The Fortune of War (14 page)

Jack gathered his Leopards, and they looked to their guns, number six to starboard and seven the other side, just under the overhang of the forecastle: each crew fought a pair of guns except in those few ships with a superabundance of hands, and in the unlikely event of their being engaged on both sides at once the crew ran from one to the other, firing them alternately. The Leopard quickly settled who should be first and second captains

- Bonden and Babbington - who should be boarders, fireman, sponger and so on; checked the breeching, drew the charges, having little faith in any loading but their own, recharged, ran the guns in and out half a dozen times, and drew breath. Those were the familiar eighteen-pounders, five hundredweight a man, and they offered no problems, though the Leopards did not much care for the way Java's jollies had arranged the swabs and rammers, and though in their weakened state they did find the starboard gun heavy to heave inboard against the slope of the deck: but as Bonden observed, once the dust started flying, the recoil would look after that.

Forshaw darted below to report that the chase had worn and shown a waft, thought to be a private signal, and that the Java was about to wear likewise. He was in a state of shrill glee, and his voice went so high that it almost vanished. He looked so frail, so very childish in his over-sized borrowed clothes that the older man looked at him quite pitifully, and Jack thought, How I hope that boy don't stop a ball. 'House your guns,' he cried aloud, glancing at his watch, which said one minute before noon.

Immediately afterwards the hands were piped to dinner, and at the same time the drum beat for the officers. This pleased Jack: Lambert meant to take advantage of the last minutes before the galley fires were put out in clearing the ship for action. He and Jack might differ about manoeuvring, but they were of the same mind about going into battle with a full belly.

The Java was already almost entirely cleared, and although there was not yet a clean sweep fore and aft -some of the immense amount of baggage belonging to the Governor and his suite had still to be struck down into the hold - the cabin bulkheads and furniture were gone, and her captain, General Hislop, Jack, and the captain of the Marines, sitting at a grating slung between two guns, could see their probable, their almost certain adversary, as they ate. They were all men who were thoroughly accustomed to fire and they ate heartily; but rarely did they take their eyes from the American.

'As I was telling Chads,' said Lambert to Jack, 'my intention is to go the plain, straightforward way about it: to bear down, lay the ship alongside her, hit her as hard as we can, and then board her in the smoke.'

'Yes, sir,' said Jack.

'We have plenty of willing hands for the job, with all our supernumeraries; and I fancy they will make a better fist of it with the cutlass than playing long bowls with the guns. And now I come to think of it, Chads tells me you have very handsomely offered to fight a pair of guns yourself and to keep an eye on the forward battery. I am very much obliged to you, Aubrey: I am a lieutenant short, and most of my youngsters are on their first voyage; and six and seven were served by the Marines. Not that they did not serve them pretty well, but Captain Rankin here will be happy to have his small-arms men back again.' Rankin agreed, observing that the tops were not nearly as full of sharp-shooters as he could wish, if the action became really close. One bell stuck, and Lambert continued, 'I think it is very nearly time: so, gentlemen, I will give you the King, and confusion to his enemies.'

The officers walked out on to the quarterdeck: the chase lay about two miles ahead, to leeward, and both ships were running at a good ten knots; but now the Java was labouring under her royals and Captain Lambert had them taken in. Yet even without them she gained perceptibly: and so they ran eastwards, each drawing a long white furrow in the sparkling sea. An empty sea: nothing to windward, nothing to leeward, and the William had vanished astern long since, while Brazil was no more than a faint cloudlike band from the masthead.

And now the stranger - a stranger no longer, nor a chase - displayed a commodore's broad pendant on the main, together with the colours of the United States. Bonden had been right: she was indeed the Constitution.

A few moments later her royals too came in, followed by her fore and mainsail, and she hauled to the wind, her speed dropping immediately. It was clear that she meant to fight and that she had always meant to fight, but to fight as and when it suited her: she had drawn the Java from the land and from the William, and now she was content. An intelligent opponent, reflected Jack; cool and calculating.

