Swords From the Sea (49 page)

"Then," Pierre's face fell, "I am not to speak to the admiral if chance serves?"

"Not to him. Keep your ears sharp and tell me what you hear down under the deck where the men are camped. Every evening I will walk by the biggest mast. But don't speak to me unless you have learned something. All the ship knows that Paul and I are kunaks."

Pierre felt a twinge of jealousy, but saw the wisdom in the Cossack's plan. Ivak announced that they would set out at once, and proceeded to break camp by burying the jug and taking the hawk to the hut of a fellow officer. He led Pierre to the stables and ordered his horse and two others, picking out a trooper to ride with them to bring the beasts back.

He did not hurry, until his own horse, a black Kirghiz stallion, fresh from a long rest, broke away from the Cossack that held it. Ivak saw it rear and was at its side in a half-dozen swift strides. The stallion tossed its head and wheeled away, but the sotnik had a hand on the saddle horn. Running beside the horse, he leaped into the saddle.

Finding his stirrups and taking up the reins, he raced the stallion in a wide circle bringing up in front of the stables, reining in so sharply that its hind hoofs scattered gravel and sand over the onlookers. The Cossacks gave the performance no more than a casual glance, but Pierre looked glum.

"Bon sang! I cannot sit on a beast like that."

Ivak was utterly astonished when he learned that the Provencal had never ridden a horse. He asked how men got about in France, and learned that the gentry rode in coaches, while the peasants sat on donkeys, if they had them. He thought for a moment and ordered blankets girded to Pierre's mount instead of a saddle.

"Hold on by the mane," he directed, "and wrap your legs around its barrel so! Give him a hand up, one of you."

Cossacks strolled over from the barracks to stare at the unusual performance. To them a man who could not ride an artillery cast-off was a marvel.

"Ekh, here's a fellow who doesn't like stirrups-see his saddle."

"Nay, it's a new way to carry your bed around."

"Wrong, you simpletons. He's been to Constantinople and raided the sultan's stables. What are you going to do with him, Uncle Ivak?"

Pierre gritted his teeth and held fast. He saw that those troopers who swaggered in weather-stained uniforms, who wore weapons as if born to them, were veterans who knew their own worth, quite different from the recruits of Petersburg.

"Don't cackle before you lay an egg," Ivak remarked at large, not mindful to have his own dignity slighted through his companion. "This kunak of mine laid out more Tatars in the steppe than you would put to grass in a lifetime."

"Well, luck to him," shouted a trooper. "S'Bogun-go with God."

Some hours later they passed the last of the pickets and came out on the shore, where Ivak searched for and found a skiff hidden in the rushes. And Pierre had his first glimpse of the Liman.

They were halfway between the Boug estuary and the upper end of the Liman, where the Russian fleet was anchored in a half circle across the wide mouth of the Dnieper.

"Name of a dog," shouted the seaman, "this Liman-it is not the sea! 'Tis a bay!"

He could see the opposite shore, five miles away, a long line of sandy spits. To his right, nearly hidden in the heat haze, the masts of the Moslem fleet were visible. A single glance told him that they had blockaded Jones's squadron in the Liman.

When they came within hailing distance of the Russian line, Pierre rested on his oars, brushing the sweat and the gnats from his eyes. He saw two three-deckers, and counted the guns in the tiers-seventy-two. They were in the center of the line. The others were frigates, with a few sloops, eighteen in all.

Black hulls, encrusted with gray salt at the waterline, squat bows and lofty poops set with rows of stern windows that reflected the sun, stumpy masts and short spars, small sails-he did not like the look of all that.

"Dutch belly boats," he muttered, "crank and dull before the wind. They would make no way in the teeth of the wind."

He could see, however, that they carried heavy batteries. Behind the line, at the jetties by the Dnieper mouth, were half a hundred smaller craft, bomb ketches, double shallops, and great scows mounting a single long twenty-four or a mortar.

"The flotilla," nodded Ivak, "Nassau's flotilla."

Behind these, a barren shore, nearly white with salt, under the clear sky, as blue as the skies of Provence. He pulled slowly for the Vladimir, which he made out by the ensign at the staff over the stern lanterns. Passing under the towering stern with its gilded carving, he looked at the small gallery. This was called the Admiral's Walk, being sacred from immortal custom to that personage. No one was there.

Pierre waited until Ivak had gone over the rail. Then he kicked the skiff away and went up eagerly.

By shouted orders and the creak of block and tackle he knew that the gun-deck crews were at battery drill, but on the spar deck men were overhauling rigging, and he halted by the booms to stare around him, filling his nostrils with familiar smells.

A bearded Greek boatswain, wearing green pantaloons spotted with tar and a crimson scarf bound over his head, jostled against him and turned around to curse. Then, surprised by Pierre's bulk and long yellow hair, he growled a question.

"What are you about?"

Pierre began to explain that he had come from the Kherson dockyard, and wanted service with the marines on the Vladimir, but the other cut him short with a bellowing laugh.

"Oho-ho! Marines! Do you think this is Toulon? We have no marines and few men who have seen blue water. Have you? Then go below, my bully. You are big enough to pull a rope, and Number Four gun of the port battery lacks a ropeman. Bear a hand my fine lad and you'll have vodka to wet your whistle, before the Turks hack you."

