CHAPTER 1.
Lieutenant Favian Markham, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was not yet asleep when he heard the knock on his cabin door. He had spent the morning watch, from four until eight, as officer of the deck, after which he’d sleepily eaten breakfast in the wardroom while trying to write a letter to Miss Emma Greenhow in Portsmouth before realizing he had grown too sleepy to see his own handwriting. He’d then retired to his cabin, with the intention of sleeping through at least the next watch, and if possible, the entire Sabbath. But now a summons had come. Resignedly he rolled over and acknowledged the knock.
“Captain wants you on deck, sir. Ship in sight on the weather beam.”
“Thank you, Mr.— ah— Zantzinger,” Favian said, peering uncertainly through the slats of the wooden screen that served as his cabin door. “Tell the captain I shall be at his service momentarily.”
He heard the midshipman’s footsteps on the companion as he swung his long legs out of the cramped berth, and felt a warning stab of pain from his touchy stomach as he groped uncertainly for his shoes. A ship, he thought. He brushed his dark hair forward. Too much to hope she was an enemy warship; but it would not be unreasonable to trust she was a fat Indiaman crammed with specie, like the one John Rodgers had captured a few months before.
Favian reached into his locker for his neckcloth and cravat, then decided against wearing them in the tropical heat and brought out his undress coat instead. He let his collar float loose, like Lord Byron. Taking his undress round hat from its peg, he held it in the crook of his arm and stepped from the cabin, ducking his six feet four inches to avoid ramming the deckhead beams with his forehead, looking, he knew, the very picture of an ill-tempered executive officer— dyspeptic, approaching thirty, no longer hopeful of promotion, and awakened in the midst of a profoundly needed nap.
Scratching his long side-whiskers, he went up the companion. The berth deck was deserted, the gun deck above almost barren of humanity. The word of the sighting had passed swiftly among the crew, and except for a few shellbacks peering out the gun ports that had been opened for ventilation, all were on the open spar deck above, adding their weight to the weather rail and probably saving the ship a few inches of leeway as they stared out at the weather horizon. Favian felt the warm Atlantic sun on his shoulders as he buttoned his coat and donned his hat.
He blinked in the strong tropical sunlight. Captain Stephen Decatur stood on the little roundhouse aft, peering to windward with his long glass while Midshipman Zantzinger stood by, holding the captain’s straw hat. Decatur wore a black homespun coat, for he affected a carelessness of dress as well a genial attitude with the crew, just as Favian, to complement it, insisted on formality. It was a kind of working relationship that suited the two men well, and just as well suited the ship.
Favian went up the roundhouse ladder and saluted his captain with bared head. “You sent for me, sir?”
Decatur took his eye from the glass and looked up at his tall, gangling first lieutenant with an easy, familiar smile. “Sorry to get you up. Rub the sleep from your eyes and take a look at this singular apparition.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Singular apparition indeed, Favian thought. He put his hat back on his head, tipped it back, took the long glass from Decatur, and peered through the tube.
United States was on the edge of the Sargasso Sea, and the water was a sour yellow. The wind was fresh and warm from the south-southeast and blew into Favian’s face as he adjusted the glass to the movement of the rolling frigate.
Standing out on the bilious yellow horizon and into the blue, cloud-scudded sky were the three masts of a ship, traveling swiftly and easily under topsails and topgallants, sails that were etched against the blue sky in gently curved, classic lines, well cut and trimmed to perfection. Beneath the masts, barely visible above the wave tops, rode the black hull of a ship.
Favian lowered the telescope and faced his captain. Decatur’s black eyes were calmly leveled at his, expectant. This was one of the little dramas at which Decatur excelled, Favian thought: that of the captain receiving dramatic news from his first officer— news that, Favian had no doubt, Decatur knew full well already.
Favian had no intention of playing his own part badly. He knew that his words might go down in history, to be read by generations of boys who would promptly go out and make the same kind of mistake Favian had made at that age, and Favian had no intention of letting it be said that Decatur’s hand-picked first officer was not equal to the occasion.
“A warship, Captain. She’s got a new suit of white sails aloft, so she’s probably just been overhauled and has a clean bottom.” Before his words could be buzzed among the hands, he added, “May I recommend sending the men to quarters, sir?”
Decatur received the words with practiced self-assurance. “Not yet, Mr. Markham, if you please. Let’s haul our wind and go for a closer look.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Nothing like keeping an audience in suspense, Favian thought.
“Hands to the braces!” he called. “Smartly, now! Mr. Sloat, starboard your helm!”
United States turned into the wind with her accustomed sluggishness, Favian seeing the sails trimmed and the yards properly fanned. The motion of the ship changed abruptly, and Favian felt his breakfast tumble in his stomach, tasting for a second rice pudding unpleasantly mixed with bile. He fought the sensation and it swiftly passed.
Decatur was using the long glass, so Favian picked another from the rack and peered at the mysterious ship. She, too, had altered course, studding sails blossoming from her fore-topmast and top-gallant yards as she bore down in chase. She’d seen United States, and wanted a closer look— confirmation, as if any was needed, that the mystery vessel was a warship and looking for trouble.
“Mr. Stansbury, make our number.” Decatur was speaking to the signal midshipman, who bustled to the flag locker and then to the halyards. The sliver of black that was the hull of the other warship rose slowly above the yellow horizon, and as Favian peered intently through the long glass he caught a glimpse, between tossing waves, of a yellow stripe on the black hull, broken by black gunports.
“She doesn’t answer the private signal, sir,” Stansbury reported.
“She’s British, Captain,” Favian said, returning the long glass to its rack. “She’s painted in the Nelson chequer. We don’t have any ships with yellow stripes.”
“I think you’re right, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said. As he lowered his glass, his lips twitched in a languorous, satisfied smile. “Clear the ship for action, if you please, Mr. Markham.”
Even as Favian bawled the order, heard the blare of the trumpet and the thunder of five hundred sets of feet in response, he appreciated the value of the moment as patriotic tableau: the calm, heroic Decatur, standing motionless on the little roundhouse in full view of everyone on deck, smiling and self-confident as the ship burst into frenzied activity around him. If they’d had a flag up over the quarterdeck to form a backdrop for the captain, the scene would have been perfect.
Favian fought a burst of impatience at these necessary preliminaries and wondered if Decatur, behind his casual, assured mask, felt the same. The whole of the naval officer’s life was geared to those brief moments when he might be in combat; both Decatur and Favian had spent seven years of peacetime duty, of paperwork and drill, beef and rice on Sundays followed by pork and peas on Mondays— all aimed simply at those rare and fleeting moments when an American ship might lie yard arm-to-yard arm with an enemy ship, amidst the smoke and flame of guns, and the officers would at last discover whether all those years of drill had been in vain. Favian felt both irritable and headstrong as he paced along the spar deck supervising the work of the crew, and wished he could fling himself against the enemy then and there, and somehow requite himself for those years of drill, bad food, scant pay, and no promotion.
