CHAPTER TWO
Eleven days later, Cossack cruised under easy sail southwest of Hispaniola. It was a hot and cloudless morning, the deep blue of the sky so perfectly matching that of the sea that only the white sail of the schooner Piscataqua, close to eight miles to the southward, and the flash of Yankee Venger’s trysail, the same distance to the north, served to define the horizon. The four ships of the Markham fleet were spaced within sighting distance of one another, cruising slowly to the westward in search of the Jamaica convoy, which should have left port two days before.
Andrew Keith, Cossack’s first officer, quietly paced away his morning watch on the weather quarterdeck. A short, middle-aged man, Scots-Irish like many New Hampshiremen, he tried to keep his potbelly to a minimum by constant, monotonous exercise. His eyes slitted against the glare, Keith paced back and forth, keenly watching the hands as they finished their tasks of scrubbing the planking and brightening the brasswork. The captain would soon be on deck to supervise the crew’s sail and gun drill, and Keith made it his business to be certain that the ship was ready for whatever exercises Malachi had in mind.
Keith had been a seaman for close to forty years, starting at the age of nine; for a few lucky, and in retrospect gloriously happy, years he had been master of his own vessel, the schooner Amanda, until it had been caught by a British revenue cutter while disgorging smuggled goods in a cove on the Delaware coast. The British had been unable to prosecute the case successfully in any American court, and Keith had been liberated from gaol only a few hours after he’d been thrown into it, but his release had come too late to save the Amanda from being “accidentally” run aground and burned by its British prize crew, a mischance for which Keith had been granted the apologies of His Majesty’s government and a few bushels of nails, brass, and other fittings suitable only for sale as scrap.
The cargo, since it had been smuggled, had not been insured, and the insurance money paid him for the Amanda had in turn been used to pay his debts of honor to his backers, The Markham & Sons Corporation of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jehu Markham, a fine gentleman whatever his other peculiarities, had not insisted on being paid back; the debt was in fact uncollectable. But Keith, without hesitation or regret, had turned over the last of the insurance money, the profit from previous voyages, and had even taken a mortgage on his snug little house to pay off the little remaining. Jehu had immediately employed him as chief mate on one of the Markham vessels, with a promise of becoming a captain as soon as a suitable vessel was free; the war had intervened, and Keith had found himself without a command, and with a curious sort of promotion. He was now a “first officer”— in a navy he’d be a first lieutenant— virtually the same position he’d held as chief mate, but with far better pay and a large slice of the prize money.
Keith had never served in a warship; his life had been spent in merchant service, and short of signal guns he had never smelled powder. He had, while master of Amanda, had cause to shoot a mutinous sailor— or, rather, he had ordered his chief mate to do it, the mutiny had collapsed, and the rest of the rebels had spent the balance of the voyage battened below, to be turned over to the law upon arrival in port. But short of that, and the usual sort of discipline he’d had to inflict— fists, the rope’s end, and occasionally a belaying pin were all that were required— he was a man unused to large-scale violence, and in fact unsure how to prepare a crew for war.
But he knew what was shipshape, and what was not, and as he paced the weather side of Cossack’s little poop his eyes missed nothing.
“Turn that glass, Mr. Martin,” he growled, when the ship’s sailing master— it seemed unusual to be in a ship where the captain and master were not the same person— overlooked by a few seconds the last dribble of sand from the glass.
“Christ fucking a glass o’ gruel,” said Finch Martin, the master, whose language inclined all at once to the blasphemous, scatological, and inventive. Martin, a white-haired dwarfish man, a former Markham merchant skipper himself, hastened to the glass, turned it, bustled forward to strike eight bells of the morning watch, eight o’clock in the morning.
Bosun’s pipes began to whistle down the hatches as the next watch were turned out of their hammocks. Cossack, with far more crew than she was ever designed to hold, was standing watch-and-watch rather than three watches, because below there was only enough room for half the crew to sling their hammocks at a time. It was a tedious system, and ensured that no one but a few of the officers got more than four hours’ sleep at a time, but the compensations— pay and prize money— were supposed to make up for it.
If any prize money were to be had. The Jamaica convoy was supposed to have left Port Royal two days before, but the Markham fleet, cruising in an ideal position south of Hispaniola, had not sighted them.
Keith was worried about the temper of the crew. They had not been disciplined well in port, to keep them from desertion; and they had been allowed women aboard, which tended to create division among them;. It had been impossible to keep the hands from bringing liquor on board— they had been a loose and rowdy bunch. Yet now they were subject to military discipline. Their women had been taken away unexpectedly, even those they had tried to hide away; their liquor had been hove overboard; they had been subject to long daylight hours of merciless drill, in blazing heat, with sudden calls to quarters even in the middle of the night. Any merchant crew would have long since rebelled.
But these were privateersmen. They had been sustained throughout by the force of avarice, knowing that they would eventually be rewarded for their labors by the capture of fat prizes, by the knowledge that their captain was taking them after a rich convoy. If the convoy did not appear, the mood of the crew could change, there would be sullenness, perhaps even mutiny; only the peculiar personality of Malachi Markham could keep them together. And Malachi was... strange.
The first day after leaving St. Thomas he had imposed sudden discipline on the crew; the entire ship had been searched stem to stern for liquor, all had been found, and the mates had thrown it overboard— and Malachi personally had fisted to the deck a man who objected, then, while he was down, flailed him with a colt until the man was striped red and breathless. The mood of the crew had been ominous that day, but later, after eight unrelenting hours of gun and sail drill, the hands had turned gay and cheerful, unbelievably so.
“Flemish that line proper, Mr. Butcher,” said Andrew Keith, his eyes missing nothing.
Somehow Keith found the idea of a cheerful crew sinister. He wasn’t used to it; even the best of merchant crews were inclined to be sullen when they contemplated the fact that their contracts were likely to be so worded that they would end each voyage in debt to the ship’s owners, rather than the other way around. And Malachi’s methods of imposing discipline were tempered with what Keith could only think of as buffoonery.
The watches had been set against one another in sail drill, tacking the ship, wearing her, setting and changing sail, the sort of labor guaranteed to turn their fingernails red with blood and mark even the horniest topman’s palms with blisters— but the losing watch, instead of having their grog stopped, being forced to do extra drill, or any decent means of punishment, were forced to undergo ridiculous penalties: being made to dance the hornpipe under the critical eyes of the watch that had beaten them, being asked to recite Biblical verse or sing pious hymns, or even being forced to recite poetry.
Poetry! It had been comical to see the veteran seamen rolling their eyes in desperation, trying to think of any bit of verse, and the fourth man to recite “There was a young man from Nantucket” had been heartily booed down by the entire ship’s company before he got out the second line. Even the seaman Malachi had started earlier in the day had participated with a merry will, blustering out an axiom from Poor Richard and in his turn hissing the others. One of the mizzen topmen had apparently memorized most of Shakespeare, and had electrified the crew with speeches from Henry V, particularly the one that began with— what was it?— tennis balls. Tennis balls turning to gunstones... Keith would have to hear it again.
Malachi exercised the gun crews on the same principle, larboard against starboard in competition, the side that more consistently failing to mock-load and run out being forced to endure foolish penalties in front of the ship’s crew. Yet whether this jolliness was proof against the enemy’s cannonfire remained to be seen. The skylarking that had been made a part of the drill would be knocked out of them with the first enemy broadside, and then only a practiced, moral steadiness could carry them through. There would be no poetry or hornpipes when grapeshot was flying overhead. Keith would rather have had a crew sullen and steady, than cheerful and unpredictable.
“Cap’n’s on deck, sir.” The helmsman spoke to Keith in a husky stage whisper, probably carrying half the deck to where Malachi, in bare feet and three-cornered hat, had appeared from the mainhatch, probably having just concluded an inspection below decks. Malachi glanced around the bustling ship with a practiced eye, one watch relieving the other, then strode aft.
“Relieving you, Mr. Keith,” Malachi said with a grin.
“Thank you, sir,” said Keith, nodding his head formally. “Wind fair and steady from the nor’ nor’east. Our course is sou’east by east. Piscataqua and Venger are on station.”
“And Nubian Pride?”
“She seems to have parted company in the night, sir.”
