The Devil's Own Luck (5 page)

The critical moment was approaching, the time when he would have to actually take station across the bows of the
Verite,
a time when she would have to turn to meet the bigger enemy bearing down on her. At that moment she would be doomed, for the
Magnanime
would do as much damage to the
Verite
as the
Verite
could do to the
Medusa.

“Bar shot,” he called to the gun captains. He was going in much closer on this attack. So now he would aim at the sails, using two ingots linked by chain to slice through some of his opponent’s rigging. If she was busy splicing ropes, she would have fewer men free to man the guns on both sides. Harry turned to his brother, who stood at the taffrail, sketching madly, as he tried to record the scene for a future series of paintings.

“We come to the high point of the action, James,” he shouted. “You will observe the
Magnanime
will soon be shortening sail, reducing to topsails only. She will turn to face our foe, and seek to rake the
Verite.
If the French captain is wise, he will fire a broadside for the sake of his honour, then strike his flag. I fear I must leave the Navy to take the man’s sword, but I will try to get you over there in time to record the ceremony.”

James just smiled and waved, then carried on drawing.

Harry gave the orders that brought the
Medusa
round yet again. The French captain might be inexperienced, but he was no fool. He knew what was coming, and the action of the
Medusa
had ceased to interest him. He had manned his starboard guns and was turning to face the
Magnanime,
himself shortening sail to avoid the risk of fire.

“Aim high,” shouted Harry. “He’ll be down to topsails soon.” The
Medusa
was practically stationary, Harry having reduced sail, just like the
Verite
which lay broadside on to her, her larboard guns unmanned. He could see the topsails of the
Magnanime
through the enemy rigging. He gave the command and the
Medusa
’s guns spoke. He heard the whistle of the bar shot as it sliced its way towards his now vulnerable foe. He was in high spirits, his face flushed; he knew that success was assured.

At that moment his face froze. The
Magnanime
should have come on, ready to turn and pour a broadside into the Frenchman. Instead he saw the bigger ship back its topsail and lose what little forward speed it still maintained. It was heaving to, out of range of the enemy’s guns, leaving him at the mercy of the
Verite.
There was a period in which no one moved, except his brother, who was still drawing furiously, unaware of the danger. He saw the gunners on the
Verite
rush to the larboard side. Their guns were already loaded and run out. His, aimed at the rigging and reloaded with bar shot, were useless.

He just had time to turn round and shout to his brother to get down, when the side of the
Verite
erupted in smoke. The world exploded around him, guns were dismounted, the side was smashed and the deadly splinters took their toll. He started to give commands that would get his ship under way, removing her from this arc of certain destruction, but hearing the cracking sound of wood splitting, he looked up to see the mainmast breaking above the cap. There was a tearing and crashing sound as it ripped apart the rigging. Blocks were falling and men were running as the great length of timber crashed to the deck. Harry opened his mouth to shout as something hit him. He staggered then collapsed on deck, blood streaming from his head. He tried to rise. Surprised to see James still standing with a shocked look on his face. Then there was blackness.

CHAPTER THREE

THE BRIGHT
blue sky hurt his eyes as he tried to open them. He was aware of the light, the pain in his head, and a powerful smell of bad breath as a silhouetted head came between him and the sky. Another dark shape obscured some of the sky.

“Back, sir, I pray. Let him breathe some air.” The other head pulled back and Harry heard his brother’s voice.

“Will he survive?”

“Too early to say, sir. Too early to say.”

In the background Harry could hear shouted commands. Men were moving about, blocks were creaking and ropes straining. He judged by the motion of the deck that he was still aboard ship. But which ship? He struggled to sit upright. The sharp pain in his head made him fall back again.

“Easy now, sir,” said the man above him. Any comfort intended from the words was entirely washed away by the foul blast of air. Harry lay back, the memory of the action with the
Verite
filling his mind. Something had gone wrong, and he could not think what it was. Why had the
Magnanime
hove to at the critical moment?

