Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

" 'Quarrels,' zur?"

"Arrows, Stone. They're alongside the crossbow. They look like bolts."

More rummaging sounds followed.

"Got 'em, zur." Stone handed up the weapons and hoisted himself out of the cabin with a single thrust of his powerful shoulders, disdaining the ladder. "You orta been mannin' that there oar, Loveable, not Mr. Hoare," he said.

"I does what my orficers tell me to, Jacob."

"You be a lazy bugger, that's what you be," Stone said. He hauled a grapnel up from below and began to splice it to the bitter end of a lanyard.

Under a steady, slow, harassing fire, Hoare and his crew blacked their faces and hands with soot from Inconceivable's galley stove. Cradling the cocked crossbow in his arms and dragging the bag of quarrels behind him, Hoare crawled forward in the dusk, under cover of Inconceivable's rail, into her very bows.

He had procured the crossbow only last year, when he happened to stop at an inn outside the ruins of Corfe Castle. The weapon had to be centuries old. Although he had bought it on a whim, he felt obliged to try it out. He had chosen a meadow outside Portsmouth, where he at least had had a chance to retrieve the bolts.

Hoare had found at once that the crossbow worked. In fact, it was surprisingly powerful. While his first shot went into the blue somewhere to the north of the tree at which he was aiming, his second, fired from a hundred yards, buried itself so deep in the trunk that he could not withdraw it. He would not have cared to be one of the steel-clad men-at-arms who had faced the thing, and he understood why crossbows had been outlawed by chivalry and Church alike.

He had also learned that the crossbow was extremely slow to load-slower, even, than his lost Kentucky rifle, which, in turn, had taken him twice as long as one of his pistols or a smooth-bore musket. To cock the bow, he would have to stand upright, press his foot into a combination stock and stirrup, and heave mightily on a steel lever. The notion of doing this under fire from Marie Claire-sporadic though it was-gave him a grue. And his accuracy would be laughable.

Sheltering behind Inconceivable's jib, Hoare shouldered the awkward weapon, making sure that it cleared her forestay. By now, the chase was less than a hundred yards ahead, a few points off Inconceivable's larboard bow. Hoare had ordered Bold to come up on her from windward, so as to take her wind with Inconceivable's towering mainsail. He leveled the crossbow and waited for a target to show itself.

He did not have long to wait. The silence of Inconceivable s pursuit would certainly have convinced the other vessel's crew by now that she was without firearms-as, indeed, she was. By now, they were close enough to distinguish one from another, even in the dusk. Now he could see five of them, no fewer. Short of extreme heroism and the most extraordinary luck, any attempt at boarding her was doomed. And so, in all likelihood, was Bartholomew Hoare.

Two of Marie Claire's crew were standing on her taffrail now, one reloading his pistols and the other taking aim. Hoare too took careful aim, held his breath, and squeezed the crossbow's strange long trigger.

With a sharp, soft snap, the crossbow kicked back against Hoare's shoulder. His target uttered a croaking cry, clutched at his leg, and fell backward against the helmsman, knocking him away from the schooner's wheel. Marie Claire drifted gracefully into the negligible wind, athwart Inconceivable's bows, where- had she been armed with cannon-she could have murdered Inconceivable with a raking fire.

Now! Hoare cried to himself. He whistled an ascending banshee note. In response, Stone raced forward to stand beside Hoare. He twirled his grapnel as though he were swinging a dipsey lead-or a sling, flashed through Hoare's mind. The three Inconceivables braced for the impact, grasping any shroud or timber within reach.

Stone let fly with his grapnel. Instead of catching in Marie Claire's rigging, it caught in the clothing of a second Frenchman, who jerked like a jigged salmon. Stone heaved at the grapnel line. The jigged man clutched at a shroud, missed, fell forward into the Channel. Stone's grapnel tore away.

Inconceivable rammed Marie Claire just aft of her starboard main shrouds. Her bowsprit thrust across the schooner below her main boom before grinding to a near-halt. Marie Claire heeled heavily away. There was a crash below-perhaps, Hoare hoped, from Morrow's best yachting china. Carried along by the schooner's momentum, Inconceivable began to swing to starboard, pressing against Marie Claire and braying the jigged man between the two hulls like an ear of Indian corn. He squalled. One arm waved briefly in the narrow gap before he was drawn down into the welcoming water.

The blow into Marie Claire's midships must have caught another enemy wrong-footed, for he spun and went overboard on the side away from Inconceivable. The others-two were still on their feet-were nimbler. One chopped an axe into Inconceivable's forestay as it tangled in the schooner's main shrouds, and cut it apart just as Hoare clutched at the nearer of the paired shrouds. Inconceivable rebounded. Caught wrong-footed himself, Hoare felt his feet leave her. He dangled in Marie Claire's shrouds, first by one hand, then by both, when Marie Claire drifted away from his own precious pinnace, his first and only command.

Behind him, Inconceivable's jib came down with a run over Bold and Stone. There was another grinding sound. Even where he hung, Hoare knew the two craft had parted company.

By the time Hoare's sailors had struggled out from beneath the jib's hampering folds, Marie Claire and her involuntary stowaway were a cable or more off, steadied again on a course for Weymouth. She was as good as home free.

He did not dangle long. Two of Morrow's men hauled him out of the schooner's shrouds and dragged him to her little quarterdeck, where their master stood waiting.

How did did you get onto my traces, Mr. Hoare?" Morrow asked. "Take your time in replying, and rest your voice as often as you wish. The wind is still light, and we have several hours to while away before Marie Claire makes port. As for your amusing little jury-rigged row-galley…"

Morrow gestured toward Hoare's pinnace. Inconceivable lay motionless less than a cable away, a shadow in the dusk, her forerigging all ahoo where forestay and jib halliard had been cut, her high mainsail drooping unattended, the sweeps dangling from the raw holes Hoare and Stone had chopped into her tender sides. She looked a floating wreck. Hoare's heart went out to her. Meanwhile, Marie Claire's sails had filled, and she was under way again, ghosting toward Weymouth and leaving the smaller craft behind.

Moreau saw Hoare's expression. "Perhaps I'll return tomorrow, tow her in, and add her to my fleet. You just used her to kill my man Lecompte, after all. You are my debtor. What you Anglo-Saxons call 'blood-geld,' eh?"

He smiled and cracked Hoare across the face with his open hand. Instinctively Hoare struggled to strike back, but the burly men holding his arms restrained him with ease.

"Be seated, pray," Morrow said. He gestured to his men, and Hoare found himself flung onto the deck with stunning force.

"I repeat: How did you find out what I was doing?"

"I put two and two together, Mr. Morrow," Hoare said.

Morrow leaned down and cracked him across the face again. This time, he used his closed fist.

"You mispronounce my name, Mr. Hoare," he said. "My name is Moreau-baptized Jean Philippe Edouard Saint-Esprit Moreau."

"A long name for the metis son of a fur trader, Monsieur Moreau."

Crack came the hand.

"Fur trader, m'sieur? My father was no fur trader. He would not have soiled his hands with trade. No, no. My father was Jean-Francois Benoit Philippe Louis Moreau, nephew of the archbishop and seigneur of Montmagny. His seigneurie stretched from the river south to St.-Magloire and east to St.-Damase des Aulnaies-many, many arpents, m'sieur. When Monseigneur mon pere died, I inherited half that land. It is still mine.