Another tale of my great daring, Marlowe thought, to be carried back to Williamsburg. A tale of how Marlowe spared the life of the man who tried to kill him. Such the gentleman, they will say, such a man of noble birth.
Only he and Bickerstaff and Allair understood that killing the man would have been the more merciful act.
“Now, men,” Marlowe addressed the crew of the Plymouth Prize, “I beg of you, lay down your weapons.”
Fifty muskets fell clattering to the deck.
An hour later the captain’s gig disappeared around a bend in the river, heading upstream to Jamestown. Along with Captain Allair went his great beast of a wife, who had happily decided to remain in the cabin during the confrontation. Had she been on deck, Marlowe would have actually been frightened.
As it was, her presence in the gig left little room for the Allairs’ personal belongings, which Marlowe assured them he would send back with the militia the next day. With the former captain properly disposed of, he took his place on the quarterdeck and summoned the crew aft.
“Good afternoon, men,” he said in as cheerful a tone as he could manage. “I am sorry for the little altercation that I had with your former captain, but I have no doubt it gave you some pleasant diversion.”
There were a few smiles at this, weak smiles. No one laughed. “My name is Captain Thomas Marlowe, and I have here orders from Governor Nicholson instructing me to take
command of the Plymouth Prize.” He quickly read through the orders, added some banal thing about attending to duty, and then dismissed them.
“Pray, sir,” one of the men spoke up, “but what shall we be doing now?”
Marlowe smiled. “We’ll be doing what the Plymouth Prize was sent here to do,” he said. “We shall be going forth and hunting down those roguish pirates.”
Chapter 8
A SHIP is a vegetable affair. Every part of it, save for those little bits of metalwork, was once a plant of some description. The frames and planks and decking, the hanging knees and clamps and wales, the very fabric of the vessel, all once were living oak, fir, longleaf yellow pine.
It is wood that holds the great mass together-pegs called tree nails, driven into holes bored through plank and frame and hammered home with great force. Then, between these wood planks, are pounded dried plant fibers in the form of oakum to render the hull watertight. And between the planks of the deck is poured the melted pitch of pine trees.
The masts rise from the deck like the great trees they once were. Their roots go down through weather deck, gun deck, and berthing deck to where they terminate in the dark hold, set into a notch in the keelson called a step.
But these roots are not so substantial that the mast can stand on its own, not with the tremendous pressure of sail it must carry. So the masts are set up with rigging: shrouds and stays, unwieldy lengths of cordage that are themselves woven from bits of dried plants and coated with tar distilled from the trunks of pine.
The shrouds come down to deadeyes, nicely worked, round pieces of wood pierced with three holes through which are rove smaller lines called lanyards. The lanyards in turn are held fast by thin and insubstantial lines called marlin, bound up in an elaborate knot called a seizings. Thus the whole machine, from the great bulk of the mainmast to the tiny seizings on the spritsail topmast shrouds, all work in consort to move this thing called a ship to wherever its masters deem it should go.
And every bit of it, from keel to truck, started its life as a living plant. And like all things that were once alive, it is all prone to rot.
And such was the state of the Plymouth Prize.
One look at the anchor cable and Marlowe knew the reason for this condition. From the point where it left the hawse hole to where it plunged into the river, that six-inch-thick rope was as dry and white as a bone, so long had it been exposed to the sun.
Just below the water’s surface a great mass of weed and scum held fast to the cable and streamed away in the current. The anchor had not been off the bottom, and the ship had not moved in quite some time. When a ship does not move, and her people do not look after her, she begins her quick return to a state of nature.
Had Marlowe understood the true condition of the Plymouth Prize, he might not have been so active in securing her command for himself. As it was, no sooner had Captain Allair disappeared upriver than the carpenter, who, like most of the men, was quick to accept the change of command, came to him and said, “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but might we have some men for the pumps?”
“Certainly,” said Marlowe. “How much water is there in the well?”
“Three feet, sir, and rising.”
“Three feet? When was she last pumped?”
“This morning watch, sir. Pumped dry.”
Marlowe’s mouth hung open at this news, despite himself. She had been pumped dry that morning, and already there
was three feet of water in the hold, and this while riding at anchor with no strain to speak of on her hull. In a seaway she would leak much worse, and in a gale she would not last an hour. But this was not the worst of it.
The mainmast had a great nasty section of black wood where the rot was eating away at it. The standing rigging was slack and in desperate need of fresh tar. A fine white powder fell from whatever piece of the running gear Marlowe took up and twisted open, a sure sign that the rope was rotten and would not bear any strain.
After sending half the men to the pumps, Marlowe sent the other half aloft to shake out the sails, it being his intention to let the canvas dry to a bowline. They climbed with great care, taking each step slowly, lest the rope on which they stood break and they fall to deck.
On the fore topsail yard he saw a man put his foot clean through the rotten fabric of the sail.
Another man, loosening off the main topsail, was halfway out the yard when the footrope on which he stood gave out under him and he fell screaming from that great height. All about the ship men froze, aghast, as the unhappy soul bounced off the main top, hit the main yard with a thump that sent him spinning, and plunged into the river. But despite all that, they fished him out, fully alive but shaken, and after a few cups of rum he was quite set up again.
It was a prodigious amount of work that the Plymouth Prize needed to put her in fighting trim, if, indeed, she could ever again hope to achieve that exalted state. And Marlowe understood that if she could not, then he, Bickerstaff, and all of the Prizes might well be dead within the week.
This much and more Marlowe discussed with Bickerstaff as they trudged across the western beach of Smith Island toward the low grassy hills and clusters of trees in the middle of that place.
It was late afternoon, the day after he had taken command of the Plymouth Prize. The guardship was still where they had
found her, being readied for sea by First Lieutenant William Rakestraw, whom Marlowe hoped, after a lengthy interview, was at heart an able officer, grown dull under Allair’s lethargy.
Behind them, riding at anchor in the shallow bay, was the sloop Northumberland. Marlowe had left her small crew aboard, had taken only Bickerstaff and King James with him. No one else needed to know what they were about. He trusted no one else to walk with him into the lion’s den.
“Admit it, Tom, she’s worse off than you had imagined,” said Bickerstaff. “Even I can see that. She needs prodigious work. And not a sort of tidying up, either, blacking down the rig and sweeping up the decks and that sort of thing. No, she needs careening, she needs a new mainmast, she needs new running gear rove off, a new suit of sails.”
“Honestly, Francis, how you go on. You would think the ship is sinking under our feet.”