knots, heaving and bucking in the scend of the following seas as if she were a wild mare. At top speed, Hoare lashed the helm lest she broach to while he occupied himself with the rescue. As they passed, Neglectful and the stranger would present their larboard sides.
Hoare snatched up a grapnel to which he had long ago spliced a light dock line and clambered forward into Neglectful's eyes. Shifting the clips of his harness onto her fore-stay, he stood erect, whirled the grapnel in a circle, and let it fly. Before the grapnel could even strike its target, he had dropped the line into a bronze chock, taken a turn, and braced himself.
The grapnel caught in the lugger's bulwarks. Hoare had a lightning memory of the last time that grapnel had been put to use; it had caught a Frenchman between neck and shoulder and pulled him off the schooner Marie Claire.
Now Hoare cleated the far end of the line to one of the sockets he had set to take Neglectful's swivel gun at need. Neglectful lurched steeply to starboard, her timbers squealing in protest as the line drew taut and spun her full about, nearly in her own length, bringing her head to the gale, bucking in the seas aft of the stranger, her two scraps of sail a-thunder.
Between them, the three men heaved Neglectful and the dismasted lugger close enough to each other so that the castaways could scramble across their own swimming deck, take a purchase on Neglectful's jib-stay, and drop onto her bowsprit. The first man made it without incident, but the second missed his timing and went over the side with a shriek of despair, carrying Hoare's grapnel with him, into the widening strip of Channel between the vessels. He had kept a tight grip on the grapnel, however, and the other two men readily dragged him aboard Neglectful, spluttering but no wetter than he had been before his bath.
Especially in foul weather, the Channel hereabouts was a no-man's-land, so until now Hoare could not be sure whether he had saved French lives or English ones.
'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,' the swimmer gasped, crawling after Hoare into the stern sheets, where Hoare could take the con once more. The sentiment might be Papist, Hoare thought, but the words were English. At least, then, he did not face the risk of being overpowered by ungrateful guests and carried off to some Breton port.
The first castaway looked back at the lugger, dwindling in the distance and wallowing visibly. 'There goes me livelihood,' he said bitterly through chattering teeth.
Hoare gestured to the two to go below and mimed eating, drinking, and dry clothing. They looked puzzled.
'Can't ye talk?' the first arrival shouted at him. Like so many people, he must assume that anyone who could not speak certainly could not hear. Hoare shook his head, smiled an apology, and repeated the motions. The swimmer went below, but the owner waited while his livelihood raised her weary bows into the air and disappeared behind a roller. She did not appear again. Thereupon, the owner joined his companion below.
Hoare kept his yacht's course easterly, scudding before the wind, even though wind and seas were far outpacing her. He knew Neglectful's cleverly formed transom would prevent her from being pooped.
The choking reek of coal smoke, sweeping horizontally from the little yacht's Charley Noble, was followed quickly enough by the more welcome smell of soup a-heating. The gale had not let up, but it had not strengthened, either, and Neglectful rode smoothly enough that Hoare's guests- probably as good seamen as he, if not better-had judged it safe to light her galley stove. Hoare had no spare oilskins, but he had several loose heavy garments that would fit any wet visitor well enough. It was no more than half a glass before the bereaved owner, clad in Hoare's thick Shetland sweater, stuck his head out Neglectful's cabin hatch and reached his host a cup of thick, hot soup, in one of his own thick, hot mugs. It was welcome; events had moved so fast that Hoare had not thought to breach his emergency cockpit supply.
In his other hand, the rescued owner held one of the Roman-style wax tablets that, together with numerous other devices, Hoare carried about for easy communication whenever his feeble whisper could not be understood.
'Name's Dunaway, your honor,' he said, 'Abel Dunaway. Owner of the Fancy lugger-though that means nowt this day.'
Dunaway handed the tablets to his rescuer. His mournful, tanned face bore a week's growth of grizzled beard, and a shag of gray hair dropped into his eyes. He made himself comfortable in the cockpit, face-to-face with Hoare. In Neglectful's narrow cockpit, their knees all but touched.
