FANTE’S FIRST DAY AS A MEMBER OF THE UNITED STATES NAVY WAS NOT an unalloyed success. At more than three hundred pounds he was too big to send aloft, and though he was enthusiastic, he did not know a becket from a bowline. As a result, it was nearly impossible to bid him to his duty, at least not using the correct names for things. Having been ashore all his life, Fante could not be made to understand starboard from larboard, no matter how loudly it was shouted into his ear, and it did not help that he was so bold as to ask why sailors couldn’t just say right or left when that was what they meant. But once the big man was started, it was just as difficult to get him to stop.
Though his grammar, and even his diction, was superior to that of many of the petty officers, Fante did not comprehend the words “avast” or “belay,” much less the concept “easy does it.” When he took up a line and was made to pull, the Mozambequean went at it with a will. When Yunis got under way, he was assigned to the fore halyard, one of a dozen hands designated to set the massive lateen foresail. Ignoring the trill of the bo’sun’s pipes and the sincere entreaties of his shipmates, Fante shouldered aside the other crewmen, took hold of the halyard, and pulled on it hand over hand. The warrior prince did this, sweating and grunting, until he had raised the twenty-five-foot-long boom from the deck to the foretop. This exhibition had single-handedly put a five-hundred-pound spar thirty feet into the air.
His shipmates were so astonished that none noticed that Fante had continued to pull even after the halyard had been made fast. Thinking that the mast had to be held aloft during the whole voyage, Fante kept such a tension on the line that he eventually bent the iron bit of the cleat up from a three-inch plank.
Yunis rode a pleasant land breeze into the offing, and by the end of the afternoon watch she was into the first puffs of a soldier’s wind, full out of the southeast, as fair as could be hoped. The ship had been generously provisioned by the tradesmen of the port, and supper was a lemony seafood stew thick with okra and chorizo. There was bread and haricot beans, and for dessert a custard made of wild apricot and banana. The meal helped staunch the grumble of the more superstitious members of the crew, for Yunis, of necessity, had gotten under way on a Friday.
Without a hundred passengers pressed belowdecks, the ship seemed spacious, even hollow, and there was room to stretch out. Fante had been issued with Nolan’s spare clothes, a straw hat, and a spare hammock and mattress. The pants required expansion, but Fante was able to use Nolan’s long nightshirt as kind of short blouse. The Mozambequean had no other possessions but did not seem to want for anything. As the coast of Africa went out of sight, Fante was one of the few who did not linger at the rail to watch. Instead, he went below muttering, “Pshhh, so what.”
Just before lights out, Fante took his new hammock to the forecastle. He was too proud to ask anyone to help him hang it, and anyway, he’d watched as the other sailors rigged theirs. By copying those coming off watch, Fante managed to get one end of his hammock up and then the other. Crouched beneath the low overhead, he realized that putting himself into the sack would not be as easy as the sailors made it look. He lowered the slings almost to the deck, figuring that if he were to fall, a short trip would be better than a long one.
As Fante worked, Billy Vanhall came down the main hatchway and unrolled his hammock. He glared at the black man. “What do you think you’re about?”
Fante did not answer.
“Hey, I’m talking to you. Don’t you go tryin’ to hang your hammock in here,” Vanhall huffed. “I ain’t berthing with no Africans!”
From out of the darkness a voice said, “What’s the problem, Stumpy? Last night you slept with two hundred.”
“They was cargo. This here is differn’t.” Vanhall glanced over and spit a chaw of tobacco. “Listen, here, Congo. You sleep on deck, not with the white folks, sabey?”
Fante continued unrolling his hammock. “I am sleeping here,” he said. “Despite the fact that I dislike white people, and you mostly, because you smell bad. You sabey?”
Across the berth deck, Guild burst into laughter. The mirth was general now, delighting Fante and enraging his antagonist.
“I ain’t sleeping with no niggers,” Vanhall spat. He skipped furiously over to midships, pulled out his Bowie knife, and started to cut down Fante’s hammock.
As Fante moved to prevent this, Vanhall’s blade flashed up. Fante blocked the knife, cocked a fist, and drove it home under Vanhall’s nose. The sailor tumbled back and a crashing grunt burst from his lips. The knife clattered across the deck.
Fante filled his hands with the front of Vanhall’s jersey and slammed him against the bulkhead. His teeth clicked, “What does that word mean . . . nigger?”
Vanhall croaked out something and tried to wriggle free, but Fante pushed him harder against the mast. “Speak, you fairy’s turd!” Fante hissed. “What does it mean?”
Nolan appeared on the ladder, shining a lantern into the compartment. “Stop this at once!” he shouted.
Faces peered silently from their hammocks. Nolan saw the knife lying on the deck, and he came quickly down the ladder. “Fante, what is going on?”
“Oh, this one is teaching me English,” Fante said.
The commotion had been communicated quickly through the ship, and Kanoa arrived from the forecastle carrying a rattan switch. “What’s a matter, you goddamn swabs?”
Fante shook Vanhall again, banging his head off a lantern hook. “What does nigger mean?” Fante rasped.
“It means a small or worthless person,” Nolan said. He put his hand on Fante’s shoulder, pulling him back. “Now put him down.”
Fante did not comply. Nolan barked, “Let him go, Fante, at once!”
Kanoa waved the end of the rattan. “Do like Mister Nolan says.”
Scowling, Fante shoved Vanhall aside. The sailor scuttled backward toward the hatch combing, wheezing and choking.
Fante said to him, “From now on, you will be my nigger.”
Curran appeared from aft, Padeen close behind, carrying a musket. Curran quickly took in the scene; Vanhall was a troublemaker, and it didn’t take a great deal of insight to know what had happened.
“Get up, Billy Vanhall,” Curran said.
The sailor came to his feet. “That cannibal attacked me. Everyone saw it.”
Hoots and catcalls cascaded from the hammocks and bystanders. Someone said, “Vanhall cut his self more than he could chaw!” There was laughter again, and Fante joined in it.
Curran looked at Vanhall. “Will there be any more trouble?”
“I ain’t sleeping here.”
“Then you may sleep on the weather deck,” Curran said icily.
Shaking with embarrassment and rage, Vanhall plucked down his hammock and rolled it under his arm.
“All right, pipe down and turn in, all of you,” Curran said. “We’ll be watch on watch until we pass Gibraltar. You’ll need all the sleep you can get.”
Nolan started to say something, but Curran touched him on the elbow. “Square this matter away, Padeen,” he said, and guided Nolan up the ladder.
When they had gone, Padeen gave Vanhall a swift kick in the ass. “Ain’t it fine, Billy Vanhall, celebrating the accident of your birth?” Padeen growled. “No one made ye king of the world, to be looking down at us all.”
“You talk tough with a rifle in your hand, you Mick bastard.”
Stephen Bannon dropped out of his hammock and landed like a panther. “Ye little mincing Dutch bugger. Should ye care to learn some manners, here’s a Mick happy to oblige.” Bannon cocked a fist, but Fante came between them.
“Let him be.” Fante gently pushed Bannon back. “I can fight for myself.”
Kanoa pointed the rattan at Vanhall. “We ain’t never had no trouble on the Easy E, and you’ll stop that gob, Billy Vanhall.” Kanoa narrowed his eyes. “Or I’ll kick your haole ass.”
FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN DAYS OF SUNNY WEATHER, AND THE MODERATE, RELIABLE trades square on their quarter; day and evening barely touching sheet or brace—delightful sailing, 120 miles often made from noon to noon, topgallants aloft and the days passing in perfect naval exactitude. Aboard Enterprise and Yunis the routines were the same: reveille and hammocks stowed, the decks sanded, holystoned, and flogged dry, watches called and the hands piped to breakfast, then divisions, the morning watch set and relieved, the young gentlemen working up their noon figurings, dinner, divisions again, the dogwatch, supper, then the music of a fiddle and sometimes dancing on the forecastle, the second dogwatch, hammocks piped down, and as the stars turned above, the first and middle watches conned the ship, and at dawn reveille came again. Time passed in a smooth, gentle rhythm, the wake lengthened, and the sea was beautiful each day; a glorious run.
Aboard Enterprise Gustavo Gubbins had been Old Chick’s assistant, and now, detailed to cook for Yunis, he ruled his own camboose and came into his own. Now sailing in ballast, Yunis carried not much more than thirty hands, and the prize crew ate like lords. Gubbins was from Charleston, a freedman who’d cooked for the Boykin family until a misunderstanding over a silver punchbowl found him relocated to New Orleans; and there he had joined the Navy during the last war. Gubbins was much admired by the crew for his orange fritters and potent chicory coffee, which he would serve out, gales only excepted, to any sailor come off watch, night or day. There was soft tommy, too, while the flour held out, and pain perdú with treacle syrup on Sundays after quarters. Gubbins could be counted on to put on a good feed even when the ship was down to salt pork. Not one to merely steep it and sling it, Gubbins insinuated shredded bits of the stuff into caldrons of red beans and simmered them together for two whole watches, along with onion, celery, and green pepper, adding more soaked beans as their predecessors dissolved into a creamy, sumptuous gravy. By this alchemy was rendered one of the ship’s favorite suppers, served out always on Monday evenings over fluffy white rice and slathered with flecks of incendiary peperoncino in vinegar. It went down well with a can of beer or a tot or two of three-water Bob. And it was to this same meal that Nolan and Curran sat down at the narrow table in the great cabin. A cast-iron skillet filled with beans and a beaker of rice were carried from the galley and served with a long white loaf (almost a real baguette) to wipe their bowls. They ate for a while, spoons clinking, and Nolan said, “The humble bean has been raised to ambrosia. This will make me abandon Stoicism and become an epicure.”
“It is a simple, honest meal,” Curran said, breaking off some bread and pushing it into his bowl. “Gubbins, that worthy man, has composed a magnum opus.”
A sad smile came to Nolan’s face. “I remember that this was young Wainwright’s favorite food.”
“He was as brave as a lion, that little boy.”
They fell to drinking alternate sips, and for a moment the ship seemed full of ghosts.
“Have you seen many fights?” Nolan asked.
“A couple,” Curran nodded. “But that was the sharpest and the bloodiest. I was knocked down twice, and each time thought I was dead.” Curran listened to the creaking of the ship and said, “You have seen your own share, Philip.”
“Some on land,” Nolan nodded. “We chased Tenskwatawa and Shawnee prophets about with horse artillery. And in the end defeated them with a scrap of paper. At sea, I have seen not more than a dozen fights, I reckon.” After a pause he continued, “When I was with Porter in the Pacific, naval warfare seemed like a game. We would fall upon a British whaler, fire a leeward gun, and they would surrender.”
“Porter was not always so lucky,” Curran said. “Nor was Essex.”
“She was not. I was no longer aboard when Essex was cornered and taken at Valparaiso. And that was a sharp fight, surely. But I had been taken off by Holyoke before then, and we were luckier. By the time the British converged on Essex we were well to the northwest. Aboard Holyoke we had an eventful cruise, but even when we fought privateers, I had only near misses. A whiff of grapeshot once took off my hat but left me unscathed. I came to think of myself as impervious.”
Curran remembered Nolan’s sangfroid during the fight with Ar R’ad. He and Pelles had seemed rooted to the deck like a pair of oaks.
Nolan said quietly, “When I was put aboard Constitution, the second time, Captain Stewart was very firm about my sentence. He kept me in the brig, larboard side, below the gun deck. I was aboard twenty-six days when we came upon HMS Cyane and Levant. On Cyane’s first broadside, the space was struck square with a 32-pound shot. I was caught up in a tornado of splinters and iron. The blast killed a thief Captain Stewart had placed in there with me, a man named Webb. I was turned upside down by the blast—quite like I had been caught in a whirlpool. I was made unconscious, and when I first came to I had no idea if I was alive or dead. The explosion had blown the jacket off my back. I pulled myself up and saw the rest of the fight through the hole punched in the side. It was a black night, but I had been in darkness so long I could easily see. Well, everything that could be seen from the larboard side. I watched as Cyane was dismasted. I saw her strike her colors, and I watched as Levant was run down and taken.
Nolan became thoughtful, and he said slowly, “Constitution took all the British prisoners aboard, and I was mixed in with them. They told me, ‘It don’t signify, Jonathan, you have snatched us up, but we have burnt your president’s house.’ ” Nolan drew a breath. “I am ashamed to say that part of me hoped it to be true. I was still bitter then.” In the silence that followed Nolan said at last, “Now, when I think of that little boy killed, Wainwright . . . ”
Curran poured out two more cans of Bob and lifted his in silent toast. Nolan picked his up, touched it to Curran’s, and said, “To our departed shipmates.” They drank and stared out at the wake, grown luminous now that the moon had set.
Curran said, “For every terrible thing I have witnessed at sea, death and blood and battle, I’ve seen a hundred miracles.”
Nolan took a sip. “A sunrise over Nuku Hiva, and the glory of the blue Indian Ocean.”
“I have seen the aurora burning over a gale in the North Atlantic and even the Saint Elmo’s fire.”
“What landsman could even imagine those things?” Nolan asked. “Lightning striking a rolling green sea, or the little silver drops that skitter across the surface before a bow wave, so perfectly like stars.”
Curran nearly said, “We are lucky,” but he knew Philip Nolan was not lucky; not lucky or fortunate or anything like it, and to say otherwise to him would be cruel indeed.
“Come in.”
“Pardon me, sir,” Nordhoff said. “Enterprise has hoisted two blue lights and a red. She wants a parley.”
Yunis came under the frigate’s lee, and Curran looked up at Pelles standing at the quarterdeck rail. His voice came over the speaking trumpet in an almost conversational tone. “Mister Curran, it will not do to have Yunis accompany Enterprise through the strait, and especially following behind, like a prize. The whole world will know she is a taken ship, and she’ll be of no more use to us than a portrait of Mister Madison.”
“Yes, sir,” Nolan called back.
“Enterprise will depart company, and you are to join the squadron in Cartagena. Keep your wits about you as you pass through the Gut, make sure to darken ship, give the Sallee a wide berth, and join us at the soonest.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Carry on, Mister Curran. Good night to you.”
IT WAS FROM THE MAINTOP THAT THEY FIRST SAW CAPE SPARTEL, THEN THE broad back of Jebel Musa, the southernmost of the twin Pillars of Hercules. North, past the cape, through a dull African haze, was the coast of Spain, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the shining Mediterranean. They’d lost sight of Enterprise in a squall two days ago but had a glimpse of her at dawn, a nick on the horizon cracking on toward the cape and turning east for the Gut.
At five bells in the afternoon watch the strait opened silver and gray on the starboard bow. The day was by turns bright and hazy, and north of the strait the swell had about it an odd, restless lift. Holding course first north by east and then north-northwest into the Gulf of Cádiz, Curran intended to remain in the Atlantic until nightfall, appearing as much as possible to be a vessel upbound for Portugal. Yunis beat north, the larboard rail buried and a fine white wake trailing behind for a mile.
