Yankee Privateer Page 6

  "My compliments to Mr. Ninnes," he said to the boy who dogged his steps during engagements, "and say that I want a mast out of the brig. As quickly as possible!" The boy took a running jump for the gun deck where Ninnes was on duty.

  As two shots thudded out, the brig changed course. White splinters sprayed from her rail.

  "Too low!" Fogler spat.

  A second crash—the result of extra speed in loading-slammed out almost before the echoes of the first had died away. A long rent split the mainsail of the brig, and then her foremast curved toward the sea, toppling down on the already battered rail. But the privateer did not move in to finish off the crippled enemy.

  Instead, under Crofts' orders she angled wide, sending only a single broadside into the brig as she swept past. The other sails behind could be seen from the deck now, and Fitz tried to identify them.

  "A frigate!" The lookout was quick with the bad news.

  "A trap," Fogler bit out the words. "An' if th' Cap'n o' that there frigate hadn't bin a mite too anxious, he coulda snapped us up as easy as easy! Now we gotta show our heels an' lose th' brig into th' bargain!"

  "If we waited to nibble at that bit of cheese the cat'd claw us sure." Fitz watched the disabled brig fall astern. "There's a time when it's best not to be greedy."

  But if the impatience of the frigate's commander had spoiled the success of his trap, the Retaliation was not yet out of danger. With her mast down the brig could not run, but the frigate came grimly on, maintaining a speed which was little comfort to those on board the privateer. They settled down to a steady flight northward.

  In the hours which followed, Fitz believed that he would never forget the sight of those pursuing sails. He knew that the privateer, for all her speed and the skill of her gunners, dared not stand up in open fight to a frigate. But running away from the first real competition which they had met set his teeth on edge.

  Captain Crofts, however, had another trick up his neat blue sleeve.

  "So that's it!" Fogler had been quicker than his superior officer to catch a hint of what was in the Captain's mind.

  It was close to sunset and the privateer was changing course, so slowly that Fitz had not been aware of the move until the sergeant's exclamation drew his attention. The crew was alert, standing by in a sort of mouse-hole crouch by the guns.

  Slowly the Retaliation lost way, lagging a little as if the wind which had been cupped in her canvas so skillfully all afternoon were failing her. The pursuing sails grew taller against the evening sky.

  "That is a frigate," the words formed in Fitz's mind, "she can blast us out of the water without even using her full strength. We're plagued fools if we tempt her to do it!"

  But even as he thought, he checked the priming of his rifle.

  Then the deck shook and a blast of smoke and flame curtained up. Their broadside was on its way, a few distant white slaps on the waves marking misses. But not all had missed. And the frigate tacked, halting her forward rush.

  "Double-shotted!" Fogler cried exultantly. "That's givin' 'em a sour cud t' chaw on!"

  Fitz shouted out the orders which had been drilled into him during the past weeks. Moments later the men of his small command went into action. In the gathering dusk they fired at will, picking out targets which gun flashes or the last remnant of sunlight disclosed.

  "Yeeee " the wild scream of a woods panther almost split Fitz's eardrums and a hand clutched at his arm. "See 'at lobster kick then? I got him—plum center!"

  Then the Retaliation reeled under their feet. A choking cry slashed through the dimness, sinking to a thin whimper. The crash of the privateer's answer came evenly enough. And the guns' steady beat was a thunder, almost drowning out the sharp crack of the rifles and the duller reports of the marines' issue muskets.

  A sheet of flame leaped up almost in Fitz's face. He staggered back and lost his footing; it was as if the deck had melted away. Then he crawled up again, clawing for support at a swinging bit of cordage which dangled out of the sky but had firm anchorage above somewhere.

  "Be y' hurted, sir?" someone bawled in his ear. He shook his head and pushed away the helping hands. His own were wet and red and he wiped them on his breeches.

  "Rifle," he said dully, "where's rifle?" He stooped to grope for it but his hands found only dampness which he shuddered away from.

  "Here y' be "

  His fingers closed about the hot metal barrel. Fumbling he loaded. He must try to get the wheels-man ... If he could sight him through the smoke and gathering darkness.

