ship turned beyond his reach.
“Set the fore tops’l!” Marlowe shouted. “Hands to the halyard, haul away! Sheet home!”
The men in the waist burst from their reverie and raced to pin rails and halyard tackle. They might not have been men-of-war’s men, ready for a fight, but they were good sailors and they responded swiftly to those familiar orders.
“Haul away! Sheet home!” Dinwiddie took up the series of commands, and overhead the topsail yard began to jerk up the mast, and the men hauling on the sheets pulled the lower corners of the topsail out to the ends of the fore yard below it.
The current had hold of the Elizabeth Galley, turning her so fast that Press and the longboat were already astern. The boat crew, caught right at the moment of preparing to board the Galley, were now struggling to lay down arms and take up oars again. It was a little cluster of chaos floating on the river, and it gave Marlowe a flash of hope, like a spark from steel on flint, but no more. The current would carry them both alike, and once the boat crew was straightened out and pulling again, they would move faster than the Elizabeth Galley could in that light air.
“That’s well!” Dinwiddie shouted, and then, “Damn me! Captain! Captain! Larboard bow!”
Marlowe looked forward. The ship astern of them, which they would have missed if they had not cut their anchor cable short, was now right in their path, the river sweeping the Galley into her.
“Larboard your helm! Hard over!” Marlowe shouted to the helmsmen, who shoved the tiller hard to the larboard side. Such a shift of rudder would have had a dramatic effect on a ship moving fast through the water, but now it was the water that was largely moving the ship, and the rudder did little to alter her course.
“Damn my eyes,” Marlowe said as they dropped closer to the moored vessel, a slow, deliberate, graceful drift toward collision. “Shift your helm!”
The helmsmen swung the tiller in an arc across the deck, all the way to starboard. The move had done some good, Marlowe noted, had jogged the Galley a little way out of line with the ship astern.
The bowsprit passed the moored vessel and then the bow, not five feet off, the two ships so close it would have been a simple matter to step from one to the other. Marlowe could feel the men on deck holding their breath as they watched the anchored vessel, deserted, ghostly in the mist.
“Midships!” he called to the helmsmen, and they moved the tiller to the centerline, and Marlowe saw that he had waited a second too long. The Galley’s stern was too close, and just as he decided that no further jogging of the rudder could help, the ships hit, the Elizabeth Galley’s larboard quarter slamming into the turn of the other vessel’s bow with a shudder that shook both ships, keel to truck.
Marlowe watched the damage happen, a few feet from where he was standing. The Galley dragged down the side of the other ship with a chorus of snapping and cracking and wrenching. He heard glass break and knew that his beloved quarter galley was smashed to splinters.
For long seconds the ships ground together as the Elizabeth Galley was carried past. Someone appeared on the deck of the moored ship, shouting curses, just as the Galley bounced off her main channel, wrenching it from her side, and then she was clear.
There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief fore and aft, a second’s reprieve, and then a pistol shot rang out, and Roger Press’s voice was shouting, “Bring to! Bring to for a queen’s officer!”
“Set the main topsail!” Marlowe called forward, as if he and Press were arguing over who was in command of the Galley. The men moved to obey, but slowly, and he could see eyes glancing outboard.
“Bring to!” Press shouted again, audibly closer. “Bring to for a queen’s officer, or you shall all hang!”
That had the effect Press was hoping for. The men moved more slowly still, unwilling to disobey Marlowe, but by tacit agreement working with such hesitancy that they might be construed as obeying Press as well.
“Damn your eyes! He’s no queen’s officer, he is a bloody pirate! Give him no thought, unless you would be cut down on deck!” Marlowe shouted, but rather than inspire the men, that only seemed to confuse them more.
Damn it! Marlowe turned, looked aft. The longboat was pulling for them with a will, the men bending to the oars, the boat more than matching the Elizabeth Galley’s speed. Thirty feet astern and gaining, all those men, all those weapons.