But if time and tide wait for no man, Favian thought, neither do they speed. The wind would bring the ships together in due course. It was a pity, for fame’s and promotion’s sake, that Hull in Constitution had already beaten Dacres in Guerrière; for Favian’s future’s sake, it would have been best if United States had been the first American ship to meet and defeat an enemy. Charles Morris, Hull’s first officer, had been jumped two grades of rank to captain. Would the Navy Department hand out another such plum in so short a time?
But he was anticipating. The battle was yet to commence, and its outcome was by no means sure.
“Watch it there, Cassin!” Favian snapped out at a helpless midshipman. “I’ll not have your section’s lashings cast off in such a lubberly manner, strewn about the deck! Stow ’em away properly!”
His tension somewhat relieved by his little outburst of anger, Favian ducked down the companion to the gun deck, stooping beneath the deck-head beams, watching the gun crews at the business of making their guns ready to fire, casting the lashings off the long black twenty-four-pound guns, clearing away the side tackles, preventer tackles, and breechings, while the gun captains returned from the gunner’s storeroom with their cartouche boxes, priming irons stuck in their belts, while the ship’s boys scattered sand on the deck to prevent seamen’s feet from slipping on the blood that might soon anoint the planking. It was the familiar bustle, enacted at least once each day on the well-drilled frigate. But this time the air seemed taut, as with an electric charge; the glances of the hands were feverish, their speech terse.
“What d’ye think, Markham?” asked John Funck, the fifth lieutenant. He commanded the larboard twenty-four-pounders— the guns that would soon, if the other warship proved hostile, greet the enemy with a deadly hail of roundshot.
“It’s a warship, and it’s not one of ours,” Favian said. “She could be French, but a Frenchman would probably have run. There’s a small chance she might be Portuguese in these waters.”
Funck nodded. He was twenty-two, six years younger than Favian, too young to have fought off Tripoli. He seemed calm as he faced the prospect of his first action, but there was a muscle jumping in his cheek, and Favian knew how well looks could deceive. He remembered his own barely controlled terror as he faced his first man in a duel, at the age of seventeen, in that quiet orchard in Spain, and how afterward his friends had, to his immense surprise, praised him for his courage; he remembered also the strange, sudden paralysis of his arm on the morning before he stepped with Decatur into the ketch Intrepid to sail into Tripoli harbor to burn the Philadelphia. He flexed the fingers of his right hand at the memory.
It would be easier for Funck. A frigate action was less personal than a duel or a cutting-out party. He’d never see an enemy until it was over. A good first battle.
“She’s British, all right,” he concluded. “She’s got to be. I’ll be down when the time comes to open fire.”
“Aye.” Funck nodded tersely, and Favian passed by him, stepping carefully over the twenty-four-pounders’ training tackles, which stretched back from the gun carriages almost to the deck’s center line. The gun deck was as it should be, the screens between the captain’s great cabin broken down to reveal the long black guns that shared Decatur’s living space— the reminder, amid the captain’s comparative luxury, of the single, deadly purpose of the ship’s existence.
Favian heard cheering above; probably flags were being raised. He ducked down to the berth deck to take his sword from his locker, then carefully took from his chest the two balanced dueling pistols, a gift from his father, and loaded them. They were exquisite, with octagonal barrels, so that he could take hurried aim along the top of the barrel if there was no time to aim properly. He stuffed the pistols into his waistband and strapped on his sword— this was another gift, from the town of Portsmouth, following the adventure in Tripoli harbor. Favian left his cabin and made his way to the spar deck, his head turning to windward involuntarily as he gained the deck, seeking the strange sails coming ever closer on the yellow horizon. They were larger, fore studding sails set, edging down the wind, the hull risen clearly from the waves.
“Mr. Markham, come look at this. It will amuse you.” Decatur’s voice floated over the spar deck. Favian, holding his scabbard carefully so as not to foul himself on the crowded, busy deck, joined his captain on the roundhouse and uncovered in salute.
“Ship cleared for action, Captain.”
“Very well. I’ll tour the decks in a moment. Take the glass and see if you recognize that ship.”
Favian handed his hat to Zantzinger, took the long glass, and put it to his eye. The other ship leaped into focus: the sleek lines, the well-tended rigging, the yellow stripe down its side. “A little large for a Britisher, sir,” Favian reported. “She’s— good God! It’s Macedonian!”
Decatur grinned delightedly from beneath his straw hat. “It is indeed,” he said. “Captain John Carden, unless they’ve given her a new man.”
Favian suppressed a grimace. Just a few months before the declaration of war Macedonian had visited Norfolk, and the officers of United States had played host to their British counterparts. Favian had not been impressed.
“Carden’s a brave man, by all accounts,” he said. It would not do to defame a fellow officer in front of the hands, even if the man was an enemy. “But you know him better than I. I spent my time with Lieutenant Hope, whose talk was all of flogging.”
“D’you doubt we’ll beat ’em now, Markham?”
“Never did, sir.” Another little dialogue for the benefit of Clio, the Muse of history. Favian might find himself quoted in some musty text as an example of the “spirit of the early Navy.”
“Carden told me that a twenty-four-pounder was too large a gun for a frigate— that his eighteens could be worked faster and more accurately in a fight,” Decatur said. “Besides, he said we had no practice in war.”
Favian lowered the glass and looked down the length of the spar deck, seeing the men standing ready at the rows of deadly forty-two-pound carronades. “They’ve had all the practice they need to handle the likes of Carden, sir,” he said. As you well know, he might have added. Decatur’s habit of speaking for the history books could grow irritating. United States was a bigger ship, constructed more stoutly, and with an armament that could overmatch Macedonian both at short ranges and long bowls. Constitution’s victory over Guerrière had removed from American hearts any lingering doubts about whether an American forty-four could beat a British thirty-eight in a fair fight. As far as Favian was concerned, the question was not whether the American frigate could beat the British, but by how much. And, though he didn’t quite admit it to himself, there was another question, of interest to at least one member of the crew: whether Favian Markham would survive the victory.
“I’ll take my tour of the ship now, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said. “I’d be obliged if you’d accompany.”
“Of course, sir.” The tour of the decks was as much a part of the ritual of battle as the raising of the flags, and it was the sort of thing at which Decatur excelled: going down amid his men, the sailors and marines, clapping backs, making jokes, giving little homilies and speeches, exuding self-confidence, bringing the ship’s company to the proper pitch of battle. There would be nothing out of place, Favian knew, nothing Decatur would have to reprimand the crew about, or awkwardly choose to ignore, for Favian had made his own tour of the ship to prevent just such an occurrence. He considered smoothing his captain’s path to be part of his job: Decatur, who so obviously felt the breath of history on his neck, had quite enough to think about as it was. Favian had known his captain for years, from Decatur’s days as a reckless, headstrong midshipman to these more sober, stalwart days of 1812; and Favian knew that somewhere in this more solid version of Decatur the reckless youth was waiting to blaze out. Favian prudently considered that he wanted his captain to keep his head, and so he gave Decatur no reason for upset.
