Unlike the majority of his peers, Captain Gale Sloan had never been a superstitious man. His own cat was solid black, and if it had been his habit to stay home every time the cat dashed around in front of him, he would never leave the house. If he happened to avoid walking under ladders, it was out of sheer common sense and a reluctance to repeat past experiences rather than fear of some old wives’ tale. He’d been a boy of ten, standing under his father’s ladder trying to offer then-Admiral Sloan a fresh sandwich when the admiral had accidentally knocked over a bucket of paint. It had taken the better part of a week to get it all out of his hair. The Admiral had tried to impress upon his protégé the importance of omens, good, bad, and indifferent, but none of his insistence had ever had any real effect. A bird was a bird, the wind was completely unaffected by whistling or the scratching of stays, and Friday was as good a day as any to set sail – so when Friday rolled around bright and clear, he gave the order to raise anchor with a clear conscience.
Unfortunately for Captain Sloan, his crew thought differently, and their displeasure was conveyed quite clearly through their slovenly sailing. H.M.S. Rohir, widely regarded as the tautest and most efficient ship in home waters, had missed stays under the port-admiral’s very nose. Less than a week out, she’d borne down with gunports open on a British whaler and spent a full hour accusing them of being Frenchmen in disguise, until the harassed whaler captain had finally been allowed to show his papers. The mistake was perfectly excusable, as the whaler had indeed been in enemy waters for some time and had taken to posing as a French ship in order to avoid being attacked, but it rankled nonetheless. And then there was that whole affair with the third lieutenant. It seemed he’d gotten into some sort of trouble ashore and been kicked out of the house at which he had been peacefully boarding for the past several years. He and the first lieutenant had exchanged harsh words on the subject, and the resulting tension in the officers’ mess had spread and infected the entire ship.
And now, this.
Sloan shook his head irritably and turned away from the rising sun, curled locks rustling around his ears in the light breeze. “No, Mr. Bowen, we will not beat to quarters yet. These French are no threat to us. Their ships are manned only with a skeleton crew, essentially unarmed, carrying nothing more frightening than a herd of cattle to that new fort some distance inland. Even if they were fully prepared and crewed entirely by able seamen, we could still outrun them easily. No, we’ll continue on our present course for the time being.” He spun on his heel and, without further comment, went below to contemplate the rapidly-falling barometer in his personal quarters.
As it turned out, “the time being” did not last very long. The lookout on one of the eleven French ships woke from whatever reverie he’d been so deeply involved in and reported the British ship, and instantly fresh white canvas blossomed out on every mast. The third lieutenant was just preparing to tell the second lieutenant that he didn’t think the Frenchmen would be too adamant about the pursuit (it being common knowledge that British were always the better sailors) when the warning shot from the leading ship whistled past his ear, struck the deck harmlessly, and bounced over the side. The shot was made at extreme range and caused no damage, but no one put its accuracy down to sheer luck; if the British were better sailors, the French were usually better marksmen.
Captain Sloan, just making his way back to the deck, tossed a quick glower at a midshipman resting his hand against a backstay before ordering the men aloft to spread more sail. Water creamed white along the hull and the Rohir’s wake fanned out abaft her stern, but still the Frenchmen gained. The larger ships could spread canvas higher to catch more of the light airs and shouldered aside the slowly growing seas more easily, whereas the smaller brig was already laboring in the heavy swell. The continuous swishing of water along the hull made a strange contrast to the seamen’s quiet whistling.
“Mr. Owen, ask those men to belay that noise, if you would,” Sloan said crossly. “This is no time for celebration. Oh, and we shall beat to quarters.” His words were quickly relayed throughout the ship. Marines filed into the rigging and settled in the tops, hauling their rifles after them in hastily roped-together bundles; powder boys scrambled through the din belowdecks carrying the first of the gunpowder charges to each of the ship’s sixteen great guns. Seamen ran by divisions to their places along the railing where they waited, ready to run aloft and trim the sails at a moment’s notice. Then, the initial rush over, silence fell.
