Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars Read Online Free PDF Page B

Charles shuffled across the deck and down the ladderway to his cabin. Careful not to wake his steward, he sloughed his oilskins and his uniform coat, slipped off his shoes, and climbed into his bed otherwise fully clothed. By ten minutes after twelve, he was fast asleep.
    At one o’clock he sat bolt upright. He could hear that the wind had risen to an eerie high-pitched whistle, and he could actually feel the vibration of the rigging through the deck.
Louisa
plunged raggedly and seemed to stagger each time the bow dropped before rising again. More seriously, something had come badly adrift, its banging sending rhythmic jolts the length of the ship. Attwater pushed his way through the curtain to the sleeping cabin with a small lantern. Charles was already frantically searching in the darkness for his shoes.
    “You’re wanted on deck. The weather’s up,” Attwater announced.
    On the ladderway to the quarterdeck, an insane wind grabbed at his flapping overcoat, filling it like a sail. He clutched tightly at the rail to keep from being blown overboard. He pulled his coat together with his fists and struggled onto the deck. Talmage came across to him immediately. “Mizzen topmast … carried away,” he yelled, and gestured upward. Charles could see the mass of loose halyards and stays snapping in the wind, the topmast section entangled below, swinging with the roll of the ship and hammering furiously against the still-standing lower mast.
Why
hasn’t Talmage dealt with it before now?
    Angry but unable to express it, he yelled, “Cut—it—loose—over— side!”
    Louisa
was being pounded mercilessly by the sea, burying her bow with each oncoming wave. She could not withstand this kind of punishment long. Eliot stood at his usual place by the wheel, and Charles started toward him. A vicious gust swept the ship, laying her over nearly on her beam ends. Charles clutched at the binnacle to keep from sliding down the sharply canted deck. For a moment he hung from the box with no purchase for his feet. He found Eliot’s sturdy form beside him, his hand clutching the back of Charles’s coat, the way a mother cat picks up a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and pulling him to his feet.
    Charles took a speaking trumpet from its place in the binnacle, put the horn directly over the master’s ear, and shouted into the mouthpiece, “We will bear away and run before the wind.”
    Eliot nodded vigorously.
    Charles knew too well that turning the ship from lying to, with the bow taking the wind and waves head-on, and swinging to present her stern to the elements presented two significant perils. First, as she fell off with the wind, her vulnerable side would be exposed to the seas, where she would be in danger of being rolled over or swamped, either an ordeal from which she might not recover. Further, once she was around, she would immediately require sufficient speed to prevent the onrushing waves from sweeping over her from behind and driving her under, stern first. He saw that Winchester had arrived on deck and beckoned him to approach. Using the speaking trumpet as he had with Eliot, he found that he could speak almost normally. “We will wear ship and put her before the wind,” he said. “The instant she is around, set the main topsail, close-reefed, then haul down the staysail.”
    “Aye-aye,” Winchester shouted and started forward.
    Charles could neither see the seas nor gauge when to begin the turn except through the deck as
Louisa
’s bow began to rise. There was no point in waiting. “Hard aport!” he screamed at Eliot, too far away to hear; he windmilled his arm to signal his intent. He watched closely as the helm came over. Immediately, the ship’s head began to fall off, the turn accelerating as the wind caught the fore staysail sideways and pushed her around like a weather vane. The force came broadside on, heeling the ship more sharply.
Pray God we aren’t swamped.
They were in the trough between the waves,