  Another broadside shook the ship. It was pure hell down with the guns when the concussion of the firing put out the battle lanterns at every round.

  "Langrage!" He caught the word which had no meaning. ''That'll strip her down t' proper size."

  Across the water he saw the whip of tattered sailcloth blown out by the wind as he shook his head, trying to clear the mist from his eyes.

  "I do not think,” observed a steady voice behind him, "that we shall have any more trouble. A pity we cannot take her—but we couldn't pull her teeth and survive the pounding "

  A sort of growl answered that, and then came a full round of orders which Fitz only half heard. The privateer began to pull away from the crippled frigate-free now to run without death sniffing full-fanged on her trail. Fitz turned to assess the damage to his own force. By the light of a lantern he counted. He was short two men.

  "Sims's bad, sir "

  A lump which had been squatting on deck ministering to another shadow showed a white face. Fitz shuffled up to the quiet body on the planking. He stared down at the awkward, sometimes stupid, but always willing boy who had admitted readily that he had run away to sea to escape the life of a tavern pot-boy.

  "Best shift him to the cockpit," Fitz began, then someone held the lantern closer. He gagged and swallowed sickly. There was no need to ask Watts' aid for that.

  "Th' lad's gone . . ." Stanley, the frontiersman, pointed out the obvious. "Them splinters be right crool. ..."

  "Splinters be right cruel," Fitz quoted to himself some hours later, eyeing his own face in the scrap of mirror Biggs kept for them to scrape their chins by. At least, he supposed it was his own face he saw there. But he did not recall those two deep lines bracketing nostrils and mouth.

  Doubtless every face aboard the Retaliation would carry its share of lines in days to come—for all, they had peppered a frigate so badly that it would be of little use to His Majesty's Navy for quite some time. But this time they had paid toll in blood themselves. Fitz tried not to remember Crofts reading from a worn Bible over three sacks they had committed to the sea.

  Every league they were logging now brought them closer to the hunting ground of ships to which their late opponent would be as a longboat to a schooner. St. Malo might be a happy and safe port for privateers, but hounds kept watch on the foxes' earth, and now they might be forced to run more than fight.

  On the other hand, the Retaliation had faced up to a more formidable foe than she had ever been fashioned to bait. And her crew, having shaken off some of the dangerous over-confidence in their own prowess which the easy victories over the disabled merchantmen had given them, were more alert.

  "What is langrage, sir?" Fitz flipped the soap from his razor.

  Biggs grunted and did not raise his eyes from his battered company record book. "Lengths o' chain, crowbars, anything you can shoot int' sails t' tear an' foul 'em. The Britishers claim it t' be unfair as a weapon— we use it when we have a need t' "

  "Hmm," Fitz went back to the delicate business of smoothing his jaw. Shaving on shipboard was no easy task, but Crofts demanded a high standard of personal neatness and cleanliness from his officers and men.

  "As you saw—it works right enough," Biggs put aside his book. " 'Less that frigate carries a sight more spare sail 'n she should, she'll still be tryin' t' make port under bare poles. But if you use langrage to clear decks it's about th' wickedest thing there is. Crofts don't hold wi
th shootin' below sail level when it's in th' guns." The stout little officer had his own worries and now he voiced them. "We're three men short. Sims was killed an' Crowley died o' wounds. Rodgers with a broken arm—won't be fit for duty in less'n a month th' sawbones says! That leaves us plague shorthanded!"

  "Maybe we can recruit when we hit Saint Malo," Fitz suggested.

  But the marine lieutenant shook his head. "I don't hold wi' shippin' foreigners. An' green hands'll need lickin' int' shape—not much better 'n none at all 'til they've been blooded proper." He slammed the company book into his sea chest.

  "We might as well get some target shootin'—mighty ragged showin' we made. But there ain't balls t' waste, so see as they have a good sight 'fore they go bangin' off."

  "Aye, aye, sir." Fitz towelled his face. "Want a drifting target rigged?"

  "Aye. I've got t' report t' th' Cap'n. You take over drill 'til I get there."

