Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  Ready to raise Merry Hell with any shipping he encountered.

  “Thankee, God,” he whispered aloft, “for a heaven-sent slant o’ wind. Now, could You give me just one more?”

  Chapter Ten

  Lt. Jules Hainaut looked about the decks of his small schooner, a captured American trader, only sixty-four feet on the range of the deck, and tried to savour his temporary “command” for as long as it lasted, tried to tamp down his disappointment that it was only for the day, and that Le Maître, Captain Choundas, seemed averse to ever letting him free. God forbid, but ever since Choundas had learned that his bête noire was in the Caribbean, the monstrous old ogre had come over all protective, as if he’d not risk his “pet,” his “like a son to me” protégé beyond his sight until Lewrie and Proteus had been eliminated…by his other, experienced “pets,” Desplan, Griot, and MacPherson, the talented, the promising, the mature…! Merde alors, but it made Hainaut feel like a mewling infant, a kitten with its eyes barely open and vulnerable to the back-garden crows who’d carry it off like a ripe…worm!

  L’Impudente (her American name had been Saucy) was not even the Captaine’s to give him, for she was basically the yard-boat Governor-General Hugues used to tour his coastal fortifications…or sail to Marie Galante Island with his friends, wenches, and baskets of wine and food for his occasional romps…a faded, neglected…yacht!

  Capitaine Choundas despised long trips in coaches, and a riding horse was pure torture on his mangled body, so, when he had decided to accompany the Le Bouclier frigate to Basse-Terre to complete her lading for her first aggressive cruise, he needed a comfortable way to return, and L’Impudente was available.

  “Follow us to Basse-Terre, Jules,” Choundas had ordered, “and I will take passage back to Pointe-à-Pitre with you. Try not to run her aground, mon cher. M’sieur Hugues would never forgive me if you wreck her, and he already despises me enough,” he’d said—without humour.

  Even that was galling; as if Hainaut had never been a tarpaulin man, a well-trained matelot, boat-handler, or Aspirant who had stood a watch by himself.

  Well, for one day at least he was not a paper-shuffling Lieutenant de Vaisseau, a mere catch-fart to his master. He had challenged L’Impudent’s lethargic crew to sail her as she was meant to be sailed, had infused them with enthusiasm and had heated their blood with a dole-out of naval-issue arrack, the fierce but coarse brandy, before he even got the schooner away from the dock, with a promise of double the usual wine ration with their noon meal if they showed that magnificent frigate a clean pair of heels and danced a quadrille round her.

  Even with a weeded bottom and both running and standing rigging in need of re-roving or replacement, L’Impudente could dance. Under all the sail she could bear, he’d stood out with the wind up her skirts to carve graceful figures beyond the harbour moles to wait for Le Bouclier. Then, once on course Southwest, then West, he had weaved her about from one side of the frigate’s bows to the other, sometimes falling back to pace her alee, then up to windward, ducking under her stern and pretending to fire raking broadsides into her transom.

  Capitaine Desplan and his officers, and the frigate’s eager crew, had first good-naturedly jeered them, then later cheered them, as the aptly named schooner had taunted and flirted about her. Hainaut didn’t see Capitaine Choundas peering over the side during his antics, which was disappointing, as he strove so hard to prove himself a trustworthy ship-handler, but surely the others were telling him…!

  L’Impudente had threaded the middle of the five-mile-wide channel between the Vieux Fort and the island of Terre-de-Bas in the Saintes, with antics done for a while, and the frigate finally spreading enough sail to threaten to run her down, dead astern of her in the deeps that L’Impudente was sounding. She stood out a good six kilometers (Hainaut was iffy when it came to the new measurements that the Directory had invented but in the old measurements he was sure he was out far enough to miss any reefs or shoals, and would not damage their Governor-General’s little “play-pretty.”

  He had turned North, with the Trades a bit ahead of abeam, and the lithe schooner had gathered speed and heeled, dashing spray as high as the middle of her jibs, seeming to chuckle in delight to make such a gladsome way, as Hainaut did. Onward, rocking and romping, ranting over the bright sea, until he was far above Basse-Terre, and stood off-and-on to allow the frigate to sail in and anchor first, far from any risk of falling foul of her. At last, he angled in toward the harbour, which was no true harbour at all, just a lee-side road off the town and its quayside street, his crew ready to short-tack once he turned her up Eastward, planning to ghost in alongside Le Bouclier once she had both anchors down.

