Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  Mr. Du Lesseps then took his turn, and demonstrated how it was done. He put four rounds near the center of the target, and the last two dead on the bull's eye.

  The Gunner then told the officers what they had been doing wrong – yanking the trigger rather than squeezing it; closing their eyes at the moment of firing; taking so long between shots that their extended arm began to shake – or, conversely, firing so rapidly that they had no time to aim. Then he allowed them to reload, and fire another cylinder. As each man fired, Du Lesseps watched the target through a telescope and corrected their fire. This time everyone did significantly better.

  “That's well,” the Gunner said when they had finished. “Remember, it's not an officer's job to fight but to lead his men. You won't be engaging at this range, but much closer, 'cause your pistol is only for your personal self-defense. But if you can hit a man-sized target at this range, you can hit a pirate at five feet, even one swinging a blade at your neck – if you keep your head. So to speak,” he added when everyone laughed at his unintended double entendre.

  Until now, the hands had been spectators, rooting for their own division officers and engaging in a certain amount of friendly if surreptitious betting. Now it was their turn to blaze away with shotguns. The target cable was paid out to a distance of fifty yards, Unlike the officers, the hands had all had instruction on, and experience handling, their stubby, double-barreled weapons, and their practice went quicker. As each man fired two rounds at the target, the Gunner watched through the scope and called hits or misses. He decreed that a “hit” was at least one pellet within the inner two rings of the bull's-eye, reasoning that this would be a disabling shot. Since a round contained eight pellets, each nearly 8.5 mm in diameter, this criterion allowed for a high degree of declared accuracy on the part of most of the seamen.

  “Boys, o'course you've been shootin' at the maximum effective range of the weapon, so these are good results”, Du Lesseps said. “In action – as some of you know from experience – the engagement ranges will be much shorter, particularly in boarding or repelling boarders. Then the main thing will be rate of fire – how fast you can reload. That's just a matter of practice until the movements are automatic. I've got bandoliers of dummy shells made up, and a half-dozen practice guns with the firing pins removed. You'll be doin' loading drills by division – LPOs see me to schedule that.”

  Next it was the turn of the riflemen – but first, the target raft was drawn alongside so that the shot holes could be patched. The shotgunners had so perforated it that it would otherwise have been impossible to call hits and misses any more. Then the towline was veered out to a cable's length – two hundred yards. This was well within the effective range of the rifles, but was still a difficult shot, with both the schooner and the raft moving up and down on the gentle swell.

  Each of the seaman-gunners of the landing force fired a five-round clip at the target. At that range, Mr. Du Lesseps needed back-up in calling hits and misses, so a midshipman also manned a telescope. They gave the rifleman the benefit of any disagreement between the two. These men had all put hundreds of rounds through their weapons, both on the firing range ashore on Nosy Be and in action, so they racked up good scores. The three surviving sharpshooters, armed with long 7.62 mm seal rifles, did even better, even though they fired from their usual battle stations in the lower mastheads, where the roll and pitch of the vessel resulted in greater motion than at deck level.

  Finally it was the turn of the Albatros's main battery – the 37 mm rifle. The target was cast off and allowed to float free, and the Gunner estimated ranges using the optical range finder. The gun was run out on its rails to the starboard gun-balcony – one of the platforms that jutted out from each side to allow the gun to fire dead ahead or dead astern – and began firing. As soon as the gun's crew found the range, Sam ordered the schooner tacked, so that the crew had to heave the gun across the deck to the port gun balcony and lay it again. The XO noticed that, after a few iterations, the gunners were trembling with fatigue, so he told off a gang of seamen to help with the chore of moving the gun from side to side, to save the gunners' strength for loading and firing.

  This evolution the XO timed with his watch. It was repeated until the time between firing a round from one side, then releasing the locks and heaving the gun on its tracks to the other side, locking it down, and firing the next round, was reduced to under a minute.

  Finally, Sam allowed the gun to fire enough rounds from one position to completely demolish the target. All hands – not just the gun crew – cheered at the sight of the raft blowing apart. This served as the dramatic conclusion to the exercise. When the crew was secured from battle stations, they were in high spirits, as always after gunnery practice. The noise, the smoke, the excitement of a hit – all served as an exhilarating tonic, wiping away the last of their fatigue. The crew went laughing to their supper, joking and skylarking.

  Now began a tense period for Sam, as he waited for the corsairs to appear on the northern horizon, while worrying to himself that he had made a mistake, that the two dhows were headed directly for Nosy Be. An additional worry grew as sunset approached: that they would slip by unseen during hours of darkness. The moon was in its last quarter, so visibility at night would be limited. He could only hope that a dhow's great expanse of sail would catch and reflect the dim moonlight enough for his lookouts to spot her.

  Through the night, the schooner patrolled off Cap d'Ambre, beating eastward for an hour, then tacking and reaching back toward the land for an hour while lookouts strained to catch sight of the enemy. False alarms that turned out to be small clouds on the horizon – and in one case of a bright light reported, Venus rising – kept everyone tense and alert.

