Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [71]
Jackie turned his gaze toward his cousin.
“We rule the waves and don’t you forget it,” Billy went on. “Our navy’ll make mincemeat out these Yankees.”
“If they don’t sink us first,” commented the dour Scot.
“Best place for this bucket,” Billy retorted.
The Scot was unmoved. “If this bucket goes down, laddie, we’ll go with it.” He lifted his hands to remind them of their chained wrists. “You’ll not be thinking they’ll send a smith down to break these off if she goes down, are you?”
Billy glared at him, the truth sinking in. Overhead, another salvo of cannon fire silenced any reply.
***
On the quarterdeck Commodore John Paul Jones paced back and forth. The power of the Englishman’s first broadside had surprised him. The man-o’-war’s hull was shrouded with smoke as gunners loosed their charges. The explosion below decks on Richard during the second broadside had surprised him too. He had not expected the Englishman to find a vulnerable spot so quickly. That they had was obvious from the ragged salvos now coming from the main gun deck below.
Without Landais and Alliance or Cottineau’s Pallas, it seemed the English firepower and accuracy would make short work of Bonhomme Richard. As well as the damage below decks, they had already lost some spars and rigging. The only hope was to fight a close action.
“Back the fore and main topsails,” he commanded. Long minutes passed, the Englishman blazing broadside after broadside before Richard fell astern, safe for the present from the long English guns. With an eye on the filling topsails, Paul Jones judged the right moment. “Weather the helm! Hard over!” he called, anxious she would respond.
As the lazy wind began to push Richard, she paid off to starboard across the tall stern of Serapis. “Rake as you come to bear!” the commodore called down through the smoke. The unfired port battery, shotted and ready, discharged one after another in a staccato pattern, the deck shivering with the recoils. Splintering wood and screams could be heard over the water in the aftermath, time for only one salvo before the guns were unsighted. Within seconds, Richard’s port side smashed amidships against the starboard quarter of Serapis’s transom.
The deck officers were quick to see the commodore’s plan. They rushed to the bulwarks to supervise the placing of a boarding plank, rallying the men close by. Callused hands flung the baton across. An officer sprang onto it, waving a pistol in one hand, a short sword in the other.
Paul Jones, both hands on the rail, could see the officer’s mouth working, arm urging boarders forward. With only enough contact between the two ships for one plank, the English were waiting. Before he had taken three steps, the American was cut down. His pistol and sword dropped into the abyss between the hulls as he crumpled off the plank. His place was filled immediately, marine following marine. Support was given by the men in the mast tops who pouring down small arms fire on the English. A swivel gun crashed, spraying death onto Serapis’s deck, but where the dead and injured fell, their places were taken as though by sorcery. The French marines were shot off the plank as fast as they put feet on the wood. The odd man who succeeded in reaching the English deck was hacked to pieces. Paul Jones could almost hear the English officers laughing at him. When twenty men’s lives had been wasted he saw it was futile.
“Belay the assault! We’ll sheer off!”
***
As Bonhomme Richard fell away, Captain Pearson took the initiative. From his position on the quarterdeck of HMS Serapis, he had personally directed his crew as they repelled boarders, content to leave the gangplank in place as long as necessary. While the Americans kept coming, his men could shoot them off with little risk. But as soon as the enemy abandoned their attempt, Pearson saw his chance.
“Helm hard a-port!” he shouted, Serapis eating her fill of the meager wind. She swung but could not muster