· 4 October 1805 ·
H. M. S. MERLIN, AT SEA
All eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon as the distant burning star of fire inched up above the earth’s dark rim. Rising, it sent its first brilliant, white-hot rays streaking across the heaving black wave tops, splashing color over the water’s surface, radiant streaks of deepest blue. The sea air on their faces was cool, and carried a sharp bite of salt.
It was going to be a beautiful day.
No one had spoken for some time, not even an hour earlier when Nick had wordlessly joined Gunner and Lord Hawke at the port rail just aft of the bowsprit. Like them, Nick stared silently down at the dark, rolling sea, now shot with brilliant sunlight.
Both men knew why Nick was not in his sick bay berth, even though in the waning moonlight they had seen a dark stain of blood on the white bandage wound around his head. He’d come to the port rail for the same reason they all had. They’d all come to wait for Billy. And Nick again found himself thinking about courage, and the brave little match-boy.
Was he, too, going to prove himself courageous this day, a truly brave boy? As brave as the boys in stories who always stood and fought, and never ran? Never gave in. Never surrendered.
Near enough to Nick’s own age, the match-boy was serving under Admiral Lord Nelson during the Battle of the Nile, aboard Goliath. Each gun crew had its “match-boys” and “powder monkeys.” Powder monkeys ferried gunpowder from below and match-boys lit the powder in the “touch-hole” to fire the cannons. In times of close-range exchanges, when the huge warships were yardarm-to-yardarm and trading broadsides, keeping your limbs, much less your wits, about you was essential. It fell to these young match-boys to do both.
One day, the story went, during a pitched battle at close quarters, an incident occurred which had caused Nick to ponder the question of courage in earnest. A hailstorm of cannister shot and cannonball was tearing into Goliath’s canvas, rigging, and topsides with ferocious velocity and accuracy. The English ship’s great guns were red-hot, bucking and roaring in response. There was more hot lead in the air than air itself. If you were a match-boy, you were right in the thick of it!
At the breech end of his cannon with a burning match in his right hand, the boy was waiting for the gunners to clean and reload, when a French cannonball from the opposing vessel severed his right arm. The ball took his dear limb most cleanly, leaving his entire arm hanging from the shoulder by only the slenderest thread of skin.
The boy looked from his grievously wounded arm to the match that lay, still burning, on the deck. Smoke, fire, lead, and the screams of the wounded filled the air. The boy bent down, picked up the match in his good left hand, and put it to the touch-hole. The cannon belched fire and lead. His perfect ball tore away the royal topgallant mast of the French frigate. And this mere boy, no more than twelve years of age and in shock from the loss of his own blood, had laughed at the murderous effect of his cannon, and then gone off to the surgeon to have his arm attended to.
One arm hanging by a string, he’d fired his cannon and then he’d laughed.
Nick had never forgotten that laugh. Surely that was bravery itself, the laugh of a real hero!
“Sail, ho!” now came a faint cry from the masthead high above. Although they of course could see no such sail; at their level the horizon was still a pale empty orange line in the distance. Nick saw the masthead signalman come flying down a shroud to the deck, with nothing but his hands and his calves wrapped lightly around the line to control his fall. The man then scrambled aft to find the captain, the whole maneuver taking only a matter of seconds! “Sail, ho!” echoed the runner at the foot of the mast, cupping his hands and shouting this news to the officers on the quarterdeck.
“Where away?” said the quarterdeck.
“Hull down, and dead to leeward!”
“Hull down, dead to leeward, aye!”
And a moment later, they saw a small shadowy black shape on the pale pink line where the sea met the sky. As they watched, the shape grew steadily larger as she bore down on them. Mystère advancing into battle was the vision of menace. Compared to their own warship, she was a monster. Enough to give even the bravest man, even Hawke himself, pause. But Hawke knew that this day the sure, swift sword of England was in their hands. And that Merlin was finally ready for a fair fight, a fight she had to win.
The captured Spaniard spy Velasquez, a noose around his neck and spilling his guts in order to save them, had revealed that Spain, in a treacherous secret alliance with France, planned to entrap an unwitting Nelson and his fleet, now lying at Portsmouth, by luring them down off Cape Trafalgar with a single small Spanish galleon known to be loaded to the gunwales with Incan gold.
If McIver failed to deliver Velasquez and his documents of treachery to Nelson, the unwitting sea lord and his fleet would sail on the next tide into the waiting arms of a combined French and Spanish Navy. It would be an unthinkable disaster for the English.
Finally, as the Mystère loomed ever larger on the horizon, it fell to Gunner to break the silence. “Yer feelin’ a bit better, are ye, lad?” he asked Nick. “Seein’ as yer up and about?”
“Aye,” said Nick.
“No use in askin’ if sick bay ain’t the perfect place for the wounded young shipmate today?”
“None.”
