Absolute Honour (7 page)

Not
all
the sharpshooters will be on their decks, he thought.

A detour to the galley kept Jack from the deck. With the hot water and some rough soap he found there, he plied his straight
razor, taking off his beard, as voices rose and fell above him, words indistinct, disagreement clear. He took his time, for
he wanted no nicks and, as with his dressing, there was something soothing in this attention to ritual. Finally, he pulled
a stock from his waistcoat pocket, the material cut from the same dark cloth as his regimental facings, and bound his long
black hair into a cue.

On his way up to the deck, he spared a moment to duck into the Captain’s cabin, to the only mirror on the ship. It showed
him an officer who would disgrace neither name nor regiment. Sticking out his tongue at this other self, cap tucked under
his arm, he climbed the steep stair.

He emerged onto the quarterdeck, but the officers were gathered on the poop, facing that majority of the crew who were not
aloft in the rigging. His movement through them brought silence, many regarding him as if they had never seen him before.
He ascended to the poop deck and stood behind Link’s left shoulder, just as Red Hugh flanked him on the right.

The Captain gestured to him immediately. ‘You talk of the
fiercesome French, Williams. But we have bold warriors ourselves, do we not?’

‘Not doubting their courage, Cap’n,’ the tattooed Welshman replied from the wheel, ‘but courage itself fires no shots. And
the Frenchie will fire plenty.’ He looked to starboard. Jack could see how much the French ship had closed. Half the distance
at least. Two glasses gone, no more than two remained. One hour.

‘He won’t, as I have told you,’ Link said, his voice strained. ‘He’ll want us fresh and unhurt. He’ll come for the grapple,
sure. And that’s how we’ll beat him.’

‘With him double or triple our men?’ It was the Scandinavian, Ingvarsson, who spoke.

‘You know the way of it. Christ, most of you have served under a letter of marque or for the King yourselves.’ Link leaned
over the rail. ‘He’ll board with half, leave half on his ship. So we’ll kill the half that comes, and then go get t’other
over there.’

‘And that’s where the gold will be,’ said Engledue. ‘Remember, lads, she’s the
Robuste,
sure, and heavily laden with booty. Look how she lies down in the water.’

All looked again. She didn’t seem to move so sluggishly to Jack. But various of the seamen nodded.

‘So how will we kill the half that comes?’ McRae had stepped forward. ‘Most of us have fought before, right enough, but we
had less grey in our pigtails then. And if their ship is ever so full of gold, they got it by fighting. The odds are still
long against us.’

A murmur echoed agreement to this. It was an Irish voice that cut through it. ‘Well then,’ Red Hugh said, ‘won’t we just have
to shorten them?’

He stepped around Link, bent at the knees, drew his hand back. Something black flew over the rail, landing with a distinct
thud on the deck.

‘Grenade!’

Men yelped, scattered. As they did, Red Hugh turned to Jack. ‘Did you see the bend at the knee, the gentleness of the lob.
All in ease, Jack, all in ease. Your first lesson.’ He winked, then, turning back, he shouted, ‘What do you think of those
odds now, fellows, with an Irish Grenadier and an English Dragoon to back ye?’

Heads lifted. Link recognized the moment. ‘And I’ve an issue of rum now and fifty pounds later, aside from your shares, for
each man who plants his feet on the enemy deck. What say ye?’

It was handsome enough. With a cheer, the men crowded around the cockswain who stood before a rum barrel awaiting this moment.
Mugs were filled, drained, lifted hopefully again. The slave, Barabbas, appeared with a tray for the poop deck. Jack did not
hesitate. He remembered how, before Quebec, he had turned down a tot. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Red Hugh nodded approvingly. ‘That’s it. ’Tis a fine balance, much like the mix of gunpowder in a fuse. Too much rum and one’s
abilities are hampered. Too little and one’s courage is restrained.’ He held out his palm, refusing a second mug. ‘I think
I’ve got the mix just about right.’

Jack felt he could have had a little more. But seeing Link slurp at a second overfilled mug like a hound at a bucket, he too
declined.

Red Hugh came over, placed an arm around Jack’s shoulder. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘to make sure you don’t end up like One-Handed Tom,
let me apprise you of a few other things you’ll need to know about grenades.’

Engledue had been wrong or perhaps over-hopeful. The second glass had barely begun to decant its sand into the lower chamber
and the enemy was already not more than two hundred yards astern. Indeed, Jack had watched the
sailors there reef some sails, obviously slowing the vessel to the
Sweet Eliza’s
pace.

