An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (12 page)

“Rodney,” it said, “Rodney!”

Even in his pre-occupation Rodney realised that Lizbeth was addressing him by his Christian name, contrary to her custom since she came aboard, of being strictly formal even in private.

“What do you want?”

The question was abrupt, almost rude.

“I heard Master Hales say we are running away! It can’t be true. Surely you are going to stay and fight?”

“With two Spanish ships? It would be madness.”

He did not know why he troubled to answer her except that it was a relief to be able to express thoughts that were seething within his mind.

“Are you afraid?”

Lizbeth’s question was an impertinence which he could not allow.

“Not for myself,” Rodney snarled, “but for my ship, for the men who sail with me – for you, if it comes to that.”

“I would not have you play the coward on my behalf,” Lizbeth replied.

“Play the coward!” Rodney repeated the words beneath his breath.

Then suddenly he lost his temper. He turned and glared at Lizbeth with such fury in his expression that almost instinctively she took a step away from him.

“Will you oblige me, Master Gillingham,” he said in a voice that was perfectly audible to those standing by, “by going to your cabin and staying there? Those are my orders, sir!”

As he finished, he turned again to his contemplation of the carrack but he knew that Lizbeth had obeyed him. And yet somehow it gave him very little satisfaction. The wind was rising, but if that was an advantage to the
Sea Hawk,
it also gave the same advantage to the Spanish Ship.

She was chasing them now. There was no doubt about the fact that she had altered course and her bow was pointing straight at them. She was gaining, too, and Roger calculated that in another hour she was likely to overhaul them.

It was then he looked at the sky! Dusk was falling with the swiftness which in the Tropics turns a sunlit, cloudless day suddenly into night. It was their one hope, as he well knew. The darkness would cover their retreat and they might lose the Spaniards before the dawn.

The lugger was being left behind on the starboard bow. She, too, had given chase, maybe in response to signals from the carrack, or perhaps she was not a pearling ship as he had at first suspected but one of the guarda costas which the Spaniards had creeping along the coast for just such an occasion as this.

The breeze suddenly wavered and then renewed itself. Rodney watched the carrack to see if she too received the check. In the tropical waters one ship can have a fair wind while another only a few miles away can lie becalmed. Rodney began to be afraid that the wind would die away on him completely, but the
Sea Hawk
kept steadily on course while the carrack, with her greater breadth of sail, drew nearer and nearer.

And then, as he watched he suddenly saw a disc of white appear on the side of the carrack. The disc spread and became a small cloud and six seconds after its appearance the dull thud of a shot reached his ears.

“They’ll be carrying two devils from hell aft on the quarter-deck,” Barlow muttered.

There was another burst of smoke from the Spanish ship and this time a spout of water rose from the crest of a wave a little to the starboard of the
Sea Hawk.
Rodney called Baxter to him.

“See what we can do with our culverins.”

Baxter bawled the order, but the Master Gunner shook his head doubtfully as he eyed the distance between the two ships. A cannon aft was sighted. He measured out the powder charge on the fullest scale, he trained the gun again and then stood, a length of smouldering match in hand, watching the heave of the ship. Suddenly he set the match to the touch-hole, jerked the lanyard and the cannon roared out.

“Three cables short of her,” yelled a voice from the foretop.

The Spanish ship was firing fast now. There was a sudden, splintering crash and a hole appeared in the quarter-deck bulwark amid a shower of splinters. Another shot skimmed along the planking of the fo’c’sle. A man fell with a crash and there was a sudden wave of crimson staining the deck. Rodney saw who it was as the man fell – it was Dobson, the ship’s surgeon.

There was the sudden roar of the
Sea Hawk’s
cannon and a flash of flame, vivid and glowing, which told Rodney that darkness had nearly fallen. In a few moments it would be completely dark. Another shot splintered below.

“Cease fire!” he shouted.

He imagined, rather than saw the surprise on Barlow’s face.

