14

THE FIRESHIP

‘It’s the timing of the thing, d’ye see?’ said Lieutenant Hardiman, leaning on Coke to peer along the brass barrel and over the beak-head. ‘If the Hogens see us too soon, they’ll recognise us as a fireship – else why would a two-masted sloop be charging full tilt at ’em? – and they’ll rake us so bad they might disable us before we can reach ’em. Or shift out the way and then broadside us as we pass.’ He grinned. ‘Neither good. But if the admiral shelters us close, as he strives to do –’

He left the sentence unfinished and simply pointed. Raising his head from the gun – he had been trying to remember all that Squires had done in terms of siting the gun, though truly it had been precious little – Coke looked afore. The Antelope was tight in the lee of the Prince George, scarce fifty yards behind it. The great warship, with a following wind bellying its sails, was surging forward. There were moments when a larger wave in the roistering sea dipped the bigger vessel, raising the Antelope, and allowing Coke to see clear to the Dutch fleet. They were still bunched up and struggling to come about, to turn broadside on to their hurtling enemy. Though he found distances hard to gauge at sea, he reckoned they were less than a half-mile away.

Hardiman stood straight. ‘ ’Tis nearly the moment to let us loose. And we need to slow a little, else we’ll be shoving our bowsprit up the admiral’s arse.’ He slapped Coke’s back and stepped away. ‘And then we must double our speed to close with the enemy. D’ye like Shakespeare at all?’ On Coke’s grunt – he didn’t – the officer continued, ‘We’re greyhounds in the slips, what?’ He leaned back down for a moment. ‘Remember, do not fire until you are on the up of the wave. Aim high, but not too high. With fortune our chain-shot will shred the Hogens’ rigging and sail and even snap the main mast. Disable that and it’ll slow ’em till we crash into ’em.’ He grinned. ‘ ’Tis the theory, anyhow. Good luck.’

He walked off the forecastle, bawling at his men to handle the sheets. Men, and one boy – for Dickon was aloft, laughing no doubt, his monkey on his back. Coke saw the immediate effect of the commands, the Prince George gaining again, but not too much; the Dutch beyond, appreciably nearer. It could only be a matter of minutes.

It was even less. In one minute, with the enemy perhaps a quarter-mile off, the great ship began its swing to port, the strong wind in its massive sails and four hands on the tiller turning it as easily as Coke could have guided his horse. That same wind carried Hardiman’s shouts to him, full sail deployed as the Antelope countered, bearing sharply to starboard. The lieutenant had talked of timing and he’d been right – the sloop plunged so close to the flagship’s stern Coke felt he could almost have reached over and peeled some gilt paint from its panels. Then, with full sail up, the fireship was driving straight at a Dutch ship, the largest one. He could clearly see the three gun decks, and what had to be close to forty muzzles, like hungry iron mouths now swinging towards the Antelope as the English sloop surged on. No shots came immediately, but there was no comfort in that. The Hogens could just be waiting for them to get too close to miss.

Coke knew, from lurid tales told in hammocks around him at night, that though the target of a ship coming straight at you was narrow, if you did hit it, the ball could carry the length of the vessel, smashing gun carriages, splitting beams and shattering wood into a thousand splinters that became missiles in their own right. He reached up and touched his cheek where the splinter he’d received still lay. He’d been lucky. He’d seen men ripped apart by them.

‘Please God, keep me lucky still,’ he murmured, and smiled just a little. He rarely uttered a prayer, except in battle. During those, like most men, he was a fervent believer.

Three hundred yards now. He grabbed the spike, shoved it hard down into the touch-hole, puncturing the cloth cartridge bag within. Withdrawing the metal, he scattered some powder from a cup into the touch-hole, then reached back to the glowing slow-match hanging on a hook, keeping his arm wide. Just as he did, a huge roar came and he looked up to see a giant cloud of white smoke burst from the ship ahead.

‘Fall down!’ Hardiman cried, but his yell blended with the balls’ whoosh towards him…past him, whirling blurs that came and went, barely giving him time even to duck. But not a single shot entered the Antelope’s prow; no splinters shredded him. Coke looked again and the Dutchman was still dead ahead, the smoke rising from its sides, its gunners no doubt frantically loading again.

It was close to time. He now uttered a different type of prayer, the kind he would breathe over dice in a gaming club. ‘To fortune – and my sweet Sarah,’ he murmured. Truly he had no desire to kill any man, and he had no personal quarrel with the Dutch. But he had undertaken to do this, as a means not an end, and do it he would. So now he raised the slow-match above the touch-hole. The Antelope was bucking up and down like the creature for which it was named. When it reached the bottom of one large wave, just as the next wave took it, Coke shoved the slow-match into the powder. On the gun deck of the Prince George, he’d seen the burn happen instantly, heard it fizz and go out, counted three seconds when nothing happened and then the blast arrived. Here, sparks came on the instant of his touch and were followed, perhaps one heartbeat later, by the explosion.

He could not see, and did not stay to check for success. He was already running, coughing out the smoke, making speed aft. The skeleton crew was already in the longboat, held to the Antelope’s stern by a chain. They would wait for him – but they wouldn’t wait for long.

‘By Christ, man, that was good shooting,’ cried Hardiman from the rail.

Pausing to cough and breathe, Coke chanced a look back. The smoke had largely cleared from the Dutch broadside, and he could see immediately what he’d done. Spars, rigging and canvas dangled from the shattered main mast.