  Fitz hurried through the rest of his toilet and started out to assemble his sharpshooters. He had to skirt a group of seamen busied about a pile of lengths of rusty chain. And just as he was slipping by, the ship gave a sudden toss. Fitz, grabbing to save his balance, clutched at the nearest shoulder. The owner of that pinched flesh favored him with a scowl. It was Ninnes, his uniform jacket laid aside, his hands dirty with flakes of rust.

  "By this time even a landlubber should've learned how t' keep his feet without pawin' t' do it!"

  Fitz's half-shaped apology was killed. The raw hostility of the other was like a riding crop laid across his face.

  "You were addressing me, sir?" he demanded crisply.

  Ninnes did not rise from his knees. When he answered his slow and careful diction had disappeared— which should have warned Fitz. It was in the idiom of his boyhood bay fisherman's world that he said:

  "Certain sure I wos speakin' t' ye. Dance 'round wi' a pig sticker in yer mitt, but ye can't keep yer feet in a dead calm "

  "Perhaps you want to dance with—with a pig sticker too?"

  The men had fallen back, leaving the officers to face one another across the pile of chain.

  "If you do," Fitz continued, "I shall designate a friend to call upon any gentleman you choose to act for you "

  Those words had an odd stilted ring, even in his own ears. They belonged to the formality of that other world beyond the wooden walls of the Retaliation. Yet the custom to which he had been bred demanded that he say them.

  Ninnes' lips twisted. "Iffen ye'r a man," he retorted, "ye'll do yer fightin' barehanded! We don't hold wi' 'em up-river planter's tricks. Come out wi' yer fists up iff en ye ain't a-f eared "

  "Mr. Lyon!" Biggs' shout cut through the tense atmosphere. "Mr. Lyon, where are you, sir?"

  Fitz turned reluctantly, but not before he had answered that challenge.

  "Let it be fists then, and whenever you please."

  They were in northern seas now, there was a bite to the night wind which set Fitz shivering uncomfortably a few hours later. The deck was icy under his bare feet, and he might as well have shed his breeches too for all the protection they now afforded him. Yet Ninnes, facing him there in the half-dark, was as cold.

  Fitz pulled his wits together and tried to remember the scraps of the art of fisticuffs which had been pounded into him by his cousins under the tutelage of one of his uncles' grooms. Only this was not going to be a bout fought by rules—he did not trust Ninnes to forbear making it a matter of dirty dock fighting.

  He circled, watching the other warily. But the lieutenant was not rushing blindly into battle either. At last with a feeling that he might as well get the worst over, Fitz attacked. His fist went harmlessly over Ninnes' shoulder and he was not able to duck the blow in the short ribs which the other returned. This was going to be as bad as he had feared, Fitz decided resignedly.

  Suddenly steel flashed bare in his face and he rocked back on his heels. A boarding hanger swished through the air as Fitz gulped and gave ground. In the dim lantern light his eyes focused on Crofts' face, stone hard, stone white.

  "You will both follow me at once!" The words came separately as if they had been bitten off in frozen anger.

  Fitz obeyed. Ninnes was another shadow shuffling along before him. Then he was blinking in the stronger light of the Captain's cabin, standing on the defensive before the master of the Retaliation.

  "Mr. Lyon!"

  "Aye, sir!" Instinctively his bruised shoulders went back and he stared straight ahead as if he were alone on trial.

  "I have the power, sir, to reduce you at once to the lower deck or put you in irons for the rest of the voyage. Such antics as you have indulged in tonight come perilously close to mutiny "

  Fitz blinked again, painfully aware of the swelling puff below his right eye. He swallowed without daring to answer, tasting the sweet flatness of fresh blood.

  "How can an officer afford to brawl before his men —how can he hope to maintain discipline after such an exhibition—pummeling each other across the deck as if you were ships' boys! Both of you entirely forgetting your duty! An injured man is of little service to the Retaliation—I would be justified in setting you ashore to beg your way home again—both of you! I thought I was commanding a crew of men, not of schoolboys eager to loosen one another's teeth. You two have been snapping and snarling at each other's heels since we cleared Baltimore. Either you end it now, or I'll take my own steps to do so. I understand that the challenge was of your offering, Mr. Lyon?"

