Peril on the Sea Read online

  “If you will, please, sir,” said Sherwin, “extend my compliments to Captain Fletcher, and ask him to spare me a moment of his time.”

  “Why,” asked Highbridge, “would the captain find you worthy of an instant’s conversation?”

  “I can help to defend this ship,” said Sherwin, trying to sound capable. “You appear to have lost a few fighting men, and I can handle a sword.”

  A warship usually had a small complement of soldiers on board. Men of money and good repute often funded voyages for adventure and profit, and were often quartered with these soldiers. When the ship found an enemy, a gentleman was considered another sword and was expected to join the battle.

  “I can pay for the honor,” added Sherwin.

  Highbridge considered this.

  “And I can pen a history of Captain Fletcher, as I was going to write one for Captain Pierson.”

  “Can you indeed?” said Highbridge, sounding doubtful but curious.

  “Did you, by any chance, see my broadside on Drake’s raid on Cádiz,” asked Sherwin, “The King of Spain Bearded in His Den and His Staunchest Ships Reduced to Kindling?”

  “The King of Spain rebuilt his fleet, and a hundred more,” said Highbridge, “and Drake merely made revenge inevitable, for all his swagger.”

  Feeling abashed, Sherwin nonetheless continued hopefully, “Mr. Highbridge, think of how I can further burnish the good name of Captain Fletcher with my pen.”

  There was a knock, and a ship’s boy appeared, blond and thin, wearing a belt with a large brass buckle around his waist. The lad entered the lamplight, and it was evident that his face had been, in some recent event, peppered with small wounds.

  “Compliments from the captain, Mr. Highbridge,” said the lad. “The captain asks me to make certain that our new passenger is fed.”

  “See to it, Bartholomew,” said Highbridge.

  Then Highbridge did something that briefly puzzled Sherwin. He used the circlet of glass, a gold-rimmed lens, to examine Sherwin’s hands. He surveyed the calluses on his right hand, and eyed the relatively smooth surface of his left.

  Then Highbridge let the lens dangle and looked at Sherwin as a man might look at a bill nailed to a wall, a list of property being auctioned. Sherwin had never been gazed at so long, and with such quiet intensity.

  But in conclusion Highbridge said, “You are no seaman, but you have been practicing with a sword.” This time there was new promise in his smile. “And, in truth, there is the barest trace of ink on your fingers.” He put his hand on Sherwin’s shoulder and said, “Sergeant Evenage, I do believe that young Sherwin here will prove a worthy shipmate indeed.”

  “I am not surprised to hear it, Mr. Highbridge,” said the sergeant.

  “We must see to it,” added Highbridge, “that he does not die.”

  BARTHOLOMEW RETURNED with a wooden trencher of mutton and parsnips: fresh food, and delicious, much better than the frumenty—boiled wheat—and dried pike fish Sherwin had eaten on the Patience.

  Sherwin had never before dined with such relish. Highbridge remained talking to Evenage about water in the hull, with the pumps being manned around the clock.

  “We have no choice,” confided Highbridge to the sergeant. “We must put in somewhere soon, or we will founder.”

  Sherwin realized, uneasily, that there was no fear in the first officer’s voice, only the guarded attitude of a man who knew danger.

  11

  DON’T LET HIGHBRIDGE frighten you,” said the sergeant when he and Sherwin were alone. “He hates the Spanish and their secret agents more than he loves gold. He’s a warrior, is our First Officer Highbridge, and a good-hearted man. We lost four soldiers against a prize ship off Bordeaux, and Highbridge and the captain took the losses hard.”

  A prize ship was a vessel that had been captured. Prize vessels were manned with as much of a crew as their privateer captors could spare, and sailed to a port to be ransacked and, very often, refitted under a new flag.

  “Was this a ship that had been taken by the Spaniards?” asked Sherwin.

  “No, sir, she was the Santa Catalina, manned by a crew of English privateers.”

  Sherwin felt mildly shocked, although he had heard rumors of such crimes. “Does Captain Fletcher steal from his countrymen?”

  The sergeant laughed. “Sir, he does.”

  “And is it true that we are about to sink?”

