During their last few busy days in Newport, Kite half-hoped and half-feared to meet Sarah Tyrell again. In the event, as Nantucket Island faded astern and resumed the blue insubstantiality that Jones had first sighted weeks earlier, Kite was glad that nothing further had passed between them. Arthur Tyrell had sent his clerk down with the papers he required Kite to take with him and later the same day, shortly before sailing, Kite had waited upon Tyrell in his counting house to enjoy a glass of wine and a fine view over the harbour. He had cleared Spitfire outwards at the Custom House and was enjoying the last moments of relaxation before he took the schooner to sea. It was Christmas Eve and a fine winter’s morning. Tyrell had been in a cordial mood, solicitous that Kite would not remain in Newport over the festive season, but sympathetic to his anxiety to sail, so that Puella could be brought to bed in England, with the passage behind them.
‘My wife will be disappointed,’ he remarked as they took their leave, an uncomfortably enigmatic enough remark from Sarah’s husband to make Kite feel a shred of guilt at the warmth Sarah had kindled in him. But it was the closest he got to Sarah, and to Kite’s relief Puella gave no further signs of jealousy. In his self-conceit, Kite did not realise the extent to which Puella was a prey to fear. Nearing the time of her confinement, alone and bereft of the support of Dorothea that she had enjoyed during the birth of Charlie, Puella was as much worried over the approaching ordeal of a long ocean passage, as the uncertainty of her future and the arrival of her quickening child.
Kite was blissfully unaware of her acute anxiety. The final arrangements about the cargo, its stowage and the necessity of attending the Custom House filled his time and thoughts. As they slipped seaward in the last of the daylight of Christmas Eve, 1759, the land was already in shadow and Kite could not see the solitary horsewoman who, from the eminence of Castle Hill, watched the Spitfire turn east south east, heading south of the skein of islands beyond Buzzard’s Bay.
They took their navigational departure the following day from the eastern extremity of Nantucket Island. Ahead of the Spitfire lay the broad expanse of the Atlantic. Taking a final glance at the low and misty shore, Kite could persuade himself that no such place as Newport existed, and no such person as Sarah Tyrell had ever smiled at him.
Only the flaking scab on his cheek reminded him otherwise.
The Spitfire ran east under her modified rig at a fine clip. It was cold, bitterly cold at times, and the west north westerly wind blew for nine days at gale force, but the schooner and her company were undeterred. The North Atlantic, even in her wintry mood, seemed disposed to treat them kindly. Those few of the hands who regretted leaving the warm climes of the tropics were seduced by Whisstock’s glowing accounts of London and Liverpool where, he affirmed, a man could live like a prince once he had made his fortune. So seductively did Whisstock descant upon the delights of these cities, so easily did he brush aside the actual mechanics of securing a fortune, that even Jones was persuaded there might be something in Whisstock’s claims. Consequently one evening, as he handed over the watch to Kite, he raised the matter with him.
Kite laughed. ‘He is deceived, Mr Jones. Liverpool is a foul place, though London might be well enough, I wouldn’t know, I have never been there. But Liverpool…’ Kite pulled a face. ‘True, there are some elegant dwellings there,’ Kite went on, relying on Makepeace’s assertions rather than any experience of his own, ‘but without any means, and I don’t suppose Whisstock has any means, he will be reduced to seeking lodgings in low alehouses where the only things he can rely upon seeking him out are the drabs and the pick-pockets.’
‘It’s the old choice between the pox, penury and an outward ship, then?’ Jones queried with a grin.
Kite nodded. ‘I fear so, Mr Jones, but he may prove useful in a counting house and so avoid the first and last. As for the pox, that depends upon his continence.’
‘I supposed as much,’ Jones said, embarrassed at his temporary gullibility.
They laughed and Jones, having passed over the watch and relieved himself of his ignorance, went below.
As the days passed, Kite felt an increasing confidence, for the clear cold weather enabled him to verify their latitude and it held until they approached the north coast of Ireland and ran along the parallel of Malin Head, a month out of Newport, Rhode Island. He continually made plans, revised, honed and discarded them in favour of new ones; so high were his spirits that Susan Hebblewhite’s murder was only a faint shadow on his horizon.
