The Beothuk Expedition (23 page)

“I'll be a spiny dogfish!” the gunner declared. “I seen it done before but never with a blessed swivel. Upon my word, young sir! Well done!”

The men laughed and whooped but I told them to pull for their liberty, if not their lives. The shot had been no more than bravado, fired in hopes of angering the Frenchman into rash pursuit. It was a gamble with poor odds but with the tide at its ebb I was betting that the brig would draw more water than was in the tickle. A gentle waft of air lifted our topsail and Froggat worked the tiller to take full advantage of it. My immediate concern was to remove the
Dove
from harm's way, should the
Valeur
either pass through the channel unimpeded or run aground with its four-pound guns blazing away at us. The Spruce Islands lay about a league distant and their shelter was our only sanctuary.

With the help of the rising breeze we were halfway there when the Frenchman entered Shoal Tickle. Just as I'd hoped, her captain had thrown caution to the wind and was taking the channel with all the speed he could muster. I watched from the stern of our little shallop and hardly dared to breathe. Froggat stood beside me with his knuckles white on the tiller. On came the brig, even as I wished aloud that she would seize the bottom and rattle her masts. On and on she came without so much as a scrape, until she had cleared the Tickle and was coming up fast in our wake.

The French captain had either sailed Shoal Tickle before, or else he was the luckiest man afloat. The brig passed through it without so much as a scratch to her keel, and then celebrated by firing her guns at us. I gave new thought to our situation as a plunging shot threw a spray of water over the deck. The Spruce Islands were still half a league away with the wind rising on the starboard quarter. The islands were the largest part of a maze of rocks and shoals, and in these I placed our final hope.

The Frenchman kept up his ragged fire but the standard of gunnery was a scandal. Four-pound balls dropped into the sea on all sides of us, none but the first coming close enough to remark upon. Over the next half-hour the wind continued to rise and the sea to build, until the
Dove
was pitching sharply in the deepening troughs. My plan, such as it was, involved leading the brig among the islands and as close to the rocks as I dared, again on the chance that she might strike bottom and be damned. This would be risky enough in light airs, but now the sea was becoming capricious.

The waves in fact seemed to be heralding something of a squall. “Like dogs before their master,” I heard Froggat say. As we passed the first of the Spruce Islands, the wind brought drizzle and fog swiftly into the bay, quickly obscuring the rocky knoll. Treacherous shoals now lay all around us and I gave Froggat a heading that would take us deeper within the labyrinth.

The
Valeur
kept up her occasional fire until she suddenly luffed up into the wind and gave us a single broadside. Three of the balls thrummed harmlessly overhead, but the fourth spelled the end of able seaman Rundle. I had ordered the
Dove
about on the larboard tack a moment before and it was a lucky shot that found him. He was standing in the shrouds, reaching for the topsail sheet, when the unseen ball took away his arm. At first there was scarcely any blood, owing to the shock of it, but it came fast enough when he fell to the deck. Frost tried to staunch the flow with the shirt from his own back but the little Cornishman died some few minutes later. I have to say that I was sorry to see him pass. In life he scarcely had the sense to know his duty, and yet I think he might have done well enough, had he been removed from the influence of Grimes. Jenkins sobbed as he helped put the body over the side, but Grimes did not give his old shipmate as much as a departing glance.

With the wind and rain upon us, we ran before the squall with jib and reefed mainsail alone, the topsail having threatened to part or take away the mast. Frost had rigged a reefing jackstay for extra support but I was not convinced that it would take the strain. All the while I kept a close eye on the brig and was happy to see that her seamanship was showing again. Canvas went up and down according to a momentary gust and the vessel yawed like a drunken sailor.

As dusk approached the wind dropped a few knots and turned a point to the west. Darkness descended quickly and the sky merged with the sea while I resisted the urge to crowd more canvas. We were south of Upper Black Island and I knew that Lobster Rock was somewhere near, dangerous and invisible in the night. The wind turned another point and the rain gradually lessened. Stars appeared and the moon broke through the clouds to illuminate the bay in a wash of silvery light. I had taken up my compass to try and fix our position when I heard Jenkins shouting from the bows. I looked up, and as I did the light of the moon revealed a sight that nearly caused my heart to stop. Dead ahead, and not more than a biscuit toss away, was the Lobster, a tiny speck on my chart that now loomed as large as a continent.

