The French Prize (17 page)

An excuse, a weak excuse
 … he chided himself. Of course he could climb up there with them, the damned bloody tarpaulins—there most assuredly was nothing they could do that he could not.

Biddlecomb is not climbing aloft
 … he reminded himself.
Even he feels it's below his station
. But Biddlecomb's words had suggested that he had, in the past, gone aloft in such a storm. Wentworth loosened his grip on the lifeline, took a step toward the shrouds, then stepped back again and renewed his hold on the rope.

No. He would not.

But not for want of courage. He was satisfied that it was not fear that kept him on deck. Rather, it was the absolute certainty that once he was up aloft he would have no notion of what to do, a humiliating circumstance. He could face the possibility of an ugly death, but embarrassment was more than he was willing to risk.

Soon the men climbing aloft disappeared into the darkness and Wentworth turned and made his way aft once more. The wind was like a solid thing that pushed him sideways, hard against the lifeline as he struggled along. What little regularity there had been in the ship's motion seemed gone now, and she rolled and bucked and heeled with no method to the madness. The great seas lifted her bow and tossed her aside and she lay down on her leeward side, the water boiling up through the gunports, the masts groaning even over the cumulative noises of ship and storm.

Wentworth was thrown against the lifeline as the ship rolled farther than she had rolled yet. He hung there and they paused, man and ship, and Wentworth wondered if she would come up again, or if she would lie there on her beam ends until another sea rolled her over completely. But then, with a slow and deliberate motion, a fighter knocked down but unwilling to stay down,
Abigail
shook off the tons of seawater on her deck and slowly stood again, ready for the next.

William had nearly reached the mizzenmast before he could make out Biddlecomb standing where he had left him, one hand on the lifeline, unmoving, and Wentworth resisted a natural tendency to find something comforting in the captain's stolid aura of command. Wentworth paused, not sure of where he should go. He could not stand the thought of going below with all this happening on deck, but he did not think he was particularly welcome on the quarterdeck. Wentworth, however, did not much care where he was welcome and where not, so he made his way further aft and resumed his place at the mizzen shrouds, sheltered by the cloth lashed there.

Biddlecomb did not move, only glanced over at him, then turned and shouted something to the helmsmen, but the words were whipped away from Wentworth's ears by the banshee wind. They stood there, Wentworth and Biddlecomb, unmoving save for the constant effort required just to keep their feet. The ship rose and the men at the helm turned the wheel hard, eased it, turned it the other way. The bow plunged down again, scooping the seas and sending them cascading down the deck until, to Wentworth's astonishment, there was never a plank to be seen, the entire deck was submerged, masts and fife rails rising up as if from the bottom of the sea.

Incredible …

Abigail
rolled and the water broke against the bulwark and jetted out the gunports around the muzzles of the guns and everything groaned and clattered and roared and screamed. Then the ship rolled again, rolled hard as a big comber came up under her bow, rolled far over on her beam ends so Wentworth was sure the main yardarm had gone in the water. She hung there, then rolled back, and as she did another wave broke over her weather bow and a great surge of black water came tearing down the length of the deck. Wentworth twined an arm through the mizzen shrouds and grabbed hold with both hands. He heard Biddlecomb shout a warning to the helmsmen.

The boarding sea smashed against the mainmast, against the mizzen, buried the fife rail in tumbling foam, hit the guns with a terrific force, burying them, too, rolling over them, sinking Biddlecomb and the helmsmen up to their waists, Wentworth on the weather side up to his knees. The
Abigail
staggered like she had taken a blow to the head, righted herself in a groggy roll, shed the seas from her decks with a waterfall sound.

Wentworth let out his breath, which he realized he had been holding. Biddlecomb was shouting to the helmsmen. The ship began to rise again on the next wave and suddenly Wentworth caught a motion to leeward, like some great animal waking up. Biddlecomb saw it too, looked over quick, and above the wind Wentworth heard him shout, “Oh, damn my eyes!” as they both realized in that instant that the aftermost gun had broken clean out of its lashings.

