The Hawk (33 page)

'Come now, Captain Rennie.' The same slightly accented
voice, the same man he had encountered before, when he had
been seized in the inn at Portsmouth and taken to the house
outside. The same softly persuasive tone, now utterly
menacing. 'Come now, if you had told us everything, and we
knew that to be true, why should we continue to press you,
hm?'

'Press me? Is that what you call this damned torment?' The
last word exhaled in an exhausted huff. Torture was
exhausting. His head pained him savagely, as if the back of his
skull had been split to the brain pan, the wound gaping and
burning in the foul air. He closed his eyes and tried to pray.
The pain in his head, in his wrist, and in his kidneys – where
his relentless interlocutor had struck him repeatedly –
precluded prayer. No words of supplication would come.

'Do not
sleep
, Captain Rennie.' Rennie felt his head jerked
up by his sparse hair, the roots nearly torn out. Again the
fiend's voice:

'Wake
up
, if you please. Wake, and answer me. Why did
you overpower the boatman?'

Rennie dragged open his eyelids.

'Your clumsy pretence of loyalty to our cause has lowered
you in my estimation – you know?
Abbaissez! Imbécile!
' All
softness gone. 'What did you throw overboard, from the
boat?'

'You are mistook . . .' His head sagged as the fellow let go.
'The boatman attacked me. He tried to strike me with the
boat's anchor, and it fell . . .'

At any and all cost he must not admit the truth. That he
had torn free his blindfold, knocked the boatman senseless in
a sudden lunging attack with an oar, and then attempted to
fire the rocket. That the rocket – damp with his sweat and
with seawater soaked through his coat – had failed to ignite,
and that he had been forced to throw it over the side when the
boatman regained his senses and grappled with him.

'
Ecoutez-moi, Capitaine
Rennie.' Bending to Rennie's
bloody ear, his breath on the torn flesh. 'Do not attempt to
deceive me again. And do not repeat that nonsense about
disguising the
Lark
as a vessel of the Royal Navy. Was that Sir
Robert Greer's plan? His plan to capture us?'

'No . . . no, that is my own plan, I tell you. It has nothing
to do with Greer. Greer is my enemy, my persecutor. He
wishes me destroyed – and I him! That is why I wish for a
commission in the French Navy!' Again the huffing
exhausted breath as he tried to convince them and placate
them. He closed his eyes again, in futility. It was hopeless,
was it not?

'I said – do not fall
asleep
!' A piercing pain in Rennie's side
as he was kicked in the ribs.

'Oh Christ!' Not aloud, but screaming inside his battered
skull. 'Oh, Christ Jesu, save and protect me!' The pain seared
through his ribs and burned into his spine. He nearly fell
forward on his face. All that sustained him now was the one
small spark of hope that was still alive within him. Would
James in
Hawk
find him – by a miracle find him? He dare not
allow that spark to go out.

The boat swung quiet and smooth, with hardly a ripple, and
bumped gently against the ship's side. Mist swirled.

'Make fast!' James's whisper.

The man standing in the bow found a protuberance – a
stunsail boom – and tied off the painter. They had
approached at a greatly reduced rate – fifteen – and had
found the ship by dead reckoning, or quickened luck, where
they had hoped to find her, exact, looming black out of
the fog.

'Oars!' Whispered. The oars were quietly brought inboard
and boated, James raised a hand, cocked his head, listened.
Misty, droplet-ticking hush. The washing immensity of the
surrounding sea caught in a great bell-glass of silence. James
waited, and was on the point of ordering his men to board,
when the stretching silence was broken.

From beyond the corvette, on her far side, a muted
hail, and the ripple of sweeps. 'Another damned vessel
approaches!' James, urgently whispering to Mr Love.

'I hear it, sir. Who can it be?'

'I'll wager my warrant of commission it is the
Lark
. That is
why this ship is hove-to. She waits so
Lark
may come to her.'

'Then – if we remain alongside, we shall be discovered.'

'Nay, I don't think so.
Lark
will likely send her own boat,
and approach on t'other side. We shall remain where we are,
alone on this side.'

'But if
Lark
should not approach on the far side? If she
should approach on this, sir . . . ?'

