The Captain From Kirkbean Read online

  But we held the bastards, he told himself, standing beside the stump of his ship’s mizzen. It had gone over the side just as the surviving French finally retreated to lick their wounds, and he made himself look northward, despite a spasm of pain deeper than anything from his shattered arm, to where flames danced in the night beyond Prince William. HMS Serapis was still afloat, but it was a race now between inrushing water and the fire gnawing towards her magazine, and the boat crews plucking men from the bay looked like ferrymen on the seas of Hell against the glaring backdrop of her destruction.

  But she would not go alone. Two French seventy-fours had settled in the main channel, one the victim of Torbay’s double-shotted guns, and Paul bared his teeth at them. Their wrecks would do as much to block the channel as his own ships—probably more, given his commands atrocious casualties. Torbay had over three hundred dead and wounded out of a crew of six hundred. Neither the wounded’s heartbreaking cries nor the mournful clank of her pumps ever stopped, and exhausted repair parties labored to clear away wreckage and plug shot holes. It was even odds whether or not she would be afloat to see the dawn, for she had been the most exposed of all his ships and suffered accordingly.

  Prince William was almost as badly battered, and Captain Forest was dead. But his first lieutenant seemed a competent sort, and Triumph, despite heavy damage aloft, had suffered far less in her hull, while the ancient Panther had gotten off with the least damage of all. If he could only keep Torbay afloat, perhaps they could still—

  “Sir! Captain! Look!”

  The report was scarcely a proper one, but the acting second lieutenant who’d made it had been a thirteen-year-old midshipman that morning. Under the circumstances, Paul decided to overlook its irregularity—especially when he saw the French officer standing in the cutter with a white flag.

  “Do you think they want to surrender, sir?” the youngster who’d blurted out the sighting report asked, and Paul surprised himself with a weary laugh.

  “Go welcome him aboard, Mr. Christopher,” he said gently, “and perhaps we’ll see.”

  Christopher nodded and hurried off, and Paul did his best to straighten the tattered, blood-and smoke-stained coat draped over his shoulders. He would have sent his steward for a fresh one if any had survived the battle … and if his steward hadn’t been dead.

  The French lieutenant looked a visitor from another world as he stepped onto Torbay’s shattered deck. He came aft in his immaculate uniform, shoes catching on splinters, and enemy or no, he could not hide the shock behind his eyes as he saw the huge bloodstains on the deck, the dead the heap of amputated limbs piled beside the main hatch for later disposal, the dismounted guns and shattered masts.

  “Lieutenant de Vaisseau Joubert of the Ville de Paris,” he introduced himself. His graceful, hat-flourishing bow would have done credit to Versailles, but Paul had lost his own hat to another French marksman sometime during the terrible afternoon, and he merely bobbed his head in a curt nod.

  “Captain Sir John Paul,” he replied. “How may I help you, Monsieur?”

  “My admiral ‘as sent me to request your surrender, Capitaine.”

  “Indeed?” Paul looked the young Frenchman up and down. Joubert returned his gaze levelly, then made a small gesture at the broken ship about them.

  “You ‘ave fought magnificently, Capitaine, but you cannot win. We need break through your defenses at only one point. Once we are he’ind you—” he shrugged delicately. “You ‘ave cost us many ships, and you may cost us more. In the end, ‘owever, you must lose. Surely you must see that you ‘ave done all brave men can do.”

  “Not yet, Lieutenant,” Paul said flatly, drawing himself up to his full height, and his eyes glittered with the light of the dying Serapis.

  “You will not surrender?” Joubert seemed unable to believe it, and Paul barked a laugh.

  “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight, Lieutenant! Go back to the Ville de Paris and inform your admiral that he will enter this bay only with the permission of the King’s Navy!”

  “I—” Joubert started, then stopped. “Very well, Capitaine,” he said after a moment, his voice very quiet. “I will do as you—”

  “Captain! Captain Paul!”

  Excitement cracked young Christopher’s shout into falsetto fragments, and Paul turned with a flash of anger at the undignified interruption. But the midshipman was capering by the shot-splintered rail and pointing across the tattered hammock nettings into the night.

  “What’s the meaning of—” the captain began, but his scathing rebuke died as he, too, heard the far-off rumble and strode to Christopher’s side.

  “See, sir?” the boy demanded, his voice almost pleading. “Do you see it, sir?”

  “Yes, lad,” Paul said quietly, good hand squeezing the youngster’s shoulder as fresh, massive broadsides glared and flashed beyond the capes. My God, he thought. Hood not only believed me, he actually attacked at night! And he caught the Frogs just sitting there!

  He watched the horizon for another moment, and then turned back to Joubert.

  “I beg your pardon for the interruption, Lieutenant,” he said, taking his hand from Christopher’s shoulder to wave at the growing fury raging in the blackness of the open sea, “but I think perhaps you’d best return to your own ship now.”

  Joubert’s mouth worked for several seconds, as if searching for words which no longer existed. Then he shook himself and forced his mind to function again.

  “Yes, Monsieur,” he said, in a voice which was almost normal. “I … thank you for your courtesy, and bid you adieu.”

  “Adieu, Monsieur,” Paul replied, and then stood watching the lieutenant and his boat disappear into the night.

  Other voices had begun to shout—not just aboard Torbay, but on Prince William and Panther and Triumph as well—as what was happening registered, but Paul never turned away from the hammock nettings. He gripped them until his hand ached, listening to the thunder, watching the savage lightening, knowing men were screaming and cursing and dying out there in the dark. A night battle. The most confused and terrifying sort possible … and one which favored Hood’s superbly trained ships’ companies heavily.

  And then the cheering began. It started aboard Prince William, and his heart twisted at how thin it sounded, how many voices were missing. But those which remained were fierce. Fierce with pride … and astonishment at their own survival. The cheers leapt from Prince William and Panther to Torbay and Triumph, and he knew the same bullthroated huzzahs were rising from Russel and Charon and the batteries. The deep, surging voices tore the night to pieces, shouting their triumph—his triumph—and he drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  But then he thrust himself upright and walked to the quarterdeck rail, and the cheers aboard Torbay faded slowly into expectant stillness as the men still standing on her shattered decks looked up at their captain.

  Sir John Paul gazed back at them, good hand resting on the hilt of his sword, exhausted heart bursting with his pride in them, and cleared his throat.

  “All right, you idle buggers!” he snapped. “What do you think this is—some fine lord’s toy yacht? This is a King’s ship, not a nursery school! Now get your arses back to work!”

  The End