A Falcon Flies (82 page)

The tall clipper ship looked lazy now, indolent in her flounces and ruffles as a lady of high fashion, and
Black Joke
was snorting and snuffling busily down the short leg of the triangle. If they both maintained this speed and course they would meet about eleven nautical miles ahead. Clinton could visualize the exact spot clearly just beyond the spit of land marked on his chart as ‘Bakoven Point'.

Huron
was committed to her present course. She could not bear up for the land lay close under her weather rail, and the chart showed breaking shoals well offshore – there was one of them now, close on her starboard beam, showing its round black granite back and blowing like a whale.
Huron
was in a trap, and her only escape would be to find the extra turn of speed which would carry her away out of gunshot range – and there it was, the wind, less than three miles ahead of her.

There was a loud banging from the deck below Clinton's feet, and he glanced irritably at Ferris.

‘See what that is,' he snapped, and turned his full attention back to the clipper. Three short miles she had to go, but even as Clinton stared at her through his glass he saw her huge square mainsail quiver and then shake gently as she luffed in the flukey airs below the mountains.

‘Please God!' Clinton whispered, and
Huron
's speed bled off perceptively, all her sails were losing their taut clean shape and she checked away, baulking like a weary animal.

‘She's found a hole in the wind,' Lieutenant Denham called exultantly. ‘We've got her now, by God!'

‘I'll thank you not to blaspheme on this quarterdeck, Mr Denham,' Clinton told him sharply, and Denham's expression was instantly crestfallen.

‘I beg your pardon, sir.' At that moment Ferris arrived breathlessly back on deck.

‘The stokers, sir,' he panted. ‘They are knocking out all the furniture from the officers' quarters. Your bunk's gone, sir, and your desk also.'

Clinton barely glanced at him, he was studying the clipper, evaluating each yard of difference in their speeds, judging as finely as he dared the angle of his interception.

Yes, he decided, with
Huron
's loss of speed, he could edge in a touch more.

‘Bring her up a point to starboard,' he told the helmsman, and then he glanced up at his own sails that were helping the big bronze screws under the stern to hurl
Black Joke
forward. The alteration of course had affected them.

‘Mr Ferris, see to the trim of your jib, if you please.'

Ferris bellowed an order to the foredeck watch, and watched critically as they hardened up the long triangular sail.

All
Huron
's sails shivered, and then refilled, once more taking on their true shape, and she spurted away, a curl of white sparkling under her bows. The dark windswept water was much closer ahead of her.

It had been Denham's unnecessary blasphemy, Clinton was sure of it, and he glanced darkly at his Lieutenant, and then reluctantly gave the order.

‘Let her fall off a point.'
Huron
was head-reaching again. If
Black Joke
held on she would be aiming to cut behind the clipper's stern. The alteration was an acknowledgement of the advantage changing hands once again.

The engine voice pipe squealed, and it was a relief to have even the small distraction.

‘Engine room, Captain,' he snapped into the mouthpiece. ‘Coal long ago gone, sir. Pressure down to 100 pounds, sir – and falling.'

‘Burn everything you can find.'

‘Wood goes up like paper, sir. No body to it – and it chokes the flue.' MacDonald seemed to relish the gloomy news, and Clinton felt his irritation turn to anger.

‘Do your best, man, nobody can ask more than that,' and he snapped the voice pipe closed.

Was he close enough yet to try a shot with his bow-chaser, he wondered? The long sixteen-pounder had almost twice the range of the big thirty-two pounders that made up
Black Joke
's main armament. A lucky shot might carry away one of the clipper's spars, might even bring down a yard – and at that moment he distinctly felt the change in the engine vibrations coming up through the deck,
Black Joke
was faltering, the steam in her boilers losing pressure.

‘Mr Ferris, break out the colours, if you please.'

As the Ensign unfurled at the peak, spread gloriously against the pale blue sky, crimson and silky white, shouting a challenge on the wind, Clinton felt that tightness in his chest, that swell of pride which never failed him.

