A Sea Unto Itself (35 page)

*****.

The wind did not change immediately. Cassandra sighted Cape Mohammed at dawn the next morning. High and forbidding, its deeply ravined scarps gleamed golden in the beams of the rising sun. The sky had changed its mood, turning a deep red to the east. The narrow passage into the Gulf of Suez for the moment lay darkened in the shadow of Mount Sinai. By the end of the morning watch, the cape glided past to starboard, a few small islands and the arid heights of Egypt easily visible on the port side. After cruising the center of the Red Sea with its unbounded horizons, the space seemed dangerously confined with little room for error. Charles ordered a man in the forechains with a lead to take soundings as they went. The depths proved ample, but any veer in the wind would present him with a nasty shore under his lee in the blink of an eye.

The sky turned overcast as the morning wore on, lowering clouds skimming the tops of the mountains to port. Charles looked to Cromley by the wheel and received a confirming nod in return. To Bevan he said, “Get the topgallants and courses in. We’ll proceed under the topsails. Have the best bower cast loose and the cable bent on in the event we must come to anchor.”

“Aye, aye,” the answer came in ready agreement.

With the topmen still aloft, the air deadened, the wind falling away. “Lively there; lively!” Charles heard the boatswain shouting upward. There was a note of anxiety in his voice.

The first gust came across the highlands to the west with surprising force. Charles could actually see it, a dark smudge of dust and grit blown sideways off the ridge tops. “Get all the canvas off except the foretopsail,” he said to Bevan. To Cromley: “Put the helm over. Bring her head into the wind.” There was little wind as yet, but there soon would be more. It came as Cassandra was only beginning her turn, a gust like the punch of a fist, carrying a cloud of sand and pieces of brush across the deck with stinging force. The ship heeled sharply with the onslaught and her head immediately began to fall off. Charles turned his back to the wind to protect his face and eyes from the flying debris. The sea surface had churned to a seething froth in an instant. He had to shout to gain Bevan’s attention. “Let go the anchor!”

Bevan nodded that he understood and waved his arm repeatedly to Winchester who had gone into the bow with a party of men. Charles did not hear the splash as the heavy hook pierced the sea surface, but he saw the cable race out the hawse. He felt through the deck as the thing bit, dragged, and bit again. Charles stood tensely still, holding his breath while the wind howled around him, feeling with his feet whether it would hold. After a moment he breathed easier.

As soon as it had settled from the west, abating its force, the wind shifted to the south again; then east of south with a feeble gust. Cassandra swung dutifully on her cable in response. By mid-afternoon it dropped altogether and rain began in a thunderous downpour, turning the grit-covered decks a muddy brown, which quickly ran out in small rivers through the scuppers. Charles stayed on the deck in his sodden clothes enjoying the blood-warm tempest, the first precipitation he had experienced since entering the Red Sea. The clouds parted in the late afternoon, and then they vanished, the sun raising trails of steam off the warming deck boards. The wind, when it started up soon after, came just from west of north, straight down the gulf. The change in the seasons had begun. Charles knew that whatever plans the French might have would be put into motion as soon as they found themselves ready.

*****.

With a contrary breeze in the narrow waterway it took a full two days of tacking and tacking again to cover the last ninety miles to Zafarana. The landing place proved a desolate little cluster of barely a half dozen huts beside a treeless wadi now running full with water down from the rugged hills behind.

“Remember, Mr. Jones, the twelfth of August at the place we agreed to, and not a day later if you can help it,” Charles said. The two women had already been lowered into the cutter waiting alongside, dressed in loose black gowns with headscarves that covered their faces. Jones himself wore his customary baggy white covering and turban. Charles wondered for a moment at the man’s mission and his methods and what perils he might expect to encounter.

“And I’ll thank you to be prompt,” Jones said tersely. “It may be that we’ll need to be taken off in a hurry.”

“We’ll be there,” Charles answered. “You may count on it.”

Jones swung out onto the sidesteps. He paused before starting down. “One more thing: Do you recall that ship which sighted us while you were dallying unnecessarily at the rendezvous north of Koessir?”

“She may not have picked us out,” Charles said. “It’s unlikely she did.”

Jones assumed an expression as if speaking to a truant child. “But if she did, her captain would have reported it when he came into port.”

“I suppose so. What of it?”

“Don’t be slow,” Jones said. “You must continue up to the port at Suez and make a show of spying out the harbor. Otherwise, if they see you coming back down they’ll wonder what you were up to. They’re not stupid; they’ll put two and two together.”

Charles thought that Jones was being cautious to the point of paranoia. Still, it made some sense. He had come this far, it would be useful to be able to report on any French preparations at the very head of the sea. “All right,” he said. It came to him that there would be a small problem, but something he could manage.

Jones finally went down the side. “Give way all,” Charles heard Beechum order the cutter’s crew. On the shore he noticed two men in Arab dress emerge from one of the huts to meet the boat as it was pulled up onto a small strip of sand. Jones stepped out first, then the women. Without looking around they disappeared with their hosts back into the hut. Charles shook his head and returned to the quarterdeck.

“Please see that the cutter is brought inboard and secured as soon as she is alongside,” Charles said to Winchester. He turned to the sailing master. “We will resume northward to Suez.”

Cromley nodded. “Suez? Yes, sir,” he said.

“Suez, Charlie?” Bevan interjected. “Why do you want to go to Suez?”

“To see what the French are up to. Also, Jones requested it.”

“What about your promise to the crew?”

“Two days, Daniel. That’s all it will take. We’ll just have a look into the harbor then turn south. I think we will have a gander at Koessir on our way down the sea so that we can make a complete report to Admiral Blankett in Mocha.”