“Good!” Malachi exclaimed, briskly, cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. “Send the hands to breakfast. Then we’ll exercise them in setting the stuns’ls, bonnets, and drabblers ... a fine wind for it.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Nubian Pride, under her strange master Ruitenbeek, had followed them out of Charlotte Amalie ten nights ago, and had been dogging their path every since. Ruitenbeek had been damnably alert to catch their slipping out of port: There had been no clues to their departure before nightfall, when suddenly the women were bustled off the Markham flotilla, and fresh water brought aboard as the cables were hove short. The Markhams hadn’t left until after midnight, after a hurried watering, during which time Malachi seized the opportunity to slip below and give a proper farewell to Roxana, making up for the lost opportunity the night before. The memory of that leave-taking brought a hollowness to Malachi’s heart, a catch to his voice... Roxana, her laughter, her willingness, and most of all her agile young body as she teased his reluctant desire into yet a third performance during their final hour, all were memories that inflamed him as he marched the weather quarterdeck. He’d escorted her ashore to a respectable inn, with her hundred guineas wrapped in her handkerchief; during the minutes spent ashore he’d pictured Josiah, his head the size of a Scots turnip from his drinking the night before, tapping his foot and looking impatiently at his watch, aware that the tide had already turned. The picture had been such a spur to his recklessness that he’d had Roxana again, on the respectable bed of the respectable inn, savoring the delay... Roxana. She would be missed.
Later, creeping under a thrice-reefed main topsail between Water Island and the looming shadow that was St. Thomas, Malachi had hung in the chains, soaked with spray, fingers raw with throwing the lead-line, voice hoarse with shouted instructions to the helmsman. The blood thundered through his veins with exertion and the promise of action. He had been amazingly happy. It had been a perfect evening, love followed by tide and wind and spray, danger under his lee— Pah! He banished his sentimentality with a hearty explosive, startling Keith and the helmsman. He marched to the weather taffrail and leaned his buttocks against it. It was Ruitenbeek that he had to think of.
It had been at dawn the next morning, after they had kept inshore of the dolphin-shaped rock that waited for them in the lee of Water Island, kept close inshore through Perseverence Bay. Then letting the land breeze take them out, they’d discovered Nubian Pride behind them, marked by her royals set against the brightening sky and the white bone of spray at the prow of her black, narrow hull. Ruitenbeek had followed them out, and had been keeping in sight for the last ten days.
Was he a British spy or not? That first night he could have fired a false fire to bring Melampe down on them, but he hadn’t; on that basis Malachi was inclined to trust him. Yet even if he had, the American privateers would most likely have escaped, and Ruitenbeek might have decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
That he had parted company during the night might indicate that he was heading for Port Royal to warn the convoy that privateers were lying in wait, and the convoy could then alter course, passing far to the southward, or beating up through the Windward Passage ... no, that last was too unlikely, the Windward Passage was a favored route for convoys to Jamaica, the trade winds were dead against going the other way.
The convoy was at least a day late. On the sixth, two days before, the convoy was scheduled to have left Port Royal; but on that day the wind had dropped entirely, and the Markham flotilla had been becalmed. Whether the wind had also dropped in Port Royal was another matter; the convoy might have got out on a land breeze, and then passed by— or even through— the Markhams that night. The next day a fitful breeze had broken out from the northwest, and strengthened during the night; even if the convoy had lost a day, they should have been sighted this morning. Instead, nothing. Perhaps Ruitenbeek had contrived to warn them. Or, worse, might not only warn them, but urge them to send warships to clear the way.
But the convoy might simply be late. They might be waiting for Ferret to join them, or might still be becalmed, or the convoy might be so large that it took two days to work out of Port Royal Sound.
At least the delay gave Malachi and his partners more time to drill their crews. The privateers had signed on a hard core of fine seamen— men far better than the landsmen the British pressed into their ships in time of war— but even the best of seamen needed to become acquainted with their ships, with the way the wooden vessels behaved in any one of the infinitely varied conditions of sea life. Cossack seemed to travel more swiftly at night, when the air was heavier; it could sail closer to the wind in light breezes, but not so much in heavy winds, which was unusual; and its Yankee construction meant that, with an alert crew, it could carry an enormous quantity of sail aloft in high winds, quantities that would tear the sticks out of any British-built ship. Not just the officers, but the men as well, would have to know this, would have to become intimately acquainted with all their ship’s virtues and peculiarities, with the way its hull took the sea and the way the helm handled; they needed it to be able to anticipate, in battle, the precise ways that Cossack might behave. And, as good as a seaman might be individually, in order to be an effective member of the crew he had to be as aware of the capabilities and limitations of his shipmates as he did with the ship itself; this they had not yet learned.
“Masthead there!” bellowed Malachi. His voice, when shouting orders, was quite different from his normal-speaking voice: about half an octave higher, and spoken with enormous volume— his shout could carry half a mile downwind.
“Aye, Cap’n?” called the masthead lookout. His own shout seemed apprehensive.
“You should be seeing the Morant Cays off our starboard bow!” Malachi shouted.
“Aye aye, Cap’n. Cays are there, right enough. Fifteen mile or so.”
“You did not report it!”
Andrew Keith, a ship’s biscuit between his teeth, could be seen peering over the weather bulwark just forward of the main hatch, curious. Martin, the Master, scratched his head and looked at Malachi from slitted eyes.
“No, Cap’n,” called the lookout. “I didn’t know—”
“You’ll report everything that ye see!” Malachi shouted. “You’ll report every sail, every rock, even the very whales! D’ye understand, damn your varnished soul?”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” replied the chastened lookout. “Cays off the starboard bow, sure enough.”
“Very well,” said Malachi in a subdued voice. Keith and the master were both staring at him with peculiar expressions, half bafflement and half curiosity, as if he had just pulled a peccary from his hat. Keith, eating his biscuit, began to saunter aft. The master climbed the companionway to the poop and marched to where Malachi leaned against the weather rail. Keith quietly parked himself by the wheel, close enough to hear every word about to be said.
“Begging your pardon, Cap’n—” Martin began.
“How may I assist you, Martin?” asked Malachi ingenuously, and tugged his hat down over his nose. His voice was pleasant, but spoken loudly enough that Keith, by the wheel, could hear.
“How did ye know th’ Cays were off our starboard bow?” Martin asked. “You can’t see ’em from the deck, and there ain’t no way of determining longitude, particularly with the poxy clocks we’ve got aboard, which lose ten minutes each day, an’ more if it’s humid, and you ain’t seen any of our dead reckonings...”
“I can feel the waves reflecting off those rocks,” Malachi said, trying to keep his inner grin from reaching his face. “Do you mean to say you cannot?”
“Feel the—” Martin spluttered.
“I can feel three waves, Mr. Martin,” Malachi said. “They are each distinct. There is a north’ard wave— you can see it, surely, it is rolling us— it is blown to us by the wind. There is a wave from east nor’east, blown by a storm a few days ago, probably around the Leeward Islands. The storm blew itself out, but I can still feel the waves, even though you probably can’t see them, not with these rollers from the north rampaging over them. And I can feel a reflection from both these waves, quite close— they bounce back when they encounter something, d’ye see, like those cays, or the rim of your shaving bowl, and although you can’t see it, I can feel it right enough. I felt they were close enough for the masthead lookout to see, and I was right.”
Martin removed his three-cornered hat and scratched wonderingly at a drop of sweat at his nape. “I’m the son of a syphilitic Dutch cow if I can understand it, Cap’n,” Martin said. “You say you can feel it? How can you, Cap’n Markham?”
Malachi peered at Martin from under his hat brim. “The wave moves the ship, Mr. Martin; even the little ones affect its motion,” he said. “And I can feel it when some part of the ship is in contact with my, er, private parts.” He waited for the revelation to sink in, then grinned. “D’ye have any other questions?”
“Ahem,” said Martin. “No, sir. I thank ye.” Still scratching his nape, the bulbous-nosed Martin backed away. Malachi, with an air of smugness he could not conceal, unsat himself from the rail and walked toward the stern, staring at Cossack’s foaming wake. The story would be over the ship in hours, probably— and years from now, around some warm New England hearth, an old Yankee sailor would be telling his grandchildren how “Crazy Cap’n Markham saved the ship from going aground in a full gale, by feelin’ the waves with the seat of his pants.”
