The Seekers (42 page)

The clang of the ship’s bell told Jared it was five o’clock. A moment later, men began to point and curse. A familiar and despised scarlet ensign was being run up each of
Guerriere
’s three masts.

Slow matches wrapped around iron linstocks curled acrid smoke into the air beside each gun. Jared judged the frigates to be less than two miles apart. The Britisher was rolling violently in the whitecapped swells.

All around him, he smelled sweat. Saw hands raised to rub watering eyes. Marines in groups of seven—one to fire, six others to reload the rifles for the marksman—were climbing quietly to the fighting tops.

Amidships, Lieutenant Morris called out, “Shall we give her a shot to catch her attention, sir?”

Hull’s voice carried all the way forward. “Mr. Morris, I will tell you when and where to fire. Stand ready—and see not a single shot is thrown away.”

The frigates drew closer together.

Closer—

Jared saw a single puff of smoke erupt from
Guerriere.
A second later, he heard the slam of the explosion.

Almost at once, the enemy’s entire starboard side poured out smoke and thunder. Men aboard
Constitution
jerked their heads up—the Britisher’s shot would hit high if it hit at all.

Not a single round found a target. The accuracy of the guns depended on the precise moment of firing, Jared knew. Someone aboard the enemy had miscalculated—given the order to fire just as the starboard side rose on the up-swell of a wave.

He whirled around, saw and heard the British cannon-balls raise huge, noisy geysers of water—every round having traveled all the way over
Constitution
’s masts.

Guerriere
immediately began to wear around to bring her larboard batteries to bear. Hull shouted so everyone on deck could hear. “Men, do your duty now! Your officers can’t command you every minute. You must each do everything in your power for your country—!”

Then he called for flags.

Wild cheering broke out as the three jacks traveled up their lines to snap in the wind at the three mastheads. On the mizzen, a huge seventeen-star ensign unfurled. New eighteen-star flags, recognizing the addition of Louisiana to the union in April, had yet to be supplied to the navy.

On Hull’s next command, the forward gun crews swung into action. Smoldering linstocks dipped. The bow chasers boomed. But the shots dropped into the sea well short of the enemy.

Jared was fascinated by the agility of the gunners.

When fired, the twenty-fours recoiled like juggernauts, their carriages slamming backwards from the open ports and jerking the breeching ropes so taut Jared fancied he could hear the thick lines whine. The moment the recoil spent itself, a member of the gun crew shoved the rammer into the muzzle. Once all sparks were swabbed out, reloading could safely begin.

Because
Constitution
’s first shots had missed, the bow chaser crews grumbled about their error as they worked. They’d mistimed their fire by a second or so, and profanely swore it wouldn’t happen again.

Guerriere
had come about. Her larboard batteries began to spout smoke and orange fire. Some shot plopped into the water midway between the two vessels. But a few rounds struck quite close to the American, raining water on Jared and the men nearby. Jared heard a peculiar thudding amidships, pivoted to see a gunner leaning over the high rail, pointing down at the hull.

“That one hit us! But the ball bounced right off.”

Grinning, he whirled back to the disbelievers in his crew. “I swear to God it bounced, lads. With that live oak, it’s like her sides are made of iron!”

For almost an hour, the battle continued without much result.
Guerriere
kept wearing in order to rake with her starboard guns, then with those on the opposite side. But Hull was quick to respond, tacking and half-tacking so that most of the salvos fell short, or hit the sea where
Constitution
had been only moments before. Occasionally Hull ordered one or two shots. But no more.

As the inconclusive chase wore on, Jared grew increasingly nervous. So did the men at the fo’c’sle guns. They were openly impatient with Hull’s tactics.
Constitution
was making slow headway, using the interval between the enemy’s broadsides to bear in closer and closer. But the captain still refused to commit the frigate’s full firepower.

The light was beginning to fade from the towering clouds. Getting on toward twilight, Jared thought. Perhaps there’d be no decisive end to the engagement—

A strange quiet descended.
Guerriere
’s guns were silent. She seemed to be standing completely still. Hull called for the main topgallants to be set. As men clambered aloft, he bawled another order, “Sailing master—
lay her alongside!
”

Jared’s throat tightened. At last, Hull was taking the offensive. In moments, he felt the frigate surge forward—on a course that would carry her directly past the enemy’s larboard side—and larboard cannon.

