Both masts were sheared off just above her ravaged bulwarks, and she looked like a pheasant that had been gut-shot by a lucky, closein blast from a fowler’s shotgun. Her starboard side bore so many ragged shot-holes, some right on her waterline, already gurgling and frothing with dirty spume and foetid venting air from belowdecks, that there was no hope of saving her. They’d punched her almost to a full stop, and she was already listing to starboard as if to hide her hurts!
“Hold fire, Mister Catterall!” Lewrie shouted forrud. “No need for another. Drop it, lads…dead’un! Wait ’til we corner the next rat! Mister Langlie, helm up, and hands to the braces. Lay us close-aboard yon three-master just off our starboard bow.”
“Aye, sir!” the First Officer barked, looking greedy as he began to issue quick instructions.
“Mister Catterall, secure the larboard battery. Next victim, we will engage to starboard!”
The runt-sized full-rigged ship quavered as if shocked, before her topmen began to scramble aloft to free more sail, as hands sprang to the braces to wear her a little off the wind to run due West, winds on her starboard quarter, which obviously was her best point of sail.
“Puts me in mind of a Dutchman, sir,” Mr. Winwood commented to his captain, his face screwed up in concentration after a long study with his telescope. “A tad shorter than your av’rage three-master, a lot beamier, and her bows bluffer…”
“Shallower draughted, too, I’d expect,” Lewrie added. “Bound to be slow as treacle, even did she have a full gale up her skirts.”
“Won’t get far, I doubt, sir,” Winwood said with a even rarer sniff of satisfaction, nigh-even pleasure; even broke a faint smile on his phyz! The usually stolid Sailing Master rubbed his hands together with a sandy rasping of a practiced tarpaulin man, inured to ropes and exposure half his entire life.
Small she might be, shabby she might be, but the merchant ship was deeply laden with something sure to be valuable. If she was Dutch, she was very far from home, and a very rare sight in the Caribbean with most of the so-called Batavian Republic’s colonies occupied by British forces. Holland was occupied by the French, but it was a cooperative occupation, so Lewrie had heard; the “ideals” of the French Revolution had found fertile soil in a fair number of Dutch hearts, who had aided the earlier American Revolution so eagerly.
Allied with the Frogs, sailing from a French port, the merchant ship was surely up to something nefarious in aid of some joint scheme. She might be gunn’l deep with arms and munitions for Saint Domingue…she was sailing deeper into the Caribbean, not for home. She’d be what was termed “Good Prize.”
No wonder Mr. Winwood was rubbing his hands together so gladly; he was already assessing his share of her capture and sale; it was too bad, Lewrie thought, that he was counting chickens that’d never hatch.
“Steer direct up her stern, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie ordered. “I wish to get up to pistol-shot before we bear up and rake her.”
“You’ll not try to, uhm…?” Mr. Winwood gasped, scandalised by the loss of guineas.
“Might be a frigate I saw off Basse-Terre, Mister Winwood,” he told the Sailing Master. “No time to fetch-to, and sway out boats for a boarding-party. Well, one boat, perhaps…so we may set her afire and be certain she’s a total loss. Sorry. My savings could use infusions of prize-money, too, but…”
He swung back to look at the three-master, now pinned like some struggling butterfly on Proteus’s jib-boom and bowsprit as the frigate bore a touch alee of her, as if to intersect her course and swing about due West to present the previously used larboard battery. A flag from the Batavian Republic now flew above her tall, galleried stern windows.
It was too far for Lewrie to shout advice to the Dutch captain, though he did glare at the stout figure by her taff-rail and pushed his thoughts at him. Strike, fool…’fore I’m forced t’kill you!
Chapter Eleven
“Now where is he going?” Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas dyspeptically said, peering out over the taff-rail of Le Bouclier as she drummed and thundered to the last of the “orderly” chaos of a ship come to anchor into the wind. Topmen were aloft, fisting the last sails by the brails to the yards after the tops’ls had bellied flat aback when she had steered Nor’east to brake to a stop. Men of the after-guard on the quarterdeck swarmed around him to strain against the mizen tops’l and t’gallant halliards and jears to lower the yards to the cross-tree and fighting-top. More men stood by the after capstan, with the kedge anchor’s messenger line already fleeted about the capstan drum, waiting for the stern kedge to be rowed out with Le Bouclier’s stoutest cutter and dropped. The frigate was faintly shuddering as she made a slight sternway, falling back from her best bower, paying out scope on cable run out through the larboard hawse-hole, beginning to snub to the resistance of a well-grounded anchor.
