Chapter 8
Summersgill woke in the darkness and clutched the sheets to his chest. Outside the stern window a gibbous moon was turning the waves the color of bone. Stars shone in a sky cloudless from horizon to horizon, yet thunder was shaking the ship. A deep, menacing rumble encompassed him. When he swung out of bed he could feel it rise through the soles of his feet and invade his bones, as though the
Nimrod
herself were growling.
"Father?"
Emily, too, was awake, her eyes twin gleams of dread in the darkness. He wondered if he looked just as frightened as she and guessed that he did. There was something primal and threatening about the noise, like the howling of wolves.
Was this the moment? He pulled on his clothes and opened the door a cautious crack. At once he was aware there were voices in the noise, voices muttering, cursing in imaginative whispers. Deep voices and the trundle and groan of the thirty-two pound cannon balls being rolled about the decks in a sailors' version of the savages' war dance. The threat and the dread of it took his breath.
Summersgill turned, closed the door behind him and leaned on it, panting, discovering that courage was easier by daylight. He really didn't want to do this. He didn't want to go out of this room at all, among those fiends, sneaking, possibly fighting his way down to certain death.
"Father, what is it?"
Not quite able to look her in the eye, he essayed an unconvincing smile. One breath at a time, one step at a time, he crossed the room, reached out, closed his fingers on the tinderbox and slipped it into his pocket, where it hung remarkably heavy for such a small thing. His wants and desires had nothing to do with it, after all. He had given his word. That was all that mattered.
"Put on your warmest clothes, Emily. I want you to wake my wife and Bess, and tell them to make ready. Take the money and papers from the strongbox, and watch the ship's launch. If you see the young gentlemen getting into it, you are to go with them. They will be expecting you."
She was an intelligent young woman, and he could see that she understood. He blessed her again for her coolheadedness in a crisis. She would need it to control his wife who, though a wonderful woman, was inclined to fits of nerves. "Yes, sir. But, sir ... Father. Are you not coming, too?"
The sound that came out of his throat was somewhere between hysterical laughter and sobbing, he swiftly choked it back into a more normal chuckle, so as not to alarm her. "I have my duty to do, my dear. I don't think that will be possible."
This was no way to go to one's death. There should be a ceremony. He set his wig straight, pulled up his stockings and carefully tightened the garters to keep them smooth. Then he pinned an emerald stickpin into his cravat, affixed the heavy gold brooch of the Order of the Garter to the brim of his hat and placed it on his head. That did feel better.
Sitting beside her on the bed, he hugged his daughter, her arms around his neck and the soft cheek against his ineffably beautiful. She was, thank God, capable enough to survive without protection, to use his savings to set herself up in a small shop in Bermuda. A milliner's, perhaps, like her mother's. It was not what he had wanted for his only child, but it was better than what she would get if she stayed here. "Well," he said, "well, you're a brave, good girl, and you must know that I value you immensely. But I'd better cut along now, or it'll be too late. Mind you do as I say, and get in that boat!"
Outside the cabin, he paused for a second, blinded with tears. The tone of the sailors' muttering had changed. A crack, a thud, and a laugh. Summersgill raised his head sharply to see the second lieutenant, Sanderson, scrambling to his feet. The man seemed unable to bear weight on his right ankle—one of the rolling cannonballs must have clipped him "by accident"—and now, unable to walk, he stood shaking with fear and pain, helpless. Summersgill could hear the sailors debating whether to break the other leg or pound him into a pulp and heave him overboard. "No one'd know," Bates laughed again, "and it'd be one less of the bastards to deal with later."
"Shut up, cully! The fucking lubber's watching!"
Summersgill didn't recognize the voice that said this, but at the words he felt every head swivel and every eye affix itself on him. For a moment he stood rapt in terror, as a tiger's prey feels before its glowing gaze. Death by fire seemed quicker, cleaner, infinitely more desirable than the thought of whatever these men might do to him, and his knees shook. With a great effort of will he locked them, stood tall, and smiled. At any moment, at any moment now, someone was going to shout "Get him!"
The voice, when it came, stopped his heart, he clutched at the quarterdeck rail to stay upright, and for a second of abject fear, he did not register that the words were "Sail ho!" shouted by the lookouts at fore and mizzen masts together.
