James Nelson: The Guardship

The fire flared again, igniting something, and Marlowe leapt to his feet. He had to risk passing out. He had to get on deck fast.

He careened off a post, stumbled, kept running. He could see a motion in the smoke, a swirl of gray and yellow as the sulfur was sucked up overhead, and he knew that he had found the hatch. He leapt for the space, and his hand found the combing and he pulled himself up.

“Oh, Lord, help me!” he cried, trying to find the strength in his tired arms and aching lungs to pull himself up through the hatch. His hand touched something-the leg of the cabin table-and his fingers wrapped around it and he pulled himself out of the smoke-filled hold, out of that special hell that LeRois had laid along for them, and up into the great cabin.

The cabin was filled with smoke as well, but after the hold it seemed like the freshest of air, and Marlowe wanted to just collapse on the settee and breathe, just breathe. He took a staggering step aft, recalled that the ship was about to explode. How had his mind become so addled?

He turned and lurched out of the great cabin and down the alleyway, careening off the cabin doors as he struggled to get to the waist. The door was open, and he stumbled out into the open space.

The old pirate ship was still burning, though not as bright now, and Marlowe’s damaged eyes could see nothing but a few shapes moving about. The fight was over, apparently, but he did not know who had won. He tried to shout a warning, but all that came was coughing and retching.

“Marlowe! Marlowe, dear God!” It was Bickerstaff, standing in front of him. His face came in and out of focus, and he looked so very concerned.

“Bickerstaff…,” Marlowe managed to get out, and then broke into a coughing fit again.

“Marlowe, pray, sit! We have won the day!” Bickerstaff said, but Marlowe just shook his head and pointed feebly down. “Magazine…,” he said, “…fire…”

Bickerstaff stared at him as if not comprehending. Marlowe tried to summon the power to explain further, but Bickerstaff said, “The magazine is on fire?”

Marlowe nodded. It was all he could do.

“Shall we get the Plymouth Prize under way?”

Marlowe shook his head. No time for that, not by half. He glanced over at the guardship, still riding against the pirate’s side. They would never save her. He pointed toward the other bulwark, the one closest to shore, and staggered toward it, hoping Bickerstaff would understand.

And he did. The teacher let go of Marlowe’s arm and turned to the dark shapes in the waist that Marlowe guessed were his men. “The magazine is on fire!” he heard Bickerstaff shout. “Over the side! Everyone over the side! Throw the wounded over, we shall get them to shore! If you cannot swim, grab something that will float!”

Marlowe sensed the stampede to the side but could see no more than dark shapes rushing past, men carrying other men. He heard the pounding of bare feet and shoes on the deck, voices full of fear and pain, the cries of the wounded. He could still smell the sulfur, but mostly it was sweet night air, the most

delicious sensation he had ever had. He paused by the main hatch and closed his eyes and just breathed.

And then he felt rough hands on his arms. He opened his aching eyes to see King James and Bickerstaff on either side of him, hustling him to the side of the ship. Men were leaping over the rail. He could hear splashing and shouting in the river below.

They reached the bulwark, and he heard Bickerstaff say, “Marlowe, can you swim? Isn’t it odd that I don’t know?”

But Marlowe did not know either. Can I swim? He could not recall.

He felt the deck heave under his feet, thought that he was going to pass out again. It was the strangest sensation, the solid deck moving thus. Wanted to comment on it, felt hands lift him up. Realized that the ship was about to explode.

“Dear God!” he shouted, regaining some of his senses. He put a foot on the pin rail and stood up, and on either side James and Bickerstaff did the same, then he launched himself out into the air.

He felt himself plunging down through the dark, and then the warm water was all around him, covering him, smothering him with its blackness.

And then the water was lit up like it was daytime, only much brighter than that, and the colors were brilliant reds and oranges, not the pale yellow of sunlight. He felt himself shoved through the water as if pushed by a giant hand.

He kicked and kicked again, and his head broke the surface and he gasped for air, that precious element. Flaming bits of the Wilkenson Brothers were falling all around him, splashing and sizzling in the water.

He could see things-people, wreckage, he could not tell-bobbing in the water, lit up by the great flames that were consuming the merchantman turned pirate. A night of fire, a night of death.

There was something beside him, floating, and he grabbed it. It was a section of a yard. The main topsail yard, he thought. He could see the footropes trailing off of it, a charred section

of the sail still made fast by its robands. He held on as a child clings to its mother. Drifted until he felt sand scraping the bottom of his feet.

He drifted a few more feet and then realized that he could stand, so he began to walk for shore, pushing through the water, dragging the section of the yard behind him, because suddenly it was very important for him to save it from the flames.

At last he was in only a few inches of water and he could not pull the yard any farther, so he decided that it would be all right where it was. He just wanted to sit down for a moment, and then he would find Bickerstaff and King James and they could start cleaning all this up.

And then he was sitting. And then he was lying with his cheek pressed against the rough sand of the beach. He was very warm and comfortable. He felt himself sinking into the earth, and the darkness enveloped him like a blanket and then all thought just floated away.

It took him some time to realize that the voices were not in his head, that what he was hearing was not a dream. When he finally realized that he was indeed awake, he lay very still and listened and tried to reckon what was going on. He did not open his eyes.

His body ached as if he had not moved for some time. Where he was pressed into the sand he was still damp, but his face was warm and the parts of him exposed to the air were dry, and he guessed that it was daytime, a warm, sunny day. What day, he could not begin to imagine.

Then memories began to filter back of the last night that he could recall. He could still taste the sulfur in the back of his throat. He remembered the fight on the deck, the brimstone-filled hold, LeRois.

He opened his eyes and was greeted with a face full of sunshine that made him blink and turn away. He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks, and he groaned out loud. He put a hand down in the warm sand and began to push

himself up, and that made him groan even louder with the pain and the effort. At last he sat up and held his face in his hands.

“Here, sir!” he heard a voice call out, a voice that he did not recognize, so he ignored it. “Here’s one still alive!”

He heard the soft sound of footsteps in the sand, getting closer. Guessed that he was the one they meant. He opened his eyes again and blinked, easing them into the full brunt of daylight. He let the tears run unimpeded down his cheeks.

At last he looked up. He was on the edge of the James River. It was a fine day, the sky blue and the sun warm, the few clouds overhead white and pleasing to the eye. It was all quite at odds with the way he felt.

Forty feet off the beach the charred bones of the former Wilkenson Brothers and the Plymouth Prize reached up from the brown water, skeletal hands from the grave, two enemies locked together in death. Wisps of smoke still rose from the black timbers. He could not see the Northumberland but guessed she was down there too. Half a cable length beyond that the burned stumps of the other pirate vessel’s masts stuck up from the river like old pilings.