What did they have for defense? No cannon, no swivels. A smattering of muskets and cutlasses. Marlowe had intended to rely on the Elizabeth Galley’s speed to keep them out of danger. He had not thought of being overtaken by a rowed vessel.
“Damn it!” he said out loud. He heard Honeyman’s voice, a menacing growl, a squealing overhead. The men were being driven to set the main topsail, but even that would not keep them out of Press’s hands. Unless the wind picked up dramatically in the next two minutes, the boat would overtake them.
Bickerstaff appeared beside him. “I would not expect these men to defend the ship, Thomas. They are not sure with whom they should place their loyalty.”
“You are right. I am loath to say so.” If they are loyal to anyone, Marlowe thought, it is Honeyman. For all the good that will do me.
“Perhaps you should slip away,” Bickerstaff suggested. “Go down the starboard side with a float as Press comes up the larboard. I do not think he will molest the others if you are gone.”
“Do you think I would be so craven?”
“No, but it is a prudent suggestion, and so I thought it my duty to make it.”
“And I appreciate that, but I cannot.” He looked back at the boat. Almost up with the after end of the Elizabeth Galley.
Marlowe felt a gust of wind on his neck, and the Elizabeth Galley heeled a bit, and the water gurgled around the cutwater. Hope surged up as he looked astern, saw the longboat disappearing again in the mist and dark. And then the gust passed, and the ship came down on an even keel, and the sound of the water died away. They had gained fifty feet. It would take Press four minutes to make up the distance.
“Perhaps we can fend them off,” Marlowe said, and then he ran down the quarterdeck and along the gangway over the waist. “Mr. Honeyman, get a gang to unlash those spars!” He pointed amidships to the top of the main hatch, where the spare yards and topmasts were stored, long, massive tapered timbers like a giant bundle of kindling. “Roust out that main topsail yard! We shall fend these dogs off!”
“Come on, come on, you heard the captain! Go! Go!” Honeyman shouted the orders, and the men reacted, casting off the lashings, arranging themselves along the length of the heavy spar. They moved to Honeyman’s orders and because Marlowe had hit on just the right degree of resistance-keeping the boarders off without bloodshed, avoiding the possibility of shooting at a queen’s officer, if such he was, or being shot by one.
But they would not enjoy that neutrality for long, Marlowe understood. They might boom Press off once or twice, but then Press would start shooting, and then the Elizabeth Galleys would have to reexamine their loyalties.
The men hefted the heavy spar, twenty-five feet long and three hundred pounds, and maneuvered it so it was lying crosswise on the ship, ready to be tilted over the side and used like a giant poker to push the boat away.
How long will we be able to do that? Marlowe wondered. Not very long.
And then Honeyman was there, at his side, and Marlowe wondered what fresh request the men had at that critical juncture. But Honeyman just nodded and said, “Spar’s ready for fending off, Captain.” He hesitated, just a beat, and then added, “I was thinking, we might hoist it aloft with the stay tackle. Get it more vertical.” He looked Marlowe in the eye, and there was a wicked expression on his face. “Of course, if we do that, there’s a chance we might drop it. If you get my meaning.”
It took Marlowe a few seconds before he did, but when he saw what Honeyman was suggesting, he grinned as well and said, “A fine idea, Honeyman. Sway her aloft.”
Honeyman rushed off, called, “Let us get the stay tackle on this spar, make it easier to maneuver!”
The stay tackle, a block and tackle that hung between the masts, directly over the main hatch, was used primarily for hoisting cargo and supplies in and out of the Galley’s hold. Now eager hands grabbed the end of the tackle and made it fast to the middle of the spare topsail yard, and Honeyman shouted, “Sway away!” The men hauled together, and the long, tapered spar rose up in the air.
The longboat had regained the distance lost to the cat’s-paw of wind, was pulling over the last stretch to the Galley’s side, twenty feet off and closing.
Across the water Marlowe heard Press shout, “Pull, you whoresons!” though he could see the men were already pulling with all they had.
