Rebellion

Rolling with the ship, the Cornishman made his way aft. “Time we came about, Captain.”

Stuart nodded. “Very good, Mr Tredstow.” The lieutenant, his dark hair ruffling, looked Hawkwood’s way. His voice rose in a warning. “Hold on and keep your head low, else you’ll lose it to the boom.”

Hawkwood looked to the side and saw that a second crew member had joined the man at the tiller bar. Neither of them was the previous incumbent, Hodges, indicating that there had indeed been a change of watch since Hawkwood was last on deck.

Stuart called to his helmsmen. “Bring her up two points!”

“Two points it is, sir!”

The lieutenant turned to his bo’sun. “Mr Welland!”

“Standing by, sir!”

Stuart’s hand swept down. “Helm-a-lee!”

Welland yelled, “Let go and haul!”

The helmsmen heaved the tiller over. The cutter’s bow lifted. The deck was a confusion of bodies, or so it seemed to Hawkwood as he watched Griffin’s crew fight to turn her through the eye of the wind. For a few chaotic seconds the ship yawed as the bow swept round, causing the mainsail to flap like a broken wing, then the whole world tilted in the opposite direction as the boom, braces slackened, catapulted across the deck. Hawkwood ducked instinctively and although the boom was set some way above his head he was shocked at the speed of the manoeuvre. He saw he wasn’t the only one taken unawares. Caught off guard, two crewmen also lost their footing. Soaked, jackets and breeches plastered to their bodies and looking faintly embarrassed, they clambered to their feet from the scuppers where they had fallen, still holding on to their ropes.

The ship slewed violently.

Stuart yelled at his helmsmen: “Hold her! Hold her!”

Hawkwood hung on grimly. As the bow came up and the mainsail was sheeted home, he straightened, bit back the sour taste that had surfaced at the back of his throat, and found he was sweating profusely beneath the coating of spindrift.

“How was that, Mr Smith?” The lieutenant, one hand thrust into his jacket pocket, the other still attached to the binnacle, gave one of his trademark grins, though Hawkwood thought it might have been a little forced. “Bracing enough for you?”

At that instant a white-hot bolt of lightning shot across the cutter’s starboard bow. In the space of a heartbeat night became day, followed a split second later by a colossal thunderclap that sounded as if the entire sky had split asunder.

Several of the cutter’s crew flinched; some ducked as though expecting an enemy broadside.

“Lord save us!” Tredstow exclaimed loudly. He stared heavenwards.

Hawkwood wasn’t certain if it was the reflection from the lightning that had turned the lieutenant’s face pale or if the blood had drained away of its own accord.

Griffin’s commander found his voice. His jaw tightened as he said hollowly, “It would seem the storm’s a lot closer than I’d thought.”

A profanity hovered at the tip of Hawkwood’s tongue. He swallowed it back quickly and let out his breath.

“Which places us in a dilemma . . .” Stuart continued. “We’ve still a fair distance to cover. In clement weather I’d raise more canvas, but with the storm upon us, I can’t risk it. I’ve no option but to reduce sail. We’ll do our best but it could be that our only option is to try and ride it out.”

The words had barely been uttered when the rain began to lance down.

It shouldn’t have come as a shock. Its arrival had been prophesied only a few hours before, but the sheer force of it took every man by surprise.

God really does have a sense of humour, Hawkwood reflected bleakly, as icy needles rattled against his face and shoulders with the force of grape shot.

“At least it’ll keep the Frogs at bay,” Stuart said, grimacing at the sudden inundation. “If they’ve any sense, they’ll still be a-bed.”

Which is where I should bloody well be, Hawkwood thought. On dry land, if possible.

“Perhaps you’d rather go below?” Stuart offered.

Hawkwood suspected that the lieutenant had made the suggestion not so much to keep him out of harm’s way as to prevent his one and only passenger from getting under everyone’s feet and jeopardizing the safety of the ship.

The prospect of returning to the cabin’s claustrophobic interior held little appeal. The combination of the ship’s gyrations and the odours below deck would more than likely result in him spewing his guts out the minute he lay down. Retreat, he decided, was not an option.

He shook his head. “If it’s all right with you, Captain, I think I’d prefer to remain upright.”