With a long glass Nolan could pick out the shapes of a dozen corsairs sheltered under Cape Malabata, but none came out. During the long afternoon they sighted a square-rigged ship to the north. It turned out to be a Finnish brig, Panu Vesterinen, 500 tons, with a deck cargo of lumber and tar barrels out of Helsinki. Yunis attempted to hail, but the brig opened her course and piled on sail.
Collapsing his telescope on his chest, Curran said to Nolan, “She does not care for the cut of our jib.”
“Nor should she,” Nolan answered. “We look more wolf than lamb.”
Curran turned his eyes toward the cape again and said, “That might help us yet.”
Deception and stealth were all that Yunis could count on; there was not likely to be any help if the corsairs under Malabata decided to come out. Though the Spanish based a squadron of the line at Algeciras, Curran could not hope for its protection. Exhausted by decades of war and defeat, Spain was not much inclined to police the strait. Like Portugal, Spain paid tribute money to the Barbary potentates, using purse rather than powder to safeguard the vessels of its fleet. Though it might be possible for an extraordinarily rich and valuable ship to bribe the Spanish to convoy her, it was unthinkable for Spain to provide escort for a prize vessel—especially a prize taken by a power as far away and feckless as the United States. It would make no sense for Spain to accommodate a far-off nation, even a friendly one, when it had enemies so close at hand. Close by, Morocco was the least aggressive of the Barbary States, yet still the port of Tangiers teemed with corsairs, and any Arab plying the strait was likely to turn pirate if the occasion offered.
The sun went down without color, but off the larboard quarter a low, black band stretched across the horizon. Nolan came up from the great cabin to report that the glass was falling, a sure sign that the Levanter would falter in the next several hours. High above, the sky was streaked with wisps of silver. Perhaps a tramontana, Curran thought, and a welcome thing, though it might make for a wild night.
At dusk, Curran put the ship about, passed Trafalgar, then took Tarifa close to larboard. He would try the strait before moonrise. Running without lights, and with the Blessing, they would be past Algeciras and Gibraltar by the end of the middle watch. The final leg would be a reach along the coast of Málaga into Cartagena and a rendezvous with Enterprise.
Curran ordered a big supper for the men, the last of the goats from Sierra Leone served in a peppery curry. That, cornbread, fritters, and a full measure of Bob Smith made the mess deck a happy place. Aboard Enterprise a good feed was always served if there was the possibility of action, and those who knew Pelles suspected the same of his protégé. During their meal, Kanoa told Fante that if the corsairs tried to take the ship back, there would be a tussle. Fante’s response was to pick his teeth and say he didn’t care, Portuguese or Arab—if they came to his ship he would cut off their ears. Few disbelieved him, and none were surprised when the long roll of the drum brought the ship to quarters after supper.
The galley fires were extinguished, the guns manned, cutlasses and muskets were served out, and the lookouts doubled. The wind had clocked round to the north, gusty and growing brisk. There had been almost no twilight as the clouds lowered, and the sky and sea were soon closely matched shades of black.
Nolan stood on the quarterdeck and watched as Padeen lit the lamps in the binnacle. The rigging sang as the tramontana pushed them toward the strait at better than ten knots, the starboard rail buried in a luminous torrent of foam.
“It is as dark as a closed mouth,” Nolan said.
“The Gut,” Curran answered. Without stars or landmarks, Yunis was feeling her way by dead reckoning. On their approach Curran had taken bearings on Trafalgar and Tarifa, a running fix to approximate their position. In Curran’s head spun a mathematics of time, speed, distance, and another, ineffable component: instinct.
Padeen was at the helm, a sure hand, and Kanoa was also on deck, standing just below the quarterdeck break, watching the sails and the vast darkness alternately. Though Curran and Padeen steered according to compass, the Hawaiian’s navigational skills were those of old Moloka‘i. Kanoa could tell the ship’s distance from the European and African coasts by the smell of the water and the feel of the cross-swell passing under the bow. Kanoa, a prince royal, was son, grandson, and great-grandson of navigators: he was born upon the sea and raised from childhood for a life in it. Peering into the ink-black night, Kanoa knew where they were as surely as if he had a chart laid before him. A navigator of the Occidental school tells his way by compass, clock, and stars, a Polynesian by never forgetting whence he came and thinking constantly of where he is bound. Even in this moment, on a dark night threading the Pillars of Hercules, Kanoa could turn and point the direction home to Newport, Norfolk, or either way back around the world to Moloka‘i.
As they passed the Sierra de la Luna, the wind came from the cliffs in stuttering gusts. Curran tacked again, steadying on a course north and east. The sails luffed and rumbled but the ship steered true, and after they passed the tower at Guadalmesi, Curran fell off two points, anticipating the headlands of Carnero and Europa fifteen miles ahead in the darkness.
Curran bent into the glow of the binnacle and looked at his watch. There was plenty of night left, but also many miles to make until they were beyond Gibraltar. He walked to the quarterdeck rail and said down to Kanoa, “I would like to put a reef in, before we pass Carnero.”
“I ’spected you would, sir,” Kanoa said. The topmen were already lined up by the shrouds; at his whistle they now scrambled aloft.
White horses filled the Gut, and below the headland the Las Perlas thudded with a great and booming surf. At midnight the lights of Gib opened to the north, scattered like fire sparks beneath the hulking mass of the Rock.
“Gibraltar, Mister Nolan.”
“And I would hardly know it on such a night. I was there for two months aboard Independence just after the peace, and was never ashore.”
“You didn’t miss much,” Curran said. “It is more like an English village than a Mediterranean town.”
“Mister Cass was the surgeon aboard Independence,” Nolan remembered. “And he was constantly patching up midshipmen.”
“Were they awkward fellows?”
“They had a knack for trouble. And seemed not to be able to steer clear of their British counterparts. They tangled with them almost daily until the commodore restricted the mids to their ships.”
“Mister Fentress was one of them, was he not?” Curran asked.
“He was. As a mid he was quite umbrageous, and his personality lent itself to confrontation.”
It was not British midshipmen to be feared tonight, but rather a south wind. Eight miles to the south, along the African coast, Curran could see combers battering Cape Leona. Beyond it, connected by a low shore devoid of lights, the promontory of Almina was gathered like a fist on the edge of the dim horizon.
Attaching himself to the binnacle, Curran said to Padeen, “We’ll not have this ’norther long.”
“I’m of your opinion, sir. With these squalls a’playin’, we’ll soon have something out of the west. That’s certain.”
Padeen was superstitious enough not to mention the possibility of a wind from the south. A westerly might speed them on their way to Cartagena, but a wind from Africa—or worse, a flat calm—would do them no mercy. Anything less than a topsail breeze would leave Yunis prey to corsair galleys—heavily armed, oar-powered warships. Some of the galleys carried 32-pound smashers—handled by right seamen who worked together in packs. Even now, any number of these rapacious machines might be riding out the gale under the headlands on the African side.
Nolan watched as Curran paced the quarterdeck, lifting his glass now and again and scanning the African darkness. Thunder announced a third squall, and a curtain of rain spun at them, flattening the swell around the ship. The squall also reduced visibility to a stone’s throw, a comfort against enemies real or imagined.