Bells clanged six o’clock. Steadily,
Constitution
drew up nearer the stern of
Guerriere.
Evidently some of the American fire had done damage; Jared saw hands aloft at the enemy’s mizzen, furiously rerigging lines.

Out across
Constitution
’s starboard rail, he watched the frigate come abreast of
Guerriere
’s stern and pass it. Perhaps the distance of a pistol shot separated the vessels. He could pick out the braid-decorated uniform of the lean captain, Dacres, on the enemy’s quarterdeck.

Guerriere
’s larboard cannon began firing, stern batteries first. The sea echoed with the rolling thunder; fiery bursts at the muzzles brightened the darkening day.

Geysers shot skyward between the ships. The American’s hull thumped several times as more enemy shot caromed off. Then a round struck amidships and penetrated with a tremendous crashing of timbers. Men screamed in pain.

Shot ripped several of
Constitution
’s sails. Hull sent more men up to repair the damage. Impatience edged the voice of Lieutenant Morris. “Sir, we have men badly hit on the gun deck. When can we fire?”

“Not yet, not yet!” Hull shouted back, clambering up on an arms chest in order to see the enemy more easily.

The fo’c’sle gun crews tried to encourage one another during the enforced inaction. “They got blind men firing them guns. Can’t hit a thing.”

“Must be ’cos they got no sights on their pieces the way we do.”

“I seen three more rounds bounce off our sides, just as pretty as you please—”

Slowly, inexorably,
Constitution
drew abreast of the British frigate, whose gun and spar deck cannon continued to boom intermittently. Overhead, the frigate’s canvas whined and cracked in the wind.

Gunners standing to the right of their pieces blew on the smoldering lengths of cord to raise sparks, then lowered their hands as close to the priming pans as they dared. Jared stood motionless not far from one of the carronades, the powder and shot relay having suspended activity because of the lack of American fire.

One of the carronade gunners gave his quoin a kick, making sure the elevating wedge was firmly in place. On
Guerriere,
Jared now saw faces clearly; he could even judge the relative ages of the men. My God, how close the frigates were running! Why didn’t Hull—?

“On the next one, sir?” Morris shouted.

“On the next one!” Hull replied, still balanced atop the arms chest, watching the slow rise of the rail in relation to the enemy’s hull.

Suddenly he flung up his arms. “Now, sir—
pour in the whole broadside!
”

Jared had never heard such noise. The deck shook beneath his feet as the forward gun deck batteries fired, then the midships batteries. The carronades on the fo’c’sle roared, and recoiled, billowing smoke from the depths of scorching-hot barrels. Starting at the bow,
Constitution
threw everything on her starboard side.

Almost immediately, jubilant shouts rang from the tops. The marines aloft were the first to see the damage double-shotting had done to
Guerriere
’s masts and rigging. Jared saw it for himself when some of the thick smoke cleared.

He saw another kind of damage, too. Aboard the enemy, men writhed on the deck and tumbled out of the rigging. A new sound blended with the last of the American cannon fire—cries of agony from the wounded and dying aboard
Guerriere.

Bouncing up and down on the arms chest, Captain Hull yelled even louder, “By heaven, that ship is ours!”

The captain seemed oblivious to the fact that, in his excitement, he had split his trousers from crotch to knee.

Men laughed. But not for long. In less than a minute,
Constitution
’s batteries reloaded and fired a second broadside.

Hurriedly passing shot and powder buckets again, Jared coughed and gritted his teeth against the acutely painful roar of the fo’c’sle pieces. The carronades recoiled wildly on their wheeled carriages, checked only by the humming ropes. His world shrank to a small piece of deck, smoke-choked, filled with deafening crashes, hit by bursts of orange that glared, then quickly dimmed. In the hellish light, Oliver Prouty’s dirty, grinning face resembled some imp’s.

Through rifts in the smoke, Jared saw men fallen on the deck. He saw blood, and felt the old, puzzling nausea begin to build in his belly. He fought it, but it grew stronger moment by moment, almost paralyzing him. His only relief came from avoiding a direct look at the wounded.