“Aye, I thought as much. Still, we won’t be pepperin’ each other from a distance today, Nick. We’ll be boardin’ her or she’ll be boardin’ us, grapnels’ll fly, and then yardarm to yardarm we’ll lie. Frenchies with sabers screamin’ like banshees, mind you. Broadside to broadside, too, lad.”
“I’ve read that’s the way it’s done,” Nick replied softly, staring out at Blood’s looming black silhouette, every inch of canvas spread. “The way Lord Nelson does it anyway. Attack. Always attack.”
“Lord Nelson ain’t got a little sister waitin’ for him in the next century,” Gunner replied, spitting over the rail. “Nor a mum and dad, neither.”
“Ain’t got his best dog chained up and starving in this one, either, has he? On that bloody pirate’s boat over there, I’ll wager,” Nick shot back. Lord Hawke coughed and put a hand on Nick’s shoulder.
“Nicholas, listen to me. If you must remain on deck, I will understand. But I want you to stick close by Captain McIver,” Lord Hawke said, a worried look clouding his brow. “He’ll be by the helm, well protected by Marines. I must insist that you remain by his side throughout the engagement. No matter what happens to Gunner or me. Is that clear?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Nick said with a smile, feeling as if he’d just won the Irish Sweepstakes. He’d been sure Lord Hawke was going to make him stay below and miss the entire engagement. “I won’t leave the captain’s side, your lordship, I swear it!”
“See that you don’t, lad,” Hawke said seriously, and handed Nick a thick envelope sealed with wax. “Please sew this immediately into your pocket. Keep it safe with the time machine, Nick. If something happens to me, I want you and Hobbes to personally deliver both the envelope and Leonardo’s machine to this person in London. We must not allow this machine of yours to fall into William Blood’s hands. Do you understand, lad?”
“Aye, sir, I do,” Nick said, and turned the envelope over in his hands. On it was a name in Lord Hawke’s fine hand. It said simply, George R. George Rex, Nick realized in an instant. The packet was addressed to the King of England.
“I think it’s time, your lordship,” Gunner said, casting an eye at the sea and the steadily advancing red-hulled seventy-four. “By the looks of that spray off his cutwater, he’s making a good ten knots! She fairly flies, don’t she!”
Hawke looked out at Billy’s position, nodded, and the three of them went aft to find the captain.
Nick kept expecting to feel afraid, but was aware only of a growing sense of excitement. He saw the bluejackets lashing huge rolls of thick canvas to the rails all along the port side. To what end? he wondered. And he saw that the main deck was curiously empty of sailors or Marines, and then he remembered Stiles saying they needed a trick or a miracle. Apparently they’d decided not to count on miracles.
“Ahoy there!” he heard the captain shout, his voice ringing with good cheer at the sight of Nicholas on deck. “Fine day, ain’t it, young McIver? Glad to see the medico’s nostrums has you up and about, lad. I am truly overjoyed!”
He was standing by the helm on the quarterdeck and next to him stood Mr. Stiles and a group of scarlet-coated Marines. Nick was most happy to see Stiles, another escapee from sick bay. The captain raised his long brass glass and swung it round to Mystère, spinning the little focus ring with the raised letters “NM.”
“And so we find Mr. Blood returns!” the captain said loudly. “He’ll find us in better health than he left us, Mr. Stiles! Strike our colors, Lieutenant!”
“Colors, sir!” Stiles replied, and they all looked aloft as the red and blue Union Jack fluttered down from the main top-mast.
“Haul the Spanish ensign to the masthead if you please, Mr. Stiles,” McIver said.
“Haul away, aye!” Stiles cried.
And they watched as the Spanish flag was hauled up on a halyard to replace the British, snapping in the breeze, to flutter at the top of the mainmast.
“What’s going on?” Nick whispered to Stiles out of the side of his mouth.
“A masquerade party, Nick,” Stiles whispered back with a smile. “A little trick the captain’s preparin’ for Bill. We ain’t showin’ him our true colors; instead we’re dressing the barky up to look like a pretty Spanish señorita. See how all three masts is raked sharply aft in the Spanish fashion? Try to lure old Bill over close without him firin’ them magical cannons of his. Here, put this on.”
He handed Nick an odd-looking little sailor’s cap, the floppy kind Nick knew the Spanish sailors wore. Nick noticed that they were all wearing them, even Captain McIver who had shed his blue officer’s coat for a simple white blouse and a floppy cap.
“What’s next?” Nick asked.
“Well, about now Billy’s masthead lookouts will be reportin’ a small Spanish galleon swimmin’ in their direction. That’s the way our aft-raked rig will appear in their spyglasses from this distance,” Stiles said. “And since Billy’s expectin’ to meet up with just such a barky today, he may well credit it.”
“What about when he gets in close?” Nick asked. “We won’t look so much like Spaniards then.”