“Deck thar!” It was the masthead lookout, alert, fresh from his chastening and eager to please. Malachi looked over his shoulder toward the shout.
“Venger’s gone about!”
Malachi took a telescope from the rack, turned his hat 180 degrees on his head so that its beak would not interfere with his motions, and laid the end of the tube against his eye. Jehu had tacked across the wind and begun his patrol in the opposite direction, a signal that the other Markham ships, in turn, were to imitate the maneuver. They would be going back and forth, patrolling the same miles of ocean all day, waiting for the convoy. Malachi swore.
“Call the hands from breakfast, Mr. Martin!” Malachi called. “We’ll tack directly.”
Martin repeated a more prosaic interpretation of Malachi’s orders. “Call the poxy offspring of Dominican whores to the braces!” Pipes blew down the hatches, and the watch on duty boiled up on deck, manning their positions, as Martin brought the helm down to edge Cossack closer to the wind. The hands, under Martin’s profane direction, trimmed the yards until Cossack was beating on the starboard tack, ready to cross the wind.
Malachi stood on the poop, hands comfortably in pockets, relishing the moment, the suspense, a hundred or more faces turned to him, waiting their orders, ready to commence the day’s drill.
“Put your wheel down, Mr. Martin,” Malachi ordered; and Martin barked brief orders to the helmsman, who ported his helm and began to bring Cossack into the wind.
“Deck thar! Piscataqua signaled enemy in sight!” It was the foremast lookout, shouting in heavily accented English, his voice rough with excitement.
”Belay!” snapped Malachi to the helmsman— who, given contradictory orders, stared at him wild-eyed before putting his helm to starboard to counteract the earlier order. Cossack’s yards trembled, her foretopsail flapping wildly, her wake describing a reversed “S”; but she fell off from the wind with the last bit of steerage way left to her, and on her old tack began to gather way again.
“Masthead there!” Malachi shouted. “Are you certain certain?”
“Aye aye, Captain!” The lookout’s voice had a Swedish lilt. “Red flag at the maintop and foretop, guns fired to windward— it’s the signal. She’s wearing ship, and sheeting home her tops’ls. The right signal was three guns, but she fired the whole broadside, hopin’ it’d carry upwind, I guess. Didn’t hear it, but that’s a power of smoke, can’t miss it in this wind.”
“That’s a guinea for you, man!” Malachi shouted, impetuously sweeping off his hat and waving it. “Look alive, Mr. Keith, get the red flag on our maintop and fore to acknowledge the signal, and clear away the starboard broadside— we’ll signal Yankee Venger!”
The crew cheered, the enemy finally discovered the prospect of prize money in sight. Keith and Martin were barking orders, the second, Maddox, and the third, Stanhope, dashed up from their breakfast in the wardroom as the bosun’s pipes wailed their discordant tune.
Cossack had been cruising under easy sail, reefed topsails with courses and topgallants furled to the yards: swiftly the crew unfurled the courses and topgallants, sheeting them home, and shook the reefs from the topsails. Cossack became a wild and lively creature, slicing through the water at speed, white sea crashing over her starboard bow. Her rolling increased, and the signal broadside, nine cannon fired in sequence, each guncarriage leaping inboard to the limit of its breechings amidst smoke and thunder, was fired partly into the sky and partly into the foam. Yankee Venger acknowledged by hoisting the two red flags and firing two guns, and then both vessels began to wear.
“We’ll carry out sail drill as normal, gentlemen,” Malachi told his officers as they stood braced on the quarterdeck, ready to react to the changing pitch and roll of the ship as it wore away from the wind. “Get the royals on her, then rig out the top and t’gallant stuns’l booms. We’ll have the bonnets and drabblers on her, aye, and the stays’ls as well.”
With the wind now coming over the larboard quarter Cossack became the swiftest thing on the ocean, a black fragment of wood driven by an immense cloud of sail. Taking waves from the new angle, the roll was reduced almost to nothing, but the pitch increased as Cossack followed each new wave, dipping and rising like a swallow, foam spilling aft from the fo’c’sle. Malachi, perched again on the taffrail, shouted order after order, supervising the trim of the studding sails and the set of the staysails. Feeling the stern was pushing the bow too far down into the trough of each wave, he ordered the mizzen topgallant taken in, and suddenly passage became smoother, more effortless, as the ship’s pitching decreased; and speed noticeably improved as the bow leapt from wave-crest to wave-crest.
“I think we’re gaining on Piscataqua, sir,” reported Keith in his deep voice, his eye glued to a telescope pushed through the lee mizzen shrouds.
“Best see for myself,” Malachi said. “Take my hat and coat.” He handed Keith his coat and hat, then took a glass from the rack and slung it over his shoulder on its strap. He ran down to the maindeck, up the fo’c’sle ladder, and hurled himself into the fore shrouds. Born to work, as at home in the rigging as in his own cabin, Malachi ran nimbly up the ratlines, and hung, apparently at his peril, for a moment from the futtock shrouds, his back for some seconds parallel to the creaming water below as he hung by fingertips and toes; then, as the ship rolled in the other direction, he hauled himself into the topmast shrouds and continued his climb into the topmast crosstrees, coming face to face with a lookout who jumped and muttered, “Bugger the Pope!”
Malachi grinned at him and settled himself into the cross-trees. The lookout, the first to have spotted Josiah’s signal, was a Swede named— well, Malachi could not remember the name of this morose topman, but damned if they weren’t all Anderson anyway. He hooked a nimble leg through the laniards. The lookout, his back braced against the topgallant mast, his hat pulled down against the glare, paid him no attention.
Malachi, his practiced limbs compensating automatically for the ship’s pitch and roll— considerable here, over one hundred feet above the deck, where the ship’s motion was exaggerated— focused the telescope first upon his brother’s Piscataqua. The schooner was sailing at a slightly different angle, presenting Malachi its starboard quarter. The square topsails and topgallants were set, and the great mainsail and foresail were spread out like giant yellow wings. Then, slowly, another wing rose, its canvas bright and new, shining white in the sun, a gaffsail hoisted upon the mainmast.
“Look ye, a gaffsail!” shouted Malachi in delight. “ ’Twill keep the foresail from drawing, Malachi,’ says he, ‘the ship will be unhandy’ Ha! He’s quick enough to hoist it in chase!”
The lookout turned his head slightly and cleanly spit tobacco into the sea below.
“I see you chew like a Christian,” offered Malachi. The Swede nodded. Malachi returned to his telescope, where Josiah’s ship still pitched in the sweet blue ocean, and followed the horizon to starboard. It was hard, even with the telescope, to define the horizon well, but there was a decided line, and something white on it. Very likely it was the topmasts of the cutter Ferret, far away now, under full press of sail. Capable of carrying a prodigious amount of canvas, and with only a tiny hull to restrain it, Ferret was outdistancing them even with a crew new to handling the little cutter.
No sign, thus far, of whatever it was Ferret had seen: the convoy, if convoy it was, was still out of sight. But wait! Another fleck of white far to larboard— hull-down, square-rigged fore- and mainmasts carrying studding sails, topgallants, and royals, a fore-and-aft rigged mizzen with gaff topsail: a barque! “Harrowed Hell,” swore Malachi. It was almost certainly Nubian Pride, under full sail to intersect the path of the Markham ships, some intersecting point on the sea where there might or might not be a Jamaica convoy.
Malachi dropped the telescope from his eye and leaned back against the topgallant mast. He could feel an edge of excitement sliding through him, warming his blood like the call of a distant bugle. By nightfall Cossack might be blooded, either celebrating a string of prizes under her lee, or a crimson-scuppered hulk, pounded to splinters by overwhelming enemy cannonade. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to relax. It would be hours yet. There was nothing to do but wait, and it was pleasant here. There was remarkably little noise: the bustle of the crew, the creaks and moans of the working hull, were left far below; with Cossack traveling at a good percentage of the wind’s velocity, there was very little wind, just enough to ruffle his hair. The only sounds were the creak of the yards as they took the strain, the flap of the red flag above his head, the keening of the breeze as it rippled through the hempen rigging. A nearby tackle’s occasional squeak added a touch of syncopation. The Swede— Malachi was sure now the name was Anderson— was good company, better than he would have been if the man had been garrulous. The lookout’s sole comment on the proceedings, indeed his only gesture save the constant motion of his slitted eyes as he scanned the sea, was to turn his head and spit an occasional quid of tobacco into the foam.
