"What's he doing? If he's a privateer, why attack a man-of-war?"
"Probably wanted to see if he was escorting a convoy. He sees we ain't so he takes a shot for fun and he's gone."
"Has it occurred to you that if we catch them, we'll be forced to fight them? Our own countrymen?"
"We won't catch them. See how he gets his squares in?"
"Sponge!" cried the number-five gun captain, and Biddlecomb realized with a start that that meant him. He was finally getting a chance to fire the guns and he was not even paying attention. He plunged his swab in the water bucket and drove it hissing down the barrel, stealing a glance at the fleeing schooner as he did. Her square sails, topsails and topgallant sail, were clewed up, and already men were laying out on her yards and fisting the canvas.
The Icarus could have outsailed the schooner on any point of sail, save this one. In the present circumstance, sailing close-hauled, the Elizabeth's massive fore and aft sails would allow her to point several points higher than the square-rigged Icarus could ever hope to make. As long as the chase was to weather, the Yankee was safe.
"You're right," Biddlecomb said to Rumstick. "Unless something carries away, we won't catch her now."
"We sure as hell ain't going to catch her if Pendexter don't turn the bloody ship!" Harland grumbled as he shoved a fresh cartridge down the barrel of the gun.
He was right in that. The Icarus, still on its old course, was moving perpendicular to and away from its quarry.
"Silence fore and aft! Shut your bloody gobs!" McDuff, now down from the masthead, fairly screamed. "Who give you bastards leave to talk?" He wound up with his starter and struck hard at the man nearest to him. Silence fell over the deck.
"Hands to braces!" Dibdin shouted from the quarterdeck, and the men scrambled to their lines, casting off coils and taking turns off belaying pins. "Starboard tack, sharp as she'll go! Let go and haul!"
The yards squealed as they came farther around, and the Icarus heeled hard over through the turn. The men sweated and heaved to the accompaniment of curses and lashings from the bosun and his mate until the yards would come no farther.
"Lay into those bowlines!" Dibdin shouted. "Put some weight in them, as much as they'll take! Come, Mr McDuff, mind your business!" and the men hauled until the bowlines were as taut as harp strings and the Icarus was sailing as close to the wind as she was able.
Biddlecomb looked over the starboard bow. The Elizabeth was sailing closer still, not much, but enough that she would inch away from the Icarus. By nightfall she would be gone, and Pendexter could do not one thing to prevent it.
For half an hour the Icarus was silent in an unnatural, anxious way. The men stood at their stations, no one daring to make a sound, watching the schooner draw steadily away. Once Smeaton fired his pistols at a passing turtle, the crack of the guns making the men leap. That and the clumping of McDuff's boots as he prowled the deck were the only sounds to be heard above the rush of water down the side.
"Mr Smeaton!" Pendexter shouted at last, his voice sounding odd after the silence. "We shall fall off to present a broadside. Every man is to aim with care. I want that pirate crippled!"
Orders flew down the deck and the sail trimmers prepared their lines as the gun captains again crouched low over the guns and the handspike men stood ready. Every man aboard was greatly relieved to have a job to do, something to break the terrible silence.
Biddlecomb looked down the deck and saw that all was in readiness, every man concentrating on his task. On the quarterdeck Pendexter held his glass to his eye. He nodded his head and Dibdin stepped up to the rail.
"Helm's a-weather!" he shouted, and the Icarus swung round, her starboard battery coming to grip with the enemy. Biddlecomb tensed, waiting for the moment when the guns would bear, anxious for the men to do well and so avoid Pendexter's wrath, but not so well that the Elizabeth would be caught.
And then number-eleven gun fired, a deafening blast. Biddlecomb dropped his swab in surprise, and he saw Pendexter drop his telescope, glass spewing from the end. The gun leapt inboard, over the foot of the handspike man, who fell, shrieking in agony. Blood poured from his shattered foot and spread across the deck.
"God damn you to hell!" screamed Pendexter at the stammering, frightened gun crew.
"Sorry, sir, it were an accident," said the gun captain.
"God damn your accidents!" Pendexter shouted. "Mr McDuff, a dozen for each man on this gun crew at first light tomorrow, do you hear?" McDuff nodded.
"Now," Pendexter continued, gesturing toward the sobbing man on the deck, "get him below and get back to your gun, or God help me it shall be two dozen each!"
Three men from number-eleven gun picked their fallen mate off the deck and carried him below, the motion making him scream with renewed vigor.
Biddlecomb glanced over the starboard side, looking for the Elizabeth, and was surprised to find her gone. He was confused for a moment, then realized that all the while the brig must have continued to turn. He looked aft. The Elizabeth was now broad on the starboard quarter, and the two vessels were moving in opposite directions.
"Round up! Round up, God damn you, Mr Dibdin, are you an idiot?" Pendexter shouted. The helm shifted and the Icarus began the turn to weather. "Now, you motherless imbeciles," Pendexter addressed the men, "fire as your guns bear, and not a moment before or after."
The Elizabeth came into sight once more as the Icarus turned in her wake. Number-thirteen gun was the first to bear and it fired at the schooner, then number eleven, which remained silent, half her gun crew below tending their mate. Number nine came to bear and went off with a crash. Biddlecomb could see the fall of the shot, three cable length short of the schooner. Number seven fired, and five, all down the starboard side, each gun laid as well as its out-of-practice crew was able, each gun missing by a cable length or more. When at last the Icarus came up in the Elizabeth's wake, still unable to point as high as the schooner, she had lost half a mile in the chase.
"Mr McDuff," Pendexter yelled, his voice calmer than it had been, "start the fresh water please."
Biddlecomb was surprised by this order. By "start the water" Pendexter meant that all the fresh water should be let to run into the bilges where it could be pumped overboard to lighten the vessel. This seemed excessive, considering that they would still never catch the schooner.
Ten minutes later the fresh water was streaming over the side. Ten minutes after that the carpenter was knocking the wedges out of the mast. And in another ten minutes the sail trimmers were sent below to carry round shot to the windward side, all in an effort to coax an extra half a knot out of the flying brig. And Biddlecomb admitted to himself, reluctantly, that they were moving faster. But the Elizabeth was still pointing higher.
He was running his eye over the trim of the Elizabeth's sails, noting how Page had let the main out just a hair farther than seemed right, when the stern of the schooner coughed gray clouds of smoke and two plumes of water shot out of the sea, two hundred feet in front of the Icarus.
"He's rigged stern chasers, by God!" Rumstick marveled.
"Don't look so pleased, Ezra. We're being shot at," Biddlecomb reminded him.
"Didn't take too bloody long to get them guns aft, either," Rumstick noted in a softer voice.