Soaked from stem to stern, the big frigate heeled far over under the steady blow, the splendid curves of her hull enabling her to ride the glossy rollers, but she dipped at every downward plunge, and heaved up again with green water pouring from her head rails and figurehead.
Oraclaesus was doing her utmost best, and was a credit to the men of Woolwich naval dockyard who built her. Nonetheless, she was riding out the storm only because of the seamanship and foresight of her new commander, Joe Flint. For Captain Baggot had long since been heaved over the side, sewn up in a hammock with a roundshot at his feet: him and all his sea-service officers, together with Mr Lemming, the surgeon, who never did recognise the disease that killed him. These great ones were gone, together with over a hundred of the ship’s lesser people, who received ever-more perfunctory funeral rites as Flint grew tired of reading the service and the surviving hands, exhausted and over-worked, despaired of the whole dreadful process.
So the ship was surviving – and only just – because, with too few men to work her in a blow, and foul weather only to be expected in these latitudes at this time of year, Flint had long since sent down t’gallant masts and yards, taken in the fore and main courses, and set only close-reefed topsails and storm staysails: a task the hands could manage in easy weather. This left the ship with bare steerage way, but saved her when the storm struck, for otherwise she’d have lost her masts, rolled on her beam ends, and drowned every soul aboard of her.
Now Flint and Billy Bones stood braced on the soaking, sloping planks, hanging on by the aid of the storm-lines rigged across the deck, and draped in the tarred blouses and breeches they’d taken from dead men’s stores. They huddled together to yell into each other’s ears against the howling wind and the dense salt spray that came up over the bow at every plunge of the ship, drenching as far back as the quarterdeck. But however hard they shouted, the wind blew away the sound such that no other could hear: not even ten feet away at the ship’s wheel where the helmsmen were fighting to hold the ship on course.
“It’s no good,” said Flint.
“It ain’t neither, Cap’n!” said Billy Bones.
“We must have more men. We’ll not survive another like this!”
“And we ain’t steering no course. Just running afore the wind.”
“When this blows over, I shall signal Bounder and Jumper to come alongside.”
“What about Mr Povey? He’s aboard Bounder and he’ll blab to all hands!”
“Yes, but –”
Flint was about to argue that, without more men, they’d die anyway. But the storm spoke more persuasively, with a roar and a crackling from above, like the volley of a thousand muskets, as the wind got its claws fairly into the fore topsail and ripped it from its reefs and flogged it and shredded it and blew it out into streaming rags that stretched ahead of the ship and threw off bits of themselves to vanish instantly into the howling night.
“Bugger me!” said Billy Bones.
“Helmsman!” cried Flint, stepping close to the wheel.
“Aye-aye, sir!” said the senior man.
“Can you hold her?”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”
Flint came back to Billy Bones, hauling himself hand over hand by a storm-line, and leaning his head close to Bones’s.
“She’ll run like a stallion in this. She’d run under bare poles –” he looked at the men at the wheel “– so long as they don’t tire.”
“Shall I send up fresh hands?”
“No! Can’t risk it. They’d take time to get the feel of the helm, and we could be broached-to and rolled over while they do.”
Billy Bones nodded. The wheel was a double, with spokes radiating out from either end of the drum round which the steering tackles were rove. That meant two big wheels, one ahead of the other, such that four men – one to each side of each wheel – could steer as a team in heavy weather. It was a task best left to those who’d got the knack of it, working with these particular shipmates, under these particular conditions.
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones.
“So,” said Flint, “there’s something else we can do in the meanwhile, for we’re no help to these excellent men at the helm.”
Billy Bones couldn’t actually see the leer on Flint’s face. It was too dark for that, but he knew it would be there, and he trembled in a fright that had nothing to do with the storm.
For a storm was nothing to Billy Bones. Standing on a wet wooden slope with the wind shrieking in his ears was nothing to him. Likewise, the cold seawater that got under his collar and ran down his neck. And neither did he fear the tremendous power of the elements that could take a ship, and break it and sink it and drown him. All that was meat and drink to Billy Bones. He’d faced it all his life, and if ever he pondered on so philosophical a matter as his own death – why, Billy Bones would naturally expect it to come at sea, in a storm, and a fitting seaman’s death it would be an’ all! So he wasn’t afraid of the weather…only Joe Flint, the infinitely charismatic Flint, whom he feared and worshipped all at once, as if by evil enchantment.
Meanwhile Flint was speaking:
“Stand to your duty!” he yelled to the helmsmen.
“Aye-aye, sir!”
“Mr Bones and I am going below.”
“Aye-aye!”
“We shall soon return.”
“Aye-aye!”
Beckoning Billy Bones to follow, Flint made his way through the dark night and the screeching wind, with the rain and spray lashing his face so hard he could barely breathe, and the ship heaving up and down, twenty feet at a time, beneath his feet. Sight was nearly useless and he went by feel, storm-lines, and seaman’s instinct.
There was no hatchway on the quarterdeck, so he descended the larboard gangway ladder to the maindeck, and groped his way aft beneath the quarterdeck, where there was shelter at least from the wind and wet. Around them the great guns strained and heaved in their lashings, ever seeking the opportunity to snap a rotten tackle and break loose for a playful plunge about the deck, grinding and smashing and killing…Except that there was nobody to kill, only Flint and Billy Bones; the few others aboard were either up above or down below. The main deck, the gun deck which was the raison d’être of a man o’ war was unnaturally empty of men.
In the darkness, Flint went just aft of the capstan and forrard of the bulkhead that divided off the captain’s quarters and slipped carefully down the ladderway to the lower deck. And there he paused, with his back against a cabin door, until Billy Bones came rumbling after him.
There was no weather at all down here, and the mighty voice of the wind was shut out by solid oak that admitted only a dull, demonic wailing. But all the wooden music of ship’s noises was playing: the creaks, squeaks and grumblings of eight hundred tons of carpentry, fighting to stay together while the wind and the sea tried to pull it apart.
Flint tingled with sudden excitement. He blinked in the black darkness, relieved only by a few feeble lanterns. Pulling off his tarred frock, he dumped it under one of the lanterns so it could easily be found; tarred clothes rustled and made a noise, and were awkward. Billy Bones did likewise. Flint sniffed. It still smelled vile down here, but better than it had done. There were only a few sufferers still alive in their hammocks, and the hands had got ahead with their swabbing. Flint peered in the darkness and made out the shape of a few hammocks up forrard. He grinned. They were of no concern. His interests lay aft.
Just astern was the bulkhead, and the door that led to the gun-room: province of the ship’s gentlemen, where