Movement around the edges of the crowd—men fading away into the darkness. Young Hawkes darted out of concealment, where he had been cowering behind the capstan, and ran to the captain's cabin. The hard core of mutineers, Boyd and Bates among them, tried to call men back, but others were already returning the shot to the shot garlands.
A far off thump of cannon and the cloudless night was stained pink. Jets of fire outlined two ships, sails flapping in the billowing smoke, hulls outlined in flashes of gunpowder, only to vanish again when the guns fell silent.
"Beat to quarters!" Hawkes' shrill voice broke as he gave the order, and for a moment there was no movement at all on deck as the beginnings of mutiny were checked by the wild, high thrill of excitement in the child's voice. "It's pirates, lads! Pirates! She'll be our first prize of the campaign. All hands clear for action!"
A lantern, kicked over on the far off brig, kindled her ratlines. Her sails went up in curtains of fire and the unstayed masts drooped towards each other. The second, larger sloop had now seen the
Nimrod
coming like an avenging angel out of the darkness, and her flame-lit sides were thick with men cutting the cables, hauling back the boarding ladders that held them to their prey.
"Bow chasers, fire on the up roll, I want them stopped, not sunk!" Walker was on deck—quite a different man from the spit and polish tyrant Summersgill had come to know, roused from his bed and ready to fight. There was a sort of glory about him, as there had been at times on punishment day— the glow of a man in his element, completely fearless and at ease.
"Riflemen to the tops! Take in sail! Port your helm!"
Marines came thundering up every hatchway,
sharpshooters swarming up the shrouds. Insensibly, the feeling had shifted and now men were running to their places, with no more thought than a leaf shows, opening to the sun.
"Lay aloft to furl royals! Lay out and stop flying jib! Man topgallant clewlines, buntlines, and weather braces. Jib downhaul!"
Officers had begun to reappear. The
Nimrod
slowed, turning side-on to the privateer ship. With a great clash, the gun-port covers flew open and the cannons rolled out. The bow chasers were already barking in harsh voices, each shot sent on its way by an enormous jet of crimson flame and a plume of sulfurous smoke. Summersgill could see the black pocks appear in the privateer's white sails where shot had punctured them, and as he looked, the main topgallant yard cracked and fell on the heads of the men trying to scramble back onboard. He felt almost giddy with the reprieve. Not yet dead, not quite yet.
"Back into the cabin, sir, please, and stay there." Peter appeared at his elbow, moving with a fluidity that he would surely pay dearly for when the excitement was over. He, too, was in a state of high exaltation. Throughout the waist of the ship, where the lighter twelve-pounders were beginning to come to bear on the pirates, he noticed something of the same displeasing joy resting upon every crewman. For the first time in the voyage, there were universal smiles. Not the sort of smile one would like to see in one's last moments of life, but smiles nevertheless.
"I ... ah..." he said rather lamely and drew the tinderbox out of his pocket.
Peter's eyes widened, and his sharp face softened with a look of enormous respect, but he only bowed his head and took a key from around his neck, where it had hung on a bloodstained cord. He passed it over with a smile, and Summersgill received it as the gesture of friendship it was. For a moment neither of them knew what to say. Then a ball cracked against the bow of the ship, oaken splinters hummed into the netting like angry wasps, and Kenyon remembered himself.
"As long as the cannon are in use, you will never get to the powder room," he said. On deck the sergeant at arms had opened a great chest and was passing out hatchets and cutlasses to eager hands. Boarding parties were assembling; the captain leading one himself, the third lieutenant another.
"The crisis will come when this is over," said Kenyon, dancing on his feet in his eagerness to get to his own. "These half-trained scum are nothing, but now we have armed our own people. Getting them to hand the weapons back after...? That may be your moment."
"I understand," said Summersgill and shook Peter's hand. "I'll be ready. Well, good luck, lieutenant."
"Thank you, sir. And to you."
Chapter 9
In the cabin, with the doors open a crack, Summersgill could see down into the waist of the pirate ship, see Kenyon
fighting with a furious, economical style. Beside him, Andrews was trying to pull his sword from the backbone of a man. It had wedged fast, and he dropped it, picking up the sailor's blood-slippery cutlass in its stead, his hands the same color as his hair in the light of the burning sail.