The plain truth was that the land ahead was as insubstantial as the fading blue of Nantucket astern, and the joy of sailing in this crisp, fine weather, for all the icy blow that hurled itself at them from the north west, was unalloyed. Time enough, he thought, to worry. Makepeace was right. If not rich, Kite possessed sufficient funds to stand trial with a good defence if matters reached that extremity.
Puella grew in girth and was warm in her bearskin. The brief social encounter with Sarah had persuaded her she could hold her own among white society and Kite was too ignorant himself to disabuse her. As a country apothecary’s son he was incapable of making the distinction between the easy manner of the wealthy, meritocratic colonial gentility, and the rigid hierarchies of his native land. Thanks to the influence of Mulgrave and his experiences in Antigua, Kite had matured into a genteel and courteous young man. His own manner was natural and uncontrived, but insofar as England was concerned, he lacked the sophistication or pretension to judge how England would regard himself, let alone his beautiful but black mistress. While his high mood and higher hopes were a measure of his new-found confidence, they were also a measure of his youth.
They sighted Malin Head on the horizon to the southward, and the island of Inistrahull a point or two on the starboard bow shortly before nightfall thirty three days out from Newport. Kite bore up and hove-to for the night, unwilling to run down on so dangerous a coast in the dark. During the hours of darkness, the wind dropped, and Kite came on deck at dawn to find them wallowing in a dense fog. What wind their was, was light and fluky, while the damp struck into their bones with far greater chill than the brisk cold wind of their passage. All about them lay a wall of damp and impenetrable vapour.
Kite swore, suddenly feeling the lonely burden of command after the jolly, light-hearted days of carefree running. He was again made abruptly and humiliatingly aware of his ignorance and lack of sea-experience as the clammy fog insidiously depressed him. Lost in his thoughts he wanted to return to his cabin, to bury himself in the bearskin alongside Puella; he realised the temptation to give up and abandon matters was a strong and seductive compulsion to a man eager to conceal his inadequacy. Was this why men like Makepeace got drunk or drowned themselves in sensuality? Now vulnerable, bereft of self-confidence again, Kite felt the looming spectre of the gallows rise. He could put the future out of his mind no longer. His imagination conjured the loathsome and fearful image within the wraiths of fog, feeling again a sense of personal doom.
Fate was mocking him, chastising him for his weeks of satisfaction as Spitfire raced across the Western Ocean. He damned himself for his folly, for being seduced by Sarah Tyrell and agreeing to undertake her husband’s commission; damned himself for listening to Makepeace and his plans for wealth and partnership. The fog was an omen, a certain portent that matters would not, could not, go well for him.
Kite swore again, the foul oath bursting forth with all the conviction his ardent and frustrated nature could muster. He regarded the deck ahead of him with distaste. It was now full daylight and he could see the planking sodden with condensation; every rope dripped and moisture ran in rivulets from the slatting, idle sails; even the helmsman could do little with the tiller as the rudder kicked back in the low swell. Kite fretted as the hours passed, frustrated and worried, the anxiety eating away at the pit of his stomach. He wondered whether waiting until the damned fog lifted was all he could do.
On this occasion Jones was of no use to him, for cold and fog were as unfamiliar to Jones as to Kite, and although Kite had known both since his boyhood on the fells of Cumbria, he had then borne no responsibility and he knew the country so well that he had never been lost.
Now Cumbria and its beloved fells lay not far away, beyond the narrow strait of the North Channel, through which he yet had to take the Spitfire. There was much yet to accomplish and whatever happened to him, he must at least see his father and sister again. The decision brought him up with a round turn. This was no time for self-pity and he was suddenly contemptuous of the temptation to give in. If men like Makepeace could master situations like this, so could Kite. Then he suddenly recalled something Makepeace had said to him. It was almost his last remark, a friendly afterthought as he contemplated Kite’s homeward passage.
‘Don’t forget, Kite, that if you are in home waters, you have to consider the run and the set of the tide. If you are lost in fog and in soundings, you should anchor.’