The Java replied to the American colours with her own, and a union flag high in the leeward rigging as well, so that there should be no mistake; and she too stripped to her fighting sails - no sound on board but the brief orders, the bosun's call, the run of seamen's feet, the creaking of blocks, and the song of the wind in the rigging. With the main and foresails hauled up, every man on deck had a clear view of the American as she lay there, her head a little off the north-north-eastern wind: and now in total silence Captain Lambert took the Java down as he had promised, slanting across the wind straight for the enemy's larboard quarter. Half an hour would bring them into battle.

For those with no immediate tasks at hand, ten of these thirty minutes passed in a state of suspended activity, the wheel unmoved by so much as a spoke, scarcely a word on the crowded, gravely attentive quarterdeck. Then Captain Lambert nodded to Mr Chads, and the drum volleyed and thundered fore and aft. Most of the officers and midshipmen ran to join their divisions at the guns; the master stepped behind the wheel to con the ship; three parties of Marines climbed into the tops, trailing their muskets; the surgeons went below, down, down, under the waterline; and silence fell again. Everything was ready. All along the clean, neat deck, brilliant in the sun, the powder-boys stood with their cartridges behind the guns; the shot-racks and garlands were full; thin smoke streamed from the match-tubs; the bosun had long since secured the yards with puddening and chains; deep in the magazine the gunner waited among his open powder-kegs; the fearnought screens were laid over the hatchways.

Jack walked into the comparative darkness of the forecastle, and there at the open port his gun-crew was waiting for him: they were stripped to the waist, showing their appalling burns, and most had tied handkerchiefs around their heads against the sweat. They looked at him with a serious though confident expression; the neighbouring crews with curiosity and a kind of hopeful deference - few, apart from the captains, had ever seen a great gun fired in anger, and Captain Aubrey was known to be a master of his trade.

Blazing sun beyond the port, and there, exactly framed, the Constitution. A heavy frigate indeed; now he could gauge the true size of her massive spars, the unusual height of her ports, well clear of the choppy sea breaking white against her side. A tough nut to crack, if the Americans could fire their guns as well as they could sail their ship. American seamanship he knew; but could a fighting ship be improvised? Could four hundred officers and men be taught their duty in a few months? A few months as against the continual practice and tradition of twenty years of war? Unlikely, but not impossible; after all, a great many Americans had learnt gunnery, often much against their will, in the Royal Navy - he had had scores under his command in one ship or another. He hoped Lambert would board as soon as possible: there was something very daunting about the determined attack of hundreds of men swarming over the side with cutlasses and tomahawks. Few ship's companies could withstand it.

Behind him Forshaw, who, being too light to heave upon a tackle with any effect, acted as their powder-boy, was explaining to one of the Java's midshipmen that he would feel quite different, quite easy, once the dust began to fly. 'I generally chew a quid of tobacco while we are going into action,' he added, 'and I encourage my men to do the same; it makes the awkward waiting pass much quicker.'

In the cockpit, where, by the light of three hanging lanterns, the surgeons were putting a final razor edge on their instruments by means of an oiled silk-stone, Stephen said to Mr Fox, 'Do you not find, sir, that your perception of time is strangely altered on these occasions, when - that rat, Mr McClure, you may certainly strike that rat, if you are brisk.'

Mr Fox was obliged to admit that he had not experienced such an occasion before; but he hoped that presently the dispersion of stimuli would have a lenitive effect, that the din of battle and the necessary activity would dispel a certain illogical uneasiness, or rather impatience.

'There,' cried Stephen, flinging a retractor at a particularly bold rat. 'I very nearly had him, the thief. Surely, Mr Fox, you have more than your fair share of rats aboard?

Have you thought of introducing a parcel of weasels? We find them answer admirably, in Ireland.'

'I thought you had no weasels, no serpents, no salamanders, in your country.'

'No more we have; the Irish weasels are all stoats. But they are the devil for rats.'

A tremendous triple knock, a bang or crash reverberating along the cable-tiers, cut off the surgeon's reply: the Constitution had opened fire at half a mile, and three of her round-shot had struck the Java's side on the ricochet.

'Good practice,' observed Jack; and as he watched, bent low to see through the port, he saw another jet of smoke from one of the American's after-guns. The shot struck the sea, skipped three times, with each splash in a direct line for his eye, came aboard - a muffled thump in the tight-packed forecastle hammocks - and could be heard rolling about overhead. Forshaw darted out and came back with the ball, a twenty-four-pounder.

