them, pass a line somehow…
God, this is a stupid thing I am doing! Marlowe thought. The idea of letting an unpredictable hulk drift down on them, with that sea running and the wind howling around their ears, was insane. But he could not let those men die without trying. They were sailors. British sailors, to boot. He did not examine his motives; he knew only that he had to try.
“We must slow our drift!” he shouted, and the two men nodded. “Let us lash some of them spare spars together, put ’em over the side with a light hawser, a sort of sea anchor! That might do!”
“Aye, sir!” Honeyman shouted. “Mayhaps the wreck’ll drift down on the spars. If those poor bastards yonder can reach them, they can grab on to the spars and we’ll pull ’em aboard!”
Marlowe nodded as if that had been his thought all along, but actually it had not occurred to him. Still, it was perfect. Set a sea anchor in the form of the spare masts and yards, let the hulk drift down on that, let the men climb aboard the spars, and pull them over to the Galley. Simple.
But Marlowe was seaman enough to know that it was never that simple.
The first task was to lash the spare spars together and get them over the side. Honeyman and Dinwiddie and Burgess worked the gangs of men in the waist, lashing together the long, rounded timbers, Elizabeth Galley’s inventory of spare topmasts and yards and topgallant masts. They lashed them lengthwise, like a giant bundle of twigs, and rigged stops and yard tackle and stay tackle to lift the whole mess.
Halfway down the length of the spars they attached the hawser, the three-inch-thick rope that would hold the Elizabeth Galley tethered to the drifting mass.
The Elizabeth Galley would drift faster through the water than the half-submerged sea anchor made up of spare spars. If the hawser were attached to the sharp end of the spars, the ship would just pull the sea anchor through the water like a boat. But with the hawser attached to the midpoint of the spars’ length, the Galley would be pulling the long timbers sideways, like trying to drag a ship broadside through the water, rather than bow first. The spars would thus act as a brake to slow the Galley’s fast downwind drift.
Simple.
The men staggered through the task, tired, battered from their long night, their footing unsure on the slick and rolling deck.
Will this be worth it, if any of my men are killed in the trying? Marlowe wondered.
Bickerstaff made his way aft. He looked drawn, pale with fatigue. “You are setting a sea anchor, or so the rumor goes, forward.”
“Yes, we are. Let that hulk drift down on us.”
“Do you mean to take possession of her?”
“Possession? Dear God, she will not live till the first dog watch. I have no hope beyond getting her men off!” Their conversation, like every such conversation for the past twenty hours, was carried out at shouting volume. Marlowe could feel his throat ache with the effort.
“Whatever do you hope to gain by this?” Bickerstaff asked.
Marlowe shook his head. His throat hurt too much to bother with “I don’t understand you.” “We can do no more than save those men!” he shouted, hoping that would answer Bickerstaff’s question.
And apparently it did, for Bickerstaff nodded and went forward again, and the next time Marlowe looked, he was standing in the line of men holding the fall of the stay tackle and ready to haul away on Dinwiddie’s command.
It took an hour to prepare, which was an extraordinarily short time in those abominable conditions. But in that time they had drifted a good quarter mile from the wreck, which was visible only now and again from the deck. In the maintop a lookout kept a steady vigil, shouting out every so often that it was still visible, that it had not rolled over or gone to the bottom. Yet.
Marlowe stood at the break of the quarterdeck. Below him, arrayed around the waist and foredeck, the Elizabeth Galleys stood ready. A dozen men on the stay tackle, the massive block and tackle that hung directly over the main hatch, used for lifting stores and cargo in and out. Now it would lift the spars straight up. More hands, including the cook and Bickerstaff, on the yard tackles, coming down from the ends of the fore and main yards and normally used to swing the ship’s boats over the side. Now they would do the same for the sea anchor.
Honeyman and Burgess stood at the rope seized to the spars, like an umbilical cord between the sea anchor and the Elizabeth Galley, ready to slack that away as needed.
There would be no orders shouted. In that howling wind it was not worth trying. Marlowe pointed a finger at Flanders at the stay tackle, pointed toward the sky, and Flanders ordered his men to haul away.
Up off the hatch the bundle of spars rose, swaying wildly with the roll of the ship, while Dinwiddie passed orders to the yard-tackle men to keep it steady.
Carefully, carefully they lifted the ton of tapered and oiled wood, swayed it out over the side. At one point the Galley took a wicked roll, and the spars slammed into her side with an impact that was like hitting the wreck. Then they rolled the other way, and the spars swung outboard, and the yard tackles kept them there.
Out and clear of the ship, they were lowered into the water, and the tackles jerked free, and suddenly the spars were floating, like a great pile of wreckage, tethered to the Elizabeth Galley with the three-inchthick hawser.
Marlowe gave Honeyman a sign to slack away, and Honeyman and Burgess let the rope slip around the fife rail and run out through the empty gunport. Marlowe watched the spars drift farther and farther, and then he made a closed-fist sign, and Honeyman took a turn of the rope around the rail and held it fast.
The Elizabeth Galley gave a light jerk as the sea anchor took hold and checked the ship’s fast drift, holding it more or less in place as the dangerous hulk, beyond any control, drifted down on them.
And then there was nothing to do but wait.
Marlowe sent the men below to have what breakfast they could with the seas too rough to light the galley fires. Happily there was fresh meat aboard, they being only three days out of port, and so the beef that was already cooked was served out cold, along with fresh biscuits and butter. All in all a handsome meal, far better than the salted meat, which even when cooked could be as hard as shoe leather.
The men, like Marlowe, were too eager to see what was happening to remain below. They came back up through the scuttle, meat and biscuits in hand, and lined the rails, watching for signs of the hulk as one or both of the vessels rose on the waves.
They were rewarded with the merest glimpses at first, the low-lying wreck more than a quarter mile away and visible only on those occasions when both ships happened to rise at once. But soon it was evident that the sea anchor was performing famously, that the wreck was now drifting much faster than the Elizabeth Galley.
With every passing wave that held the wreck up like some article for sale in the market, they could see she was getting closer, and with each cable length she closed, Marlowe could feel the tension build like a storm. He could all but hear the questions rolling through the men’s heads: How will we get these poor sods off? How will we keep that wreck from running aboard us and taking us down, too? Is this bloody worth the risk? Those questions rolled through his head as well.
For that last question, at least, Marlowe felt quite sure he had the answer. Quite sure, but not entirely.
An hour and twenty minutes after he had sent his men to their breakfast, Marlowe could see the people on the wreck distinctly through his glass. The battered ship was not more than three cable lengths upwind, visible all the time now, save for those few moments when both ships were deep in the troughs of waves.
She was hard over on her larboard side, her rounded bottom facing into the wind and sea, which broke over her as if she were a spit of land. Her deck was nearly vertical and facing the Elizabeth Galley; Marlowe had an uninterrupted view from the taffrail right up to the shattered end of the bowsprit.
He could see her crew, or what was left of them, up on the high side of the deck. They were arrayed along the combing of the main hatch like figurines on a shelf. One or two of them had been waving arms and that white cloth, but they could see now that the Elizabeth Galley had spotted them, and they had stopped waving, saving what must be the precious little energy that they still had.
Marlowe moved the glass from the deck down toward the sea, training it on the sea anchor, the bundle of masts and yards that floated halfway between the Elizabeth Galley and the drifting hulk. It was all but awash. At times it was lost from sight as the sea rose up between it and the Galley, and the three-inch hawser would seem to disappear right into the side of the wave.
The sea anchor worked because it did not move easily through the water, with the hawser pulling it sideways