‘Lively now,’ the lieutenant said, ducking at the crack of muskets being discharged, taking Coke’s arm to push him firmly towards the net that hung down to the longboat below. Dickon was at the prow of the longboat, the monkey on his shoulder, arm stretched out to his aid. Throwing himself swiftly over the rail, Coke swung down and the boy held him steady.

‘Make ready to cast off,’ called Hardiman, swinging a leg over the rail. There he paused, a sudden query on his face. ‘By –’ he managed before blood burst like a fountain from his mouth and he pitched over the side, to plunge into the sea scarce a yard from the longboat, vanishing immediately under the waves.

As Coke bent to seek him he heard the cry of the boatswain, hand on the tiller, ‘Rats!’ and he turned back in time to see a huge black shape running down the chain towards him. There were others behind and for a moment he was too stunned to do anything but gape. Another seaman beside him was quicker, reaching past him with his oar, swiping them off one by one as if in some strange fairground game. They kept coming; the man kept hitting them, while Tromp the monkey chittered furiously at them, scrambling around and around Dickon’s head.

‘Sir! Sir!’

The cry came again from the boatswain; Coke, realising he was being addressed, looked back. The man was passing something to the rower before him, who passed it on in his turn. ‘Hardiman was going to light the fuse, sir. Now you must.’

Another slow-torch was slapped into his hand. He grabbed it too swiftly, yelped as he was singed. ‘How?’ he called back.

‘There’s a hatch between the gun ports. You can see the cloth fuse dangling out.’

Using one hand to steady himself on the boat’s prow, Coke leaned forward. A piece of grey cloth hung from a square opening, damp when he touched it, reeking of oil. As the man beside him kept swiping the rats, as the monkey yelled loudly, and as the sound of another Dutch broadside came – this one striking home, he could feel the ship shudder even through the chain – Coke thrust the glowing rope’s end into the cloth. There was a fizz, then a flame, which climbed rapidly into the hatch.

‘Cast away,’ shouted the boatswain and the man who’d been fighting the rats, whose numbers had not ceased, now dropped his oar back into the boat, and reached to unhook the chain’s end.

With a loud shriek, the monkey broke from his master’s clutch. He leapt onto the chain and onto the first rat upon it, biting down, then ran past him, leaping over others to vault onto the ship.

‘No!’ Dickon yelled and then hurled himself at the net. In a moment he was up and over the railing.

‘Dickon!’ cried Coke, rising and swaying as the waves struck the longboat.

‘Cast off!’ yelled the boatswain. ‘You’ll have to leave ’im, cap’n. She’s a powder keg now.’

The crewman at the front threw off the chain. For a moment, Coke hesitated – but only a moment. Someone had called him Cap’n – and only one person called him that.

He hurled himself across the already widening gap, just grabbed the net, though his feet plunged into the water. He started to climb, ignoring the shouts to return. When he reached the rail, he glanced back. The boat was already fifty yards away, the men’s calls lost to wind and wave.

‘Dickon!’ he shouted. The smoke was roiling up thick through the deck. He’d paid no mind to what had been prepared to turn the Antelope into a burning spear. Whatever it was burned fast. He could feel the heat on his bare feet.

Smoke engulfed him. He could not cry out again, just stagger forward, coughing, seeking Dickon in the dense clouds. Then he heard a faint noise above him, glimpsed the soles of two feet on the rigging of the main mast. They were only an arm’s reach above his head and, with a leap, Coke grabbed one.

Dickon fell onto Coke, sending both of them crashing to the hot deck. There was a gap of air there, perhaps a foot high. Through their wracking coughs they managed to take a little of it in.

‘Come,’ Coke croaked, seizing the boy’s hand and starting for the stern of the ship. He had no plan, save to go where last he’d seen other Englishmen. His one hope was that perhaps they’d stood off and waited. Yet even as he crawled, palms and knees scorched by the heated wood, he knew this was a faint hope indeed.

They’d got halfway to the stern when the collision came. It was preceded by faint cries, like those of sirens luring sailors onto the rocks, penetrating what had become a roar of fire. Both he and Dickon were knocked onto their sides and rolled down to smash into the rails, which fractured but did not give. Coke looked up through the smoke, some of it dispersing enough for him to see a looming immensity above. Then all was swept away by the decking, which had been bending up as if pushed from below by some living creature, suddenly exploding, with flames shooting up, reaching high enough to seize the sails and tarred ropes which, crisping on the instant, fell upon them like flaming whips.

Fire – above, below, all around. Fire enfolding them. Clothes catching, hair dissolving, skin blistering. Coke took a breath that was near all smoke. In his fading sight, the flames assumed the shape of a beast, rising high, stooping for him with red and yellow claws. For him – and for the body next to him. For Dickon.

It was his last moment, and all that remained of a final breath. He’d curled his feet up, folded in on himself as if that would give him some protection. Now he kicked out, striking the rail hard which shattered under force and flame. Seizing Dickon’s collar, he rolled them both off the ship.

The water was freezing, glorious – until he realised he could breathe it no more than he could smoke. Yet it didn’t seem to matter. He’d used his last breath well. And as he sank, Captain Coke could only hope that Dickon, who he’d pulled from a pile of snow on a London doorstep, whose shape he saw rising above him, would live to eat more nuts.