The Baltic Prize

Chapter 57

‘He’s safe, b’gob!’ the master breathed.

Brice snatched back his telescope and looked for himself. ‘Praise be, an’ he is.’

Mr Midshipman Rowan forced himself to a calm. In the drama of the moment, the captain had thrown himself into the sea, a famous and important frigate captain. Why hadn’t he called for volunteers or some such? He certainly now had enough salty yarns about service at sea with the legendary Captain Kydd to keep the boys at the naval school in thrall for hours.

He was allowed a peep through the glass. It was confusing at first: the sagging wreck with figures crawling on it, the web of rigging hanging down in a tangle. Then he saw that the tackle was hauled in and being fastened high up in the shrouds, a single impossibly thin line in a catenary curve above the rocks and down to the launch. This was seamanship of the highest order and he watched in awe before Lieutenant Bowden claimed the glass.

Soaring above the rocks, then splashing into the sea, the first man was hauled in to the launch. Tyger’s barge and cutter were on hand to ferry batches of rescued men back from the pierhead to the frigate, but for some reason the first survivor was brought straight aboard Tyger.

‘Respec’s from Commander Bazely an’ he’s got news f’r the admiral as won’t wait,’ the man panted.

Bowden stepped forward. ‘You have intelligence for the commander-in-chief?’

‘The Russkies – they’ve moored fore ’n’ aft, sent down topmasts, unbent canvas. They’s going nowhere, he thinks. And f’r numbers, he says-’

‘Thank you, we’ll get this to Admiral Saumarez this hour. Mr Brice, take away the pinnace and report to flag without delay.’

Brice bellowed for the boat’s crew and, seeing Rowan, beckoned to him. ‘You have the boat, Mr Rowan.’

A stab of fear and excitement seized him. For the first time he was to act the real sailor in a mission of war!

Heart in his mouth, he swung over to the rope-ladder and down into the pinnace as fast as he could manage, seamen’s hands reaching up to steady him as he boarded and took up position in the sternsheets. Feverishly he went over the routines: check the rudder was secure in its pintles, the tiller ropes led fair, the bottom boards in place out of the way.

‘Prove the bowman!’ he piped, as authoritatively as he could.

The man forward raised his hand. ‘Aye aye,’ he called.

‘Prove stroke!’

The seaman throwing off the lashing of the main-sheet tackle looked up at him in surprise.

Of course – they were going out under sail. ‘Very good. Carry on,’ he managed.

There were other matters – the mast raised to its step, simple stays rigged, tacks laid along.

Lieutenant Brice clambered in with the Fenella seaman.

‘Carry on, sir?’ Rowan asked breathlessly.

‘Do, please.’

‘Bear off forrard!’ The boat took up with a bang and flap of stout canvas but sheeted in fast and, with a merry chuckle of water under its stem, curved away.

‘Sir, around the island to the west’d?’ Rowan asked diffidently.

‘Which way’s the quickest?’

‘To the west, sir,’ Rowan came back, in a small voice.

Brice said nothing, raising his eyebrows and looking at him quizzically.

Rowan understood. This was the navy: his was the command and therefore his were the decisions.

With the tiller tucked familiarly under his arm he shaped course for the westernmost end of the low, scrubby and oddly green-banded grey cliffs. The sails were drawing well and needed little tending and, with the steady westerly, he could hold a firm heading and listen as Brice questioned the seaman. It would be the lieutenant who would see the admiral, having drawn together all information into a methodical narrative.

The furthest extent of the little headland was coming up, and after rounding it, there would be only a brisk going about, then a quick beat up the island to the open sea beyond – and the Baltic Fleet. To have completed a task of war, however humble – it was a first time for him.

He was close enough to the bleak shore now and yelled importantly, ‘Ready about!’

But as he stood to throw over the tiller his world went mad.

From the island came a shout and then he heard a fusillade of musket shots, which whipped and shrieked about him. Gouts of water were thrown up and he heard the slap of balls through canvas followed by the gurgle and cry of a wounded man.

Instinctively he put down the tiller and the boat began to slew about but at the same time Brice stood up to go to the wounded man’s aid and as he did so the clew block of the flogging main caught him on the side of the head and he dropped senseless into the bottom of the boat.

