rather than from the pointed end. For that same reason it was going to be a son of a bitch to haul back aboard. Marlowe wished they had attached another line to one end so they could turn it perpendicular to the Galley and pull it back sharp end first, so it would ride through the sea like a ship’s hull. He wished they had put some sort of a flag on it so the men on the wreck could see it better. But they had not, and it was too late now.
Another ten anxious minutes, and the wreck drifted down on the sea anchor, and every man aboard the Galley hoped the men clinging to her would see the spars, would think to jump for them, would be able to do so. The big seas battered the half-sunk hulk, crashing against her exposed bottom, causing her to roll in such a way that the watching men aboard the Galley clenched their fists and tensed their arms and waited for the whole thing to roll over and finish the poor bastards on her slanted deck.
Then at last the wreck was there. They could see the bundle of spars slamming against the deck of the hulk where it emerged from the sea. There was exactly one hundred yards separating the two ships, the length of cable that Honeyman had veered out. Now the men on the wreck had only to climb down to the spars and grab hold, and the Elizabeth Galleys would haul them over. In theory.
Marlowe climbed halfway up the mizzen shrouds, aimed his telescope at the distant deck. There was no way to communicate to the men there what he wanted them to do, no means of passing orders over the one hundred yards. He could only watch and hope.
He saw one of the men pointing down at the spars that thumped against the nearly vertical deck, right below where they were huddled on the hatch combing. He saw arms waving, pointing at the Elizabeth Galley, pointing down at the spars. They were getting the idea.
There followed what seemed to be half a minute of arguing, and then the men started to move. One of them climbed over the edge of the hatch, half sliding, half crawling down the sloping deck, down into the water that boiled over the low rail, and for a second he was lost to Marlowe’s sight, and Marlowe feared he had been swept away. But he appeared again, his head and shoulders above the white, churning sea, clinging to the bundle of spars.
One after another his mates followed him, down the deck, into the sea, and then onto the sea anchor that ran from their former ship to the Elizabeth Galley. In the Galley’s waist, men shouted words of encouragement, cheers that the men on the wreck would never hear. The Galleys were smiling, pounding one another on the back, relieved and exhilarated.
Don’t bloody celebrate yet, Marlowe thought as he watched the last of the shipwrecked sailors slide down and take his place on the spars. Fifteen men he counted, perhaps half the original complement.
“Mr. Honeyman, heave away at the capstan!” Marlowe shouted. The wind had calmed enough that Honeyman could hear him from the waist. He waved acknowledgment and shouted an order to the men at the capstan bars, and they began to heave around, hauling the hawser in, pulling the sea anchor back to the Elizabeth Galley.
They moved fast at first, pulling in the slack. The hawser rose up out of the sea, streaming water, growing straighter with the pull of the capstan. More and more rope came inboard, and as it did, the men at the capstan moved more and more slowly. And then they stopped.
“Heave! Heave a pawl!” Honeyman shouted, as if his voice could push them around, but it was no use. The hawser would not come in.
“You there, you lazy bastards, lay onto that capstan!” Dinwiddie shouted, indicating every man who was not at that moment pushing a capstan bar. They ran to the capstan, jostled in to find a place, every possible inch taken up by men ready to push the big winch around.
“Good!” Honeyman shouted. “Now, heave!”
From the quarterdeck Marlowe could hear the combined groaning of the men, the rope, the capstan as they exerted tremendous pressure on the bars. The capstan came around, slowly, and one more pawl clicked into place, and then it stopped.
Marlowe climbed down from the mizzen shrouds as Dinwiddie came rushing aft. “No bloody good, Captain!” he said between heaving for breath. “We can’t pull the damned thing in!”
“Son of a bitch!” Marlowe shouted out loud. The wreck was drifting down on the sea anchor. If he did not pull the men in, it could roll right over them. If he did not get the sea anchor free, the wreck would run right into the Elizabeth Galley and sink her as well.
The only reasonable thing to do was to cut away the damned sea anchor and the shipwrecked sailors with it. He thought of those men clinging to the spars. They had been sure of their pending death, and then like an angel from God the Elizabeth Galley had appeared. The sea anchor had been their path to salvation. He could not cut it away.
“Come with me,” he said, and ran forward and down the ladder to the waist, grabbing the main topsail halyard for balance as the ship rolled under him, an awkward, jerky motion thanks to the restraining effect of the bar-taut hawser.
Honeyman saw him coming, came staggering aft. “We’ll never haul it in!” he shouted. “Not in this sea! I-”
“If we attach a line to one end of the sea anchor, we can pull it so it is at a right angle to the ship!” Marlowe shouted, gesturing with his hands to imitate the motion of the sea anchor. “Then we will not be trying to pull it sideways but point first, like a boat going bow first through the water! It should come right in!”
“Yes,” Honeyman agreed.
“Aye, but there’s no line, sir. We can’t float one upwind,” Dinwiddie pointed out correctly.
“Right,” Marlowe agreed. He turned to Burgess. “Have you a snatch block that can go over that hawser?”
Burgess paused. A snatch block was a specialized piece of equipment, a block-what a landsman might call a pulley-like any other, save that it was opened on one side so that it could be put around a line rather than having to thread the end of the line through it.
“Aye…” Burgess said at last. “But what… you ain’t…”
“Get the snatch block over the hawser. I’ll use a strop for a sort of harness, carry a line out along the hawser.”
“Captain!” Honeyman and Dinwiddie protested, almost at once.
“Don’t argue with me, just do it, goddamn your eyes!” Marlowe shouted.
“Let me take the line out to them!” Honeyman countered.
“No! Get the block!” Marlowe shouted, and Honeyman and Burgess raced off, and Marlowe shed his oilskins, coat, and shoes and climbed up on the bulwark, above the taut hawser, above the roiling sea.
Don’t think, don’t think… The words raced through his mind. This was one of those moments, all too frequent at sea, when one could not think about the action he was resolved to take, or he would never have the courage to do it.
It was his idea to save the shipwrecked men, his mistake not to order a line tied to the end of the sea anchor in the first place. Ultimately, it was all his responsibility.
Sending men aloft to stow sail in a howling wind was one thing- that was as much a part of the sailor’s life as scrubbing the decks-but he could not expect anyone else to undertake this extraordinary danger. Not when it was his idea, and his oversight, that made it necessary.
These thoughts floated around in his head, amorphous and unformed, as Honeyman and Burgess rushed up with the snatch block and strop, a loop of rope that Marlowe would pass under his arms. He leaned out of the gunport, clapped the snatch block over the bar-taut hawser, tied it shut with spunyarn so it would not open accidentally. He hitched the strop over the hook in the block while Burgess arranged the rope that Marlowe would carry out to the sea anchor. He passed the bitter end to Honeyman, and Honeyman made it fast to the snatch block.
A swell rose up beyond the bulwark, slapped in through the gun-port, hit Honeyman square in the chest and face, but he did not pause any longer than it took to spit out the water he caught in his mouth and blink it out of his eyes.
“Ready, Marlowe,” he said at last.
Marlowe nodded, looked fore and aft. Nothing holding him back now, save for his powerful reluctance to plunge into that frigid water.
“All right, goddamn my eyes…” He reached down and grabbed the strop and slipped it over his head and shoulders and arranged it under his arms. The hawser was going slack. “Honeyman, I believe the wreck is shoving the sea anchor along. Keep tension on the hawser, take up with the capstan as you can.”
“Aye,” Honeyman said, and Marlowe was surprised to see the concern in his face and the faces of the others in