“Mr Outhwaite. I would be obliged if you could move your patient below. We are about to commence firing.”

The voice cut through Harry’s pain. At first he refused to believe that he had heard right. But Outhwaite’s reply laid any doubt.

“A few moments more, Captain Carter, if you please. No good will be served by killing a man for the sake of a minute.”

“Waste not a minute,” said Harry.

“You remember, Ludlow.” Another shadow stood over him. Harry lifted his head again. This time he ignored the pain. He started to get up from the deck. Hands grabbed him to help him up. He stood swaying, trying both to remain standing and to focus on the man before him.

“Harry?” James’s voice was full of concern.

“A fine calculation, James. Is that not what I said?”

“You must come below, sir,” said Outhwaite.

“I calculated everything, James. Everything except the fact that this man would be captain of the
Magnanime.”

Harry tried to point at Carter. But he was too weak to raise his arm.

Oliver Carter was not as tall as Harry remembered. Or was it the fact that he had grown fat that made him seem small? But the face, round though it now was, carried the same expression. And the smile, utterly without warmth, was very familiar. The hatred in the eyes was unmistakable.

“I’m glad you are up and about, Ludlow. You are just about to see me remove a serious hazard to shipping.”

Harry looked past Carter to where the
Medusa
rocked on the ocean swell. Nearly all of her rigging was over the side. Her masts were reduced to stumps, jagged where they had broken off. Boats which had been alongside his ship were pulling furiously away. He shrugged off the arms supporting him and staggered towards the bulwark.

“Stand by to commence firing, Mr Bentley.”

Harry looked at his ship. The damage to the
Medusa
was great, but her hull was sound. Given his crew and a little assistance from Carter, she could be jury rigged and sailed home. He fell forward against the side of the ship, struggling hard to avoid passing out again. With a great effort he turned to face Carter. As he opened his mouth to ask the man he hated for help, Carter, looking straight at him, shouted: “Fire!”

Harry did speak, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the guns. He spun round to see the damage inflicted.

The
Magnanime
was a floating gun battery of enormous power. Yet the
Medusa
should have withstood her broadside for longer. But his poor ship simply blew apart after the first round had been fired. The last thought that Harry held before he passed into oblivion was that Carter had lined the deck of his ship with gunpowder barrels. The
Medusa
did not sink. She disintegrated.

Hatred was not an emotion with which Harry Ludlow felt comfortable, sensing that somehow it caused him more suffering than the person it was directed against. So while as capable as the next man of holding a strong dislike, his affable nature and abundant optimism tended to hide this. Few people could, by their mere existence, upset him.

As he lay in the cot, he thought back to their first meeting. Harry seemed to remember a degree of friendliness. Carter had been the premier of Admiral Hood’s flagship, the
Barfleur,
a three-decker of a hundred guns. Hood, having held the command in the West Indies, was superseded by Rodney, who commanded a combined fleet of thirty-four ships of the line. A few months later, in March 1782, these two gentlemen were to fight a most decisive battle. Rodney, breaking the French line in defiance of the Admiralty’s Fighting Instructions, changed the whole nature of naval warfare. Harry had joined Hood’s ship in January of that year as fourth lieutenant.

It would be hard to describe the gulf that separated a fourth lieutenant from the first lieutenant, especially aboard a flagship. Yet the icy reserve, so common in such a situation, was wholly lacking. On meeting the other members of the wardroom, he had been left in no doubt that Carter was a hard man to mess under. For him, nothing could have been further from the facts. Carter, on deck, seemed to go out of his way to praise his abilities. The premier also encouraged Harry to air his opinions at table. Young men find such attention from their superiors flattering. Harry was no exception. If the others in the wardroom had noticed that he was being favoured, they had chosen to ignore it.

The curtain of his cot was pulled back. Harry kept his eyes shut. Even in the dark of the screened-off cabin, the faint light from the lantern hurt his head. He knew that the man who had tended him on deck was leaning over him by the blast of foul breath that hit his nostrils.