His mind frozen with shock, Rowan stood unmoving while the boat completed its turn through the eye of the wind. The sight of the wildly flogging foresail brought him round. ‘Tacks ’n’ sheets!’ he cried, the men’s white faces all his way as they scrambled to obey.

It steadied him, the simple naval order, the routine of it all.

The pinnace obediently took up on the new tack and laid out agreeably to seaward.

The air was still alive with the vicious whaaap of bullets any one of which could end everything in the blink of an eye. It was a paralysing thought and, for a terror-stricken few seconds, he waited for it to happen, but he thought he’d better get on with things while he was still in this world.

He drew the tiller over and the boat fell off the wind slightly but now they were end on to the muskets ashore, a much smaller target even if he himself was still exposed.

‘Trim your sheets, then,’ he chided the main-sheets hand, and then to the Fenella seaman ordered, ‘You, go and see to the lieutenant.’ He called down the boat, ‘How’s that man who was hit?’

‘Not good, sir,’ one of the seamen forward returned. ‘In the guts an’ choking.’

In a ludicrous surge of warmth he took in the simple fact that the sailor had called him ‘sir’, the first time any of them had freely done so. He gulped back the wash of pleasure and, with guilty urgency, called back, ‘Find the boat’s bag and make him as comfortable as you can.’

The man was apparently severely injured. He should return to Tyger and get the doctor to him before it was too late. About to give orders for a gybe about, a contradictory thought slammed in. They were on a mission of importance, of imperatives. Was it right to abandon it for the sake of saving a life?

Everything in him wanted to get the man to care and attention, to be in time to stop the precious mortality ebbing away. He’d never seen a man die and here he was, contemplating being the cause of it. It was unfair – back in Guildford lads his age were still sitting at their desks construing verbs and such without a care in the world beyond the next half-holiday.

But he was an officer. This was what they did. Captain Kydd would want no less than a grown-up and deliberate decision. And it was to go on under a full press of sail and finish the job.

‘Bowse in that foresheet,’ he threw at the crew forward. Every knot counted now.

It was less than an hour up the dreary coast and then, passing beyond the last point, into view came the Baltic Fleet in all its glory.

He found the flagship and was soon lying off the huge bulk of the fabled Victory.

‘Boat ahoooy!’ came a hail from the upper deck.

In the pinnace, the bowman didn’t hesitate. ‘Aye aye!’ he bawled back, the indication that there was an officer in the boat that needed due receiving.

Into the massive lee of the first-rate Rowan brought the pinnace around and, as though under eye from Nelson himself, to a faultless alongside at the side-steps and chains.

‘How is he?’ he hissed urgently, at the man tending Brice.

‘Still out to it, sir.’

There was no alternative so Mr Midshipman Rowan swung out of the pinnace and mounted the side-steps, entering the middle gun-deck of the battleship through the ornate boarding port.

‘Good God! What’s the meaning of this, you rogue?’ spluttered the receiving officer, utterly taken off guard by the appearance of a young gentleman at the port instead of a full-rigged officer.

‘Intelligence. For the commander-in-chief, sir.’

‘You dare to-’

‘As ordered by him as not to lose a moment.’

At the man’s mingled outrage and confusion, he added, ‘We took fire. The lieutenant was knocked senseless and I carry the intelligence myself. Admiral Saumarez will be anxious to hear it, I’m persuaded, sir.’

‘If this is your prank, you’ll-’

‘And I’d be much obliged, sir, if the unconscious officer and the grievously injured seaman in my boat receive the attention they deserve.’

Rowan was conducted through the great ship to the admiral’s day cabin.

‘Sir, a midshipman of Tyger, who insists to lay an intelligence before you,’ the officer said doubtfully.

‘Well?’ Admiral Saumarez frowned.

Before such majesty Rowan’s new-found confidence fled. If the captain of a ship was a lord, an admiral a prince, then a commander-in-chief was an emperor, who was glaring down on him, the lowliest of the low.

‘M-my lieutenant lies wounded. I r-report in his p-place …’ Sir Thomas might have phrased it more elegantly but he got it out and was gratified to see the great man ease and perceptibly turn benign.

‘A right handsome report, Mr Rowan. You’ll want to return to your ship now, I believe.’