Nor'west by North: The Tenth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure by Chris Durbin

Author:Chris Durbin [Durbin, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-15T22:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Sixteen

News of the French

Wednesday, Twenty-Sixth of March 1760.

Argonaut, at Sea, off Fair Head.

‘Where away, Mister Shorrock?’

‘Starboard bow, sir, about three miles. He must be just off the next headland.’

‘That’s Torr Head, sir,’ Fairview added, looking at the chart.

Holbrooke could see it clearly now. South of Fair Head the land trended downwards but at Torr Head it suddenly rose into a little hill on a peninsula. It looked like a nose, a clown’s bulbous nose at a travelling fair. And just off the clown’s nose was a brig, perhaps a hundred tons, Holbrooke estimated. It was sailing close under the land, which was unusual in this westerly wind, and it was making hard going of it. Perhaps its master hoped to catch the ebb around Fair Head. If so, he would have to make better speed before the tide turned again and made the whole thing impossible. That piqued Holbrooke’s interest. It wasn’t like a trading brig to be so careless of his passage speed. There were no harbours here and no road that would hold an anchor in these tidal rips. What on earth was he doing?

‘Let me see that chart, Mister Fairview. Now, what’s the extent of the tidal rips where that brig is?’

‘The worst of it’s close into the coast, sir. Maybe out to a mile offshore. You can see the white water clearly now.’

The brig was in shadow as the sun slanted relentlessly towards the green hills of Antrim, but half a mile offshore the orange rays caught the short, steep waves that the tide was kicking up. From three miles away on the deck of a stout frigate, the sea didn’t look particularly rough, but Holbrooke knew that a small brig would be pitching and rolling like a mad thing.

‘He’s bearing away, sir,’ Shorrock called excitedly. ‘Now he’s wearing. God, what a shambles. That mizzen boom came close to taking the mast by the board.’

‘Call all hands to make sail, Mister Shorrock. I’ll leave it to you, Mister Fairview, but I want to be alongside that brig before we lose the light. Hoist that red flag at the main t’gallant head.’

‘Pegasus won’t see it yet, sir. They’re both out of sight behind the island.’

Holbrooke glanced towards the island. There was no sign of the two frigates.

‘Never mind, hoist it anyway and fire a gun to leeward; a gun every two minutes.’

Everyone on deck could see that the brig was in a panic, and they were all taken up with the thrill of the chase. T’gallants were set at record speed and soon the stuns’l booms slid out through their irons, closely followed by the stuns’ls themselves that flashed in the dying light of the day. Argonaut picked up speed with the wind broad on her starboard beam, casting a wide bow wave that reflected the dying light of the sun in a glory of orange and red and grey and white.

‘Nine knots and a half, sir,’ Shorrock reported after a cast of the log, ‘and we’re gaining on him.

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