“Helm a-lee!” I cried. Froggat did so in an instant and the sudden change in direction nearly threw Greening from the masthead, where he'd been watching for the brig.

“Deck ahoy!” he called when he'd recovered his hold. We were then shaving past the foaming rocks with not a dozen yards to spare. If I heard his cry it did not register, occupied as I was in willing us to safety. “Deck ahoy!” he roared again. “Sail on the starboard beam!”

This time his words forced me to tear my eyes from the breakers. There, out of the darkness and bearing down with stunning speed, was the Frenchman. He'd thrown caution to the wind and was upon us with the weather gauge in his favour. I could not manoeuvre without allowing him to change course the more easily and intercept us on his own terms. We were in as tight a spot as any I could imagine, and yet I was unwilling to surrender without a fight.

“Bear off the wind, Mister Froggat,” I said, hoping my voice sounded calm. By wearing ship I hoped to round the Lobster, away from the brig to prevent its broadside from coming into play. “Set topsail, boatwsain. Ready the guns, Mister Bolger. All hands stand by.”

We were now running before the wind but a glance astern told me that it was not enough. The Frenchman had three times our sail and nothing could prevent him from overtaking us. It was now a question of which side he would engage us on. The moon's light showed clearly the faces of my crew as they stood at their quarters. The warrant officers looked grim but determined and young Greening was fidgeting with nervous excitement. Jenkins waited, open-mouthed and staring, while Grimes wiped his palms repeatedly on his breeches. Cutlasses and pistols had been laid near at hand and I quickly tucked a primed piece into my belt.

“Are you ready, Mister Froggat?”

He nodded and heartened me with his reply: “Dying is of no importance, Jonah, for it lasts so short a time.”

I smiled at his paraphrase of Johnson and turned to the business of drawing all that we could from our little sloop, for sloop was how I now thought of her. In the last few days no humble shallop could have served us so well, and I thought it only fitting that she be accorded some dignity before being sent to the bottom.

The Frenchman now made his intentions known, altering course to come abeam on our larboard side. At my word the crew rallied to our two small guns. Every man expected the worst as the brig drew abreast, but then, just at the critical moment, we witnessed a sight that caused us to stare in disbelief. In altering course her crew missed stays and lost so much of her headway that she dropped astern again. It was an unexpected deliverance, but one that merely delayed the inevitable.

While this was absorbing our attention there was treachery afoot on board the
Dove
. All hands were watching the antics of the Frenchman while Grimes was climbing unseen onto the forecastle with a cutlass in his hand. There he began hacking at our jib sheets and halyards with clear intent to disable us. I turned at the first sound and my reaction was immediate: I drew the pistol from my belt and levelled it at his back.

As the senior officer, the blame was mine alone. I was wrong to trust Grimes in the working of the ship, even when there were so many mistrustful eyes to watch him. His intention could only have been to deliver us into the hands of the French, and in doing so to escape the justice that awaited him. It was even likely that he'd lost his reason, for John Wilkes' influence had twisted his mind in dangerous directions. Whatever his motive, it was now my firm intent to put a ball between his shoulder blades. My finger tightened on the trigger, even as Greening leapt upon the forecastle and obstructed my line of fire. I saw him raise his boot to the worn seat of Grimes' pants, and with arms flailing the traitor flew head first over the bow. A scream cut short was the last we knew of him.

Or so I thought. In fact, he did not plunge into the sea at all. It was only as Frost and Greening began knotting and repairing the sheets and halyards that they discovered him hanging over the side, his foot entangled in the ropes that he'd hacked from the rigging. His fall had been arrested just short of the waves and his body had slammed with great force into the bow timbers. He hung there unconscious, his head and arms dragging in foam from our bow wave. Greening picked up the cutlass and stood over the rope. A single chop and Grimes would cease to exist. I saw him hesitate, and may God forgive me but I said nothing. To the man's great credit, and to my shame, he threw the blade aside and took hold of the rope, his broad back straining as he drew the unconscious Judas onto the deck.

