Authors: Peter Smalley
James peered, gauged the distance, and gave no command.
A few minutes more, and:
'D-e-e-e-ck!
Lark
gaining rapid upon us!'
James again employed his Dollond, nodded once, waited a
moment, then:
'Mr Dumbleton! Hard-a-starboard! Mr Abey, larboard
battery stand by!'
Moments of creaking, spray flying, heeling change, and as
Hawk
came off the wind on the new heading, her five
larboard carronades were trucked at a sharp angle in the
ports.
Midshipman Abey waited, poised like a wild animal about
to spring – and loosed his battle howl:
'
Larboard battery! Fire! Fire! Fire!
'
BOOM BOOM-BOOM BOOM BOOM
The great multiple concussion shook the
Hawk
from stem
to stern, to the fierce song of rushing ball. Smoke ballooned
and eddied across the gritted deck.
At two cables, even at an acute angle,
Lark
was a very
considerable target, and three of Richard Abey's roundshot
found their mark. One smashed the bowsprit and rendered
her headsails useless. Two struck her mast.
A moment of washing quiet as the sound of the guns fled
away over the sea.
Lark
appeared to pause, as if uncertain of
her purpose. She faltered, still uncertain, and then with a
rending rasp her topmast fell, and crashed in a tangle of
ropes, yards, and sagging canvas.
A roaring yell of triumph from
Hawk
's crew, ringing across
the water.
'Mr Dumbleton! Mr Love! We will tack ship, and head
south!'
'Aye, sir.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Mr Abey! We will reload the larboard battery with grape!'
Hawk
swung again to the south, leaving her opponent
smashed and broken, riding the wind-ruffled swell.
By now the corvette was well ahead, her sails getting small
against the sky.
The coast of France just visible on the horizon to the south,
and
Hawk
, sailing with the wind one point abaft her starboard
beam, had caught up the corvette, and was nearly within
range. Lieutenant Hayter had preserved his original tactics
intact in his head. His scheme was to attempt to shatter the
corvette's rudder, then to lay in close alongside and rake her
with grape. He would have to risk a potentially devastating
broadside from the corvette's six-pounder great guns, but his
own roundshot – fired at and through the corvette's stern –
would already have wrecked not only her rudder; they would
also, he believed, have battered gun carriages and injured
men, smashing through the stern gallery and all the way
through to her forecastle.
'Aye, it is a great risk, Mr Dumbleton.' In answer to the
sailing master's obvious concern. 'Sea actions always involve
risk, do not they?'
'One broadside of ten guns, sir – even if only half of her
roundshot slammed home – would cripple us entire. We are
only a very little light cutter, after all. Certainly I can lay you
close alongside, but the – '
'Then that is all I ask of you, Mr Dumbleton.' Over him.
'If I am killed I hope that you will raise a glass of good claret
to my memory.' He saw the sailing master's shocked
expression, and at once regretted his flippancy. 'Belay that. It
was a damned foolish thing to say. We all risk our lives today,
and I beg your pardon.'
'Very good, sir.'
The wind steady, and a strong swell running.
Hawk
pitched
steeply, and as she righted herself – twin orange flashes from
the corvette's chase ports.
BOOM-BANG
Roundshot rushed the length of
Hawk
's deck, missing
everything except a halyard, which snapped apart as if cut by
a giant invisible knife. Shouts of alarm along the deck.
'
Steady!
' bellowed James in his loudest quarterdeck.
A shroud-humming, sea-scudding moment, spray flying,
then:
'Starboard your helm! Starboard battery, stand by!'
The heeling turn, and Richard Abey:
'
Starboard battery – fire, fire, fire!
'
Five carronades thudded in sequence, and five eighteenpound
roundshot hissed away across the sea. One went wide
and ploughed into a lifting wave in an explosion of spray.
Four went home. The corvette's rudder was smashed from its
pintles, and dashed in jagged pieces into the sea. The stern
gallery imploded with a heavy crunching crack, glass and
timber punched inward, and men screamed horribly beyond.
The tafferel disappeared, and the chase ports, in a disintegrating
blast of timber and iron. Gun carriages tumbled
askew. The mizzenmast trembled, the spanker boom swung
and fell, vangs, blocks, stays whipped and coiled and snarled
over the side.