“He is having the time of his life, m’sieur,” Capitaine Desplan answered with an indulgent chuckle. “Your pardons, but he has so many stern responsibilities, for such a spirited young man. And he serves a most demanding master, n’est-ce pas?”
Choundas painfully turned to glare at Desplan, wondering if his comments were any sort of criticism; but no, Desplan still smiled, as if he had no reason to cringe from Choundas’s wrath.
“She is shabby and badly maintained, m’sieur, but that schooner handles as lively as a Thoroughbred stallion,” Desplan went on. “Once we would have relished such sport…until stern duty, and command of ships and squadrons, forced us to growl at the world. To be that free and young, again, ah, what a brief joy. To dance with your very first little ship, m’sieur? Remember?”
“Umph,” Choundas finally allowed. “I do, indeed. La Colombe, she was named, a despatch-boat…she, too, was an American schooner. Aptly named, she was. She flew like a ‘dove.’ Umph. Well…”
For a brief moment, Choundas had almost seemed human, in sweet reverie of his early days as a newly appointed Lieutenant, not even a Lieutenant de Vaisseau yet. But that moment swiftly passed, and he turned and clump-swish-ticked back to the taff-rail, glowering as little L’Impudente came about and began to gather speed to run into the port, at long last. Perhaps, Choundas thought, Jules Hainaut had suddenly remembered that the noonday meal that Captain Desplan would soon serve would be infinitely better than the cheese, sausages, and vin ordinaire carried aboard the schooner in a palmetto hamper. He was waving, even if the schooner was nearly a mile or more off, all of them…?
“Mon Dieu!” Captain Desplan suddenly exclaimed, grunting as if suddenly punched in the abdomen. “M’sieur Choundas, the semaphore, it sends the alarm signal. What…”
Choundas slowly turned to watch the long arms of the semaphore tower swish, pause, then swish to a new bit of its message; an urgent signal that repeated—Enemy In Sight!
“Capitaine Desplan,” Choundas growled of a sudden, stamping the ferrule of his cane on the deck, “get this ship underway, at once. If you have to cut your anchor cables, do it! Vite, vite! Before you lose her. The ‘Bloodies’ are paying us a visit!”
Ponderously, Choundas turned to look out to sea once more; out beyond the canted masts of Hainaut’s onrushing schooner. He could see a pall of sour grey-brown smoke a few miles away, could see the tops’ls and courses of a three-masted ship headed South, see a smaller ship to the left of the smoke pall that was turning to run, one that would be a prize capture before the half-hour glass would turn.
Sudden boiling rage surged up his throat, made him wish to howl and jibber at the slackness, the inattention of the signal stations up the coast, the idle, work-a-day shamblers pretending to maintain watch!
And where was that commandeered schooner he had posted to the leeward coast of Basse-Terre to guard against such a raid? If, despite his sternest warnings and implied threats, those hapless island-born Creole time-servers had decided to tuck into the lee of Pointe Allegre and fish, or go ashore for a leisurely three-hour meal, they would learn that his threats were not empty, that eve
n close ties to Governor Hugues would not save them.
But, no—he could not, must not bellow and stamp as he wished. Le Bouclier, caught in the middle of the evolution of anchoring and taking in all sail, was already a madhouse. Her captain, mates, and senior officers already made enough noise to interrupt their matelots’ work, then rush to undo all their labours of the past quarter-hour and get way on her again.
Besides, he was Guillaume Choundas, Le Hideux, the ugly monster whom all feared. One thoughtless rant, and that useful aura of terror would evaporate, leaving him recalled as just another panicky officer who’d windmilled his arms and floundered; then, people would laugh at his haplessness and his disfigurements, making him a pitiable object of fun with no real authority or respect. No, he could only stand by the flag lockers and taff-rail lanthorns, leaning his bad leg against them, and drum impatient fingers on the silver handle of his cane in an outward sham of calm, as if he were quickly scheming. But aflame with murderous rage. The slack captain of that guardship would pay…and this ‘Bloody’ anglais, too! Once this marvellous frigate got sorted out and under sail, there was still a chance to salvage things…such as his successful reputation, and his continued career!