Where the fighting was thickest, Summersgill made out Captain Walker, and for the first time in the voyage, he felt a glimmer of admiration. Watching Walker fight recalled bear baiting—the privateers flung themselves at him like a pack of dogs, and he swiped them away like a bear. Laughing, sword in one hand, crowbar in the other, Walker was awful yet splendid, Summersgill thought and yelped, starting forward in shock.
Walker had been back-to-back with Bates, protecting each other, but as Summersgill watched, Bates turned, drew a reefing knife from his belt and drove it hard between Walker's ribs. The captain gasped, stumbled, and went down. Bates smiled with satisfaction, looked up, and saw Summersgill watching him. A jolt of connection, of panic, of paralysis, then Bates turned to defend himself from a blow, and Summersgill closed the door, latched it, and rested his forehead on the glass, wondering if he was about to be sick.
Convenient
, he thought shakily. He had a strange urge to laugh,
and no more than fair, after all
. But his legs quaked and his breath would not stop juddering in reaction. It was hard to understand why he felt so overcome—hadn't he practically suggested that Kenyon should do the same? Yet it was one thing to believe in poetic justice, quite another to see it.
Seeing him upset, Emily came to his side and took his hand as she looked out. Pulling her back, he closed the door again, shielding her from the horror that was the realm of men. Sometimes he wished he did not have to deal with it himself, not only because of its barbarity but also because of its reluctant echo in his own nature. For now that the shock was wearing off, his natural cynicism reasserted itself. Bates' actions were appalling, yes. Abhorrent. Yet also tremendously welcome.
A thud of men's feet hitting the deck, voices outside, and Summersgill tucked his hand in his pocket closing his fingers tight on the tinder box. Just in case. "Remember the boat, Emily," he said as he eased open the door once more. "I hope it won't be necessary, but it's as well to be sure."
The slice of open door revealed the
Nimrod's
own people, milling in the waist, their hands tight on their arsenal of weapons. There was a growing ugliness, a tendency to push at any man whose blue coat marked him as an officer. The third lieutenant narrowly avoided being tripped and trampled, and Summersgill set his teeth in his lower lip, sure that Bates had waited too long to act, and nothing less than the slaughter of everyone in charge would now satisfy the crew.
Coming aboard with several of the midshipmen and younger officers ranged about him like a bodyguard, Kenyon paused at the sight of this milling disorder. A flash of concern and thought went through his eyes, then he set his followers aside and walked confidently through the press of men to the quarterdeck ladder. Standing on the first step, head and shoulders above the crowd, he called out, "Men, I regret to have to tell you Captain Walker is badly injured and may not live."
A strange reaction went through the sailors, part doubt, part superstitious dread. Then someone at the back of the crowd cheered, and there was sparse scattered laughter.
A detachment of marines came over the side. Behind them, Summersgill made out Andrews unobtrusively attaching the ship's longboat to the winch, some of the boys lifting a barrel of water into its stern. They, too, believed this was the moment, then.
Certain that the mere sound of it would disrupt the fragile truce, Summersgill forced himself to breathe in and out once. The whole ship was tensed like the trigger of a pistol, drawn back almost to the firing point. He breathed again and resented the need, frightened to move.
In the strained silence, Kenyon took off his coat. During the fighting, the stripes on his back had begun to bleed again, and his shirt was marked with long, red parallel lines.
A deliberate display?
Or an instinctive act of solidarity with Walker's other victims?
Whichever it was, the crew responded. Faces that had been implacable creased with confusion as a frisson of fellowfeeling went through the Nimrods.
"For the time being, this places me in charge. Lt. Smith, the prize is yours; pick your prize crew and get aboard her immediately."
"Yes, sir." Smith nodded. Fear made his face bone white, but his voice held the genuine quarterdeck bark as he singled out a number of men. They looked at one another for support, for signs of defiance, but none seemed willing to make the first move, and Smith's shoulders relaxed a fraction as the sailors came to his side.
"You will be glad to hear, gentlemen," Kenyon continued, "that the vessel we rescued has promised a bounty for every man as soon as we get to port, and that's on top of the prize money for the sloop. A good night's work. As there will be considerable labor tomorrow, swaying up replacement masts on the prize, we will splice the mainbrace tonight."