By the Mast Divided (38 page)

Dysart grinned, juggling the flints that would be used to spark the slow-match, before stowing them deep in his pocket. ‘Christ, Barclay will bust a gut if he finds oot a man he flogged in the morning was fit tae fight the same bluddy night.’

‘Then let’s hope it is something the surgeon cannot cure.’

‘Amen to that,’ Dysart replied, before adding. ‘Taverner, Dommet, 
get that wee barrel of gunpowder.’ Dysart then looked back at Pearce. ‘So you might no just be going for a mad battle?’

Pearce just put a finger to his lips, as the command came to get the boats over the side. There was a nervous moment when Lieutenant Digby spotted him, his raised eyebrows testimony to his surprise. The pair locked eyes, before Digby nodded, then looked away.

‘Where’s Corny?’ asked Rufus.

‘Gherson,’ Charlie Taverner snorted, probably hiding in the heads. ‘The way he was shitting himself it be just as well.’

‘Happen he’s learnt his lesson from the other night,’ said Rufus.

‘Don’t go wagering anything on that,’ Taverner replied, as he went over the side into the boat.

Stiffly, Pearce followed him down.

‘A trip around the bay,’ hooted Michael, as he came last, by his loud proclamation taking any curious eyes off Pearce. ‘Now, would we not have paid good money for such a treat, and here we are getting it for free. Sure, it’s a grand life.’

The first strokes of the oar had made Pearce wince, but the constant movement slowly warmed his muscles, which caused the pain to ease into a dull ache. It was there, it was nagging, but thankfully it was bearable. Ridley and Costello had done him a great favour with their bogus, lightweight cat, and he had to believe that such a thing could not have been carried out without the connivance of the Bosun himself. Sykes, who had hauled him out of the water off Deal but declined to hand him over for punishment had to be in on the secret. Kemp had been kept away from that cat o’ nine tails. Maybe Sykes had made sure the other warrant officers shared his sentiment.

Reflecting on that, Pearce was obliged to acknowledge that there were good men in King George’s Navy as well as bad, just the same as existed in all walks of life. It was wrong to judge the whole by the likes of Barclay, Kemp and Sam Devenow. Time aboard might have revealed more kindness than contempt, and he would have made friends for sure, because all his life, in all the situations in which he had found himself that is what had happened. But it was not a notion he wished to put to the test – if he never saw another sailor in his life he would rest content. He turned his thinking to ways of getting away from this crowd of fighting men once ashore, adjusting what he had planned previously to the new condition he now found himself in – pennilessness.

The moon disappeared behind a large cloud, and the party in the cutter was thrown into near total darkness, with only the silver edging of the overhead black mass showing any light. When the moon did reappear, after what seemed an interminable gap, to bathe the sea in a pale glow, none of the other boats, which should have shown as silhouettes, were visible. Nor could they hear the sound of dipping oars, any coughing, the clink of metal or a voice checking for their presence.

Pearce and his companions rowed on, only their heavy breathing audible, while Lieutenant Thrale, one hand on the tiller, swung his head all around in a desperate search for company. Seeing none, he racked the sky, finger half raised to test the wind as he tried to discern his course by starlight, his lined old face even more creased by worry. Pearce half hoped they were lost; that they would land in the wrong place. The prospect
of a fight, with an intoxicating tot of rum to fire the spirit, might be exhilarating to those with no imagination, but this was no fairground bout they were rowing towards, it was an enemy who would try to maim or kill them, an enemy who would not ask the nature of his sentiments first should he be forced into a confrontation.

‘Can you hear that noise, sir?’ Midshipman Burns called from the prow, a tremulous note in his piping, young boy’s voice.

‘Where away?’ Thrale replied, tucking the tiller under his arm, hat lifted and a hand cupped to his ear.

‘Dead ahead, I reckon,’ said Burns. ‘Breaking water.’

With the beating of his own heart and panting bodies around him, Pearce could hear nothing. Judging by the expression on Thrale’s face, curious, anxious but unconvinced, neither could he, but that was likely due to the degree of his deafness.

‘No,’ Thrale insisted, ‘to starboard. It will be the rocks Captain Barclay alluded to.’

‘Rocks,’ hissed Michael O’Hagan, ‘what flippin’ rocks?’

‘Silence there,’ barked Thrale, before dropping his voice. ‘Sound deceives at sea, Mr Burns, plays tricks upon the untried ear, the sirens of ancient times were noted for it. What seems hard by can be a league distant. Pay no heed to the noise, just keep your eyes peeled for the western beach. Lieutenant Roscoe might already be ashore. If we do not get cracking he will head off for that bastion without us.’