For the next fifteen minutes,
Constitution
ran alongside
Guerriere,
suffering few hits from the enemy guns but doing devastating damage with her own.

Shortly after six,
Constitution
’s broadsides broke
Guerriere
’s mizzen several feet above the deck. The Americans cheered as the huge mast began to topple, cordage and all.

Jared watched screaming men plummet from the yards and rigging. Some fell in the sea. Others landed on the deck, the luckier ones dead or unconscious, the rest broken and twitching.

Near the wheel, Captain Hull continued to bob up and down, his linen underdrawers showing through the tear in his trousers. As
Guerriere
’s mast crashed across her rail, Hull waved a fist. “Huzzah, boys! We’ve made a brig of her! Next time we’ll make her a sloop!”

The British gunners still seemed unable to inflict much damage on
Constitution,
but the American fire was highly effective. As he passed shot and powder forward, the procedure almost automatic by now, Jared tried to figure out why.

When the smoke blew away enough to permit it, he studied
Guerriere
’s badly ripped hull, noting the exact moment at which her cannons went off. At last he saw the difference.

She tended to fire as she rolled upward on cresting waves. Hence the principal damage she did occurred aloft.
Constitution
’s gunners, on the other hand, usually fired on the down-roll, taking their toll on the enemy’s deck, and hulling her in the bargain.

A few more men aboard the American frigate had been wounded. Jared still avoided looking at them; the nausea, barely manageable, was with him every moment.

Except for the humiliating sickness—and a growing ache in his arms and shoulders—he did his job as if he’d been at it for years. The first few broadsides had terrified him. Now he hardly glanced up as the batteries roared.

Constitution
changed course again. She swept across
Guerriere
’s bow, then put her helm hard to larboard. Orders were barked—stand by for another broadside!

The frigate began to veer back before the wind. Her larboard gun crews readied their slow matches. Oliver Prouty swiped his face with his wrist, peering into the gray billows around the tops. “We got some of our braces shot away. She’s not falling off fast enough—”

The significance of that escaped Jared until a few moments later, when he heard alarmed cries aft. He whirled, squinted through the smoke—and saw a sight that froze him. Like the prow of a phantom ship materializing,
Guerriere
’s jib boom and bowsprit appeared in the smoke.

Prouty yelled, “She’s going to hit us—!”

The enemy’s bowsprit thrust against the American’s larboard stern quarter with a prolonged grinding noise. The impact splintered the taffrail and crushed the stem longboat.

Almost instantly, the British frigate dropped into
Constitution
’s wake—or tried. A man pointed. “She’s fouled on the mizzen rigging!”

A moment later, sheets of fire seemed to leap from
Constitution
’s fighting tops. The marines aloft raked the enemy’s deck with their rifles.

Tangled, the two ships bobbed on the swells, their rails not six feet apart. A voice screamed from the fore-top: “They’re preparing to board!”

Someone near
Constitution
’s wheel—Jared couldn’t see who—took quick action.
“Boarders away!”

“Come on, Jared!” Prouty exclaimed, pulling his friend aft.

They scrambled along the gangway amidships, men running behind and ahead of them; all except the few hands responsible for the sails had left their stations and headed for the cutlass racks.

The rifle fire from the tops thickened the smoke even more. Above the din, Jared heard men shriek aboard
Guerriere
as the marines hit their targets.

But the enemy, too, had sharpshooters aloft. A man just in front of Jared took a ball in the shoulder and pitched against the rail. Jared made the mistake of glancing at him. Blood stained the man’s blouse; big, bright patches of blood—

“Keep moving or you’ll be trampled!” Prouty screamed behind him, shoving. Jared dashed on.

They seized cutlasses from their assigned racks. A few yards aft near the larboard rail, Lieutenant Morris doubled over suddenly, gut-shot by a ball from a British pistol half a dozen feet away. A lieutenant of marines clambered up on
Guerriere
’s fouled bowsprit, searching the blowing smoke for his commanding officer:

“Captain Hull? Shall we boar—?”

A ball hit his forehead, drove him to the deck. Jared swallowed the bile in his mouth, closed his fingers tight around the cutlass hilt. At the enemy’s rail, he could see the British sailors milling. One side or the other would seize the advantage at any moment, and cross the bowsprit—