The climax of the storm cost three more lives, and came close to achieving what Broad hoped of it. He knew all about it, too, because sick man though he was, he was part of the team that saved the frigate.
The first indication was when the corporal was carried screaming into the sick-bay, followed almost immediately by the smell of brandy and the tiny surgeon. The crazy motion of the deck, that had the soldiers reeling as they tried to lay their comrade down gently, bothered Mr Adamson not at all. He rode on his skinny legs like a gull, the fat black bottle swinging from his fingers. He raised his eyes to heaven as much as to say ‘what a waste’ to Broad, as he sent two or three huge gulps shooting down the open throat of the screaming man. As the corporal coughed and jerked, Mr Adamson spoke.
‘Blowing great guns out there, my friend,’ he said. ‘And about enough seamen on deck to man one of your damned piratical luggers. God help this poor fellow when I try to tie his arm up. She’s rolling like a mare in season!’
Seconds later a boatswain’s mate fell into the tiny sick-bay. He was streaming water and red in the face with exertion. ‘You!’ he said to Broad tersely. ‘Up. On deck. Aloft, damn you, and make it snappy.’
At that moment the Welfare made a plunge and roll combined that seemed to go on for ever. Broad felt his body turning over, while the corporal, who had been propped on his side, rolled down the deck like a piece of carpeting. The surgeon grabbed for him, staggered, and repeated a short, sharp oath over and over again. Broad could feel the timbers vibrating. He put up a hand, the boatswain’s mate seized it and jerked him upright. He hardly noticed the pain as they scuttled crabwise along the deck.
It was chaos. The frigate was lying over on her ear, and a huge jumble of spewing, cursing people had slipped from their places on the high side into a struggling pile on the low. There was shouting, screaming, and the frantic bellowing of animals in pain. Out of the murk boatswain’s mates appeared momentarily, thrashing with cane and rope, kicking and swearing. Broad ignored this rabble and crabbed along to a ladder. The Welfare was in trouble, and if this chaos was the response to a call for all hands, then God have mercy on her.
On deck, he was appalled by the tiny number of people visible. More than the crew of a ‘damned piratical lugger’ by a long way, but not enough, not enough. The short, high, grey seas were sweeping across the waist almost without pause. At the hatch he had to wait for nearly a minute before he could claw his way to the windward side in a frantic dash. The boatswain seized his arm at the last and hauled him to shelter.
‘Good man!’ he shouted.
The noise was dominated by a clapping like a succession of cannons. The fore topsail had blown out, and the remaining strips were cracking and creating like wild things. One of the headsails had gone too, which was perhaps a good thing, thought Jesse. The ship was struggling for her life, pressed down by a gust that was doing its immortal best to keep her under while the seas cleared her decks of every object, up to and including the masts. Even the life-lines which the boatswain had rigged so that men could hang above the seas as they moved along the decks were going under from time to time. Aft, the four men now at the wheel were in a bad dream, waist deep in water, white-faced, fighting.
‘Aloft, aloft!’ roared the master. ‘Hand main topsail!
Get him in, boys, get him in!’
It was all a whirl. Broad aloft, flattened against the yard by the enormous pressure of the wind, men on deck in a maelstrom of foam. A scream as a fellow he knew by sight flew over his head, smashed to the deck where he lay like a rag doll for a second, to disappear in a grey welter as the next sea smashed on board and creamed over the lee rail. A weird howling as the fore topgallant mast carried away. Well, that was no loss. The ship would be easier without it. But by God, he thought, this is a blow and a half ! Not that he thought coherently. He was weak, and the work was hard, and the old rule of one hand for the ship and one for himself went, as it always did, by the board. He fought hard wet canvas with his hands, his arms, his stomach and legs, his knees and elbows, even his teeth.
They saved her. Gradually the Welfare, canvas stripped, yards braced round to offer least resistance, rose sluggishly from her crippled-shoulder position, put her teeth to the wind, and began to ride them again. The men who had done the work stood in the lee of a shattered cutter and drank wine at the captain’s order. One boy stood and cried; his father was one of the lost three. One of the men too old, or too sick, to hang on.
The first part of Jesse’s prayer ended with the end of the storm’s climax. For an hour the frigate lay-to under bare poles with the rain and wind a moving shroud. Then the sky lightened, the wind .eased, the rain ceased. Still the seas broke over the battered ship, still the gale tore ceaselessly at her top-hamper. But the worst was over.
With merely a gale blowing, the hands were sent aloft to set canvas. More men were beaten up from below to handle headsail halyards and outhauls. A reef was shaken out of the main topsail. Half an hour later she lay bravely to the seas, belting up great gouts from bow and side as she clawed towards the Atlantic.
During the course of the afternoon the weather moderated, which made the hell below decks worse in some ways for those of the people who had collapsed earlier. The boatswain’s mates, freed from their duties on deck, lashed by the tongue of the boatswain who had in turn been lashed by Swift, lashed the moaning bodies below with everything at their disposal. Some discarded rope’s ends and cane for solider battens. Heads were broken and blood flowed. Swift would have had some of them shot, he averred to William, except that not a man-jack of the marines was capable of standing, let alone firing a musket.
William felt superb now that they had lived through the worst.
He had worked on the deck almost like one of the people, although he had not, of course, gone so far as to handle a rope. But he – and Jack too, to be fair – had been in the thick of it right the way through. He had been as sick as a dog, had been cut across the face by a wildly lashing sheet when it carried away, but he had kept his end up. He and Jack had even managed to kick a seaman as he stumbled past, for the act of stumbling. He was beginning to be able to tell the lubbers from the seamen, he thought. He was beside his uncle, who had crossed to the lee side of the quarterdeck to observe some wreckage floating by, when the master approached Swift and coughed deferentially.
‘Yes, Mr Robinson? What is in your mind?’ said Swift. ‘It is in my mind, sir, that she would stand a little more canvas. That it is time, also, to bend a new fore topsail. It is in my mind, sir, that this wind is a thought less powerful. I beg your pardon, sir.’
William looked at the master. He was not an inspiring man to see. Thin, and very ugly, with an attitude to his superiors that bordered on the indifferent. He had helped William, it was true.
But he had had to be asked, and passed on his knowledge in ways that were not easy to follow. He talked of ships as though they were thinking, feeling things. But he was a good master, nobody could gainsay it. William looked at the rigid, bellied sails, close-reefed and tiny against the towering, straining masts. He tried to detect a change. Why did Robinson think she could now stand more? But the mystery remained.
Captain Swift hardly glanced upwards.
‘As you say, Mr Robinson,’ he said. ‘As you say. Shake ’em out and welcome.’
He turned to William, very unexpectedly.
‘Like to go aloft, my boy?’ he said in a jovial voice. ‘Keep an eye on the scum, eh? Weather’s moderating, and it’s about time too.’