The Baltic Prize

Chapter 56

Just as soon as the Baltic Fleet had brought to, Admiral Hood went to Victory to report. And before he’d returned to his ship Tyger’s captain was summoned.

Saumarez was another man. Sprightly, alert and penetrating, he sat Kydd down and spoke crisply. ‘The Russian armament is now in Ragervik. We can’t see into it and we need to know its intentions, is it readying to sail against us and so forth.’

‘Yes, sir. As the Swedish fleet is not-’

‘Quite. Lose not a moment, if you please.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The two big islands effectively hid the well-sheltered anchorage in the crook of the bay and there was no alternative other than to sail in directly, make examination and leave by the southern exit, braving whatever lay inside – a storm of shot from a dozen battleships or cunningly placed iron-chain booms to rip the bottom out of questing scouts.

Kydd gave the orders that had Tyger wheel about southward into the entrance, then noticed Fenella, still obeying the last order to patrol the entrance. He’d go in alone, he’d decided: if Tyger was disabled or wrecked he didn’t want any hopeless attempt at rescue to end costing two ships.

‘To Fenella, “remain on station”,’ he threw at his signal crew and, without waiting for acknowledgement, set course round the island for the inner channel.

Almost immediately the top of the cliffs to the left and the round flank of the island erupted into fire: a fierce bombardment converging from both sides and within minutes the sea gouted and pocked with shot-strike.

‘Good God,’ Bray said, shaken. These were no common field guns but heavy pieces, coastal artillery in place for the purpose of destroying any who dared trespass within.

The storm grew wilder and Tyger began taking hits. The guns atop the cliffs to larboard with their increased height of eye could throw their shot far further and they were making the most of it, their massive balls tearing up the sea closer and closer as they ranged in.

Kydd took it in grimly. At this rate it was going to be a desperately run thing. Sooner or later a hit would do serious damage and, dead in the water, Tyger would be a sitting target. Yet there was no other course open to him, the task being so decisive.

A harsh crack sounded from forward – it was the foreyard, a shot taking a long gouge out of it towards the mid-line in a shower of splinters. It hung for a moment, then folded inwards and, driven by the wind, hung down, flogging the mast.

Tyger slewed off-course while men fought to control the tons’ weight of yard and rigging. No ship could survive in this and there was no point in trying to go further. Some other way had to be found to uncover the secrets of Ragervik.

The frigate wore around, making for the open sea.

‘We need to find somewhere to fish the yard,’ Kydd muttered. It was more to take time to think, rather than achieve the temporary repair to the foreyard. Without their information a strategic decision by Saumarez would be near impossible and-

‘Fenella’s leaving station,’ grunted Bray in surprise.

The brig-sloop had braced up and, for no clear reason, was making for the tip of the peninsula. She neared, then unaccountably put over her helm sharply to starboard to run down the line of cliffs, so close that her yards seemed to brush the white heights.

‘What the devil?’ said Kydd, taken aback by the nonsensical move.

‘I think I know,’ Bowden said sombrely.

‘Well?’

‘He’s going in under the guns.’

Of course! So close in to the cliff face the guns could not depress and could only fire harmlessly over the top of the plucky little ship – but at the risk of Fenella taking an uncharted rock or skerry in the shallows beneath. Bazely had nevertheless judged that the lesser draught of his brig would give him this chance and, with outrageous courage, was sweeping on into the inner anchorage.

He was disobeying orders, but who was Kydd to argue?

They couldn’t follow in a full-rigged frigate and looked on as the sloop disappeared behind the island. The muffled crump of guns sounded, rolling smoke appearing briefly above the island. It petered out and resumed further in. Fenella was getting through!

In a fury of impatience Kydd could only wait. Then he realised it was most likely that Fenella would emerge from the other side, the south. He snatched a glance forward – but the boatswain had things well in hand. Capstan bars had been hauled up into the fore-top and preparations were brought along to lash these lengthways around the foreyard at the split – to ‘fish’ the spar. It would serve in the short term until they could ship a new yard.