'Then we are lost.' James, simply. 'We must take that risk.
We have no choice in the matter.'

'Then, when the
Lark
and this ship have conducted their
business – then we will board, sir?'

'Nay, if we are to board at all it had better be at once, when
all attention on deck is on the
Lark
.'

But this proposal was at once exploded by the thudding of
feet and general activity on the deck above. It became clear
that the corvette was about to get under way.

'What are we to do, sir?' Mr Love was increasingly
apprehensive, as were the boat's crew.

'Do? We will do nothing, Mr Love.'

'Nothing, sir? Will we not be discovered at any moment?'

All this in heated whispers.

'No, I think not.' James, firmly. 'If as I suspect
Lark
merely
joins the corvette to form a little squadron and proceed
forthwith to France, then we will do very well simply to cut
our painter and remain quiet here in our boat, lying low, until
they have both made fresh way. Then we will make for
Hawk
at a fast rate, go aboard, and begin the chase.'

'You – you wish to chase them
both
, sir?'

'They have got Captain Rennie.'

James, his face blackened still, stood in his working rig beside
Richard Abey on
Hawk
's deck. He had set a course for
France, in pursuit of the corvette and the
Lark
– now out of
sight – and had again ordered sweeps deployed. The wind was
very light, scarcely more than a stirring of the air, and patches
of mist drifted and slowly rolled over the quiet black swell.
The sweeps were a steady, rinsing pulse above the wash of the
sea along the wales, and the creaking and sighing of timbers.
A sailing vessel at sea has many small voices, whispering,
muttering, sighing, all uttering the same message of intent: I
drive, I swim, I am alive. James heard these voices, and was in
harmony with them. They whispered and quietly sang in his
ears, flowed in his blood as it streamed through his veins.

'Two knots and a half, sir.' Richard Abey with the halfminute
glass.

'Very good, Mr Abey, thank you. We will lift the rate, if
y'please. I want three knots – four, if we are able. But no
chanting, no singing to the rhythm. We must remain silent.'

'Aye, sir.'

The instruction passed by a boy, his face blackened, his feet
pattering on the deck. The pulse of the sweeps presently
quickened, the grunting breath of the men as they pulled
joined the other sounds and became part of the cutter's
murmuring voice.

'We will all take our places at the sweeps in turn,' James
decided. 'Say so to Mr Love, Richard.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Glass by glass, say to him.'

And soon, as the glass was turned, he and Midshipman
Abey took their places at the great oars, with Mr Love, and
the cook, relieving spine-weary men, and drove
Hawk
on
through the sea. Thomas Wing appeared, demanding in an
indignant whisper to know why he had not been called upon
to take his turn at a sweep with the others.

'Nay, Doctor – hhh – you are not required on deck –
hhh . . .' James, bending his back.

'Is it because I am too small? Hey?'

'In course it is not – hhh . . .'

'Then tell me the reason!'

'Hhh – keep your voice low, for Christ's sake – hhh . . .'

'Then oblige me with an answer, if y'please!' Furiously
husking.

'Oh, very well – hhh – take your place . . . relieve Dickens
forrard there . . .'

'Thankee, I will.'

Dr Wing duly relieved the seaman at the sweep, and bent
his own back. Small as he was in stature he was not lacking in
strength; in fact, he was exceptionally powerful, and contrived
to pull on the sweep with great vigour. However, he
was quite unable to find the correct rhythm, and each of his
strokes was out of tempo with the others on his side of the
deck. He strove to correct the impediment, which caused his
sweep to snag others, but failed utterly to achieve his desire –
and was soon obliged to desist.

'Dickens! Worshipful Dickens, resume your place, resume
your place!' Mr Love, and the seaman obeyed, taking the
sweep wordlessly from the embarrassed doctor, who stepped
away, wordless himself, and went shamefaced below.

'Hhh – he will take it hard – hhh . . .' James muttered, half
to himself. Presently: 'We will lift the rate again, lads! Never
forget, we are in a chase!' Calling in his hoarse husking tone.

The men at the oars renewed their efforts, bending their
backs with a will, and
Hawk
slowly increased her speed.

Half a glass, and:

'Sir, I feel a wind on my face.' Richard Abey.

