Читать книгу The Green Woman - Fee-Christine Aks - Страница 4

Off the Cagliari Bay, 1798.

A blazing flash of lightning cut across the sky, immediately followed by a rumbling thunder and another two flashes of lightning that lit up the night for a few seconds. The thunder bellowed like cannon shot while the rain rattled down on the deck of the little schooner brig like pellets of lead shot.

For more than half an hour, the Lady Anne was moaning and rolling from one side to the other and back again. Her rigging and masts were creaking and groaning from the hard gusts of the storm that reached out like wet-cold giants’ hands for anything they could find up on deck. No storm staysail or reefing had been able to withstand this ghastly tempest. The mainmast’s sails were already torn and hanging from the yards like ghostly white rags. The ship would not be able to defy this cruel storm for much longer.

John Mackenzie pulled his woollen cloak tighter around his shoulders and strengthened his grip on the staircases’ handle. Oh, that god-dammed dogwatch! He was dead tired. But sleep was not an option: he was a British sailor and had to do his duty; even though there was nothing much more to be done for the poor ship.

Though they had reefed the sails in time, they had not been able to save anything more than the mizzen mast’s topsails. Torrents of rain water ran into the lower decks and swashed around the cannons. The reinforced hatches over the hold could just withstand the hailstorm that shot down on John, the two officers of the watch and Talbot, the second officer at the steering wheel, like volleys of rifle bullets.

The boatswain Al Dawson was standing under the quarterdeck’s overhanging edge and holding on with his right hand to the nine-step ladder that led up to the steering wheel. His other hand was clinging to the figurehead’s green painted arm that John had given him the day before. In a few days, this broken-off piece of oak wood would become a new boatswain’s stick.

The rest of the detailed figurehead of a woman in a long green dress was still defying wind and weather at the merchant ship’s bow, just like for the nearly seven years past.

It had been painful to John to give away the well-crafted arm, even for an extra-ration of rum. But Dawson had not let up; he was giving credit to the rumours.

John cast a worried look across the forecastle that buckled up with every foaming wave and sank down into the next trough of the sea. He prayed that the new right arm with the rose which he had painted blood-red only a few weeks ago in Jaffa harbour, would stay on. Not only the ship’s fate and the fortune of her entire eighty-headed crew were at stake, if the beautiful woman went to pieces.

John’s heart was pounding like mad when he thought that only he knew just how important the mysterious lucky charm was to him and the successful outcome of his plan.

A loud cracking-sound, followed by a tearing-sound and the ruptured bursting of wood attracted John’s attention. Then something clattered amidships onto the deck. John saw some round object vanish through a hole in the planks: a cannonball.

All of a sudden the officers of the watch were in a flurry of activity. They gestured and flailed about, while Al Dawson sprang up from under the protecting edge of the quarterdeck, stormed up the nine steps to Talbot’s side, bellowed “all hands on deck!” and started yanking like mad at the ship’s bell. The high, rattling chimes cut through the howling of the wind and were only for short moments overpowered by thunder.

Immediately, John could hear through the stairway the pitter-patter of many feet below deck. Only seconds later, the first head with a seaman’s plait appeared in the passageway that led to the crew’s accommodation.

“All hands to Quarters!” bellowed Dawson against the howling of the storm.

Two men each positioned themselves with the twenty-four eighteen-pounders and pushed open the gun ports. Then they gazed expectantly at the two officers of the watch who both were staring intently to starboard into the storm night.

John fixed his gaze out into the darkness, his heart pounding nearly as hard as at the time of their departure from Jaffa, when he was sure to be caught any moment by the henchmen; those grim men with scimitars who had already been chasing James and his companions.

One of the officers yelled something that John could not quite catch; but he could well imagine who had spotted them here, southeast off Sardinia, and opened fire: the fleet of the king-slayers had discovered them.

John saw how Talbot at the steering wheel braced himself against the gusts of the storm and tried at the same time to hold the rolling ship as stable as possible.

The bursting of yet another foremast’s yard hurled hand-sized splinters onto the deck. With a sharp buzzing-noise, a nearly head-sized wooden object came down, a tackle with ripped off ropes that John could only evade by having the presence of mind to jump aside.

Just a split-second later, the steps of the stairway crashed in – exactly where he had been standing a moment before.

“Report, Mister Dawson!” rang Captain Porter’s sharp voice in John’s ears. The little man had torn open the door to his cabin below the poop deck and was running with three wide steps to the starboard-side stairs leading up to the rear deck.

Dawson gestured and rapidly filled the captain in. His cry “Fire at will!” nearly drowned in yet another crashing-sound that made the ship’s starboard side explode – exactly where the steps led up to the rear deck. The captain had vanished, buried under the wreckage.

Fighting against the storm, Dawson worked his way over to Talbot in order to help him fixing the steering wheel. But he never made it. An enormous wave catapulted the ship’s hull high onto the portside.

Six bronze cannons tore themselves free of their restraining ropes and broke through the splintering ship’s side, taking their heavy oaken mounts with them. John saw how eight seamen were involuntarily carried off into the deep as well.

A short flash of light a little way off, hardly to be seen in the stormy night, was followed by yet another ear-deafening crash.

With a beastly groaning, the Lady Anne buckled up again and lay hard to her starboard-side. Foaming sea spray clashed on the deck like a huge flood wave and swept John off the slippery planks. At the last moment, he clung onto the stairway’s handrail and pulled himself up again.

He had to keep a sober mind. Giving up was not an option. His luck and fortune lay in this ship, and he would not give her up. To forfeit everything now, he had already taken too many risks.

Like running wild coach horses the memories sped through his head: He had never had regrets about his decision to go to sea; even though he would have liked to leave his hometown Huntingdon in different circumstances. At Lloyd & Sons he had learned everything he needed as a carpenter’s fellow.

But a future in the provinces he would never have established, even if he had not aroused the hate of Melissa’s brothers. Maybe they had calmed down by now; after all, it was more than three years since he had turned his back on his county.

Well, what worried him much more right now was the promise he had made to Pamela’s brother. James Morton had vowed to give him Pamela for a wife, if he were to bring that small pouch of sailcloth to England without detection. But what of it, when they were now sunk here, somewhere between Sicily and Sardinia, by the damned Frogs?

John heard Talbot cry out. A moment later the poop deck broke open. The second officer clung to the wood like a rat and, still holding the steering wheel, went overboard.

John would never see how the nineteen-year-old disappeared. A huge tremor made him lose his balance and flushed him with the next wave through a gaping hole out of the dying ship’s hull.

His last thought was with the mysterious woman who was tied to his luck and fortune. He had not been able to save her sufficiently. Soon enough, they both would find their eternal rest in Davy Jones’ Locker. One last flash of cannon fire cut through the dark stormy night; then John passed out.