Scarborough Fair (29 page)

When the lieutenant completed his survey he returned to
Bonhomme
Richard
. On his first knock he was admitted to Paul Jones's cabin. Inside, Captain Pearson sat stiffly opposite the commodore, the desk neutral ground between them. Half filled wine glasses stood next to crumb-covered plates, all that was left of biscuits the steward had managed to find. Although the cabin was a shambles, the two officers held their bearing as though seated in the grandest royal court in
Europe
.

“Yes?”

Dale glanced hesitantly at the English captain, but Paul Jones gestured his presence was immaterial. “Well, Mr. Dale?”

The lieutenant sighed, at a loss where to begin. None of the news was good. “HMS
Serapis
has lost most of her spars, sails, and rigging. Her foremast still stands and part of the mizzen. She is sound structurally, but looks a lot worse than she is. Most of the damage is superficial and can be repaired under way.”

Jones's eyes flashed. “And
Richard
?”

Dale shook his head. “Captain Pearson's eighteen-pounders took a heavy toll.” As he spoke he glanced about the stern cabin, examining timber joints and planking. “Our rudder is held on by only one pintle and the stern frame is nearly shot away. From the mainmast aft the lower deck timbers will not hold without much work. The quarterdeck is ready to collapse over the gunroom. The worst is that we are holed below the waterline and the pumps are losing ground. The men are working as hard as possible, but the water is still gaining.”

“Have you a head count of the prisoners?”

“Including those captured earlier from merchantmen there are almost five hundred.”

“Work them in relays,” the commodore said flatly, “and have them form bucket lines from the holds.”

“Pardon me, sir, but the fire parties are using all the available buckets. They assure me the outbursts are under control, but it will be several hours before we can be certain the fires are out.” He paused. “She may sink before that happens.”

“We'll see about that.” Turning away from the English captain who sat watching and listening, Paul Jones frowned. “Thank you for your report. I will remain on board here. You take command of
Serapis
. Jury-rig her, then stand off. Take whatever you need. Ask for volunteers among the prisoners, but give yourself a clear majority of men you can trust. I will reassess the situation at daybreak. If
Bonhomme
Richard
can be saved, I'll do my best to save her.”

***

The sun rose at ten minutes to six. The morning was gray, gloomy with fog that shrouded the two ships like gun smoke from the previous night reluctant to abandon the battleground. Fires were still burning on the warships, under control but not extinguished. Smoke imprisoned by the fog thickened the still air, clogging lungs that craved oxygen to feed aching muscles. The prisoners-of-war had worked through the night at
Bonhomme
Richard
's pumps, two hours on, two hours to rest. Petty officers walked among sleeping men, prodding and kicking, swinging knotted ropes to rouse them to their feet. Dreamers, they struggled upright, shambling to places at the pump bars. Each time they were called demanded more effort to obey.

Jackie Rudd was gray with fatigue, miserable with cold, and so hungry his stomach growled continuously, refusing to be quieted by sips of water. He stood with drooping head between sagging shoulders, his weathered fisherman's hands raw with blisters. His feet had been wet for so long and numb with cold he was almost oblivious of the seawater spouting from the outlet onto them each time he completed the circle around the pump. He listened with only half an ear to the petty officer's hoarse chanting. Jackie just pushed, then pushed again, and yet again until his existence was a sickening blur. All he wanted was to crawl away into a corner of the deck and be consumed by sleep.

“All right, rest. Change places. Come on, you lazy bastards,” the petty officer said wearily, walking away to kick awake the next shift to take their turn.

Gratefully, Jackie released the bar, arms dropping lead heavy to his sides as he trudged to a heap of cordage. When a man rose to take his turn at the pump, Jackie sank down in his place, the hemp at least dry. His eyelids slid out of control over his hazy vision. It seemed only moments before a hand was shaking his shoulder.

“Wake up, damn it.”

“Not already. Let me sleep…” He tried to curl away from the intruder.

“It's me, Billy. Don't you want to eat? I'll have it then…”

Jackie pushed himself upright, heavy as a cannonball. “Eat? I'll eat. Give it here.” Some hard ship's biscuit was pushed into his hand. Eyelids gummed together, he shoved the food into his mouth. It tasted like sawdust on his swollen tongue. He gagged, spitting out crumbs, mumbling obscenities.

A voice he didn't recognize spoke beside him. “What d'you expect, lad? Hot rabbit broth? Maybe a bit o' prime bacon, eh?” Jackie wrestled his eyes into focus. The speaker was a sailor in a tattered striped jersey. A ragamuffin of a man, his head a shock of ginger curls. He threw a questioning glance at his cousin.

Billy caught it. “This here is Thomas Berry. He was on the English man-o'-war.”

“That I was,” the Englishman nodded before biting into his hardtack carefully, biscuit crunching between rotten teeth. “A sailor in the King's Navy, that's me. And press-ganged too. I was a fisherman like you and your oppo here. We heard 'em coming up the street one night so I dived out the cellar door of the alehouse and a brute of a tar laid me out cold with a belaying pin. I woke up in a cutter with ten other men, trussed up like a chicken on the way to market. And me with a fat-arsed wife waiting nice and warm in bed at home.”

“When was that?” Jackie asked, although he couldn't have cared less.

“Nearly ten months since, and every sodding day a bastard. I'm from the west country, I am, or I'd steal a boat and row like hell for it.”

“So would I if I knew where we are,” Jackie added drowsily.

“That's just it, lad,” Tom Berry said with a sly grin. “Your cousin here says you belong to Scarborough?”

“What of it?”

