Touch and Go (29 page)

Turning away, Delancey shouted “Pass the word for Mr Mather!” and told that officer that he was losing the services of Mr Topley and would have Mr Stock as replacement. They watched as the fishing boat headed back for the land. “A boy today,” said Delancey, “and a man tomorrow—or possibly dead. . . . What do you think of the weather?”

“There will be half a gale by morning, sir.”

The wind was rising and the
Merlin
had begun to pitch. Dark clouds were gathering to the westward and, in the other direction, a fishing boat was racing into the Pertuis Maumusson under a scrap of canvas. It began to rain as Delancey went to breakfast and he thought that Mather had understated the case. In his own opinion it was going to blow a gale.

During the rest of that day the
Merlin
was heading, close-hauled, into the Atlantic. With each hour she encountered a stronger wind and a heavier sea. Under shortened canvas, the ship pitched and rolled. Topgallant masts and stunsail booms had been sent down, staysails furled and topsails reefed. Below decks everything had been lashed into place with double breechings on the guns and every chest or table secured to a ring-bolt. Merely to move about the ship was an effort in itself, and there were a few minor mishaps resulting in cuts and bruises.

Dinner was served with difficulty and without the pea-soup there should have been. Delancey decided to wear ship before dark, while the men could still see what they were doing. With careful timing the ship was brought on her new course. There was an awful moment when it looked as if she might be caught by a wave on the beam but she paid off in time and now had the wind on the starboard quarter. Canvas was still further reduced before nightfall and then the watch below turned in. For those on deck there were moments when a crescent moon could be glimpsed between tattered, racing clouds. Every part of the ship was creaking and groaning with the strain of her pitching and rolling. The noise of the wind through the rigging was a constant moan rising to a shriek when a harder gust than usual tried, as it seemed, to tear the ship apart.

On deck, Delancey looked back on mounting rollers in sinister pursuit and thought of the constant care that had been spent on the rigging, none of it too slack or too taut. The ship and her crew were being tested now and it was in such weather as this that a past mistake or instance of neglect could turn into present disaster. All was so far well but he knew that the worst was still to come.

And what would happen to the
Dove?
She would be driving now through the Pertuis d'Antioche, with sandbanks on either side and somewhere ahead a French squadron riding at anchor in the Aix Roads. Sam Carter would have this advantage that the anchor watch on each man-of-war would have something else to think about. But the channel was narrow and all must depend on somebody knowing each twist and turn. How was Topley shaping up to the situation? Sam would have thought the boy a poor reinforcement but his presence would give his skipper another officer, another man on whose loyalty he could count. It might make all the difference and Delancey believed that it probably would.

At first light the French coast was a dark line ahead of them, seen through clouds of spray. Studying the land, Delancey could see that his navigation had not been at fault. The
Merlin
had Les Sables d'Olonne on her starboard bow. He took Stirling into his day-cabin to study the chart. They had both to hold on to the table as they talked.

“If all has gone well, we should sight the
Dove
within the next hour. We shall soon afterwards sight a frigate coming through the Pertuis Breton.”

“May I ask, sir, why you think that?”

“Well, Mr Stirling, the enemy must do something. If the
Dove
went through the Basque Roads during the small hours, there might have been gunfire, there should at least have been a report. So the French Admiral will order a pursuit.”

“But in what direction? How is he to know?”

“He won't know. That is why he will send out two frigates, one through the Pertuis d'Antioche with orders to patrol as far as the Gironde estuary; the other through the Pertuis Breton with orders to patrol as far as the Ile d'Yeu.”

The ship lurched heavily and both officers clung to the table. A book which Delancey had been reading slid across the deck and rapped against the ship's side. The lantern swung violently and there came sound, from the steward's pantry, of broken crockery. It was now blowing a full gale and men were already exhausted by the mere effort of holding on.

“Do you think the
Dove
will be taken, sir?”

“It will depend upon whether she was damaged during the night. If she is not crippled, Sam Carter will take her into shoal water where a frigate cannot follow.”