Bevan’s eyes narrowed as the cutter was hoisted up over the side to be stowed in its place midships on the beams over the gundeck with the other ship’s boats. “I don’t know about this,” he said. “The crew are expecting . . .”

“I’ll fix it,” Charles answered.

Augustus appeared a moment later. Charles had sent him to move his belongings back into his own cabin the moment the Joneses had decamped. “They done left all of their things all over the place like they was expectin’ to be right back,” he said unhappily. “I don’t think they thought you’d be usin’ it.”

“Throw it all in a sack,” Charles answered. ‘Then have it struck to the hold.”

*****.

“No, sir. We ain’t havin’ it; not one bit,” Thomas Sherburne insisted. “Ye promised to take us south
 

direct.”

“I know, and we will,” Charles said, trying to sound reasonable. “But the situation has changed. It’s only to look into the port so see what’s there.” Charles had summoned Sherburne onto the quarterdeck as the spokesman for the crew. He intended to explain what he was about to do, and that it would only delay them for a day or two, so as to forestall any discontent or further refusals of
 
orders.

“I don’t know,” the able seaman said. “Me mates won’t be likin’ it. They been too long aboard already. Goin’ back is all they talk about.”

“I’ll make it up to them. It’ll just be a quick look from a distance. There’ll be no fighting or anything else to delay us after. You tell them I said that.”

“Well, I suppose . . .” The words came out with the greatest of reluctance.

“Thank you,” Charles said.

Suez proved a heat-baked little port with a few dozen buildings shimmering in a sea of sand all around. A crumbling castle guarded the harbor close in. Through his glass Charles saw the French tricolor fluttering from its single tower. The approaches were a maze of bars and shoals, hardly suitable for deep sea craft. He saw no sign of anything like a buildup of transports for India or, more particularly, any French warships. He doubted that a seventy-four could make her way in if she wanted to.

“We will put to across the mouth of the harbor, if you please, Mr. Cromley,” Charles said. “Then you may come about and we shall depart.”

“Yes, sir. That’s it then, just the look?” Cromley asked.

“It was more to be seen than to see,” Charles said with some satisfaction. “Our work here is finished. The next port of call will be Mocha.”

Cromley nodded agreeably, then called for the boatswain to have the sails trimmed and the yards hauled. Charles noted signs of animation among the men as they took up the halyards or started aloft, the first he’d seen since putting Jones on land. Cassandra glided slowly across the entrance to the port, a mile from the shore, and what must certainly be in full view of the castle. As if to confirm this, a single puff of smoke appeared from its battlements, followed shortly by the distant report of a cannon and a smallish fountain in the sea a cable’s length to port. A six-pounder, Charles thought, from the size of the splash. It would be an army field gun and little threat to him. Disdainfully, his ship turned her stern landward and slipped away.

With a following wind, they made short work of the Gulf of Suez. Cromley had a firm idea of the deep channels and Cassandra sailed large, approaching the straits to the main body of the Red Sea early in the middle watch the next day. Charles felt pleased. If the breeze held constant he could expect to reach Mocha in a week’s time. Better, he had resumed sleeping in his own bed, in his own cabin. All was right with the world, or at least as best as could be expected under the circumstances. It came as something of a concern, therefore, when he saw Midshipman Hitch running along the gangway from forward. “There’s the Frenchie frigate t’other side of the passage,” the boy shouted breathlessly, still a distance away.

“Who sighted her?” Charles said as the boy came to a stop.

“Giles, the lookout in the foremast, sir,” Hitch managed. “He says she’s hove to, waiting like. The same what we had with all these times.”

Charles swore under his breath. The midshipman had made his report loud enough to be heard by half the men on board. He knew immediately why the frigate was there. The polacre they’d seen making for Koessir five days earlier had indeed sighted Cassandra's masts and reported it. L'Agile had been dispatched to search him out, guessed or knew that he’d gone up the gulf, and had bottled up the exit to await his return. Charles realized that he was in trouble. It wasn’t the frigate that concerned him—he thought he could contest with her on equal terms if the crew were willing. But would they be willing? He saw the answer marching across the waist toward the ladderway to the quarterdeck; Sherburne and two others with a growing collection of men behind, all scowling angrily and shaking their heads.

“Damnation,” he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Charles needed time to think; there was no time. With the wind as it was there would be no going back up the gulf, and no point to it anyway. He’d have to come out sooner or later. Should he press on with as much sail as Cassandra could carry and hope to slip past in a mad race for Mocha? No, L'Agile was the faster ship. He called up in his mind the narrow passage between the gulf and the Red Sea, with reef-encircled islands on one side and reef-encrusted shoals on the other. The straits were too narrow for maneuver. The Frenchman would rake him repeatedly at an ever shortening range as he bore down. If his masts were somehow miraculously undamaged and he slipped by in one direction or another, she would run him down, yawing to fire her broadsides into his stern until he was crippled. They had to fight; it was their best chance; it was their only chance. More than that, it was the opportunity to close, yardarm to yardarm, where gunnery would tell.

He looked again at the men collecting at the ladderway to the gundeck. Ayres’marines held them back from storming upwards. Surely he could reason with them; they would have to see that it was their best course. Damn them all anyway. What did they expect him to do? He went forward to the ladderway.

"We ain’t stopping to have at that Frenchie," a man shouted at him before he even reached the forepart of the quarterdeck. Bevan bellowed over the din for order. Winchester had his sword drawn. Charles raised his hands for silence so that he could speak. “Ye give us yer word, no fightin’,” a man near the head of the ladderway called out. “We sail past,” another yelled, attempting to out shout the first.