Captain's Surrender (15 page)

"Sail ho!" came the cry from the masthead. Peter ran up the shrouds, glass in hand, to the maintop, looked where the midshipman pointed, and could see, perhaps, a smudge of white too regular for a cloud. Excitement coursing through him, he came down to universal smiles on deck.

"Make the signal for Captain Joslyn!" he commanded, and waited until the signal flag was flying before returning his attention to the sea.

"And prepare to tack ship!"
"Aye aye, sir!"
As they came about, Peter saw flags break out on the
Asp
,

signaling a general pursuit. He bent on as much sail as the rigging would safely bear, and after an hour, it became clear that the
Seahorse
was gaining on the unknown sail.

By the following day, they had gained ten miles and could see her quite clearly, green hull banded with cheerful yellow. The name painted on her stern was
Virginie
, a thirty-two, a little heavier than the
Macedonian
. She was flying a Dutch flag, but apart from the sheer implausibility of this, the coxswain's mate recognized her as the thirty-two which had taken him prisoner in the year sixty-seven, and had then been under Captain Jean-Paul deBourne, a gentleman of the old school.

"Sir," said Peter's first lieutenant, the newly senior Mr. Howe, "that's the Hudson Strait ahead, sir. If we don't do something now, and there
is
a three-decker in the bay, well, our prospects will be considerably worse."

The man affected Peter like a bad smell—quite unfairly, for he was a competent officer, and this was a justified worry that Peter shared. He supposed it was just that he was used to Andrews there, with whom he would have shared his thoughts, and the knowledge that Andrews was on his own ship, inaccessible, made his rigid back ache.

"Mr. Howe, I suppose it has not occurred to you that I might have already thought of this? Nor that your asking the question is disrespectful in the utmost to Captain Joslyn, who can be supposed to have thought of this, too?"