  Sherwin had hoped for a reassuring response, but instead the sergeant shook his head and said, “That, my friend, is beyond my power to foresee.”

  SHERWIN SLEPT.

  At first his slumber was a cramped, shuddering semi-consciousness, from which he woke with terrified shocks, sure that he was about to drown. But gradually, as he woke once more to find Evenage polishing the brass and leather of his rapier sheath, or his large, unwieldy-looking wheel-lock pistol, Sherwin felt the lurch and toss of the ship to be reassuring enough to allow him to fall into a dreamless sleep.

  HE DID NOT KNOW how many hours passed.

  He woke at last to find Evenage gently shaking his shoulder, saying, “Be quick, sir—the captain will see you now.”

  Sherwin felt a tremor of helplessness pass through his spirits, huddled, as he was, naked in a blanket. And he was fearful at the prospects of holding a conversation with the notorious mariner.

  “Sergeant,” he protested, “I’m not prepared.”

  “Climb into these clothes, sir, if you will,” said Evenage.

  He indicated a neatly folded pair of serge breeches and a dark blue doublet. A pair of high boots stood rocking gently with the movement of the ship, as though a lively spirit inhabited the footwear.

  “They belonged to my late friend Robin Fosque,” explained Evenage, “who suffered a matchlock ball off Calais.”

  Sherwin felt some inner question as he fastened the belt around his waist, the mantle still faintly stained with the blood of a dead man. Would the spirit of his vanished shipmate be of assistance to him, or resent him for being alive? The boots were a little too roomy, but some gun wadding in the toe of each allowed for a snug fit.

  Sherwin noted that Evenage did not offer him a sword.

  THE HOUR was daylight, but the sky was filled with a cloud-cloaked, murky sunlight, the seas all around the ship white-capped and fuming.

  Sergeant Evenage accompanied Sherwin, and Highbridge looked on from the ship’s waist, the space just before the quarterdeck, in a place partly sheltered from the elements. Each step took a long heartbeat, and Sherwin kept his eyes downcast—in his uneasiness he did not want to meet the gaze of the famous privateer.

  Until at last he had no choice.

  CAPTAIN FLETCHER was a gray-haired, red-cheeked man with sharp, slate-blue eyes and a way of looking away before he spoke.

  There was, it was true, much to observe all around.

  The seas were boiling with further tempest, and the wind howled through the tightly furled sails. Men worked their way along the ship using handlines, gripping tightly as water seethed over the deck. The captain stood to one side of the quarterdeck, clinging to the rail with casual ease. The ship slanted heavily to starboard as she coursed through the white water.

  To make matters more dramatic, in Sherwin’s view, the vessel was approaching the rocky surf and chalky outcroppings of what Sherwin took to be the Devonshire coastline, with a strong wind pushing her and the captain making no effort, for the moment, to escape a violent encounter with the impending land.

  Sherwin clung to the rail in an attempt to imitate the captain’s nonchalance. The unfamiliar mantle Sherwin had donned was stout wool, rich with natural oil, and it kept off the rain, although his boots and breeches were already damp from the foam lashing the air.

  Sherwin judged the Vixen’s length to be some ninety feet, and estimated her to be twenty feet across at her widest point. She was much smaller than many of the Spanish warships famous throughout the world, but, with her modest dimensions, she was a typical English fig
hting ship. He knew, further, that with four or five decks below, a powder magazine, and a complement of arms, she was able to feed, arm, and deploy herself in no mean way. Well fewer than a hundred men would be enough to sail her around the world, if the captain desired such an endeavor.

  “Is it true, as Highbridge reports,” asked the captain at last, “that you were going to write a history of that plodding merchant mariner Captain Pierson?”

  Sherwin stiffened with this affront to the good name of his late friend and master. “I was, sir, already at work with my pen, and I found Captain Pierson’s character to be adventuresome and admirable.”

  “I have encountered cheddar with more character than Pierson,” said Captain Fletcher, adding, as one does of the dead, “God grant him peace.”