  "I provoked him to it, sir," Fitz's fellow prisoner's answer was strained through a cut lip.

  "Very well. You shall both forfeit one quarter of all prize money lying to your account at the present moment. And should either of you make another disturbance, my patience shall be utterly exhausted. Now get to your quarters "

  Crofts' biting tongue brought the red blood up Fitz's purpling bruised face. For his own part, it would be no hardship to never set eyes on Ninnes' battered features again. But he noted with some satisfaction as the other pushed past him, that he had given almost as good as he had received in that brief encounter—in spite of the lieutenant's advantage in inches and poundage. How it might have ended had Crofts not come upon them was a matter he was not going to think about.

  "Sand down your hide, did he?" Watts was standing outside the marine officers quarters. "Let's have a good look at the damage."

  Fitz pulled out of the other's light hold. "There's none to signify," he growled and swallowed blood again. "Well, if you won't avail yourself of my skill, you thickheaded young dunce, you won't. But you and Ninnes had better learn how to live together without showing your claws more than once a day, or the Captain will do a little scratching of his own. D'you realize that he was well within his rights to have given you a , taste of the rope's end for this?"

  Stark tales of a man-o-war's ghastly discipline by lash flicked across Fitz's mind. There had been one man ! flogged on the Retaliation a few days back—flogged for 'deliberate negligence of duty. And the marines had l paraded naval fashion at the scene. The stern efficiency of the punishment had made it none the less worse to watch. Maybe Crofts had been lenient.

  "You can always comfort yourself with the thought that you shall soon be free of us," Watts continued. "Don't look so drop-jawed, my friend, such stupidity does not become you. We should raise Saint Malo soon and then you may skip nimbly ashore and bid us farewell. That has been your intention, has it not? Saint Malo is a civilized port."

  "A civilized port?"

  "Yes, you signed papers for a voyage until we reached a civilized port, remember? And Saint Malo, being some centuries older than the Baltimore our fathers hewed out of a wilderness, can certainly be described as civilized. "

  "And let Ninnes think he frightened me off?"

  For the first time the amused quirk was gone from Watts' wandering eyebrow. Without it his face presented a mask of languid boredom.

  "Ah yes, I was almost forgetting Mr. Ninnes. No, you could not possibly allow him to think that you d
id not live just to bare fangs with him. A purpose in life, I know, is always to be desired in the young. You believe that in selecting this particular one you have achieved your goal? Allow me to felicitate you, sir. And now may I leave you to those health-recruiting slumbers which may only too soon be interpreted by the call of duty."

  Fitz banged into the cabin and slumped down on the edge of Biggs' sea chest, holding his aching head in his hands. He was manifestly a fool if he did not do as Watts had suggested and leave ship the minute the Retaliation dropped anchor. Once in France, he could get passage home with little difficulty. This voyage had been wrong from the start.

  But if he did walk off the privateer, he would leave behind him an unfinished business which he knew would plague him the rest of his life. For some reason Ninnes hated him—almost as much as he had disliked Ninnes from the start—hated him enough to risk the Captain's good will which he valued above everything else. And Fitz could not go now, allowing Ninnes to believe that he had been driven away.

  And even if there weren't Ninnes to think about —Fitz looked around the narrow cabin where he crouched, every inch of it so jealously used. Overhead he could hear the shuffle of feet as the watch changed. The thick smell of salt, bilge water, and unwashed clothing made a fog about him. Somehow all of this was right and proper and belonged. It was harder for him to recall riding planted fields. He fitted into a place in this new world—awkwardly perhaps, like a nail not driven in quite straight—but in the right place to hold some essential boards together.

  He was not leaving ship in St. Malo—if Crofts would keep him on. He would simply not remind the Captain of their agreement.

  Somewhat comforted, as if he had escaped an alarming but elusive menace, Fitz crawled into his hammock and fell asleep at once.

  6

  Jack Ashore

  I often have been told

  That the British seamen bold

  Could beat the tars of France neat and handy.

  But they never met their match,

  Till the Yankees did them catch,