Our jib was now trailing over the bow and checking our way, and Frost stood out on the plunging bowsprit to gather it in. It was a valiant act, though ultimately pointless, because it was the last thing he ever did upon this earth. With our speed diminished the
Valeur
had come up quickly on our starboard side. Without warning, her broadside thundered from sixty yards away. One shot passed between Froggat and myself, close enough to make my eyes water with the rush of air. Another holed us at the waterline and a third smashed through the gunwale, dismounting number three swivel and impaling Jenkins' thigh with a two-foot splinter of wood. The fourth ball struck our bow, taking away the sprit and part of the stem. The boatswain went with it, and there was no question of his having survived. A great spray of blood on the flapping staysail was all that remained. We had no time to mourn his passing, or even to think of his loss, for the French were already reloading their guns.

From the stern deck I looked down on a moonlit scene of frenzy and destruction. Jenkins writhed and screamed in the debris while Greening and Bolger struggled to clear the other gun. To fight on would be suicide, I knew, but I intended to make a final statement before pulling down our ensign. At my order the gunner pointed number one swivel and fired into the enemy. His shot bounced off her tumblehome and deflected upwards, severing the chain on her foremast yard.

It was very strange that in the midst of all of this I should think of Amy Taverner. My heart was racing, my eyes burning from the smoke and my every sense attuned to the peril of our situation. And yet the notion that I would never see her again had entered my head, along with a feeling of calm acceptance. It passed over me like a wave and was gone in an instant, but the knowledge that I had experienced it lingered much longer. I looked across to the brig, where the French were clumsily pointing their weapons. Our own gun was ready for a second salvo and Bolger was waiting to time it with our roll. With the loss of the jib we were moving in every direction and he waited for what seemed an eternity until the right angle came to bear. The ball struck what remained of the stays on their foremast yard and it toppled to the deck in a tangle of ropes, canvas and scrambling men. I threw the rudder over and we sheered away, filling our sails and putting our stern to the brig before her guns could reply.

I had no way of knowing it then, but the gunner's shot would hamper the
Valeur
enough for us to put some miles between us. By the same token, however, I had no way of knowing that one of her guns would first wreak havoc upon us. In a surprising show of accuracy or good luck, the hissing ball took us square astern. It entered the aft cabin below my feet with a deadly shower of splinters and shards and passed through the full length of the sloop. Every man in the waist was struck by the wreckage, though by some miracle they were all left alive. The most seriously hurt was Bolger, who was thumped on the head by a stout piece of oak and was missing a good piece of his scalp. The ball passed into the forecastle cabin and lodged in our bow timbers, shaking loose a few planks but leaving us in no danger of sinking.

It was the final shot of the skirmish, for it can hardly be called a battle. With the disabled
Valeur
dead in the water we limped northward, never keeping our heading for more than a minute because of the missing bowsprit. We zigzagged out of the Bay of Exploits, fluttering like an injured waterfowl and fearing that the predator would return for the kill. The men were in a sorry state, bruised and battered, and I called for a double ration of rum to bring them around. It was the only thing that remained of our provisions, the barrel of dodgy pork having been blown to kingdom come.

I made my way forward to the gunner and found him conscious and lucid. As I inspected his wound he spoke with sadness of his old friend Frost, and all they had been through together. “Why, sir,” he said as I inspected his torn scalp, “him and me was boys together in the
Leopard
when Cap'n Palliser were a midshipman. Frost used to say he were bred to the sea on account o' his mother being a mermaid. A fine man before the mast, was Hard Frost. He could hand, reef and steer before he were old enough to shave, and now me old shipmate's gone and entered the port o' heaven.”

“We shall all miss him, master gunner,” I assured him as I dabbed at the wound.

“He had a wife somewheres. Portsmouth, I think. He only seen her every three years or so, but I'd best try to find her all the same. I wonders sometimes if he didn't know that his end were nigh. ‘Twere something he said to me when we was about to fight that brig. It were one o' them foolish rhymes ‘o his:
Sailing, sailing over the bounding main, Many a stormy wind shall blow ‘Ere Jack comes home again
. Funny, ain't it, sir? Like he knew he'd be clewing up his topsails afore long. And who can say? Maybe that's how it is for us all when our time is up.”