“Aye, that’s what them rolls of canvas lashed to the port rails is for. A señorita’s costume disguise for the whole barky!” Stiles said and turned to the captain. “Let fall the portside canvas now, sir?”
“If you please, Mr. Stiles,” said McIver, and on Stiles’s order the crew cut the ropes. The thick canvas rolls unfurled all along the port side of the Merlin, from the rail down to the sea. Nick went to the rail to watch and saw that the canvas had been carefully painted with a blue and gold checkerboard pattern over blue topsides to resemble the side of a Spanish galleon. He noticed that the gun ports had all been painted to appear closed, adding to the deception.
Behind the painted canvas, the Merlin’s real gun ports were open, her cannons ready to be run out, and he saw gun crew-men gathering the canvas tightly to the hull and lashing it there to help the illusion. From a distance, Nick now saw, the Merlin would appear to be something she surely was not, a pretty blue and gold Spanish galleon!
Nick returned to the helm a few minutes later, smiling. It was a devilish good trick and it might just work! He saw that a dark-haired stranger with a full black beard had joined the officers at the helm. He was wearing a royal blue greatcoat with shiny silver buttons and a yellow sash across his chest, in the Spanish style. A blue and gold three-cornered hat perched atop his black curls. Then Nick saw that Stiles had his flint-lock pistol stuck in the middle of the man’s back.
“Allow me to present Señor Enrique Velasquez!” Stiles said to Nick, bowing deeply and smiling. “Formerly a spy for the Spanish crown and recently promoted to captain of this here barky!” So, Nick thought, they were using the Spaniard as a decoy captain!
“Signal flags on the enemy red frigate, sir!” came a shouted voice from the masthead signalman who’d returned aloft with a spyglass to the rigging above. “He signals ‘What boat? ’ ”
“What boat then, Señor Capitán?” Stiles asked Velasquez, prodding him with the pistol.
“¿El Condor, señor?” the man said, full of anger and loathing for his humiliating predicament. “Or, is it El Diablo? I forget, you know I—”
“Five seconds, señor,” Stiles said, sticking the pistol up under the man’s jaw. “Is about how long you’ve got to live.”
“Condor.” Velasquez said raspily. “¡Es El Condor, señor!”
“Aye,” McIver said, and thought about it for a moment. “Send him ‘El Condor out of Catalonia,’ ” Captain McIver shouted aloft, and saw the proper signal flags run out immediately.
“He signals ‘Welcome Condor! Rendezvous?’ ” said the lookout, and Stiles and McIver smiled broadly at each other. So far, it was working. The fact that Billy wasn’t already firing his nitro-powered long-range guns meant the illusion was holding up. At least for now.
“Where’s Gunner and the crew?” Nick whispered to Stiles. “Where are all the bluejackets and Marines?”
“They’re massed belowdecks, waitin’ for a signal,” Stiles said. “No more talkin’ now, lad, unless you speak español. Sound travels far across water.”
They could see Billy’s red topsides clearly now—he was closing fast. In his rigging, the black skull and crossbones known as Jolly Roger flew, and the upside-down English flag. He had all his gunports open and they could see the gun crews at each station. They hadn’t run them out yet. Blood might be fooled, but he wasn’t taking chances, either.
“I’ll hold fire until your signal, Captain,” Stiles whispered to McIver.
“Aye, Lieutenant,” he replied in a hushed whisper. “My signal will be ‘God save the King!’ ”
“Aye, sir!”
Nick could see Billy tacking cautiously closer, not willing to commit, but clearly drawn in by the blue and gold topsides and the aft-raked Spanish rigging. Billy had furled his stun-sails and royals now, and slowed the big seventy-four considerably. Nick could sense the presence of many enemy eyes watching them through spyglasses high in her rigging. The others must have felt the same because everyone pulled their Spanish caps down farther around their ears. Nick noticed that the sun had climbed about two hands over the horizon and that Billy was sailing right into its blinding glare. It was probably why he had not yet seen through the painted canvas draping Merlin’s hull.
A little miracle, Nick thought, and he’d take it, with God’s blessing.
“Easy, lads, easy,” McIver growled in a low whisper. You could feel the tension round the helm as Billy’s flagship hove into view. She was now less than a thousand yards distant. She was magnificent there in the full light of the rising sun, with bright pendants streaming from her three mastheads and billowing clouds of white sail above her crimson hull. Even slowed, she was still heeled well over, and throwing foaming white water to either side of her cutwater.
A glorious sight, but it felt to Nick as if every one of her seventy-four gleaming cannons would soon be aimed at his heart. It was hard to believe that such a breathtakingly beautiful vessel was bent on his personal destruction.
