A shout from bow oar brought him back to reality with a heavy crunch. They had rammed, or been rammed by, another craft. Whoever the strangers were and whoever was at fault, they meant the wherry no good, for they neither shouted in outraged reply nor screamed in panic, but swarmed aboard the double scull out of the fog in a confusing rush. The bow oar was quickly overwhelmed, and Hoare, as he drew his sword, heard him splash into the Thames and go gurgling off. Thames boatmen, like blue water sailors, seldom swam. Beside him, Hoare sensed that Thoday had drawn the blade of his sword cane.
Stroke oar was more alert than his mate, more courageous, or simply did not want to lose his livelihood and his craft, for he grappled with the first of the boarders. The wherry tilted alarmingly. Thoday lost his balance and began to topple over the side. Hoare heard the slim cane-sword clatter into the wherry's bilges. He grabbed his shipmate under one arm and pulled him back aboard, out of danger, as a second boarder scrambled aft with a rush past stroke oar and his struggling attacker, followed by a third. It was two against two in the dark, then.
Hoare's own particular foe clawed for his eyes, but a knee in the bollocks stopped him with an agonized gasp, and the clawing stopped. Hoare thrust the heel of his free hand under the man's jaw and pushed, hard. Over he went, backwards. Hoare could now turn to Thoday's aid. As far as he could tell, the man on top was a boarder, for he smelt vile. Thoday, he realized fleetingly, was a cleanly man, as well as lacking his adversary's weight.
Hoare had his target. Without finesse, he hacked his sword into the boarder's back. With a shriek, the man collapsed upon Thoday. Hoare freed his sword and turned to the struggling pair amidships to see if he could tell friend from enemy. If so, he could bear a hand. What with their thrashing, he could not, and stood helpless.
But still another boarder was coming aft, balancing himself carefully as he came, as though he, too, knew something about messing about in boats. But, perhaps, not quite enough. Hoare thrust down with one foot, then with the other, setting the double scull a-rocking steeply-so steeply, in fact, that a wash of Thames water came over the larboard coaming. Then he reversed the motion. Back in Canada, up the Saguenay, he had seen French lumberjacks match skills that way on a log. The one who stayed out of the river was the winner. The young Hoare had at least tried this "burling" against a Canadian friend, and had gotten well soaked every time, but he had at least tried it. This opponent had not. Hoare saw him flail his arms wildly, saw him fail to regain his balance, saw him teeter and fall. He fell flat, with a clumsy splash that soaked Hoare's face and shoulders.
He could see the other craft now, the one that had carried the boarders. Swinging in the tide, it was drawing alongside them. It was a pair-oar, propelled by sweeps and not by sculls, somewhat longer and beamier than their own craft, and it held a single passenger in its stern sheets. He was near enough to grip, and Hoare gripped him. He pulled him into the double scull, where he threw him into the bilges and sat upon him, panting heavily.
So sitting, he could give his full attention to untangling stroke oar and his opponent who were still battling in the bilges. Appearing from aft, Thoday gripped one figure's hair. Hoare dropped his sword and followed suit with the other.
"This one's ours," Thoday grunted, and struck Hoare's man behind the ear with a heavy object. There was silence, broken only by panting breath all around, the gentle wash of water in the bilge, and the smothered whimpers of the visitor upon which Hoare was perching. The perch, he now realized, was a woman. He could tell by its feel.
"Bert," stroke oar said in a muffled voice. "Where's Bert?"
Hoare was about to break the news to him that Bert had been lost overside, when the missing man hauled himself wearily up and in, over the wherry's square counter.
" 'Ere I be, Matthew, no thanks to you," Bert gasped.
Thoday was breathing heavily. "Well, sir, that's the second time this thing has come in handy." In his hand, he held the falcon figurine from Mr. Ambler's rooms. Even in the dark, Hoare could tell it had drawn blood.
In the heat of battle, one of the wherry's sculls had been lost overside. Besides, the man Bert was in no condition to row, and Hoare frankly doubted that Thoday had ever learned how.
"We haven't reached Greenwich yet," he whispered to the man Matthew. "Move us along, if you please."
"Wot, all by myself, after jest fightin' off a pirate crew? Take an oar yourself, mate."
"Pipe down and row."
The man began to complain bitterly.
"You hardly have a right to complain," Hoare told Matthew between heaving breaths. "Look here… you've gotten yourselves a prize out of this night's work." He had quietly cleated to the scull's counter the pair-oar's painter, which its last occupant had brought aboard with him as any good waterman should.
"Come on, Bert, bear an 'and," Matthew told his mate.
"Wot, wif only one oar?" Bert's voice was slurred. " 'Ere then, you, budge over and gimme room." Elbowing Thoday out of his way, Bert stuck the odd scull between the thole pins and took up Matthew's rhythm. They began to make a sidling headway through the fog, the captured pair-oar towing dismally in their wake.
With Thoday's help, Hoare busied himself with securing their captives, including the woman he had been using in lieu of a thwart. She seemed to be a young person. When she began to protest at being mishandled, in a whispered snarl he ordered her to pipe down if she knew what was good for her. The rasp he produced apparently cowed her, for she piped down and let herself be trussed.
Allowing for the state of the tide, Hoare judged, the wherry and their captive pirates might have drifted to within hailing distance of Royal Duke. He put his fingers in his mouth and uttered his deafening general-purpose whistle. As he did so, he saw, no more than a few fathoms to starboard, the loom of some vessel. It reached well above their heads, and the wherry was sweeping past her.
"Ahoy the boat!" came a voice from her deck. Hoare nudged Thoday.
"Identify me," he whispered.
"Royal Duke," Thoday called, thus announcing that they were carrying the yacht's commander.
"Ask 'em if they know her whereabouts."
"D'ye know where she lies?"
Hoare could hear a mutter of consultation. Then, "Two or three cables downstream. Atropos lies next below us, then Leopard, then your brig."
Atropos. Twenty-two guns. Hornblower's sloop. A nothing perhaps, but vastly more powerful in comparison with his own command, just as her captain was vastly more powerful than a mere Commander Bartholomew Hoare. It would have been a pleasure to stop and pay a call on Hornblower, but it would have been neither right nor proper. Besides being a new father, Hornblower, he knew, was preparing his ship for sea and would have no time to waste on a casual midnight call from a subordinate officer, no matter how friendly he might be.
"What ship is that?" Thoday called to their guide, echoing his commander's whisper.
"Guerriere!" came the reply.
"Thank you, Guerriere!"
They rowed on past two more ghostly forms, before Hoare repeated his shrill whistle. He did so again, and then again, until, muffled perhaps by the fog, he heard a faint call in reply.
"Pull for the sound, men, pull for the sound," he whispered.