A Sea Unto Itself (38 page)

Sherburne looked uncertain. “’Twarn’t nothin’, sur,” he mumbled. Then his eyes narrowed to slits and he smiled. “I’m sure ye and t‘other officers could have did it yerselfs if we’d let ye be.” There was laughter at this, and more when Charles said, “It would have taken us a trifle longer.”

He turned serious. “I will increase everyone’s ration of spirits at supper this evening by half. That’s little enough.” Some nodded and there were murmurs of appreciation. He waited for silence. “I want all you to know what I am going to do next, so that you may be prepared for it.” He spoke for several minutes about transporting the French crew ashore; the necessity of sailing by Koessir to spy out any preparations there and to pass on a message as to where the frigate’s crew could be found. After that he promised to make directly for Mocha, if they met no further obstacles, and if no other event occurred that their duty would require them to attend to. The gathering around him grew in number. Charles explained matter-of-factly that Admiral Blankett had expressly forbidden their presence on shore at their last visit. “I will request it again, in the strongest terms,” he said. “If he refuses, I will resign my commission in protest and he will have to appoint someone else to captain you. That is all I can do.”

Heads nodded soberly at this. No one spoke. “You tell your fellows what I have said,” Charles concluded. “I know that you have doubts about my honesty, but I mean every word on my sacred honor.”

The silence among those around him seemed magnified by others passing by and the work still going on. “If there is nothing further, I will return to my duties.” He held out his hand. A surprised Sherburne dusted his own against his trousers and shook it.

“Thank ye, sur,” the seaman said.

*****.

Charles watched from his quarterdeck the jollyboat as it fairly skimmed across the water away from the broken French frigate. The morning sun had risen a quarter toward its zenith, dancing glitter reflecting off the bright blue sea. L'Agile wallowed two cable lengths off the stern, her waterline about four feet closer to her gun ports than it had been before the battle. He had regrets about what was to occur. He could have left her as she was; she would probably sink in any case before the day was out. This way, however, he would be certain.

He checked his watch; it had been seventeen minutes since the boat’s crew climbed down her side and hurriedly cast off. Charles had ordered the ship thoroughly searched from stem to stern; several kegs of powder breached in the powder room; and a half-hour’s length of slow fuse suitably inserted and lit. He glanced at the small island where the French were now in occupation. It had taken all night for them to ferry everything and everybody across, and he could just see the piles of casks on the beach, and several already erected canvas shelters on the higher ground. They’d even fastened a tricolor flag near the top of a palm tree. He heard Bevan’s hail as the boat neared and Beechum’s reply. He pulled out his watch again to check the time. Twenty-three minutes. Before he raised his eyes he sensed more than saw the flash.

L'Agile's forepart, just behind the foremast, erupted in a glowing ball of flame and smoke. The blast came to him an instant later. He’d seen a ship of war blow up once before. This wasn’t a particularly large explosion as these things could be, but it was more than enough. The fore half of the hull abruptly vanished, blown upward and outward in pieces of broken timber. The center, open to the sea, dipped as if exhausted. The stern lifted, the rudder in its entire exposed to view, then slipped forward and downward. For a moment only the mizzenmast could be seen, rapidly shortening until just six feet of the topgallant mast remained visible. She had struck bottom. A cheer went up from the waist. Charles didn’t see what there was to cheer about; she had already been defeated.

He turned toward the helm. “Have the hands piped aloft, Mr. Baker; all plain sail. Mr. Cromley, we will make east by south, if you please.”

Both men acknowledged their orders. Charles saw the jollyboat being secured in its place midships, nested inside the launch. Beechum appeared from along the gangway. “We did as you said, sir,” the young lieutenant reported.

“I saw,” Charles said. “In fact I could hardly have missed it. You’re sure she was empty?”

“Yes, sir. I checked the hold myself. There was nobody left; I’m certain of it.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. He had once, almost by accident, found a small child on a French ship about to be similarly destroyed. Little Claudette now lived with Penny at their home in Cheshire. “If you would be so good as to inform Lieutenant Bevan that I anticipate looking into Koessir tomorrow morning.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Beechum touched his hat and left.

Charles stayed where he was a few moments longer in a reflective mood. If he’d guessed right, somewhere in the sea was the seventy-four gun Raisonnable. Winchester had queried the frigate’s surviving officers, but they had been uncommunicative. It was possible he would find her at Koessir.

*****.

The Egyptian coast emerged slowly in the stillness of the morning gloom. Cassandra glided effortlessly under topsails and topgallants, an easy northwesterly wind on her stern quarter, the dark line of the shore three miles off the port beam. Ting-ting-ting, the ship’s bell broke the quiet.

It was not unusual for him to be on deck at this hour, but it wasn’t normal either. There was nothing he wouldn’t have entrusted Beechum as officer of the watch to attend to. He had slept poorly during the night, and when he attempted to recall Penny’s expressions and features to compose himself, the dark-haired Italian woman’s face intruded. After being away from home for longer than eight months, he suspected that this was not unusual, but knew it was something he’d best not dwell on. Being on his own quarterdeck helped.

“Hoy the tops!” he shouted upward through cupped hands. “Anything? Anything at all?”

“Naught, sir,” the answering call came down. “I can see the surface well enough, but she’s bare.” There was a pause. “There’s a point of land, mebby two leagues ahead.”

“Thank you,” Charles said in an almost normal voice. That would be Koessir Point. From the chart, it was a low headland projecting a mile or so into the sea with a wide band of coral around its base. There should be an old Turkish fort on its southern side overlooking the town and harbor.

“Mr. Dill,” he said to the quartermaster standing behind the wheel, his hands resting easily on its spokes. “Please make our course two points to port.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Two points it is. I make it to be south-by-southeast, less a half.”