  “Heu, Lieutenant?” the schooner’s permanent Bosun said from the tillerhead. “There’s something going on astern, I think, m’sieur.”

  “Touch more lee helm, Timmonier,” Hainaut told the helmsman as he stepped past the long tiller sweep to the taff-rail to raise his telescope, a particularly fine one looted from the same disgraced admiral who had “supplied” his smallsword.

  “Mon Dieu, merde alors!” Hainaut spat in alarm. “The ‘Bloodies’!”

  “Hard t’miss, thank God,” Lewrie said, pointing his telescope, its tubes collapsed, at the volcano of La Soufrière to the Southeast, and the other peak at the North end of the island that was just about as tall. “It appears we’ll make landfall just about level with a town called…Mister Winwood?”

  “Deshaies, sir,” the Sailing Master informed him, after a quick peek at his chart. “About seven miles offshore, I’d make it, before we bear away due South.”

  “Close enough,” Lewrie said with a wolfish grin on his phyz as he paced about near the windward ladder-head, which would soon be the engaged side, if most French ships were inshore. “If they’ve watchers ashore, we’ll sail faster than a messenger can ride. And if they have semaphore towers, it don’t signify. Panic, and bags o’ shit; that’s what we’re here for, after all. Though I simply don’t understand why we haven’t seen a single one of our warships, all the way here.”

  “It’s possible, sir, that most of them are lurking to windward of the island,” Lt. Langlie commented, “where they can snatch prizes.”

  “‘It is not love but booty that this iron age applauds,’ do ye know,” Lewrie cited, not above borrowing from Mr. Peel’s stock of erudite quotes; though the Latin had quite flown his head. “Tibullus, I believe. Aha! Speakin’ o’ booty…”

  He lifted his glass to eye a schooner of decent size that stood abeam the wind, close inshore but heading outward. Inshore of her was a small ship, full-rigged and three-masted, that was also standing out to sea as if she hadn’t a care, or an enemy, in the world.

  “Time to hoist the false Tricolours, Mister Langlie,” he said.

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “And, do I have t’fire a salute to their Governor-General, I’d not bemoan the waste o’ powder, either,” Lewrie chuckled. “All in the best of causes…ain’t it, Mister Peel. All’s fair in love and war.”

  “That remains to be seen, Captain Lewrie,” Peel frostily said by his side. His nose was still out of joint that no argument he offered could dissuade the mercurial Capt. Lewrie from his enterprise…though Peel had to admit that Lewrie’s preparations had been little short of masterful.

  Proteus’s masts and spars, right to the yardarm ends, had been painted in the French fashion; two large Tricolour flags flew from the main-mast truck and spanker, and even her sails had been altered with wet wood-ash from the galley fires, brushed on to mimic the different seaming system of French sailmakers. Her own Sailmaker, Mr. Rayne, and his crew had basted the jibs to appear narrower-cut, and had raised up the roach at the jibs’ feet, before “painting” false seams. The bastings could quickly be freed by firm yanks on the spun-yarn small-stuff twine, returning Proteus to full-bellied sailpower in a twinkling.

  Lastly, despite his protestations that the private signals not be used except in the most im
portant circumstances, Mr. Peel had been forced to turn them over. With Lewrie committed to his madness, and his officers and crew so exuberantly enamoured of the plan, he could do no less, no matter that their use this day would clue the French to changing them the day after.

  “She’s making a hoist, sir,” Lt. Adair cried, standing aft with the signals midshipman and after-guard. “An Interrogative, followed by a string of numeral flags.”

  “Mister Peel?” Lewrie said, turning to their resident spy.

  “Ah, uhm,” Peel muttered, lifting a heavy borrowed telescope to his eye, trying to keep the schooner in the ocular, and focussed, with the frigate bounding and rolling beneath him. “It is the challenge…to which we should reply…” He referred to a sheaf of papers.

