Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (53 page)

I stand up and look about. I can't hear anything anymore but the crash of the cannons overhead. The
Victory
and the
Redoubtable
continue to pound round after round into each other's sides. There are men falling from their decks to ours, dead men, headless men, armless and legless men, parts and pieces and showers of blood.

I stagger over the wreckage to my old station, my old Division One, to the port guns, some of which are still firing.
Oh, Lord, there's Harkness lying over there facedown in his
own blood.
I look over at the
Redoubtable
and I could reach out and touch her sides, she's that close.

Numb, I go over to take Harkness's place.

"Swab! Powder!" I see a blackened Tucker give up his load of powder and head down for another. "Wad! Ball! Wad! Clear behind! Fire!"

Crrrrash!

I don't have to aim. I just pull the lanyard and the gun bucks and another ball crashes into the side of the
Redoubtable.
"Swab!" I shout again.

Through the smoke I see another huge ship pulling up on the other side of the
Redoubtable.
I can see the ship's name writ on her side. It is the ninety-eight gun
Temeraire
and now the
Redoubtable
is taking it from both sides.

"Powder! Wad!"
The
Temeraire
...that's the ship that Willy's on,
my dazed mind remembers.
Willy from the Brotherhood. Where's Davy in all this? And Tink? I know Robin's over there on the
Revenge,
but where ...
"Ball! Wad! Clear behind! Fire!"

Crrrash!

Our charge spits fire and flame and iron into the enemy's side, not two feet away. Splinters fly everywhere and men cry out, but still they reload and fire and reload again.

Through the smoke I see that one of the
Redoubtable
's gunports most near us, which had been closed, now opens and instead of a gun pointed at us, it is a crowd of Frenchmen who are trying to board us. They're crowding right through the port and coming at us with pikes and muskets and cutlasses and the battle is now hand to hand and as nasty as it gets. Their muskets
pop
and a man by my side cries out and falls and I see that it is Shaughnessy and I pull out my sword and I strike at an arm that holds a pike and feel the point of my sword ripping through skin and muscle and hitting bone. I am sickened when I feel that horrible ripping of flesh and hear the scream that follows it, but still I thrust and thrust and thrust again at the men coming through the portal and I'm screaming, too.
Come on, boys! Pikes! Swabs! Axes! Anything to keep them away! Push 'em back! Oh, lads, we've got to push 'em back!
and my men are at my side hacking and flailing away at the would-be boarders until they retreat into the darkness of their hold to lick their wounds and we pause to lick ours.

I kneel down and lift Shaughnessy's head, but I see that he is gone and so I gently lay him back down and stand up and go back to the guns and
Swab! Powder! Wad! Ball! Wad! Clear behind! Fire!
Don't think about nothing, just do it, over and over and over again. Don't think about nothing...

Crrrash!

The pounding of the great guns from the
Victory
goes on and on and on and my ears are now numb with the sound so I can't hardly hear anything anymore. The
Redoubtable
reels from the pounding it's taking. It can't take much more of this, it just can't, getting it from both sides, I'm thinking, and I am right. With a great wrenching, snapping crackle, her main comes down and then her mizzen and the mortally wounded
Redoubtable
lurches away from us and begins to sink.

It will not take long. She will go under and hundreds and hundreds of French officers, men, and, yes, boys, too, will go down with her and I helped put them there and
may God have mercy on my soul...

The
Victory,
herself wounded, pulls away from our starboard side. The
Wolverine
is shattered and, for sure, her battle, our battle, is over.

I have lost all sense of time. I don't know whether it's been minutes or hours since this all began. I stand exhausted, weak in the knees as men swarm around me, swinging axes to cut away the fallen rigging.
No, no, girl ... you must move.
I shake myself out of my daze and I sheath my sword and I dash up to look at the quarterdeck.
Thank God!
Jaimy's there and still standing on both his legs.

I take up my seabag again and hurry across the deck to one of the two lifeboats, the one right now not buried under the wreckage. I spy a man nearby and order, in my deepest voice, "You there! Lower that boat! I have an urgent message for the Flag!" I am covered with powder dust, but it doesn't matter, for the man turns and it is Jared and he knows me right off.
Am I now undone, after all this?

