Tenacious

It looked as if the two ships would merge in splintering ruin but then the fo'c'slemen on the foredeck of Alexander boomed out the fore-topmast staysail to weather by main force and by small yards she yawed giddily and slid past.

Kydd strained to see any tiny thread of black rope against the white water indicating a line had been passed. There was none. The 74 plunged past Tenacious on her way round once more and Kydd could see activity on both ships. But when the light line had been finally passed across from Alexander it would in turn bring aboard a heavier hawser, then probably one of the anchor cables roused up from the tiers in the orlop. At more than a hundred and twenty pounds for every fathom streamed it would be a fearsome task to manhandle.

This time Alexander came up to leeward of the stricken flagship, necessarily head to head to bring their fo'c'sles adjacent. Kydd used his signal telescope to watch: he could make out a lone seaman in the forechains with his coiled, heaving line tensed, waiting.

The two ships closed, Alexander deliberately keeping well to leeward as she edged ahead. They began to overlap—the seaman started to swing his smaller coil in readiness—but even as he did so it became obvious that the windward vessel was catching more of the wind's blast and drifting down fast on the more sheltered leeward. Alexander's bowsprit sheered off rapidly.

Once more the big man-o'-war went round ponderously. Once more the seaman in the chains began his swing, and once more it proved impossible. Time wore on. In Tenacious hands were piped to dinner, and the heaving line was cast twice more. The afternoon watch was set—and on the next pass a line at last was caught on Vanguard's foredeck.

Those watching in other ships dared not breathe as the dots of men on her fo'c'sle scrambled to bring in the line, but Alexander was falling away fast. Kydd knew what they had to do: a dark cavity in Alexander's stern windows was where her cable would be led out, but first Vanguard must hold fast the precious light line while a stouter rope was heaved in from Alexander and manhandled through the hawse-hole, where it would be led to the main capstan.

Below in the sweating gloom this hawser would be heaved in, its distant other end seized to the main cable issuing out of Alexander's stern windows as it was led from the giant riding bitts further forward.

It was now only a matter of time. Little by little the great cable, nearly two feet in circumference, was drawn across the foaming sea until Vanguard was finally tethered.

The weight of the seven hundred feet of heavy rope between the two ships formed a catenary, a graceful curve in the cable that acted as a giant spring in the towing, absorbing the shocks and fretful jibbing of the storm-lashed ships. Alexander showed small sail, then more, until reefed topsails gave her enough force to pull Vanguard in line and then, miraculously, begin a clawing, slewing motion ahead.

As if in respect to the feat performed in the teeth of its hostility, the wind moderated from a full gale to a sulky bluster, then later to a steady north-north-westerly. And foul for Oristano.

The ships, limping at no more than walking pace, could not lie close enough to the wind to overcome the current taking them south, and the only dockyard on the west of Sardinia was left astern.

'What now, do you think, Mr Hambly?' Houghton asked. There seemed to be no avoiding a long and chancy tow back to Gibraltar.

Adams brightened. 'Sir, when I was a mid in Cruizer we chased a corsair to Sardinia, and he disappeared. We found him in San Pietro Bay, south of here, in as snug a harbour as you'd find within forty leagues. I believe Admiral Nelson could lie there in perfect peace while he repairs enough to sail back to Gibraltar.'

'Mr Hambly, lay me within hail of the flagship.'

It was a notion clearly to Nelson's liking and the tow was shaped more southerly. The winds diminished rapidly to a pleasant breeze, and with the sun now strong again and in the ascendant, wisps of vapour rose from the water-logged decks.

A distant lumpy blue-grey appeared from the bright haze ahead. 'San Pietro island, sir,' Adams said smugly. 'Our anchorage lies beyond.'

After several days of danger and hardship Kydd found the prospect of surcease and peace attractive. But as the sun went down so did the breeze and those who had cursed the wind were now regretting its failing. Sail was set to stuns'ls but their forward movement slowed to a walk again and then a crawl. The night came languorously in violet and pink, but no breeze blew from the Sardinian shore. A half-moon rose, stars pricked the heavens, and the ships remained drifting.

Then Kydd saw something that awakened memories of an Atlantic night when death had risen out of the darkness to claim his frigate. 'Breakers, sir! I see breakers!' Barely perceptible, but distantly picked out by moonlight, there was a white line of surf—the storm swell driving into the shore. It seemed that the other ships had spied it: there was movement of lanthorn light around their fo'c'sles. Without doubt they, too, would bend their best anchors to their cables.

Tenacious found out the sombre truth with the rest: there was no wind to haul off the land and the water was bottomless. It was unjust. Weary after so much strife they now faced another night of dread, feeling the sullen swell rolling under their keel, relentlessly bearing them towards the dark mass of the land while the sails hung useless in the moonlight.

They were long hours—restless, waiting, fearing the dawn and starting at every flap and shiver aloft, it was hard simply to endure. The deep sea lead was cast regularly; eventually it touched bottom at three hundred feet but this was too deep for anchoring.

When sunrise came it was soft and warm, welcoming them with the deep blue of the morning sky—but the royal blue of the open sea changed to the liquid green of inshore. Constrained by the dead weight of the tow, Alexander and Vanguard had not been able to take advantage of every little shift in the night breeze and now lay significantly closer inshore.

From the quarterdeck of Tenacious it looked a grave situation. The two 74s, still joined by the long cable, were now within a short distance of the shore and it was heartbreaking that after all their efforts the flagship would end in the breakers they could now clearly see.