Malachi, perfectly at home, let his feet sway with the mast’s considerable movement, and swept the ocean every few minutes with his glass. The barque grew larger, began to show its black hull: Nubian Pride. In the other direction, dapples of white began to appear between the wave-peaks: Malachi leaned forward with an oath and applied the telescope to his eye. Slowly, over many minutes, the white specks resolved themselves and sail spread over many miles of ocean, vessels of all sizes and patterns: the Jamaica convoy!
“Convoy ho! To the suth’ard! Twelve sail!” It was the excited lookout in the main crosstrees, the man Malachi had berated for his inattention earlier, and who had just sighted the convoy without benefit of telescope.
Malachi’s heart pounded foolishly, overexcited by the slow appearance of the enemy. The convoy was lying almost due south of their position, stretching over a good ten miles from west to east, well scattered, many a mile or two downwind of the rest. There seemed to be two vessels keeping to windward, presumably escorts. One of them, from the size of its great sails, was either a ship of the line or a very large Indiaman; the other was a brig or snow, which from its relatively small amount of canvas, and conservative design, Malachi suspected had originally been built as a merchantman, whatever its current employment. There was at least four miles separating the escorts, the smaller vessel toward the head of the convoy, the larger to the rear. Ferret, having reduced sail, was approaching the larger escort from her larboard quarter, as if to take up station as an escort. Piscataqua, if she proceeded on her course, would strike the center of the convoy; Cossack was currently aiming directly for the smaller escort.
Malachi swept the glass to Nubian Pride; the lean hull of the barque was plain to see, just a few miles to the east of Cossack; their courses were converging and would intersect somewhere in the center of the convoy. Turning to look behind him, Malachi found his view of the snow Yankee Venger blocked by the maintopsail.
“Gunsmoke from the cutter, sir!” said the Swede, and Malachi’s telescope abruptly came around again.
Ferret had indeed fired, although not in anger. It was a signal, in answer to a challenge from the large escort. The British recognition signals, thanks to Ferret’s capture, were in the Markhams’ happy possession. The escort— it was too far for Malachi to see for certain— had probably raised a white flag at the foretop and fired three guns to leeward; Ferret presumably had given the proper reply, raising a red flag with a white cross at the maintop, a Dutch jack at the flagstaff, and firing three guns to windward, the signal that she was a British man-of-war. Whether the British believed the signal remained entirely to be seen.
Malachi heard the bell strike eight times far below: noon. He folded the glass and held it between his knees; cupping his hands, he shouted to the uplifted faces below, “Deck there! Send the hands to dinner!” The shriek of the bosun’s pipes answered him as the crew stampeded down the hatches.
Minutes passed. Individual ships in the convoy began to appear hull-up on the horizon, details of their rigging becoming apparent. The large escort to windward of the rest was almost undeniably a two-decked man-of-war, of sixty-four or seventy-four guns, certainly enough firepower to blast Cossack to kindling should Malachi ever be rash enough to venture within range. The other vessel keeping to windward of the other ships, the one Malachi had assumed was another escort, seemed to be a merchant brig converted to a warship, possibly a ship under warrant to the king rather than a naval vessel, or even a privateer somehow argued into acting as escort. Assuming there were no other escorts— Malachi, at this distance, couldn’t be entirely certain— the situation was almost ideal; unless the two-decker was an extraordinary vessel indeed, it would be slow and unhandy for this sort of work, quite unable to catch the dancing privateers. And unless the brig was unusual, it could either be battered into submission or its tub of a merchant hull left far behind. Malachi did not care which.
Anderson cleared his cheek of tobacco and spat the whole of it into the heaving sea.
Another puff of gunsmoke from the escort, another white flag raised. Piscataqua obediently raised the white-crossed flag and the Dutch jack, firing the proper return salute; Malachi could picture the escort commander’s joy in having another ship granted him. Ferret, its single great mast pitching maniacally on the sea, slid across the two-decker’s stern at a distance of a mile or so, and nonchalantly continued toward the convoy. Would Ellyat wait for the other Markham ships to be in position before attacking the convoy, or would he find the temptation of being a wolf among the flock too great to withstand?
The convoy could quite clearly be seen now, at closest only three miles off: there were almost thirty sail, a motley collection of sloops, snows, morphodite brigs, barques, shallops, luggers, and, here and there, the big ship rigs built especially for the West India trade. The British had no West India Company with a state-granted monopoly, as did, for example, the Danes, so they had no regular convoys of West Indiamen built especially for the trade. But some of England’s larger trading companies built West Indiamen on the Danish pattern, smaller and of shallower draft than their giant East Indiaman cousins, but nevertheless containing a small fortune in goods, probably worth many of the small vessels’ cargoes together, armed with somewhere between twelve and twenty guns and with enough crew to fight them. Such ships often dismounted part of their broadside in order to have more room for cargo; traveling en flute in this manner, they were more vulnerable and easier to take. Malachi hoped he could find a West Indiaman with half its broadside piping the wind. Although the sight of the convoy had thrilled him, he could not quite forget Cossack had no surgeon; it would be best, he decided, to find a prize without guns.
“Ferret’s in action, sir,” said Anderson, the first words the lookout had spoken since Malachi had climbed into the crosstrees.
Malachi’s telescope snapped back to the cutter: Ellyat had laid Ferret alongside a merchant lugger— a good choice, for it could escape easily once alarmed— and already had men aboard her. A neat action, accomplished without the firing of a single gun, and— it was to be hoped— without the escort noticing a thing.
Malachi cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted to the men below, “Deck there! Ferret’s taken a prize! She’s like a shark among a shoal!”
Swiftly the word was passed below to the men, cheering breaking out among them as they ate their dinner below decks. Malachi turned his glass on the escort: so far, not a sign they’d noticed. No— the two-decker was wearing ship, sending men aloft to get her topgallants up, firing a signal gun to leeward, the traditional challenge to combat. Ferret, meanwhile, had secured her prize and was heading downwind, cutting the convoy like a cake. The escort brig, miles away toward the head of the convoy, suddenly wore ship, signal flags fluttering from its masts, with the evident intention of dashing clean through the convoy to take the prize back.
Ellyat did not seem perturbed by the British effort and dashed downwind onto another merchant vessel, this a morphodite brig, Ferret ran up American colors and fired a gun to bring her to. The brig obeyed the order, her yards swinging in confusion; and Ferret promptly lay alongside and took possession. No more than five minutes had passed since Ferret had begun the action; she could not do much more, since she carried only forty men and would soon run out of prize crews to put aboard the British vessels. Ferret and her new prize separated from one another and began to fly downwind.
The two-decker— Malachi could see now that she carried at least seventy-four guns, a vast broadside of far more use in line of battle than in escorting a score of merchant ships— had apparently remembered Piscataqua still windward of the convoy, dashing down under full canvas; Ferret’s prizes were losses that could be written off, but if the seventy-four was to protect the convoy from further attacks, Josiah would have to be dealt with. The big escort hauled her wind and began to ride on the same path as the convoy, in the meantime getting all sail aloft in an effort to match her opponents’ speed.
Not so the escort brig: she was still snorting along through the convoy, under full sail, cutting through on a course almost directly opposite to that of her charges and abandoning her station at the head of the convoy. Josiah, contemplating the situation, apparently decided that as the brig was leaving her station in such haste, the head of the convoy would provide easier pickings; accordingly, he took in the gaffsail and put his helm down, riding parallel to the convoy, but with greater speed than either the convoy or its two-decked escort.
“Take the glass, Anderson,” cried Malachi, jumping to his feet. “I’ll be needed on deck shortly. Keep a sharp eye.”