‘Why don’t she fire?’ whispered Jack from his place on the poop.

Engledue heard him. ‘French frigates don’t have a chase gun,’ he said. ‘And we have none astern to trouble him. Since he has
the weather gauge he’s content to hang back and awe us with his numbers. He thinks we’ll strike before we fight.’

The Captain of the
Robuste –
for so she was, the name now clear in gold letters on the prow, a cloth ostentatiously removed to reveal it – had obviously
ordered all hands to the rails where they jeered and shook weapons. Music blared, too, and Jack could make out several fiddles,
drums and horns. Indeed, the numbers told him that the original estimate had been more likely: they were closer to triple
the
Sweet Eliza’s
strength of forty-six men than double.

Jack licked dry lips. Wonder if it’s too late for another rum? he thought. Then he saw it probably was, for the sails that
had been reefed were hoisted again and the enemy began to overhaul them.

‘Raise the portholes. To the guns!’

Men ran to their stations. The nine four-pounders on the starboard station were rolled out. Immediately the jeering redoubled
on the French ship and, a moment later, their portholes were raised. But their guns rolled out not only on their quarterdeck,
for their gundeck was not
en flute.
Double the number of barrels pointed to larboard and Jack remembered Engledue saying these were likely to be nine-pounders.
Double the weight of ball, too, then.

‘Steady, lads. On my command!’

Jack felt bound by the order, even though the French ship was now coming into good range of his rifle. There was also a peculiar
feeling that, if neither of them started the fight, it would not happen. Besides, as the ship got closer, Jack could see the
enemy wasn’t quite ready to commence.

‘Messieurs! Messieurs!’

A Frenchman, dressed as if for breakfast with a napkin shoved into his silk shirt, was balanced on the bowsprit like a tumbler
at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. He leaned far out over the water, waving his tricorn hat with one hand casually threaded
round the stay that ran to the foremast; his other hand pressed a bullhorn to his mouth.

‘Does anyone here speak French?’ called Link.

Jack looked to Red Hugh. The Irishman tutted. ‘No, no, Jack, I defer to you. Mine’s rusted and largely conned for use in taverns
and brothels. I’d only offend the fellow and provoke his fire. You have a chat. I’ll just back you up.’

‘I’ll speak to him, Captain, if you like.’

‘Do so,’ said Link. ‘Damn his eyes and tell him we’ve only salt cod aboard.’

Jack nodded. He was handed a bullhorn and stepped up to the rail, Red Hugh a pace behind him. The
Robuste’s
prow was now nearly level with the
Eliza’s
stern.

‘Monsieur!’
The man shouted.
‘Parlez-vous français, monsieur?’

‘Oui. Et vous anglais?’

‘Ah yes, a little little.’ He seemed to be attempting some sort of bow then, suddenly, he sneezed very loudly.
‘Merde,’
he said.

‘Santé,’
called Jack.

‘Merci.’
Pausing only to wipe his nose on his sleeve, the man continued. ‘You are army officer, yes?’

‘Oui. Avec tout mon régiment au-dessous.’
Jack gestured below decks, to where the rest of the 16th Light Dragoons obviously lurked.

The Frenchman laughed. ‘Ah. I think you make a
pleasanterie
with me,
hein?
I think you have
… les Nègres
there.’

‘Non. Pas des Nègres. Seulement
… le salt cod,’ said Jack. At the man’s blankness he called out,
‘Les poissons au sel.’

‘Pas seulement, je crois.’
The Frenchman gave a big smile.
‘But if you have this only, then you let us look?
Si seulement les poissons,’
he shrugged, ‘we let you go,
hein?’

‘Tell him to bugger himself, Absolute,’ Link called.

Though Jack knew many degrading words in French, that term wasn’t one.
‘Non, monsieur. Ce n’est pas possible.’

There came another shrug.
‘Quel dommage. Eh bien,
I see you momently.’ He sneezed again.

‘Santé,’
said Jack but the Frenchman didn’t thank him this time. He’d turned and lightly run down the bowsprit to his forecastle.

‘I’ve a bullet that will cure that cold, Froggie,’ Jack muttered, turning quickly yet obviously not quickly enough, for Red
Hugh seized his arm and yanked him down behind the elm boards that had been brought from the hold and lined the railings.
These were better able to withstand the bullet that smashed into them than Jack’s Dragoon coat would have been.