He had forgotten about the tides! God what a fool! At least he had had the forethought to put about the night before. He called forward to have a man set in the chains and to begin swinging the lead. As he waited for his order to be carried out and the leadsman’s monotonous chant to begin, he resolved that, once ashore he would leave Liverpool for Cumbria and proceed directly to his father’s house. He would hire a conveyance and make short work of the journey. God-willing he would find his father and Helen in good health. They would take Puella in, care for her and tend her during her labour. He could then return to Liverpool, wait upon Makepeace and try his luck or take the consequences. The resolution cleared his mind. It seemed easy enough and honest enough; he had not, after all, killed Susan. A doubt crossed his mind that his father might be dead and Helen married, but then the leadsman began to call out the soundings from the starboard chains.
‘By the mark thirteen!’
Kite’s heart hammered; it was not a great depth of water after the bottomless Atlantic. ‘call all hands,’ he bellowed, ‘prepare to anchor!’
There followed half an hour of confusion as the cable was roused out and dragged forward to be bent on the starboard bower. This in turn had been released from its secure stowage, catted and prepared for dropping. By this time the leadsman was calling twenty fathoms and then twenty-five. Kite went forward and stared down into the water, telling the leadsman to leave the weight on the seabed for a moment, in order that he could estimate the speed and direction of their drift.
The line lay stubbornly against the ship’s side. For a few moments Kite was deceived, then he had the lead cast again from the opposite side. The line drew rapidly away from the ship’s side, out on the larboard beam. Kite hurried aft and peered into the binnacle.
‘Is she steering?’ he asked the helmsman.
‘No, Cap’n,’ the man responded, as if he had been asked if the Spitfire had been flying.
‘Damnation!’ The schooner’s head lay to the north, but according to the evidence of the leadline they were drifting east. Kite was mystified, then the leadsman’s voice sang out shrilly: ‘By the deep four!’
‘Dear Christ!’
‘Let go, sir?’ Jones called, his voice high-pitched with fear.
‘By the mark, seven!’
The temptation to relax was great. Was the depth increasing or not?
‘By the mark, five!’
Then they all heard the echo, ’by the mark, five!’
‘Jeeesus Chris’!’
‘Let go!’ Kite shrieked, hearing the splash of the anchor, then the diminuendo of his fearful order bouncing back at them. The hairs on the nape of Kite’s neck crawled as he felt the deck tremble slightly as the cable ran out through the hawse-pipe. They must be close… So close.
‘Nip it! Nip it!’ Kite bellowed when he thought enough had run out to hold the Spitfire. Somewhere the unseen cliffs mocked him: ’Nip it! Nip it!’
Kite hurried forward and peered over the side. The cable ran round the bow, rubbing against the stem and he could see the tension in it as the anchor bit, then he felt the schooner’s head snub round as the anchor brought up and spun the Spitfire head to tide. Now the cable ran down into the water at an angle, disappearing into the depths; the Spitfire was static, and not adrift on the bosom of the sea.
Kite felt the deep undulation of the incoming ocean swell and saw the velocity of the tide as it sluiced past them as if a mill-race. He felt his heartbeat subside and he swallowed, his mouth dry. Straightening up, he felt an immense relief that they were, for the moment at least, out of immediate danger.
As he composed himself, he sensed a change in the weather. The deck seemed to be less damp, the dankness of the fog diminishing, the vapour increasingly nacreous. Then, patchily at first, the limits of visibility began to extend as the fog began to thin. It took a moment to perceive anything, then slowly, with each man exclaiming at the sight, the echoes of their surprise bouncing back, the cliff reared upwards alongside them. It was huge and close, so close that the schooner was rocking to the backwash of the breaking swell as it met the vertical rock face.
‘Good God!’ whispered Kite to himself. He stared up at the fissured mass. The strata lay at a slight angle to the vertical. Here and there small ledges bore the stains of bird-lime, spring nesting places for guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and little auks. The dark purple of the striated rock reared above their mastheads and was shrouded in misty cloud and the swell broke in a ceaseless necklace of foaming water at its foot. Kite shuddered. Would the tide have swept them clear, or did sunken rocks lurk nearby, as the variability of the soundings suggested? He would never know. All that he could be certain of was that they had avoided disaster.
As the warmth of the wintry sun slowly burnt off the fog, the first whispers of a breeze began to ripple the water. Fortunately these airs came from the south west, filling the sails so that, sheeted home, the Spitfire began to creep up tide, over their cable. Their situation was too precarious to tarry and Kite ordered the cable cut. They would lose an anchor but the slant of wind might be temporary and Kite could not wait to leave the proximity of that mighty cliff.