At five bells, almost at once, the wind went from north to west, from off the larboard beam to dead aft. Padeen put up the helm and Curran ordered the watch to ease the sheets. Now put before the wind, Yunis settled into near-perfect silence, floating with the breeze rather than beating through it. The transformation was astounding. The smallest whisper could be heard on deck, as could the low, constant rush of water along the side. The swell no longer jostled the bow, and the ship seemed to be flying through still air instead of sailing upon the ocean.
Kanoa’s hand found Nolan’s shoulder. “We’re through, sir,” he said.
The wind was astern and Yunis’ bow pointed straight at Cartagena, a mere two hundred miles away. There was not much Nolan could do on deck, and as Kanoa seemed to relax, Nolan thought his own anxious vigilance added little to the safety of the ship. His cloak was soaked through, and after bidding Curran good morning he went dripping into the main cabin.
Nolan toweled himself off as best he could and lay in his hammock listening to the wind and the sea, and wondering, as an artilleryman might, if the priming of the guns had been soaked through. He heard Curran’s voice through the skylight telling Kanoa that they would pipe to breakfast at six bells, and then he fell asleep.
The squalls scudded away, and the dawn was pure and brilliant. Yunis opened the coast of Marbella, and the day widened under scattered clouds. Curran congratulated himself as the morning bloomed, the wind freshened, and the clouds lifted and became whiter.
“Mister Nordhoff,” Curran said just before eight bells, “you are a welcome relief.”
The boy had little comprehension of how dangerous the straits had actually been, and this blithe optimism had permitted a good night’s sleep. Vanhall relieved Padeen at the helm, and Curran gave orders for the ship to continue north by east.
The wind remained dead astern: a midshipman’s dream. Nordhoff chalked the new heading on the slate, saw to it that the bells were rung and the log heaved, and wished Mister Curran a pleasant morning and a good, if late, breakfast. Curran yawned and rubbed his eyes. The smell of coffee, fritters, and oatmeal came up from below, and he followed it down the companionway and aft into his cabin.
Yunis surged along, her lateens set wing on wing and her deck as level as a dance floor. It had been an uneventful but trying passage, and the crew remained in a state of relief even after a sail was sighted in the east. Guild had called down to the deck when the stranger was no more than a smudge on the horizon. The sea was dappled with whitecaps, and the sail difficult to make out, for in the broadening dawn it was within a hand’s breadth of the rising sun. The stranger eventually revealed herself to be square rigged and laboring hard to windward. She made heavy weather with her courses, tacking southwest and northeast, sailing much but gaining little. By the time she was two or three leagues off, her broad, round bow marked her as a merchant, and the few who watched her did so with a pinch of condescension. That the distance closed at all was because Yunis was sailing before the wind, closing rapidly with her lateens spread like wings.
Nordhoff was not much experienced as an officer of the deck, and on this bright, pleasant morning he made two small but self-multiplying mistakes. First, he took for granted that the hail from the masthead could be heard all over the ship. This wrongly presumed that both Curran, acting as captain, and Padeen, the acting master, were aware that a sail was in sight. Second, Nordhoff assumed that since the corsairs used lateen-rigged vessels, any square-rigged ship was more likely to be friend than foe.
At two bells in the forenoon watch, the stranger was seen to add sail and turn onto a larboard tack. As she closed it was plain that she was a whale ship; her sides were studded with davits, and she had a broad deckhouse aft. More discerning eyes might have noticed that though she seemed every strake and plank to be a whaler, her davits were empty and she towed no boats. The stranger came on, and would have gotten closer still had not Padeen happened on deck, and Kanoa behind him.
“Christ Jaysus,” Padeen cried, sprinting up the quarterdeck ladder. “Sodom and Gomorrah, have you been struck blind, Billy Vanhall?!” This as he ran past the baffled Nordhoff and took the tiller himself.
“What are you about?” bawled Vanhall.
Padeen put the helm down, veering away from the stranger and calling out for all hands on deck.
Vanhall scoffed, “Ain’t she flying a Nantucket pennant?”
Padeen had now taken over the tiller. “Ya blockhead, there ain’t no Yankees hunting whales in the Med!”
Nordhoff felt his guts turn. He had been the first to spot the Nantucketer’s pennant and the Stars and Stripes at her mizzen; the possibility that they might be a ruse de guerre had not occurred to him. Padeen ordered the drummer to beat to quarters. Below, in the waist, the deck filled with hands. Kanoa was mustering the topmen and arguing with Fante about where he might station himself.
Curran and Nolan were on deck in an instant, saw the whale ship to leeward, and were astounded.
“That there is McKendrie Evans, sir,” Kanoa said. “Or was.”
Nolan looked out across the narrowing band of water. “The taken whaler?”
“I got no doubt,” Kanoa said. “Look at her davits, all swingin’ empty. And she was never one to fly the flag if it was not of a Sunday.”
Curran put his glass on her. “It is sure he knows who we are.” At a distance of two miles Nolan could see that the whale ship’s decks were full of men and that she was preparing to wear ship. The whaler’s brick tryworks were gone, and in their place was a pair of massive guns. One was on a Gribeauval carriage, like the weapons aboard Ar R’ad; the other, aft, seemed to be mounted on a more traditional naval carriage.
Curran handed the glass to Nolan. “What do you think?”
Nolan saw that neither gun had the elaborate iron plate shielding seen on Ar R’ad, but both looked deadly just the same. “The forward gun is a 40-pounder. The one aft is much shorter, a carronade, but a huge one, I am afraid. Maybe a 50-pounder.”
The stranger’s yards were shifted and her spanker brailed over. As her helm was put down, the stern came around, revealing a freshly painted transom. Curran took back the glass and put it to his eye: the whaler’s stern had been recarved and freshly painted. Below a crescent moon were chiseled the Arabic words Um Qasim: Mother of Sorrows.
Nordhoff said, “I am terribly sorry, sir. I had no idea she was a ship-of-war.”
“Nor could you have, Mister Nordhoff,” answered Curran. “Please be so kind as to run into my cabin and retrieve the Ottoman ensigns. Since our friend is flying false colors we shall as well.”
“Yes, sir.” Nordhoff was away at once. Nolan glanced at Curran; they had both known commanders who would have torn the boy apart. It would serve no purpose now.
A mile and a half to starboard, Um Qasim was shivering her main yards and settling downwind. Curran considered the set of his own sails, wing on wing and a glorious sight, but not the most efficient point of sail. Padeen was at the tiller, wringing every knot from Yunis’ sleek, shallow hull. All hands were at their stations, and every eye was on Curran. The stranger settled now three thousand yards astern and parallel. There was no hope in engaging so well-armed a foe. Curran’s only choices were variations on a theme of prompt and precipitous flight. For the next few minutes there was a narrowing opportunity to try to work to windward. A bold, perhaps even foolhardy maneuver—but if successful it would surely get Yunis clear.
Curran watched as Um Qasim set royals and sheeted home smartly. Standing at the starboard rail he was barely aware of Fante approaching, and of Nolan waving him back. Curran felt suddenly and irredeemably alone. In all his years at sea this was the first time he had ever been in tactical command. For the first time in combat he would not wait for orders but give them. In the next three minutes Curran would either have to run downwind or put about and try to maneuver under the corsair’s stern.
An attempt to flee to windward would expose them dangerously to Um Qasim’s great guns: a doubtful endeavor. A xebec could sail close-hauled better than any square-rigged ship—but where would they go? West, back into the narrowing strait? If there were another corsair off Gibraltar (and there would surely be at least one), he would instantly join the chase. On the other hand, were Curran to tack to larboard, turning north, he would soon come against the coast of Málaga. He might open the distance temporarily, but to no purpose. The corsair would have him trapped against an ironbound coast, his choices reduced to capture or shipwreck.