He added, for the whole eight-man crew of rowers, and no doubt intended to include the fighters as well, in a voice that tried and failed to be uplifting, ‘Bend to your oars, lads, otherwise we will miss out on any glory.’

‘Glory,’ Pearce scoffed, softly, so that only Michael beside him could hear.

‘Sure,’ Michael replied, his voice just as low, ‘I been told by those staying aboard that we could all die trying to save Barclay’s name.’

‘The noise increases, sir,’ Burns called.

Thrale had been trying to look at his fob watch to see if he was late, cursing the next huge cloud that had blown in to obscure the moon, but he tried a cupped hand again, then nodded, as if having finally located the sound. ‘Well to starboard, Burns, I’m sure of it, and my watch, as well as the motion of the boat, tells me we must be getting close to shore.’

The run of the sea had changed, no longer the big, steady rising and falling swell of the open sea, but waves kicking to sharper peaks as they shelved in shallow water, lifting and dropping the prow in a more
deliberate fashion. Pearce could hear the sound now, the crash of breaking water, and though he had no way of being sure, it did not sound to him as if it was well off to his right. He would have shrugged had he not been occupied on the oars, for it was none of his concern. The rowing became harder as the boat rode the increasing swell. The water was shoaling fast – sometimes enough to leave an oar free when it should be dipped, in a sea becoming disturbed enough to require the blades to back up a tiller that had become near useless at controlling the course of the cutter.

‘I saw a flash of white, sir.’

‘Come Mr Burns, even someone as green as you must know that white water signifies waves breaking upon the beach.’

‘It is not like that, sir,’ Burns squeaked, ‘and the noise is much louder.’

‘True,’ Thrale replied in a reassuring voice. ‘Perhaps we are closer to the rocks than intended – I have come off my reckoning a trifle. But be assured we will shave them and they border sand that stretches for half a mile, which will mean a slower approach than I had hoped, indeed we must bend to or we will struggle to get to the action before it is joined. Now I require no more talking, for even with the sound you allude to there may be people on shore who will hear you.’

The sea state was growing increasingly disturbed, not just rising and falling but eddying suddenly, creating unpredictable troughs and peaks. And the sound of water breaking on rocks had risen from a distant to a very present and steady roar. Dysart spoke up suddenly, his voice anxious, but respectful. ‘I reckon there be rocks under our keel, your honour, an’ some of them might be more dead ahead that yer allowing for.’

‘Is that Dysart?’ Thrale growled, recognising the distinct Scots accent. ‘Talking when I have ordered silence?’

‘Aye, sir,’ the Scotsman replied, his voice raised against the noise of the waves. ‘But ah speak for every able hand aboard, when ah say it wid be prudent tae come aboot and get tae calmer water where we can check our position.’

Thrale barked loudly then, ignoring his own injunction to be quiet. ‘Damn your impertinence, you will speak yourself to a grating, I tell you. Rowers, bend hard, I want to be driven up that beach when we strike sand, lest we broach to and get cast back into the spume.’

Thrale took off his hat again, and, laying it in his lap, he began to strike the crown like a cask, in a tempo that he wanted the men on the oars to replicate. Having already pulled for near an hour they were too tired to respond, which only enraged the old lieutenant, and made him 
strike at his hat more ferociously.

‘Rocks!’ Burns yelled. ‘Dead ahead.’

If Thrale had reacted immediately they might have got clear. But instead he half-stood, swaying and hatless, peering into the gloom ahead, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he could not think of what to say. The boat was now bucking like a fickle horse in water that had no pattern to it. But the sound was unmistakable, and now it seemed to surround and envelop them rather than come from any given direction.

‘To larboard,’ Thrale shouted eventually, falling back to sit down and pushing hard on the tiller, ‘boat your oars. Starboard oars, haul away hard.’

They tried to turn using one set of oars, and get the prow pointing out to sea again, but it was too late – the surf was too strong and it acted on a boat turned sideways to deny all attempts to get the head round, at the same time carrying them in further towards the shore. They were in surf now – a maelstrom that could only be a few dozen yards away from safety, but there was no choice but to let the head fall off again for they risked being be upended into the sea. Dysart started yelling to reverse the boat, in an attempt to get out stern first, setting an example himself by grabbing the end of Pearce’s oar. He, like everyone else, was now standing, trying to exert enough pressure on an oar to get them clear. Burns was squealing fearfully and uselessly, bent over in the prow, while Thrale was yelling a set of conflicting instructions that no one was listening to.

