catch them soon, Hoare told himself, we'll lose them in the dark.
'We'll sweep up on 'em,' he whispered.
Stone blanched at the idea of standing erect under fire to work Inconceivable's sweeps; Hoare suspected that Bold did as well, though he could not be sure, given the growing darkness and the coxswain's natural hue.
'Jest as ye say, sir,' Bold said. 'Odds are ye'll lose one of the two of us though. There goes half yer boardin' party.'
Hoare was silent, at a stand. At last he said, 'Here's what we'll do.'
Hoare and Stone ducked below to put Hoare's plan into effect, leaving Bold at the tiller in the growing dusk.
A hammering and banging began below decks. Only seconds apart, the two amateur carpenters broke through Inconceivable's thin strakes. The blades of her sweeps thrust out from these jury-rigged scuttles. Hoare doffed his uniform coat and laid it neatly on his cot; the two carpenters turned galley slaves and began to heave.
The firing from Marie Claire had fallen off as the darkness gathered. Now it redoubled, and the pistol flashes were near enough to reflect off Inconceivable's sails.
'Mr. Hoare wants to know: are we showing a wake yet?' Stone grunted from below.
'Tell him 'just,'Jacob,' Bold replied in an undertone. 'We might be makin' half a knot. The chase, she might as well be swingin' at anchor.'
'She's put out sweeps of her own now, sir!' Bold called below after another minute.
'Mr. 'Oare says, 'They can't row and shoot at the same time, any'ow,'' Stone answered.
Now, Inconceivable's taller mast began to tell, for somewhere above the lesser reach of Marie Claire's main topsail, a breath stirred.
'She's answerin' 'er helm again, sir,' Bold said.
'Good. Head about two points to windward of her, and we'll bear down as soon as we come abreast. Meet her now. Dyce.'
Shortly, Inconceivable's sweeps stopped and lifted, dripping audibly, into the quiet air. Then they withdrew into their crude ports. Hoare stuck his head out of the companionway and crawled into the cockpit, keeping low. He reached back, pulled his sweep out of the hatch, and handed it to Bold. Bold made the tiller fast, thrust the sweep into its socket dead aft, and began sculling, slowly and strongly. Under her own sweeps, Marie Claire seemed to make no headway. She would have rated double Inconceivable's tonnage, so this could be no surprise to Morrow.
Hoare leaned down into the cabin and said in his loudest whisper, 'Bring up the crossbow and the quarrels, Stone.'
' 'Quarrels,' zur?'
'Arrows, Stone. They're alongside the crossbow. They look like bolts.'
More rummaging sounds followed.
'Got 'em, zur.' Stone handed up the weapons and hoisted himself out of the cabin with a single thrust of his powerful shoulders, disdaining the ladder. 'You orta been mannin' that there oar, Loveable, not Mr. Hoare,' he said.
'I does what my orficers tell me to, Jacob.'
'You be a lazy bugger, that's what you be,' Stone said. He hauled a grapnel up from below and began to splice it to the bitter end of a lanyard.
Under a steady, slow, harassing fire, Hoare and his crew blacked their faces and hands with soot from Inconceivable's galley stove. Cradling the cocked crossbow in his arms and dragging the bag of quarrels behind him, Hoare crawled forward in the dusk, under cover of Inconceivable's rail, into her very bows.
He had procured the crossbow only last year, when he happened to stop at an inn outside the ruins of Corfe Castle. The weapon had to be centuries old. Although he had bought it on a whim, he felt obliged to try it out. He had chosen a meadow outside Portsmouth, where he at least had had a chance to retrieve the bolts.
Hoare had found at once that the crossbow worked. In fact, it was surprisingly powerful. While his first shot went into the blue somewhere to the north of the tree at which he was aiming, his second, fired from a hundred yards, buried itself so deep in the trunk that he could not withdraw it. He would not have cared to be one of the steel-clad men-at-arms who had faced the thing, and he understood why crossbows had been outlawed by chivalry and Church alike.