He willed Tyger on as she rounded the outer island in the opposite direction to position herself at the exit as Fenella emerged.

There was another fury of thuds, more roils of smoke snatched away by the wind.

And there she was! Missing her fore-topmast and sails riddled through, she limped into view – and in close chase were at least half a dozen lesser craft: cutters, luggers, yawls, enraged at the brig’s audacious penetration of their lair. At Tyger’s sudden appearance they turned tail and promptly disappeared.

‘She still has to put about, sir.’ Brice knew how these small craft handled and had his doubts. Fenella had to take up on the other tack in order to make way against the steady westerly, for a short distance ahead the shore of the mainland would force the issue.

The brig cautiously came up into the wind, the yards braced around but at ‘let go and haul’ disaster struck. With sails full and drawing once more, the mainsail boom gave way and in moments the big fore and aft sail was rent from top to bottom. Unbalanced, with all the headsails and square sails on the fore bearing her off to starboard, in an uncontrollable wallow, the brig was driven back against the island she was rounding.

There was not a thing Kydd could do except watch in dismay.

At first it seemed they had a chance. Immediately clawing into the wind the brig cleared the first point but as the lack of sail on aft told, she fell away, nearer and nearer the wicked bluffs towering up. They tended inwards for a short distance and then, inevitably, sprawled out again in a welter of broken rocks … and Fenella was carried bodily into the grotesque twist of crags that would be her grave for all of time.

Wrung with pity, Kydd’s first impulse was to send his boats to the rescue but stopped. This was a much graver situation than it first appeared. First, the coast was impossibly craggy and sheer. No one was going to get up that near vertical rock-face. Worse, the heaving sea at the base was studded with white-torn black rocks for some distance out – no boat could get in through those.

His mind raced over the common methods of rescue. A keg with a line attached, a raft. Launch them into the seas and float them in. One fatal flaw: the westerly was parallel with the shore and would carry them out of reach down the coast. And the same twist of rock that had taken Fenella would ensure they couldn’t be set in the water up-wind as they would be carried past well offshore.

It was heartbreaking. Safe and dry on Tyger’s deck, he must stand and watch while the gallant little brig was torn to pieces and her company drowned or battered to death as the seas rose. He could see them now, figures clinging to the canted side of their ship, staring out to where men still lived and breathed. After their bold and heroic deed, to meet their end in this way … Which one was Edmund Bazely?

He snatched Brice’s telescope and focused on the shoreline with a ferocious intensity. There had to be a way!

Not with that cursed twist of rock. It forced out anything to the point where it would drift in always out of reach. It was obvious that no boat could get in, but surely there had to be …

Yes. A running jackstay. A line secured somewhere in the rigging of the doomed vessel that would have a travelling block and strop running along it that sailors could grasp and be pulled to safety.

How to get the line to them? The same damnable problem – the line just couldn’t be floated in.

He resumed his scrutiny. The tangled rock, a brief patch of sand, a seaweed-covered rock-

Yes! If …

‘Mr Joyce. Take us in – we anchor in four fathoms, a whisker to weather of the rocky point.’ At this depth of water in these two-foot waves their keel would be scending no more than a few feet above that boulder-strewn sea-bed – but not more than a quarter-mile offshore.

While it was done, he worked out the rest.

The launch: under oars it could get to a point just to seaward of the fringing rocks, say a hundred and fifty yards and opposite the wreck of the Fenella. It would then throw out an anchor fore and aft and remain as a fixed point – a pierhead, in effect.

Get a line ashore and secured high in the rigging, then range it back to the launch’s mast step. That would be the means to bring out the sailors, lofted over the fiendish dark sunken rocks and back to the world of men.

‘Mr Bray – here’s what we have to do.’

The first lieutenant roared his orders with all the force of his pent-up frustration and men leaped to obey.

The launch was manned and lines, tackle and blocks thrown aboard. Bray boarded.