At first, Hawkwood thought the lieutenant was about to deny him the choice, but his feelings must have been evident in his expression for Griffin’s commander merely nodded. “Very well. In that case, I’d be obliged if you’d keep your movement about the deck to a minimum. We don’t want any accidents.” The lieutenant’s gaze shifted. “Stand by to reduce sail, Mr Welland, if you please!”

“Aye, sir!” Welland raised a hand in acknowledgement. From the speed of the response, it was clear the bo’sun had been waiting for such a signal. He yelled across the deck: “Stand by fores’l!” He turned and eyed his lieutenant expectantly.

Stuart nodded. “Now, Mr Welland!”

The bo’sun’s face streamed with spray. He turned back towards the men waiting by the ropes. “Take in fores’l!”

Blocks squealed like stuck pigs as the jib and bowsprit were hauled in. Hawkwood marvelled at the men’s skill. He stared up at the mast and yards and the huge mainsail and the spider’s web of rigging and pulleys radiating from them. It was a miracle, he thought, how anyone could tell one rope from another. Nautical jargon had never failed to confuse him, nor, if he were honest, had it held much allure. It was a language as foreign as any he’d encountered during his long army service.

And yet, he wondered, would it be any different for a sailor who found himself marooned on a battlefield? Was army slang any more intelligible to the uninitiated? Probably not, he decided. And, be he sailor or sapper, so long as every man knew what he was doing, what did it matter?

Hawkwood became aware that someone was leaning towards him. It was Tredstow. Water coursed in shiny rivulets down the seaman’s grizzled cheeks. He put his lips close to Hawkwood’s ear, while a hand gripped Hawkwood’s arm like a steel claw. “I were you, I’d hang on tight. This ’un’s going to be a right cow!”

Hawkwood had once been told that on clear days, depending on the location, it was possible to stand on an English clifftop and view the other side of the Channel. Sometimes, it was said, France looked close enough to touch.

Had he first heard that from one of Griffin’s crew, he’d have considered the man at worst a liar, at best an imbecile. Cloaked in darkness and dwarfed on every side by waves almost as high as the cutter’s main yard, the prospect of an imminent landfall looked an unlikely prospect. For all the headway she was making, Griffin might as well have been not two leagues from France but two hundred. But she was trying her best to get there.

Cutters, Hawkwood knew, were built for speed. It made them ideal for patrols and the carrying of dispatches. He did not know, however, how many men it took to crew one. If pushed, he’d have hazarded a guess and estimated about forty. From what he could see, every man jack of them appeared to be topside, including, he supposed, Purser Venner, though it wasn’t easy to make out features in the tumult and the darkness. Either way, every spare inch of decking looked to be occupied, with the men at their stations, ready to defend the ship against the elements; which they were doing, heroically.

From the moment of its opening salvo the storm had raged without let-up, increasing in strength with each passing minute. Under the relentless assault from wind, rain and waves the deck had become as treacherous as an ice sheet. All hatches had been battened down and it would have been a foolish man who tried to make his way from bow to stern unaided, so safety lines had been rigged, running fore and aft. With a dark and angry sea only too eager to ensnare its first victim, the men of the Griffin were clinging on for dear life.

Hawkwood knew that in the running of the ship he was no more than excess cargo. The knowledge didn’t sit well. He’d never been comfortable with the role of spectator. It was one thing to relinquish all responsibility for transporting him to his destination to the lieutenant, but to entrust his safety to another party made him distinctly uneasy. He needed to be doing something.

So he’d put his proposal directly to Griffin’s commander.

“I’m a spare body, Captain. Put me to work.”

The lieutenant had been about to dismiss Hawkwood’s offer out of hand but then, as before, the look on his passenger’s face had made him pause. After an exchange of meaningful looks with his second-in-command, he’d nodded, turning quickly to his two helmsmen.

“Fitch! You’ve a new volunteer! Bates, you’re relieved! Report to Mr Welland for new duties! Before you do, find Mr Smith a tarpaulin jacket.” To Hawkwood, he said, “It’ll be less cumbersome than that riding coat you’re wearing.” Adding, “Please do exactly as Fitch tells you. No more, no less. Is that clear? Anything happens to you, they’ll have my innards for garters!”

