That was awkward in the crowded barge; it was even more so when they stopped to raise the mast, step, and brace it. That gave her something to do; she shifted over to the windward rail, along with everyone else except the coxswain at the tiller, sitting on it to fight the heel and make the boat stiffer as it raced across the wind toward the stricken Merrimac.
Under the urgent focus on the task ahead ran the sheer exuberant satisfaction of the cutter's racing speed, the sea hissing past six inches away-less when they crested one of the huge waves and white water burst around them. She fought down an urge to whoop and grin as the bow went up… up… up; then the great jerk of acceleration on the crest as the sail caught the full force of the stiff wind and cracked taut. And the long roller-coaster swoop down the skin of the gray-blue swell, with goose-wings of spray flying higher than her head from the boat's bows and the curving wake racing aft.
For a moment she was a skinny black girl in faded cutoffs and a T-shirt again, dancing with excitement in a little dinghy as it tossed in a yachtsman's wake off Prince Island.
Swindapa did whoop, and the coxswain gave an exultant tribal screech, half-standing at the crest to get another sight of the Merrimac's sails, leaning expertly into the tiller and calling directions to the hands at the lines. Soon enough they could see the mountain peaks ahead to the southeast, and then the stumpy tops of the ship's mutilated masts.
"Ready to let go!" Denniston called. The hull came up be-side them, looming a dozen feet overhead. There were plenty of ropes overside, and a few of the Merrimac's hands waving and calling. "Ready to fend… let go the sail!"
The cutter turned up alongside the ship, and the sail rattled down. Alston moved to take one of the ropes and secure the bows with a running bowline knot. "Denniston, I'm going to rig for tow," she said crisply. "When I do, tail on to the line and haul away; I want her head about five points up and as much way as you can."
"Yes, ma'am." A hesitation. "Ma'am, we're not going to tow this bitch free-not even with all the boats."
"I'm aware of that, Petty Officer Denniston," Alston said. "Every bit helps, though."
"Ma'am. Aye, aye, ma'am!"
She nodded, gripped the rope, braced her feet against the slick heaving planks of the ship's side, and swarmed up hand over hand. The others followed, and the gear; she was looking about, taking in the details. Not much was recognizable of the trim, neat new ship she'd boarded in Westhaven. Hmmm. Wheel's still functional.
"Where's Captain Clammp?" she said, striding over to a young man she recognized as one of his officers. "I need a report on the status of the ship."
Red-rimmed eyes blinked at her from behind thick spectacles. "Thank God you're here, ma'am," the young man said. His face worked for an instant, as if he was about to burst into tears, then stiffened. "Ma'am, Captain Clammp was injured when the foremast gave way-knocked down-when the wind shifted. He's been unconscious ever since. We… ah, we lost five hands, including Lieutenant Stendins." Which had left this teenager in command, probably on his first voyage out of home waters. "Several more were injured. We…" he made a helpless gesture toward the chaos of the ship.
Marian Alston put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Son, you kept the ship afloat through as bad a blow as I've seen," she said. "Now help's on the way. I need to know everything."
While he told her, Swindapa was directing the unloading of the boats arriving from the frigates. The Merrimacs staggered away from the pumps, and fresh hands began plunging the levers up and down; a tow cable with an empty hogshead on the end for a buoy went overside and the boats made fast, strung out and began to pull the Merrimac's prows to the west of south. Captain Clammp came by, bandaged like a mummy and lashed to a stretcher, to go overside into boats and be rowed out to the warships.
"You've done a fine job," Marian said to young Clammp. "Now rest."
He staggered off. The new hands at the pumps were swinging the levers vigorously, and there was a perceptible increase in the jets of water going overside. One of them started a chanty, and the others took it up:
"They say life has its ups and downs;
That really now, is quite profound!
I'd like to push the captsan 'round,
But it's pump her mates, before we drown!"
More men and women came running to gather around her as she made a high beckoning gesture with the fingers of both hands; the motion of the ship changed beneath her feet as the added thrust of sixty or seventy strong backs swinging ashwood oars came on to the towline. She looked around at the circle of faces; a couple of ensigns, a lieutenant, and half a dozen experienced petty officers and chiefs-ship's carpenters, rigging specialists.
"Pump me mates Pump her dry;
Down to hell, up to the sky-
Bend your backs and break your bones
We're just a thousand miles from home!"
"All right, people, we need to lighten this ship and get some sail on her," Alston said briskly. "Guns overside. Get the auxiliary pumps started; once you've made some headway in the hold, start her fresh water overside as well-stores, this clutter on deck, everything that can be heaved to the rail except her main cargo." Most of which was far too bulky and heavy to move anyway. "Chips?"
The Lincoln's master carpenter jerked a thumb westward to where two more boats were towing bundles of white pine spars, seventy feet long and a foot and a half thick in the middle.
"With those spars, ma'am, we can do jury masts on the main and fore-scarf and wold 'em. That'll give you something. It'll take a while."
"Sometimes when I am in me bed
And thinkin' of the day ahead;
I wish that I could wake up dead-
But pumpin's all I get instead!"
"Get it done in the next fifty minutes or there's no point," she said over the sound of the chanty. "I want the rigging ready to go up and the sails, too." She pointed ahead, to where the breakers made a white line to their south and east. "The swell, tide, and wind are all shoving us toward that. We need to bring her head around five points, and get some real way on her- five knots, more would be better-and the wind's not favorable." Not dead in their teeth, but coming in over the starboard quarter.
She tapped a fist into a pink palm. "We need what's on board to win this war; to keep it, we have to save this ship, so that's exactly what we're going to do, people. Let's do it; let's go."
They gave a short, sharp cheer and scattered to their work at a run. Alston watched them go, fighting down a ferocious impatience. Who knew what devilments Isketerol might be up to, might get up to in the future, if they gave him time?
Swindapa came up and handed her a piece of hardtack. She looked down at the hard gray-brown crackerlike rectangle, puzzled for an instant, then ahead at the cliffs they'd be passing- hopefully passing, and not running into-in an hour or two.
"If Jack Aubrey could get close enough to those rocks to hit 'em with a ship's biscuit, why not me?" she said, matching Swindapa's grin for a brief instant. It was good to remember that there was more to the world than their present trouble.
The chanty went on, pounding to the rumble and splash of the pumps:
"Yes how I wish that I could die,
The swine who built this tub to find;
I'd drag him back from where he fries,