On impulse, Kydd joined him in the sternsheets. ‘Carry on, Mr Bray,’ he said, to his surprised first lieutenant, who made room for him, setting the boat under oars and heading in.

‘Bit of a current,’ he muttered, working the tiller irritably. It had to be seas swirling around the point, which were meeting their bows and going on to push them off course, but it triggered a prickling apprehension in Kydd.

On the wreck, men saw them approaching and figures raised themselves out of their stupor. Arms waved but some simply stared vacantly.

Fifty yards off, they were nearing the foaming outer crags. They could go no further.

The kedge anchor plunged in at the bows and quickly caught – but the launch immediately slewed about to face into the current and Kydd’s presentiment returned in full force. With a sickening certainty he watched the bowman secure a light line to the small keg and cast it into the sea well up against the current flow – then saw it whisked downstream and away before it could make its way inshore to a small group of Fenellas stumbling and reaching.

In an agony of impossibility Kydd took in the second try, the bowman’s arm wrenching in pain at the effort. And one more, two.

His mind replayed a scene from another place, another time – the Devon coast, a forlorn wreck with men clinging to it, his doomed attempt to get a line to them, the hours of trying, the cruel and bleak finality, bodies washing in the breakers.

Within a hundred yards, the figures on Fenella’s carcass were now unmoving, still. They would know in their hearts that all that could be done had been played through, and now they must face their end while others looked on, utterly helpless.

There – on the crazily canted quarterdeck – a lone figure, struggling upright. It was waving, but not in farewell. A deliberate gesture, repeated. Crossed arms over the breast – the naval distant signal to belay, to secure, to abandon.

It had to be Bazely. In his last hour, telling them it was hopeless and to save themselves.

Hot tears pricked Kydd’s eyes. That he must now be witness to his friend’s death – it was too much and a ragged lump of misery formed.

Suddenly, like a madman, he flung himself forwards to the bowman, who stood still, stricken. He snatched at the line and brought it in furiously hand over hand until the keg bumped at the gunwale. He slashed at the lashing and when the thin line was free, stripped to his shirt and breeches, fumbling for his belt, tying the rope in a bowline to it, sliding the result around to the small of his back.

‘S-sir?’ the man said, bewildered.

Kydd could say nothing, still choked by emotion. Ignoring him, in one awkward move he twisted over the side and into the sea.

The water was bitterly cold and took his breath away.

No real swimmer, he struck out for his life, angling high up into the deadly current, aware of vague shouting from the boat. He didn’t care, crazily stroking as if pursued by all the demons of Hell.

Salt stung his eyes as waves seethed over him, the cold reaching deep, paralysing. The shore was getting nearer but it was a tiny, precious patch of sand he had to reach or his despairing mission would finish in the victorious, surging sea, eviscerating him among the jagged outcrops.

A glancing blow to his leg shocked him and he saw that he’d been carried down past his landing spot. In a frenzied, all-or-nothing bid he redoubled his thrashing but his limbs were now lead weights and he felt himself tiring, flagging. He struck out wildly in a last desperate flailing – but was knocked askew by his arm nearly being wrenched from its socket. Disoriented, he tried to make sense of it but then the other arm was gripped and he was pulled bodily forwards – a sailor clutched by others had gone into the sea and laid hold of him.

Utterly exhausted he could do nothing as he was manhandled into the shallows and flopped over. And staring down at him, eyes feverish and caring was Bazely. ‘You chuckle-headed simkin!’ he croaked. ‘A gooney juggins who thinks to-’ His face suddenly contorted and he looked away.

There was fumbling at the line at his back. ‘It’s a jackstay,’ Kydd choked. ‘Take it to your shrouds … travelling block … over the rocks.’

Bazely stopped him. ‘As if I’ve never heard o’ how to rig such!’ he growled, then added, in a low voice, ‘Leave it t’ me now, Tom. Ye’ve done your piece.’

He tore off his coat and tenderly wrapped it around Kydd. ‘Things t’ do, cuffin, will get back.’