“Helm down, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie ordered, as the struggling merchantman pressed on Westerly. “Course, due South for a bit. Lieutenant Catterall? Rake her as you bear.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Catterall shouted back, as mystified as anyone else aboard, aghast at the idea of passing up such a rich prize, of not even firing a warning shot to force her to strike.
Proteus hauled up more to windward, sailors on the sail-tending gangways freeing braces to let the yards swing to ease the press of the wind, and the increasing heel that might angle the artillery too low.
“Open ports!” Catterall cried. “Run out, and gun-captains, aim low! As you bear…fire!” He slashed down his sword, though no gun had yet crossed the Dutch ship’s stern, just a few breaths more and…Standing between the guns, Catterall’s view was limited to the bulwarks and the open gun-ports, the cross-deck beams over his head with rowing boats stowed in chocks. To starboard, there was the gangway now full of Marines with their levelled muskets, the end of Proteus’s main-mast course sail, the ordered tangle of the Dutch ship’s mizen-mast rigging, spanker, tops’l and t’gallant, and that Batavian Republic flag that was just starting to be lowered…
Catterall glanced aft at Captain Lewrie, standing four-square by the rolled-hammock re-enforced quarterdeck rails and netting that overlooked the gun-deck. Surely, he’d call for fire to be checked, before it was too late, before…now they’d struck!
The 6-pounder bow-chaser and 24-pounder carronade mounted on the forecastle went off almost as one, a sharpish barking, instantly echoed by a titanic booming, followed by the foremost 12-pounder long-barrel gun in the starboard battery as it slammed backwards in recoil, double-shotted.
Catterall turned back to the target, even more mystified, mouth open to reduce the pummeling on his eardrums as guns closer to him lit off and hurled themselves inboard, looked up as the Marines with their “confiscated” Yankee-made rifles chose targets and volleyed. Up above them and the gangway bulwark, rather significant chunks of timbers and gilded pieces of the Dutch merchantman’s stern were soaring skyward in a cloud of gun-smoke and punched-free dirt and paint chips! Catterall heard the Dutch ship scream as her entire stern was hammered in, could hear the slamming and rending of the merchantman’s guts as round-shot, langridge, and grape-shot eviscerated her innards as far forward as her foremast, snapping stout carline posts, knees, and hull timbers like so many frail toothpicks! The broadside swept past him, sternward, gusting hot, foul winds, gushing grey thunderheads of spent powder, and the quarterdeck carronades bellowing last, put paid to the foe. Catterall could hear human screams this time. Their flag was down, blown down, but the Captain was not calling the Cease Fire. Proteus wore about to the West as Catterall’s gunners reloaded and ran out once more, to fire into the stricken ship along her larboard side this time, leaving him gaping open-mouthed, unable to feature such deliberate destruction!
“On the down-roll, Mister Catterall! Sink the bitch!” he heard.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” Lewrie allowed as Proteus wore about Sutherly after her second crushing broadside. They had blown her stern in, shot away both rudder and transom post, then punched great holes on the waterline, where the ever-hungry sea now sucked and surged into her, remorselessly. The merchantman’s mizen-mast had been sheered off belowdecks, had swivelled and fallen forward into her main-mast’s rigging to drag that shot-torn assembly into ruin as well, to drape her larboard side like a funeral shroud.
“She’s afire, too, sir,” Lt. Langlie pointed out, his arm extended toward her bows, where her galley fire, still smouldering under the steep-tubs and grills so soon after feeding her complement, had spilled from the brick-lined pits, catching fresh fuel alight. Hot air rippled up from below, distorted and wavering like the air over a forge. Thin skeins of smoke jetted from the gaps in her deck planks or side scantlings as if bellows-driven, with now and then a wink of tiny yellow flamelets peek-a-booing over the bulwarks.
“Saves us the trouble of stopping to light her ourselves” was the grimly satisfied reply he got from Captain Lewrie.
