Scarborough Fair (25 page)

Paul Jones was almost deaf under the roaring of the English cannon. He wondered how either ship could withstand the crippling broadsides and fires which had broken out everywhere. It seemed
Richard
's guts would be wrenched and twisted until she gave up and went to pieces. Eyes running from smoke he turned away, searching the dark sea for the rest of his squadron. Spying gunfire he used his telescope, studying until he was sure of what he saw. The other English vessel, the sloop-of-war
Countess of Scarborough
was being engaged. But by whom? As the squabbling ships maneuvered, blasting broadsides, he had to wait until a French ship was silhouetted against the night sky.
Pallas
! So Cottineau had not deserted him after all. Originally built as a privateer,
Pallas
fought like one now, dodging and weaving, salvos rippling from her ten-pounders.

Someone touched his arm. He lowered his glass to see Richard Dale's dirt-streaked face. Hatless, his hair was singed and tacky with blood, and through rips in his uniform jacket his smoke blackened shirt could be seen. His white knee breeches and stockings were spotted by sprayed blood.

“Sir, we've lost the main battery. Two of the eighteen-pounders exploded during the second broadside, and the rest have been destroyed since. Not that there are any men left below to man guns if I had them. They're all dead.” His right eye jerked with a nervous tic, mouth contorted into a humorless grin. “All dead. They're all dead…” He shook his head as though to disperse the horrors he had witnessed.

The commodore nodded. “Damage control? I want you…”

Dale waved a tired hand. “I've got fire parties working without rest. They no sooner douse one fire before another breaks out…” He covered his ears as a ragged salvo thundered from the English guns.
Bonhomme
Richard
protested beneath their feet while a spar fell from aloft, trailing a tangle of rigging.

Screams broke out from the starboard rail. Both officers craned necks. A man lay howling on the deck by the wreckage of a nine-pounder. A ball had demolished the gun carriage and taken the cannoneer's legs with it. He sat stunned, staring wide-eyed at two ragged stumps where his legs had been. Nearby, an officer rocked back and forth, clutching his face where a huge splinter had torn away his cheek. Blood poured from the gaping hole, a full side of yellowed teeth exposed above the brilliant white of his jawbone. It was Purser Mease who had been in charge of the quarterdeck battery.

“Give me a hand!” Paul Jones barked, moving to the rail. He prodded a finger at two marines occupied reloading muskets. “Get these wounded men below! You and you! Get this debris cleared!” He gestured to the shattered gun carriage. When they stepped forward to carry out his orders he turned away, grabbing Lt. Dale's sleeve to pull him over to the port rail where an unmanned nine-pounder stood silent, miraculously intact, aimed uselessly at the open sea. Without waiting for help, the two officers began to drag the cannon across the deck. When a marine joined them the commodore nodded his thanks, but when a second came up he waved him away. “Get back to your station! And use that musket!” When the soldier frowned Paul Jones remembered and repeated the order in French.

Explosions ripped across the weather deck. Sweating, the commodore straightened up in time to see the devastation of his battery of twelve-pounders. His position on the quarterdeck gave him an aerial view as cannon bucked loose from carriages, rope falls flailing the smoke-heavy air like whips. As powder kegs exploded one after another, it was hard to believe it was night, so clearly could he see the systematic destruction. It appeared the only armament he had left was the three nine-pounders on the quarterdeck where he stood. With only two trained gun crews, the third cannon was left to himself and Mr. Dale.

He was no stranger to cannon. He had worked them often enough as a junior officer, the routine never forgotten, only dulled. He glanced down at the main deck again. Who could be sure who was winning in all this chaos?

“Sir?”

“What?” The commodore snapped, irritated.

“Look! Can you see?” Dale pointed astern into the night.

Paul Jones squinted. His eyes did not lie. A vessel was bearing down on them, bellying sails ghostly gray, towering over the unmistakable lines of a frigate.

