The Blackbirder

Chapter 22

The closer they drew to the French Indiaman, the grimmer things looked. Marlowe had purposely sent no flags aloft until they had smoked the stranger’s identity. Once they had, he ran French colors aloft, fore, main, and mizzen. It did not appear to have fooled them.

The two ships had closed to a mile or so when the Indiaman began to casually reduce her spread of canvas to fighting sail. The studding sails disappeared first, and though they were not doused with any sort of breathtaking speed, neither was the evolution the kind of slow and clumsy work that would indicate a small or poorly trained crew.

Topgallants after that, with hands sent aloft to stow, and then the mainsail was hauled up in its gear. It was all unhurried, almost leisurely, like a confident duelist who carefully removes his coat and waistcoat and sets them down with care, certain he will be putting them on again soon.

The Elizabeth Galleys watched this and they were not immune to the effect.

Not that the men who sailed under Marlowe were wanting in courage, not at all. But being ordered into battle was one thing, being able to choose one’s fight was another, and the closer they drew, the bigger and more imposing the Indiaman looked, and the less certain they became.

“She is a monstrous thing,” Bickerstaff noted. He and Marlowe were at the weather rail on the quarterdeck and not aft in their private place. The time for privacy was past. “Are they all so big?”

“Generally. Not much protection from the navy in the East Indies, and quite a bit of danger. There are the native pirates, of course, and the Great Mogul’s navy. And now these fellows on the Pirate Round, sailing out of New York and Newport and such and taking whatever they can lay hands on. Thomas Tew’s successes there in ninety-four have quite inspired those of an adventurous mind.”

“Sailors from the American colonies? Taking prizes with never a letter of marque?”

“Shocking, ain’t it?” Marlowe agreed.

“Thomas Tew, if I am not mistaken, died while holding his guts in place with his own hands, trying to replicate his famous voyage.”

“True enough, but those of an adventurous bent understand that such things could not happen to them.”

Marlowe looked forward at the grim men standing by their guns. He wondered how many of them thought they were impervious to French iron. Not many, he imagined, not anymore. Given the chance, he reckoned a solid majority would now vote to turn and run, but none of them down there was going to be the one to broach the subject, and neither was he. The die was cast.

“How do you think she is armed?” Bickerstaff asked. His was an active mind. Marlowe thought that if Bickerstaff was about to be shot in the head he would be wondering about the make of the gun, the merits of firearms over cold steel, the physiological aspects of a bullet tearing through flesh.

“Probably eighteen-pounders. Perhaps twenty-fours. I think I count twelve gunports.”

“Indeed? Heavy armament, to be sure. Much heavier than ours. Have they the men to work those big guns?”

“Good question. That might be their weakness. You see, for all their arms and man-of-war styling and such, East India companies-and this is true of all of them-are still merchantmen, which means they are parsimonious to a fault. They’ll keep crews as small as ever they can to save on wages, so it is possible that their guns make a great show, but they do not have the crews to work them.”

“If that is the case, then, this should not be a bloody day for us. Either broadsides or boarding, we should have them.”

“We should. Unfortunately, the Indiamen are often used to transport troops. If that is the case she could be packed with men. Trained fighting men.”

“Which could explain her apparent disregard of the potential threat we pose.”

“Yes it could. And damned insulting it is, I might add. I think she should be quite terrified of us.”

If the Indiaman was in fact terrified, she continued to do an admirable job of hiding the fact. The Elizabeth Galley, with all plain sail set, and studding sails to weather, ran down fast on her, but she made no attempt to run, no attempt to gain the weather gauge, no attempt to defend herself beyond reducing down to fighting sail. It was making Marlowe’s men very nervous indeed.

They were no more than a quarter of a mile apart when Marlowe saw something flash on the Indiaman’s side. He put his glass to his eye. They had opened gunports and run out the great guns. Marlowe shook his head. Now what?

“Studding sails in! Clew up topgallants and mainsail!”

That was the first thing. Now what?

They had to exchange broadsides, at least two. That would tell Marlowe how well manned they were, whether he should consider boarding, or standing off in an artillery duel, or throwing up his hands and running for the horizon.

“Get those Frenchy colors down, run up the English,” he called. “Sail trimmers, stand by. Gunners, a broadside on my command…”

He looked aloft. The French colors were coming down, those of Old England on their way up. Do this thing proper, he thought.

The English ensign hit the main truck. “Larboard your helm!” Marlowe called, and the Elizabeth Galley swung off. “Sail trimmers, meet her…fire!”