  “I have it, sir,” Lt. Adair insisted, quickly calling numbered flags to the sailors standing by the windward halliards. French flags were numbered differently, but the stolen private signals book had the coloured illustrations in order, to sort them out. On this day in the middle ten-day of the new-fangled French month, the proper reply was a five-flag hoist…Nine, Two, Eleven, Thirty, Repeater; which signal quickly soared aloft as high as the mizen-mast top, each bundled flag suddenly blossoming as the light binding twine was shaken out.

  “That won’t put them off, will it?” Lt. Langlie fretted. “That we’re miles more efficient than any Frog ship I’ve seen when it comes to breaking signals, sir? ’Stead of hanking them on and sending them up straight from the lockers, free to fly, and…”

  “Hmmm,” Lewrie frowned, having not taken that into consideration ’til now. Inefficiency wasn’t limited to French ships, though. He’d seen signalmen start a hoist with the first flag, let it flap near to the bulwarks as the next was attached, so the message crawled up, one item at a time. “Mister Peel, what’s a merchantman doing with naval private signals?” he asked, instead. “Could she be a privateer?”

  “Very possibly a privateer, or a captured merchant ship turned to naval use, Captain Lewrie,” Peel answered with an equal frown.

  “Was she sloppy at her hoist, Mister Adair?” Lewrie demanded.

  “A tad, sir, aye,” Lt. Adair agreed.

  “Let’s call her a privateer, then,” Lewrie decided, lifting his own telescope, “’til we know better. And assume she’ll take us for a real Frog warship, with a martinet bastard for a captain, compared to their idle ways. Just so long as it gets us within close cannon shot before her captain figures it out. ’Bout two miles, now?”

  “Just about, sir,” Mr. Winwood estimated aloud.

  “More sails inshore, sir,” Midshipman Elwes pointed out. “Wee single-masted fishermen, most-like.”

  “Damme, she’s making another hoist!” Lt. Adair groused, waving his signalmen to haul their own quickly down. “Mister Peel, may I ask your assistance? I speak French, but translating, and sorting out the flags, both…”

  “Of course, Mister Adair,” Peel acquiesced, despite his opposition to the whole endeavour; as long as they were there, why not make every effort to pull it off?

  “Bienvenu…‘from where bound,’ she asks,” Adair called out. “Damme…where are we from, sir?”

  “Rochefort,” Lewrie quickly extemporised, “we’ve cruised along the Carolinas with no luck, and are short of provisions. Got chased off by American frigates, tell him. Break it up into three hoists if you can…keep ’em gogglin’ us. Mister Peel, what’s a good name for a Frog frigate that’s been unfortunate at taking prizes?”

  “Uhm…L’Heureux…‘Fortunate,’ sir,” Peel said, snapping his fingers as if inspired, and breaking his first impish grin of the last two days.

  “Aha! Yes, make it so, Mister Adair. Quickly,” Lewrie bade.

  “Aye, sir. Uhm, however d’ye spell that, Mister Peel?”

  “And now, gentlemen,” Lewrie continued, turning to his assembled officers, “let us beat to Quarters. Take your stations, and God help the French.”

  Lt. Adair had to stay on the quarterdeck instead of going forward to supervise the forrud-most guns and foremast, in close cooperation with Mr. Peel and Midshipman Elwes to sort out the proper flags to convey their fictitious identity and recent past to the inquisitive schooner.

  She a guarda-costa? Lewrie wondered, lifting his glass one more time. We’re close enough, now…I can see semaphore towers, ashore, but they ain’t wagging, yet. Waitin’ for the schooner t’tell ’em who and what we are, are they? Well, just you keep on waitin’, damn you all. You’ll know us soon enough!

  “Ahem,” Mr. Winwood said at his side.

  “Time to turn South along the coast, I take it, sir?” Lewrie asked with a faint grin, taking time to turn and look at him.

  “Aye, Captain,” Winwood solemnly agreed with a slow nod.

  “Very well, sir. Haul our wind and shape the new course.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “She’s hauling her wind, too, sir,” Lt. Adair announced. “New hoist…damn, what does that mean?”

  “Not for us, Mister Adair,” Lewrie snapped. “Let it pass, this time. There’s a semaphore station, halfway up yonder mountain that’s working its arms. Can they not read our hoists, most-like they’re asking the schooner to tell ’em what she’s learned.”