“Very good.”

The wheel came over a few spokes. After a moment Charles felt the movement of the deck change almost imperceptibly as Cassandra sliced across the easy seas at an altered angle. The sun showed, a sliver of orange on the horizon to the east, looking for all the world, he thought, like the yoke of a frying egg as seen from the side. The distant shore turned a radiant yellow. Charles went to the binnacle, opened the cabinet beneath, and removed his long glass. The point of land just to starboard of the bow showed starkly in the strengthening light. He snapped open the telescope and trained it forward. He soon found a foreshortened rectangle of stone projecting from behind the headland—the blunt upper battlements of Koessir’s fort. A flag flew above; he couldn’t make out the colors, but he knew well enough.

“Mr. Beechum,” he said as he closed the glass.

“Yes, sir.”

“At the next bell we will alter course to starboard to weather the point. After that is accomplished, you may clear the ship for action.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I would like fresh eyes in the mastheads as well, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Charles pulled open the telescope again. He guessed that if the French seventy-four were in the roads beyond the headland, her masts would reach at least as high as the fort, probably higher. He saw nothing. “Tops,” he shouted upward.

“Naught, sir,” came the immediate reply. “I’ll tell ye on the instant.”

“Thank you,” Charles muttered to himself. Despite his impatience, he breathed a little easier. It looked to be unlikely Raisonnable was in the port, nor any other sizable warships. The usual early morning life of the ship began around him: cleaning the decks, flaking down disordered lines, running the log to measure their speed, the carpenter and boatswain making their rounds to see what repairs or maintenance might be required. Charles could see the wood smoke wafting forward from the galley chimney, indicating that the cook had begun preparations for the crew’s breakfast.

At four bells, Bevan came onto the deck with Sykes. Winchester and Aviemore would be asleep, having stood watch during the graveyard shift from midnight to four in the morning. Beechum promptly gave orders for the ship to be prepared for battle and the waisters be called to trim the sails.

“Good morning, Charlie,” said Bevan. “Anything yet?”

“Nothing so far,” Charles answered. “No sign of the seventy-four. We’ll know for sure soon enough.”

Bevan seemed satisfied with this and turned his attention to the set of the sails aloft. Charles noticed the carpenter on the gangway and went to speak with him. “Mr. Burrows, I have a request,” he said.

“Aye, sir?” He touched his hat.

“I require an empty keg to be made watertight, with a weight in the bottom, and a four-foot staff with a flag fixed at the top. It’s to be put in the water with a message for the French.”

“Aye, we can do that. When do you want it?”

“Before the watch is out, if you please.”

In time, the point before Koessir neared to starboard. Charles kept Cassandra two miles out, well clear of any of the submerged coral closer to land. The lookout high in the mainmast reported a large number of local bottoms in the harbor and a polacre at anchor just outside, but no warships of any consequence. As they passed the headlands, Charles ordered Cromley to angle in toward the shore. The fort showed itself on the southern slope, a modest town beneath its walls, and a mole protecting the harbor from the sea. The ship’s bell rang again–—this time eight strokes, the end of the morning watch. The crew should have just finished their breakfast.

“Beat to quarters,” Charles said to Bevan. “Have the starboard guns run out.” He turned to Sykes: “The colors, if you will, and hoist a white flag from the foremast.”

“A white flag, sir?”

“To show that we won’t fire on them if they don’t fire on us first.”

“Yes, sir.

At that moment, a puff of gray-black smoke showed from the fort. The distant bang and a spout in the sea, well short, came an instant later. “Carry on as you bear, Mr. Cromley,” Charles said. His keg with the flag on it, almost a marker buoy, had been placed by the entry port midships. A canvas envelope containing a precise description of the whereabouts of L’Agile’s crew was affixed just below the flag. Two men and Midshipman Hitch stood beside it.

The mole came into clear view. Charles took up his glass and saw that the inner harbor was crowded to its capacity with small shipping, almost entirely single-masted sambuks and a few only slightly larger baghalas. A three-gun battery of six-pounder field artillery had been set up on the end of the breakwater, and he saw a party of French artillerymen running along the stones to man them. Beyond the battery, as he had been told, a single European polacre rode at anchor. He lowered the glass and looked upward to see that the union flag had broken out on the mainmast; the white banner requesting a truce running up its halyard.

“Mr. Cromley, steer to run alongside the mole from fifty yards out.”

The master acknowledged. Cassandra bore down at a goodly speed toward the harbor, its contents coming into easy view by the unaided eye. Charles thought the craft inside were a curious collection. Except for the polacre, they were adequate for running up and down the sea but too frail for fetching India. He counted fully fifty of them before he gave up. The foot of the mole showed alongside. The fort had not fired after its initial warning. The battery at the mole’s head was manned, the guns presumably loaded, the gun-servers standing beside their weapons. It would take courage, Charles decided, for them to stand like that. In any exchange with his own much heavier and more numerous broadside they would be annihilated in an instant. As Cassandra swept past unmolested, the French artillery captain raised his plumed hat in salute. Charles returned the greeting, then gestured to Hitch that the keg be lowered over the side and released. “We will stand off the shore, Mr. Cromley,” he said. “Make for the center channel of the sea.”

“Mocha, sir?”

“Mocha, Mr. Cromley, with all speed. Daniel, you may dismiss the men from quarters and house the guns.”

Charles paused by the rail to look over the polacre. She flew no identifying flag. A lighter lay in the water alongside as some of her cargo was swung down in a net. He squinted into the reflected glare. Black men, barely clothed, huddled on the lighter’s boards. Other men stood over them—European men in broad-brimmed hats with muskets. The cargo net was a jumble of black arms, legs, torsos. More blacks crowded the merchantman’s deck waiting to be lifted down. He turned away in disgust.