The tour went well. Decatur could hardly avoid the realization that while he was liked and respected by his officers, he was loved by the people. Dressed in his homespun coat and straw hat, he looked as much a foredeck hand as any of them, and he mixed well, while Favian, uniformed, with his presentation sword, pistols stuffed into his waistband, and collar open in the fashion set by Lord Byron, followed him over the deck, smiled obediently at his jokes, and glared with eagle eye to make absolutely certain the captain was not disturbed by the sight of gear not properly stowed or lashed down, rust spots not scoured out of cannonballs, or side tackles not overhauled and clear for running.
Toward the end of his procession Decatur was approached by one of the ship’s boys, Jack Creamer, asking to be placed on the ship’s rolls. He was only ten years of age, and the legal limit was twelve; young Creamer, the orphaned son of a dead crewman, had been put aboard unofficially after artfully pleading his way on board.
“Why d’you want to be on the muster roll, my lad?” Decatur asked.
“So I can draw my share of the prize money when we take the enemy, sir.”
Cheeky little banker, Favian thought; but Creamer’s reasoning provoked a laugh, and any laugh in the tense moments before battle was a good sign, so Decatur airily acceded to the request. Favian, as he made a mental note to record the boy’s age as twelve on the muster roll, knew full well that it would not be Decatur who would have to answer the inevitable inquiry from the Secretary of the Navy as to why and how a small boy had suddenly appeared aboard the United States, in mid-Atlantic, in the moments before a battle. Such correspondence was entrusted to the executive officer as a matter of course, and Favian, anticipating the volumes of paperwork this little patriotic tableau would generate, ground his teeth and tried not to think of how much his life would be simplified if, in the ensuing action, little Creamer’s head were knocked off by a cannonball.
Decatur went up the companion to the spar deck, joked with the marines, the trimmers, and the crews of the spar deck carronades, and then returned to the roundhouse, peering at the Macedonian through his glass. The British frigate was still about three miles off, edging down slowly; she had raised three battle flags— spots of color against the white sails, the blue sky— visible to Favian without the use of a telescope.
“I don’t like her having the weather gage,” Decatur said, his eye fixed to the long glass. “I’d like to try our rates of speed.”
“We could go about and try to take the weather position, sir,” Favian offered.
“Ye-es,” Decatur said slowly. “Wear ship. We’ll see if Carden wants to keep the weather gage.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mr. Sloat, stand by to wear ship!”
Sloat, the sailing master, nodded and sent the trimmers running to the sheets, tacks, and braces. “Manned and ready, sir,” he reported.
“Rise tacks and sheets.” As Favian gave the order, he could see Decatur out of the corner of his eye, standing with the long glass tucked under one arm, staring pensively at the enemy ship, paying no attention to the efficient work of the sail trimmers as they clewed the big mainsail up to the yard. Favian wondered if Decatur was remembering the discussions in Constitution’s wardroom, years ago, off Tripoli, where Favian, the young Decatur, Favian’s friend William Burrows, Thomas MacDonough, and others of the youthful junior officers later known as “Preble’s boys” would hold forth endlessly about naval tactics and the best methods of matching ship against ship. Burrows, perhaps the best technical seaman among them, had always held that it was foolish to engage a single enemy without a trial of sailing first, in which an acute officer could discover his enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps Decatur was remembering Burrows now, that awkward, eccentric, misanthropic young man from South Carolina, Favian’s only real friend in the service— perhaps Decatur was remembering Burrows’s advice as he commanded the sluggish United States against a weaker, but swifter and more maneuverable, enemy. It might become important to know just how much swifter, and how much more maneuverable.
“Wear-oh!” Favian shouted.
“Port yer helm!” Sloat roared. “Brace the yards square to the wind!”
United States rocked uncertainly as her bow fell from the wind, spray curling up over her stem. From a position with the wind coming over her larboard side. United States would swing through an arc of perhaps two hundred twenty degrees to come up close-hauled on the starboard tack, with the wind coming forward of the starboard beam. United States and Macedonian would then be heading in nearly opposite directions, and unless Macedonian wore as well, she would let the American frigate get upwind of her and take the weather gage, seizing the initiative for the upcoming battle.
“Shift the heads’l sheets! Set the spanker!”
The big American ship lumbered through her turn, the yards being progressively braced around as the wind shifted. “Careful there! You on the t’gallant braces!” Favian called, and Sloat barked out a reprimand. Because of the difference in the purchase of the braces, the topgallants tended to get a little ahead of the rest.
“Set the mains’l!” United States was on her new tack, plunging into the waves, the brisk, warm Atlantic wind blowing into Favian’s face as he cast his eyes over the braces, the buntlines and clewlines, making certain all was coiled down properly.
“D’you have your watch, Markham?” Decatur asked, his eye once again glued to the long glass.
“Aye, sir.”
“Let’s see how long it takes Carden to respond to our maneuver.”
Favian glanced at his watch, then followed carefully with his eyes the black sliver of British oak being driven along under its cloud of canvas; the black sliver seemed to hesitate, then swept slowly around in its turn until it looked like a mirror image of itself a few minutes before, edging down on the wind with studding sails set, yet still anxious to keep the weather gage.
“Twelve minutes, sir.”
Decatur’s smile affected laziness, but Favian saw triumph in his black eyes.
“Very well,” Decatur murmured, for once more to himself than to any hypothetical audience. “Very well, in truth.”
Favian saw a fore royal blossom on the enemy yards as the British frigate, eager to regain lost ground, added to her spread of canvas. She was still two miles off. Favian calculated relative positions, speeds, angles, and with a sudden shock realized why Decatur was so pleased.
“We’ll wear again presently,” Decatur said, his eyes bright with calculation. “Not yet. I’ll give the word.”
“Aye aye, sir. Mr. Sloat, keep the trimmers at their stations.”
Favian repeated his mental calculations, his mind filled with angles, surfaces, wind strengths. By God, he’d been right: United States’s maneuver had caught Carden by surprise, and it had taken him a long time to decide upon an adequate response. In another fifteen minutes or so, unless Macedonian changed her angle of approach, Decatur could wear again, and Macedonian would again be forced to follow suit, but this time the British frigate would put herself in an awkward position. Any attack made on Decatur would come slowly, allowing United States’s lower battery of twenty-four-pounders to hammer at the British frigate at long range before Macedonian’s eighteen-pounders could be expected to enter the fight successfully. Favian smiled. Burrows, discoursing long ago in Constitution’s wardroom, had been right. The trial of sail preceding the combat would be critical, unless Carden saw his danger— and when Favian had met Carden and his officers a few months before in Norfolk, none of them had struck him as an acute
The minutes crept by. Macedonian sailed her way into the trap, none the wiser.
