Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Free sheets and take a strain…helm’s up! Ease the sheets. Wait ’til the deck’s level, for God’s sake, wait…Now, fire! And sheet home. Helm is alee! And we are bound for home and mother!”

  “What in Hell was that in aid of, I wonder?” Lt. Devereux, the Marine officer, asked with a wry, gawping, one-eye-cocked expression.

  “Some young and cocky Monsoor, with dung for brains,” Catterall chuckled. His guns were shot out, swabbed clean, flintlocks removed, and the tompions inserted into the cooling muzzles. The gun-ports had been let drop and lashed shut, and his magnificent 12-pounder Blomefeld Pattern great-guns were now firmly bowsed to the bulwarks, their trucks chocked, and train and run-out tackle neatly overhauled. A last sponge-down to remove the powder stains, and Catterall could go aft for a well-deserved glass of claret from the gun-room stores. Looking up at their Marine officer on the gangway above him, Catterall imagined that Devereux was looking a tad “dry,” himself, and might even, after such a successful morning’s work, dip into his personal stores and offer to share a bottle with them. Devereux had private funds in addition to his pay, and a much more refined palate; his wine stock was head-and-shoulders above anything to which Mrs. Catterall’s second son could ever aspire…not if they kept blasting perfectly good prize vessels off the face of the ocean instead of taking them, that is.

  “Good rub-down, Sarn’t Skipwith,” Devereux instructed, handing over his Pennsylvania rifle-musket. “And do tell Private Doakes he is not to dab gun-oil on the stock, this time, hmm?”

  “Sah!”

  “And did you do good practice, sir?” Catterall asked.

  “Rather doubt it, Mister Catterall,” Devereux dismissively said. “Our closest approach was just under three hundred yards, and even the rifle-musket can’t guarantee accuracy that far. Did keep ’em worried, though, I expect, to hear balls hum round their ears that far away.”

  “Lord, I’m dry as dust!” Catterall ventured, hands in the small of his back and creaking himself in a backwards arc to resettle bones.

  “We’ll splice the main-brace, if I’ve learned anything about the Captain,” Devereux promised. “Soon as everything’s ‘Bristol Fashion.’”

  Catterall turned away for a last look-over of his charges, making a face at the very thought of rum, and thinking that Lt. Devereux was a stingy bastard at times. “Oh, jolly,” he falsely cheered.

  “Now, Mister Winwood,” Lewrie said, beckoning the Sailing Master up to the starboard mizen shrouds, “at Nor-Nor’west, should we attempt to work our way to windward below Monserrat, or should we stand on ’til we fetch Nevis, or Saint Kitts, before tacking for Antigua?”

  “I suggest we stand on, sir,” Mr. Winwood said. “The Trades’re back to normal…so far, that is. Not above Saint Kitts, though.”

  “Very well. Consult your charts and make a best guess for me, as to when and where we may safely shave Nevis. Aye, no need to put us on a lee shore on Saint Kitts, should the Trades back Easterly.”

  “Aye, sir. I shall see to it.”

  “Mister Peel?” Lewrie beckoned again, as Winwood went down to the binnacle cabinet. “A moment of your time, if you please.”

  “Captain Lewrie,” Peel said, tight-lipped and still truculent.

  “My apologies for any Billingsgate language in the heat of the moment, Mister Peel,” Lewrie casually explained, “but if we are bound to work hand-in-glove ’til God knows when, I s’pose I do owe you further explanation of my…madness,” he continued, with a disarming grin.

  “I quite understand you wish to take Choundas down a peg in the eyes of his compatriots, Captain Lewrie,” Peel coolly allowed, stiffly formal. “I would also imagine that tweaking his nose this morning was something personal to you.”

  “Quite right, Mister Peel,” Lewrie cheerfully confessed. “Was he watching this morning, or will he just hear of it, he’ll know the name of our ship. And you have already told me that he knows I’m in command of her. Your Mister Pelham suggested that that knowledge might lure him into folly…since chasing me down to kill me is personal to him, too. This little piece of work should fix his attention hellish-wondrous. Right?”

  “Granted, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said, gravely nodding, and seeming to relent his insulted stiffness a tad.

  “But what’ll it do among his smuggling captains and crews, his small and weak auxiliaries…his privateers?” Lewrie posed, beaming with evil glee. “I deliberately destroyed that Dutch ship to make the point that, do they cross my hawse, there’ll be no mercy, ’long as they work for Choundas. That rumour will get round among ’em, count on it, soon as Proteus, and Lewrie, and Choundas are linked. Other warships might play by the accepted rules, but they’d best write their wills and sleep with one eye open as long as I’m at sea.

  “And any British frigate that hauls up within their sight just might be Proteus, and Lewrie, hey?”

  “Yes,” Peel said after a long frown. “I do see your point, sir.”

  “So do you accept my apology, Mister Peel?” Lewrie asked.

  “I do, Captain Lewrie,” Peel replied with a smile, at last, and his hand out for shaking. “Do you accept mine as well. For being my own secretive self when it came to the private signals. Did we wait to use them, they would have been out of date in another two months in any event, so…for not going direct to Antigua, as Mister Pelham wished, too, and disputing your decision to come here.”

  “I will endeavour to explain myself more plainly in future,” Lewrie vowed, shaking Peel’s hand. “But for now, I must carry on, sir, so…” Lewrie said, turning away to head for the hammock nettings overlooking the gun-deck and gangways, ready to address the crew.