The Swede took the glass, hefted it in one hand as if testing its weight or unsure of its purpose, and looked at it with a quizzical eye. He’d done all right with the naked eye so far, or so his countenance seemed to state. Malachi looked down at the deck over a hundred feet below, contemplated the slow and easy way to climb down via the shrouds, and decided against it. Timing his motions with the pitch of the ship, he stepped effortlessly into space and seized a backstay, about four yards distant, with all four limbs.
“The name is Person, sir,” said the laconic Swede as Malachi hung twisting in the rigging.
“Oh. Beg pardon,” said Malachi hastily, and slid the hundred feet to the deck at a speed carefully calculated not to tear the bleeding skin from his palms.
“How d’ye,” he said cheerfully as his feet touched the deck near Maddox, the dark-browed second officer.
Maddox started, his hat toppling over one ear. “Yfags,” he swore, rescued his hat, and then turned to his captain. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, sir,” Maddox said in his deep voice. “Aside from the personal danger, it makes the rest of the officers look decrepit.”
“Issue the men their liquor and call them to quarters,” Malachi said, dancing a bit— the planks were hot under his bare feet, and he could feel scorching tar on his toes. “I expect to be in action within the half hour.”
“Aye aye, Captain. Mr. Keith is aft with your coat.”
“Thankee.” Malachi walked aft, finding Keith on the poop. Keith had changed into a good brown swallow-tailed coat, a fresh white cravat, and wore a sword by his side on its baldrick.
“I sent your coat and hat below to your cabin, sir,” Keith said the instant Malachi appeared. His hand nervously clasped and unclasped the hilt of his hanger; he appeared thoroughly uncomfortable with a sword hanging at his side.
“Very well,” Malachi said. “I’ll wait for Shaw to be issued his rum, then call for them.” Keith nodded.
He smiled as he heard the hands, in a queue for their liquor, begin to sing; it was a song he’d heard much of, one set to the tune of “God Save the King.” It had been invented by Martin, the master, and was entirely characteristic of the man’s rude eloquence; it was called “Bugger the King.”
Bugger our gracious King,
Bugger our noble King,
Bugger the King!
Yankees at John Bull’s throat,
Proclaiming Freedom’s hope,
From Land’s End to John o’ Groats,
Bugger the King!
Malachi laughed: he would have given much for the privilege of singing it to German George’s face. He looked at Keith: the first officer was looking dead ahead, paying no attention to the song or the ship, his cheeks pale.
“Have a bit of rum yourself, Mr. Keith,” Malachi suggested, watching the white knuckles as they grasped the hanger-hilt.
“ ’Tis phlebotomy I need, not rum,” Keith said. “I feel an agitation in my blood.”
“Spend it on the enemy, man, not in a surgeon’s bowl,” Malachi urged. He knew full well what Keith was feeling. “This is the body’s calling to the blood to prepare for action and is your own good.”
“Yet my mouth is dry, in faith,” said Andrew Keith. “With your leave, I’ll have a dram.”
“Have two,” said Malachi.
Keith nodded tersely and left the poop, heading below toward the officers’ private store of rum. The master followed him with a sympathetic eye.
“He’ll be all right once the grapeshot starts flyin’ like glassware in a Levantine whorehouse,” Martin said. “These cold-blooded Scots are just slow in starting.”
“Aye,” said Malachi equably. “He’s a steady man of good parts. What in blazes is that Dutchman doing?”
Nubian Pride had altered course slightly and was now heading on a sharp converging course with Cossack a mile or so to larboard.
“She’s sailin’ for the tail o’ the convoy,” Martin said.
“Alter course two points to starboard,” Malachi said. “We’ll avoid her.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n.”
“Deck there!” The voice, strained and hoarse, belonged to the Swede in the fore-crosstrees. “The escort’s signaling!”
The far-off thump of a signal gun reached their ears; the first shot they’d been close enough to hear. Malachi snatched a glass from the rack and trained it on the seventy-four. Signal flags were rampaging up and down her masts: another gun fired.
“Deck there!” The lookout again. “Pisc’taqua’s worn ship!”
Josiah had finally made his move. Having left the two-decker far behind, the Yankee schooner was now near the head of the convoy. He had in fact passed the escort brig, which was heading in almost the opposite direction, in futile pursuit of Ferret, which was by now probably four or five miles to leeward with her two prizes.
The brig, suddenly aware by the two-decker’s signals that she was the only escort capable of stopping Josiah from snapping up every sail at the head of the convoy, suddenly hauled her wind, her yards moving crazily as she tried to tack, and— by the nailed Christ!
“She’s in irons!” whooped every lookout on the ship. Malachi threw up his arms and danced a brief jig. The brig, her crew moving like madmen, was stalled dead in the wind’s eye, every sail aback; she was actually gathering sternway. Josiah could take the entire head of the convoy without fear of interference.
“That squinty-eyed bastard of a toad-fucking Dutchman has altered course agin’,” Martin bellowed, stamping his foot and startling the helmsman, who glanced at Martin from slitted, suspicious eyes.
“Harrowed Hell,” said Malachi. Nubian Pride was cutting even closer to them, now five or six cables to larboard on a direct converging course. Keith, his hands now quite steady, appeared once more on, deck, having augmented his armament with a brace of pistols tucked casually into his waistband, and a short duck-footed musket with seven barrels spread fanwise, held in the crook of his arm.
“I’d move them pistols, sir,” said Martin, looking at Keith with a peculiar expression.
“Why, in faith?” asked innocent Keith.
“Because they’re like to go off by accident an’ blow off yer balls,” said Martin with an unpleasant leer.
“Unless, of course, you’re desirous of a hasty phlebotomy,” grinned Malachi, “in which case proceed.” Keith rapidly began transferring his armament to safer parts of his anatomy.
“If you’re quite done,” Malachi said, “call the hands to quarters; they’ve had enough time to swill their grog. And take in the bonnets and drabblers; we’ll leave the stuns’ls and stays’ls aloft for the present.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” said Keith. “Here, Martin, hold the—”
“Watch where you’re pointin’ it,” growled the master.
“—Sorry. It points in so many directions. Hold this for the present: there.”
“Mr. Maddox!” bawled Malachi, raising his voice above the two muttering officers, both of whom were dancing a delicate minuet as they circled one another, gingerly trying to deal with the seven-barreled musket without somehow setting it off.
Maddox hastened aft; he had armed himself with a rather elegant bell-hilted rapier.
“Sir.”
“Clear away the fo’c’sle larboard nine-pounder and put a ball through yon Dutchman’s foretops’l,” said Malachi, nodding toward Nubian Pride. “If he doesn’t obey the warning to stay clear, I’d be obliged if you’d put a broadside into him.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” said Maddox, stolidly refusing to show surprise at the unexpected order. He turned and dashed to the fo’c’sle, threading his way among the hands that were busy clearing the ship for action.
“McVie!” called Malachi.
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” howled the Bosun from somewhere in the mainmast, where he was presumably supervising the sail drill.
“Swing out the black cutter, the pinnace, and the gig!” Malachi shouted. “Have a swivel gun ready to drop in each, and have each ready to carry a prize crew!”
“Aye aye, Cap’n. Directly.”
“Sir?” It was Albert Stanhope, the horse-faced third officer, standing below the break of the poop.
“Aye, Stanhope, what is it?”
“May I assist in any way, sir?” Stanhope asked, screwing his weak eyes against the noonday sun. “I have no duties at present.”
The more-than-useless Stanhope had been assigned few tasks, other than to march about the gundeck during action and make a conspicuous target of himself; Malachi devoutly hoped the young man would prove equal to the task.
“Er, aye, Stanhope,” said Malachi. “You may assist the bosun.”
“Aye aye, Captain Markham.” The thin officer turned, cocked his hat down over his eyes in a businesslike manner, and prepared to pick some hands for the task.
“Stanhope!” Malachi called.
“Sir?”
“What in the name of Christ is that thing at your waist?”
“This?” Stanhope asked, pointing to the strange, rattling object dangling between his knees. “It is a sword, sir.”
“That’s a dragoon saber, Mr. Stanhope,” said Malachi. “What is it doing on a ship-of-war?”
“A gift from my father, Captain.” It would be. Absurdly long, it was meant to be rigged to a saddle rather than hung at the waist.