 

12

A
loose cannon
 … William had heard that expression often enough, had used it himself. It meant someone who was unpredictable, a danger. But he had no idea of the real implications of the term. Until now.

The water poured off
Abigail
's deck as the bow climbed on the next roller, and the gun, which certainly weighed above a ton and was mounted on wheels, began to careen aft, rolling downhill, as it were. Biddlecomb allowed himself a second or two at most to evaluate the situation, then he ducked under the lifeline and stumbled toward the gun, slipping, falling, pulling himself up.

Stupid bastard, what does he hope to achieve?
Wentworth thought but he, too, was moving in that instant. He let go of the shroud and the ship rolled and he felt his feet come out from under him as he went down, slamming shoulder-first into the deck. He tried to push himself up but the motion of the ship held him flat. He had a sudden vision of being run over by the cannon, but remembered that the skylight and the raised overhead of the great cabin were between him and it.

He put his hands against the wet deck planks and pushed and then the boarding sea rolled over him, swirling him away, tumbling him like a toy boat in a stream. His mouth was full of salt water and his legs and arms flailed for something to grab. He slammed into some unyielding thing, felt the sharp pain in his side from the impact, but he grabbed it and held on as the water drained away. Some sort of low wooden device with a heavy rope wrapped around it. He felt a hand on his collar and before he quite knew what was happening he was lifted to his feet. He grabbed hold of the bulwark and the helmsman who had picked him up said, “Keep a weather eye out for them boarding seas!”

He nodded and looked toward the leeward side. Biddlecomb was splayed out over the skylight and the big gun was rolling forward. It slammed into one of its mates and staggered to a stop and Biddlecomb pushed off and went after it.

Wentworth's head cleared and he waited until the ship was more upright, then raced forward, grabbing the lifeline and ducking under it. The bow rose and the gun began careening back again and he jumped up on the raised cabin top as Biddlecomb leapt onto one of the stationary guns and the great iron brute rolled past, knocking the wheel off another gun carriage and slewing sideways.

Wentworth's hand fell on the rail around the mizzenmast. There were coils of rope there that seemed to be serving no purpose so he snatched one up and found the bitter end. He was no mariner, no jolly jack-tar, but he had considerable experience with horses, some of them quite wild. He leapt as the gun slammed to a stop, took several turns of the rope around the muzzle, and held tight.

“Belay that! Belay it!” Biddlecomb shouted but Wentworth could only shake his head to indicate that he did not understand. Then the bow plunged down again and the gun rolled away and the rope tore through Wentworth's hands, which were naturally soft and made softer still by the constant soaking of the past hours. He shouted with pain and let go and the gun slammed forward again, smashing into the middle gun and threatening to tear that one free as well.

Where in all hell is everyone?
Wentworth wondered.
Why are we bloody all alone?
And then he realized that the rest must still be aloft, and the helmsmen unable to let go of the wheel. There was no one else.

He picked up the rope again, ignoring the burning agony of his palms. “If it rolls away it'll smash through the side!” he shouted to Biddlecomb.

“Damn the side, let it go!” Biddlecomb shouted back. “We must stop it from—”

He managed to say no more than that. The ship hit the trough and twisted and rolled and the seas came crashing aft and Wentworth and Biddlecomb could do no more than hang on to keep from being swept away. Then the bow began to rise and the gun began to roll aft, smashing into the raised hatch, bouncing off, moving faster as the deck slanted steeper and steeper. Biddlecomb leapt forward and looped a rope around the gun's cascabel and Wentworth got his rope around the muzzle again, and he saw that rather than hold the rope, Biddlecomb twisted it around a substantial-looking wooden beam, letting the wood take the strain, not his hands.

“Belay your line! Tie it off!” Biddlecomb shouted and Wentworth looked desperately around for something to tie it to. The line on the cascabel came taut, the great gun tipped and pivoted on the steep wet deck. Wentworth tried to hold his line but even if his hands had not been flayed he would not have been able to do so, and he let it go before it did further damage to his flesh.