Below the quarterdeck, where Nick stood, he could hear the stamping and impatient murmurings and the jangling of swords of hundreds of anxious sailors and Marines, waiting for the signal to fire the rows of cannons hidden behind the canvas and eager to race up on deck and engage the enemy.
Gunner, in a brilliant strategy devised the night before, had put all the working guns on the port side and heaved the disabled ones overboard. Merlin could now only fight one side, but she’d be much quicker and more nimble than the big first-rater, a heavy seventy-four.
“¡Hola! Hola!” A shout of hello from a hand aboard the huge Mystère came drifting across the water. They were hailing the Spanish captain. Stiles again jabbed the spy Velasquez in the back with his hidden pistol and the startled Spaniard returned the shouted greeting.
“¡Hola!” Velasquez cried.
“¿Buenos días, señor! Esta El Condor?” said the Spanish voice, floating across from the French warship.
“¡Sí, aquí es El Condor!” Velasquez shouted in return, and the big red frigate tacked once more and crept in ever closer. Surely they could see the false paintwork now! But, no, she kept coming.
Nick could see the sun glinting off the endless rows of polished brass cannons on every deck of her massive hull. Like everyone else at the helm, he held his breath. Stiles, who felt some uneasiness from the jittery Spaniard standing at the business end of his pistol, started to say something, but it was too late.
Suddenly, without warning, Velasquez bolted forward for the port rail. Screaming like a man possessed, he started tearing wildly at the ropes that bound the canvas to the Merlin’s topsides.
“¡Artificio! Artificio! ” Velasquez shouted across the water to the French as he ripped and tore at the lines supporting the painted canvas disguise. “¡Decepción! A trick! A trick!”
Nick saw the largest section of canvas fall away from the rail and into the sea as Stiles raised his pistol and took aim at Velasquez, but he knew it was already too late! Stiles fired and the Spaniard crumpled at the rail, clutching his leg. A dark bloodstain spread on his breeches, but he was not mortally wounded. McIver wanted him alive for the meeting with Lord Nelson. Seeing that he was still tearing at the lines that held the canvas, Stiles raised his pistol to fire again, but the captain shook his head no. It was too late.
The Merlin now lay unmasked, and, with the telltale black-and-white “Nelson checker” pattern now bared along her side, she was revealed for what she was, a battered English man-of-war, undermanned and undergunned and spoiling for a fight!
There was a shout aboard Mystère and then an instant later, a roar of powder and flash of flame from Billy’s bow. A ball tore through the rigging over their heads, showering them with debris. Nick drew a deep breath. The sharp bite of gunpowder was becoming all too familiar. He heard another enemy cannon roar and Mystère came storming in under their lee now, rolling her big guns out as she came.
A rapid series of explosions, marked by flashes of fire and booming thunder along her massive flank, almost immediately hid the big red frigate in a cloud of roiling black smoke. Nick braced himself for the incoming barrage of iron shot but, miraculously, there was none.
The French cannons, fired in haste, had all been fired on the ship’s downward roll, and most balls pounded harmlessly into the sea. Still, the battle was now joined, for better or worse, and Nick craned his head around, fore and aft, aloft and below, starboard to port. It was as if he couldn’t possibly see enough, hear enough, feel enough. He was, he reminded himself, a hand, albeit an unpaid hand, on an English man-ofwar going into battle under the magnificent broad pendant of Horatio Nelson, the heroic victor of the Nile and St. Vincent!
“Strike the Spanish ensign, Mr. Stiles, and show her our true colors! Haul our ensign, if you please,” McIver said, his voice barely above a whisper. As the Union Jack fluttered aloft into the sun, the captain clambered up to the top of the rail, got up on his tiptoes, cupped his hands, and delivered the resounding battle cry. He’d donned the blue coat of the Royal Navy once more.
“God save the King! God save the King!” Captain McIver roared. “God save our bloody King!”
“Save the bloody King!” came the roaring answering cry, from one end of the ship to the other.
There came then a great rolling thunder of English cannon fire from the three decks beneath Nick’s feet. The entire hull shook with the enormity of it, the unmistakable fury of a rippling broadside!
Every portside cannon was now firing in perfect sequence on an upward roll and delivering a devastating first strike! Gunner had done it, Nick rejoiced! Instantly the air on deck was full of boiling black gunsmoke, and across the water, through clear pockets in the thick smoke, the devastation was plain. Already the cries of the maimed and wounded aboard Mystère floated back across the water to Nick. Much of her upper rigging hung in limp shambles. The captain turned to him with a huge grin.
“I’ve never seen the like of it, Nick! Your friend Gunner has done it all right, finest ripplin’ broadside as ever I saw!” And he turned back to the main deck and continued his battle cry, “At ’em with a will, now lads, England expects nothing less of you!”