Delancey's prediction was, as Stirling thought, uncannily accurate. As it grew light Les Sables d'Olonne were on the
Merlin
's starboard beam. The look-outs then reported, almost at the same time, a sail to the south, which would be the French frigate, and a tiny scrap of sail to the north, evidently the
Dove.
Delancey's telescope swept a waste of stormy water under a leaden sky. The gale was blowing now from the southwest. There were these two patches of canvas and no other sail to be seen.

“We are faster, I think, than the
Dove,”
Delancey concluded, “and the frigate is a little faster than we are . . .”

“God, sir, look at that!” Mather, who had relieved Stirling, pointed aft.

A mountainous wave, bigger than any they had yet seen, was overtaking them. It was a green-grey mass of water flecked with foam, intricately seamed and furrowed, lightened at its crest by the sunrise, darkened below by the shadow of the preceding wave. It came on quite slowly and Delancey found himself estimating their chance of survival. Had it been breaking, they would all have been dead in a matter of minutes. But the mountain ridge was sharp-edged, hardly beginning to curl inwards. It came nearer—and nearer—and then, sickeningly, the stern of the
Merlin
began to sink like a stone.

Down, down it went and Delancey, clinging to the mizen shrouds, had the feeling that his body was weightless, his feet merely touching the deck, no longer resting upon it. Would the fall never end? Looking aft, the moving mountain was now, seemingly, twice the height. It blotted out the sky, filled the world with its threatening immensity. Would the
Merlin
slide stern-foremost into the giant wave, never recovering from its present fall? But, no, the fall had been checked. It seemed, for an instant, as if the ship were at the bottom of a well.

Then, with frightful speed and force, the ship's stern was tossed upwards. It felt now as if a giant were trying to push Delancey through the quarterdeck planking. The weight on his feet was increasing and as he looked forward, he could see the forecastle far below him, poised as if about to disappear beneath the surface. The stern was nearly at the summit and he had a glimpse of the sunrise.

There was a sudden crash as the tip of the wave came over the stern and washed down the ship like a waterfall. He was nearly torn from the mizen shrouds by the weight of the water and, gripping convulsively, saw with wonder that the helmsmen were still at their post. The crest of the great wave was now ahead of the ship, a retreating mountain on its way to make its final collision with the rocky coast.

Now the ship's stern was sinking again, almost as sickeningly as before, but the next wave, as Delancey could see, was no such monster as the one that had passed. He had a feeling that the worst of the storm was over and that the gale would lessen in the course of the morning. Soaked to the skin and desperately tired, he wondered to find that he was still alive.

On deck again after a change of clothes and an attempt at breakfast, Delancey found that the situation had somewhat changed. The day was brighter, the wind lessening, but that damned frigate had gained perhaps a mile. The
Dove,
by contrast, was losing ground. He could see no damage to her rigging but she might, of course, be leaking as the result of having gone aground.

“Where are we, Mr Mather?”

“Opposite Noirmoutier, sir. The Ile d'Yeu is on our starboard quarter, Belle Ile somewhere ahead of us.”

“And what course is the lugger steering?”

“She is heading eastward of Belle Ile, sir.”

“It seems to me that she is doing more than that.”

“Sir?”

“As she is heading, she will pass east of Les Cardinaux and so into Quiberon Bay.”

“But then she'll be trapped. I should guess, sir, that she is damaged and that her master means to put her ashore before she sinks.”

“Sam Carter? Not he. I think it's time, however, that we gave that frigate a choice. We'll head west of Belle Ile and see which prey she chooses to follow.”

“Aye, aye, sir. She'll follow us, as more worth capturing.”

“I wonder.”

Over the next three hours the chase continued, the pursuing frigate closing the distance but clearly following the lugger rather than the sloop.

“I can't make it out, sir,” said Mather. “The lugger is passing east of Hedic and Houat. She will be trapped in the Bay.”

Delancey closed his telescope and turned to Mather with a smile.

“So the frigate pursues the smaller prey—the craft that cannot escape!”

“Is Mr Carter doing this in order to save us, sir?”