“Still out cold by the look of him.” The voice was deep and rasping, the kind of voice that denotes the heavy drinker.

“It is to be hoped that the Lord will see fit to spare him.” Another voice, also deep, but much clearer in tone.

“If’n there be such a thing. It would be a kindness if he were spared your ministrations. After the damage your lord and master has done, a dose of your supplications could see him off.”

“Captain Carter has merely done his duty.” Quite a sharp response. Defiant.

“His duty, you say.”

“I had the honour to assist him in the writing of the dispatch.”

“Then I hope you did not imperil your soul.”

“I shall leave medical matters to you, sir. I would suggest you leave the state of my soul to me.”

“All I’m asking is that you leave this one, body and soul, in peace.”

“There is a proper function for prayer. The vital spirit is succoured by it. You cannot contend that the power to heal is merely a physical thing.”

“True. But being spiritual has the power to kill, usually through boredom. Snuff, Parson?”

Harry heard just one sniff, so he assumed that the parson had declined. He could also tell that the other man had been careless in his distribution, for some of the mixture was tickling his own nostrils. He tried in vain to contain himself, but to no avail. A huge sneeze rent the air, jerking him off the bed and sending a searing pain through his head. He fell back on the bed with his eyes open.

“Bless my soul,” said the parson. “It looks as though he’s come round. Praise the Lord.”

“As a man of science I’d rather praise the snuff.”

“Can we not look to a higher authority for this provision?”

“Only someone as indoctrinated as you could look for divine inspiration in my spilling a little snuff. I have the unsteadiest hand in the fleet.”

“A fine boast for a surgeon.” There was no Christian charity in that remark. “You must be hungry, sir. Some soup, perhaps?”

The man with the bad breath leant over him again.

Harry blinked, and with a convincing stab at the air of a man just waking up, he said, “Where am I?”

“He appears to have lost his wits,” said the parson, leaning over the surgeon’s shoulder to look at him.

“What a fine example of dogma,” said the bad-breathed man with more than a trace of asperity. “He asks a perfectly natural question, and you doubt his sanity before you even answer it. You, sir, are aboard the
Magnanime.”

Harry said nothing. He looked past the surgeon, taking in quickly the details of the cabin. Fixed wooden bulkheads told him he was below the gundecks. The deep shelves were filled with a variety of instruments and an array of apothecary’s bottles, each labelled in Latin to denote its contents. No daylight, or fresh air, pierced this section of the ship. The smell of the bilges, and of packed humanity, was all-pervasive. But the lanterns did show that at least the cabin was dry. Very likely the surgeon’s own quarters.

“Do you recall the action with the Frenchman?”

“Yes. And I also recall the sinking of my ship. How long have I been like this?”

“All last evening and through the night. You’ve taken a nasty blow on your head, Mr Ludlow. I’ve stitched you back together again. You didn’t budge throughout. Some of the hands claimed you was dead. Taking wagers they were.”

“We all prayed for your eventual recovery,” said the parson sonorously.

The other man gave an eloquent grunt. The surgeon put his arms under Harry’s back and lifted him to a sitting position on the cot. “Bear a hand, Mr Crevitt.”

The parson quickly pushed a bolster behind Harry’s back. His eyes were now in focus, and in the dim light he could see the faces of his two attendants. The one who had helped him up had a ruddy vinous complexion and a purple swollen nose. Watery and bloodshot eyes stared out from under an untidy, unpowdered scrub wig. His leather waistcoat was stained and dirty. His companion, tall and thin, was dressed in clerical black, relieved only by the white swallow tail of the parson’s collar round his neck. A large hooked nose dominated the bony face. His complexion was sallow, in contrast to his sharp black eyebrows. He stood stooped because of his height, his gaunt face anxious and concerned.

“We should inform the captain,” he intoned.

“Not yet. Soup first.” The vinous face smiled, displaying few teeth, all black.

“Outhwaite,” he said. He had too few teeth for such a name. “And this be the parson, Mr Crevitt.” The parson gave the briefest nod of acknowledgement.