The Spitfire stood slowly to the west north west and the cliff disappeared astern in the mist. Kite could only suppose he had touched the coast somewhere near the Mull of Kintyre, or perhaps the coast of Islay, but he was never afterwards sure. All he knew at the time was that he must get away and stand back out into the Atlantic to wait for a final clearing of the weather before he attempted anything so foolish as to head for the North Channel and the Irish Sea.
It was two days before the visibility finally improved, and when it did, Kite saw a sail to the east. The stranger was a brig, standing close-hauled to the north west, heading towards them.
‘Outward bound,’ Kite remarked to Jones, who had come on deck to relieve him. The two vessels closed on reciprocal courses, the brig flying a bright new red ensign, prompting Kite to hoist his own colours.
‘I suppose,’ Jones remarked, ‘she could be a naval brig-sloop, come to take a look at us.’
The strange vessel was edging down, and would pass close to them and Kite agreed, remarking that, ‘I think you’re correct. She appears to have her guns run out…’
The suddenly the two were approaching to pass close, a man standing atop the rail of the outward bound brig waving his hat and Kite, leaping up on his own rail and hanging on to the main rigging, waved back.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jones yelled, ‘get down!’
The red ensign was descending in jerks to reveal the white and gold lilies of the Bourbon French. At the same instant a few puffs of grey smoke, accompanied by points of fire, rippled along the brig’s gunwhale. The shot tore over their heads. Holes appeared in both the main and foresails and a ball hit the hull in a cloud of splinters which erupted with the impact. Then the brig’s helm went over and her sails slammed aback. A second later first her main and then her foreyards swung as she tacked and stood close across Spitfire’s stern.
‘He’s going to rake, sir!’ shouted Jones, as the horror of their predicament struck them, ending their stupefaction. Kite heard Puella screaming but thrust the intrusion aside.
‘Larboard watch, run out the larboard guns! Starboard, tend the sheets! Up helm!’ Kite lunged at the helmsman, helping to push the heavy over to windward.
It was as well they had met the brig at the change of the watch with the entire crew on deck. Kite had no very great chance of getting off a shot at the enemy, but he could run for it, at least gaining a small lead on his opponent whom he rightly concluded was a French corsair. By turning the same way as the enemy, Kite succeeded in buying himself a few moment’s respite, avoiding the catastrophe of the brig’s broadside being poured into Spitfire’s stern where Puella was hiding.
But Puella was not hiding, she was on deck. ‘What is happening?’
In the cabin she had heard the discharge of the brig’s guns and felt the impact of the shot, then the heel of Spitfire’s deck had caught her off balance as Kite turned towards the enemy. Frightened, she could remain below no longer. Kite was strangely glad to see her. She had wrapped herself in the bearskin and looked so incongruous that seeing her thus, he smiled despite the circumstances.
‘We are in trouble, Puella; that is a French privateer. An enemy ship. We must try and escape.’
As the brig tuned, so did Spitfire, frustrating the French commander as he tried to place his vessel so that his guns could fire the length of the schooner’s deck. Instead Kite drew away to the north and east, running before the wind, with the brig swinging in Spitfire’s wake. Kite picked up the watch glass and levelled it on the brig. She had completed her turn in Spitfire’s wake and although Kite had opened up a lead, she was clearly able to overhaul her quarry. That she was well manned and ably handled he had no doubt. There had been sufficient insouciance in the ruse of the waving officer, and the smart execution of her turn under their lee to convince him of that. But having turned away, Kite could think of nothing further that could be done. He looked forward. The larboard watch were laboriously loading and running out the larboard battery, but he had insufficient men to work the guns on one side of the ship, let alone two, even supposing he had a crew of competent gunners. This he had neglected, despite the letter of marque-and-reprisal that Spitfire carried. It had not been intended that she operated as a privateer until after she had fitted out properly in Liverpool. As it was, she carried scarcely sufficient powder and shot to fire off a dozen guns, let alone fight with her broadsides. Besides, Kite thought bitterly, as a privateer Spitfire was supposed to act offensively, not in abject self-defence.