“He yells pull, I pull,” Hawkwood said.

Stuart nodded. “You have it. Tell me, Mr Smith, do you know your opera?”

Hawkwood stared at him.

“‘Heart of oak are our ships . . .?’ It’s something my father used to sing to me. I suspect we’re about to discover if the words hold true. Bates! Hurry up with that damned coat!”

The moment the helmsman, Fitch, moved along, allowing him room to grasp the tiller bar, Hawkwood discovered why it was a two-man job. Above him, Griffin’s mainsail still stretched between gaff and boom but under the lieutenant’s orders the sail had been reefed in tight, leaving just enough canvas aloft to enable the helmsmen to preserve some semblance of authority. Trying to maintain steerage-way, however, was like wrestling a bucking mule. It felt to Hawkwood as if his arms were being torn from their sockets. There was only one course of action: hang on, obey Fitch’s directions as best he could, and trust to salvation.

In times of adversity he’d often wondered whether death might not be some sort of merciful release. Inevitably, the feeling had always dissipated, but every now and then a new situation would arise when the notion reared its ugly head. This night was fast turning into one of them.

Fighting in the Spanish mountains, he’d known cold and rain, but nothing like this. The wind force hadn’t lessened either. If anything, it had escalated substantially, causing them to tack more times than Hawkwood could remember, with the inevitable drenching results. Despite the tarpaulin jacket, he’d never been so wretchedly wet in his entire life. Spray or rain, it made no difference. His hands were numb; he could hardly feel the ends of his fingers. He’d also lost all sense of time. The passing of the hours had become irrelevant. All that mattered was survival.

The sense of dread rose in his chest as, yet again, the cutter’s bow disappeared beneath another enormous wave. As the mass of water exploded over the forecastle it looked for one terrible moment as though the end of the shortened bowsprit had been sheared away. But then, ponderously, Griffin began to rise. At first, it was as though the sea was refusing to relinquish its grip until, with a supreme effort, she broke free, thrusting herself into the air like a breaching whale, the water running in gleaming cataracts from her forward rigging. Her bow continued to climb until it seemed she would fall back upon herself, such was the steep angle of her ascent. Finally reaching the vertex, Griffin hovered, but only for a moment before gravity took hold once more, drawing her back down into the seething well below.

The hull shuddered under the impact. A vivid streak of lightning zig-zagged across the sky. It was followed by another massive rumble directly overhead. As the echoes died away, it struck Hawkwood that if there was such a thing as the voice of God, it would probably sound a lot like that last roll of thunder.

And if thunder was a vocal manifestation of the Almighty’s wrath then the howling of the wind had to represent the grief of ten thousand souls trapped in purgatory. Which was why Hawkwood missed the warning shout. The first he knew something untoward had happened was when he saw a knot of seamen break apart as if a grenade had been tossed into their midst.

He heard Fitch bellow, “Keep hold, God damn it!” and as he hung on to the tiller he watched helplessly as the carronade broke free from its cradle and 10 cwt of cast-iron ordnance careered towards the lee bulwark, shedding slivers of twisted eyebolt from the damaged carriage in its wake, along with threads of pared cordage that were left whipping to and fro across the deck like decapitated sea serpents.

Gathering momentum, the carronade headed for the port scuppers, trailing mayhem as the more quick thinking among Griffin’s crewmen tried to grab on to the pieces of rope still attached to the metal barrel. The slippery conditions proved too much for them, however, and they found themselves dragged along by the weight, while others scrambled aside, slipping and sliding on the water-soaked planking, some falling full length as they tried to get out of the way. The sound of the carronade hitting the bulwark was loud enough to be heard over the storm. As was the scream.

The bulwark absorbed the brunt of the collision, the remainder was borne by the one crew member who’d been unable to scramble clear in time. Sent sprawling, he’d only been able to watch, paralysed with fright, as the heavy metal cylinder hurtled towards him. As the carronade hit the raised side of the ship it tipped, trapping the seaman beneath it, crushing his chest and shoulders and shattering his ribs and pelvis into matchwood.

It took eight men under the guidance of Lieutenant Weekes to pull the wreckage free and drag the body to one side, but by then it was too late. The crewman was beyond help. Even as they strove to gather up the corpse the rain and seawater were already rinsing the blood from the scuppers.