There was no indecision now, no running behind a rock. Captain McIver was taking the fight right into the enemy’s throat. With a roar of her men and a roar of her cannon, Nick heard and felt the Merlin exploding to violent life all around him. He could scarcely imagine the look of shock and rage on Billy’s face when the painted canvas had dropped into the sea, exposing the English cannons now rolled out into the sun! Velasquez’s desperate attempt to foil the plot had been too late after all! Billy had taken the bait and now he was paying the price for it.
The massive multiple explosions of the great cannons continued their endless rolling rumble beneath Nick’s feet.
“Hear that, boy?” said McIver gleefully. “Give you joy, that’s our dear Gunner down there! Has the lads tickin’ like a fine Swiss clock! He’s timin’ our rolls perfectly, reloading on the downward, firing on the up! And, we’ve blasted old Billy a good one with that first broadside! That’ll send Bill reelin’, and no error! We’ve got a chance now, Nick, a fighting chance!”
Nick knew it was true. If Merlin was victorious this day, it would be in large part due to that first devastating broadside. Gunner had made good on his promise. Nick hoped it was an omen of things to come.
Captain Blood’s Mystère, reeling and stunned by the surprise attack, could only watch in dismay as the English ship tacked abruptly behind her to windward and then raked her stern mercilessly. Now Merlin came slashing toward the French seventy-four’s starboard flank, all of her forward cannons blazing. From where Nick stood, Mystère looked to be in total disarray. She was fighting back, to be sure, but it was a confused effort, bereft of any rhythm or symmetry. Merlin was running downwind now, and showing a great turn of speed.
On board the French warship, an unhappy officer stood on his quarterdeck.
“Mon Dieu!” said the bewildered French lieutenant, looking at the utter chaos surrounding him. “My God!”
The first officer on the massive French vessel was in fact in a state of complete confusion. Approaching battle into a blinding sun, he’d failed to recognize the trickery of Merlin’s painted side and suffered a devastating broadside in consequence. Now he heard the cry of “God save the King” float across the water and saw the enemy tack around and into him.
He was shocked to see all her hatches fly open and legions of shouting red-coated Marines surge up on her decks with a great cry of “Hurrah!” and begin forming up on the main deck. All around them, he saw, were bluejackets with cutlasses flashing in the sun, who now swarmed up and massed at the port rail breastworks, as everywhere English officers in blue coats urged them on. Sharpshooters with muskets were scampering up into the rigging and already firing at targets aboard his floundering French warship.
What was Captain Blood’s plan now, he wondered. And where, pray, was the infamous captain himself? Hiding below in his cabin? Sporting with his captured English filly?
Mystère’s stern lookout now called out a warning and the French officer went completely pale. The little English third-rater had spread all her canvas and was bearing down on him at an ungodly speed! Surely, even the wily English captain did not intend to heave to and attempt to board the much larger vessel? That would be suicide! The French crew outnumbered the English two to one! But what else could he be thinking, tacking right up inside Mystère’s lee? Where was Captain Blood? In his cabin sipping English breakfast tea with his English mistress of course. Mais certainement!
The French first officer found his Captain of Guns wandering the main deck in a daze. The man was bleeding from both ears and unable to speak. No wonder they weren’t returning fire! No one had given the order! The first officer ran off like a madman, ordering every crewman he saw to fire at will. It wasn’t textbook tactics, but it was effective. Finally, the French gun crews got off a deafening broadside, and the Mystère’s bow lookout smiled, happy to sniff a little French gunpowder in the air at last!
Order restored, the big French seventy-four now turned all her starboard heavy guns on the oncoming English vessel.
Almost instantly, aboard the Merlin, the air was full of deafening blasts and thick black smoke as the two warships now traded blows at close quarters. Murderous amounts of iron shot were now ripping into Merlin and Nick saw the devastating effect it caused all about him, especially the splintered wood that exploded inward every time a ball struck the wooden hull. For the first time Nick noticed the wet sand spread on the deck underfoot and remembered its gruesome purpose—to soak up the blood of the dead and wounded so that the decks would not become slippery with the thick red stuff.
Merlin was coming up on Billy’s stern quarter now, and Nick could only imagine how terrible the French broadside would be. He held his breath and waited as the seconds seemed to stretch into hours.
“Hard a’port, now, lads, hard a’port!” McIver screamed and lunged for the wheel himself, impatient with his helmsman. He put the wheel hard over and drove her straight for Billy’s midships! Nick could see the shock on the faces of the Frenchmen now lining Mystère’s starboard rail. Did the English captain now intend to ram them? Would he dare sail right into the rain of hot lead and iron they were firing?
“Handsomely, now, handsomely!” cried McIver, pale blue eyes raised aloft, watching for the luff of his mainsail, spinning the ship’s wheel lightly through the tips of his fingers. You could feel the effect of the mighty press of canvas aloft, feel it singing, shuddering throughout the huge wooden boat, feel it through your feet, Nick realized, you could feel it in your toes!