“She began to strike her colours, Captain Lewrie,” Peel accused. “I don’t see why you had to—”
“Damn you, sir!” Lewrie barked, turning on him. “My word is law aboard this ship, and I’ll thankee to remember it! Her flag still flew, her captain had not yielded her up, and I’ve no time to line my purse, with an enemy man o’ war in the offing. D’ye hear me plain…sir?”
“I will be forced to report that,” Peel retorted, stung to the quick by such harsh, ungentlemanly language, such a sudden challenge.
“Damn what you report, Mister Peel!” Lewrie sneered, his hands clasped behind his back, leaning forward from the waist, his face close to Peel’s, forcing him to take half a step backwards. “We came here to inspire terror, Mister Peel…fear of us greater than any that bogeyman Choundas carries with him. In their navy, their privateers, their merchantmen, alike…sir!”
“But…” Peel was weakly forced to object, taken aback by this new, bloodthirsty aspect to a man he’d always considered competent but too…flibbertigibbet. “The consequences, our repute…”
“Now you just contemplate the implications of that, why don’t you, Mister Peel,” Lewrie continued, in a softer voice, with slyness creeping onto his face, “while we try our metal with yon Frog frigate. Mister Langlie,” Lewrie barked, spinning away, “shape course to stand seaward of the port with the wind a touch forrud of abeam for greater speed. I want us at close quarters with that frigate before she gets a goodly way on. She’s still bows-on to the town, maybe had anchors down before being alerted.” He lifted his glass to peer hungrily at her, measuring speed and distance, warily over-estimating how quickly she could cut cables and make sail, giving the French the benefit of the doubt as to how well-prepared they would be by the time Proteus was level with her. Choundas was rumoured to have come in a frigate. Was this his, under his direct command or not, her captain and officers had to be a cut above the usual jumped-up radicals, with skills gone rusty for spending too long in harbour. Lewrie hoped the enemy frigate was the one based on Guadeloupe before Choundas arrived—but he wasn’t ready to wager the lives of his crew on this being the case.
“Mister Catterall, load and then secure the starboard battery,” Lewrie called to his Second Officer, “then double-shot the larboard to the muzzles with grape, langridge, star-shot, bar-shot, and chain-shot. Hop to it, lads! We’re going to skin the Monsoors alive!”
“Vite, vite, vite!” Choundas muttered under his breath, as if he could will Desplan and his crew to quicker preparation. The cables had been cut, anchors bedamned, and the bitter ends not even buoyed for later recovery. They could always take new ones from a fearful merchantman. Courses had been freed by energetic young
topmen, who had slashed the gaskets away. Clew lines had been freed by men on deck, and the sails let fall on their own, not eased down. Fore course and tops’l were now laid flat aback their masts, and the jibs were fully hoisted, then drawn by human force to starboard to get their frigate’s head down alee. The spanker over the after quarterdeck shivered as men of the after-guard tailed on the sheets to drag it over to starboard, as well, to force Le Bouclier’s stern to walk windward and twist her more wind-abeam to work her off the town. Blocks’ sheaves cried and squeaked as her main and mizen tops’l yards crept up off the rests one snail-like foot at a time, to Choundas’s impatient eyes. The enemy ship was hull-up, now, dashing down upon them with a bone in her teeth, all but her main course drawing well, and that sail showing but a single reef, so far. Was Fate merciful, Choundas thought, they might brail it up to reduce the threat of fire from the sparks of her own gunnery, reducing her speed, giving his own frigate a chance!
He looked over the stern, down the long transom post, past the massive pintles and gudgeons and the wide, tapered slab of the rudder. Choundas felt a cold, bleak despair settle in his stomach, as if he’d gulped down a sorbet too quickly. Even with the rudder hard-over, the sea round its blade only barely swirled, little stronger than a spoon in a cup of coffee. A flowing tide would spin eddies greater than that!
He stood erect, shambled about to his right to lay hold of the larboard taff-rail lanthorn-post—and found a cause for sudden hope. The steeple of a church ashore was no longer pinned over the larboard cat-heads but was now roughly amidships, right over the larboard entry-port. She was moving, falling off and making way!
“Vite, vite, sacrebleu, vite!” he urgently whispered.
“What should we do, m’sieur?” the petty officer normally in command of L’Impudente asked of his temporary, amateur captain.
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