The French Prize (26 page)

“She is big, for a privateer,” Frost agreed. They were quiet for a moment, watching the onrushing ship, now directly in their wake and about a mile and a half distant. “And fast, I fear,” he added at length.

Jack nodded.
Fast, indeed
 … The Frenchman's studdingsails were set and drawing now, to weather and lee, aloft and alow, just like
Abigail
's, which had been set with considerably more alacrity. But this distant ship was longer on the waterline than
Abigail
, which would make her faster, and being French-built they could count on her having a finer entry and a cleaner run aft than the apple-bowed, stubby American merchantman built to haul a maximum of cargo at a reasonable but not remarkable speed. Jack looked up at the sun. It was late spring and they were well to the south. Darkness would not be on them for many hours.

It is only a matter of time
 … he thought. They could not outfoot this damned Frenchman. They could not lose him in the dark

“Your papers are in order, I would assume,” Frost said. “Bills of lading, clearing manifests, invoices?”

“Yes, the papers are in order,” Jack snapped. He was fully engaged in self-flagellation, and he did not need any prompting from Frost to do it better.

“And your
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
, of course,” Frost added.

Jack felt a sensation in his stomach that was much like what he imagined swallowing a grapeshot would feel like; a sudden and unnatural weight, nausea, the certain knowledge that something was terribly wrong. The
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
! How many times had he pestered Oxnard for it? And every time Oxnard had assured him he was pulling it together, and in the end he had sailed off without it.

“You do have a
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
, do you not?” Frost asked, sensing something was amiss, because Jack was not at all the stoic, unflappable character that he wished himself to be.

“No, I do not have a damned
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
,” Jack said. “Oxnard … Mr. Oxnard had said repeatedly he would take care of that, but in the end he forgot. As did I.”

“Oh, dear…” Frost said. They remained quiet for some time, watching the man-of-war in their wake plunging on, relentless and fast. Jack felt a slight veer in the wind and he ordered the braces trimmed just so, but it was pointless and he knew it. Even if the Frenchmen sailed their ship like a Portuguese bumboat she would still have a knot or better on the
Abigail
. If she did not carry any spars away—unlikely in that wind—then she would be up with them in just a few hours.

“If she is not a privateer,” Jack said, “then perhaps she is not on the lookout for a prize. Perhaps her intent is not hostile.” He wanted to confer with Frost now, wanted the older man's input and suggestion, this friend of the
Abigail
's owner, he was happy to look on him now as Oxnard's surrogate. Jack wanted Charles Frost to take the cup from his hand, or at least help him bear it, and he loathed himself all the more for feeling that way.

“This looks to be the actions of a ship bent on taking a prize,” Frost said, his voice lower now, conspiratorial. “We don't know what has happened. New orders from Paris? We may be in full-fledged war with France, for all we know.”

Jack nodded. Frost was not offering much in the way of comfort.

“But see here, Captain,” Frost said, speaking lower still and taking a step toward Jack. “I have no say aboard this ship, I know that. But Oxnard and I are friends, and we talked of this quite a bit these past months, so I think I know his mind. This…” He nodded toward the Frenchman astern. “… this is the very reason he put those guns aboard your ship. The reason he asked me, if I was to take passage with you, if I would train your men in the use of them. Oxnard does not want to lose a ship, and her men. He wants to make a stand. And that, my boy, is why he wished you to take command. Because he knows a fighting man when he sees one.”

Jack did not take his eyes from the Frenchman. He waited for the inevitable reference to his father, the apple not falling far from the tree, chip off the old block, like father like son, et cetera, et cetera, but Frost apparently had said all he meant to say on that point, and said no more. It was Jack's turn to speak.

“We have six guns, and men enough to man three of them, if we have no need to trim sails,” he said, also speaking low and conspiratorial. “I could not count the men or guns aboard this fellow, but I'll wager it's a damned lot more than we have.”