The first rock they touched ground along the keel, a hard rasping noise, lifting the middle of the boat and sending everyone off balance. Shouting was drowned by the noise of the crashing Atlantic Ocean as it met the French coast – not even a yell of panic-stricken fear could travel further than the next ear. That useless thought filled Pearce’s mind as he struggled to get back into position to row. This water stretched thousands of miles west, south and north – the waves that threatened them might have come from the Americas – and the old fool Thrale had managed to find one of the few spots in that mass which was deadly.

With his back to the shore Pearce could not see what was coming. Right by his ear Michael O’Hagan was bellowing his prayers to every saint or saviour in the papist pantheon. In front of Pearce, Charlie and Rufus, having been thrown down by the grounding keel, were on their feet again, but not rowing, not attempting to regain control of their oars. Instead, they were looking past Pearce and Michael with faces full of dread. 

‘The little shit has jumped!’ yelled Taverner, pointing to the prow in a way that made it impossible for Pearce not to look. Burns was not there now, but as the boat dropped into a trough of swirling spume he could see the flailing arms in the water as the midshipman fought to stay afloat and swim. If they had ever had a chance of getting to safety Burns’ action condemned it, for Charlie Taverner must have reckoned that the boy had seen a route to salvation and taken it ahead of the rest of the boat crew. Charlie grabbed Rufus and yelled in his ear, a second before they both went overboard. They could not swim but they took over with them one of the small barrels of powder, which, if they could maintain their grip, with the ropes that had been attached to carry it, they must believe would keep them afloat.

Water was flying around their heads now, making it difficult to see and almost impossible to think. Voices were yelling but if they were making any sense it was being carried away on the noise of wind and water being dashed against rocks. High white sheets of spume were visible now in light of a moon carried clear of the black cloud that had obscured it. The phosphorescence made the prospect almost as light as day, illuminating the desperate degree of danger they were now in.

Ahead lay glistening black boulders, their looming shapes rendered fantastical by the silver light that glistened on their wet surfaces. The cutter was being tossed about like a cork, and it was bound to capsize, if it did not break up on the submerged rocks that were crashing into the keel. Strakes of planking were already stove in and the bottom was filling with water, which was at least acting to give those still in the boat a modicum of stability. Whatever order should have existed was absent, and to Pearce it was clear that while Burns might have been pre-emptive in his panic-stricken leap, it was the only safe option now. He must jump now or wait until the rocks ahead smashed the boat to matchwood; hard unyielding stone that would sunder human flesh to a bloody pulp.

Pearce got hold of Michael O’Hagan’s shirt collar and hauled his ear close. ‘We’re going over, Michael. Do not, whatever you do cling to me. I will hold you.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I swear on your Jesus, if you clutch on to me you will take us both to perdition.’

Pearce had to pull him over, because Michael could not bring himself to jump, in his mind hanging on to that last hope of life that existed with something solid beneath his feet. They did not get as clear of the side of the boat as Pearce wished, and it swung on a surge of seawater, crashing 
into them both so that they went under. Pearce felt what he dreaded, Michael’s hands scrabbling for a grip on his clothing. The combined weight of himself and the Irishman took them deeper. Punching in water was useless, so Pearce did the only thing that he thought might make Michael let go – he bit him as hard as he could, with no idea of where he had sunk his teeth. He thought it was into his friend’s head.

He managed to get one hand clear, and with some effort Pearce tore at the other to get Michael to release him just as they surfaced. Turning on to his back and dragging the floating Irishman on to his belly, he stopped him from regaining his fatal grip. There was no way of knowing what was behind him, but despite the rocks he knew that floating was the only option, the waves would carry them in. There were rocks for certain, but he hoped for a gap or a boulder of a shape that would not maim them, break some bone or smash a skull, for that meant certain death. Each time he tried to turn and look, he faced two problems – Michael started to panic, and the furious surf and spume blocked any clear view of what lay ahead.

Something solid touched Pearce’s foot, a rock he thought, and he pushed his boot down on it, wondering as he did so why he had lacked the sense to kick them off before jumping into the water. A wave rolled over his head, filling his mouth, thumping his back into a higher part of that which was under his foot. The pain brought back fierce concentration as he tried to get some purchase. With one foot pressed down, the next surging wave spun his body sideways, Michael still on his chest, then threw him into something so hard and unforgiving that he felt himself winded. The grip he had on the Irishman was lost, and it took a fumbling, groping hand to get hold of his clothing. Pearce was face down in the water now, one hand thrusting and hauling like mad as he tried to drag his friend, with what little purchase he could get with his feet, to a point where he hoped they could both get their heads above water long enough to breathe.