The gun twisted on the line Biddlecomb was tending, the barrel cleared the raised overhead, spinning under its own weight. In the binnacle light Wentworth could just make out the looks of terror on the faces of the helmsmen and then they released the wheel and leapt clear, larboard and starboard, as the cannon swung around and smashed into the wheel, two tons of gun and carriage hitting the fragile steering gear and smashing it to kindling.

“Damn it!” Biddlecomb shouted and he dropped the line and ran aft. “Grab up the relieving tackle!” he screamed as loud as he was able, and he could just be heard above the wind. Wentworth looked around. He did not know what relieving tackle was. And then he realized Biddlecomb was calling to the helmsmen, not him.

Abigail
fell off the wave and her bow came down and the gun staggered and swayed and lifted on its two left wheels. It hung there for an awful moment and then toppled over, hitting the deck with an impact that Wentworth could feel in his shoes, even with all the other shuddering and banging of the ship in the seaway. With palpable maliciousness the gun began to slide forward, swinging around as if reaching out for Wentworth's legs. He glanced up but Biddlecomb was yelling at the helmsmen and pointing forward and paying not the least attention to the gun.

Wentworth leapt up as the ship rolled under him and he came down on the cabin top. The rope he had made fast to the muzzle was still there, and as the barrel swung toward him he jumped over it, snatched up the rope, and leapt back to safety.

Abigail
was twisting and rolling in a way she had not before, turning sideways to the seas, the monstrous waves coming not so much on her bow as right amidships, and the ship in turn rolled further and further and the strain came on the rope as the gun reacted to the increasing slope of the deck.

But now Wentworth was ready. He jumped from the cabin top, clawed his way to the weather rail, the deck becoming more vertical, and just as the gun was starting to build genuine momentum in its slide he wrapped the rope around the beam that was the opposite number to the one Biddlecomb had used. The line came tight, the beam creaked under the weight, but the gun ceased its downhill slide.

Wentworth looked for Biddlecomb, hoping to share his triumph, but Biddlecomb was nowhere to be seen.
Has he abandoned his post
? Wentworth thought, but a motion above caught his eye and when he looked up he could just make out the figure of a man—Biddlecomb, he was sure—clinging to the mizzen shrouds above his head, one hand holding the shroud, the other flailing out with a knife, cutting the lines that held the sail lashed tight to the mizzenmast. With each line he cut, more and more of the sail, the mizzen sail, Wentworth believed it was called, spread to the wind, flogging and beating.

Abigail
continued to roll. This was not like before, the dip and rise with the seas moving under. She was going over now, with the defeated feel of a ship that would not be coming back up. Wentworth clung to the weather shrouds and tried to keep his feet. The rope holding the gun popped and the gun slipped a few inches and Wentworth knew that it would not hold for long.

More ropes, more ropes
 … he thought, as coherent an idea as his mind could form. There was another, right under his hand, and he grabbed it up and let go of the shrouds. He half tumbled and half slid down to the gun. His shoes came hard against the carriage and stopped his plunge toward the lee scuppers. He wrapped the rope around the wheels, around the barrel, then turned and crawled back toward the weather side, crawled up the steeply slanting, wet deck. He clawed at the pin rail, pulled himself up. He hauled the slack out of the rope as best as he could and wrapped it around the beam where he had tied the other.

Biddlecomb was back on deck. He half slid down to the cabin's raised overhead, used it to break his slide, then scrambled aft. He climbed onto the smashed remains of the helm, reached up to the boom above his head, and yanked a coil of rope from a cleat there. With a deft move he tossed the rope so it payed out straight and draped over the cabin top.

“Haul on that, Wentworth, haul for all you're damned worth!” he shouted, his voice cracking with the effort, and then Biddlecomb laid into the rope, heaving it out with quick jerks, and inch by inch the corner of the flogging mizzen sail was dragged snapping and beating to the end of the boom.

Wentworth once again slid down the deck, stopping himself on the cabin top. He snatched up the rope and shouted in pain, confident the wind would whisk that show of weakness away. He pulled as hard as he was able, but Biddlecomb looked over his shoulder and shouted, “With me! Hey, ho!” and as he said “ho!” he jerked the rope.