Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [83]
“Silence! Any man to shout stays down here in this midden!”
The threat was enough. Hushed, the prisoners-of-war waited their turn as the anvil moved slowly down the line. Eyes alternated between the cursing smith and the level of rising water. Jackie tried to estimate how long before he would be free. After half an hour he was next in line. The man before him still had his head bent, hands clasped in prayer, lips moving silently. The two sailors pulled him down, swearing as they forced his fingers apart so the manacles could be stretched on the anvil. The hammer rang, driving the chisel through the iron. The prisoner opened his eyes, stunned. He stared for a moment at his freed hands before raising them aloft.
“Thanks be to God! He is here at this hour!”
The smith snarled, leaning forward. He grabbed the prisoner’s belt then heaved him aside. “Forget your God, scum. Thank me instead!” He turned hard eyes on Jackie. “You. Get your hands down here. I’ll spend no more time in this cesspit than needs be.”
Jackie gritted his teeth as he stooped to spread his wrists. The chisel was placed. He watched the arc of the hammer. The anvil rang as the chain was severed. Free. Moving aside, rubbing his wrists, he darted a glance at Billy who stared back enviously. Jackie gestured upwards, suddenly grinning. Billy nodded grimly. One of the smith’s aides thumped Jackie’s shoulder.
“Get topside! All hands to the pumps!”
He nodded dumbly, not trusting his voice. He waded along the deck, seawater tugging at his canvas trousers, reluctant to lose him from its clammy embrace. Then he was in the companionway, slopping up the ladder. Musket fire grew louder. He emerged onto the gun deck, stooping under the low deck beams as he turned for the next stretch of ladder. Upended and smashed weapons and men lay strewn everywhere, cannonballs like huge black marbles dotted among the blood and human gristle. One depleted gun crew was still feverishly working their eighteen-pounder, ramming down the charge and shouting as they strained to run the truck up to the topsides. The cannoneer screamed as he set fire to the touchhole. Jackie almost cried with pain when the cannon roared, bucking back like a wild animal as it threw death out the port. Grimacing, he climbed on toward the sky. If the devastation of the gun deck battery had been a nightmare, then he was totally unprepared for the scene on the main deck.
Beneath the night sky, the rigging of the two ships stood gaunt against the moon through patches of drifting smoke. It was difficult to tell where the spars of one ship ended and the other began. They seemed tangled in a mess of trailing shrouds and braces, the remains of the sails like tattered battle pennants. Below, smoke billowed, smearing wreckage that cluttered both decks. Flames threw crimson into the sky fore and aft, and he could see flashes and hear barking of muskets from the mast crosstrees. For’ard, there was the clatter and rasp of swordplay, screams and yells from everywhere. A cannon bellowed from what he guessed must be the quarterdeck, grapeshot whistling a deadly melody toward the English warship.
For a moment he almost turned to go back below. It had seemed safer there. His mouth hung open as he tried to take in all the information thrust at him. He started to move then stumbled over the body of a prisoner who had been shot down on reaching the deck. Jackie recognized him as the praying man. So his God hadn’t helped him after all.
“You there! Standing like a lump of wood! Lend a hand here!”
At the foot of the mainmast an American petty officer stood over a line of men working at a pump. It was a winch with several extended bars so a dozen men could wind at each handle together. Jackie recognized it as a chain pump which pulled a string of valves through the bilges, more efficient than the normal two piston machines. He took his place, the petty officer calling time so the men worked