  “Captain Pierson’s career took him to Africa and the West Indies,” Sherwin added, bristling inwardly at the lack of respect shown to his deceased mentor. “He had transported silks, velvet, pig iron, and silver reals in his day, and knew all the tactics of trading in the East.”

  “Did he?” queried Fletcher dryly.

  “Pierson was a hard man to cheat,” said Sherwin. “He knew the Turkish trick of dyeing silk with a pigment easily washed off so that it resembles indigo but is one-tenth the value.”

  “Captain Pierson,” said Fletcher with an ironic smile, “must have been a phenomenon of marketing shrewdness.”

  “Sir,” said Sherwin, “if you will forgive me, I believe he was.”

  “What were you going to call these weighty volumes of Pierson’s blazing history? A Hercules for Our Own Era: Danger and Death Surmounted to Bring Taffeta to the Strand?”

  Despite himself, Sherwin felt a flicker of amusement. “That title has a certain charm, sir, if only I had ink to write it down.”

  “Well, you’ll find my own history astonishing and deserving of the highest praise.”

  “Perhaps, sir, you may be right.”

  “Perhaps? There can be no doubt. I will dazzle and edify you. My life has been more dramatic than that of the bantam rooster Drake, with his puffed-up reputation, and far more salty than Frobisher’s, that dour hulk. As for Captain Hawkins, the man was a slave trader, and I’ve never trafficked in humans.”

  “No doubt your history will be wonderful to write and even more delightful to read,” Sherwin allowed.

  “The matter is settled, then,” said Captain Fletcher. “You will write the history of my life. Can you rhyme?”

  “Sir?”

  “Can you write rhymes, like those declamations one hears from the stage, Hector sword-to-sword with Achilles, all in couplets?”

  Seamen, explorers, and military men vied with each other to complete the stories of their exploits. Some, like the impressive Walter Raleigh, were beginning to pen their own chapters, but others needed a co-author with access to a vigorous muse.

  “I had in mind a prose work, sir,” said Sherwin, still unwilling to completely commit his talents to the service of this notorious seaman.

  “That will do, I suppose, if you salt and sugar it well.” He sounded downcast, however, and in need of encouragement.

  Sherwin felt inspired to improvise.

  “But were some tale of yours to live through time,

  You should live in it first, rhyme or no rhyme.”

  Sherwin spun this in the moment, and hoped the awkward couplet would serve to satisfy the prideful captain that poetry was not his gift.

  “You have a degree of aptitude,” said Fletcher, “but you lack proper encouragement—and spirited material.”

  “I hope for the muse’s attendance,” said Sherwin, feeling mild irritation despite his own modest estimation of his poetic skills, “every time that I dip my quill.”

  “You keep on with me, and mark me as I speak,” said Fletcher. “I’ll inspire your powers, and we’ll have the world forget these trifling privateers, my competitors, in a play composed of poetry.”

  “I’ll need paper,” said Sherwin, feeling enthusiasm at the prospect of exciting work, and undeniable fame, “and a decent goose quill—no doubt I can find some tonight in Southampton.”

  “Where?” asked the captain, with an absent air.

  “Surely,” said Sherwin, “with a following wind like this, we’ll be in harbor by nightfall.”

  “Oh, no,” replied the captain with a laugh. “There are so many good reasons why we mustn’t show our necks in any harbor. And our course is well west of the usual naval ports in any event.”

  “Are we heading toward some secret anchorage?” Sherwin asked with what he realized sounded like naïve speculation.

  Smugglers and privateers often concealed their ships in along the rugged Devonshire and Cornwall coastline, but the practice could be dangerous. While there were many safe coves, there were also sandbars notorious enough to have names like Dragon’s Reach and Red Graze. These menaces to shipping arose and vanished over the seasons, and moved from place to place, and even the currents were hard to predict.

  The captain found Sherwin’s question amusing, it seemed by his smile, and did not answer directly. “You’ll need some servant, I believe, someone to your keep your boots on the proper feet. Young Bartholomew Ingby was training with Master Gunner Aiken, but I believe he’ll be better suited to keeping you in one piece.”

  “Sir, you are too kind.”