“Wear her again, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said, his eyes glowing.
“Aye aye, Captain. Mr. Sloat, stand by to wear ship!”
“Manned and ready, sir.”
“Rise tacks and sheets!”
“What wouldn’t our fathers give to be here, eh?” Decatur asked, and then his eyes saddened. “And poor James, of course.”
“Aye, sir,” Favian said. “It’s what they’d all fought for.”
His words were diplomatic, but Favian knew his own father too well ever to think that old Jehu Markham would wish to stand here by his son. Both Jehu and Decatur’s father, Stephen the elder, had been privateers in the Revolution; Jehu, with his brothers, Josiah and the legendary Malachi, had made himself a tidy fortune in property and prize money with their squadron of privateers, and even now Favian’s cousin Gideon Markham, Josiah’s son, was continuing the family tradition, commanding a New Hampshire privateer schooner against the British. Favian had been the first to break the tradition of a nautical but independent family and join the young Navy, the first naval man in the family since Tom Markham had deserted from a Royal Navy man-of-war in Boston generations ago; Favian’s had been an uninformed choice made at the patriotic, impressionable age of sixteen, and since regretted at leisure.
But no, Jehu would not want to be here. He had turned his back on the sea, retired from his shipping interests about the same time young Favian had entered the service, and now lived the life of a squire some miles from his old home at Portsmouth. He had never shown signs of regretting his choice.
But from what Favian had heard of Stephen Decatur the elder, he was certain the old captain of the Fair American and the Royal Louis would wish to be here with his son. And of course Favian had known the James whom Decatur had mentioned: James Decatur, the brother who had been treacherously killed at Tripoli, and whose life had been so bloodily avenged by his infuriated brother, by a maddened Favian, and by a host of ragged, wounded, but enraged American tars. It had been one of those rare moments, Favian remembered, when he had actually seemed transported, losing all consciousness save that of fury; he had become a living embodiment of vengeance, storming aboard the Tripolitan gunboat at the head of a party already weary with wounds and fighting, to hack with a cutlass at its perfidious commander and drive its crew howling into the sea. Decatur had gone mad as well, Favian remembered, but he’d gone after the wrong boat in the milling confusion of battle, and had a wrestling match with a formidable Tripolitan captain before managing to draw a pistol and shoot the Moor through the heart. That incident— the lucky shot while he was sprawled on the deck with a maddened enemy crouched over him trying to cut his throat with a curved knife— showed the reckless, youthful, and charmed Decatur as well as any. And it showed something characteristic of his admirers as well: In the same fight a seaman, Daniel Frazier, with both arms wounded and hanging helpless, had interposed his head between an enemy scimitar and the grappling Decatur, saving Decatur’s life at the cost of a vicious, and potentially fatal, wound. A man who inspired that kind of devotion was a man worth watching, many had concluded, but then, Decatur had been so marked from the start— unlike Favian Markham, and so many others.
“Set the mains’l!”
Sloat’s final command shook Favian from his memories, and he forced himself to recall the fact that the enemies he now faced were far more dangerous than the Tripolitans had ever proved to be, and that the kind of fighting madness that had fallen over him off the coast of North Africa would never work successfully here, not in the careful, precise maneuverings of a frigate action. Favian turned his eyes to the enemy, then took out his watch and made note of the time in case Decatur wanted it.
Macedonian was not slow this time, evidence that she had expected United States to wear again, but even so she was late. Her approach would be long, and all of it in the deadly arc of the American frigate’s twenty-four-pound guns.
“Very good, Mr. Markham.” Decatur returned his glass to the rack; he had learned all he needed to know. “We’ll shorten down to fighting sail and wait for them. Mr. Sloat, steer her rap-full.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
That would lay the mizzen topsail aback, slowing the ship but increasing its stability as a gun platform.
“Captain,” Favian said, “unless you need me here, I’d like your permission to go below to the gun deck and supervise the firing.”
Decatur looked upon Favian with an indulgent eye. “Aye, go down. I’ll probably join you by and by. Fire on my signal.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He bared his head in salute and made his way to the gun deck.
The guns had been given affectionate nicknames by their crews, and Favian had allowed them to paint the names on the port sills above the guns: Glory, Lion, Brother Jonathan, Jumping Billy, Nelson, Happy Jack, Long Nose Nancy ... the guns Favian had drilled for two years, day in and day out, until he knew each as well as— better, really, than— he knew his own hand. One of his chief jobs as first lieutenant was to supervise gun drill, and Favian had always made gunnery the subject of regular study; Decatur, finding their ideas in general agreement, had let Favian have almost a free hand in training the crews, and had supported him in his long-running skirmishes with the Navy Department, who could never understand how so much powder and shot could be expended in peacetime. The guns were tested, the men trained to be able to load and fire in their sleep, and Favian was immodest enough to know that he had done superbly.
“All right, boys!” he bawled as soon as he’d made his way down the companion. “Larboard battery, out tampions, load, and run out! Round shot— the smoothest and roundest iron you can find!” There was a cheer of satisfaction and anticipated triumph as the gun crews bent to their work. The choice of shot had to he made with care, since not only did uncertain casting methods result in irregularities in the spherical shot, threatening to produce errant flight at long ranges, but American shot in particular tended to be short weight. Favian had discovered, and immediately had consigned to the hold as ballast, so-called twenty-four-pound shot that weighed less than eighteen pounds. As the battle would open at long range, it was especially critical that the best shot be used first.
The gun deck filled with a menacing rumble as the men leaned on the side tackles, the long black iron guns thrusting themselves from the ports and into the bright sun. United States’s corkscrew motion through the water altered slightly as forty-two tons of broadside guns were hauled by main strength out the gun ports. Favian parked his round hat on a cutlass rack forward of the captain’s pantry and walked along the row of guns, stooped to avoid the deckhead beams, and peered through the ports at the British frigate coming down the wind toward them. Macedonian had shortened to “fighting sail,” topsails, jib, and spanker, and Favian grinned: Even now Carden hadn’t realized the trap into which Decatur’s maneuvers had lured him.
The clatter of feet on the companionway announced the appearance of a midshipman. It was Archibald Hamilton, the young son of Paul Hamilton, current Secretary of the Navy. Hamilton hopped over the training tackles as he came forward, and doffed his hat in salute.
“Captain Decatur will wear two points in a few minutes,” Hamilton reported. “His compliments, and he hopes you are ready to open fire.”
“Tell Captain Decatur it’s too blasted early!” Favian almost roared, knowing the broadside was going to be wasted, but he bit his uncourteous reply back and simply nodded. The reckless Decatur had triumphed momentarily over the Decatur the Cunning; perhaps it was best that there be a whiff or two of powder to take the edge off the captain’s eagerness, even if the carefully chosen shot in the larboard guns were lost.