“Well, laddo, that's where we are. Off Flamborough Head a few miles. We can't have drifted far in the night. Nowhere at all if that anchor we dropped held ground.”

“You sure?”

Billy snorted. “Course he's sure. He was on the deck of
Serapis
there, not chained up below like us.”

Jackie came awake. Flamborough. Then, they were really but few miles from
Scarborough
. Home. After the last endless hours, the news seemed impossible.

“So you know the waters around here?” Tom asked, leaning close. “The tides at the Head look fierce. A man who didn't know the waters could get carried out to sea or smashed to pieces on the rocks…”

“I know them all,” Jackie interrupted with a sneer, pride ruffling his feathers. “I have my own boat at
Scarborough
. I've fished all the way down to
Kingston-Upon-Hull
, and up past
Whitby
with our Billy here.”

“Then you're my man. You and Billy.”

“What are you going to do?”

Tom Berry winked. “You wait and see.”

***

Paul Jones swilled his face with the lukewarm water the steward had brought. He dabbed his cheeks with a towel, peering into the mirror to inspect the line of his jaw for any stray whiskers. There were none. He folded the razor back into its ebony handle and placed it by the washbowl. How his man had produced a clean shirt he did not know, but he shrugged into it gratefully then donned his freshly brushed uniform jacket and hat. A last mouthful of tepid coffee remained in his cup, the silver pot empty. Eight hours of sleep had left him feeling almost human.

On the remains of his quarterdeck he recalled the entry he had written in his journal while the battle was still fresh, before he had succumbed to a drugged sleep: “…a person must have been an eyewitness to form a just idea of this tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished terror, and lament that war should be capable of producing such fatal consequences…” He reconfirmed his thoughts looking down onto the weather deck, absently resting a hand on the nine-pounder he had aimed and fired so many times. Persistently, his thoughts were punctuated by a gravel voice calling time at the nearest pump. He turned away from the depressing sight of his battered ship to look seaward.
Serapis
stood off the starboard quarter. Dale had wasted no time setting her to rights. Through the drifting fog he could see the felled mainmast had been chopped free and figures were moving about on deck near the foremast and the remnant of the mizzen. It appeared Dale was organizing a jury-rig to enable
Serapis
to reach an allied port where her masts and spars could be replaced.

Pleased with his lieutenant's progress, he crossed to the port wing to stare into the fog where his squadron lay. Just the sight of them drifting in silence angered him. Cursed Frenchmen. Where had their courage been when he needed them, had
ordered
them to engage? If only they were men of the same caliber as
Bonhomme Richard
's crew. He had Portuguese, English, and best of all, Americans. If the French had been in dire need of education, then by today they should know beyond doubt his capability. If not, they never would. Worst of all, while the others had done nothing, Pierre Landais in
Alliance—
and Jones scoffed at the irony of the name—had actually been a deadly hindrance, firing into
Richard
as he sailed gaily past. And where was Landais now? Fled from the battleground, and so he should. If he had been here now Jones would have boarded his ship and hung him from the yardarm. If it was the last thing he did, he would see Landais court-martialled and dismissed…

“Begging your pardon, sir?”

Paul Jones banished his ugly thoughts. The Frenchman's day would come. “Well, Mayrant, and what have you been doing?”

The midshipman glanced down at his arm suspended in a sling. “Only a scratch, sir. A careless bayonet.”

The commodore smiled, wondering the truth of the matter. “Well?”

“The carpenter begs you to excuse his impertinence, but he would like you to come below. He says there is something you had better see for yourself.”

It could only be bad news. He nodded, glancing at the fog lying heavy on the sea before looking back at Mayrant. “Very well, lead on.”

***

The carpenter was stoking his pipe. He sat halfway down the companion ladder from the orlop deck into the after hold. He stood up when the midshipman brought the commodore past the main-jeer capstan to the hatchway. Puffing clouds of aromatic smoke, he leaned against a bulkhead. He saluted without removing his pipe, speaking through teeth clenched about the stem.

“Morning, sir. I thought you'd better have a look.” He gestured down the ladder.

“Morning Carpenter,” Paul Jones replied, squeezing past and descending until water lapped within inches of his shoes. Grabbing an overhead beam he leaned out from the ladder for a better view. For'ard, the mainmast foot was submerged, and aft he was unable to see the mizzenmast step for a layer of murky water where flotsam milled disconsolately. That had to mean the bilges were under at least eight feet. “How deep is it?”

The carpenter fingered a damp sounding rod that lay against the steps. “Ten feet and two inches. And it's gaining.”

“How fast?”

“Five inches in the last hour.” He studied the commodore's stony expression. “The pumps can't keep up, sir. We had number four going for a couple of hours but it broke down again. It's beyond repair.”

“Then the others will have to pump harder.”

The carpenter shook his head. “If we get under way, the slightest squall or heavy sea will tear her apart.”

Paul Jones's eyes were hard. “You're saying she's lost?”

The carpenter scowled before pursing his lips to blow a smoke ring that crumbled into thin air. He watched it disintegrate then looked steadily at the glowering commodore. “She's a good ship, sir, but before God and
Providence
, I don't think working every man in the squadron at the pumps would keep her afloat.”

“You say, you say.”

Withdrawing his pipe, the craftsman pressed his lips into a thin line as he studied the officer. “That's my opinion, sir. For what it's worth.”

Paul Jones nodded grimly. “Yes, for what it's worth.” He looked back at the gaining water. Nobody liked to be told the ship they had come to love was sinking. When he faced the carpenter again, his eyes searched the man's face. “Just do your best. Keep pumping until I give the order to stop. She's served me well, and by God, if I can I'll save her.”

***