The men were silent, and the wind, dead astern, seemed not to be stirring at all. Curran had a few more seconds to work out the probabilities in his head: relative velocities, sail areas, weight of broadsides—some factors in his favor and others decidedly against him. Even well laid, Curran’s own armament was worth little: a dozen 8-pounders and pair of long 12s in the stern. He would never be allowed close enough to use them. Um Qasim’s great guns could destroy him in an instant, but they took a full six minutes to reload. They were big, damned awkward things, as was the whale ship herself. Though a runner for her type, McKendrie Evans was not a frigate. And she appeared to be heavily laden. Curran knew his craft was faster, quicker too in stays, but frail as a flower. He could not hope to fight, nor could he blindly run. To survive, Curran had to both outsail his pursuer and remain in a position where he could not be taken under direct fire. His only choice was to remain on course downwind, trusting that a lighter, smaller ship could outfly a larger and heavier one.
Nordhoff came on deck, breathless, dragging both the Ottoman merchant ensign and the jet black al-Uqab. “Which flag should I hoist, sir?” the boy piped.
“Both,” said Curran. “Fly them both.”
The red-and-green banner went up on one halyard, and the black rectangle of the al-Uqab on the other. Curran had little hope that the enemy might be deceived, but he might be induced to doubt, just as Curran had when he saw the Stars and Stripes. It would have to be enough to answer a lie with a lie.
The moment to work to windward had passed. It would be a chase, and presently there was nothing else to do. “Steady as you go, Padeen,” Curran said.
Curran consoled himself that a stern chase was at least a long chase, and everything depended now on speed. Speed and vigilance, for Um Qasim had now to be watched for the slightest indication that she was preparing to yaw and fire her massive pivot guns.
“Mister Nolan,” Curran said, “what should you think is the range of a long 42?” Curran addressed these words to his friend but intended them to be heard by every man on deck. Nolan understood and formed his answer accordingly.
“It is a preposterous great thing to have afloat. Most unwieldy and difficult to train. For their Long Tom, I should think perhaps four thousand yards would be the far end of an effective range.” Nolan spoke confidently, but every hand aboard Yunis had seen what similar guns had done to Enterprise, a Boston-built frigate nearly three times their size.
The deck waited for Curran to answer, and from Um Qasim came the boom of a chaser. The distant report twisted itself into a howl, and a ball skipped across the water and splashed down far to leeward. It had not been a ranging shot but a signal. Curran watched as Um Qasim hauled down the American flag and replaced it with the yellow-and-red-striped ensign of an Ottoman warship.
Curran shook his head. “And that is nonsense, too. He is no more Turk than we are.” He walked to the quarterdeck rail. “Petty Officer Kanoa, we will throw the deck guns overboard, forward to aft, if you please. But retain the powder and shot.”
“Aye, sir.” Kanoa went to the bow with a dozen hands and cut away the tackles of number one. With glum expressions they shoved it to the edge of the gun port, put pry bars under the carriage, and pushed it through on the roll. The gun went over with a splash that echoed dully through the hull. So it went, port and starboard, and as Yunis was lightened she quickly gathered speed.
“Mister Nordhoff, have you a day glass?”
“I do, sir.”
“Go into the maintop. Though this pirate is pretending to be a man o’war, he has fanatics aboard instead of gunner’s mates. Firing tends to be a bit of a theatrical event. I will have you call out their preparations so we may anticipate the fall of their shots.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go aloft. Vanhall, take a rifle and go with him.”
Nordhoff slung his telescope and went directly up the ratlines. Had Curran told him to swim to the bottom of the sea the boy would have obeyed with the same alacrity. The day was bright, and the wind seemed to be building.
Curran said to Nolan, “Would you care to help fight the ship?”
“I would, very much.”
Curran smiled. “Take your pick of the gunners. We shall retain the two 12-pound guns in the great cabin. I would appreciate it if you commanded the battery. You may double or treble shot if you think best, but when the corsair comes within a thousand yards, open a steady fire. Though I doubt we will impress or deter him, we may have the luck to knock away something.”
“Am I right to think you will jibe and tack to keep us out of the line of fire?” Nolan asked.
“For as long as I can.”
“And if we should be holed or dismasted?”
Curran said quietly, “I do not intend to strike or be captured.”
“Plain enough,” Nolan said, and he held out his hand. “I’ll see you for supper, then.”
Curran shook hands. “Supper. Somewhere.”
Nolan went below and Curran called for Hackman. “Corporal, there you are. How are you fixed for grenadoes?”
“About twenty, sir.”
“Excellent. When I was down in the hold I noticed that the previous owners stored powder in demi-casks.”
“Near a dozen, sir, at least.”
“And I believe there is a barrel of pitch forward. I would like you to make some stinkpots. They will be most efficacious if we should close with the enemy.”
“Yes, sir.” There was a bit of doubt in the corporal’s voice, and he was not the only one within earshot to wonder how they would be delivered onto the enemy’s deck. Like grenadoes, the incendiaries had to be thrown by hand.
“You will have time, I believe, to make a dozen or so,” Curran said.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And I believe we may serve out the remaining rifles and tomahawks.”
“Yes, sir,” Hackman nodded his head obediently, but as he walked away he narrowed his eyes. “Tommyhawks and stinkpots, damn my guts,” he muttered to himself. “Us against all the Turks of the world.”
Kanoa came aft carrying his pahoa. “The guns is overboard, sir.”
Behind Kanoa, the deck was a long, empty sweep punctuated by slashed breeching and unhooked tackle. “Very well. Start the stores and water over the side, then the anchors. You may keep the kedge and skiff.”
“Yes, sir.”
A steady series of splashes went up on either side of the ship as casks, crates, and various stores came out of the hold and were tossed over the side. Curran pointed his glass at their pursuer, now hull up and steering in their wake. There was some activity aboard Um Qasim, a bit more scrambling about than was quite proper aboard a man o’war. Soon, studdingsail booms appeared low and aloft.
The sails were let fall, nearly doubling Um Qasim’s canvas, and the wave before her bow spread wider and dragged far astern. Curran held his breath and studied her, but Um Qasim was not gaining. Yunis, now lighter by several tons, was plain flying before the wind.
“How does she steer, Padeen?” Curran asked.
“Like a dream, sir. Light as a feather.” Padeen shot a glance back at Um Qasim, still a mile and a half behind. “We might make Cartagena yet.”
“On deck,” Nordhoff’s voice came out of the maintop. “On deck, there. She’s limbering her guns.”
Curran lifted his glass. Um Qasim had her gunwales rigged on hinges, like those of Ar R’ad. Her wide gangways, used to cut in and work on whale carcasses, had been screened with pieces of canvas, and these were now drawn back, revealing the long, tapering barrels of her twin guns pointed over the larboard beam. Curran could just make out the men heaving at the wheels of the gun carriages, swinging them about.
“On deck,” Nordhoff sang out. “They are training the forward gun.”
Now would come a test, not only of marksmanship but of seamanship. Curran knew as well as anyone that this first shot would tell a tale.
From the top: “They have fired, sir!”
