bravado, or complete indifference to danger and violent death which allowed the two younger officers to chat so casually, while the seaman's severed arms still twitched on the deck, not twenty feet away.

Clinton was afraid, afraid of death and afraid of failing in his duty and afraid of being seen to be afraid, but then he was older than they, for despite their manly airs Ferris was a boy and Denham barely twenty – so perhaps it was not courage but ignorance and lack of imagination.

‘Fifty-five seconds!' Denham grunted scornfully, as the next ragged broadside crashed into
Black Joke
's iron hull, and somebody started to scream below decks, a high mindless keening like steam from a kettle.

‘Send somebody to stop that fellow,' Ferris murmured to the seaman who crouched nearby, and doubled over still the man hurried away. Seconds later the screaming stopped abruptly.

‘Good work,' Ferris told the seaman as he took his place at the bulwark again.

‘Dead, sir, he is, poor devil.'

Ferris nodded without change of expression, and moved closer to listen to his Captain.

‘Mr Denham, I am going to lead the boarding-party. You are to be ready to sheer off and leave us to it, should there be any danger to the ship—' There was a sharp fluting sound, like the flight of a giant insect past their heads, and Clinton glanced up irritably. The marksmen in
Huron
's rigging had opened fire, the pop of their muskets seemed muted and without menance. Studiedly Clinton ignored them and went on issuing his final orders, raising his voice to compete with the crash and roar of shot and the strike of it into the gunboat's hull.

As Clinton finished speaking, Denham blurted abruptly, ‘It's hell not being able to reply.' He was staring across at the clipper whose silhouette was blurred with a bank of pale gunsmoke that even the gale could not disperse rapidly enough. ‘It's bad for the men,' he corrected himself swiftly, and Clinton had his answer. Denham was afraid as he was, and the knowledge gave him no comfort at all. If only they could do something, anything, instead of having to stand here in the open and make studied conversation, while
Black Joke
tore across the last few hundred yards of white crested sea that still separated them.

The crash of cannon shot tearing into
Black Joke
's vitals was almost continuous now as the fastest gunners aboard
Huron
outstripped the others. The bow cannon that the American Captain was supervising and laying was firing three times to the other's twice, Clinton had been counting the plumes of muzzle smoke, this would be the sixth ball they sent into the little gunboat since the American had given the order to fire as many minutes ago.

He watched the gunsmoke bloom again from the cannon's maw, and this time the gunboat's deck was swept as if by hail stones, but leaden hail stones as big as ripe grapes that pierced the thin steel bulwarks with pricks of sunlight and clawed chunks of wood from the main deck, a deck that was now threaded with meandering scarlet snakes of blood and slick little puddles of it that spread from beneath the inert and crumpled figures that seemed to be scattered in purposeless profusion wherever Clinton looked.

Black Joke
was taking merciless punishment, perhaps already more than she could afford, but they were close now, very close, seconds only left to go.

He could hear the cheering of the clipper's gun crews, the terrified wailing of the slaves who were huddled down in pathetic little heaps upon
Huron
's decks, he could clearly hear the rumble of the sixteen-pounders run out against the straining tackles, and hear the shouted commands of the gun captains.

The girl at the rail still stood rigidly erect, staring white-faced across at him, and she had seen and recognized him now. She tried to raise a hand to wave a greeting, but the iron slave cuff on her wrist hampered the movement. As Clinton stepped forward the better to see her, something tugged sharply at the sleeve of his jacket and behind him Ferris gasped.

Clinton looked down at his arm, the sleeve was torn and the white lining showed in the tear – it was only then he realized that it was a musket ball fired from
Huron
's cross-trees which might have struck him squarely had he not moved, and he turned quickly to Ferris.

The boy was pressing a wadded handkerchief to his chest, standing very upright.

‘You are wounded, Mr Ferris,' said Clinton. ‘You may go below.'

‘Thank you, sir,' wheezed Ferris. ‘But I'd just as soon not miss the kill.' As he spoke, a droplet of blood formed in the corner of his mouth, and with a chilling little jolt, Clinton realized that the boy was probably mortally struck – blood in the mouth would almost certainly mean a lung hit.

‘Carry on then, Mr Ferris,' he said formally, and turned away. He must not let the doubts assail him now, he must not question whether his decision to board
Huron
had been correct, or if his execution of the attack had been properly carried out – or if he was responsible for those dismembered corpses that littered
Black Joke
's deck, or for the dying lad who still determinedly kept erect. He must not let his resolve weaken.