  Sam had the armchair from his day cabin brought topside and lashed to the rail, and there he took catnaps from time to time, never going below all night. Because detection range would be short in the darkness, he wanted to be ready for an instant response should the dhows be sighted.

  Dawn found him red-eyed and unshaven, stiff in every joint from sleeping slumped in the chair, his head cradled in his arms on the rail. He stood and stretched, then caught sight of the XO headed aft, a mug of coffee in each hand. He came onto the quarterdeck and handed one of them to Sam.

  “Bless you, my son. All of your sins are forgiven,” Sam said gratefully. Kendall chuckled and rasped, “Amen, Father.”

  They sipped their coffee in silence for a few minutes, then Kendall said, “With all due respect, Commodore, you look like kak. It looks like being a bright clear day – when we sight them, we'll have at least an hour before we're in range. Why don't you grab a couple of hours in your rack?”

  “If I didn't feel like kak, I might take offense at that remark, Al. But I think I'll follow your recommendation.”

  Two hours later, Sam re-appeared on deck, washed, shaved, and appearing as well-rested as if he had spent the entire night in his bunk. A lifetime of seafaring had conditioned him to make the most of every opportunity to sleep.

  “Good morning, Mister Munro,” he said to the officer of the watch. “Any traffic?”

  “Good morning, Commodore. No, none since I came on deck. Lookouts are posted fore and aft, and in the maintop, as you ordered.”

  And that situation prevailed throughout the morning – nothing in sight.

  Sam passed the time by wringing the last tenth of a knot of speed out of the Albatros. This was an exercise he enjoyed, and it had the added benefits of both exercising the crew at sail-handling and allowing the schooner to cover the greatest amount of water on each leg, minimizing the chance that the dhows could slip by them. He ordered all fore-and-aft sail set for the beat to the eastward. Then, when she tacked back onto the westerly leg, he added both the fore-topsail and the drifter. He ordered a midshipman stationed by the taffrail log, watch in hand, noting the distance run every six minutes and multiplying by ten to get the vessel's speed through the water. The breeze had freshened, and the Albatros alm
ost attained eight knots on the broad reach to the west, a very respectable turn of speed for a bluff-bowed ex-merchantman.

  The long day wore on in this fashion,with Albatros tacking back and forth, searching an empty horizon.

  At sunset, Sam, while still publicly displaying serene confidence, was in an internal turmoil. Had he guessed wrong? Were the Caliphate gun-dhows even now bombarding Hell-ville harbor? Or had they slipped by unseen during the night? He resisted the temptation to send down to radio a repeat of his orders to maintain a careful radio watch. He knew Mr. Robert didn't need to be told twice, and doing so would only reveal Sam's nervousness and anxiety.

  He compromised by “just happening” by the radio shack shortly after sunset. Robert and his mates were surprised to see the Commodore in the radiomen's tween-decks lair, where he normally didn't venture except on his Sunday inspection rounds.

  “Just curious, Sparks,” Sam said with elaborate casualness. “Were we within radio range of Nosy Be all day today? Were propagation conditions good?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. We copied some routine traffic between Hell-ville and an arriving vessel around noontime,in fact – came in clear as a bell.”

  “Ah. Um. Well, carry on, Mister Robert.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Sam left Radio, feeling the curious stares of the comms crew at his back. He knew that almost before he reached the quarterdeck scuttlebutt about the Commodore's odd behavior would have spread fore and aft.

  But he was saved by the lookout's cry: “Sail ho! Sail broad on the starboard beam.”

  The schooner was then on the port tack, reaching back toward Cap d'Ambre, on a gentle southeasterly breeze.

  “Douse the drifter and the square topsail, Mister Low!” Sam said instantly. “Come up. Trim in.”

  The schooner came up onto the wind, the hands tailing on to the sheets and heaving way.

  “Tack. Fall off.” The vessel's bow came smoothly through the wind and fell off onto the starboard tack, running free toward the strange sail.

  Sam grabbed his telescope from its rack in the chartroom and looked northward. The sail was still only a tiny white blur. He tucked the telescope into his waistband and heaved himself up into the windward ratlines and scampered up to the lower masthead. There he had to pause to catch his breath before raising the telescope to his eye. Once he re-focused, he could just make out two tiny white triangles nicking the northern horizon: a two-masted dhow.

  “There's her mate just to the west, Skipper,” the lookout, now only a few feet above Sam's head, said in a conversational tone. Sam stared again through his telescope, and sure enough there was a second set of lateen sails, barely visible on the horizon.

  Sam climbed down to the deck, striving mightily to keep his face impassive, as if everything was happening just as he anticipated. In reality, he was filled with a fierce joy and an enormous sense of relief: he had guessed right. Nosy Be and Joan were not, after all, endangered by his poor judgment.

  “Battle stations, Mister Low,” he said calmly.

  “Aye aye, sir.” The usual organized chaos ensued, as bosun's mates calls shrilled, the pipe was repeated over the PA system, and the hands scrambled to their stations. Once there, they hurriedly rolled down their sleeves and buttoned their jumpers up to the neck, as a precaution against burns. The canvas cover was whipped off the 37 mm gun and vanished below, and the gunners, and the seamen detailed to heave her from side to side, stood by in readiness.