A huge, gray-white cloud bloomed in front of Um Qasim. To Curran’s surprise, she had not turned to starboard as far as he had expected. Her forward gun, the long 42, had been pivoted forward and fired narrowly across the bows. As the smoke gushed, the whale ship’s entire suite of sails shivered with a concussive ripple. The water in front of Um Qasim was whipped into foam, and a shudder went through the sea, reaching Yunis a good two seconds before the report of the gun, a deep, resonating, and incomprehensibly loud thud. The booming was followed instantly by a tearing noise, a screech that increased in pitch and volume. The ball struck the water three hundred yards astern, caromed off a swell, and splashed down a hundred yards farther on, trailing a lopsided rainbow.
Ten seconds later, Um Qasim’s after gun fired over the larboard rail. The report was less sharp and the explosion less grand, but the incoming round was louder, a noise that was part whistle and part rumble. This ball slammed into the wake less than a hundred feet astern, far closer than should have been possible. The shot went to pieces as it slapped the water, and the air was filled with a sputtering buzz. A hundred tatters lashed the wake, and splinters tore into Yunis’ rigging and transom, shattering the glass in her sternlights. The round had gone to pieces, either destroyed in flight or fractured in the barrel. Big drops of saltwater pattered down, and among them shards of razor sharp black stone.
In the cabin Nolan bent to retrieve one of the pieces—the cannonball had been made of marble rather than iron. He realized that the corsair’s gunners must have double-primed the guns to extend their range. It was a small consolation that if Um Qasim’s gunners persisted in overloading, their marble shot would continue to disintegrate. With any luck they might eventually burst a gun. But even as Nolan hoped for the enemy’s misfortune, Yunis suffered one of her own.
There was a crack from the maintop, and the xebec seemed to lurch forward. On deck Curran was standing between Padeen and the starboard rail when he heard a shout from above. At his feet, a shadow fluttered across the quarterdeck; he did not have time to discern its source before the mainsheet had parted at the block. The line twanged back, whipping across the deck and casting the block up and then over the side. As the block went over the side, the huge triangular mainsail warped uncontrolled around the bowline tackles. The lower half of the lateen swept aft across the deck and crashed into the break of the quarterdeck, narrowly missing Fante.
Sixty feet above, the opposite end of the spar whipsawed around the masthead. In an instant, both Vanhall and Nordhoff were swept out of their lookout and cast into the air. Vanhall had been struck by the spar behind his ankles; the impulse threw him upward, head over heels, and then over the cap. Tumbling through the air, Vanhall thudded off the starboard rail and disappeared in a bloody splash. He was followed by the compact shape of Nordhoff, somehow put into the air upright and remaining that way as he fell through an arc fifty-seven feet. Curran clearly saw the boy’s face as he slammed into the wake—his eyes screwed shut and his teeth bared in a terrified grimace.
Fifty yards back in the wake Nordhoff surfaced, head and shoulders, followed by the inert body of Vanhall. Aboard Yunis three men sprang to the rails and shrouds to point at their position. They saw Nordhoff swim over to Vanhall and turn him onto his back. The sailor’s face was crimson with blood, but a moving arm demonstrated that he had survived. An empty basket was found on deck and heaved over the side, and a barrel went after it, each as much marker as lifebuoy.
On the quarterdeck, Curran had an instant to act. Already Yunis was steering wildly, the boom and mainsail flogging themselves to pieces. “Let go the foresail!”
Instantly, the way came off Yunis, the prow squatted down, and the wave before her sputtered out. Though she was still moving through the water, the xebec settled by the stern and began to wallow.
Curran cupped his hands around his mouth, “On deck! Be ready to clamp on the mainsheet and make it fast.” That line was now a ragged end wriggling through the air like a convulsing reptile. “We shall put about in a moment, and you must be ready to splice the sheet.”
Kanoa shoved the few uncomprehending hands out of the way, and Guild and a dozen others readied lines to make the sail fast. There would be only one chance to perform the necessary evolutions.
Behind them, Um Qasim was coming up fast. Should Nordhoff and Vanhall be picked up by the corsair, their fate would be slavery—or worse. If they were left to the mercy of the sea, their deaths might be more noble but equally torturous.
There was one more second to reconsider and continue to flee, but Curran did not hesitate: “Ready about!”
On deck, Fante and Guild moved into position to collar the out-of-control boom as it came around. Kanoa held a line and marlinspike clenched in his teeth, prepared to splice or knot the mainsheet the instant it could be plucked out of the air.
Curran took one more look into the wake. He could see Vanhall but not Nordhoff. Then he saw neither of them.
“Put up your helm, Padeen,” Curran said. “Put us about.”
Padeen shoved on the tiller, pushing it toward the starboard rail. Instantly Yunis’ bow banked around. In slightly more than her own length she came about, changing direction as nimbly as a cutter.
As the bow went through the wind, Fante and Guild threw themselves on the end of the spar, wrestling it against the quarterdeck break and pinning it there. Kanoa found the clew of the sail and the cut-through mainsheet. The decks bucked and pitched as the ship went round, first beam-on to the swell and then through it. Spray flew over the rail, the canvas boomed, and the spars banged against the masts. Even as the ship seemed to beat herself to death around him, Kanoa tied a pair of water knots into the mainsheet. Knotting, if not splicing, made the sheet whole again, and Guild quickly made the bitter end fast to a cleat.
The other sails were tended round without a word of command. In forty-five seconds Yunis was again under control, had reversed course, and was heading back toward the men in the water.
“Who has the swimmers?” Curran shouted.
“Two points off the starboard bow,” shouted one of the lookouts. “A cable’s length, no more.”
Leaning through the shattered sternlights Nolan caught a glimpse of them going up on a swell: Nordhoff’s small, white face and the bloody lolling head of Vanhall. Beyond them, Um Qasim had reset all her studdingsails and looked very formidable indeed—a white tower. The ships were now closing on each other with a combined speed of more than twenty knots. Kanoa and Guild were rapidly stripping log line from its reel and lashing together a pair of boat hooks.
The men in the water were now fifty yards away. Um Qasim, their destroyer, the doom of them all, was a thousand yards distant and closing in great bounds. Why doesn’t he fire? Nolan wondered. Why doesn’t he heave to and give us a broadside?
“Ready about!” Curran heard himself say. The words had come from him automatically.
“Call it, your honor,” Padeen whispered.
“Wait. Wait.” And then in a stern voice Curran called out: “Helm’s alee!”
Yunis answered instantly, her bow swinging round like a cutting horse. The xebec turned, and Nordhoff and Vanhall passed within six feet of the starboard side. The boy was holding the sailor up by the collar of his jersey, kicking with all his might.
From the deck, Kanoa thrust a boat hook at them. Nordhoff’s hand went for the shaft, missing it by a desperate inch. Vanhall did not move, but only slumped back into the water, his blood spreading in an oily sheen around them both.
“Let go the sheets,” Curran called. With a great thunder of luffing sails Yunis again went dead in the water. This would be the final, desperate measure to get the men aboard. Another line was thrown, but neither could catch it.
“Swim! Swim!” came a dozen shouts.
It was now apparent that Vanhall was either unconscious or paralyzed. “Swim, boy! God damn you, swim!” But Nordhoff would not leave Vanhall.
Nordhoff pedaled his legs but kept both hands on Vanhall’s collar, holding him up. Desperately pumping his legs the midshipman could only make slow progress toward his rescuers. From the masthead came the croaking voice of one of the Marines, “On deck, she is striking her stun’sails, sir.”
Curran looked back. Um Qasim was within eight hundred yards and pressing on with a bow wave spreading wide.