“Cease fire, sir?”

“At once, Master Barlow.”

It was too late to prevent another shot, and a second later they saw an answering flash of fire from the Spanish galleon. Rodney knew that the
Sea Hawk
could no longer be seen, for he could only locate the Spanish ship by the fire from her guns.

The wind was freshening and as he felt it blow upon his cheeks, Rodney made the second momentous decision of the evening. If they kept straight ahead, he argued with himself, the Spaniard would be able to follow them, overhaul them and keep firing where she expected them to be.

What was more, she would be near at hand, when dawn broke, to finish the destruction she had already begun. Nights were short in the Caribbean – they would not have many hours in which to get away from her. To do this and to escape he had to try methods other than the obvious. He decided to alter course and to turn nor’west, which would give them a less favourable wind but which would be the last thing the Spaniard would expect them to do.

He gave the order and knew that Barlow and the helmsman thought he was demented. He was blessing the darkness, blessing the chance of saving his ship – that was all that mattered for the moment, that the ship should be saved, and even if they had run away, they would all live to fight another day.

They had been but a few moments on their new course when there came a flash in the darkness and a shot splashed into the sea two cables to their starboard bow.

“Steady as she goes, Master Barlow,” Rodney said.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Barlow’s voice was less doubtful now. He understood what Rodney was trying to do.

The breeze was growing stronger and then, even as Rodney gave a sigh of relief, there was a crash which made the ship shudder from stem to stern.

For a moment Rodney felt himself reel on the quarterdeck.

“Are you hurt, sir?” Barlow asked.

“No, keep her going.”

It was a wide shot that should have missed them completely. Rodney’s instinct told him that what he had done was right in principle, but the
Sea Hawk
had caught it broadside on and he knew a great deal of damage must have been done.

The next shot was half a mile away from them, and the next, and the next. It was lucky that the masts had survived and the
Sea Hawk
could still scud away from her oppressor. But the shot which had hit them was by no means an insignificant one. Rodney wanted to go below and assess the damage, but he knew that for the moment he must stay on deck and correct their course-a course which must take them out of reach of the Spanish guns before the dawn broke.

6

Dawn came with a magical suddenness in the Caribbean Sea. One moment all was dark save for the stars twinkling overhead, and the next instant great pink hands swept the sable from the sky and it was day.

Haggard and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, Rodney’s expression, as his eyes swept the sea, was echoed by every officer and man on deck and the sigh of relief which welled up in every breast was as audible as the splash of the waves against the ship’s side and the creak of the rigging as the sails bellied out above them.

There was nothing in sight. Rodney heard Barlow ejaculate, “ Praise the Lord!” and while he felt inclined to say the same, he managed to keep a dignified silence, for all that he longed to shout aloud his joy and relief.

It had been a night of unending anxiety. Almost as soon as it was dark, the wind began to blow heavily from the south-east. Rodney altered course again so that the
Sea Hawk
was carried in the direction of the American coast but at the same time there were innumerable dangers in proceeding at such a speed in the darkness in those practically uncharted seas.

There was every likelihood of their running into an island, rocks or sandbanks that were not marked on the charts, apart from that, at the rate at which they were going they might easily reach the main shore itself. But the risk had to be taken. The Spanish ship would be on the look-out for them as soon as the dawn broke, and what was more, there was always a chance of their encountering other ships as they got nearer to the coast. In the hours of darkness Roger had felt a depression settle upon him more intense than anything he had ever known in his life before. He had faced death hundreds of times in the past ten years, he had known sickness and had felt despairingly that he would never reach home alive; but this agony of anxiety seemed to be a foretaste of hell.

Over and over in his mind he asked himself the question whether he had done the right thing in running away. He could see again – all too vividly – the surprise and contempt in Lizbeth’s eyes, the expression of astonishment on Barlow’s face and what he fancied was scorn on those of his other officers.