'Just the same, sir, I owes you for me life, and Jamie below as well, though he must speak for himself. The boy Jethro Slee went overboard this morning, when a thicky murderous gale hit.
'I should never ha' sent him forward to reef the foresail; he went overboard. When I bore up to fish him out, we broached to, and her mainmast went by the board. 'Twere all my fault, my most grievous fault, and I don't know how I'm to break it to his da.' Dunaway fell silent and studied his borrowed mug.
'May be lettin' up' he observed after a bit. 'What d'ye think, sir?'
Hoare smiled into the growing darkness and shook his head. In point of fact, the moan of the wind in Neglectful's rigging had risen a half-tone. It was nigh time to heave to completely.
'Sorry, sir,' Dunaway said. He handed Hoare the waxen tablets. 'To whom do I owe my life, then?'
Hoare scribed his name in the wax, added 'Lieutenant RN,' then recollected himself, scratched the title out, and replaced it with 'Commander, RN.' He had been a Lieutenant for twenty-two years and still found it hard to remember that he now rated the courtesy address of 'Captain.'
'Captain,' he said to himself. 'Captain.'
Dunaway managed a grin. 'A new creation, I'll warrant, Captain,' he said, as if he had been reading Hoare's mind. Hoare nodded again and returned the grin.
'Fancy?' he wrote. 'Smuggler?' He knew very well she was no fisherman. There had been no sign of nets or trawls aboard the lugger, and her rig had been better suited to another calling.
'Fisherman,' Dunaway said. Hoare shrugged.
A heavier sea came within a hair of breaking over Neglectful's stern. Cleverly formed or not, her stern sheets risked being overburdened within minutes.
'Sea anchor,' he wrote. He tapped Dunaway's hand and pointed to the tiller with raised eyebrows. The other nodded.
'Aye aye,' he said.
Hoare crawled forward once again, securing the idle grapnel as he went. Timing his moves to coincide with one of the periodic lees afforded him by the sea, he cracked the forward hatch, reached down, and dragged out Neglectful's seldom-used drogue. He hitched its pendant beside the useful grapnel, took in the scrap of storm jib, and signaled Dunaway to let the yacht work herself around into the wind. He gave the sea anchor ten fathoms or so of scope and cleated the line before crawling aft again.
Since she was no longer running with the wind, Neglectful's rigging began to shriek instead of merely moaning, but she rose willingly to the seas, now breasting them instead of fleeing them. Her trysail held her in place, so that once he had lashed the tiller again, she would do her duty as long as Hoare called on her to do so. He motioned Dunaway below and followed him, catching up his bag of sustenance as he went and securing the cuddy hatch behind him.
Neglectful's builder had not designed her to accommodate more than two. With three sizable men below, she was cramped. A man-o'-warsman, as used as any sardine to living bump-bottom with his shipmates, would have hardly been troubled, but Hoare had never gone to sea as less than a very junior mid. He saw that the proximity of two companions would become irksome in no time and resolved to set them ashore as soon as the weather permitted. Meanwhile, he accepted the fresh mug of his own pea soup that Jamie, the swimmer, offered him. Strangely, the rich smell of the soup blended cozily with the smell of wet wool that both his guests gave off as they began to warm up and the pervasive reek of Stockholm tar.
'Thank you,' Hoare whispered, as much as to see if he could make himself heard above the muffled cacophony here below as to give the man a polite response.
'No; thank you, sir,' Jamie said. His voice was unexpectedly cultured, but with a slight accent. French perhaps? His unweathered face was open and innocent. 'Bose Mr. Dunaway and me 'ood be feedin' the fishes long since if it were not for you.'
'A grand piece of seamanship,' interjected Dunaway. 'Both Jamie and I owe you our lives.'
'Permit me, sir, to drink your healf in this most uncommon good soup,' Jamie added.
'Permission granted,' Hoare whispered with a smile. 'If you'll steer your mugs this way, I'll even bless 'em