No, I am not. He goes over to the boat davit and says, "Aye, Lieutenant." He keeps up the pretense and the boat goes down into the water and the sail is raised. I throw my seabag over the rail into the boat and then ready myself to jump in alongside it. I go to Jared and put my hand on his arm and look into his eyes. "Good-bye and thank you, Joseph Jared. Thank you for saving my life one more time."

He puts his fingers to his brow and salutes, smiling his cocky grin in spite of everything lying in ruins about us. "Good-bye, Lieutenant. I'll collect my thanks from you when next we meet."

I jump down, put the tiller over, and pull away from the
Wolverine
to freedom.

As I thread my way out, I look at all the devastation around me and I am sickened. So much death, so much waste.

I twist around to take a last look at the
Wolverine,
hoping maybe to see Jaimy again and...

Uh-oh.

The
Wolverine
is sinking. She's already lost two feet of freeboard and she's going down by the stern. They are abandoning ship. They are passing the wounded down into their one remaining lifeboat. There will not be enough room for all of them because I have taken the other lifeboat. I, the one to whom they have been most loyal and true. I have taken their lifeboat, that I might save my own life.

Captain Trumbull comes to the rail and looks out at me. He might try to pry up boards from his deck to make a raft to carry his wounded, but I know he will not have enough time.

Damn!

I put the tiller to the boom and, turning the boat around, I head back to the
Wolverine
and, probably, to my doom.

I pull up alongside and men climb down into the boat. There's Tucker and Eli, and Drake, too. Then Tom comes down, his face ashen. "Tom," I say, "is Ned..." A quick shake of his head is all he says in reply. It is enough.
Oh, God, Ned...

More men come down into the boat, then I hear "Wounded coming down," and I look up and I see George Piggott all limp, cradled in Higgins's arms, Higgins's once-white steward's coat spattered with blood ... Georgie's blood. Higgins gently hands him down.
Aw, Georgie, no...
Blood from a wound on his left side splatters onto my upturned face as he's lowered into my lap.

His eyes flutter open as he looks up at me. "I stood up, Jacky. I did. I ... I stood up." His eyes close again.

"I know you did, Georgie," I blubber, my tears falling on his bloody face. "I know you did." I hold him and rock him and keen, "I know you did," over and over and over.

All the survivors are on the boats now and next to us the
Wolverine
sighs, turns over, and slips quietly under the sea. The boats make for a ship that is taking on wounded from other ships. There is a floating platform tied alongside and a gangway leading from it to the deck, so that the wounded can be brought more easily aboard.

The other boat gets there first and takes off its wounded. Jaimy's on that boat and I see him going up. The rest of that boat's men go aboard and now it's our turn. Captain Trumbull is in my boat.

I hand Georgie up to men who take him and go up the ladder. I give Tom's shoulder a squeeze as he goes over. The other men file out, and then it's just me in the boat with the Captain. He gets out and stands on the platform and looks back at me sitting there in my grief and sorrow.

"Please don't put me back in a cage, Sir," I say wearily. "Please let me help take care of my friends. I promise not to escape again. You can take me back to London."

He reaches down and unties the bowline of the lifeboat from the cleat. He puts his foot on the front of the boat. "We take care of our own, Miss," he says, and he shoves off the lifeboat, sending it, me, and 250 pounds sterling drifting backward.

"The prisoner escaped during the heat of battle. Good-bye ... Lieutenant Faber," and with that, he turns and he goes up the ladder.

In wonder and with thanks, I again take the tiller and pull in the mainsheet. The sail fills and I'm off.

Where shall I go?
I wonder. I can't go over there to Spain. I can't go back to England as there's a price on my head. Then I know.

I set my course westward and am under way when I look back and see Jaimy standing at the rail of that ship looking out at me. It's too far to say or shout anything, so I stand up in the stern of the boat and put my arms out to my sides and make the semaphore signals.

Jaimy reads them and nods and puts his own arms to his sides and starts to signal and he manages to signal the letter
I
before a burning hulk of a ship comes between us and I see Jaimy no more.

I sit back down and steer for the west. Oh yes, and the letters I signaled to him were:

BOSTON