"No, sir, sorry, sir," said Howe, rubbing a hand over the cocoa-brown stubble on his chin and looking cowed.
Worried that he might be turning into a monster of authority like Walker, Peter relented. "However, I think we can begin putting things in train for action. We won't clear until we're given the order, but there will be no harm in putting out the fearnought screens and slow-match now."
"Aye aye, sir." Howe smiled and hurried away. Feeling the need for something to counterbalance his presence, Peter took out his glass and trained it on the
Macedonian
, watching the small figure of her captain on his own quarterdeck. He had left off the expensive and prestigious wig, and in the red tinged sunset light, his own hair shone like a point of fire. Peter, admiring both ship and man, huddled into his greatcoat, and felt briefly piercingly happy. Andrews at his right hand and a steady colleague at his left, a battle ahead, and the sun going down in a sheet of flame over a blue shadow of land. There was a smell of slow-match in the air, and all the world seemed eager, poised for glory.
Life, he thought, did not get much better than this, and at the thought some presentiment of danger made him reach out and stroke the
Seahorse
's rail, touching wood.
The signal to engage broke out on the
Asp
and time for reflection was over. On deck the cannons were set loose, and there was a rumbling below as the larger thirty-eight pounders were brought into action on the gun deck. Ship's boys ran up from the armory with canisters of shot and powder, and the swivel guns at the bow were already shotted and primed.
"All divisions ready, sir," Howe reported, returning like an unwanted guest.
"Bow chasers fire at will," Peter commanded, "and a guinea for the man who shoots out the first sail."
The swivels barked with a high pitched note, like terriers, and the crews of the cannon tied up their hair with their scarves, spat on their hands.
Seahorse
plunged through the smoke and the cold arctic air was briefly warm and thick, smelling of gunpowder.
But the
Virginie,
had been lying to them about her speed. Now her captain trimmed the yards, she filled, and staysails broke out on all masts, spritsail and spritsail topsail on her boom. At once she leaped forward out of range. Peter ordered staysails set himself, and royals, touching the braces of the masts to feel whether they would take it. To starboard, the
Macedonian
came up beside them, her more powerful chasers firing. A ball hit the
Virginie
's stern galley and a spray of glass leaped up, glittering. A little closer and—though they could not rake her with a broadside—they might keep up a steady fire with the swivels, sending shot the whole unprotected length of her deck.
No, not unprotected, for now the
Virginie's
stern chasers spoke—there was a yellow cloud of smoke and a roar. He felt the wind as the ball passed his elbow, made a hole in the hammock netting behind him, and he laughed, feeling all earthly cares depart at the nearness of death.
"Like that, is it?"
Looking back, he saw that the burst of speed was leaving the
Asp
behind, and he wondered why
Virginie
had not done this at the start, but had deliberately allowed the fourth rate to keep up. Was she that confident that the three-decker she undoubtedly believed he knew nothing about would be enough to take on three British warships? Well, it was time to disabuse her of that notion, he'd take on the
Virginie
and the
Indomitable,
too, if he had to.
The wind remained constant. Peter gave the order for the studding-sails to be set, just as the
Virginie
began her turn into Hudson Straight. The speed cracked on; they were sailing now at thirteen knots straight towards
Virginie
's turned broadside, and the French captain took the opportunity to open a full roaring fire, raking the
Seahorse
from stem to stern. The air was full of metal. One of the gun crew, receiving a ball in the breast, was literally burst apart and his limbs landed on either side of the boat, his severed head catching in the splinter netting and hanging there.
The men on deck flung themselves flat on the boards, including Midshipman Prendergast, a boy of thirteen, for whom this was his first experience of battle.
Peter walked over to the boy, acutely conscious that the gun crews on the
Virginie
were reloading and that the second broadside would be closer, more deadly, as the strip of water between the vessels narrowed. "Stand up, Mr. Prendergast," he said firmly. "A gentleman does not cower." He took the boy by the elbow, feeling the racking shudders of fear, and stood him on his feet, with a smile. Then he leaned forward and whispered the words his own captain had told him on a similar occasion, long ago. "If you cannot be brave, it is perfectly adequate to pretend. But pretend you must. How would the men feel otherwise, seeing their officers afraid?"
The boy gave him a waxy smile in return and nodded. Then he was promptly sick into his hat. Choosing not to notice, Peter said, "Get someone to clear Beatty's head from the netting, would you? Assemble what pieces you can find for burial," and walked up the quarterdeck stairs just as the second wave of iron smashed into the
Seahorse
and came shrieking and smoking down her deck. The main mast was hit a jarring blow, splinters flew through the air, humming like bees. Peter saw that the
Macedonian
had begun to turn, but in the process had lost way. A shot from her chasers knocked off the boom of the
Virginie's
mizzen spanker, and the whole fell, tangled to the deck.
For one instant her stern was to the
Seahorse
's broadside, and Peter scarcely had to shout "fire" before all the weight of metal his small sloop possessed was loosed on the
Virginie
but at the speed they were going, he could only fire once before she had gone racing into Hudson Straight, and he had to go about to avoid being driven into Resolution Island.
This was easier said than done, with the land so close on his lee. In the end he had to club-haul to gain enough sea room to double back, set all sail once more and drive through, almost close enough to pick the little slipper orchids on Cape Chidley's grassy point.
By that time the night was black as the inside of a barrel, and he shortened sail to avoid driving her onto some unknown reef in the dark.
It had never been such a struggle to avoid looking worried, and he was almost inclined to kick the ship's cat when the lookout spotted lanterns, and they eased gently to a halt in the shelter of Akpatok Island, where the unwounded
Macedonian
had dropped anchor for the night.
He dined with Andrews in a strange state of fear and lust, barely able to give sensible answers to Josh's questions. "Do you think we should wait for the Asp? Do you think it was an ambush—I thought so myself and decided not to try a night pursuit ... Are you feeling quite alright?"
"When I thought you had gone on ahead without me," Peter said, quite forgetting the servants who stood behind their chairs, "my heart failed within me. I thought we were ruined for sure."
"Then we'll wait for the
Asp
," said Josh, giving him a look of warning and a kick beneath the table that gave him the only injury of the battle.
* * * *

Noon saw the
Asp
rounding the point, with Joslyn alternately shamefaced and indignant—for missing the skirmish, and for them leaving him behind. For the next week they proceeded in convoy and entered the great bay itself without a sight of their prey.