“Very well. Tell the captain that the range is only a little less than a mile, but we’re ready to try it if he wishes.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Hamilton uncovered again— his fair hair, bleached almost white in the Atlantic sun, gleamed briefly in the dark confines of the gun deck— then he put his hat back on and turned to return the way he had come.
The United States began to alter her motion even before Hamilton’s foot had touched the companionway. Favian frowned at Decatur’s impetuosity and called Hamilton back. “Take careful aim now, boys!” he told the gunners. He stationed himself behind the first gun in the third section, the one known as Nelson because its crew was composed of the crew of the famous admiral’s boat, all born Americans pressed into British service, and all deserted en masse sometime after Trafalgar to join the young American Navy. They were men who had served England unwillingly, but who still revered their former admiral and had named their gun after him.
“The range is a bit long, Mr. Markham,” said the captain of the gun, Nelson’s former coxswain.
“The captain wishes us to shoot, Timberlake,” Favian said simply, and the man nodded: What Decatur asked of his crew, they would try their best to perform.
“Sir? You wanted me?” Hamilton, head bared in salute, had returned at Favian’s call.
“In a moment,” Favian said impatiently. The frigate’s movement had settled to an easy roll as the waves came broadside; the gun captains knocked the quoins from their pieces to elevate them, trained them with the side tackles and handspikes, then each in turn raised a fist into the air to indicate he was ready.
“Ready now, lads, on my signal,” Favian shouted. “On the uproll, lads! Wait for the roll... Larboard battery, fire!”
The gun deck filled with smoke and flame and the roaring of giant beasts; there was a general impression of an iron stampede as the lunging guns recoiled to the limits of their tackles. The smoke poured back in the ports, carried by the wind, obscuring the results of the guns’ handiwork: the disadvantage of the leeward position.
“Now, Hamilton,” Favian said to the midshipman, his ears ringing, and trying not to cough in the lung-scorching smoke, “tell the captain, with my compliments, that as that broadside missed, I respectfully suggest we wait for the range to close before firing another.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Hamilton said. He hesitated a moment. “How d’you know it missed, sir?” he asked finally, coughing. “We can’t see a thing.”
“If it didn’t miss I’m a Turk,” Favian said. “Get along with your message now!” He turned to the gun crews. “Choose your shot carefully, boys! I’ll not ask you to waste them again!”
Hamilton made his way over the training tackles to the companionway. The thick smoke gradually cleared as it poured from the lee ports, revealing the British frigate sailing as before, apparently unharmed, her flags like bright dabs of paint against her matchless white sails. United State’s gun deck filled with growling as the guns began to run out, darkening the white square of each gun port.
Hamilton was back. “We’re going close-hauled again,” he said. “The captain wishes you to delay the next broadside.”
Favian bit back a scathing reply, and instead merely nodded. Hamilton returned to the deck above.
United States lumbered nearer the wind, resuming her former course. Favian paced along the gun deck and felt his impatience mount. The sound of the guns had set the blood roaring in his ears; and even though he knew it would be premature, he almost longed for the command to commence the action again. Though he realized that this impatience was the same reckless eagerness he had just deplored in Decatur, it fretted him all the same, and he was relieved when the closing of the range offered him the opportunity to vent his mounting eagerness with the roaring of guns. He called for Carr, one of the junior midshipmen.
“Cut along to Captain Decatur, give him my compliments, and tell him that if he will fall two points from the wind we will oblige him by chancing a broadside,” he said. The midshipman, his eyes gleaming with the same impatience Favian felt within his own heart, uncovered in salute, turned, and almost ran for the companionway.
Favian stationed himself by Sally Mathews, the aftermost gun on the larboard broadside, and peered out of the port. “Aim low, boys!” he roared. “Aim for the yellow stripe!” The motion of the ship began to change as the helm was put up, the enemy frigate— handsome, larger now, and an unmistakable target on the yellowish sea— swinging into the view of the men crouched behind the guns.
Now we’ll show Carden who has practice in war, Favian thought savagely, surprising himself with his own vehemence. “Ready, first division!” he called out. “Fire!” The roar of the guns was like a score of thunders in the low, confined deck. “‘A little low!” Favian called, seeing the shot sparkle on the waves twenty yards before the British frigate. “Second division, ready! Fire!” Flames lapped from United States’s gun ports, the bellowing guns leaping back to the limits of their tackles. “On target!” Favian roared delightedly. “Third division, ready! Fire! Fourth division... “
Again and again the five divisions, each of three guns, spat out their twenty-four-pound shot, then leaped back into the confined deck like snarling iron beasts. Gun-smoke poured in the windward ports and shrouded the deck in midnight blackness. Favian, Fifth Lieutenant Funck, and a pair of midshipmen walked along the line of thundering guns, keeping the men steady, reminding the gun captains to keep their pieces pointed low into the enemy hull, straining their vision peering through murky gun ports to catch a glimpse of the yellow Nelson hull-stripe that served as the aiming point. In the darkness Favian caught brief glimpses of the men he commanded, illuminated by gun flashes, instants frozen in time, unforgettable: a muscled pair of arms holding a handspike; a jagged profile of a seaman with his head wrapped in a handkerchief to lessen his chances of being deafened by the echoing guns; the skeletal grin of some old shellback, once pressed into the British navy and flogged within an inch of his life, baring his teeth at the enemy he had escaped.
A hand clapped down on Favian’s shoulder, and he jumped, knocking his head against a beam in his surprise; he saw through dazzled, smoke-blinkered eyes that the hand belonged to Decatur, come to inject the gunners with his brand of infectious optimism. Favian raised his hand to take off his hat in salute, then realized that he’d left his hat parked forward of the captain’s pantry; he continued the gesture self-consciously, raised his hand to his forehead, and dropped it.
Decatur had come at a particularly bad moment, with torrents of smoke from the guns reducing visibility to a few feet. Gun captains were firing almost blind, or at glimpses of the enemy when the cloud parted at a wind’s eddy, or firing at phantom frigates in the smoke, by mere guesswork.
“I believe we should cease our fire till we can properly see the enemy, sir!” Favian howled into Decatur’s ear. “Firing blind’ll get us nowhere!”
He couldn’t hear Decatur’s words, but he understood the nod. “Avast firing!” Favian shouted. “Pass the word! All guns, ’vast firing!”
The weary gunners gratefully ceased their labors, leaning on their rammers and cartridge ladles. Favian felt his ears ringing in the silence, and then over the ringing heard gunshots, randomly spaced percussions. The enemy must have been firing for some time, but Favian hadn’t noticed: None of the British shot had as yet struck United States’s gun deck.
“I’m proud of you, boys!” Decatur called out. “We’re cutting ’em to ribbons. A little breathing space, and a little wait for the smoke to clear, and then we’ll go at them again.”