'A pity it is so big,' said Jack, turning it over. 'I remember when I was a boy in Ajax, and the Apollon was blazing away at us like Guy Fawkes's night, a spent eighteen-pound ball came in at our port. The lieutenant

- it was Mr Homer: you remember him, Bonden?'

'Oh yes, sir. A very sprightly gentleman, that loved his laugh.'

'He picked it up, called for a piece of chalk, wrote Post Paid on the ball, rammed it down our gun, and so sent it back in double quick time.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' went the gun-crew and their neighbours on either side.

'And not long after that, he was made a post-captain, ha, ha, ha!'

Nearer, and the Java was almost on the Constitution's larboard beam. The American's side vanished in a cloud of smoke: her broadside, some seven hundred pounds of iron, ripped up the water, a series of white fountains short of their mark by a hundred yards; and a few harmless balls struck the Java's side.

Nearer still. Little more than musket-range, and they could see their enemies' faces. They stood poised and tense over their guns, waiting for the order to fire, Bonden glaring along the barrel, perpetually shifting it with his handspike as the Constitution came full in the beam. Point-blank range, but still no order. The Americans were running out their guns: Jack had been counting the seconds from the first broadside, and he reached a hundred and twenty before the vast thundering eruption hid the enemy again, all but her topgallantmasts, that could be seen high above, the smoke, quivering from the shock. This time the whole well-grouped broadside raced humming deep far overhead. Two minutes; quite good gun-drill, though he had managed seventy seconds. And they had misjudged the -'Fire as they bear.'

The welcome order came as the Java reached the top of her roll and was just beginning to lean to leeward. The whole of her starboard, broadside roared out and instantly the deck was filled with smoke, with the marvellous powder-smell. Laughing aloud, Jack and his mates clapped on, ran the gun in, sponged, reloaded, rammed home the charge, working like powerful machines, and as the smoke cleared they saw that they had hit her hard -gaps in the hammocks, the wheel destroyed, some shrouds and a backstay hanging loose. On either side the Javas cheered like fury; and as they heaved so they came closer still, within pistol-shot of the Constitution's bow. And at pistol-shot the Constitution fired again. A few splintering crashes aft, but nothing to interrupt the cheers forward as they ran their guns out, thumping them hard against the sills. Yet as they peered into the dense cloud of American smoke to point their loaded guns, staring and ludicrously fanning with their hands, the sail-trimmers were called. The Constitution, having fired, had instantly filled her headsails and put before the wind: she had worn, and the Java, without waiting to catch her and rake her on the turn, was wearing after her: the starboard guns no longer bore. The Leopards exchanged a glance.

The smoke cleared entirely, drifting away in a solid bank and showing the Constitution well to leeward, with the Java coming up fast on her quarter but still turning with her as she hauled up on the other tack, presenting her undamaged starboard ports. In the long pause Jack hurried up and down the forecastle battery, making them stop their noise, house the starboard guns safely and cast loose those on the other side. The two Java midshipmen, first-voyagers, had no notion of anything beyond the formal movements of the great-gun exercise. His heart was still beating high with the immense vitality of battle, and this violent activity - heaving, shoving men into their places, checking the tackle-falls, breeching, cartridges, grape and round-shot - covered the uneasy feeling in the back of his mind. Lambert might have missed one golden chance, but there would soon be another.

Very soon. The Java was ranging up on the Constitution's starboard side. The larboard guns, trained hard forward, began to bear; and as they bore, so they fired. One; three and five together; and as Bonden fired number seven he saw the shot strike the Constitution's mainchains, just before the smoke swept down. But now there were orange flashes in the smoke as the American after-guns replied; and after a few savage moments both full broadsides were at work, a continuous bellowing roar, punctuated by the even louder crashes of the next-hand guns and the carronades overhead. A prodigious omnipresent din, and in it the kicking number seven broke its breeching after the fourth discharge. Worse than that, number three had been dismounted and there were several men lying on the deck, including both midshipmen. Leaving the practised Leopards to their tasks, Jack ran to trip and secure the gun. Its crew had little notion of what to do, but by gesture and bellow and example in the incessant roar and clangour he got them to make it fast, slid a dead man through the port, and made them carry the wounded below.