Looking astern again he could see the brig appeared larger as she closed the gap between them. He felt a desperate and sickening sensation rising in his throat. In Newport he had heard the French were beaten, on their damned knees and reduced to suing for terms, so what in the name of Almighty God was this bastard doing chasing him in British waters?
Kite cast a wild look around the horizon, as if his desperation would conjure up the arrival of a British cruiser, but all he could see were the distant mountains of the Scottish islands, and they were too far off to offer the slightest hope of refuge. Night too was some hours away, even in late January, and as for fog, well they had had their quota, Kite felt sure; it was not going to oblige him by shrouding them at this juncture!
‘Bloody hell!’ he ranted as Jones hovered anxiously.
‘You’ll have to strike, sir,’ Jones said unhappily.
‘I will lose everything… No, damn it, I shall not! Not yet anyway!’
‘Our rig is cut down…’
‘But we’ve another jib below. Get it on deck…’
The men seized the idea and went at the labour with a will. Even Jones cast aside his misgivings and was soon at the head of the crowd as another jib ran aloft. Some light-weather kites used in the West Indies appeared, straining at their bolt ropes in the breeze as Jones boomed them out like studding sails. The repaying of their hull at Newport meant they had a clean bottom and, with the extra sails their speed increased perceptibly. The schooner was racing through the water, the white bone in her teeth fanning out on either bow and although Kite hardly dared believe it, the brig seemed not to be gaining on them so fast.
‘Puella,’ he said, ‘be so kind as to bring me my quadrant.’
When she returned with the mahogany box, Kite removed the instrument, braced himself against the taffrail, set the index bar to zero and carefully subtended the image of the brig, measuring the angle between her plunging waterline and her main truck. Compelled to wait for some minutes before checking it again, he looked forward. Jones was adjusting sheets, carefully gauging how best to set each sail. What else could they do?
If only they could fight… But with little powder and shot, an ineffective and small crew, Kite had little hopes of little more than discharging the guns to defend the honour of their flag before being compelled to strike it. If only…
The guns!
He could dispense with half of them without seriously prejudicing his chances of defending himself if he had to. ‘Mr Jones! Jettison half the guns on each side. No, just keep three in each waist…. And, and run one aft… See if you can get it into the cabin as a stern chaser…’
Kite saw Jones grin as he grasped the idea and waved his hand in acknowledgement. The excitement between the two men was almost palpable now as Kite turned back to his pursuer and raised the quadrant again. There was a change; he bent over the arc and saw that the angle had increased. The brig was still gaining, but she surely only had a very small advantage. Perhaps when the guns went overboard…
Puella was beside him. He had almost forgotten her in his excitement. She was remarkably calm, he thought, looking at her.
‘Spitfire is a fast schooner, Kite,’ she said, her voice level.
‘I hope so, my darling.’
‘What do you do with the quadrant?’
He explained. ‘I measure the angle…’ He realised she would not understand the simple geometrical principle, so held thumb and forefinger close together, with only a small gap. Widening the gap he moved his hand closer to her face. ‘If the French ship gets closer she seems to get bigger.’ Then he withdrew his hand, closing the gap between the fingers again. ‘If we go faster than her, she drops backwards and seems to be smaller. This,’ he tapped the quadrant, ‘can quickly tell me of a very, very small change, so that I can see…’
A cheer followed by a splash told where the first gun had gone overboard.
‘So that I can see,’ Kite resumed, ‘whether we are going faster than she is, or she is going faster than we are.’
Puella crooked thumb and forefinger of her right hand together and moved her hand towards and away from her eye, nodding. ‘I understand,’ she said.
Kite looked at her and impulsively kissed her. Below them a widening ring of bubbling white dropped astern alongside the wake as the second gun sank to the bottom.
‘Has the other ship come nearer?’ she asked.
Kite raised the quadrant again, then bent over the arc. The angle was still opening, but the difference was tiny, a minute at the most. Nevertheless, the enemy was undoubtedly overhauling them. An idea occurred to Kite. ‘Puella, I must teach you how to fire a pistol.’
‘I know how.’
‘You do?’ Kite was astonished.
‘Of course. Dorothea showed me.’
‘Would you fight and kill Frenchmen?’
‘Only if they are white,’ she replied, smiling.