‘
Huron
's replying,' Denham muttered, and Clinton lifted his glass, and watched the American's colours bloom like a flower high above her shimmering piles of white canvas.

‘And be damned,' Denham interpreted the show of colours.
Huron
was scorning their challenge.

‘Mr Ferris, we'll give her a gun now,' Clinton decided grimly. ‘Put one over her bows.' And Ferris scrambled away to the bows to supervise the loading and laying of the bow-chaser.

The shot when it came was a puny little pop of sound, muted by the wind and the long spurt of grey powder smoke was whipped away almost before it could form. Though they were all watching avidly through the telescopes, not one of them could spot the fall of shot, and Denham spoke aloud for all of them.

‘She's not altering. She's ignoring us.'

‘Very well.' Clinton kept his voice low. ‘We'll try one into her rigging.'

The sixteen-pounder banged again, like an unlatched door in a high wind, and this time they both exclaimed in unison. A pinprick of light appeared in one of the
Huron
's studding sails, pierced by shot; it held its shape for an instant and then burst like a paper packet and was blown to tatters.

Clinton saw the bustle of
Huron
's seamen on the decks and yards, and before the bow-chaser could be reloaded, the ruined sail was hauled down and another clean new sail spread open in its place. The speed with which the sail change was made impressed even Clinton.

‘The devil is a good sailor, I'll grant him that—' And then he broke off, for
Huron
was turning boldly, seeming to aim to cut the gunboat's bows, and Clinton realized what her Captain was doing. He was anticipating the rush of the wind, and as Clinton watched it struck her.

It came roaring aboard the clipper, howling through her rigging, like a pack of hunting wolves, and the tall ship heeled and seemed almost to crouch, gathering herself like a blood stallion feeling the cut of the lash, and then she hurled herself forward and was away.

The dark wind-scoured sea burst open before the long lithe knifing hull, and joyously
Huron
tossed the dashing white spray over her bows.

‘She's making twenty knots,' Denham cried with disbelief, as
Black Joke
seemed to come up dead in the water, a wallowing log when compared to the swift and lovely ship that cut daringly across her bows, just out of cannon shot, and dashed away into the open Atlantic Ocean.

Through his glass Clinton saw that the seamen who lined
Huron
's yards were gambolling and waving their caps, mouths wide open as they cheered and jeered, and then he focused the glass on
Huron
's deck.

There was a tall figure at
Huron
's near rail, clad in a plain dark blue jacket. Clinton could not make out the man's features at this distance, but he recognized the set of wide shoulders, the arrogant carriage of head, that he had last seen over the sights of a duelling pistol.

The acid bile of hatred rose to scald his throat as the figure lifted a hand in a laconic salute, a taunting gesture of farewell, and then turned away from the rail unhurriedly.

Clinton snapped his telescope closed.

‘Stern chase!' he ordered. ‘We'll keep after her!'

He did not dare look at his officers' faces, lest one of them wore an expression of pity.

L
ying on her bunk, her arms held stiffly at her sides and hands clenched painfully, Robyn heard the creak and squeal from the deck below her that meant
Huron
was altering course, and that the eight-inch thick rudderlines were running through their blocks as the helmsman spun the wheel. It was a sound she had long become accustomed to, and she braced herself instinctively as the rudder lines attached to the pintles trained around the enormous wooden rudder under
Huron
's stern and the ship altered her action through the water.

Seconds later there was a thunderous commotion from the deck above her, the blustering roar of the gale socking into the rigging, the crash of tackle coming up taut, the slam of the great sails as their awesome power was transferred into the hull, and Robyn was almost hurled from her bunk as
Huron
heeled wildly.

Then the cabin was filled with the exultant thrumming of the hull through water, as though she were the body of a violin as the bow was drawn across the bass strings, and
Huron
trembled with life, lifting and dropping to the new urgency of her run.

Very faintly Robyn could hear above it all the sound of men cheering. She jumped from the bunk and clutching for handholds crossed the cabin and pounded her fist upon the door.

‘Nathaniel,' she called. ‘Answer me this instant.'

‘Captain says as how I'm not to talk to you.' His voice was muffled.

