But military efficiency alone did not account for the pace with which the men worked. In this instance it was fear, mostly fear, that drove them, for they knew that McDuff was looking for an excuse to beat someone half to death. They could see it in the way that he stamped around the deck, and the way he kept his starter in constant motion, slashing at one man, then another. With Dibdin below and Smeaton staring wistfully ashore and taking the occasional shot at floating debris with his dueling pistol, there was no one to stop McDuff. He cursed and yelled and kicked until the men worked as fast as they were physically capable of working, but still he did not ease up. Even Longbottom stayed out of the bosun's wy.
It was past noon, with the men working through dinner, when Smeaton spotted the Icarus's gig, which had at last been cleared away and sent after Pendexter, putting off from the shore.
"I say, Mr McDuff!" Smeaton shouted from the quarterdeck. "I do believe that the captain is on his way back."
McDuff squinted in the direction of the shore just long enough to see for himself, then began alternately shouting orders and kicking men out of his way.
"Side boys! Get those motherless side boys up here!" he shouted. "Man the sides! Rig side ropes, and get those goddamned gloves for the side boys! Get this deck squared away, now!"
Men rushed in every direction as the deck was tidied and the sides manned as if to welcome an admiral. Israel Barrett scooped up the last balls of marline and tossed them down the forward scuttle just as Mr Midshipman Appleby, steering the little gig, called for the boat's crew to toss oars.
The boat crew had pulled with a will, and Appleby had waited too long to toss oars. Biddlecomb grimaced as Appleby, now pale with fright, turned the boat a second too late. The gig struck the Icarus's side with a force that made the brig shudder. Biddlecomb braced himself for the tirade that Pendexter would unleash on the boy, but nothing came. Bloody Wilson in the bow hooked on and the gig rode at the ship's side.
As soon as Pendexter's head came level with with the Icarus's deck, McDuff and Longbottom let loose with their bosun's pipes. Pendexter stepped up the boarding steps into all of the pomp and circumstance that Icarus could muster.
"Stop that damnable noise, McDuff, and get us to short peak, now," the captain said as he brushed past, his eyes on the deck. Biddlecomb could see that his hands were trembling. "Smeaton, get us under way. Get us out of this damned harbor!" he shouted as he passed the stunned first officer. He jerked open the door to the after scuttle, slamming it against the quarterdeck rail, then disappeared into the darkness below.
Biddlecomb felt sick, profoundly sick. They were getting under way! Even if Clacous had received his note, they would be gone before he could respond. He looked desperately around, as if help would come from some hidden corner of the deck.
But there was no one who could help him, and already the gig was rising from the water and swaying inboard as the hands tailed on to the boat falls, and amidships men began to walk the capstan around, hauling the Icarus up to her anchor.
"We're getting under way..." Biddlecomb heard a voice behind him, familiar but weak. He turned around. John Haliburton was standing there, his bare chest and shoulders still flaked with blood, two weeks' growth of beard on his face, his skin white from his time below. He stared around the deck as if unsure of where he was.
"Yes, John, I'm sorry," Biddlecomb said, trying to comfort his shipmate even while he himself felt overwhelmed with despair. "I thought I could get a note—"
"You said you could get us off this brig. You said you have a friend," Haliburton interrupted, his voice low and choked as if he were on the verge of crying.
"I thought I could, but..." Biddlecomb began again, and then McDuff loomed up behind them. Biddlecomb reached out to jerk Haliburton out of the way, but before he could, McDuff's starter came down across Haliburton's raw back. Haliburton gasped and staggered forward. Biddlecomb could see blood running down the length of McDuff's starter.
"Glad you're up and about, you Yankee bastard," McDuff sneered. "Now get on that capstan and heave around."
Haliburton stared at McDuff, his eyes wild, but the strength and contentiousness that made haliburton himself were gone. He staggered back one step, then two.
"John, please, just follow orders," Biddlecomb said, and McDuff rewarded him with a slash of the rattan cane across his face. Biddlecomb could feel the blood running down his cheek.
McDuff turned back to Haliburton, starter raised over his head. "To the capstan, Jonathan." Haliburton looked at Biddlecomb, then at McDuff. He shook his head slowly, then turned and leapt through the gangway into the harbor, flailing in the air and smacking down in a shower of spray. He went under, then regained the surface and with awkward strokes began swimming toward the shore.
"You son of a whore!" McDuff shouted. "Avast heaving the capstan! clap the boat falls on that gig! Gig crew—"
The crack of a pistol drowned out his voice and silenced the chaos on deck.
Biddlecomb spun around and looked aft. Smeaton was standing there, a faint smile on his face, the smoking gun in his right hand. Through the red-tinged water Biddlecomb could see Haliburton's body sinking slowly to the bottom, arms outstretched, half of his head blown away. Biddlecomb looked back toward the quarterdeck, and Smeaton was smiling down at him. He held up the other pistol and pulled the cock back. The click was loud on the silent deck. "Anyone else care to try for a run ashore?"
Biddlecomb clenched his fists at his sides as he fought the urge to charge at the quarterdeck, and then he was struck from behind, a line of pain shooting across his back.
He turned. McDuff was there, his starter dangling in his hand. "You said you could get us off this brig," he mocked Biddlecomb with Haliburton's words. "You was a real help to him, wasn't you, you worthless bastard."
Biddlecomb blinked and stared at McDuff.
"Get your arse down in the cable tier and see if that cheers you up," the boatswain said, and raised his starter again. Biddlecomb fled aft down the hatch.
Biddlecomb stood in silence, in the dark, sweltering cable tier. He had let himself believe that the nightmare would end in Barbados, that he and Rumstick wouls escape before Rumstick killed someone, before he himself or Haliburton lost his mind.
But there was no chance of that now; they were still in bondage, heading for sea again, and Rhode Island and Virginia were farther away than ever. Overhead he heard the capstan turning, and slowly the cable came down to him, wet and coated with mud and stinking of all the filth on the bottom of the harbor. Biddlecomb took up the heavy line and laid it out in the cable tier as it came in, grateful for the darkness below that would hide his angry and desperate tears.
Chapter 17.
The Privateersman
THE PISTOL SHOT AND THE GROANING of the capstan and the click of the pawls at last made Capt. James Pendexter raise his head off his desk. He stared around the great cabin, as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes rested on the wine reck and he recalled that he still had one bottle of the excellent port left. For an instant he was cheered by that thought, and then his misery and humiliation flooded back.
The admiral, as it turned out, had waited forty minutes from the time his flag was flown to Pendexter's arrival, a geological age for an admiral. And he had witnessed the entire botched anchoring from his third-story balcony, from the moment the Icarus had entered the harbor with all plain sail to the moment she had come to rest on the schooner's side. It was Pendexter's bad luck that the schooner had already captured a number of small but quite valuable prizes, greatly increasing the admiral's wealth, and he was more than disappointed to see it rendered unseaworthy for the sake of Pendexter's showing off.