More screams. Sea-shadowing, drifting smoke. The
singing wind.
'Mr Dumbleton! Lay me alongside her!'
Hawk
close in by the corvette, to starboard of the halfcrippled
ship. And now came the corvette's reply. Six
guncrews had survived of the ten in the starboard battery, and
they fired almost as one.
The flashes of the guns were so close, and the concussive
thuds, that the shock waves buffeted men on
Hawk
's deck,
even as the six-pound roundshot slammed into her side. She
took the full crushing force of that flying metal, shuddered
her whole length, and James knew at once that she had
suffered grave wounds. The sea swirled over her deck, her
larboard rail smashed away, the hammocks gone, and two of
her larboard carronades. Men lay bloody and broken, with
pulped limbs and torn heads. Some cried out for their
mothers. Others moaned. A powder boy stood breathless and
unable to move, his chalk-white face streaked with blood, his
eyes staring in terror.
The stink of burned powder, and burned flesh. The stink
of terror emptied bowels. The stink of death.
James picked himself up off the deck, deafened, halfblinded
by smoke, and:
'
Larboard battery! Fire! Fire! Fire!
'
BOOM BOOM-BOOM
A storm of grapeshot across the corvette's deck, clipping,
cutting, smashing, thudding. One of the hailing shots
smashed off a man's hand at the wrist as he raised it to his
head. Another punched a hole through a man's chest,
spraying his lungs and half of his shattered spine out through
the back of his shirt. The overall effect of those three rounds
of grape was calamitous to the corvette's people, and to the
ship herself. Over half of her guncrews were dead or shot
down and dying. The roundshot had done frightful damage,
and now the grape had smashed and mangled what remained.
'Marksmen in the tops!' James bellowed. 'Shoot into her
waist! Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill!' All compunction gone. No
sympathy left for the seamen in the corvette, that were his
mortal enemies, now.
Crack! Crack!
from aloft.
And now Midshipman Abey's voice, striving for steadiness:
'Re-lo-o-o-o-oad!'
'Belay that, Richard!' James. 'We will board her, and find
Captain Rennie! Boarding party to the forecastle! Mr Love!
Grappling irons on deck!'
Crack! Crack!
again from the tops. The shots smacking into motionless
flesh on the corvette's deck.
'
Cease firing! Cease firing!
'
The moans and cries of the dying on both vessels. The
whipping of the wind. The lifting slap and slop of the sea
along the wales. Dr Wing on deck, his face set, his eyes fixed
on the first man he reached, who lay on his back with blood
bubbling from his mouth, and sucking and bubbling from a
hole in his side.
'We will leave you to do your best for them, Doctor.'
James, a hand to Wing's shoulder as he passed him, going
forrard.
They found Rennie shackled in the corvette's orlop, in the
noisome bedlam of injured and dying men that the sweatsoaked,
bloody-armed ship's surgeon was attending to.
Mallet and chisel were brought from the carpenter's store,
and the shackles broken off. Rennie was conscious, but dazed
and parched and greatly reduced by his ordeal. Blood had
dried on his scalp and face, and lay congealed in a ring at his
neck and shirt.
Lieutenant Hayter and Mr Dumbleton helped Rennie up
the ladder and on deck, where the sea air revived him a little.
He turned his face to the wind, and saw the devastation all
round.
'By God, what a very bloody action, James. What is the
damage to
Hawk
?' Glancing towards the cutter.
'Very considerable, sir. We must get aboard, right quick. I
fear other French ships may come to investigate. The French
coast lies to the south, quite near.'
Rennie peered briefly in that direction, then stared round
him again at the scene of destruction.
'You have done all this damage to the ship yourself? Just
Hawk
?'
'Aye, sir, we have. It was the carronades. Damned good
smashers, those carronades.'
'And the
Lark
?'
'We left her part dismasted to the north. Come, sir, if you
please. We have not a moment to lose.' Helping Rennie
across the bloody, grit-strewn deck through a tangle of fallen
rigging and canvas, and slumped bodies. As they stepped
across and down into
Hawk
, Rennie supported by his
rescuers, he asked:
'What of Aidan Faulk? You took him out of
Lark
?'
'Eh? No, sir, we did not. Have a care as we step down off
the rail, now.' Helping him.
'Then where is Faulk?'