“Of course you're right, Captain Biddlecomb,” Frost agreed. “And I would not interfere with your decisions.
Abigail
is your command, no one else's. But I look at it this way. We can't outrun this fellow. We have no
r
ô
le d'
é
quipage
, which, if he means to take us as a prize will give him cause, at least by his lights. But he won't expect a fight, will he? One or two broadsides, we carry away some of his top-hamper and we're off for the horizon, leaving Jean Crapeau knotting and splicing in our wake.”

Jack looked out at the Frenchman, visibly closer now. He pictured the chart on his mind. They were well through the Mona Passage, with Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, which was now a French possession in any event, to windward, offering no hope of sanctuary. No sandbars in the offing; he would not be repeating that business west of Montserrat.

“You'll take command of the guns?” Jack said to Frost, his eyes still on their pursuer.

“Indeed I will,” Frost said, and Jack could hear the smile in his voice.

*   *   *

Captain Renaudin considered ordering Lieutenant Bar
è
re to scrub
L'Arman
ç
on
's heads.

What would you do, you damned popinjay, you strutting little bantam?
he wondered. Would he refuse a direct order from the captain? Would he tell the men that such work was beneath him, the ship's first officer, even though
they
were expected to do it? Is that how a paragon of republicanism such as Bar
è
re should act?

He watched Bar
è
re strutting back and forth across the quarterdeck as if it was his quarterdeck, looking beyond the bow at the American merchantman ahead and nodding and smiling in his insufferable, self-satisfied manner.
Yes, it would be an amusing little conundrum for you, Bar
è
re
, Renaudin thought.

But of course he could not do that. He could not humiliate a fellow officer, a lieutenant in the French naval service, no matter how lowly his origins or intolerable his demeanor.

Bar
è
re turned as if he could read Renaudin's thoughts, except he was smiling, which told Renaudin he could not, and that there was still some place the
Directoire
had not infiltrated. They had been watching the American set studdingsails, an impressive display by Renaudin's thinking. This merchantman could not have more than a fraction of
L'Arman
ç
on
's crew, yet they had set their studdingsails faster and seemingly with less fuss than his own men had.

The crew of
L'Arman
ç
on
was almost to a man members of Brest's Jacobin Club and they treated the ship as if it was a venue for their revolutionary gatherings. Renaudin would not have been surprised to hear they had called a meeting to discuss whether or not they should set the studdingsails. The evolution could hardly have been done more slowly or in a more lubberly fashion if they had.

“The Americans have stuns'ls set, but I do not think they will outrun us,” Bar
è
re said. “An hour or so and we will be up with them.”

“So this is our plan,
Citoyen
Bar
è
re? To take this American, this unarmed merchantman, as a prize?”

“Yes,” Bar
è
re said. “But she is not unarmed. She will put up a fight.” He spoke a bit louder than necessary. Renaudin imagined he wanted the men to hear and to be impressed by the depth of his knowledge, to understand that he was a man accustomed to intrigue, privy to its inner circles.

“I see,” Renaudin said, by which he meant that he saw several possibilities. One was that Bar
è
re was a liar trying to puff himself up. He hoped that was the case. Because if it was not, then it meant that
L'Arman
ç
on
was part of some great web of conspiracy about which he, Renaudin, her commanding officer, knew nothing. And Bar
è
re did.

“But see here,
Citoyen
Renaudin,” Bar
è
re continued, “this is a delicate matter. I have spoken to the men about this, and I will speak to you. We must fight them, and we must let them get their blows in, let a few of their shots strike home, before we capture them.”

“I see,” Renaudin said once more. “And why is this?”

“The wishes of the
Directoire
,” Bar
è
re said, in the arrogant tone of one trying not to sound arrogant. “We play our small parts in the greater glory or France.”

“Very well,” Renaudin said. “Then we must clear for action. And
Vive la France!”

“Vive la France!”
Bar
è
re repeated, quite missing the irony in Renaudin's voice, which was probably just as well.