The larboard broadside went off in one great blast. The deck shook like an earthquake under their feet, the thick smoke swirled and rolled downwind, and the men, well trained by now, fell to loading again.

Marlowe saw shot fall around the Frenchman and two at least strike the high-sided ship. Now the Indiaman was turning to starboard as well, bringing her broadside to bear. More and more of her high side was revealed as she turned. Marlowe counted gunports. Fourteen per side, not twelve.

The Frenchman fired. Marlowe saw the smoke through the glass, spurting from fourteen muzzles, and he whipped the glass from his eye as the noise of the broadside and the whistle of iron and the heavy fusillade all reached the Elizabeth Galley together. Round shot whipped past, punched holes in the sails, slammed into the side of the ship, tore sections of bulwark free.

“Damn my eyes!” Marlowe said in surprise. Well aimed, and heavy shot. Twenty-four-pounders. They had to be.

“Frenchy’s tacking, sir!” Fleming called out.

The Frenchman was still turning, her bow pointing right at the Galley’s waist, and the faster of the Galley’s gun crews were able to get off racking shots, but Marlowe did not think they would do much good.

The Indiaman’s sails came aback and they hauled main and mizzen around, and despite Marlowe’s fervent wish that they should miss stays and get hung in irons, they completed their turn through the wind.

The Frenchman’s larboard broadside now came around to bear on the Elizabeth Galley and the two ships fired nearly at once, the Galley’s fire ragged, uncoordinated, with the crews loading and firing at their best speed, the Frenchman’s all as one, the preloaded guns throwing out a wall of smoke and flame and iron.

A shot hit the ship’s bell in a great clanking and screaming blast of metal. “Damn it!” Marlowe shouted, and when he saw that none of his men had been felled by the spray of shrapnel, he added, “Bloody thing cost thirteen bloody pounds!”

Two cable lengths separated the ships as they passed, the Frenchman having tacked and begun clawing her way to windward, the Elizabeth Galley still running with the wind between two sheets.

“Now we shall see how well she is manned,” Marlowe said to Bickerstaff. “See how quick she can load those fine, big guns.”

And then, as if answering that question specifically, the great guns rolled out again and fired, all fourteen at once. The section of bulwark between numbers five and seven guns was knocked flat and number seven was overturned, half the gun crew blown apart in the blast, the rest slipping on their mates’ blood as they tried to flee from the loose gun barrel.

The stay tackle was severed, and the big fiddle block plunged down onto the main hatch and dropped one of the powder monkeys as he ran for the scuttle. The fore brace was likewise parted and the foreyard swung away at a crazy angle.

“Hands aloft! Reeve off a new brace there!” Marlowe shouted, and then in a low voice he said, “Well, my dear Francis, they’ve no dearth of men aboard, it would seem.”

“I should say not.” The Elizabeth Galley was firing back, firing fast and true. Marlowe could see the wood flying in sprays of deadly splinters as the shot struck home, could see the holes in the sails, the bits of rigging hanging free. But it was still the Elizabeth Galley’s six twelve-pounders per side versus the Frenchman’s fourteen twenty-fours. If the Elizabeth Galleys did not get lucky, they would not survive the day alive and free.

“Sail trimmer! Stand by to brace up, larboard tack! Starboard your helm!” The Elizabeth Galley began her turn, swinging her bow toward the Frenchman, coming around on a parallel course. “Gunners! Starboard battery!”

Marlowe paced the quarterdeck watching his men in the waist, the sails overhead, the enemy across the stretch of deep blue sea. How long had this battle lasted? Ten minutes? Was it just ten minutes ago that the two ships had been sailing in the lovely quiet of a ship at sea, just the water rushing down the side, the occasional squeak of a block or thump of the rudder?

Ten minutes and their whole world had changed. Now ears were ringing with the blast of cannon, decks ran red with blood, the air was choked with gunpowder smoke and the sound of flying metal and the shouts of the living and the screams of the dying. From one world to the next. And what would be the next world after that?

The forwardmost gun on the Galley’s larboard side came to bear and the gunners fired, and then the next and the next, but from the Frenchman, nothing. Their gunners were taking orders from an officer, and that officer chose to fire in broadsides, and he was waiting.

He did not wait long. The Elizabeth Galley’s bow came around, just past the midsection of the Indiaman when they fired again. It was the full broadside, shot almost down the Galley’s centerline, a terrible, racking fire.