“Well, well,” he said. “Now we shall see.”

Midshipman Fanning crouched uncomfortably on his haunches in the foremast-top. Fumbling with his powder horn he tried to reload his pistol. His hands were trembling with excitement while his body shook, chest heaving. He had never felt so alive, every nerve end tingling, every sense magnified as the battle raged around him. He had never felt so close to death either. Time had no meaning. He did not know whether they had been fighting for minutes or hours or forever.

When he had climbed the ratlines to his station in the fore-top with fourteen marines, the men had been apprehensive while trying to appear cheerful. Each was fully equipped and knew what he had to do. There was a professionalism and orderliness about it all. Now, equipment littered the blood-slippy planking and half were dead, stripped of powder and shot then pushed over into the nothingness of night to make more room for the living.

The remaining men fought consistently. Some lived up to his expectations of how professional soldiers should perform. They fought grim faced, almost deliberately slow as they loaded and carefully aimed before shooting. Others screamed their hate like cornered animals, almost climbing over the rail, eager to inflict pain and death. They reloaded with frantic speed, cartridge-ball-wad-ram-prime, almost one fluid movement fueled by anger. Others were silent, legs jerking uncontrollably as they shot or threw grenades down onto the English warship. He wasn't sure whether they trembled with rage or terror.

Ears numb from the battering of cannon fire below and crashes of muskets in the mast-top, the midshipman glanced around the half circle of marines. However they fought, and whatever their feelings, they fought well. He tried to still his shaking hands long enough to prime the pistol. Powder scattered over the dirty knees of his white breeches. Suddenly his hand was wet with blood. He stared at the great splash of crimson, too shocked to scream or move. He hadn't felt anything. Nothing at all. Now he knew what it was like to be wounded. God, you didn't even feel it! He choked back a hysterical laugh. There was nothing to fear but fear. Eyes wet with tears of relief, he rocked back on his heels.

Shadows moved. Fanning glanced up as a figure lurched above him, keeling over. A musket clattered unheard on the planking. Automatically, he lifted his arms to protect himself and caught the crumpling soldier. The French marine was already dead, eye socket empty where a ball had screamed into his brain. Fanning fended off the deadweight corpse. It fell at his side. Covered in the dead man's gushing blood, he wiped both hands on the tail of his uniform jacket. When he looked down gore was smeared across his hands but there was no wound. With the knowledge he had not been hit after all, the fear returned. Grimacing and sobbing, he completed reloading then hauled himself to his feet. He brandished the pistol and yelled.

“Dead man here! Clear the deck!”

A marine who had fallen back to reload rested his smoking musket on the deck then bent to hoist his dead comrade over the rail. The action was complicated by the cramped confines of the mast-top. Dancing shadows from below confused a man's eyes. Gun smoke provoked coughing fits. Each explosion nearby made nerves already raw jangle, expecting to take a hit at any moment. Clumsy, he was unable to get a firm grip on the body.

“Here man,” said Midshipman Fanning in a commanding voice he did not recognize as his own. He tucked his pistol into his belt before bending to lend a hand. They dragged the corpse to the seaward side, hoping it wouldn't land on any of their own men fighting below. Sweating and cursing, they hauled him up until his chest was balanced on the rail, arms hanging over the side. The officer and the marine paused in their efforts, eyes locked for a long second. Fanning wondered at what he saw in the other man's eyes. Pity, shame, resignation, hatred of himself, and hatred of an officer for ordering a man to be thrown casually overboard as though loss of life meant not a thing. Most of all he divined fear. Fear of the living man's own death and that he too would be unceremoniously dumped over the side to rot at the bottom of the sea. Not even a patch of ground. Only bottomless, always shifting water where a man's hopes and dreams would be rinsed from his dead mind and dissipated with the tide, lost without trace among the fishes.