'I have not the smallest notion, sir. – Mr Abey! Mr Love!
Stand by to disengage and make sail!'
Rennie held James's arm. 'You do not know?' Urgently.
'My concern was to find you, sir, and bring you home safe
to England.'
Activity now all round them on the damaged cutter's deck.
James had stepped aft to get a clear overview of his command:
his rigging, canvas, guns, and people. Rennie followed.
'Do not think me ungrateful, James. I prayed for you to
come, even when I was unable to fire the damned rocket. And
I thank God y'did come – thank you indeed, with all my – '
'Did not fire the rocket!'
'Nay, I could not. It was soaked through, and quite useless.
I threw it overboard.'
'Good God.' James stared at him, then gave a wild chuckle.
'Ha-ha-ha! Did not fire it! Then luck was with us both this
day, by Christ! No wonder we was able to steal up so close to
her!'
'Eh! Steal up?'
'Nay, never mind. Will you go below now, sir? Ask Dr
Wing to look you over.'
'Dr Wing will have more important things to occupy him
just at present, I think.' Another glance round the bloody
deck.
'Please just go below to my cabin, will you? Lie in my
hanging cot. Ask the steward to attend you. I must busy
myself here on deck, you know.' Kindly enough, but with an
urgency of tone that Rennie recognized, and ignored.
'I am very grateful to ye, James. However, I fear that your
concern for me – to the neglect of your other duties – may
count against you.'
'Count against me? – Mr Love! We will get under way! Mr
Dumbleton! Lay me a course for Portsmouth! Cheerly, now!'
Moving away from Rennie briskly. Risking censure, Rennie
limped after him.
The wind faltered and slewed round the ship, then began
after a brief hesitation to blow from a new direction – from
the south. James drew in a breath, turning his face to the
wind, and was about to issue a further command, when
Rennie:
'James, will you not consider returning to the
Lark
? I am
nearly certain that Aidan Faulk is aboard her.'
'I have no time for Mr Aidan Bloody Faulk, now. I have
done what I set out to do. I have got you back safe. And our
luck holds, you see. The wind has changed, and will aid us in
getting clear of French waters. I must bring my gravely
injured people home to Portsmouth, and the Haslar.'
'I do see that, James. However, I think – '
'Sir! If you please! Will you go below, now!' It was no
longer a request, and as
Hawk
broke clear of the damaged
corvette, and made sail in the freshening wind, Rennie
reluctantly did as he was told.
When James came below himself after the passage of
another glass, having satisfied himself that no French ships
pursued him, and that
Hawk
could sail unimpeded to
Portsmouth, with repairs undertaken that might be managed
at sea, he stepped briefly into the great cabin. He found
Rennie not lying in the hanging cot, but sitting hunched on a
side locker, attempting to transcribe his experiences in one of
James's notebooks. He had washed his face and neck, but was
yet very pale and drawn.
'Sir, surely you are not well enough – '
'I am all right, James, I am all right. My heart was so lifted
by your arrival that I was lifted altogether. I have took the
liberty of drinking some grog, and that has lifted me further.
I am quite buoyed up.'
'I am very glad.' A smile, a nod. 'And now I must look in on
the injured men, and Dr Wing.'
'Before you do, James, before you do – I will like to press
you in the matter of Aidan Faulk, if I may – '
'Aidan Faulk is nothing to me, now.' Over him, curtly, the
smile vanishing. 'I do not care anything about him.'
'Don't care anything about him? Good heaven, James,
ain't your commission altogether about him? Well, ain't it?'
The question itself, and his tone and demeanour, all
contradicting the lieutenant.
James sighed. 'I expect so, official. However, we have long
since abandoned any notion of this commission as a duty
according to what was wrote out in the instructions.
Everything has changed, and I – '
'No, James, no. You will discover, I think, that Their
Lordships will not see it in that light, when you come to write
your despatch, and make your report. "Where is Aidan
Faulk?" they will ask. "What has become of him? You have
fought an action at sea, against a French ship, when we are
not at war. You have smashed that ship, and took much
damage yourself, in pursuit of what aim, sir? If your aim was
not to bring us Aidan Faulk, then what was it, pray?" These
are the questions Their Lordships will ask, will not they?
Nay, James, you must return to the
Lark
and make Faulk your
prisoner, without the loss of a moment.'