It gnawed at Josh to think he had had the enemy in his sight and let him get away. In a somewhat different way, Peter's dazed vulnerability gnawed at him, too, and the dreams he had had on the
Nimrod
, before all this started, returned, all the more explicit for experience. It was, therefore, with a madness of relief that just as they were passing the Sleeper Islands he heard the lookout exclaim "Strange sail sir, two I think, sou', sou'-west!"

"Now we'll show 'em, eh, sir?" said his first, Tom Dench, with an eager look, and Josh who was desperate to give his mind something to do, other than to go on playing over last week's solitary dinner, laughed.

With the
Indomitable
at her side, the
Virginie
fled no more. The two French ships set sail towards him, and the vast majesty of the three-decker was like a storm-cloud bearing down.

His intent was to lay alongside the
Virginie
and board if he could. Fight his way through her, take her and leave the
Indomitable
for Peter and Joslyn. Peeling off from the convoy, he headed upwind, to gain the weather gage, so that he could run down at the
Virginie
and force her into her protector, using her as a shield against the three-decker's vast weight of armaments.

But as he did so, fully concentrating on the two vessels ahead, there came a booming series of retorts from astern. Looking back, he saw three more French vessels—a ship and two brigs—slip from their concealed anchorages behind the Sleeper Islands and make for the
Asp.
They were the
Aimable,
little less than the
Asp's
tonnage and better gunned, along with the
Gloire
and the
Trounin,
of fourteen guns and a hundred men apiece.

He saw the
Asp
and the
Aimable
lying side by side, their broadsides hammering at one another, while the
Gloire
raked the British ship from the stern and the
Trounin
hemmed her in to leeward, with a slow, measured fire at her masts, saw Peter break from pursuit of the
Indomitable
to go back to the
Asp
's aid, and laughed. Laughed long and hard because it was his first action as a captain, and he already knew he would not come out of it alive. Whether it was an impromptu trap or a long laid one, they had run their necks into it good and proper, and he, furthest in, had no chance at all at fighting his way back out to bring the news back to the commodore.

But Peter might. Peter or Joslyn—they were closer to the bay's entrance. Peter, in his fast little sloop might seem unimportant to the French commander, in the same way that the
Trounin
and the
Gloire
were insignificant alone. If he broke for it, he might yet get away.

But not with the
Indomitable
on his tail, and certainly not with the swift, well sailed
Virginie
. He laughed again, sliding down the backstay onto the deck like a boy skylarking, and everything seemed clear to him, in a moment of battle vision that took him back to the tradition of his Fenian ancestors. The purpose of his life—the reason he had been born, already condemned to flame, and then allowed to love.

"It seems that in going after the
Gloire
they've left the glory to us," he said to young Hal, who was looking at him with the careful awe reserved for the mad. "Set all possible sail to intercept the man of war. They're going to be talking about this in France into the next century."

"And then the crew are to get in the boats and flee to shore."
"Sir!" Lt. Dench drew himself up in protest. He was a long term sailor fated to serve under young idiots and to try and teach them their duties. "We can't win, but there's no shame in surrender."
"Get the lads to the boats, please, Lieutenant. And then you may set me a fire in the hold. I'll man the helm myself."
"Sir," said Dench, looking as though his dog had died, "please, sir, you don't have to..."
"My mind is quite made up," said Josh and smiled. "Give my regards to Commodore Dalby when you see him again, and my will is in the right hand drawer of my writing slope in my lodgings. Good luck to you."
* * * *

Peter had come alongside the
Gloire
. Caught in the crossfire between the
Seahorse
and the
Asp
the little brig was being scientifically taken apart. Blood poured from her scuppers and painted her black sides crimson, staining the sea beneath her. He had shot away the rudder, and when the main mast fell, leaving her without the ability to get under way or to steer, he left her wallowing, bore up and began to do the same to the
Trounin
.