The
Sea Hawk
had played the part of a coward, and yet Rodney could see no other course which he could possibly have taken without being foolhardy to the point of suicide. It might sound very heroic to die fighting against overwhelming odds, but Rodney wanted to live, he wanted to take the
Sea Hawk
back to Plymouth, not to leave her, a broken hull, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.

There was nothing else he could have done, he told himself as he set his jaw in defiance. And yet he was human enough to mind the unspoken criticism of those he commanded, to want to recapture their faith and confidence in him.

Just before dawn broke was for Rodney a most searing experience in which he knew a vast and empty loneliness and realised, as he had never realised before, that the responsibility of command was not always pleasant. His men were tired, the ship was damaged, and yet when the light came they might have to fight a bitter and bloody battle which they must win to live, for to lose meant extermination.

Then by the blessing of God, the sea was empty! The waves, choppy from last night’s wind, reflected the deep, vivid blue of the sky. For some moments Rodney waited, tense, for the voice of the look-out telling him there was a sail in sight. When no voice came from the masthead, he looked round the dock and realised there was a great deal to be done.

The quarter-deck was furrowed and grooved with jagged splinters pared off the wood. There were piles of torn rigging and wreckage on the half-deck and around the fo’c’sle. The surgeon, Master Dobson, lay where he had died, but someone had had the decency to throw some sailcloth over him.

Rodney heard Barlow give an order to two seamen who proceeded towards the shrouded corpse. There would have to be a burial service later, Rodney knew, and he wondered how many more bodies would join that of the surgeon.

But before he had time to trouble himself with the dead he must attend to the living. The
Sea Hawk
was moving heavily and was much lower in the water than she had been the day before. He looked round for Barlow and saw that he had gone below.

For a moment it appeared that the damage was not great, and yet Rodney remembered only too clearly the sound of the last shot entering the Sea Hawk’s hull. He had wondered frequently through the night how much damage had been done, but he dared not leave the deck, believing that, when it came to a matter of picking up the sound of a wave beating over a rock, or sensing danger before it was quite upon them, his ears and senses were better than those he commanded. But now he began to be troubled, and Barlow’s face, when he came on deck a few minutes later, told him the worst.

“How deep?” Rodney asked before Barlow could speak.

“Seven feet and more, sir.”

“Where is the hole?”

“A foot above the water-line, sir. She would be all right in a dead calm sea, but the waves were beating in all last night!”

“Can we fother a sail and get it over the hole?” Rodney asked.

“I’m afraid it is too bad for that, sir. The water we have already shipped will make it impossible for the men to work below. We can try, of course, and the men are at the pumps, but the hole is about three feet across.”

There was nothing they could do save get the ship ashore and mend her properly. The trouble was, how? They must find a place where they could be undisturbed long enough to make the necessary repairs. It was at that moment that the look-out shouted “ Land ho, sir!”

Rodney looked at Barlow.

“We will have to find the best place we can,” he said briefly. “What is the casualty list?”

“Two men killed besides Mister Dobson, sir, and twelve wounded.”

“Then do the best you can for them,” Rodney said, “and get the dead ready for burial. We must make for the shore, the wind shows no sign of abating.”

Rodney spoke impersonally, but his eyes met Barlow’s and there was a look of perfect understanding between them. Both knew that the ship was getting heavier and sinking lower every minute that passed. The white crests of the waves splashing happily against the sides of the ship were as deadly a menace as a Spanish gun.

The pumps, small and never very effective, would be quite useless against such a weight of water as the
Sea
Hawk
had shipped during the night and was still taking aboard. It was something that land was in sight. That meant they had anything from fifteen to twenty miles to sail before they reached the nearest point, and God alone knew if that would prove a safe harbour.

Neither Rodney nor Barlow expressed further the fears that were locked within their breasts. The men were set to work cleaning the decks, and the bodies of the dead were sewn tightly into shrouds and laid in a row waiting for Rodney to conduct the burial service.