*   *   *

Abigail
was cleared for action, her men at quarters. Such as it was. Those phrases Jack remembered well from his father's stories, when he used to beg his father and Uncle Ezra to tell them, again and again.
Cleared for action … quarters
. He toyed with those words because they were so absurd, applied to the little handful of men he had, huddled around the guns or standing by the braces, Tucker at the helm, Frost prowling the quarterdeck.

Jack looked astern. The Frenchman was three quarters of a mile behind, right in their wake, and at the rate he was closing Jack gauged there were perhaps thirty minutes before he would make his move, his one, desperate move.

He had heard about this, it was a common theme in the old stories, how the waiting was far and away the worst part of it. And that seemed to be true enough, though he had yet to experience the other part, the part when the iron began to fly and the blood began to run over the deck. He did not think the few shots from the privateer during that business west of Montserrat qualified as a real sea fight. Though, to be sure, neither would this, if things went as he hoped.

He turned back in time to see William Wentworth emerge from the scuttle. He wore plain wool stockings and breeches, a waistcoat, no overcoat, his head uncovered, a musket in his hand. His presence topside was something of a surprise. After the initial excitement that had curtailed their dinner and brought them all on deck, Wentworth had gone below and not reappeared. Jack imagined he would retire to his cabin, or the cable tier, until the shooting was done. But here he was with a long gun and a cartridge box over his shoulder.

“Ah, Captain!” he said on seeing Biddlecomb. “If I am not mistaken, it is the custom in a sea fight to have men with long arms stationed in the platforms up there, inflicting what damage they can on the enemy. With your permission I thought I might fill that function today.”

Here was even more of a surprise, and Jack tried and failed to hide it. “This is your own musket, I take it?” He thought there might be a musket on board, but he was not certain where it was located, and in any event, it was not so fine a weapon as Wentworth's.

“Musket? Oh my dear sir, no! This is a Jover and Belton .62 caliber rifle, the finest London has to offer. There aren't half a dozen of its like in the United States, I assure you.”

Jack's eyes moved over the gun. The silver side plates blazed in the Caribbean sun, the barrel glinted, the lock was kept up such that it showed no sign of ever having been used. He could see there were fine engravings on all the metal parts, though what they were engravings of he could not tell.

“Very nice,” said Jack. “And you know the use of it?”

“I do,” Wentworth assured him. “One does not behave as outrageously as I and live to the venerable age of twenty-two without being an expert with gun and sword.”

Jack nodded. That made sense to him. “Very well. You may take station in the maintop. There.” He pointed. “But under no circumstances are you to fire before I order the great guns fired, do you hear? Once I fire on the Frenchman you may assume we mean to kill as many as we can, but you are not to shoot before I do.”

“I quite understand, Captain. ‘Aye, aye,' I should say,” Wentworth replied, slinging his rifle by a strap over his back, then turning and heading for the main shrouds, which he had climbed for the first time that morning. He seemed once again to have that buoyant mood he had displayed earlier, a course change from his attitude at dinner. Jack wondered if he ever became dizzy, with his demeanor spinning so quickly.

And then he had no more time to spare a thought for William Wentworth. He heard a dull, heavy noise astern, like a big hatch cover dropped in place, and then the scream of roundshot that he recognized from that earlier voyage, and before he could turn around he saw the spout of water as the ball plowed into the sea, well ahead of
Abigail
and well to larboard.

The last wisps of smoke from the Frenchman's bow chaser were still being pulled apart by the breeze when Jack turned and looked astern. The Frenchman was all but directly to windward and less than half a mile behind. The starboard chaser went next, the horizontal blast of smoke, the sound of the shot passing far wide of
Abigail
's stern.
That's a warning, a signal to heave to
, Jack thought. If they had been trying to score a hit they would have turned aside to bring the gun to bear, but they likely did not want to lose even an inch of distance.