Another hour passed in the same strained hush. The light breeze strengthened to a strong wind, and did not seem willing to abate. Sloan had his glass trained on the captain of the leading French ship when the foreigner made his first mistake, and couldn’t help but smile at the look of consternation on the Frenchman’s face. Two topgallant sails split simultaneously, which gave the Rohir a momentary advantage in speed and, more importantly, made the French captains cautious. White canvas continued to flash out aboard the Rohir even as it disappeared aboard the French ships.
However, the day afforded no sweeter surprises for the anxious Rohirs. For a few hours Sloan cracked on heedless of the rising storm, but as the noon observation drew closer and finally passed, his recklessness passed as well. He called for sail after sail to be reefed, leaving just enough canvas flying to keep the Rohir out of range of French fire.
The chase ended abruptly when a particularly vigorous gust snapped the mizzenmasts of three of the French ships and blew out the foretopsail of a fourth. Realizing finally that when it came to foul weather, the British ship had considerable advantage in both seamen and experience, the Frenchmen all hove to and prepared to wait out the storm. A cheer rose among the Rohirs, but it too was cut off when their own topgallant split, reduced to little more than handkerchief-sized scraps by the screaming wind.
Six bells in the afternoon watch brought comparative peace; the French fleet was too far to be any threat for a day at least, the guns had been run back in and secured in the course of standing down from action, and best of all the gale had backed to something just over a strong wind (a condition to which the British sailors were perfectly well accustomed). Still, it was enough to drive any self-respecting bird out of the skies, so there were quite a few astonished shouts when the albatross first soared through the masts.
A smile broadened across Captain Sloan’s face. “Mr. Bowen, pass the word for my rifle.”
The first lieutenant’s eyes bulged. “A - aye aye, sir,” he stuttered, but he hesitated a moment before turning to relay the message. The captain’s steward, Doyle Carlow, shared the first lieutenant’s sentiments, but none of the officer’s control over his tongue.
“’Tis frightful bad luck to be shootin’ an albatross, sir,” Carlow said, peering into the captain’s face as he handed over the loaded rifle.
Sloan scoffed. “Bah. I’ve been bringing down birds – yes, albatrosses too – since the day my uncle first handed me a slingshot, and nothing’s ever come of it save a few particularly good dinners. Now stand back, if you please.” Carlow retreated belowdecks, muttering under his breath the whole time, and the lieutenants drew back along the rail to watch wordlessly. The majestic bird, easily ten feet from wingtip to wingtip, made two more passes before the captain raised the rifle and fired all in one smooth movement. He stepped to the side as the carcass thudded down in the exact place he’d been standing.
“Have that taken down to the good doctor,” he said into the sudden silence. “I don’t believe he has an albatross in his collection.”
The remainder of the daylight hours played host to considerable murmuring among the crew and saw the re-strengthening of the breeze. Sloan was not the only one to cast an anxious look at the black clouds scudding through the sky. The sun slipped behind the horizon without protest, plunging the Rohir into the dark of night, and all at once the brewing storm unleashed its fury.
Erratic gusts threw stinging rain into the sailors’ faces, blinding them; one man brought in by the press-gang three months ago was washed over the side before safety-lines could be strung along the rail. The ship’s carpenter and plenty of willing hands cobbled together a makeshift sea-anchor, and launched it during a momentary pause in the wind; not thirty seconds elapsed before one of the towering waves caught it full-on and returned it to its component planks. Sails blew out one and two at a time, and Captain Sloan didn’t dare send men aloft to replace them, because even the minor surface area the sailors’ backs provided was enough to swing the Rohir over onto her side and bring her leeward railing under the foaming sea.
Hearts the whole ship ‘round sunk into stomachs, and then further, and further still as a new sound made itself heard: Lurking beneath the shrill screech of the wind, that hollow, booming, rhythmic crash of surf on rock that every sailor dreaded. The men straining at the wheel never had a chance to bring her head around before the Rohir leapt straight onto the reef and ground to a sudden, jarring stop.
Sloan staggered forward, gripping what remained of the rigging for balance. First the main and then the foremast crashed forward, both snapped off cleanly at the base, slamming through the deck and coming to rest only when they met the hard shoals below. The sea rushed in to fill the vacancies left by panicked seamen. When the skies cleared eleven hours later, all that was left to mark the final resting place of H.M.S. Rohir and her entire crew was a light smattering of shattered planks and a single snowy feather.