‘You cannot torment me so,' Robyn yelled back. ‘What is happening?'

A long pause while Nathaniel considered his duty and then weighed it against his affection for this spirited young woman.

‘We are on the wind, ma'am,' he told her at last. ‘And going like all the devils of hell with a crackerjack tied to their tails.'

‘What of
Black Joke
?' she pleaded. ‘What of the British gunboat?'

‘Ain't nothing will catch us now. Reckon the puffing Billy will be out of sight before nightfall. From here she looks like she's dropped her anchor.'

Slowly Robyn leaned forward until her forehead pressed against the planking of the door. She closed her eyes very tightly, and tried to fight down the black waves of despair that threatened to overwhelm her.

She stayed like that for a long time until Nathaniel's voice roused her. It was rough with concern.

‘Are you all right then, missus?'

‘Yes, thank you, Nathaniel. I'm just fine,' she replied tightly, without opening her eyes. ‘I'm going to take a little nap now. Don't let anybody disturb me.'

‘I'll be right here, missus. Ain't nobody going to get past me,' he assured her.

She opened her eyes and went back to the bunk, and knelt before it and began to pray – but for once she could not concentrate. Jumbled images kept intervening, and, when she closed her eyes, the face of Clinton Codrington was there, with those pale beautiful eyes in the darkly tanned mahogany of his face that accentuated the sun-bleached platinum of his hair. She longed for him as she had never done before – he had become a symbol for her of all that was good and clean and right.

Then her mind darted away and it was that distant mocking smile, the taunting gold-flecked eyes of Mungo St John. She trembled with humiliation, the man who had violated her and turned her own emotions traitor, who had dallied with her and allowed her to hope, nay, to pray that she could bear his children and become his wife. Her despair turned to hatred once again, and hatred armed her.

‘Forgive me, Lord – I'll pray later – but now I
have
to do something!'

She started to her feet, and the cramped little cabin was a cage, suffocating and unbearable. She hammered her fists on the door and Nathaniel replied immediately.

‘Nathaniel, I cannot bear it in here a moment longer.' she cried. ‘You must let me out.'

His voice was regretful but firm. ‘Can't do that, missus. Tippoo would have a look at my backbone!'

She flung away from the door, angry, confused, her mind in a turmoil.

‘I cannot let him carry me away to—' She did not go on, for she could not imagine what awaited her at the end of this voyage unless – and she had a vivid mental image of
Huron
coming into dock, while standing on the quay was a beautiful tall and aristocratic French woman in crinolines and velvets and pearls with three small sons standing at her side waving up at the tall arrogant figure on
Huron
's quarterdeck.

She tried to close her mind to it, and she concentrated instead on the sound that
Huron
made as she bore away joyously on the wind, the drumming of her hull, and the pop and creak of her planking, the clatter of tackle and the stamp of bare feet on her deck as a party of seamen walked away with a fall, training one of the yards more finely to the wind. From beneath her feet came another muted squeal, like a rat in the cat's jaws, as the helmsman made a small adjustment to
Huron
's heading, and the rudder tackle ran protestingly through the blocks.

The sound triggered a memory, and Robyn froze, trembling again, but this time with anticipation. She remembered Clinton Codrington describing to her how as a young Lieutenant he had been in command of a cutting-out party sent into a river estuary that was crammed with small slaving craft, buggaloos and dhows.

‘I didn't have enough men to take them all as prize at once, so we jumped from one to the other, cut their rudder lines and left them drifting helplessly, until we could pick'em up later – those that hadn't gone aground, that is.'

Robyn roused herself from the memory and rushed to the corner of her cabin. She had to wedge her back against the bulkhead and push with both her feet to move her wooden chest into the centre of the cabin. Then she dropped to her hands and knees.

There was a small trap-door in the deck, so neatly fitted that its joints were knife edges, but there was a small iron ring let flush into the woodwork. Once on the long voyage down the Atlantic, she had been disturbed by a very apologetic carpenter's mate and she had watched with interest while he had dragged her chest aside and opened the hatch, to descend through it with a grease pot.