Marlowe saw men flung into the air and come down in broken heaps on top of the guns. A ball plowed through the main shrouds and parted three of them like spunyard, and he heard the mast groan and settle. The number-one gun was on its side, on top of its swabber, but the man was happily dead.

And then Marlowe was spinning around and falling and then he was on the deck, dazed, looking up. He breathed, breathed again, did a mental inventory of his parts. He was alive. Something had knocked him down but he was alive.

He rolled over, pushed himself up, shouted in agony, and collapsed to the deck again. He turned his head, looked at his right arm. It was still part of him, but the angle was not right. Just below the elbow. It was not supposed to bend that way.

Bickerstaff appeared above him, reaching down. “Thomas, Thomas, are you all right? Are you hit?”

“Damned arm is broken. Here, help me up.”

Bickerstaff grabbed him under the arms, pulled him to his feet. He was as gentle as he could be, but still it was agony. Marlowe let his arm droop at his side as he surveyed the destruction on deck.

We can’t take much more of this, he thought. We’ll board. We’ll board and take our chances. There is nothing else for it.

Then overhead came a low groan and Marlowe had the notion that someone was groaning in pain nearby. He looked up but did not see anyone. And then the groaning grew louder, higher in pitch, and with it came a snapping of wood, a popping of cordage, as standing rigging and running rigging were torn apart.

The fore topmast leaned heavily to one side, as if it was drunk or trying to peer around something. The sail collapsed, half aback. A backstay parted, whipped free, knocking a man to the deck, and then the whole thing-topmast, topsail yard, topgallant, and topgallant yard, with all their attendant rigging and sails and hardware-toppled forward and to starboard, crashing down half on the deck, half in the sea, a great tangled broken heap of detritus that draped over half the forward part of the ship and made her spin up to windward, entirely out of control.

“Larboard battery, keep firing!” Marlowe shouted. His arm was useless, throbbing in pain, but he tried to ignore it. “Keep firing! Never mind the wreckage! Sail trimmers, cut that away. Cut those shrouds free, the fore topmast stay, cut it free!”

They were helpless now. If the Frenchman chose to stand off and pound them to kindling, they could do so. If they chose to board so as to not further injure their prize, they could do that as well.

We have to pound them, pound the bastards, Marlowe thought. Hit them hard enough and perhaps they’ll lose their taste for the fight. Perhaps we’ll score a lucky hit, like they did.

In the waist, furious activity. The gunners were working their guns like crazed men, swabbing, ramming, running out, laying, and firing. They knew the score. They knew how helpless they really were, how vital it was now that they show they still had teeth.

Men swarmed over the wreckage, hacking at the still intact rigging with axes, cutlasses, sheath knives, whatever they could. Even with the topmast shot away they might be able to sail the Galley, enough to keep their broadsides bearing on the enemy, but as long as the wreckage was dragging alongside they were immobile.

“I believe they have had enough.”

Marlowe looked up. Bickerstaff was standing beside him, hands clasped behind his back. He looked like he was addressing a rhetoric class.

“What?”

“The Indiaman.” Bickerstaff pointed with his chin.

The Indiaman had fallen off, turned back to her original heading, the one she had been on when they first spotted her, running before the wind.

“Hold your fire!” Marlowe shouted, and the guns fell silent and then all along the Elizabeth Galley’s deck the men were silent as they watched.

“She’ll come around again!” Fleming interjected. He had taken a glancing blow on the scalp from a splinter and the blood ran down his cheek and matted in his hair, and though the wound was superficial Fleming looked like he might die at any moment.

“She’ll come around, lay off our quarter, pound us to slivers.” There was no fear or anger or panic in the mate’s voice. It was just an observation.

But it was wrong. The Frenchman did not turn, did not bring her other guns to bear, did not heave to where the Elizabeth Galley’s guns could not reach and pound away.

Rather, she settled back on her old heading. Her guns ran in; her mainsail tumbled from the yard and was sheeted home. Topmen raced away aloft and loosened off the topgallants.

“The impudent dog!” Marlowe exclaimed. He tried to point at the Indiaman, for emphasis, forgetting his broken arm until he raised it up. He felt the pain shoot through him. He gasped and let it drop again. “Can’t even be bothered with us! Like we were some trifling annoyance.”

“If you would rather they come back and murder us all, I could go ask under flag of truce,” Bickerstaff suggested.

“No, no, I suppose we’ll let him go.” Marlowe was feeling buoyant, despite the pain.

He watched as the Frenchman set her topsails once again. Lord, he thought, how long can luck like this hold out?