At that moment, Nolan put a line around his waist, cinched it tight, and dove over the rail. He went under, turned like a gannet, and banked toward the surface in a stream of bubbles. In three powerful strokes he was over to Nordhoff and Vanhall and bundled them both into his arms.
“Haul away!” Nolan shouted up at the deck. “Haul away! I have them.”
Kanoa and Guild led a dozen hands in heaving on the line.
The Marine called down from the foremast, “On deck! They are training weapons.”
Nolan, Nordhoff, and Vanhall were still a dozen yards from the ship. Curran could not wait. “Sheet home. Sheet home! Padeen get under way, steer fair and by.”
The sails were cleated and Yunis began to gather speed. On deck, a dozen hands joined Kanoa and Guild pulling in the line. Nolan lifted his face from the water and his teeth clapped down on a mouthful of air.
Rolling over on his back, Nolan held tightly to Vanhall and Nordhoff. Spray parted around them as Yunis gathered way and Padeen steered downwind, doing his best to pendulum the three men toward the side of the ship.
The water about them seemed to twitch, and the air in the sails cracked like a whip. “She has fired,” the lookout cried. There was a deep boom and the howl of a shot screaming overhead. A column of water went up off the starboard bow. The water returned to the sea with a protracted snarl.
“Heave!” Guild yelled. “Heave!”
The combined weight of the men in the water was too much; the gathering speed of the ship worked them closer to the side, but it was impossible for even a dozen men to lift them from the water and over the gunwale.
“Make the line fast,” Kanoa shouted. “Fast with a round turn. Now, out with some nippers! Get a purchase on this. Turn to!”
Someone found a set of tackles and Guild knotted them to the line. This process took half a minute, and in that time Nolan was again towed under. The three faces disappeared for an agonizing span of seconds; the line went taut as a harp string and then suddenly slack.
“Goddamn me!” Kanoa spat. The line angled sharply against the counter and then veered back out. There was a kick and splash on the near side of a swell, and Nolan’s head popped out, his face streaming. His right fist clung to the rope, and his left hand pulled Nordhoff along by the collar. Vanhall was nowhere to be seen.
Nordhoff coughed out, “He’s gone under!” But there was nothing to be done. Curran saw the sailor pass by the mizzen chains three feet underwater. Vanhall’s striped jersey showed red and black through the blood-streaked water. Waving his arm, Vanhall went over a swell and then disappeared from sight.
The blocks were now fixed to the line, and Guild clamped onto it. “Lay hold!” he grunted, “Heave! Heave!”
Another pair of lines was sent down; a bowline and a figure eight. Nolan shoved his foot into the bowline, stepped up on it, and put a turn under the shoulders of the exhausted boy. Grabbing him by the waist of his pants, Nolan shoved Nordhoff up into Fante’s outstretched hands.
Kanoa leaned out over the main chains and his hands clamped onto the midshipman’s shoulders. Kanoa got him up as far as his chest and then the hands of a dozen shipmates closed over Nordhoff’s shirt, shoulders, arms, and hair. As they struggled, Fante reached down and with one powerful heave brought Nolan onto the deck.
“Let her run, Padeen!” Curran said, and the ship began to make way.
Dripping, exhausted, Nolan slapped Fante on his back.
Um Qasim was within six hundred yards, almost rifle shot, and she was coming up fast. The corsair’s after carronade went off like a thunderclap. The corsair trembled, and the space between the ships was rent by a white nimbus shot through with fire. Curran could see the ball flying at them, a deadly blur, and he turned and yelled, “Lay down!”
The crew fell to the deck, but Curran remained on his feet, too fascinated to move. He watched the ball come on, first a speck surrounded by a smudged rainbow, and then a screaming, wobbling blur. He felt its breath as the round went howling over the starboard side. The ball struck the water just off the bow, atomizing the sea before the prow and then sending a fountain skyward. Running into the empty space, Yunis pitched violently forward and down. A tower of green water went up as high as the foremast and then poured down onto the forecastle like a torrent. The foredeck was filled ankle deep with water and the flood ran aft, tangling together the cut gun tackles and stripping clean the shot racks. Yunis shuddered and found her stride, but as she came from under the flood she seemed tremulous under her helm.
Nolan trotted down the companionway and sloshed aft to his guns. Through the sternlights Um Qasim loomed like a cloudbank. Nolan shouted to the gun crews “Together now, hit them on the rise!”
Nolan worked a pry bar under the carriage of the larboard chaser. “Three inches,” he said, wiping the seawater from his eyes. “And the quinion up too, an inch. Easy now, another, heave! That’s it. That’s it.”
Through the skylight, Curran heard Nolan’s command: “Smartly now, lads. As they bear, on the roll . . . fire!” The starboard chaser went off with a deck-rattling bang. A jet of smoke stabbed astern and then returned, swirling over the quarterdeck.
Curran went to the rail to observe the fall of the shot. Nolan’s round went home, hitting the corsair square. The ball tore straight through Um Qasim’s jibs and cracked off her foremast in a shower of splinters.
“Stand clear, now,” Nolan said. The portside chaser was trained and aimed precisely, and at the top of the swell he thumbed a match into the touchhole. The gun went off, filling the cabin with a stupefying crash and bucking the cannon straight back against its breeching. The smoke went out and came back, and Nolan saw a pair of blurs streak toward Um Qasim. He had aimed for the bow, where the upper cheek met the fore end, intending to sweep the deck. His shot, loaded double, struck exactly where he had aimed.
With a terrific crash the cannonballs tore through Um Qasim’s bow, ripping off an entire plank and plowing straight through the forward carriage. They did further mischief aft, striking either the helmsman or the ship’s wheel itself, with the immediate result that Um Qasim bucked suddenly and fell off the wind. Her spanker banged over in an uncontrolled jibe, and the ship yawed off to starboard.
A cheer went up along the decks of Yunis. They had struck the enemy, but Curran knew that to survive they had to stay lucky; the enemy had only to get lucky once.
Corporal Hackman came on deck cradling his freshly made incendiaries. “Stinkpots, sir.”
“Hand them out, Corporal, if you would be so kind. And in the meantime detail your riflemen into each of the tops—reliable fellows with Kentucks’. They may fire at will.”
It is an axiom of naval warfare that if the enemy is in range, so are you. As soon as Yunis’ Marines began to snipe at the enemy’s deck, they were answered shot for shot. The corsairs may not have had weapons as accurate as Kentucky rifles, but they made up for any deficiency with enthusiasm and diligence. Their tops, also being taller, gave the corsair’s miquelet men a decided advantage. Bullets snapped through the sails and soon cracked through the transom.
“All hands not returning fire may repair below,” Curran said. “Those below, load your weapons, fill powder horns, and distribute grenadoes and stinkpots to each mess. Corporal Hackman, see to it that every three men share a match.”
The order to go below was obeyed reluctantly. Nolan’s head again popped out of the skylight; his battle grin gave him the appearance of a fiendish jack-in-the-box. “I am reloading with chain,” he said. “Have you any objection?”
“I do not,” Curran answered, checking his watch. “And I think this issue will soon come to a head. Can you fire and have another salvo ready in five minutes?”
“I can. Shall I reload with ball?”
“Grape or canister might answer—if you can find them.”
“We have musket balls in plenty. I’ll make canister out of a tin lantern.”
“The faster the better.” The decks were clear and Curran stood close to Padeen. Behind them, Um Qasim had sorted herself out and was again running before the wind. Without his glass Curran could see the loaders swarming over her great guns, sponging and swabbing and carrying up the huge rounds on four-handled stretchers.
