NEVELL, THE MASTER AND I STOOD BY THE TAFFRAIL, OUR SPY-glasses trained on the ship to our south. She was a frigate, of thirty-six guns, and near enough that she already filled the telescope’s compass.
‘Can we run?’ Nevell asked.
The master shook his head. ‘Doubtful, sir, not while she’s got the weather gage. If we ran upwind we’d not get past her; downwind, and we’d find ourselves on a lee shore.’
‘She’s run up her colours,’ called one of the seamen.
Looking through my glass, I saw a red ensign flapping from her stern. She was evidently sailing under Admiralty orders; I could guess the man who had written them.
‘Hoist the Union flag,’ said the master.
The frigate’s response was swift. ‘She’s signalling us to heave to.’
The master and I both looked at Nevell, but the sea was not his element and he could offer no more than a shrug.
‘You say we cannot run.’
The muted roar of a distant cannon was like a drumbeat underscoring his word. The frigate had fired her bow-chaser. It was only a warning, but the threat was unmistakable.
‘I suppose we had better heave to and wait,’ said Nevell at last. ‘If she is an English ship, we should have nothing to fear. She probably thinks we are a merchantman and merely wants to inspect us for deserters.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Actually . . ’ Briefly, I explained my fearful suspicion.
‘But you said you thought these ships a fantasy, as ephemeral as the rest of Burr’s army.’ Nevell frowned. ‘Can they actually have been real?’
For any man who had accompanied Burr on his deluded crusade down the Mississippi, who had seen the sad figment of his army, it was hard to credit. Yet in another way it was all too easy to believe. It would, after all, be entirely consistent with my own dismal luck.
‘Though even if it is one of Burr’s ships, there is no cause to fret,’ said Nevell hopefully. ‘They cannot know your involvement in the scheme, and they certainly cannot expect to find you here.’
Whether they did or not, we would have little say in the matter. We furled our sails and waited for the frigate to come.
When she was about four hundred yards off our beam, she backed her sails and lowered her pinnace. We stood on the schooner’s deck and watched her crew row across. I had wanted to go below and hide, but Nevell discouraged it. ‘The best hiding place is always in plain view. If they searched the ship and found you lurking in the bilge they would certainly take you for a deserter.’
The pinnace had almost reached us. Looking down, I was astonished to see a pair of stiff golden epaulettes on the shoulders of the man sitting in the sternsheets. Why would the frigate’s captain come to visit us in person? In addition to the sailors on the oars, I noticed four marines perched in the bow. It seemed the captain did not trust our hospitality.
The pinnace rapped against our hull. All the schooner’s crew were on deck, gathered in a knot by the foremast. They watched in silence as a pair of gold-cuffed sleeves reached over the gunwale, then as the white cockade of a cocked hat rose into view, and finally as the captain clambered over the side. He looked to be somewhere in his forties, with a rigidly old-fashioned bearing and a grey, sour face that betold ill health. Despite that, I noted a brusque vigilance in his eyes which I guessed would miss little. As his marines mounted the ladder, he brushed the dust off his lapels and turned to the master.
‘Captain Chatfield of His Majesty’s frigate Duke of Gloucester,’ he announced.
‘Ezekiel Strong, master of the Gannet.’
‘Where from?’
‘We hail from Bristol, sir, but sailed from New Orleans two days ago.’
‘Your cargo?’
His words were stony, but the master retained his humour. ‘Molasses, sir.’
Captain Chatfield surveyed the schooner’s deck, his eyes flitting over every line and belaying pin. The crew stared back.
‘As you will know, our navy is sorely depleted by traitors and deserters who enlist aboard American merchantmen,’ he said at last. ‘Our duty is to apprehend them and restore them to their rightful station, or to see them punished. You will oblige me by mustering your men, and any supernumeraries or passengers, with whatever passports or papers they possess. I will also require your log and muster books.’
Though he issued the orders sharply enough, I fancied I heard a bored indifference in his tone. Perhaps he had boarded too many vessels of late and was tired of it, although if that were the case he could easily have sent a subordinate. To my thinking it was more as if he already knew what he would find, that the search was merely a formality. His grey eyes scanned the deck, and I became convinced they fixed on me more than any other.
The master emerged from the cabin with a pair of books in his arm. He handed them to Captain Chatfield, then took his place among the men by the foremast. Chatfield turned a few pages of the log without interest, then opened the muster book. He tapped the page with a bony finger and stared at the assembled crew.
‘I will now read the muster,’ he said crisply. ‘When you hear your name you will kindly step forward and present your papers to the corporal. If they are found to be in order you will then stand by the mainmast.’
The marine corporal took up his position beside the main hatch, while his three subordinates stood by the starboard rail, their muskets in their hands. The master and his mate, who were anyway exempt from impressment, waited at the mainmast.
It did not last long, for there were only eighteen men in the crew. As Chatfield called each name the man in question handed his papers to the corporal, who scrutinized them carefully before waving him aft. Once or twice he questioned the men as to their home towns, or the ships they had served on, but their responses satisfied him. Soon Nevell, Fothergill and I were the only men left in the bow.
Chatfield nodded towards us. ‘Who are these?’
‘Passengers,’ said Strong.
‘Is there a manifest?’
Strong produced it, and Chatfield stared at it for some moments. Did I see a flicker of recognition cross his face? I could not be sure, but I felt a familiar sense of inevitable doom crawling through my guts.