“Use it well, Stanhope,” Malachi sighed. “And try not to trip over it in the meantime.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Stanhope turned, took a step, and promptly sprawled in an unseemly tangle on the deck. The red-cheeked third officer was assisted to his feet by the bosun, who had just arrived from aloft, and the two, after Stanhope had been brushed off by the helpful McVie, set about rigging three of the ship’s boats outboard. The master shook his head at Stanhope, bustling purposefully in the waist.
“ ’Tis like shooting fish in a barrel with this,” he said, holding up the seven-barreled volley gun.
“I know,” said Malachi. “Fish with pimples. Yet I cannot resist entirely.”
Both watches were on deck and slightly tipsy, clearing the ship for action and readying the great guns, swinging out the boats, and reducing sail simultaneously; the deck seemed disorderly, with the hands bustling from one end of the ship to the other, shouting and calling to one another— yet it was an orderly bustle, each man knowing his place and his duty, and over the shouts and curses and tumult was the solemn whine of the ship’s grindstone, sharpening axes, cutlasses, and pikes, the privateers’ weapons of close execution.
“Shaw!” Malachi shouted, having seen his cabin servant racing on one errand or other. Shaw came to a sudden halt at the sound of his Captain’s voice, then turned and rushed, with equal haste, to the quarterdeck.
“Fetch me—” Malachi began, but was suddenly interrupted by a baritone bellow from Maddox, who was waving his hat from the fo’c’sle. Shaw, apparently understanding, nodded and dashed beneath the poop toward Malachi’s cabin.
“Captain!” Maddox repeated.
“Yes, Mr. Maddox?” Malachi shouted back.
“The larboard nine-pounder is cleared for action, sir!”
Malachi glanced to his left at Nubian Pride, still on collision course with Cossack, two cables’ lengths off the larboard bow. Ruitenbeek showed no sign of changing course. “Do your duty, Mr. Maddox!” Malachi shouted. Maddox clapped his hat squarely back on his head, and bent over the nine-pounder chaser, sighting along its iron barrel.
“Sail setting as ordered, sir,” reported Keith, dashing back to the poop. “The hands are at quarters, the gun-deck’ll be cleared in a moment.”
“Thank you, Mr. Keith.”
The fo’c’sle chaser went off with an iron-lunged bang as Maddox ordered the match applied to the touch-hole, a flamehearted flower of dark smoke blossoming from the cannon’s mouth as it hurled its massive weight back upon its tackles. As it flew away the ball sounded like a swarm of giant bees in flight. It arched visibly through the air to puncture Nubian Pride’s main topsail with an audible smack. Cossack’s crew bust into a brass-voiced cheer, as if the cannon had been fired at Lord North himself.
“Silence there!” Malachi shouted, managing somehow to bellow louder than all the crew. The crew hushed instantly, a few of them leaning eagerly over the larboard cannon, linstocks in their hands, ready to follow the single shot with an entire broadside.
“Sponge out!” Maddox’s voice, giving the regular cadence of orders, was suddenly very loud. Turning to his captain, he reported, “Not quite the foretops’l, sir. Shall I try again?”
“Your shot seems to have been quite efficacious, thank you, Maddox,” Malachi said. His speech had grown more formal in an effort to disguise his own excitement; the sound of the nine-pounder, the tang of powder in the air, had brought a coppery flush to his cheeks and a glitter to his eyes. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep them from flailing about in answer to the animation he felt, the heat he felt surging through his veins at the hint of action. This was not the time. Nubian Pride was swinging in a hasty circle to starboard, her yards uncoordinated, as she tried to brace them in her new attitude to the wind. She failed, losing way, and Cossack surged ahead toward the convoy.
Shaw suddenly appeared on the poop deck, carrying Malachi’s sword, pistols, cartridge case, and whistle; he hurried to buckle the swordbelt around Malachi’s waist.
“That wasn’t what I asked for, you fool,” Malachi growled, biting .back the temptation to express the agitation he felt in the form of a long tongue-lashing with his helpless red-haired steward as the target. Malachi tightened the sword belt and thrust his pistols through it, each at an angle so they could not hit a vital part if discharged accidentally. “I wanted my hat, coat, and shoes.”
“Beg pardon, Captain,” Shaw said, handing him his cartridge case. Malachi slung the case over his shoulder. “Shall I go fetch them?”
“Nay,” Malachi said, gauging the approach of the convoy: quite close now. “Best go to your station.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” said Shaw; not only was he the Captain’s steward, but also the captain of one of the quarterdeck twelve-pounders.
“Get in the royals,” Malachi told Keith. “And the stays’ls. Take in the stuns’ls, but leave the booms aloft; we may set ’em later. I want the main t’gallant furled.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Keith hastily, for Malachi had given him little time. He reached for a brass-speaking trumpet and began bellowing orders. His second-generation Ulster accent, Malachi noticed, became more prominent when he was excited. Malachi perched himself upon the weather taffrail, leaving his orders’ execution to the first officer while he studied the convoy.
Josiah’s schooner had fallen among the van of the convoy, scattering merchant vessels in all directions, a few hove-to, waiting Yankee boarders. The escort brig, after falling in irons, had managed to get itself under way again, but was on the wrong tack and would have to either wear ship or attempt tacking again if she hoped to interfere with Piscataqua’s activities. The two-decker had continued on its rampaging course through the convoy, all sail aloft, but was as yet even farther from the site of Josiah’s reaving than was the brig. Malachi felt a certain sympathy for the escort ships: there were only two of them, guarding a large convoy, covering twenty-five square miles of ocean, and attacked by five enemy vessels, each faster than their own. It was a hopeless task.
The two-decker’s dash for the head of the convoy had left the rear undefended, perfect pickings for whichever of the American ships could slip in and make their attack. Malachi accordingly walked to the lee rail, peered intently at the flock of ships, and chose one that seemed fatter than most. “Lay me a course for that snow with the red beak, Mr. Martin,” Malachi said to the Master, pointing at his chosen target. “I’ll take her first.”
“That old hooker don’t have a chance,” Martin said. “A good choice, Cap’n.”
The dwarfish master gave the helmsman brief instructions, and Cossack altered course another three points to starboard, losing speed as much of her spread of canvas was taken in, but still bearing, wind behind her, upon her chosen prey.
“I’ll have the ship under her proper colors, Mr. Keith,” Malachi said. “We should not be afraid to declare ourselves.”
“Indeed not, Captain,” said Keith, “A pleasure it will be to see the Rattlesnake over our poop.” He strode to the flag locker, chose the correct banner, and raised with his own hands the Rattlesnake ensign, first flag of the new American republic: a gaudy, perhaps even unsightly flag, with its thirteen stripes of red and white, and a grimly realistic rattlesnake rippling across it, dont tread on me blazoned in black below. An appropriate banner, Malachi thought, for a young nation not afraid to be ugly in order to make a point.
Malachi took a brass-speaking trumpet from its locker and raised it to his lips. “Give her a gun across her bow, Maddox!” he shouted. “Let’s baptize our ensign with gunsmoke!”
“Happily, Captain!” Maddox returned, and bent over the starboard nine-pounder. Almost immediately he stepped back and signaled the gun captain to apply his linstock: the gun leapt inboard with a roar, straining its tackles, and a roundshot clipped wave-tops twenty yards before the red beak of the target snow. Meekly the snow hove-to, awaiting her prize crew. The Yankee crew cheered, and this time Malachi let them continue as long as they wished.
“Lay me aboard her, Mr. Martin,” he called to the Master. “I don’t want to take the time to send a boat.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Ready to lead a boarding party, Captain.” It was the third officer, Stanhope, standing at the break in the poop, his long sword now clear of the scabbard and in his- hand. Malachi scowled.
“Wait till you’r told, Stanhope,” he barked. “This is Maddox’s turn; he earned it. You’ll get your chance.”
Stanhope flushed red again. “At your service, Captain,” he said bitterly. “Whenever you please.”
Malachi nodded curtly; this was no time to let the hands see their officers bickering. “Pass the word for Maddox,” he ordered.
“Deck thar!” shouted the mainmast lookout, his voice cracking. “The two-decker’s worn ship!”