As the debris was cleared away and the dead man was carried below, Fitch turned and glared at Hawkwood over his shoulder. Despite the water teeming down the coarse face, there was no hiding the anger in the helmsman’s eyes. “By Christ, I hope you’re worth the bloody trouble!”

Hawkwood kept silent. There was nothing to be gained by responding to Fitch’s outburst. Had he been in the helmsman’s position he’d probably have come close to voicing the same sentiment and if he hadn’t put it into words, he’d likely have thought it. Seafaring men, much more than soldiers, were prone to superstition. Any break with routine that resulted in catastrophe was likely to be deemed portentous by the less rational members of a close-knit crew. He suspected the men of the Griffin were no different in that regard. They’d now lost one of their own and despite the death occurring while the ship was effectively on a war footing, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that given the absence of both women and albatrosses, they’d place the blame for the freak accident squarely on the presence of a stranger. Which, Hawkwood supposed, was true, indirectly, though he’d had no personal hand in the man’s death. But suspicious minds had a habit of creating their own twisted brand of logic. The diplomatic thing to do, therefore, was remain silent, let Fitch vent his spleen and pray they didn’t lose anybody else.

For the storm showed no signs of weakening; unlike the cutter’s crew who, bruised and battered by the ordeal, were growing ever more weary.

Hawkwood wasn’t a religious man. Had he been, he might well have regarded the struggle being waged about him as some sort of fitting parable in which a gallant David was battling the storm’s fearsome Goliath. But Griffin was no David. There was no sling and no stone. Here, Goliath was in the ascendancy.

The wind had forestalled all efforts to gain headway. For Griffin’s crew, there was only one priority: to try and stay afloat. So far they were succeeding, but only just.

Then another spectacular streak of lightning stabbed across the sky, ripping the heavens in two and revealing, in that moment of incandescence, a dark shadowy mass, rising like a behemoth from the waters, less than a cable’s length off Griffin’s larboard beam.

Griffin’s commander turned with a stricken look on his face. “PORT HELM!”

Fitch gasped. Eyes wide with shock, his voice rose in a scream. “Pull! For the love of God, pull!”

The sighting had been so sudden and so fleeting that Hawkwood wondered if his eyes had deceived him, but the lieutenant’s warning, allied to Fitch’s frantic cry and the expressions on the faces of the men about him, confirmed that it was not some mythical sea beast that he’d seen rising half hidden behind the moving curtain of rain but the dark unbroken line of a sheer cliff face and waves exploding on to a rock-strewn foreshore beneath it.

There was no time to think; no time to reflect on the power of the storm or how it had managed to drive Griffin so close to land; no time for recriminations against an error of navigation, if such was the case. There was only raw panic.

Fitch threw himself against the helm like a man possessed, leaving Hawkwood no option but to dig his heels into the deck and follow suit. As spray burst over Griffin’s weather side and stampeded in glistening shards along the deck, Hawkwood knew that even with their combined strength bearing down, it was unlikely the two of them would be able to hold the ship steady. The pressure of the sea against hull and rudder was just too strong.

He was suddenly aware of a tarpaulin-jacketed figure clawing his way towards them. It was the quartermaster, Mendham. Thrusting himself between Hawkwood and Fitch, he clamped his hands around the helm.

Feet scrabbling, the three men hauled back on the tiller. Hawkwood glanced up towards the mast. It was vibrating like a bow stave and looked ready to snap.

But slowly and sluggishly, Griffin began to come round.

Only for her prow to rise, swept up by the sheer power of the water beneath her hull.

“Pull, y’buggers!” Mendham yelled. “Pu—!”

And almost as quickly, she was falling away again. The quarter -master’s voice was drowned out as Griffin plummeted once more into the abyss. As the sea smashed over the drift rail, the lee scuppers vanished under a rampaging tide of foam and swirling black water that raced along the deck, sweeping all before it. Hawkwood’s boots began to slide. He saw that a good number of the crew had been left floundering as their legs were taken from beneath them. Most were struggling to their feet. Others had found a stanchion or a stay to cling to, while a few fortunate ones were grabbed by their shipmates and pulled to safety.