Probably only Decatur could have raised a cheer with that speech, but raise a cheer he did. His progress across the deck was like that of a monarch amid his devoted subjects; the powder-streaked gunners reached out to touch his hand, strained their ringing ears to catch his words, worship plain in their eyes. Favian had long ago ceased to feel any jealousy of his captain’s success with his men; Decatur was clearly above most of the laws applying to officer and sailor, and Favian accepted the hands’ worship of Decatur as some sort of inexplicable natural phenomenon, like snow in July.
There was a rending crash above, signifying an enemy shot striking home on the spar deck. Through the clearing smoke Favian saw the sails of the enemy frigate and, below them, the black hull, obscured by Macedonian’s own gun-smoke. He saw occasional flashes that signified the British guns roaring their answer to the American challenge. He watched carefully as the smoke dissipated, as Decatur made his royal progress through the deck; he counted the enemy flashes, pleased that the British were firing their smaller, lighter guns much more slowly than United States’s crew were firing their heavier, more awkward weapons. Part of that was superior American equipment: the United States Navy had recently begun issuing sheet-lead powder cartridges, more efficient than the old flannel ones. A gun firing the old flannel cartridges would have to be wormed and sponged after each shot, to remove flaming fragments of flannel that might prematurely ignite the next cartridge— that danger did not exist with the sheet-lead cartridges, so the guns had to be wormed not at all, and sponged only every half-dozen shots or so, quickening the firing process by the elimination of two tedious steps. Yet the swiftness of United States’s gunnery was not entirely superior technology: Favian had drilled these men for two years, every day, and the drill showed in their smoothness, the ease with which they repeated their movements, and the quickness with which they fired by divisions— Favian’s particular innovation. United States’s guns were also sighted, and British guns usually were not: another advantage.
As Favian peered out the port, he saw also that winking flashes of gunfire were issuing most often from the second and third gun ports on Macedonian’s side, and he heard after one such flash a rending above that meant a shot striking home.
“With your permission, I’d like to open fire, sir,” Favian called out. Decatur waved his assent. Favian turned to the crew.
“I want you to aim at the second and third ports on the enemy side,” he called. “You can see ’em plainly against the yellow stripe. Don’t raise your fists until you’re ready.” He gave them a professional, invigorating smile. “There isn’t another crew in the world who can fire so fast they blind themselves with their own smoke on such a brisk day!” he said, and heard them cheer, in answer.
He knew as well that there was probably no other ship on earth whose gun crews could find it possible to obey an order such as the one he’d just given. The battle had not been won on this day alone, but on every day throughout the preceding two years, every day that he’d drilled his men at firing by divisions and firing live guns at a mark— the tedious and daily exercises that had sharpened his crews to the point where they could spot a cask bobbing in a high sea at five hundred yards, and in ten shots be certain to smash it to splintered fragments.
“First section, ready!” he called, seeing the gun captains blow on their slow matches, the burning ends glowing cherry red. “Fire! Second section, ready! Fire! Third section, ready.”
Favian gave Macedonian’s second and third gun ports three rounds from each of his guns, until American accuracy was spoiled again by American smoke. And then the roaring guns were directed at random into the enemy hull, until a wind-torn gap in the smoke showed that the enemy mizzen topmast had been shot away near the caps; the mast had pitched forward into the enemy’s main rigging, and lay like a drunken sailor in a tangle of canvas, cordage, and torn battle flags. Favian led the men in a cheer at the sight and, standing behind the gun called Nelson, heard Timberlake, Nelson’s captain, turn to Torment’s captain just aft of him, his mouth set in a leering grin. “Bill, we’ve made a brig of her!” he laughed.
Favian turned to walk forward and saw Decatur standing there, and knew from his grin that he’d heard Timberlake’s comment. “Take good aim, my lads, and she’ll be a sloop,” Decatur shouted, loud enough for history to hear, and the gun deck rocked with laughter.
“She needs a little more hulling,” Favian corrected after his chief had passed, hoping Decatur’s joke hadn’t been taken as an authorization to fire high at enemy masts. The guns roared out, Nelson and Torment and Long Nose Nancy, aimed at the yellow stripe with which the enemy had so conveniently decorated their planking.
United States suddenly lurched to starboard, the gun deck echoing to a long, splintering crash from the spar deck above. Through the haze filling the deck Favian caught a glimpse of Decatur running hotfoot for the companion, hopping oddly over each training tackle. Favian glanced hastily about and saw Funck, the fifth lieutenant, directing the guns of his battery, all coolness now, as calm as if it were a Sunday service instead of a Sunday battle.
“Carry on, Mr. Funck!” Favian shouted. “I’m going topside for a spell. Keep hulling ’em!”
Funck nodded, and Favian ran for the companion. The air on the open spar deck, filled though it was with gun-smoke, seemed clear in comparison to the atmosphere a deck below. The mizzen topgallant had gone, lying across the starboard rail, rolling and pitching with each toss of the waves, the jagged stump thrusting like a shivered spear across the deck. Axemen were working to cut the mast free and get it overboard. Favian glanced up at the mizzen top and found himself staring into the awed eyes of the marines who had been in the top when the mast had been chewed away just over their heads and crashed over without doing them harm.
Decatur was directing the axemen, the damage was minor, and the situation obviously well in hand; so Favian climbed the larboard horse block, shaded his brow with his hand, and studied the enemy. Without having to peer through a small gunport and strain his eyes through a deck filled with smoke, Favian could see the Macedonian clearly, and he just as clearly saw a ship in trouble: the dangling mizzen topmast was gone, probably fallen and thrown overboard, and the stump of the mizzen as well, probably shot through below decks. The rest of the rigging seemed in good condition, but the hull had clearly been badly battered. Even without a glass Favian could see that the second and third gun ports had been pounded into one. Flame flickered along the enemy side, and Favian held his breath: There was a crash below, and a shriek above as a pair of shot streaked over the deck. A severed buntline coiled down onto the planking. Favian felt a smile of grim triumph spreading over his features. The British gunnery was slow, slower than it had been, and their aim simply poor. Favian must have made of their decks a charnel house.
As he watched, the enemy forecourse blossomed whitely and filled with the brisk Atlantic breeze. Macedonian’s course altered, her silhouette narrowing as she bore up. She was coming straight down toward United States, placing herself in a position where the American guns could pound her during her long approach without a hope of a British gun being able to bear in answer.
“Captain!” Favian called, jumping down from the horse block. “She’s bore up, and coming down on us!”
Decatur turned from his axemen, absorbed the information, then called the sailing master. “Mr. Sloat, lay the main tops’l aback. We’ll wait for Captain Carden, if he’s that anxious to bring us to close quarters.”
“I’ll go below for the present, sir, if I may,” Favian said. “Until we can use the carronades.”