'Aye, so do I.' James turned his face to one side, and felt the
zephyr flowing over his sweating cheek and neck, felt it grow
in strength, blowing and gusting from the west, felt
Hawk
begin to heel.

'Oars!' he called. And gratefully the weary seamen
feathered and rested on the sweeps. A moment or two after:
'Lay in the sweeps! Hands to make sail!' Abandoning
whispers now, and bellowing the commands in carrying
quarterdeck.

The great oars were dragged inboard and stowed, and men
hurried aloft in the shrouds, took up position at the falls, and
Hawk
busied herself in renewed hope and purpose with
harnessing the wind and running before in pursuit of the two
vessels ahead, flying toward France.

'Cheerly now, lads! Let us crack on!'

Rennie lay in a dead faint in the lantern glow, slumped on the
forrard platform of the orlop where he had fallen.

'Damnation!' said Aidan Faulk, holding up a lantern. 'Why
have you pressed him so?'

The man who had tortured Rennie shrugged, pushing out
his closed lips in a moue. 'I thought that you wished him to
be pressed.'

'Hell's fire, what use is he to me, or you, or to our cause,
when he lies unconscious?' Sharply.

Faulk had come aboard when
Lark
ran up beneath the
corvette's stern, allowing him to clap on to the flung rope
ladder, cling there above the sea and mount the twisting
strands as
Lark
stood away to take station. His feet and legs
had been made very wet, and he was not in best humour when
he came below to the orlop. Now he was very angry.

'Did you learn anything at all?' Severely.

'Learn?' Icily, in turn growing irate. 'We did not need to
learn that he attacked the boatman, and nearly killed him, and
threw something overboard in the struggle. He was seen
from the deck.'

'Attacked the boatman? Why . . . ?'

'That is the question I asked, exact. Also – what did he
throw into the sea?'

'And he did not answer?' Without waiting for a reply he
held the lantern closer to Rennie's supine form, as if
proximity of light would bring out the truth. 'It don't make
sense . . .'

'
Mais oui
, it makes perfect sense.' The torturer, softly. 'He
was never "with us", as you say in English. He meant us harm,
I tell you.'

'One man, in a boat? Do not be foolish.' He stared down at
Rennie, then quietly: 'Was he not blindfolded by the
boatman, as ordered?'

'He tore off the blindfold when he attacked the boatman.'

'Are you certain, entirely certain, that the boatman did not
attack him? That Rennie was not simply defending himself?'

'A lookout was posted, and he saw the whole thing. It was
just as I have said.'

'Where is the boatman now? I will like to ask him certain
questions myself.'

'He has remained unconscious since we hoisted in the
boat.'

'Christ's blood, is everyone senseless in this damned
ship?' An exasperated sigh. 'Now I cannot talk to either
man! I wished most particular to ask Rennie how much the
Admiralty knew of my activity, and to pursue an host of
other things. Lieutenant Hayter – what has become of him
and his cutters? What is the involvement of the elusive Mr
Scott?'

'I did ask him these things, naturally. He would tell me
nothing, and then – '

'Why did not y'listen to me more careful, damn you?
When I said press him, I meant persuade him to speak freely.
Pump him, not put the wretched fellow on the rack.' He
paused, lifted his head, frowned. 'Wait, though . . . yes . . . I
believe I have it, after all.'

'Have it?'

'Aye. Aye. I must apologize for having doubted your logic
and suspicions,
monsieur
. They are entirely justified.'

'Thank you, your apology is accepted. You believe now
that Rennie meant us harm?'

'I do. The boat was followed.'

'Followed! No, surely we – '

'It was followed, and Rennie was about to make an agreed
signal to the shadowing vessel. A light, a pistol shot – and the
boatman threw overboard the pistol, or the lantern, during
the desperate struggle that ensued when he saw what Rennie
intended to do. Your lookout was right in all but that one
detail.'

'But we would of course have seen such a vessel, if it was
there. We have seen noth—'

'Not if they have been clever. They will have kept their
distance in the mist, and even now they may be astern of us,
waiting their chance to attack.'

'You believe this?' Doubtfully. 'Frankly – '

'It may be more than one ship – perhaps two, or even three.
I am going on deck. There ain't a moment to lose. We will
beat to quarters at once.'