Nick watched the spectacle of McIver’s performance in awe; here then, and there was no other word for it, here then was a mariner. Here, then, was a warrior.
Ramming? All standing at the Merlin’s helm held their breath in anticipation of the captain’s next move. It would not be unlike the great sea warrior McIver to attempt any maneuver at all. He had no qualms about ordering a tactic with even the slimmest chance of success if he felt it would ultimately serve the cause of victory. Stiles looked nervously at the rapidly diminishing distance between the two vessels.
“Captain, sir!” he cried. “With respect, sir, the barky can’t survive a—”
“Ready about, Mr. Stiles?” McIver whispered to the loyal first lieutenant standing at his side. “On my signal, sir.” And again McIver’s hands were a blur, spinning the great wheel with his fingertips, his blue eyes focused on some point directly amidships of the French seventy-four.
“Ready, aye!” Stiles shot back, gladly relieved to learn of the impending tack, his eyes riveted on sail trimmers in the rigging, whose eyes were in turn focused on the rapidly diminishing angles of the two vessels.
It was the trimmers, standing barefooted on lines along the yardarms, who would now determine when the barky would stop and where. Everything hinged on their ability in the next few seconds. Sharpshooters high in the rigging of both vessels continued their deadly work and Nick was shocked to see a man standing just to the right of him fall to the deck without a sound, a small fountain of blood bubbling at his belly. Two Marines whisked the poor fellow below without a word. It shocked Nick to realize he’d probably never even learn the man’s fate.
Still, Merlin continued to bear down on Mystère and the anxious crews who lined the rails on both warships braced for the collision. The silence at the helm was a roar in Nick’s ears. He braced for the terrible, inevitable collision. On both ships, an unspoken question. Was the Englishman at the helm mad?
“Mr. Stiles, you may fall off five degrees, please, and back the main, on my signal, sir. Another fifty yards, sir. Steady as she goes.” The captain was whispering repeated directions softly under his breath and Nick took a deep breath, bracing himself against the mizzenmast halyards. What was the captain thinking? A devastating collision was now clearly unavoidable! Nick saw a Marine next to him squeeze his eyes shut in fright. If the Marines were afraid …
Inside a hundred yards now and closing at full speed. Nick looked aloft at the Merlin’s clouds of sail, white and full of wind and drawing against the rich blue of the sky. He saw a single white tern circling high above the top royals and marveled at the bird’s serene indifference to the bloody tragedy unfolding just below.
“Look alive, sir!” McIver whispered harshly, and Nick thought for a wild moment the captain was addressing him. “Mind your helm!” McIver had turned the helm over to his first officer so that he might concentrate on the multiple instant decisions he had to make in the next few seconds.
“Alive, aye,” Stiles said quietly, gripping the wheel, his eyes on the sails and the scant few yards that separated the two giant warships. Nick closed his own eyes then. He didn’t want to see it.
“If you please, Mr. Stiles,” he heard the captain say, “back the mainsail now, and prepare to heave to. We’ll take her up alongside now.” McIver, a tremor of excitement lifting his voice now far above a whisper, now shouted, “Easy now, easy, on my order—heave to, sir, now!”
The Merlin had been sailing at hull speed straight for the Mystère’s starboard midships and had closed to within less than fifty yards! Nick still doubted a collision was avoidable, but at the last possible instant he heard McIver cry out, “Back the main and hard to starboard! Heave to, boys, heave to! I want her dead stopped in forty, thirty, twenty—douse all sail now!”
Nick opened his eyes.
Merlin steamed ahead, then staggered as the trimmers doused her canvas, as she lost her wind, as the cry “Heave to!” echoed across the water. The relief and the peace, however, were but momentary.
Merlin’s intentions were now clear, she would board, and the enemy gun crews went to work again with a will. Great flashes of flame erupted every second and French cannons sent chain shot into the rigging and cannister shot and grape shot screaming across Merlin’s decks. The air was full of lead and death and choked with smoke and the cries of the newly wounded. Nick didn’t even realize that he was screaming too, urging the Merlin on as they drifted into Mystère, almost within spitting distance now, and crews on both sides firing and screaming and wanting at each other’s throats.
And Merlin, her helm hard over, spun beautifully at the last possible moment, her bowsprit nearly tangling in Billy’s mid-ships rigging. Having dumped her wind, momentum carried her forward and around until she was now yardarm to yardarm with the enemy vessel, perfectly positioned to board the party of Marines still forming up on her main deck!
The two warships were now ghosting toward one another, the gap of water between them a matter of feet and inches, and narrowing rapidly.
Nick heard a great cheer go up from the masses of men forming up on the main deck and saw a few redcoats leap up onto the breastworks on the Merlin’s boarding side and raise their cutlasses into the air. The Merlin’s crew surged forward with an ear-splitting yell. The scarlet coats were pressing forward, ready to go up and over the side as soon as the two vessels came close enough to rub shoulders and the grapnel hooks secured the boats together.