“Not exactly, Mr Mather. North of Houat there is a passage through the reef which the
Dove
can pass and a frigate can't. So Mr Carter has led the frigate on, letting her gain on him. I'll lay ten guineas that the
Dove
is undamaged but has been towing an old sail astern. Now he will slip through the channel—one he knows about and I know about—and will leave the frigate trapped in Quiberon Bay, far to leeward of the
Dove
and further to leeward of the
Merlin.

“By the time the frigate has tacked out of the bay, which will take hours, and rounded Les Cardinaux, there will be no other damned vessel in sight. We and the lugger will both be over the horizon and out of the picture. So the French captain will give it up and head for Rochefort. ‘Citoyen Admiral,' he will report, ‘two British frigates tried to reconnoitre the Basque Roads but I chased them off!' This will gain him the ribbon of the Legion of Honour and he is welcome to it. We shall be safely at anchor off St Peter Port.”

“Guernsey, sir? I supposed that we were bound for Plymouth.”

“But, surely, Mr Mather, we have no alternative? I must recover the young officer I lent to a British merchantman in distress.”

Later that day Mather repeated this conversation to Stirling, adding with some hesitation that the captain had almost winked at him. “I couldn't swear to it, mind you, but his eyelid did seem to close for an instant.”

“A bit of spray, I expect,” said Stirling, “But I do wonder, sometimes, what he is up to, especially when he looks most innocent. He has made himself this chance to visit Guernsey—his own home, after all.”

“We were lucky to shake off that damned frigate. I feared at one time we should be brought to action.”

“But he never gave it a thought. Do you realise, sir, that we manoeuvred for hours in the presence of the enemy and never so much as cleared for action?”

“And that's true enough. But the captain would have played some other trick even if the lugger had not been there. No French frigate could catch this sloop in a hundred years!”

W
INDS were light and variable during the latter part of the night and it was broad daylight when the
Merlin
came slowly into the anchorage off St Peter Port. There was the harbour in the foreground, with red-roofed houses huddled beside it and straggling up the hillside. There was a faint haze of smoke from the chimneys and the cry of the gulls as they circled round the fishing craft. Among the houses facing the harbour was the one where Richard Delancey had been born. Although strangers lived there now, he still had the sense of homecoming.

With conditions so ideal for the purpose, he could not resist the temptation to show off a little, performing a trick which is just possible for the well-trained crew of a crack ship in what was almost a dead calm. As the sloop drifted into the anchorage her guns saluted Castle Cornet, the boom of each gun echoing off the cliffs. For a space of perhaps three to four minutes the
Merlin
was hidden in a cloud of smoke. When the smoke finally cleared, she was seen to be at anchor, her sails neatly furled, with a boat alongside in the water, looking for all the world as if she had been there for a week.

There were appreciative comments along the waterfront and exclamations from women on their way to market. The trick had been worth watching and one or two seamen ventured a guess as to who the sloop's commander must be. The man who had no need to guess was old Captain Savage, who had last seen the
Merlin
in Grand Harbour, Valletta. He was on the jetty when the gig pulled into the steps and called for three cheers from the longshoremen and idlers who were assembled there. “And three more cheers for Sir James and the victors of Algeciras!”

Delancey stepped ashore while the boat's crew tossed their oars and was greeted by Savage at the top of the steps. “Welcome home!” cried the old man, and Delancey, with Northmore and Stock at heel, stepped ashore amidst raised hats and shouts of welcome. He had not counted on making any such triumphant entry—he had planned, indeed, to be there at daylight—but it came, as he had to admit, as a pleasant surprise. Moving up High Street, he was greeted all the way, pausing here and there to shake hands with old privateersmen and schoolfellows.

After calling on the Governor, who was not at home, he went on to call at the Saumarez town house. Lady Saumarez received him and welcomed him home to Guernsey. In return, he gave her his own account of her husband's victory, adding his assurance that Sir James was unhurt and in good health. If he had no specific message it was because his visit to Guernsey had not been planned. So kind was his reception that he asked for a word in private, leaving his aides-de-camp to talk with the other members of the household. He then told Lady Saumarez about the slave market at Tetuan.