  “Pass the word for the Gunner.”

  When Du Lesseps appeared within moments, Sam said, “Guns, I think we'd better issue rifles and ammo to the gunners – all except the 37 mm crew. We'll almost certainly be engaged on both sides.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Tense moments passed as the Albatros closed with the two dhows, which had altered course slightly to converge on the schooner. The XO strolled aft and stood with Sam on the quarterdeck. This might be their last opportunity to confer face-to-face before the battle began. It was Sam's firm rule that the CO and the XO remain widely separated during action, communicating only via sound-powered phone, to minimize the possibility of one hit taking out the vessel's two top officers.

  “Any minute now they'll spot the gun balconies and realize we're not a merchantman,” Al said. “What do you think they'll do then, Commodore? Engage or run?”

  “Oh, I think they'll fight, Al,” Sam replied. “We've got the weather gage, but they don't run – not when the odds are in their favor.”

  “You're probably right, sir. Whatever else you can say about them, you can't fault their courage.”

  At a closing rate of almost thirteen knots, the dhows neared Albatros with startling suddenness: one moment, it seemed, they were still on the horizon and the next almost within range. As the XO had predicted, they had probably noticed the gun balconies and concluded that this was no fat, defenseless merchantman. A flurry of flag signals were exchanged, and the dhows diverged, clearly intending to engage the Albatros from each side simultaneously.

  Sam drew relative-motion plots in his head: the dhow to starboard was closing faster. He decided that she intended to force him to fall off into range of her consort, and then both would engage.

  “Main battery: engage to port with frag, number two fuses. Aim for sails and rigging,” Sam said to his phone talker.

  Number twos were sensitive contact fuses that would set off the shell at the slightest resistance, as from sail canvas or rope. He hoped to disable the dhow thereby. A disadvantage of the number two fuses, however, was that for safety's sake, because of their extreme sensitivity, they had to come up from the magazine one at a time rather than being loaded from the ready box, thus reducing the rate of fire.

  “Riflemen: stand by to engage enemy vessel to starboard as soon as she opens fire.”

  The seamen-gunners were armed with rifles whose maximum range approximated that of the effective range of the three-inch bronze guns that were the standard armament of the pirate dhows – a bit under twelve hundred yards. At that range the riflemen couldn't engage individual targets with any hope of a hit, but they could sweep the enemy's deck with rapid fire and at least make him keep his head down.

  There was another exchange of flag signals between the two dhows, and Sam watched in dismay as both abruptly fell off onto a beam reach on the port tack and headed across Albatros's bow towards the east-north-east. They had chosen to run rather than fight after all.

  “Come up. Main battery, open fire on the lead dhow,” Sam said quickly to his phone talker. They were just within range, and if he could disable one, if only briefly, he had the barest hope of snatching a victory from this encounter.

  The 37 mm rifle went off with its characteristic startling crack! and a waterspout bloomed short of the target, with a dirty yellowish-brown splotch in its center from the explosive charge.

  The second dhow was now crossing ahead of the Albatros. “Shift fire to the second dhow,” Sam said to his phone talker, reckoning that they had taken their only reasonable shot at the leader. The second dhow was now at or near the maximum effective range of the 37 mm. It barked again, and came very close: a splash close aboard the starboard side of the dhow, which must have given her decks a shower of salt water with a hint of shrapnel.

  But not close enough. The dhow continued racing along on a beam reach, apparently unharmed.

  Sam cursed under his breath and resisted a powerful urge to tear off his hat, throw it to the deck, and stomp on it. But it wouldn't do for the crew to see their Commodore throw a temper tantrum like a three-year-old.

  “Tack,” he ordered as calmly as he could. Lieutenant Low had been expecting this maneuver, the obvious one, and immediately shouted the necessary orders. The Albatros's bow swung smoothly through the wind and fell off onto the starboard tack.

  “Shift the gun to the port side.”

  This order, too, had been anticipated, and the gun crew immediately threw off the locks and tailed onto the tackles, shifting
the gun rapidly and smoothly along its rails to the port gun balcony, then locking it in place.

  The three vessels were now all on a beam reach, on the starboard tack, heading south-easterly – toward Mauritius, or perhaps Reunion. Sam knew he had little hope of catching them. This was their best point of sailing, on which they could easily outpace the tubby Albatros unless he could force them to tack, a time-consuming procedure with the dhows' lateen rig. But, in this situation, there was no reason for them to tack – they could just run him under the horizon without shifting their helms a point.

  “Mister Mooney,” he called to the Navigator, whose battle station was on the quarterdeck, in close proximity to the chartroom and the Commodore.

  “Sir?”

  “Will the drifter help on this heading, d'you think?” Sam had long experience sailing the schooner, but Mr. Mooney had been her part-owner and master from the laying of her keel, when she was a merchantman named Come, Angel Band. He knew her intimately, and what she could do on every point of sailing.

  “No, sir – not a chance. Drifter's cut with too much belly to draw this close to the wind. More likely to slow us down.”

  “What about the square topsail?”

  “Might help, sir. Won't hurt.”