With the moon and stars hidden behind a thick ceiling of clouds, the world was dark as pitch. The glow of the lanterns seemed to end at the ship’s railing. The world had ceased to exist beyond the light’s reach.
Charlie didn’t like the sensation. Her world always felt too small, too confined, so not to being able to see beyond the prow gave her a hint of melancholy. If the devil added flames, this would be her hell.
As her shift wore on, Charlie continuously searched the Eastern horizon for the first signs of light. Finally, the first gray shades of dawn delineated the seas from the skies. A sense of relief filled her knowing that morning lay minutes away. She loved this time of day as the blacks and grays of night were replaced by color and the seas would stretch to the edges of the earth until it met the sky. Her eyes followed the horizon.
Suddenly, her stomach lurched into her throat.
“Sail ho!” she bellowed. “All hands!”
She grabbed the spyglass, though in truth she didn’t need to. The ship was close. For a stunned moment the whole watch seemed unable to move their feet as each man turned to the horizon. As soon as they, themselves spotted the ship, they bolted into action.
More cries of, “All hands,” echoed throughout the ship, waking their sleeping counterparts.
Charlie began barking orders to the helmsman to change course to south-southeast. She sent the remaining sailors aloft to unfurl all the sails, including the studding sails, and wet them so they would hold more wind.
She did not think the other ship had spotted them yet, as the horizon astern their ship remained dark and the sun had yet to cast its light at them. With the spyglass, she had not seen any change to their sails or their course. She knew their only hope would vanish with the light.
As each second ticked away, the outline of the ship became more visible. She felt sick. It was a British warship, heading west. In land measurement, it was a mere mile and a half away. Charlie knew in the right hands, the range of a sixteen-pound cannon was about a mile. All she could do was put as much distance between them as she could.
The larboard watch poured out from below deck and immediately joined her men in the riggings, manning the ropes and hauling water aloft. Soon the captain and the mate joined her.
The old ship creaked in protest as the sails filled with wind. Charlie could feel their speed increasing, but knew at that range it would be a short pursuit. Their ship was more than thirty years old, built just prior to the War of Independence. Her sole purpose was to carry heavy payloads. She was not built for speed. It certainly did not help that the ship had not been put in dry dock to have its barnacles scraped in years. The added drag kept the ship from her full potential.
When the warship changed course, they knew they had been spotted.
Pursuit at sea is a slow process that can take hours, or if the ships are equally matched, days. But they were not equal. Within an hour, the warship fired its cannons. Men jumped from their perches twenty feet or more to get out the sails before the grapeshot ripped through the sheets and split chunks of wood from the masts and yardarms. Captain Sinclair tackled Charlie as calls of, “Hit the deck,” sang out.
Volley after volley thundered moments before the grapeshot whistled through the air. Yardarms broke with a sharp crack of splintering wood above their heads as the rounds hit their mark. The shredded sails lost their air making the ship slow as if they had just hit the doldrums. If it had been their intent to sink the Arcadia or to kill its crew, the warship could have easily done so.
“Run the white flag,” Captain Sinclair ordered sounding shaky as he climbed off Charlie to his feet.
Getting up, Charlie ran for the boatswain’s locker and retrieved the flag. Her hands shook so badly, she could barely attach it to the rope and send it aloft.
“Captain!” she heard Mr. Byron shout and turned to see her father collapse on the quarterdeck.
“Get Dr. Kirk,” she yelled to the man standing closest to her. As she started to run to her father’s side, she realized the order to heave-to had not been given. “Drop the anchor! Lie-to!” The anchor would not find anything below to grab, but would create resistance that would slow them further as the helmsman turned the ship into the wind.
The men scurried about like rats. Each man knew from years at sea what to do. Charlie barely noticed any of it as she rushed to her father’s side.
“I’ll see to him,” she said to the mate, who kneeled next to her father. “Run the ship. Find out if anyone else is injured.”
Immediately, she saw the blood soaking her father’s clothing and pooling on the deck. She pulled the knife from her waistband and cut away part of his shirt. The smell of blood wafted to her nostrils, salty as the sea itself, as she rolled him onto his side. He had caught grapeshot in his back. Charlie knew the area in question housed his kidney and was very close to his liver as well. She grabbed the material she had cut off and pushed it against the wound. Her father made a moan of pain, but appeared to be unconscious. A weak, wet cough involuntarily tightened her father’s chest making a gush of blood soak the rag.