“Keep us off her bow, Padeen. She cannot fire directly ahead.”
“And what if she yaws, sir?”
Curran held his watch in his hand. “I expect she will, in two minutes. Until then, Padeen, you may tease her.”
The deck shivered beneath them as Nolan fired the chasers, first larboard then starboard. A whirling mass of chain ripped through Um Qasim’s forecastle, shredding her spritsail and parting her dolphin striker. Nolan’s second round, aimed higher, went hissing through the main courses, ripping holes that the wind immediately made larger. Curran watched as the corsair’s starboard staysails were let go and brailed up.
Both guns were trained at them, and Curran watched as the loaders jumped clear. He could hear the shouted syllable “Nar!” float over the sea as Um Qasim fired her aftermost 50-pounder.
The concussion snapped Yunis’ mizzen sail, and Curran could feel the blast on his face. The ball went overhead as high as the gunwale, and as it passed, the lateen mainsail was shaken from cap to foot. The deadly missile went by the main shrouds, missing them by a whisper. Fifty yards ahead, an astounding column of water pitched up.
Curran said to Padeen, “Now jink her, Padeen! Port your helm.”
Padeen yanked the tiller, and Yunis surged to leeward just as the corsair fired. Again the thunder and smoke, but this time there was an ear-splitting crackle like the noise of a close-burning fuse. A cloud of grapeshot skittered through the air, a deadly blur that lashed the water fifty feet back into the wake. The splash thrown up was not as tall but was twice as wide as the one made by the round shot. Two hundred fist-sized balls had been fired at them—a deadly puff that would have killed every living thing aboard.
The corsair had fired both her guns, and now her crew scrambled to reload. “All hands!” Curran shouted. “All hands! Starbolines to make sail, larbolines to arms!” Armed with muskets and grenadoes, the crew scrambled out of the holds. Curran observed a few expressions of awe as sailors looked up —Um Qasim was towering over the stern no more than a cable’s length behind them.
“About ship!” Curran barked. “Clap on the braces!”
Comprehension spread across the decks, and the looks of fear were replaced with something like malignant joy. Um Qasim had shot her load, both guns had fired, and it would be a full six minutes until she could load them: an eternity.
It was Yunis’ turn to dish. “Ready about!” Curran yelled. “Hard alee!”
Padeen shoved the tiller over, the yards went across onto a full tack, and the xebec nimbly reversed course. Yunis had turned on her pursuer, the fox lunging at the hound.
“Pass her, port to port. As close as you dare,” Curran said.
Not twenty yards before the enemy’s bow, Padeen put the helm over, sheering across the whaler’s cutwater, then swinging into her long shadow.
As Yunis passed to larboard, her sails ate the larger ship’s wind. The corsair’s torn canvas started to luff, and Yunis’, brisk and taut, scratched past what was left of the whale ship’s jib boom. As soon as a view opened to the deck, Curran pulled both of his pistols from the bandoleer across his chest. “On deck, by messes, fire!”
The starboard Marines were the first to pull their triggers, and did so just as the corsairs revealed themselves over the rails. Um Qasim’s bulwarks were ripped by a dozen musketballs, and splinters chirruped away to windward. The corsairs presented themselves to return fire, but Corporal Hackman’s cunning had reserved the fire of nearly all of the larboard watch. A second volley swept through the corsair’s miquelet men, tearing them to pieces.
Musket smoke rolled back and forth, and as Yunis passed under Um Qasim’s towering port side, Curran could see the corsair’s two gigantic guns, empty and pointed blankly overhead: Yunis was now too close to hit.
A handful of bearded, turbaned riflemen were scrambling on top of the guns to fire down at the xebec. A final volley from the Kentucks’ in the maintop swept them down.
“Now grenadoes!” Curran shouted.
Five went over, trailing wisps of smoke. One skipped off the rail and fell into the sea, but four of them clanked onto the corsair’s deck and went off with orange-black bangs. Under Yunis’ mainmast, Hackman lit the fuse of the first stinkpot and Fante heaved it with two hands up and over the rail of the whale ship. It bounced through the fore shrouds and spilled onto the deck, instantly bursting into smoke and fire.
The ships were passing five or six feet apart, and the swell splashed up between them. From the tops, Arab marksmen fired down onto the deck, and Hackman and Guild fell. The corsair put her helm over and bashed into the side of Yunis. The main chains briefly locked together, and the xebec shook and slowed. A pair of grapnels sailed over, and Curran looked up to see a large party preparing to jump down onto the deck. Two grenadoes were tossed into the mass of corsairs, flattening them and sending the bloody, burnt survivors reeling aft.
Running onto the midship deck, Curran slashed at the grapnel lines with his cutlass. “Fend off aft! Fend us away!”
A dozen corsairs jumped from the whale ship’s gangway and made it to the edge of the forward hatch. They had landed in a close knot, and Fante and Kanoa waded into them, Kanoa swinging his pahoa and Fante applying a six-foot iron pry bar. The Marines, freshly reloaded, turned and fired across the deck—the boarders fell in the smoke.
A bullet snapped past Curran’s head and he flinched. “Get us away, Padeen. They’ve had their chance!”
Padeen put the helm over and Yunis went away to windward. Crouching, Curran moved aft on his own deck as the whale ship slid past. Looking up, he could see a tall, thin man with a black turban and a hennaed red beard. There was a musket in his hand and Curran watched him lift it and aim. Curran ducked as a bullet struck the rail next to him.
In that instant there was a staggering explosion. The whale ship lurched up, and a roiling mass of smoke burst from the forward gun. Shot through with sparks, another whooshing gust swept along her decks—a cartridge box had ignited. Fueled by a series of gunpowder explosions, the corsair began to burn, and a swath of fire seethed up into the rigging.
As Yunis turned away, Nolan aimed a chaser, pointed as high as he could fire, double-shotted with grape. A deadly swarm tore into the transom of the corsair, obliterating her stern windows and shattering her taffrail. Aimed slightly higher, Nolan’s second gun pumped a cloud of grapeshot along the corsair’s deck.
Padeen looked to see the red-bearded man fall and another hissing tongue of flame burst up from Um Qasim’s deck. They were clear. Padeen felt the tiller strengthen under his hand as the sails filled and Yunis gathered speed. Smoke now curled away to leeward as the fire aboard the corsair became general. The Marines in the tops fired a few parting shots, plucking off those of the corsairs who showed themselves outside of the smoke.
The xebec was galloping again, the wind nearly on her beam. The deck was slanting and water rushed along her sides; there would be no catching her now.
Nolan climbed up out of the skylight, his face smeared with soot and powder. His eyes were bright. “We did it, sir!” Padeen shouted. “We have whooped them sons of bitches!”
Nolan stood next to Padeen, delighting in the sight of their burning antagonist.
Yunis heeled as she worked to windward, her wake streamed out straight behind her. Um Qasim was blazing three hundred yards astern, and they had the heels of her. As the distance opened, Nolan could see more of the corsair, her guns turned uselessly to larboard, her rigging and sails now aflame, and her yards cockeyed and smoldering. Those of her crew who were not wounded were fighting fires forward and amidships.
“Parse that, ya boogers,” Padeen shouted. “Come back if ya want more!”
Kanoa staggered onto the quarterdeck, panting and spattered with blood. Nolan saw at once that his face was streaked with tears.
“Come forward, sir. Please come at once,” Kanoa cried out. “Mister Curran has been shot.”