James Nelson - The Pirate Round

Again, there it was. Oars in tholes, he was certain. He crossed to the other side of the quarterdeck, listing in his mind all the reasons a boat might be out at that time of night-a drunken party returning to their ship, a bumboat looking for a late-night customer, even whores being ferried out to a ship-it was not unheard of. A hundred reasons a boat might be out on the water at that hour.

He leaned on the starboard rail as the boat appeared out of the mist like some nightmare water bug, a longboat, oars double-banked, men crowded at the thwarts, just fifteen feet away before it was visible. In the stern sheets, too indistinct to see in any detail but unmistakable in his gangly form, sat Roger Press.

Marlowe stood upright, gasped as if a ghost had suddenly materialized, and then Press’s voice shouted, “Backwater! What ship is that?”

The men at the capstan froze, the clacking ceased. Marlowe flailed around for an answer, but before he could grab one, Peleg Dinwiddie, standing on the gangway and looking down on the boat, answered helpfully, “Elizabeth Galley! Who goes there?”

“Give way,” Press said to his boat crew. Then to Dinwiddie: “We are going alongside.”

The Elizabeth Galleys seemed to have turned to stone. They stood, unmoving, unsure what to do, but Marlowe had no doubt.

“Cut the cable!” he shouted. No need for quiet now. “Cut the damned cable!”

Still no one moved. They remained frozen long enough for a curse to build in Marlowe’s throat, and then Honeyman snatched up an ax and brought it down on the bar-taut anchor cable, one stroke, two strokes, the strands shredding with each blow.

Marlowe leaned over the rail. The longboat was ten feet away, less than its own length, the crowd of men-armed men, he could see- ready to swarm up and into the unarmed, unprepared, and untrained men of the Elizabeth Galley. It would not even be a fight.

“Pull! Ship oars!” Press cried. He looked up, and his eyes met Marlowe’s. Press looked calm, no surprise on his face, as if he had known all along where he might find his old enemy.

The boat crew pulled hard, the boat shot forward, and the oars came up and were laid on the thwarts, out of the way, where they would not hinder the men from clambering aboard the Galley.

The heavy boat bumped along the Galley’s side, its momentum carrying it fast, the bowman standing with the boat hook and reaching for the main chains, when the anchor cable parted under Honeyman’s ax. The wind and tide seized the Galley’s bow and swung it away. The bowman lunged, slashed at the chains, almost fell overboard as the ship turned beyond his reach.

“Set the fore tops’l!” Marlowe shouted. “Hands to the halyard, haul away! Sheet home!”

The men in the waist burst from their reverie and raced to pin rails and halyard tackle. They might not have been men-of-war’s men, ready for a fight, but they were good sailors and they responded swiftly to those familiar orders.

“Haul away! Sheet home!” Dinwiddie took up the series of commands, and overhead the topsail yard began to jerk up the mast, and the men hauling on the sheets pulled the lower corners of the topsail out to the ends of the fore yard below it.

The current had hold of the Elizabeth Galley, turning her so fast that Press and the longboat were already astern. The boat crew, caught right at the moment of preparing to board the Galley, were now struggling to lay down arms and take up oars again. It was a little cluster of chaos floating on the river, and it gave Marlowe a flash of hope, like a spark from steel on flint, but no more. The current would carry them both alike, and once the boat crew was straightened out and pulling again, they would move faster than the Elizabeth Galley could in that light air.

“That’s well!” Dinwiddie shouted, and then, “Damn me! Captain! Captain! Larboard bow!”

Marlowe looked forward. The ship astern of them, which they would have missed if they had not cut their anchor cable short, was now right in their path, the river sweeping the Galley into her.

“Larboard your helm! Hard over!” Marlowe shouted to the helmsmen, who shoved the tiller hard to the larboard side. Such a shift of rudder would have had a dramatic effect on a ship moving fast through the water, but now it was the water that was largely moving the ship, and the rudder did little to alter her course.

“Damn my eyes,” Marlowe said as they dropped closer to the moored vessel, a slow, deliberate, graceful drift toward collision. “Shift your helm!”

The helmsmen swung the tiller in an arc across the deck, all the way to starboard. The move had done some good, Marlowe noted, had jogged the Galley a little way out of line with the ship astern.

The bowsprit passed the moored vessel and then the bow, not five feet off, the two ships so close it would have been a simple matter to step from one to the other. Marlowe could feel the men on deck holding their breath as they watched the anchored vessel, deserted, ghostly in the mist.

“Midships!” he called to the helmsmen, and they moved the tiller to the centerline, and Marlowe saw that he had waited a second too long. The Galley’s stern was too close, and just as he decided that no further jogging of the rudder could help, the ships hit, the Elizabeth Galley’s larboard quarter slamming into the turn of the other vessel’s bow with a shudder that shook both ships, keel to truck.

Marlowe watched the damage happen, a few feet from where he was standing. The Galley dragged down the side of the other ship with a chorus of snapping and cracking and wrenching. He heard glass break and knew that his beloved quarter galley was smashed to splinters.

For long seconds the ships ground together as the Elizabeth Galley was carried past. Someone appeared on the deck of the moored ship, shouting curses, just as the Galley bounced off her main channel, wrenching it from her side, and then she was clear.

There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief fore and aft, a second’s reprieve, and then a pistol shot rang out, and Roger Press’s voice was shouting, “Bring to! Bring to for a queen’s officer!”

“Set the main topsail!” Marlowe called forward, as if he and Press were arguing over who was in command of the Galley. The men moved to obey, but slowly, and he could see eyes glancing outboard.

“Bring to!” Press shouted again, audibly closer. “Bring to for a queen’s officer, or you shall all hang!”

That had the effect Press was hoping for. The men moved more slowly still, unwilling to disobey Marlowe, but by tacit agreement working with such hesitancy that they might be construed as obeying Press as well.

“Damn your eyes! He’s no queen’s officer, he is a bloody pirate! Give him no thought, unless you would be cut down on deck!” Marlowe shouted, but rather than inspire the men, that only seemed to confuse them more.

Damn it! Marlowe turned, looked aft. The longboat was pulling for them with a will, the men bending to the oars, the boat more than matching the Elizabeth Galley’s speed. Thirty feet astern and gaining, all those men, all those weapons.

What did they have for defense? No cannon, no swivels. A smattering of muskets and cutlasses. Marlowe had intended to rely on the Elizabeth Galley’s speed to keep them out of danger. He had not thought of being overtaken by a rowed vessel.

“Damn it!” he said out loud. He heard Honeyman’s voice, a menacing growl, a squealing overhead. The men were being driven to set the main topsail, but even that would not keep them out of Press’s hands. Unless the wind picked up dramatically in the next two minutes, the boat would overtake them.

Bickerstaff appeared beside him. “I would not expect these men to defend the ship, Thomas. They are not sure with whom they should place their loyalty.”