By noon, when they raised the high land of Spain among the clouds on the southern horizon, the Polychrest’s bows were pockmarked with shot-holes, her foremast and foretopsailyard had been gashed again and again, and she was making water fast. The Bellone’s stern was shattered to an extraordinary degree and her great mainsail was a collection of holes; but she was steering again. This she did by a cable veered out of the stern-port, which allowed her to turn a couple of points from the wind – not much, but more than she could do by steering with her sheets. She altered course deliberately on sighting Cape Peñas, and it cost her dear: the drag of the cable lost her a hundred yards – a great distance in that desperate race -and Rolfe, the Polychrest’s master-gunner, red-eyed,
black with powder, but in his element, sent a ball smashing into her stern-chaser, and from dead silence the Polychrest burst into wild cheering. Now the Bellone ran mute, apart from musket-fire. But still she ran, and it was Gijon that she was running for. Gijon, a Spanish port and therefore closed to British ships, though open to the French.
Yet there were still some miles to go, and any shot that touched her mainyard or her sheets would cripple her. Now her guns were going overboard to win back that hundred yards. Jack shook his head – it would do her little good, with the wind right aft and only headsails left.
‘On deck, there,’ hailed the look-out. ‘A sail on the starboard bow.’
She was a Spanish frigate, rounding Cape Peñas and bearing up for Gijon: she should have been sighted long ago, if every eye had not been fixed upon the flying privateer.
‘Damn her,’ said Jack, with the fleeting thought that it was strange to see such perfection of canvas, pyramids of white, after all this time staring at tattered rags: and how fast she moved!
An explosion forward – not the right crash of the carronade. Shouts, a high dog-like howling of agony. The over-heated gun had burst, killing the gunner stone dead and wounding three more – one man jerking clear of the deck as he screamed, leaping so that twice he escaped from his mates’ arms, carrying him below. They slid the gunner over the side, cleared the wreckage, worked furiously to shift the other carronade into its place, but it was a slow job – ring-bolts and all had gone; and all the while the Bellone’s muskets played on them in the bows.
Now they ran silently, with eager, inveterate malice; the coast drew nearer – the savage cliffs and the white water on the reefs were in view; and without a pause the animal screaming came, up from the cockpit far below.
A gun from the Spanish frigate, a hoist of signals. ‘Damn her,’ said Jack again. The Bellone was veering out her cable again to turn to port, to turn for the entrance to Gijon –
Dumanoir must haul up a good two points, or he would be on the rocks.
‘No you don’t, God damn you,’ cried Jack. ‘Stand to your guns, there. Train ’em sharp for’ard. Three degrees’ elevation. Fire as they bear on her main mast. Mr Goodridge, bring her up.’
The Polychrest swerved violently to larboard, bringing her side slanting to the privateer.
Her guns went off in succession, three, six and three. Great gaps appeared in the Bellone’s mainsail, the yard tilted, held only by the preventerlift; but still she ran.
‘The Spaniard is firing, sir,’ said Parker. And indeed a shot whipped across the Polychrest’s stem. The frigate had altered course to run between them: she was very close.
‘Damn him,’ said Jack, and taking the wheel he put the ship before the wind, straight for the privateer. He might have time for one more broadside more before the Spaniard
crossed his hawse – one chance to cripple the Bellone before she cleared the reef and reached the open channel for the port.
‘Stand to your guns,’ he said in the silence. ‘Steady, steady now. Three degrees. For her mainmast. Make sure of every ball.’
He glanced over his shoulder, saw the Spaniard – a magnificent spread of sail – heard her hail loud and clear, clenched his mouth, and spun the wheel. If the Spaniard caught his broadside, that was his affair.
Round, round she came, the helm hard over. The guns went off in one great rolling deliberate thunder. The Bellone’s mainmast came slowly down, down, right over her side, all her canvas with it. The next moment she was in the surf. He saw the copper of her hull: she drove farther on to the reef in two great heaves and there lay on her side, the waves making a clean breach over her.
‘And so, sir, I drove her on to the rock before Gijon. I wished to send in the boats to burn her at low tide, but the Spaniards represented to me that she was in territorial waters, and that they should oppose any such measure. They added, however, that she was hopelessly bilged, her back broken.’
Admiral Harte stared at him with sincere dislike. ‘So
as I understand it,’ he said, ‘you left these valuable merchantmen when you could have tossed a biscuit on to their deck, to chase a blackguardly privateer, which you did not take either.’
‘I destroyed her, sir.’
‘Oh, I dare say. We have all heard of these ships driven on the rocks and bilged and so on and so forth, and then next month they reappear as good as new. It is easy enough to say
“I drove her on the rocks”. Anyone can say that, but no one has yet got any head-money or gun-money out of it – not a brass farthing. No, no, it is all the fault of this damn-fool sail-plan of yours: if you could have spread your topgallants you would have had plenty of time to pick up the merchants and then have really knocked hell out of the bugger you claim to have destroyed. These bentincks, in anything but a gale wind – I have no notion of them.’
‘I could never have worked to windward of the convoy without them, sir; and I do assure you that with the Polychrest a greater spread of canvas would only have pressed her down.’
‘So we are to understand that the less sail you spread the faster you go?’ said Harte, with a look at his secretary, who tittered. ‘No, no: an admiral is generally reckoned to know more about these things than a commander – let us hear no more of this fancy rig. Your sloop is peculiar enough, without making her look like a poxed cocked hat, the laughing-stock of the fleet, creeping about at five knots because you don’t choose to set more sail.
Anyhow, what have you to say about this Dutch galliot?’
‘I must confess she ran clean away from me, sir.’
‘And who picked her up the next day, with her gold dust and elephant’s teeth? Amethyst, of course. Amethyst again, and you were not even in sight. I don’t touch a -that is to say, you don’t share. Seymour is the lucky man:
ten thousand guineas at the lowest mark. I am deeply disappointed in you, Captain Aubrey. I give you what amounts to a cruise in a brand-new sloop, and what do you do with it? You come back empty-handed – you bring her in looking like I don’t know what, pumping night and day, half her spars and cordage gone, five men dead and seven wounded, with a tale about driving a little privateer on to some more or less imaginary rocks and clamouring for a refit. Don’t tell me about bolts and twice-laid stuff,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘I’ve heard it all before. And I’ve heard about your carrying on ashore, before I came in. Let me remind you that a captain is not allowed to sleep out of his ship without permission.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ asked Jack, leaning forward. ‘May I beg you to be more particular? Am I reproached with sleeping out of my ship?’
‘I never said you slept out of it, did I?’ said Harte.
‘Then may I ask what I am to understand by your remark?’
‘Never mind,’ said Harte, fiddling with his paper-knife:
and then in an unconquerable jet of waspishness, ‘but I will tell you this – your topsails are a disgrace to the service. Why can’t you furl them in a body?’
The malignance was too obvious to bite. Crack frigates with a full, expert crew might furl their sails in a body rather than in the bunt, but only in harbour or for a Spithead review.
‘Well,’ said Harte, aware of this, ‘I am disappointed in you, as I say. You will go on the Baltic convoys, and the rest of the time I dare say the sloop will be employed up and down the Channel. That’s more your mark. The Baltic convoy should be complete in a few days’