‘Would you kill me, Puella?’ he asked, only half joking.
‘Only when you stop loving me,’ she said, adding, ‘and love Sarah Tyrell.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he stammered. ‘I will get you a pistol.’
Puella put her hand out to restrain him. ‘No. I will get one myself, and Kite?’
‘Yes?’
‘I will not let those men in that ship take me. I will kill myself first.’
He stared at her for a moment and then said, shaking his head, ‘I hope it will not come to that.’
She shrugged and went forward to the companionway. Kite watched her go: she had a damnably uncanny knack of divination, he thought uneasily. Then he picked up the quadrant. There was no doubt, the enemy brig was gaining on them, slowly but no less surely.
As another gun went overboard, Kite went forward and spoke to Jones. Then he ordered the steward to issue a tot of rum and resumed his station aft, just abaft the helmsman straining at the tiller, while Jones made the preparations Kite had ordered. It was a damned long shot, but he had little left in his locker and he guessed the Frenchman would try winging them soon.
It was another half an hour before the enemy commander felt confident enough of his greater speed to sacrifice a little of his ground, and to swing off course sufficiently to try a shot from his larboard bow chaser. The brig was slightly off on the Spitfire’s starboard quarter, so she swung away a few degrees. The shot plunged into their wake, but it was only ten yards astern, slightly off on the larboard quarter. Another shot followed, about the same distance short, but directly astern. The wind caught the spray and carried it forward over the taffrail of the fleeing Spitfire.
Kite walked forward and ordered a slight alteration in course to starboard. It was just enough to bring the schooner more directly ahead of the pursuing brig and thus compel the corsair to swing even further off course for his next attempt. The enemy waited for a full twenty minutes, by which time Kite no longer required his quadrant to ascertain the sober fact that they were still slowly but remorselessly losing ground. He decided he could wait no longer and went below to arm himself. He had decided to fight.
A party of seamen under Jones’ direction were in the cabin, gingerly easing a four-pounder into the centre of the stern window.
‘Captain Kite, I shall have to break down…’
‘Yes, yes, of course; do what you must, but hurry, the sooner we can respond to his fire the better.’
A moment later an axe bit into the wooden sill across the window transom, breaking up the carpentry so recently installed at Newport after the storm-damage. The crude destruction would lower the level of the woodwork so that the gun could fire over it, while the angle of traverse would be wide. Jones was extemporising train tackles and a recoil line which, if the gun were much used, would probably bring down the central pillars in the structure, but it was a small price to pay if it saved the schooner.
In a corner, Puella had wound a sash about her waist and had stuffed a brace of pistols into it. ‘Where did you get those?’ he asked, already guessing the answer.
‘From Dorothea,’ she said quietly, darting a glance at the seamen. ‘Mr Mulgrave let her keep a pair.’
Kite hid his surprise. As he prepared his own weapons, he told her his plan, his voice soft. At first she stared open-mouthed and then she laughed. ‘If it happens, Puella,’ he said, ‘it will be a desperate gamble. You understand?’
‘Yes, I understand. It will be all right.’
‘I hope so. You must stay in the boat. I do not want you involved in the fighting.’
‘I want our baby son to be born in England,’ she said simply. Kite felt a wrench of remorse that he had not once considered the delicacy of Puella’s condition throughout the day, let alone in contemplating the desperate measure he was about to take. He could only nod dumbly before returning to the deck.
Once Jones reported the gun in the cabin ready, Kite called the hands aft and addressed them. They had one chance, he told them, and he had explained his intentions to the mate. It would only work if they co-operated, to which they assented.
‘Very well then. The cabin gun’s crew had better be told off, Mr Jones, and we’ll get to work…’
Kite never finished, for the French brig tried another shot. It passed through the starboard rail, not eight feet from where Kite was standing and splinters sliced across the deck, catching one of the seamen in the face so that he fell back with a startled cry, blood pouring down his face.
Kite swung round. ‘Steady on the helm there.’
‘All steady, sir.’ It was the former clerk, Whisstock, and Kite walked up to him. ‘Now Whisstock, try not to look astern.’
‘Very well, Captain.’