He called Fothergill forward and directed him to the knot of men by the mainmast. Now only Nevell and I remained under his gaze.
‘Which of you is Nevell?’
Nevell stepped forward to give his papers to the corporal, but Chatfield intervened and took them for himself.
‘You are in the employ of the Post Office?’
‘I have that honour.’
‘What was your business in New Orleans?’
‘I was delivering a letter,’ said Nevell, the merest hint of insolence tinting his voice.
Chatfield grunted. ‘And you,’ he said, turning towards me, ‘I take it you are Martin Jerrold.’ There was a horrible familiarity in the way he said my name.
‘I am.’
‘Your passports?’
‘I have none,’ I whispered. ‘They were in my trunk. It was stolen from me in New Orleans.’
‘That is inconvenient.’
‘On the contrary, it is of no consequence whatsoever.’ Nevell moved forward from the mainmast. ‘I can vouch for Mr Jerrold.’
Chatfield did not seem to have heard him. ‘In the absence of your papers, I must assume that you are a fugitive from His Majesty’s navy. You will accompany me to my ship, Mr Jerrold, and remain there until I bring you before a court martial.’ He looked aft to the master. ‘As for you, Mr Strong, I have found a great many irregularities with your vessel. You claim that you sailed out of New Orleans two days ago, yet your logbook makes no mention of it. You harbour deserters. You may well have carried on trade with enemy nations in violation of the Rule of 1756. I am seizing your ship. I will send one of my officers and a prize crew to take command and sail her to Jamaica.’
‘But that is monstrous,’ protested Strong. ‘You have no evidence, sir, that we—’
‘If you wish to protest it you may do so in the Admiralty Courts.’ Chatfield permitted himself a thin smile. ‘In London.’
Two of his marines took me by my arms and dragged me to the side. Sick with fear and futile rage I glanced back at Nevell, imploring him for help. His fingers were straying towards his coat pocket, but his eyes were on the Duke of Gloucester and the irresistible broadside she had trained on us.
It was the first time I had seen him defeated, and the sight crushed what little hope remained in my soul.
Captain Chatfield said nothing as the pinnace rowed the short distance between the ships, but stared at his command with a curious discontent. Keeping well clear of the bayonet which the marine corporal had angled towards my chest, I followed his gaze. A great deal of activity was happening aboard the Duke of Gloucester: topmen swarming up the rigging, sailors scurrying around the guns, and officers on the quarterdeck peering north through telescopes. They were not watching the schooner; instead, it seemed they looked to the opposite horizon, though I could not tell what they saw. Only two people on the frigate’s deck seemed to pay us any heed: a stout, dark-suited man and a slender white figure at his side. Before I could examine them closer, we came into the lee of the hull and they vanished from my sight.
Chatfield was first up the side; I followed, painfully conscious of the bayonet that awaited me if I slipped and fell back. The frigate heeled over in the rising swell, and the slapping waves threw spray up on the ladder, but I kept my grip and hauled myself onto the deck. Chatfield had his back to me, already busy in urgent consultation with his subordinates, but the two figures whom I had seen from the boat were still there, waiting. The man in black leered at me in triumph, while the woman at his side met my gaze with pitiless dispassion. Truly it seemed that there was no distance I could travel, no path so circuitous, but that I would eventually end up face to face again with Lyell.
Chatfield paused his conversation as he noticed my arrival. ‘Is this the man you sought?’
Lyell bared his teeth. ‘Indeed it is, Captain. Well done. He escaped me in New Orleans, but I doubt he will find it so easy to go leaping out of windows this time. Had he lived to reach London he could have been the ruin of us all.’
‘So you have told me,’ said Chatfield curtly. There seemed little natural sympathy between my two captors, though I doubted I would gain anything by it.
‘He has already proved trouble enough. It would be best if we dropped him over the side immediately.’
Chatfield stiffened. ‘That would not do at all, sir. We are not pirates, and whatever his faults Mr Jerrold is a gentleman.’
‘Would a duel on the main deck suit your honour better?’ sneered Lyell.
Chatfield did not welcome the sarcasm. ‘Have a care, Mr Lyell. I do not know what passes for manners among London merchants, but aboard my ship you will be pleased to render me the courtesy I am due. Now, if you will permit me, there are rather graver matters to consider. The lookouts have reported a sail to the north.’
‘Is it not one of your own?’ Lyell remained uncowed by Chatfield’s outburst. ‘I thought there were to be two ships on this station.’
‘The Cambrian frigate sailed for Jamaica two weeks ago. I am not aware of any other British ships in the vicinity.’
Hardly had Chatfield spoken than a sailor came sliding down the backstays, dropping onto the deck just in front of us and staring at the group of officers and civilians gathered around him. Uncertainly, he tapped a tarry fist to his brow.
‘Yes?’ snapped Chatfield.
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but we’ve got the enemy in sight.’
‘Enemy?’
‘Spanish, sir. Fifth rate, forty-four guns.’
‘God damn them.’ Chatfield strode to the rail and stared out, then turned back abruptly. ‘Set the tops’ls, then beat to quarters. Signal the schooner to keep away from the battle, but to maintain her station until it is decided.’ His gaze swept over the ship and settled on me. ‘As for Mr Jerrold, take him to the orlop and lock him in the store room. We will decide his fate after the battle – if we survive it.’
The marines took my arms and led me below.