Only a few feet now separated the two vessels, and the crew of each for some reason abruptly ceased fire and simply stared at each other across the narrow gap of water, men lining both rails staring with a terrible mixture of fear and unbridled malice. To Nick, that silence seemed as loud somehow as the roar of cannons.
Nick felt a dull, jarring thud as the two ships met. A brilliant chill went up his spine as he looked into the face of the enemy. There were too many emotions at once for him to fathom. But they all shared a single name:
War.
Nelson the Strong, Nelson the Brave, Nelson the Lord of the Sea.
To his surprise, Nick found that he was repeating his chant rapidly to himself, over and over, somewhat breathlessly. “Board her, lads! Board her now!” Lieutenant Stiles was screaming to his officers from the rail, and Nick saw that the two warships were now bumping and touching, shoulder to shoulder. He felt the whole ship shudder under his feet each time the two big vessels collided.
Then a monstrous cry went up on both sides and the men of the Merlin surged up and over the breastworks and Nick saw the mass of shouting Frenchmen rise up in response, saw their striped shirts and caps and the flashing cutlasses and pikes in one hand, pistols in the other. They fired the pistols first, then threw the useless weapons down or at the enemy, there being no time to reload in the heat of battle. And to his horror he saw that the stripe-shirted enemy sailors were not only repelling the Englishmen trying to board Mystère, but that scores of them were leaping down onto Merlin’s deck and slashing the English marines as they waited to board. He saw a large number of the French who’d broken through now making for the quarterdeck where he and the captain stood.
The Marines guarding the helm fixed their bayonets and lowered their muskets.
“Repel boarders!” McIver screamed at his officers. “Beat ’em back, lads!” he said, pushing two Marines aside and pulling his cutlass from the scabbard. Then he was leaping down from the quarterdeck rail, wading into the very thick of the battle on the main deck. Nick watched his namesake smash into the massed French boarders, a cheer rising in his throat. Captain McIver didn’t mind repelling a few boarders himself, it seemed, while he spurred his officers on. He saw the captain leap up onto the breastworks over the bodies of two dead Frenchies, waving his cutlass, shouting at his men to press forward, Lord Hawke among their number.
But, shockingly, it seemed to Nick that the men of the Merlin had now lost their will, been beaten back, their attempt to board the enemy vessel thwarted. French sailors now mounted the breastworks seemingly at will, and, save the brave English captain fighting now almost single-handedly, leapt unchallenged to Merlin’s deck. For the first time that day, Nick felt truly afraid.
He felt the reassuring hand of Stiles on his shoulder.
“Easy lad, easy,” Stiles said. “Your friend Lord Hawke knows a thing or two about this dreadful game, I see!”
“But the French sailors, they—”
“It’s a feint, Nick,” Stiles said, bending to shout into his ear. “A ploy, lad! The captain and Lord Hawke is only luring them Frenchies aboard afore they commits our main body of boarders. See them now! The French officers think we’ve—”
A huge roar went up then from the Merlin and Nick saw the Frenchmen fall back as Lord Hawke himself leapt up to the breastwork to join McIver, followed by an enormous swelling mass of red-coated Marines! Like an angry swarm of bees, the Merlin’s men now rose up and over, slashing with pikes and cutlasses and firing their pistols point blank into the enemy before them, driving the striped shirts back to their decks or into the sea. A surging tide of Englishmen, which seemed to have the immutable force of nature behind it.
Nick climbed up onto a mizzen halyard block for a better view of the action, and his heart leapt in his chest as he saw his friend Hawke, England’s greatest swordsman, fending off three of the bloody striped shirts at once! Lord Hawke had let one get behind him but he whirled at the last moment and fired his pistol into the man, blowing him backward into the gap between the two warships and into the sea. He whirled again, disarming one man and running the other one through. Nick soon lost sight of his two friends as Hawke and McIver leapt into the snarling mass of humanity on Mystère’s deck, but he was thankful to see at least ten redcoats right behind them as the two determined Englishmen waded in, no doubt in search of the quarterdeck and Billy Blood.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!” Nick cried, waving his Spanish cap and wishing he could be at Lord Hawke and the captain’s side when they at last encountered Captain Blood. But he’d made a solemn promise to Hawke to remain at the helm and he intended to keep it, even though he no longer enjoyed the protection of the captain. He wondered how long the ring of Marines surrounding the helm would hold.
“Nick! Behind you, lad!” he heard Stiles shout. “They’ve broken through!” Nick whirled around to see.
Four of them! A small gang of French swabs had somehow broken through the ring of Marines on the quarterdeck and were coming his way. He saw the lead one raising his arm in a throwing motion and then an ugly steel dagger thudded with a loud thump into the mizzenmast barely three inches from his right eye!