But Kite did, just as the brig, noticeably nearer now, let fly another shot. It flew over them, so that he felt the wind of its passing suck at the air he was breathing. The ball buried itself in the larboard bulwarks with a thud. Whisstock swore and Kite remarked to no-one in particular that the brig had their range. Fortunately the ball had missed the men working about the boat, set on chocks amidships between the masts.
Then there came a roar and a cloud of smoke rose over the taffrail as the gun in the cabin below was fired. The powder-smoke wafted forward, carried by the following wind. Kite missed the fall of shot, but waited for the next. As he did so, the brig fired again, but either a yaw of her own, or Whisstock’s momentary inattention saved them and the shot plunged alongside, level with the mainmast, but ten yards to larboard of them.
Jones fired the stern chaser a second time; again Kite missed the fall of shot but a cheer came from the window below. He doubted that they had achieved anything, beyond encouraging each other. He did not want to allow the brig to get too close before putting his madcap plan into operation, for the longer she had to wing them, the more chance she had of inflicting real damage. But he was conscious of having only the one chance and that everything depended on the hazardous plan he had put in place. He looked forward again. The cover was off the boat amidships and he saw Puella, helped into it by one of the men, the pistols at her waist.
Nearby, the scratch gun crews had knocked the quoins out of the remaining trio of starboard guns and were retreating to hide under the boat. The rest of the crew had disappeared forward, crowded into the forecastle space, with only the boatswain visible, his head poking out of the forecastle companionway. He saw the man nod, his teeth bared and grinning madly.
A ball from the brig tore overhead and passed through the mainsail. The enemy were getting damned close!
Kite could wait no longer; he resolved to act the moment he next saw the tell-tale puff of smoke under the brig’s bow. He turned his head, and shouted, ‘Stand-by the main peak halliards!’ The two men posted at the mainmast threw the coiled ropes off their pins, and eased the turns belayed there.
As he saw the enemy fire again, he yelled, ‘Let go the peak!’
The able-seaman at the peak halliard already had the rope singled up to a turn on the belaying pin and now he threw that off. The rope snaked upwards from its carefully coiled fall, but at the same moment the enemy ball struck the stern and Kite heard from the cabin below a second wounded man scream in agony below. Everything was now happening at once and Kite fought to keep his concentration of the elements he must remain master of. Above him and winged out to larboard the main peak had dropped and the gaff swung wildly, the ensign half struck as its halliard ran slack. Beside him at the mainmast, the second seaman now let go the throat halliard and the whole mainsail came down, the boom end trailing in the water. This and the loss of driving power slowed the schooner, but at this critical moment, the continual screaming of the wounded man below cut into Kite consciousness like a knife. He swore as Whisstock fought the schooner’s desire to swing, the trailing main boom acting as a drag, but already the seaman who had let go the halliard was hauling on the sheet, hauling the heavy boom inboard.
He hoped the ruse had worked and the enemy thought they had shot the main halliards through, causing confusion aboard their quarry. Suddenly the brig was looming up closer. Another cloud of smoke blew over the stern and this time Kite saw their own stern chaser score a hit close to the root of the brig’s bowsprit, near the gammoning. A cloud of splinters momentarily appeared and he thought he heard a shout, but he was standing close to Whisstock, his heart pumping, and he could almost sense the thundering of the helmsman’s own pulse.
‘Steady, my lad,’ Kite said in a low voice, quite oblivious to the inappropriate use of a term for a man at least two years older than himself.
The brig was over-running them fast now, faster perhaps than her commander wished. Kite held his course as the stern chaser barked again below him, reloaded with creditable speed. He coughed as the powder smoke blew past them and waved the cloud aside, but then the brig discharged her own gun at point-blank range. This time there was no mistake. The ball thumped into the mainmast about five feet above the deck, almost severing it at a stroke. The weight of the gear to larboard was sufficient to cause it to crack. It swayed forward, the break working right through the spar with a rending split until it parted and dropped to the deck, to lean forward at a drunken angle, restrained by the shrouds.
The brig’s bow was now ranging up on the starboard quarter. Kite could see several faces peering down at him. He glanced round. His own gun’s crews had hidden behind the boat amidships, the decks looked almost deserted, but for Kite himself, the helmsman and the two hands still at the main sheet. It appeared, or at least Kite hoped it appeared, as though the schooner was short-handed and had concentrated all her efforts at self-defence in the manning of her stern chaser.
