“Mr. Cudahy! Take a watch below and bring arms aloft!”
“Aye, aye, sorr!” Cudahy, the first mate, was a black-haired Irishman with dancing eyes, and he wore a golden earring.
“Steady as she goes! Deck watch! Prepare cannon! Load grape!”
The men flung themselves at the cannons, wheeled them out of their ports, charged them with grape and wheeled them back again.
“Number-three gun crew an extra tot of rum! Number eighteen to clean out the bilges!”
There were cheers and curses.
It was a custom Struan had started many years ago. When going into a fight the first gun crew ready was rewarded and the last was given the dirtiest job on the ship.
Struan scanned the sky and the tautness of the sails and turned the binoculars on the huge war junk. It had many cannon ports and a dragon for a figurehead and a flag which at this distance was still indistinct. Struan could see dozens of Chinese thronging the decks and torches burning.
“Get the water barrels ready!” Orlov shouted.
“What’re the water barrels for, Father?” Culum said.
“To douse fires, lad. The junks have torches burning. They’ll be well stocked with fire rockets and stink bombs. Stink bombs’re made from pitch and sulphur. They can make havoc of a clipper if you’re na prepared.” He looked aft. The other flotilla of junks was surging into the channel behind them.
“We’re cut off, aren’t we?” Culum said, his stomach turning over.
“Aye. But only a fool’d go that way. Look at the wind, lad. That way we’d have to beat up against it, and something tells me it’d shift farther against us soon. But for’ard we’ve the wind and the speed of any junk. See how ponderous they are, laddie! Like cart horses against us—a greyhound. We’ve ten times the firepower, ship to ship.”
One of the halyards at the top of the mainmast parted abruptly and the spar screamed, smashing itself against the mast, the sail flapping free.
“Port watch aloft!” Struan roared. “Send up the royal lift line!”
Culum watched the seamen claw out onto the spar almost at the top of the mainmast, the wind ripping at them, hanging on with nails and toes, knowing he could never do that. He felt the fear bile in his stomach and could not forget what Orlov had said: blood on your hands. Whose blood? He lurched for the gunnel and vomited.
“Here, laddie,” Struan said, offering the water bag that hung from a belaying pin.
Culum pushed it away, hating his father for noticing that he had been sick.
“Clean your mouth out, by God!” Struan’s voice was harsh.
Culum obeyed miserably and did not notice that the water actually was cold tea. He drank some of it and it made him sick again. Then he rinsed out his mouth and sipped sparingly, feeling dreadful.
“First time I went into battle I was sick as a drunk gillie—sicker than you can imagine. And frightened to death.”
“I don’t believe it,” Culum replied weakly. “You’ve never been afraid or sick in your life.”
Struan grunted. “Well, you can believe it. It was at Trafalgar.”
“I didn’t know you were there!” In his astonishment Culum momentarily forgot his nausea.
“I was a powder monkey. The navy uses children on the capital ships to carry powder from the magazine to the gundecks. The passageway has to be as small as possible to lessen the chance of fire and the whole ship exploding.” Struan remembered the roaring guns and the screams of the wounded, limbs scattered on the deck, slippery with blood—and stench of blood and redness of the scuppers. Smell of vomit in the never-ending black little tunnel, slimy with vomit. Groping up to the exploding guns with kegs of powder, then groping down another time into the horrifying darkness, lungs on fire, heart a violent machine, terror tears streaming—hour after hour. “I was frightened to death.”
“You were really at Trafalgar?”
“Aye. I was seven. I was the oldest of my group but the most afraid.” Struan clapped his son warmly on the shoulder. “So dinna worry. Nae anything wrong in that.”
“I’m not afraid now, Father. It’s just the stench of the hold.”
“Dinna fool yoursel’. It’s the stench of the blood you think you smell—and the fear it’ll be your own.”
Culum quickly hung over the side of the ship as he retched again. Though the wind was brisk, it would not blow the sick sweet smell out of his head or the words of Orlov from his brain.
Struan went over to the brandy keg and drew a tot and handed it to Culum and watched while he drank it.
“Beggin’ yor pardon, sirr,” the steward said. “The bath wot was ordered be ready, sirr.”
“Thank you.” Struan waited until the steward had joined his gun crew, then he said to Culum, “Go below, lad.”
Culum felt the humiliation well in him. “No. I’m fine here.”
“Go below!” Though it was an order, it was given gently, and Culum knew that he was being allowed the chance to go below and save face.
“Please, Father,” he said, near tears. “Let me stay. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. I’ve been in this sort of danger a thousand times, so it’s easy for me. I know what to expect. Go below, lad. There’s time enough to bathe and come back on deck. And be part of a fight, if fight it is. Please go below.”
Despondently, Culum obeyed.
Struan turned his attention to Robb, who was leaning on the gunnel, gray-faced. Struan thought for a moment, then walked over to him. “Would you do me a favor, Robb? Keep the lad company? He’s na feeling well at all.”
Robb forced a smile. “Thanks, Dirk. But this time I need to stay. Sick or not. Is it an invasion armada?”
“Nay, lad. But dinna worry. We can blast a way through them if need be.”
“I know. I know.”
“How’s Sarah? She’s very near her time, is she na? Sorry, I forgot to ask.”
“She’s well as most women feel with a few weeks to go. I’ll be glad when the waiting’s over.”
“Aye.” Struan turned away and adjusted the course a shade.
Robb forced his mind off the junks that seemed to fill the sea ahead. I hope it’s another girl, he thought. Girls are so much easier to raise than boys. I hope she’s like Karen. Dear little Karen!
Robb hated himself again for shouting at her this morning—was it only this morning that they had all been together in
Thunder Cloud? Karen had disappeared, and Sarah and he had thought she had fallen overboard. They were frantic and when the search had begun, Karen had come blithely on deck from the hold where she had been playing. And Robb had been so relieved that he had shouted at her, and Karen had fled sobbing into her mother’s arms. Robb had cursed his wife for not looking after Karen more carefully, knowing that it was not Sarah’s fault, but being unable to stop himself. Then in a few minutes little Karen was like any child, in easy laughter, everything forgotten. And he and Sarah were like any parents, still sick with mutual anger, everything not forgotten . . .
Fore and aft, the junk fleets were blocking
China Cloud’s avenues of escape. Robb saw his brother leaning against the binnacle, casually lighting a cheroot from a smoldering cannon taper, and wished that he could be so calm.