  “I knew your father,” the captain said. “Highbridge told me of your recent sorrow, and you have my condolences.” The captain reached into his mantle. He withdrew the signet ring. He did not release the ring, but held it with a tender yet covetous air, admiring the design.

  “Do you agree, my literate friend,” asked the captain, “to pen my history?”

  This was a simple question, but Sherwin felt that his future—his breathing, waking living in the months or years to come—depended on his response.

  “Captain, I do.”

  Fletcher placed the ring in Sherwin’s hand.

  Sherwin felt gratitude and relief.

  But he also felt increasingly alarmed as the wind stayed strong from the south, driving the Vixen toward the stewing surf of the shore.

  12

  THE BREAKERS DREW NEAR, along with the cliffs, with their weather-swept vegetation, and a smell, even with the wind against them, of fertile lowland and cattle, grassland and mud.

  There was a tug at Sherwin’s sleeve, and the blond boy with the sprinkle of wounds across his features was saying, “Sir, the captain says you will need this.”

  Sherwin thankfully accepted a handsome rapier, sheathed in silver-chased leather.

  “I thank you, Bartholomew,” said Sherwin.

  “Don’t fasten the sword on yet, sir, if it please you,” said Bartholomew. “All hands will need to help work the ship.”

  Sherwin thanked him again, and added, in a tone of kind curiosity, “Were you injured in the encounter with the Santa Catalina?”

  “No, sir, before that we encountered a rich Spanish ship, off the Algarve, on her outward voyage, filled with sheep and chickens.”

  That, thought Sherwin, explained the meal he had most recently eaten.

  “We were beating to windward to close in on her, sir, and a culverin charge struck me in the face.”

  “How was it you survived?”

  “The gun was filled with nails and scrap iron, sir, but we were almost out of range and it only kissed me.”

  Sherwin gave a low whistle of appreciative amazement. “Bartholomew, you were very lucky.”

  “That’s why I believe, sir,” came the reply, “the captain wants us together.”

  “Because you might bring me luck?”

  “Because we are both lucky, sir, to be alive.”

  “Or unlucky enough,” Sherwin suggested, “to have experienced all-but-mortal calamity.”

  “Or that, too, sir. I think the captain wants to discover which.”

  SAILORS ON THE PATIENCE had been clothed in slop-breeches of no great quality, but the crew of Fletcher
’s ship wore the finest richly dyed fustian, and every buckle was silver, or silver plate, and brightly polished.

  The Vixen’s boatswain was a quick, slight man named Tom Lockwood, with a short yellow beard and a way of being able to be on one side of the ship and then the other with a flea’s alacrity. The boatswain was in charge of the sails and the rigging, and much of what a person saw when he gazed around above decks. He called seamen to their various duties and, after the captain and the first mate, the boatswain was the most able mariner on the ship.

  Lockwood responded to Highbridge’s quietly voiced commands with a short signal on his boatswain’s call, a brass pipe with a shrill but pleasing sound.

  Lockwood must have noticed the apprehensive look in Sherwin’s eye. “We’ll sail her across meadow and field, all the way to Exeter, sir,” he said with a laugh, “and be there by candle-time.”

  “I have no doubt,” said Sherwin, hanging on to the port gunwale in anticipation of what he expected to be a ferocious collision with the shore.

  The boatswain’s mate was a man named Randall Nittany, with blue eyes so keen and a gaze so steady he gave the impression of being able to see through several fathoms at a glance. He was appointed to smell the ground, as the boatswain put it—using a weighted line to plumb the water and report how rapidly the sea bottom was rising to meet the keel.

  THE VIXEN surged toward the shore, and through either luck or astuteness she avoided the foam-covered rocks on either side of the modest inlet. She was close to the shadow of a high embankment of earth before her keel kissed the bottom. The masts and the rigging shook, timbers groaned, and Sherwin nearly lost his footing.

  The captain gave a nod to Highbridge, and the dark-mantled first mate spoke to the boatswain. The boatswain’s call pronounced a staccato message, and sailors responded at once, several men leaping over the side and using ropes to pull the ship very much higher onto the beach, aided by the flood tide and the surging gale.

  THERE WAS LITTLE obvious outward reaction to the presence of a new shipmate.