spinning upon itself and bursting in another tiny new explosion of light.
The two quartermasters were ten feet from where Mungo, stood, poised to give his commands, composing the orders in his head, when suddenly the massive wheel no longer resisted the thrust of the brawny men who held it over.
Deep down in Huron's hull, in the long wooden tunnel that had been turned into a raging blast furnace, the rudder lines had burned through, and as they snapped, they snaked and whipped viciously, smashing through the burning deck timbers, scattering flaming brands into the hold below, and letting in a fresh whistling gush of air that forced the flames higher.
Under the helmsman's hands the wheel dissolved in a spinning blur of glittering brass and the quartermaster was hurled the length of the deck, striking the bulwark with jarring force that dropped him to the planking wriggling feebly as a crushed insect. his mate was less fortunate, his right arm was caught in the polished mahogany spokes of the wheel and it twisted like a strip of rubber, the bone of his forearm breaking up into long sharp splinters whose points thrust out whitely through the tanned skin, and the head of the long humerus bone was plucked from its socket in the scapula and the whole upper arm screwed up in a twist of rubbery flesh.
With the press of the rudder under the stern no longer controlling the rush of Huron's hull through the water, the tremendous pressure of the wind in her sails took over unopposed, and Huron became a giant's weathercock. She spun in almost her own length, her bows flying up into the wind and every man on her deck was hurled to the planking with stunning force.
The yards came crashing about, tackle snapping like cotton, one of the upper yards tearing itself loose, falling in a twisted web of its own canvas and rigging, and Huron was taken full aback, the neat geometrical pyramids of her sails disintegrating into flapping, fluttering chaos, wrapping around the stays and halyards, flogging against their own yards and masts.
With the gale of wind flying fully into the front of the sails, from the diametrically opposite direction to that for which they had been designed, the tall masts flexed and arched dangerously backwards, the backstays; drooping slackly, adding to the confusion of sail and rigging, while all the forestays were humming with unbearable tension, and one of them parted with an ear-laming crack and the foremast shifted a few degrees and then hung askew.
Mungo St. John dragged himself to his feet and clung to the rail. The screams of the maimed helmsman dinning in his ears, he looked, about him, and disbelief turned to bitter despair, as he found his beautiful ship transformed to an ungainly shambles. Wallowing drunkenly, Huron was beginning to make sternway, as the wind pushed her backwards and the waves came tumbling aboard her.
For long seconds Mungo stared about him numbly.
There was so much damage, so much confusion, and so much mortal danger, that he did not know where to begin, what his first order must be. Then over Huron's heaving bows, in the opposite direction to which he had last seen it, the distant but suddenly dreadfully threatening speck that was Black fake's topsails showed in a pale flash above the horizon, and it galvanized Mungo. Mr. Tippoo, Mungo called. We'll reef the mains and send down all her top hamper.'
The logical sequence of orders began to arrange themselves in his mind, and his voice was calm and clear, without the strained and panicky timbre they had expected. Mr. O'Brien, go below and give me a fire report, quick as you like. 'Bosun, rig port and starboard pumps, and stand by to hose down the fire. 'Mr. Tippoo, send a party to batten all her hatches and strike the air scoops. ' They must try to prevent air reaching the flames, he was sealing the hull. Coxswain, have the whaler off her davits and launch her. ' He would attempt to tow the heavy boat astern, to act as a drogue, a sea-anchor. He was not sure that it would provide a solution, but he intended to work Huron's bows around with the delicate use of her forward sails, and with the drogue holding her tail in place of the rudder, he might be able to run directly before the wind. It was not his optimum course, and it would be fine and dangerous work with the deadly risk of gibing and broaching, but at the least it would give him respite while he rigged the emergency steering tackle to her useless rudder, and get Huron under control once more.
He paused for breath, but once more glanced forward.
Huron was moving rapidly astern, dipping and staggering into the swells so they came flurrying aboard her in spray and solid green gouts of water, while over her bows the British gunboat was closer, so close that Mungo glimpsed a little sliver of her painted hull, and it seemed that her action through the water was more boisterous and cocky, like a game rooster erecting its coxcomb and ruffling its feathers as it bounces across the sandy floor of the cockpit.
Unable to endure the company of his junior officers a moment longer, stifled and filled with a sense of helplessness by his inability to prevent the tall American clipper from romping away from him, desperate for some activity to help his nerves from fraying further, Clinton Codrington had taken his telescope and gone forward into Black joke's bows.
Oblivious to the spray that splattered over him, soaking the thin linen shirt and chilling him so that his teeth chattered even in the brilliant sunlight, Clinton clutched for a hand hold in the ratlines, balancing on the narrow bulwark and staring ahead through eyes that swam not only with the stinging spray and wind, but as much with humiliation and frustration.
Just perceptibly, Huron's tower of canvas was sinking below the irregular watery horizon, by sunset she would be gone. She and Robyn Ballantyne. His chance had come and he had missed it. His spirits could sink no lower.
To add to his suffering, his streaming eyes were playing him false, and what he could still make out of the clipper became distorted, changing shape as he still stared after her. Then the hail from the look-out high above him broke the grip of his despair, Chase is altering! ' Clinton could not yet believe the high-pitched shriek from the masthead. 'She's coming about! The hail was almost incoherent with excitement and surprise.
Clinton whipped the telescope to his eye, and once again doubted his eyesight. Huron's masts had been almost dead in line, but now they showed individually She was coming about, already Huron was almost broadside, and Clinton stared. For a few moments more the orderly mass of sails retained their perfect snowy shape, and then the pattern began to break up. The ponderous belly of the mainsail wobbled and trembled, then began to flutter and shake like a pennant in the gale, it spilled its wind and collapsed like a bursting paper bag and lashed itself in a petulant fury around its own mast.
Huron was a shambles. Through the glass Clinton could see her beginning to tear herself to pieces, sails ripping, yards tumbling, her foremast sagging out of true, and he still could not believe it was happening.
She's taken full aback. ' He heard Denham's triyell, and of ier voices took up the cry. She fast in irons! 'We've got her, by God, we've got her now! ' Though his vision blurred and the wetness running down his cheeks was not all splattered spray, Clinton went on staring incredulously through the telescope. There is smoke, she's on fire! Denham again, and Clinton picked up the fine pale mist of smoke spreading away from her; and at that moment a fresh burst of spray over the bows drenched the lens of his telescope, and he lowered it.