  As Proteus fell off the Trades to take the wind on her larboard quarter, the schooner angled out from the coast to close her, the gaffhung fore and main sails winged and bellied out as she wore across the wind and approached at a 45© angle, aiming as if to meet Proteus, bowsprit to bowsprit. The range dropped rapidly, as the frigate’s crew settled down beside their great-guns, or knelt below the bulwarks with muskets. A keen-eyed observer might have noticed that Proteus had her gun-ports free to swing outboard a few inches with each roll, ready to be hauled up and out of the way the second that the order to fire was given. The larboard 12-pounders were ready-loaded and hauled up close to the bulwarks; a few last tugs on the tackles would jut their snouts into firing position. The flintlock strikers were, so far, un-cocked but primed, with the firing lanyards already in the gun-captains’ hands but held loosely.

  The focs’le carronades, the quarterdeck carronades, were manned behind closed ports, only a few designated men allowed to appear above the bulwarks to slouch idle, prepared to wave until the trap was to be sprung. It was a rare French man o’ war that fitted carronades so far in this war; the sight of them would have been a dead giveaway.

  “Half mile?” Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth.

  “About that, aye, sir,” Lt. Langlie agreed, striving to appear casual and inoffensive as he paced about the quarterdeck.

  Lewrie strode to the helm and took up a brass speaking-trumpet, then shambled back to the bulwarks, as if he had all the time in the world, wouldn’t harm a flea, and had the most pacific intentions; just about ready to smile, wave widely, and “speak” the Frog schooner. He held the speaking-trumpet high, in plain sight, and, as the range got shorter and shorter, he could see the schooner’s captain standing with his own amplifying device by her starboard, lee, rails, waiting for the chance to “speak” him, too.

  Evidently, the semaphore station had been satisfied, for after a brief flurry of spinning telegraph arms, it had gone inert again. One quick scan of the windward horizon showed Lewrie that the fishing boats were still casting their nets, the three-masted ship still stood out to sea a little beyond their bows, would pass to leeward about a mile off. Off the harbour town of Basse-Terre, the frigate’s putative destination, Lewrie thought he could see another three-master with weary tan-stained sails, a ship he took for another merchantman standing out to sea. He got a glimpse of a larger three-master entering harbour, brailing up as she ghosted shoreward. Close to Basse-Terre was another schooner…

  “Rounding off, sir!” Lt. Langlie cautioned. Sure enough, at a distance of no more than a British cable, the schooner had swung about to run alongside them.

  “’Allô, m’sieur!” the schooner’s captain called with his brass trumpet to his lips. “Ici
L’Abeille, le navire de guerre auxiliare…”

  “The Bee,” Mr. Peel snickered as he came up to the windward to Lewrie’s side, no matter naval custom against him being there unasked.

  “…who just got stung!” Lewrie chortled. “Run out and fire!”

  Ports skreaked open to thud against the upper bulwarks; tackle sheaves squealed, and heavy carriage trucks rumbled like a stampede of cattle as the guns were run out the last few feet.

  “False flags down!” Lewrie shouted; he’d made that mistake long ago when first as commander of the Jester sloop, and had caught a grim “packet” for it, no matter how successful his ruse de guerre had been. He had strictly cautioned the Mids and signalmen to haul the Tricolours down and get their own ensigns up as soon as the ports opened, but…

  Halfway aloft, Lewrie thought; close enough for king’s work!

  He looked forward to Lt. Catterall, who stood in the middle of the gun-deck with his sword drawn and held high over his shoulder; who was looking most anxiously back at him.

  “Fire!” Lewrie shouted as his true colours reached the tops.

  “On the down-roll…fire!” Lt. Catterall bawled.

  Three 24-pounder carronades, double-shotted with solid balls and what amounted to a small keg of plum-sized grape-shot, and thirteen 12-pounders, each loaded with two balls, went off almost as one, creating a sudden, murderous avalanche of metal, and a choking cloud of sulfurous, reeking smoke propelled windward, punctured by the flight of the shot, that only slowly drifted back over their own decks then alee, as the hands sprang to sponge and swab out, to charge and then reload the barrels, to prime the locks and begin to grunt and slave to run out for another broadside….

  But another broadside would not be necessary. The schooner was a converted trading vessel with thin civilian scantlings, framed with the parsimony of a skinflint Yankee Doodle, with light timbers put farther apart than naval practice. She was a shambles!