“Aye, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said abstractly. The last shrouds parted and the mizzen topgallant slid overboard with a final wooden shriek, bobbing astern. “Do your duty.”
Favian ran for the companion. Putting the main topsail aback would drop United States’s speed to nearly nothing, making her a perfect aiming platform, while Macedonian was making of herself the perfect target: almost bows-on, unable to fire a gun in reply, and raked by Favian’s twenty-four-pounders from stem to stern.
The gun deck was brown with smoke and echoed with the roaring guns. The guns were so hot they leaped three feet or more into the air with each shot, then dropped to the deck with tormented, plank-buckling crashes. The guns, to Favian’s surprise, were firing at will, as fast as they could be loaded and run out, rather than by section. “Avast firing! ’Vast firing till I give the order,” Favian shouted, in his fury kicking an intruding water bucket, spilling it across the deck, angrily looking for the fifth lieutenant to give an explanation.
“Funck, where the hell are you?” he demanded. “Blast you, anyway!”
In the sudden silence of the gun deck he found his answer, as litter bearers loomed through the smoke, carefully negotiating their way across the row of training tackles. The white-faced casualty they carried was Funck splattered with his own blood. Lying on the litter was the oozing form of his left leg, separated at mid-thigh by a roundshot. His eyes were closed, and a midshipman held each of his hands.
Favian felt his blazing anger turn to shock as Funck was carried by, knowing the young officer had little chance of survival: The odds were badly against surviving any kind of traumatic amputation, but even the best surgeons hesitated to perform an amputation above the knee, knowing it meant almost certain death. And it was Funck who had been commanding the gun deck while Favian had run up to help deal with the fallen topgallant mast. If the mast had not fallen, Favian might have been standing where Funck had been standing, encouraging the men at the guns, when a British roundshot widened the number four gun port and passed through the deck. For the first time Favian felt a claw of fear touching his nerves.
“Funck’s been wounded, sir.” It was Nicholson, the fourth lieutenant, the man who commanded the starboard broadside that had not yet been fired during the course of the battle. “Shall I take command here, sir?”
Fear is a luxury, Favian told himself. It can be dispensed with. The odds were against Funck’s being hurt, against anyone’s being hurt. Silly to be afraid now, with the enemy beaten.
“The deck is yours, Mr. Nicholson. I’ll help you,” Favian said, hoping his face had not inadvertently betrayed his hesitation. He clasped his hands behind him and spoke quickly, turning to the task at hand, hoping simple mechanics would occupy his suddenly timorous mind.
“Is the third section ready? At the hull now... fire!”
Again the guns roared in their sections; again the decks filled with smoke and angry, leaping artillery. Favian, walking along the gun deck, felt the fear ebb, the moment of apprehension replaced by a moment of disengagement. He felt strangely detached, analytical; carefully he prodded his own consciousness, trying to discover the source of that unlikely, inconvenient trepidation. It seemed to have vanished; its source seemed undiscoverable. In the meantime he continued to function as an officer; he spoke encouragingly to the hands, pointed out targets, reminded the gun captains to allow for windage and relative motion. The reflexes of the serving officer had been built up for years, and had taken over now; he spoke the right words, made the right decisions, stood with the proper impassivity as Macedonian yawed to fire a broadside and enemy shot crashed into the American frigate’s timbers. The rest of Favian seemed quite detached, uninvolved, watching the mannequin of an officer do its job. Favian searched the pit of his soul for his own thoughts, his own reactions, triumph or vindication or pride in his work—even an outburst of temper or another hint of fear. But there was nothing: The mannequin was empty, filled with a soulless wind, as if his effort to suppress his fear had resulted in the suppression of all else, everything that was his own. The face of the proper officer, the talented subordinate, had eroded entirely whatever it was that lay within, and Favian felt a detached sorrow that there were no longer any real choices in his life, that his course had been charted at sixteen, when he’d made the mistake of joining the Navy and adhering to the granite, unforgiving code of the serving officer, and discovered within himself the ability to counterfeit so well the face of a member of the American elite.
Macedonian yawed every so often to deliver a broadside, showing that she had only about half her guns remaining in the fight. From the occasional motion of his own ship, recorded so well by that automaton which the outer Favian had become, he knew that Decatur had been alternately backing and filling the main topsail, sliding away from the British frigate. Both the British yawing and the American easing off prolonged Macedonian’s approach, keeping her in ideal pounding distance of the gun deck twenty-four-pounders, but eventually the range narrowed, and Favian left Nicholson in charge of the gun deck and came up the companion to supervise the spar deck carronades.
These short, light guns threw a forty-two-pound shot, perhaps the largest weight of shot ever fired from a frigate; but they threw it only over a short distance, and had been out of range tiull now. Favian, walking up the companion and blinking in the strong sunlight, saw the men and their officers standing by the short, squat carronades, waiting impatiently for their orders. Decatur, imperturbable and confident, stood on the roundhouse, watching with anticipation the British frigate descending on them.
“With your permission, Captain, I’d like to fire the smashers,” Favian called. Without waiting for Decatur’s assent, Favian turned to the forty-two-pounders’ crews. “We’ve swept their foredeck clean,” he said, “so we don’t need to pay any more attention to their fo’c’sle. It’s amidships I want you to aim, and at the mainmast.” The mannequin, the officer’s mask, had made these observations below and was now translating them into action. He felt as detached as if he were watching another man play himself at chess.
“First section... fire! Second section... fire! Third section... fire!”
The carronades spoke, flinging their howling projectiles at the enemy. The number five carronade, amidships, flung itself muzzle up as it recoiled on its slide, a constant problem with these short guns whose trunnions were lower than the guns’ center of gravity. With a seemingly cheerful, professionally feigned grin, Favian flung himself at the carronade to bring the barrel low again. Another two shots from each carronade section and the British frigate’s main topmast was shot away at the caps and came down in an avalanche of splintering spars and torn new canvas. The enemy topsail swathed the British gun ports, preventing them from firing their guns without certain danger of setting themselves ablaze. While they coped with this difficulty, Favian shifted his fire forward and brought the fore-topmast down as well. Macedonian was a helpless ruin now, virtually a hulk; her main yard was in its slings and unusable, her foresail so riddled as to be almost useless. Decatur filled the main and mizzen topsails and United States surged ahead.
“Shall we rake her, sir?” Favian asked, knowing it was perfectly possible for them to station themselves off Macedonian’s bows and tear her to bits without a hope of receiving a shot in return.
“No— cease your firing, Mr. Markham,” Decatur said with a slow smile. “We’ll put our ship in order and give them time to think.”
“Aye aye, sir. ’Vast firing, there! ’Vast firing, all! ...Mr. Stansbury,” calling to a midshipman, “Pass the word below to cease firing.”