‘I suppose that means the
parlez
is over,’ said Jack with a shaky grin, but the Irishman’s reply was lost in the roar of French shot that followed the musket’s
fire. Jack had always assumed that a broadside would be just that, a single thing. But what came from the enemy was not one
explosion but a short, irregularly staggered series of them, blasts of cannon interspersed with the results of the shot; again,
not the thudding of ball against timber he’d expected but the whistle and shriek of many objects flying through the air.

He looked up. Rents and gashes had appeared in several of the
Eliza’s
sails, stays and shrouds had been severed, rigging flapped or fell. ‘What’s that?’ he shouted, as items began to fall onto
the deck, then had his answer in the two balls joined by a length of chain that landed not three foot from him. Elsewhere,
iron bars dropped, metal tumbled from the sky.

‘They try to cripple us but look how she still flies,’ Engledue cried. ‘Let’s give ’em three huzzahs, boys, and their scrap
back with interest.’

Jack had heard how the British were tighter at their guns than the French, and here it was proved. Peering through the gap
between two elm boards, he saw that the crews had waited till the ship was rolling down the wave, their muzzles thus pointing
slightly down. The explosions began with the first of the three cheers and ended not much beyond the last, and in those brief
seconds he saw most of the British ball strike between wind and water. Several stove in at the gundeck, cannon ports torn
wider. He could hear the yelps of fear and agony.

‘Load with langrage,’ he heard Link cry, and knew they were thus close enough for the ball and metal fragments, similar to
what the army called grapeshot. As the crews tended their guns, as they heard the French doing the same, each preparing a
last surprise before collision. Red Hugh, head low, began scuttling down to the quarterdeck. ‘Will you join me, Jack? I’ve
me own little gift for our guests.’

‘A moment.’ Cannon may have been halted but muskets kept up a steady smash into board, deck and railing. Jack had noted the
marksman who first shot at him perched in the top of the foremast. It was time he became more than a target.

He had already loaded his rifle before laying it carefully down. The priming was in the pan. Lifting it carefully, he raised
himself above the boards. The sharpshooter who had aimed at him before was pointing towards him again. Grinding butt into
shoulder, Jack swiftly cocked, aimed and shot. His opponent reeled back and then tumbled, screaming, to the deck.

‘Will you come, Jack?’

Jack laid his rifle back down. His one glimpse had told him that the
Robuste
was gliding into them fast. Single bullets were not going to make much difference now. It was time to try and remember exactly
what Red Hugh had said about grenades.

As he slid down the stairs and ducked inside the door, Jack saw that not all his ship’s company were engaged in fighting –
at least, not directly. Despite the fire being poured onto them, men were swarming in the foremast’s rigging, some already
splicing together what had been torn. Engledue was standing at the base of the foremast. ‘Now, Captain,’ he called to Link,
who stood beside his conman, his great meaty hands paralleling Williams’ on the wheel.

‘Now!’ Link screamed.

‘Now!’ echoed Engledue up the mast. ‘Brace abox!’ His crew braced the three yards there, the foremast sails all suddenly backed
against the wind, slowing the ship on the instant. A moment later, Link gave a roar and both he and McRae began to pull hard
on the helm to larboard. The ship slewed sharp across, denying the enemy the advantage of laying her whole length alongside.
Instead, their prow drove straight at the
Eliza’s
quarterdeek.

‘Fire!’ The gun captains’ cries came, and the cannons blasted their langrage shot just before the
Robuste’s
bowsprit, a good ten foot above the quarterdeck, came over, followed by the prow smashing into the bulwarks.

‘Good sailing, by God,’ cried Red Hugh. ‘He’ll only be able to board us forward and his numbers will count for less.’ He bent
to the rack they’d positioned earlier beneath the poop deck and lifted two balls from the rack. ‘There’s these for you, Jack,’
he said, handing them over. ‘This,’ he dropped two extra fuses into Jack’s bullet satchel, ‘in case one splutters out. Unlikely,
but if it does just twist the auld one out, shove this one in, forget the count and hurl the thing.’ He smiled. ‘And this,’
he added as he shoved a glowing cord into Jack’s cross belt, ‘will set ’em off nicely, so it will. Just remember, once it’s
sparking, to point it downwards. Nothing annoys a Grenadier more than being burnt by the fella next to him.’