He had also learned that the crossbow was extremely slow to load-slower, even, than his lost Kentucky rifle, which, in turn, had taken him twice as long as one of his pistols or a smooth-bore musket. To cock the bow, he would have to stand upright, press his foot into a combination stock and stirrup, and heave mightily on a steel lever. The notion of doing this under fire from Marie Claire-sporadic though it was-gave him a grue. And his accuracy would be laughable.
Sheltering behind Inconceivable's jib, Hoare shouldered the awkward weapon, making sure that it cleared her forestay. By now, the chase was less than a hundred yards ahead, a few points off Inconceivable's larboard bow. Hoare had ordered Bold to come up on her from windward, so as to take her wind with Inconceivable's towering mainsail. He leveled the crossbow and waited for a target to show itself.
He did not have long to wait. The silence of Inconceivable s pursuit would certainly have convinced the other vessel's crew by now that she was without firearms-as, indeed, she was. By now, they were close enough to distinguish one from another, even in the dusk. Now he could see five of them, no fewer. Short of extreme heroism and the most extraordinary luck, any attempt at boarding her was doomed. And so, in all likelihood, was Bartholomew Hoare.
Two of Marie Claire's crew were standing on her taffrail now, one reloading his pistols and the other taking aim. Hoare too took careful aim, held his breath, and squeezed the crossbow's strange long trigger.
With a sharp, soft snap, the crossbow kicked back against Hoare's shoulder. His target uttered a croaking cry, clutched at his leg, and fell backward against the helmsman, knocking him away from the schooner's wheel. Marie Claire drifted gracefully into the negligible wind, athwart Inconceivable's bows, where- had she been armed with cannon-she could have murdered Inconceivable with a raking fire.
Now! Hoare cried to himself. He whistled an ascending banshee note. In response, Stone raced forward to stand beside Hoare. He twirled his grapnel as though he were swinging a dipsey lead-or a sling, flashed through Hoare's mind. The three Inconceivables braced for the impact, grasping any shroud or timber within reach.
Stone let fly with his grapnel. Instead of catching in Marie Claire's rigging, it caught in the clothing of a second Frenchman, who jerked like a jigged salmon. Stone heaved at the grapnel line. The jigged man clutched at a shroud, missed, fell forward into the Channel. Stone's grapnel tore away.
Inconceivable rammed Marie Claire just aft of her starboard main shrouds. Her bowsprit thrust across the schooner below her main boom before grinding to a near-halt. Marie Claire heeled heavily away. There was a crash below-perhaps, Hoare hoped, from Morrow's best yachting china. Carried along by the schooner's momentum, Inconceivable began to swing to starboard, pressing against Marie Claire and braying the jigged man between the two hulls like an ear of Indian corn. He squalled. One arm waved briefly in the narrow gap before he was drawn down into the welcoming water.
The blow into Marie Claire's midships must have caught another enemy wrong-footed, for he spun and went overboard on the side away from Inconceivable. The others-two were still on their feet-were nimbler. One chopped an axe into Inconceivable's forestay as it tangled in the schooner's main shrouds, and cut it apart just as Hoare clutched at the nearer of the paired shrouds. Inconceivable rebounded. Caught wrong-footed himself, Hoare felt his feet leave her. He dangled in Marie Claire's shrouds, first by one hand, then by both, when Marie Claire drifted away from his own precious pinnace, his first and only command.
Behind him, Inconceivable's jib came down with a run over Bold and Stone. There was another grinding sound. Even where he hung, Hoare knew the two craft had parted company.
By the time Hoare's sailors had struggled out from beneath the jib's hampering folds, Marie Claire and her involuntary stowaway were a cable or more off, steadied again on a course for Weymouth. She was as good as home free.
He did not dangle long. Two of Morrow's men hauled him out of the schooner's shrouds and dragged him to her little quarterdeck, where their master stood waiting.