In unspoken agreement they broke the stare, then heaved together. The body vanished into the chaos below, a flickering shadow against a muzzle flash. Fanning suddenly felt calm, a sense of inevitability settling over him. What must have only been a few seconds since the marine died seemed like hours and he knew in that instant they would fight until they were all dead and
Bonhomme Richard
was a ghost ship, drifting and burning in the endless night.

He sighed and looked away from the battle, out to sea where the darkness waited to claim them. It was then he saw the frigate bearing down. He squinted, eyes raking her hull and sail plan.
Alliance
!

Stunned for a moment, his emotions somersaulted. Now they would beat the Englishman. They would blow him to smithereens! He jerked his pistol free of his belt and pointed it skywards, finger curling about the trigger. Startled by a shot so close behind their heads, two or three marines spun from the rail to glare at him.

“Look men!” Fanning shouted. “We're saved!
Alliance
! It's
Alliance
! She's come to help us!”

The Frenchmen shouldered to the seaward rail. After a brief moment of disbelief they began to slap each other on the back and cheer. Their voices turned other eyes to the sea and the cry was taken up from bows to stern of the crippled
Bonhomme Richard
. Heartened, each man turned back to the fighting with new vigor, tapping resources already thought drained.

“You there!” Fanning yelled hoarsely. “Lay on or I'll have you flogged at the gangway for breakfast! This is no musket drill! Lay on!”

***

“Look sir!” Lt. Wright shouted. He was watching from HMS
Serapis
's quarterdeck, gauging when
Alliance
would cross their bows as they lay shackled to
Bonhomme
Richard
. “The Frenchie's going to rake us!”

Captain Pearson's lips curled upwards, eyebrows welded together in a frown. With his head low between his hunched shoulders, he nodded he had seen the newcomer. “I expected it all along. We can count ourselves lucky the whole squadron did not have at us on first contact. I was surprised when only his flagship engaged; that he had the gall to think he could take one of His Majesty's ships with only an old East Indiaman. Well, they won't find us easy. Jones has lost nearly all his cannon and he will shield us when the frigate has passed our bow. There will only be time to rake once, and if he comes about onto our port side, we'll give him a good English broadside. No, damn him, let him come.”

Lt. Wright was amazed at Pearson's confidence, but discarded it as reassurance for the junior officers within earshot on the quarterdeck. With two vessels engaging them, they had no chance.
Serapis
was almost a wreck now, burning nearly from end to end. And if they managed to bring the fires under control, they would still probably burn to the waterline when the flames raging on the pirate ship spread back to them. If he could rally the men to retake the main battery…

A deafening explosion from one of the forward hatches shook
Serapis
like a bone clamped between a dog's jaws. The deck heaved, hurling the two officers on their faces. Great splinters scythed the air overhead. Struggling to his knees, Pearson had hands clapped over his punished ears.

“Grenade!?” he shouted.

“Aye sir,” Wright called back, pulling himself up by the rail, eyes turned back for'ard. A sheet of flame outlined the hatch, sparks jumping to nearby rigging. Burning halyards sheered away, released tension curling them into the air in fiery tatters.

“Don't wait here, man,” Pearson said irritably, hauling himself to his feet. “Get down there and bring that fire under control.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And get those damned Frenchies or Americans or whatever in God's name they are off my yards!”

***

Richard Dale ran for'ard past the smoldering wreckage of the marines' roundhouse on the open deck. Leaping mounds of cordage and smashed spars that had fallen from aloft, he dodged around burst cannon and the broken bodies of men. Musket balls thudded into the deck timbers around him as English sharpshooters followed his progress. He was too busy to notice, ears ringing from the persistent cannon fire. Even in a lull there was no silence, echoes of broadsides hammering back and forth in his mind. That and the crackling of flames eating both ships, and now the cheering at
Alliance
's arrival. Men who seconds before had been on the point of giving up now fought with renewed fury. Some grinned like madmen, oblivious of their wounds and the horrors they had seen.