He gave Pierre a push toward the fore skuttle, adding under his breath:

"I know your kind-deserter from the army, looking for a soft berth. No duffel, and a poor account of yourself."

Going below, Pierre reported to the gun captain and fell to work with a will.

An hour later he was laughing. It was hotter than the slave benches of a Turkish galley, and the men who flung themselves down beside him when the drill was ended reeked of stale sweat; the tackle of the eighteenpounder that he had been handling was stiff and caught in the blocks. A Syrian boy, half naked, wearing an amulet around his thin throat, had curled up like a dog, falling asleep as if worn out by toil.

Near the gun carriage a group of Tatars squatted without a word, only their eyes moving-fishermen by the smell of them. From the deck above came the shrill pipe of whistles and the patter of naked feet, but around Pierre welled the murmur of polyglot tongues.

A Cossack, who had been leaning against a stanchion picking his teeth, swaggered off, kicking the Syrian out of his way and grinning down when the yellow face snarled up at him. Pushing a Greek swabber from the water butt, he drank in long gulps, paying no attention to the sailor who fingered at his dirk, cursing venomously.

Somewhere a Portuguese was singing. Pierre chuckled, drinking it all in. So these were Ivak's sea wolves! Ten years ago he had been one of such a crew. Except that no Americans were to be seen, the gun deck of the Vladimir might be that of the Bon Homme Richard with its motley crew. And, unless Pierre was mistaken, there was a fight in these men.

Chapter VI

Pierre Makes an Enemy

"Those chaps will stand to their guns," he told Ivak after quarters that evening, standing by the bole of the mainmast.

There was a new gleam in the Provencal's eyes, a new swing to his shoulders. He had discarded the infantry coat, and the clumsy boots. His garments differed from the rest, because the bulk of the Vladimir's crew were drafted from the infantry regiments.

"But on the spar deck," he went on, "they are Greeks-"

Ivak nudged him in the ribs, and a man who had been passing forward stopped, to come closer. Dusk was falling-the long twilight of the southern sea-and the newcomer leered into his face.

"Oho, our little cockerel crows! Aye, 'tis our deserter from Kherson. Harken to Dmitri-you've made a bad bargain, you have."

It was the big boatswain of the green pantaloons, who turned to Ivak with something resembling respect.

"Where is his illustriousness, the admiral? He gave orders that men who could handle firelocks were to be told off, and the best of the lot picked for sharpshooters. They are to go to the tops-"

"Where?" asked the Cossack.

Dmitri pointed over his head, to the square platform that was the fight ing top, above the main yard. Ivak surveyed with interest the shadowy antennae of the shrouds.

"He ain't aft, where the gentry sit at table," grumbled the Greek.

"Yonder is monsieur, the admiral," broke in Pierre. "Only listen, bosun, and you'll hear him."

Men who had come up from the stifling 'tween decks were grouped around the foremast. From the group rang out a voice that the Provencal knew well.

It was an old ballad that Paul Jones must have got by heart from the mariners of Solway Firth when he was a lad, and he watched ships put in to Kircudbright from the American colonies. The men who listened reeked not of the words, but the plaintive drift of the ballad appealed to them.

The songs of the steppe, like those of the sea, held a burden of sorrow, and Cossacks, who had an ear for harmony, soon caught the air. Rich voices joined the American's deep tenor.

Jones was sitting on the breech of a twelve-pounder, hatless. Unlike the other officers he wore his hair unpowdered. Ten years had left lines in his swarthy face; his hands were thin, and the flesh had fallen away from his high cheekbones. But the quick brown eyes and the lift of the chin had not altered.

"Oh, he's a pretty fellow," grunted the Greek, "and very free with his songs and his double tots of rum and his airs about discipline. But what will he do when the time comes, and it's 'boarders away'?"

Pierre's temper flared instantly.

"When that time comes, you won't be treading on his heels, by you-"

He checked himself, remembering where he was, and why he had come to the ship. Dmitri put a hand to his hip where a knife was sheathed in his belt. But, glancing at the sotnik who was watching them, he stepped back with an oath.

"I'll pay you out! I'll send you to your account!"

Still muttering he hastened forward.

Lieutenant Edwards, the English aide and interpreter who had come from Petersburg with Jones, joined in the last verse with a ringing baritone. Then someone produced a balalaika.

Ivak grinned at Pierre.

"Watch out for Dmitri; he's a bad one with a knife. Now get down below and keep your tongue between your teeth, if you can."

When the Provencal had gone, Ivak inclined his head critically, listening to the khorovod, thrummed by the guitar and roared out by the deep voices of the Don Cossacks. One youngster sprang into the center of the circle, outlined against the after-gleam of the sunset. Arms akimbo, bare feet striking the deck planks, he began the wild cosachka, the dance of the southern steppe.

Squatting on his heels, he leaped up, his coat swirling, and Ivak began to pat the deck in time, thinking of other days when he had danced in the villages on feast days and had broken into the ring of girls, to kiss first one then another.