But, momentarily, resistance against the rudder eased.

The other two felt it at the same time.

“Now!” Fitch yelled hoarsely. “Put your backs into it!”

Led by Fitch, Hawkwood and the quartermaster redoubled their efforts. Gradually, the starboard bulwark began to drop. Griffin was answering! Hawkwood sensed the cutter was returning to an even keel. Relief surged through him.

And then he looked out beyond the bow and a fist closed around his heart.

Mendham followed his gaze. The quartermaster’s face sagged. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Hawkwood’s first thought was that some callous twist of fate had inadvertently caused them to turn the ship completely about, and that it was the same stretch of cliff he could see, lying in wait at the edge of the darkness. Disconcerting enough in itself, until he saw that the top of the cliff was in motion and growing in height and width and he realized to his horror that it was a wave, a huge black wave, far larger than anything that had gone before, and that it was bearing down upon them and gathering speed at an astonishing rate. He felt his insides contract.

For Griffin was still partially beam on and there was no time to turn her into the approaching threat. Fitch yelled again. Hawkwood didn’t catch the words; they were borne away by the shriek of the wind. He saw Griffin’s commander staring over the rail, head lifting as he took in the full significance of what he was seeing. The lieutenant spun round.

It was too late for a warning.

There was an awful inevitability in the way the mountainous wall of water was racing towards them; devouring everything in its path, like some ancient malevolence, risen from the deep to spread chaos upon the world. As Hawkwood watched, a skein of frothing whitecaps appeared, like pale riders cresting the brow of a hill; tentatively at first but then, as if gaining in confidence, they began to spread out across the wave’s rapidly swelling summit. It was, Hawkwood thought, like staring into a boiling cauldron. With her weather side exposed to the full might of the converging sea, Griffin stood no chance.

The wave broke across her with devastating force. The starboard bulwark vanished, swamped beneath the deluge which splintered the topsail yard like a twig, tore the gaff from its mountings, the forward hatch cover from its runners and more than a dozen crewmen from their stations. Their cries were cut short as the remains of the mainsail collapsed around them, sweeping them over the port bulwark and into the sea in a welter of spiralling limbs, broken spars and flayed canvas.

The force of the water wrenched the tiller from Hawkwood’s hands. He tried to grab on to it but there was nothing beneath his feet to give him purchase and it sprang out of his grasp as if on a coiled spring. The world became a maelstrom of sound and fury. He sensed rather than saw Fitch and Mendham being flung aside and then everything went dark. Bracing himself, he felt a stunning blow as his spine collided with the corner of the binnacle. Pain shot through him.

The backwash had barely receded before the sea crashed over them once more. The crewmen who’d survived the initial cataclysmic onslaught were given no chance to recover. All had tried to wrap themselves around what they had hoped were secure fixtures. The stronger ones hung on grimly only to see their more exhausted companions plucked from safety and into oblivion like sodden rag dolls.

Hawkwood, still dazed and smarting from his encounter with the compass box, was unprepared for the impact. Sent careening across the deck like an empty keg trapped in a mill race, he was finally brought up short at the base of the mast. Spluttering and coughing, tangled within a cat’s cradle of torn rigging and waterlogged canvas, he felt something grab his arm – a dis -embodied hand – and saw, through a blur of agony, that it was the helmsman, Fitch. The look in the seaman’s eyes as the reflux bore him away was one of abject terror.

The ship gave another violent lurch. A terrible rending sound came from deep within the hull as Griffin was slammed on to her larboard beam and Hawkwood, still coughing, found himself dislodged and adrift once more. He grabbed for the main hatchway grating and missed, then saw a strand of rope – one of the safety lines – and made a desperate lunge towards it, just as the port bulwark submerged. A strained voice yelled frantically from close by, “She’s going!” and before Hawkwood could advance his hold, the line jackknifed from his clutches. His link with the ship severed and with the cutter’s deck at a near vertical incline and still rotating, there was nothing he could do, except fall.

He was wet already, but the coldness of the water drove the rest of the air from his lungs as effectively as a mule kick. As the weight of his tarpaulin jacket dragged him beneath the waves, his last comfortless thought was that he hadn’t expected it to end like this.