Nick saw the man who’d thrown it laugh and raise his cutlass to summon the others forward. His bald head and face were horribly disfigured somehow, as if he had blood red scars around his eyes and nose, but as he got closer Nick saw that it wasn’t scars, it was a grisly tattoo of some kind. Like snakes slithering round his eyes and up his nose.
Snake Eye!
Billy’s strange companion at the Greybeard Inn!
Nick, in desperation, yanked the still-vibrating dagger out of the wood and saw the tattooed Frenchie smile a horrible grin, red rings dancing around his eyes.
“Bonjour, Monsieur McIver!” Snake Eye said to Nick, calling him by name in a thick French accent. “We meet again! I bring compliments of Captain William Blood! He said I’d find you here and he is still willing to trade your flea-bitten dog for this object in your possession. If you refuse, I have orders to bring the object itself to him along with your head!”
“I refuse,” Nick said, and the words were out of his mouth before he could take them back. Jip was worth more to him than a thousand golden orbs.
“Allons!” the tattooed one shouted, and the gang of ugly swabs began closing in on the boy.
“Hello, Snake Eye!” Stiles said to the tattooed swabbie. “Which I was wonderin’ when I’d see your ugly face again.” Stiles leapt in front of Nick and raised his cutlass.
“Kill these English dogs!” Snake Eye screamed savagely. He motioned for his mates to attack, but they hesitated. Perhaps they too had met Lieutenant Stiles before, Nick thought.
“Up on me shoulders with you, Nick!” Stiles said, standing just below where Nick still clung to the mizzen, standing on a block. “We’ll make short work of this paltry lot! Take this cutlass and watch me back, will you now lad? Hop on! We’ve seen ’em before. They ain’t much!”
Nick took the cutlass and jumped down from the mast onto Stiles’s broad shoulders, straddling his head as they waded toward the Frenchies. Stiles, slashing the air with one hand and challenging them to advance, shot one who was getting a little too close and then threw the spent pistol into the face of Snake Eye who howled in pain and fell to the deck.
Two of the others had crept up behind them and Nick whirled, slashing out with the heavy cutlass and lifting their hats for them. Stiles then spun about and in one blow knocked both their swords away, but Nick saw another dangerous turn of events just behind them.
Snake Eye, blood streaming from his broken nose, had found five more bloodthirsty comrades and they were closing in a circle around Stiles. Nick could see Snake Eye’s tattoo clearly now, two thick red serpents descending down his forehead and coiling around his eyes, one of which was an empty black hole. The snakes then encircled his bloody nose and, to his horror, Nick saw that when the man smiled, the triangular heads of the two red serpents rose up and slithered into his nostrils!
So this finally was the murderous face of the enemy, Nick thought, so this was the true face of evil and death and war. No matter what happened now, he thought, at least he’d seen the genuine article in Snake Eye.
“Down and run for it, Nick!” Stiles shouted, realizing that he could never fend off this quarrelsome bunch with the burdensome weight of Nick on his shoulders. “And get below with you, Nick! Too hot on deck for young lads who’s attracted the personal attention of Billy Blood this morning!”
“Run! Run where, sir?” Nick cried, looking around them. They were completely surrounded by grinning Frenchmen and Snake Eye was advancing one inch at a time, his one murderous eye riveted on Nick!
“Aloft!” Stiles shouted, catching sight of the dangling rat-lines just above Nick’s head. “Up the mizzenmast with you!”
Nick got to his feet on the lieutenant’s shoulders and reached upward just as Snake Eye lunged forward with a shout. But Nick couldn’t reach the hanging ratlines!
“Jump for it, lad! Now!” Stiles said and, sheathing his sword, he pushed Nick upward with both hands, feinting back as Snake Eye took a vicious cut at him with his cutlass. Nick caught the dangling rope with one hand, stuck Bill’s dagger in his teeth and shot up the ratline like a scalded cat, having now learned a thing or two about getting aloft quickly.
Up the mizzenmast he went, pausing for a moment to look down. He saw Stiles whirling and slashing with a fierceness he could scarce credit in his friend and saw the Frenchies circling him, a pack of cowardly dogs, howling for blood.
From this height, a third of the way up the aftermost mast on the deck, he could see the entire battle. Although many of the gun crews were dead or wounded, the air was roiling with thick black smoke and cannons on both vessels were still firing at point-blank range, chain shot into the rigging, and lethal cannister shot across the decks. There was now a pitched battle raging on Mystère’s main deck, and he saw Lord Hawke and McIver fighting back-to-back in the very thick of it, though he could not tell who was getting the better of it. He heard something, a grunt, just below him on the mizzenmast and looked down.
Snake Eye was racing up the mizzenmast ratlines after him, a dagger in his teeth.