Malachi turned, scanning the pack of sail eastward of Cossack; the masts of the seventy-four, towering above the other ships, were no longer foreshortened, but showing blue sky between each mast, turning south. Whatever the escort was attempting— a belated effort to guard the rear of the convoy, some last-minute attempt to rally scattered merchant vessels around its lofty bulwarks, an admission that it was useless to stop Josiah from plundering the head of the convoy— it would cut Malachi’s raid into the convoy’s rear somewhat shorter than he intended.
“You sent for me, Captain?” Maddox asked. His brow was smeared with a streak of powder from the two guns he’d fired, but his eyes were bright with the possibility of more action. Malachi wondered what a full broadside would have done to his countenance.
“Take your boarding party,” Malachi said. “Ten men, with cutlasses, pistols, a swivel, and two musketoons. Have them at the larboard gangway.”
“Aye aye, sir. Most happy.”
“Take you off, then. Smartly now!” Maddox turned and began shouting for his boarders. Each of Cossack’s officers had ten men assigned to him as his boarding party; when the word was passed for “Mr. Maddox’s people,” each of the ten would rush from his station, pick up a pistol and cutlass, and gather about their officer, ready to take possession of a prize.
Martin had set Cossack’s course to pass across the prize’s stern and then luff up to take her from leeward; it was easier that way and could be done without further reducing sail. As the nimble privateer slid up to the brig, Malachi almost gagged at the sudden stench: he didn’t have to look under hatches to know the prize’s cargo was molasses. Malachi pitied the prize crew: they’d be living with the smell until they reached port. Martin brought Cossack alongside neatly, almost gently: Martin had the foresails lifting during the latter half of his approach and threw all aback just as the snow’s own sails stole most of the wind from Cossack’s canvas. The result of Martin’s delicate judgments was that Cossack’s larboard forechains scraped the merchant snow’s hull amidships, grapnels were flung and made fast, and under the overwhelming guns of Cossack’s broadside Maddox and his ten men transferred to the prize without even a whimper of protest from its crew, fifteen or so of them, who had lined up at their officer’s command just abaft the fo’c’sle.
“That was as smooth an approach as I’ve seen in sixteen years,” Malachi told Martin admiringly. “As smooth as any Jack ever laid his Jill in the pasture.”
“Thankee, Cap’n,” Martin grinned, pleased with himself. Malachi walked to the lee rail, searching the convoy professionally: most of his targets were in flight downwind, and inadvertently making the escorts’ job more difficult by scattering over miles of ocean. Among them towered the masts of an eighteen-gun West Indiaman. Malachi pointed to it.
“Now lay me alongside that Indiaman,” he called, “and we’ll all be rich men!”
“I’d be pleased to take that lordly bugger, Cap’n,” Martin leered.
The grapnels were retrieved, and Cossack separated from her prize, her yards shivering until they were braced around to take the wind. Cossack fell off, progressively making way, until she ran with the wind on her quarter. Reefs were shaken from the topgallants, and the courses were unfurled:Cossack’s nimble hull cut swiftly through the water.
The distant rumble of gunfire was brought to them on the breeze: Malachi snatched a telescope and trained it to the eastward. The escort brig had failed either to catch Josiah or retake any of his captures, but had favored him instead with a broadside at the range of at least a mile, a pathetic Parthian shot. Malachi turned his glass to Piscataqua, which sailed casually away from the convoy, surrounded by a covey of captures. Malachi counted them: a brig, a hermaphrodite brig, a lean little lugger, one, no, two barques— five captures!
“Harrowed Hell,” Malachi swore in awe. Malachi shifted his telescope to the two-decker: the ship of the line was still tearing through the scattered convoy under full sail, but at least two miles distant. There was still time.
Malachi returned the glass to its rack and ran to the fo’c’sle, meeting McVie, the Bosun, whose battle station the forecastle was. McVie was a sailor’s sailor, risen from the disorderly ranks of seamen to a position of respect and authority, due not only to his considerable muscle, but to wise exercise thereof. He was a longtime servant of the Markham family, first to Malachi’s father Adaiah, then to Malachi on the old man’s death. He was at least four inches over six feet, with eyes of a startling blue in his brown face; his arms were lean and muscled as if carven in stone, and covered with blue-black tattoos. His long, greased sailor’s queue hung below his waist, and was tucked into his belt behind; there was no gray in his dark hair, although he must have been past fifty; his age was also belied by his smooth, high-boned face, which looked no older than thirty.
“Put that Indiaman under fire,” Malachi ordered. “Keep the chasers firing until she strikes. Make that steady fire now; I don’t want any ball loosed without aiming.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” McVie said simply. He was a man who could be trusted to perform his assigned task capably and without further explanation.
“Fire low, mind,” Malachi said. “I don’t want her damaged aloft; we’d never be able to get her away.”
“Aye aye. I’ll keep the shot in her timbers easy enough.”
Malachi returned to his position on the quarterdeck, his ascension of the poop ladder saluted by a bang from one of the fo’c’sle nine-pounders under McVie’s direction.
“The bilge-sucking Indiaman’s sailing to starboard,” Martin said.
“Follow her,” said Malachi.
“If she luffs she could put a broadside into us,” warned the master.
“If she shows sign of luffing, put your helm up and we’ll cross her hawse,” said Malachi.
Martin put his helm to port and followed the Indiaman’s course; they were parallel, about two cables apart, with the wind on their starboard quarters and the Indiaman under Cossack’s lee. There was another bang forward: the other of McVie’s chasers had found a target. At this range it was likely that he had missed, but the cannonfire, with any luck, was serving to distract the Indiaman’s captain. Malachi retrieved his telescope and focused it on the Indiaman: he could see her clearly, the brown hull with the red stripe around its gunports, the gaudy gingerbread on her poop, a cluster of officers conferring on the quarterdeck, dressed in laced coats and laced hats. There was a third bang from Cossack’s fo’c’sle, and the Indiaman’s officers jumped in surprise, turning forward; Malachi followed their gaze with his glass, and found a number of men bustling about in the waist of the ship, presumably gathering about a few casualties. One of McVie’s shots, at least, had struck home.
One of the Indiaman’s officers marched forward from the quarterdeck and established control: some men were sent to the after hatch, carrying wounded, a bloody rag of a corpse was thrown hastily overboard; the others were sent to their stations. The officers began pacing the deck, calling orders; there was a flurry of action, the hands taking their places by the braces...
“She’s going to luff!” Malachi shouted. “Put your helm up!”
The helmsman responded before Finch Martin could even give his profane interpretation of Malachi’s order; Cossack fell from the wind like a falcon on a garter snake, even before the Indiaman put down her own helm and tried to bring her nine-gun broadside to bear. The Indiaman, putting her head to the wind, was in a slower position, and with a round sluggish hull besides; Cossack, rampaging downwind, could easily cross the Indiaman’s stern at a range of less than two hundred yards and rake her with her full broadside of twelve-pound iron guns.
“We’ve got her!” Martin bellowed, waving his hat, capering in full view of the amused seamen. “We’ve got the lordly bitch right where we want her!”
“Run out the starboard broadside!” Malachi shouted into his speaking trumpet. “Every shot aimed, now!”
The seamen threw themselves on the side-tackles, hauling the guns up the deck with a massive, ominous rumble, each iron muzzle poking through the gunports in its turn, ready to thunder against the fragile stern of the British ship. Each gun captain peered along the barrel of the gun, his smoking linstock in his hand, ready to apply to the touch-hole.
“Easy now,” Malachi said. “Bring her a point nearer.” He was brandishing the telescope like a sword in his excitement; realizing it, he returned the glass to its rack and took his whistle from his pocket.
There was an unexpected bang from the fo’c’sle, and the acrid taste of powder in Malachi’s mouth. What did McVie think he was doing? Malachi put the whistle in his mouth, ready to blow it in signal for the gun crews to fire. Keith and Stanhope were both walking to and fro in the waist of the ship, brandishing their swords. “Fire as you bear, lads,” Keith kept saying; while Stanhope, marching with his shoulders back as if on the drill field, said nothing but gripped the preposterous dragoon sword with a white-knuckled hand.