“Give them time to think,” Decatur had said. Favian himself would have seized the advantage of the Macedonian’s dismasting and raked her mercilessly, but he saw at once how Decatur’s astonishing grasp of human nature had produced a plan that would work much better. Raking Macedonian might have produced a hopeless defiance in her officers, but Decatur would let them have time to realize, without the distraction of guns and screams and crashing masts, that they had lost. They were rolling their gun ports under with every wave. The wounded would be in agony from the motion. There was no hope of resistance— not with only one torn sail. They were probably taking on water as well, rolling all the shot holes under. No hope, he thought. She’ll sink like the Guerrière.
United States forged ahead and hove-to three cables from her enemy. The hands were called up to knot and splice the rigging, replace the torn mizzen topsail with fresh canvas, set another jib in the place of one weakened by shot holes. Then the American frigate tacked, showing herself fully capable of maneuvering and renewing the fight, and ranged up under Macedonian’s lee; and, without a word being spoken, the British battle flag raised on the stump of Macedonian’s mainmast was lowered in surrender.
“Mr. Markham!” Decatur called from the roundhouse. “You may congratulate yourself and your gunners on a job spectacularly done! Find a boat that can swim and go take possession. Take Mr. Nicholson with you.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Favian turned to the crew. “Three cheers, boys, for Captain Decatur!” he bawled, waving his arms like an orchestra conductor; and the men cheered their hearts out for their captain, while Decatur stood in his homespun black coat on the roundhouse, waving his straw hat in acknowledgment of their applause. The inner Favian watched his professional self lead the cheers, a little awed by the hands’ devotion. Devotion: It was a sentiment he did not understand; yet he knew that some of the men were devoted to him with almost the same fervor they felt for Decatur, and as a professional officer he knew how to use that devotion to contribute to the well-being of the ship— and, if necessary, to his own less scrupulous ends.
As the hands cheered, Favian became aware of a sickening ache in the pit of his stomach, an ache that swelled even as he stood on the deck and waved his arms. Dyspepsia. It had come, and it would stay, a reminder of his own imperfection, for days. By this time he knew it well. The profession of sailor ideally demanded a stomach of iron, and in this piece of necessary equipment Favian was sadly lacking.
Favian made arrangements for one of the whaleboats to be lowered and manned, then ducked below decks to arrange his appearance. “Mr. Nicholson,” he called. “Get yourself below and into a clean coat and hat. We’re going to take possession.” Nicholson looked up at Favian with eyes reddened by smoke, and perhaps by sorrow.
“Funck’s dead,” he said. “Funck and five others. Six wounded. I just heard the butcher’s bill.”
“He was a good man,” Favian said. He wondered how often he had confronted the death of a brother officer with the same stiff resolve he knew he was displaying now; he knew so well how to handle himself, how to approach the grief of others. He touched Nicholson’s shoulder. “At least he died in victory. His guns did well. The British dead will have no such consolation.” He could see Nicholson’s young face slowly absorbing the words.
“Now we’re going aboard the enemy frigate,” Favian said. “I want you with your good coat and hat, your face cleaned of gunpowder, your dress sword and while gloves. I don’t want them to guess about Funck. I don’t want them to know they even made us sweat.”
Nicholson looked at Favian in slow surprise, and then nodded. Unite and present an imperturbable front— that was the way of the service. Never let the enemy see grief, joy, anger. Be dispassionate at all times, even in killing. Favian intended to step aboard the beaten ship impeccably dressed, unruffled, superior, establishing his ascendancy over the beaten enemy, letting them know that there was no possibility of resistance, and that there had never been any other possible outcome.
Favian’s cabin on the berth deck, below the water line, had not been disturbed when the ship cleared for action. Favian stepped through the door, threw his powder-streaked uniform onto the bed along with his trousers and shirt. He washed his face thoroughly in a fire bucket and was careful to take off the least traces of dirt and sweat. His long side-whiskers were brushed, the elegant little spit curls on temple and cheek, demanded by current fashion, were moistened and combed into place. Over a clean shirt went his neckcloth and cravat, then the heavy full-dress coat with its bullion epaulet on the left shoulder. He strapped his sword into place over the coat, dropped his pistols into the pockets, then put his good cocked hat into the crook of his arm and stepped from the cabin, dressed as if he were sitting for a portrait. It was not for nothing he was the son of Jehu Markham, one of New England’s most prominent men of fashion, and one of the most imperturbable. He knew he looked good in full dress, the blue coat and gold epaulet that accentuated his slim figure and showed his broad shoulders to advantage. He started up the companion, then turned to go back for a pair of kid gloves.
Nicholson waited on the spar deck, less well accoutered, but still looking as if he were outfitted for a dinner at the home of one of the Navy’s commodores. Favian stepped up onto the spar deck, nodded at Nicholson and the boarding party that stood ready, and stepped up onto the roundhouse. Decatur was still there, seeing to the splicing of cordage, the fishing of wounded spars. “Don’t take Carden’s sword, Mr. Markham,” he said. “I’ll come along to do it myself.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Favian took an American ensign from the flag locker, uncovered to Decatur and the flag over the quarterdeck, and stepped to the entry port. His stomach ached with every step. The whaleboat was having difficulty in the high seas, trying to keep near the frigate’s side without smashing itself against the bilge. Favian timed his leap carefully, holding his scabbard in his hand so that it wouldn’t flail about and injure the boat’s crew, and jumped down to join Nicholson in the whaleboat’s stern sheets.
The whaleboat shipped a lot of water as it rowed, heavily laden, over the steep seas. Macedonian was a handsome ship even in defeat, even with her gun ports rocking under and bloody salt water sluicing from the scuppers. The whaleboat passed under the figurehead of Alexander the Great, then made its way to the entry port. Favian could hear a weird chorus, screams and moans and crashes, snatches of laughter and song. So this is what a beaten ship is like, he thought.
I have never been on a beaten ship, he thought. It sounds as if half the crew are deranged.
He donned his kid gloves. As the whaleboat slid to the entry port, Favian recognized one of the men in cocked hats who stood by the port to help him in.
“Hello, Hope,” he greeted.
“Hullo, Markham.”
Favian timed his leap and jumped for the entry port, soaring himself to the knee as Macedonian rolled water aboard. David Hope, the beaten frigate’s first officer, saluted hand to hat. One of his uniform sleeves was missing, the exposed arm red-stained and bandaged; there was another bandage beneath his hat, and blood on his collar. Favian doffed his hat in the American salute. The well deck was slippery with blood and spume, corpses and parts of corpses rolling from one bulwark to the other as the ship rocked, flesh tossed in a little lake of red. Favian put his hat back on.
Hope cleared his throat loudly. Favian looked down and saw that Hope was offering his sword in surrender, the sword of one first officer given in defeat to his victorious opposite. Macedonian shipped another sea, and the corpses rolled. Nicholson jumped aboard and stared in shock at the horrid scene as the red slowly climbed his white dress trousers.
Favian reached out a glove to the British sword, and took it.
Triumph, and vindication.