Kite turned again to stare up at the brig. He could distinguish an officer from several armed ratings, and saw the former turn and shout something aft, presumably to the brig’s commander. Then the man cupped his hands and shouted at Kite.
‘Capitaine, do… you….strike…your… colours?’
Kite feigned incomprehension as the brig drew level, forty, thirty feet away. The larboard yardarms of her fore course and fore topsail almost overhung the starboard quarter of Spitfire.
Then Jones defiantly fired the stern chaser again. He must have traversed the carriage, for the shot struck the brig amidships and Kite heard the cry of someone aboard the brig hit by a splinter. He could hear an oath, too, saw the grappling line thrown. The grapnel struck the Spitfire’s rail and held. He drew his cutlass and cut it adrift, but another flew through the air and then the brig was ranged alongside and Kite knew they were going to be boarded before they could do any more mischief.
The sea running between the two vessels, slapped back and forth, the two wakes cresting and hissing in a roil of confused water as the gap closed. On the brig the topgallant halliards were let go, the course clew garnets were hauled up as the sheets were started and she slowed to match the speed of the disabled schooner alongside her. Kite swung round.
‘Gunners! Now!’ he shouted. The appointed gun crews leapt from hiding behind the boat and in an instant touched their linstocks to the breeches of the three guns left in the starboard battery. At maximum elevation and double shotted, they discharged with a close sequence of booms so that Kite’s ears rang. He saw the ball and langridge, composed for the most parts of carpenter’s nails, rovings and scrap, tear upwards across the narrow gap. All along the brig’s waist this iron hail struck indiscriminately at men, guns, ropes and the fabric of the brig’s hull.
Amid the screams and shouts of fury, an order was passed and then the brig’s helm went over, the yard arms loomed over the Spitfire’s deck and she dropped alongside with a jarring crash. The next instant the enemy boarding party were jumping and flinging themselves down into the schooner’s waist.
‘Whisstock!’ Kite bawled, discharging one pistol at an officer who had just landed and turned aft towards him. Amidships the handful of men at the three guns were driven back and Kite saw one run through. A second had got his hands on a boarding pike and parried a sword thrust, before a pistol shot blew out the side of his face. But the man still thrust, impaling an enemy boarder to the rail as he fell, mortally wounded.
Kite hefted his clumsy cutlass as a French sailor struck at him. He longed for a hanger, light and handy, to fight off the assault, but he slashed wildly and yelled with all his might, ‘Puella!’
Her screech was terrible; a hideous, high-pitched and attenuated shriek that tore through the air to rend the eardrums. Kite had never heard anything so dreadful as Puella rose from the boat amidships, the terrible cry ululating from her throat in a long exhalation. On her own initiative, Puella had removed the shirt she had had on and emerged naked to the waist, levelling her brace of pistols at the mêlée below her.
The effect of her appearance was diabolical; the boarders paused for a vital instant, staring up at the voluptuous black manifestation which might have been from hell itself, and then the Spitfire’s boatswain and the bulk of the crew swept aft. Their faces were blackened with soot from the galley and they howled in pale imitation of Puella but their weapons were bright as they wielded them with telling effect. During their wait they had helped themselves to extra rum, served out by Kite’s steward whose need for Dutch courage now justified itself.
As the black-faced men swept aft, Kite despatched his attacker, the crude and heavy cutlass blade raking the man’s rib-cage so that he fell back with a gasp. In the Spitfire’s waist the blackguard crew were prevailing as Kite had hoped they would. Reassured, Kite looked up to the brig’s quarterdeck and raised his second pistol in his left hand. Although the slightly lower freeboard of the schooner limited his view, he could see the French commander, just recovering from his surprise at Puella’s appearance. Kite took careful aim and fired.
Kite’s ball missed his target’s head, but he caught the commander’s shoulder and knocked him backwards. A moment later Kite was scrambling upwards, over the brig’s rail with the boatswain and his score of blackguards at his back, and Whisstock howling at his side. It was Guadeloupe and Le Gosier all over again. He cut and slashed with a wild kind of joy, relieved from the hours of anxiety and mad with the prospect of victory, assuaging his bloodlust and intent on putting his tormentors to the sword.
In ten bloody minutes, it was all over.