Seconds to go. With the sound of the guntrucks gone it had become very quiet, except for the incessant whine of the wind through the rigging, the sound of the ship’s timbers working, and Keith’s quiet litany of instruction; all these sounds were dwarfed by the crazed thudding of Malachi’s heart and the suspiration of his breath. The Indiaman’s stern was approaching, inexorably; soon round after round of twelve-pound shot would break through those elegant stern windows and travel the length of her deck, howling iron demons demanding their due in blood. Malachi had never seen it, and could not really picture it. It bothered him that he could not.
He’d luff after the broadside and fight under the Indiaman’s lee, gun to gun, until she struck; he’d have to hope that neither of them were too damaged aloft to make their escape from the two-decker thundering down on them.
Malachi took the whistle from his mouth and rattled it nervously in his hand. “Fire as you bear, gentlemen!” he shouted, knowing he had to say something, but unable to think of anything but what the entire ship’s company already knew. “Make every shot count. Ready, now...!”
He raised the whistle once more to his lips, filled his cheeks with air. There was no way the Indiaman could escape: once committed to her maneuver, she had to continue it or fall off from the wind in confusion, even more of a target than she was now.
There were sudden cheers from the fo’c’sle, followed by McVie’s brazen-voiced bellow: “She’s struck, she’s struck to us!”
“Belay! Belay!” Malachi screamed hoarsely, his whistle dropping to the deck. The flag at the Indiaman’s poop was coming down, her main and mizzen yards squaring, going aback. The seamen cheered as one, shrieking, flinging hats aloft and leaping onto one another’s shoulders in jubilation, or breaking into spontaneous hornpipes. Martin put the helm down and brought Cossack into the wind; Malachi cleared the poop barricade in one exuberant leap and landed among the men in the maindeck, pounding shoulders, hearing their whooping congratulations.
“Mr. Keith!” he shouted. “Mr. Keith, take yer boarding party ...no, best take ten men more, you pick ’em ... a swivel, musketoons, each man with cutlass and pistol . . .” Keith nodded, hearing only snatches of Malachi’s orders through the ecstatic cheering of the men on the maindeck. “Black cutter!” Malachi finished. “You understand?” Keith nodded, turned, waved his arms, and began shouting orders in such a thick burr that he was certainly understood only with effort.
Albert Stanhope, the third officer, ran up to Malachi through the press, carrying his sword point-down in his fist, like a dagger, its tip dragging on the deck. “Captain, Captain,” he yelled, his face red with the volume he was putting into his voice. “Captain, we’ve got another prize!”
“What d’ye say?” asked Malachi in amazement. With Stanhope shouting almost directly into his ear, Malachi was finally brought to understand: when the Indiaman had luffed, she had uncovered a brig trying to make its escape in the opposite direction, barely two cables away; McVie had promptly fired one of the fo’c’sle nine-pounders across its bows— that must have been the single shot Malachi had wondered at— and the brig had meekly hove-to and awaited capture.
“Are you sure?” Malachi demanded, unable to credit this piece of luck. Stanhope nodded dumbly.
“She’s off the larboard bow, you can see her plain as day!” he said.
Malachi turned and saw it, a neat little packet brig, hove-to and awaiting his orders. “Sweet Jesus,” he breathed in awe. “I never hoped to see such a thing.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Stanhope, quietly, his face composed.
“Tell McVie to take a party—” began Malachi, and then, checked by the sight of Stanhope’s humiliated face, said, “No. You do it. Take your ten-man party in the pinnace. Each man with a cutlass and pistol; also take two musketoons and a swivel to keep the crew in line.”
Stanhope nodded, his face radiating joy. “Directly, Captain,” he said, and saluted— the first salute Malachi had ever received. It surprised him.
Martin luffed up between the two captures, and hove-to; the two boats were dropped hastily into the water and began to fill with their prize crews. Malachi stood with Keith and Stanhope at the loading port, hurrying the crew along, mindful of the two-decker soon to descend on them.
“Begging the first officer’s pardon, Mr. Keith,” said Finch Martin, the master, with his usual crooked leer. “But he has fergot his foolish-arsed gun.” He held out the seven-barreled volley gun to Keith, who reddened and took it.
“You might need it, Mr. Keith,” Malachi said, partly to alleviate the man’s embarrassment. “One sight of it, and the Indiaman’s crew will think twice before trying to retake the ship.”
“Aye,” said the master. “But if you ever take it into your head to fire it, fire from the hip or brace it against a piece of timber: it’ll break your collarbone else.”
“Aye, that much I knew,” Keith said with dignity, and descended, as protocol dictated, last into the boat.
“Shove off! Out oars! Give way all!” The cadence of orders, first Keith’s, then Stanhope’s, was barely finished before Malachi was getting the privateer under way. The two-decker was in plain sight, its enormous spread of canvas looming over every other ship in the convoy: its studding sails had been set, as had its royals; even the quaint little square spritsail had been set. She was straining every yard to catch Cossack or retake one of the prizes. Cossack’s pursuit of the West Indiaman had taken her away from the giant escort; but the time spent dead in the water while dropping boats and securing prizes was rapidly eating the privateer’s lead.
Cossack was under way before her boats had quite reached the prizes, sailing downwind to distract the line of battleship’s attention from the captures. It would be some time yet before the prizes could be secured and got under way. Malachi set his studding sails and royals to gain more speed, crossed the seventy-four’s bows at fourteen or fifteen cable’s range, and sailed blithely on. The two-decker altered course to follow, trying a few ranging shots from its bow-chasers that fell wide of the mark. Malachi sighed with relief when the enemy’s gunnery proved poor, for the British chasers were long eighteen-pounders at least, and only a foretaste of the thirty-two pounders ready to thunder out from the seventy-four’s lower battery if Malachi and the gods of war gave them opportunity.
Once the prizes had got under way, Malachi wore ship and showed the British his heels by setting his royals. Cossack gained so greatly on the battleship that the two-decker soon luffed and returned to gather what remained of the convoy about itself, signal flags running up and down its masts.
Malachi jubilantly surveyed the Markham ships and their prizes with his telescope. All of them, now that they were no longer being pursued, were coasting downwind under easy sail. Ellyat in Ferret had taken two prizes at the outset; Josiah’s Piscataqua had captured an amazing five, two of them large trading barques; Malachi had taken three, and one of them a West Indiaman. Turning, Malachi could see Nubian Pride, sailing under American colors— a belated declaration— in the company of two prizes, one a lugger, the other a little shallop that had somehow lost its mast, probably in collision, and was under tow. Ruitenbeek had made himself some money, even with his armament of four-pounders.
Only Jehu had not yet made any captures. Yankee Venger, the last of the Markham flotilla, had been too late to strike the convoy with the others. Malachi, peering over the stern, found the Yankee snow still hovering to windward of the convoy, pacing it, awaiting its chance. Accordingly, Malachi hoisted the signal for all ships to sail on the larboard tack— a blue flag with a white circle, flown at the main-peak— and fired a gun to call their attention to it. The Markham ships hauled their wind, sailing parallel to the convoy, ready to give Jehu aid should he require it.
Thus the situation remained for the rest of the afternoon, with a light but steady breeze from the north northeast, Yankee Venger hovering to windward of the convoy, the other Markhams and their prizes to leeward, and Nubian Pride and her two captures holding steady to the leeward of the latter, having luffed into the wind for no apparent reason other than to see what the Markhams were up to. The sun baked the planking as they waited, hot tar oozing from the seams; the crew, still at quarters, tried to keep in the shadow of the sails and were sent in turns to the scuttle butt to relieve their thirst.
At dusk Jehu made his move, wearing ship with incredible speed and dashing into the middle of the convoy, where he snatched out two merchant brigs at the cost of some rigging cut by the furious, but futile, long-range broadsides of the seventy-four. Yankee Venger, with her prizes, proudly joined the Markham convoy, and was given three cheers by the crew of Cossack; then all ships wore and continued downwind under easy sail, each prize hoisting red lanterns at the main yardarms so that the alert privateers could keep track of them. Cossack secured from quarters at eight o’clock, and the crew was sent to a late, cold supper; but it was almost midnight before Malachi was able to retire to his cabin, call for a tub of water and a brush, and begin to scrub the sticky tar from his bare feet.