  “Oh, Captain Lewrie,” Peel called after him. “Something else I s’pose I must apologise for. Damme, but the thinking you put into your raid, it showed such unexpected, uhm…sagacity and…”

  “What, Mister Peel?” Lewrie hooted. “You’re sorry you thought all I could do was plod round a quarterdeck and cry ‘Luff,’ or ‘Fetch out yer whores’?”

  “Something like that, sir,” Peel answered, with a faint wince to be so clearly understood. Not that he didn’t think that Captain Lewrie could ever be consistently clever, but…he did have his moments!

  “Accepted, sir,” Lewrie chuckled with a faint bow and a grand doff of his hat. Then he was busy with the Surgeon, Mr. Hodson, whom he allowed to mount the quarterdeck to make his report, and expressing his wonder that not a single sailor had been killed, and only six men had been hurt, with the further good news that only one of the wounded hands was considered a sick-berth patient.

  Sure enough, once HMS Proteus had made a goodly offing and had sailed the shore of Guadeloupe under the horizon, with only the twin peaks of Basse-Terre still showing, the brightly painted rum keg was fetched up from below with all due ceremony and martial music from the Marine drummers and fifers, to welcoming cheers from her thirsty, successful man o’ warsmen.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Le Bouclier was anchored once more, to her second bower and her lesser kedge, this time with her un-harmed larboard side facing to seaward, with little L’Impudente tied up along her ravaged starboard side.

  Saws screeched and rasped, metal hammers and wooden mauls thudded and drummed, and old wood cried as it was torn away with crow-levers for replacement with fresh planking brought up from the bosun’s stores. Blocks shrilled as dis-mounted cannon were lowered back onto carriages set back on their trucks, as shattered carriages, stripped of any useful fittings, were hoisted over-side for scrapping or firewood ashore; as replacement yards and top-masts were swayed aloft, up through the lubber’s holes in the savaged fighting-tops to be jiggled, then bound into place by weary topmen. The starboard gangway was heaped with the thick rolls of sails too singed or shot-torn to salvage, Fresh rolls of spare sails, huge hillocks of salvageable canvas, and bolts of new cloth smothered the forward gun-deck where Le Voilier, the Sailmaker and his crew, cut, snipped, basted, and sewed to patch damaged sa
ils or start completely new replacements, installing grommets, reef-lines, and bolt-ropes inside the edging seams.

  Smaller bundles, too much resembling the hopeful rolls of sailcloth, also littered the starboard gangway, and about the thick foot of the main-mast trunk in a thigh-high heap, stacked like cordwood to free deck space for the working-parties.

  Those were the corpses.

  The dead had been hastily shrouded, without the benefit of washing first, so their coverings were not the écru of new canvas, nor the darker, weather-stained parchment dun of used. They were splotched or even brightly splashed with drying gore, the bile and ordure of gutted men. Slain in mid-morning, they still awaited transport ashore to the cemetery outside the port, and it was now nearly sunset. The horrible day had been very hot and still. They already stank.

  Le Bouclier’s survivors avoided the stacks if they could, walking on eggs as far away as possible, but too tired, too dulled by fear and shock by then to hold their noses at the mounting reek, studiously ignoring them, most of the time. If they could.

  It was only when a dead man somewhere in the sloping mass round the main-mast, swelled with rapid tropic putrefaction, vented the foul gases in eerie groans or sighs that the matelots would take notice and leap away in alarm, crossing themselves in dread that some poor devil under the pile still lived and was trying to worm out from under that crushing weight, calling for aid from his shipmates, with whom he had laughed and japed just a few hours before.

  And sailors of any nation were superstitious. They could quite easily believe that somewhere among those bundled, shattered husks the confused, terrified spirits of the slain were beginning to stir, to walk and wail as night drew nigh to torment the living until properly buried ashore.

  The stench of the dead lay over Le Bouclier like a harbour fog, and the Trade wind, fading with the heat of the day, could not disperse it leeward. Belowdecks, the air was even closer and hotter, even more foetid despite the rigging of wind-scoops, and the liberal use of vinegar and wash-water to scour the decks. A miasma from wounded sailors stashed below continually welled up like hot smoke from a chimney-pot, as if driven by their wails, moans, and frantic, fretful mumblings, as they weighed their odds of living, or faced the certain prospect of dying. Half-drunk on rum or cheap brandy used to dull their pains or allay the shock of amputation, their desperate prayers and weepings seemed to create the wind that wafted the stink of their wounds aloft through companionways, scuttles, and limber holes, ever renewable, no matter what brief relief a gust of the Trades might bestow.

  Screams and half-shrieked pleas soared upwards, too, as the surgeon and his mates, civilian surgeons from the town of Basse-Terre, and even an exalted physician or two plied their gruesome trade. Bonesaws rasped now and then when amputations were necessary. They were necessary quite often; they were quicker than any attempt to draw out shards of wood splinters, bits of cloth, shot-scraps or shattered bone chips, leaving time to deal with those who needed careful attention. Supposedly, a healthy young man could recover, could live without use of a foot, a hand, an arm, or a leg.

  Guillaume Choundas kept station well up to windward, as best he was able, clumsily perched atop the breech of a quarterdeck gun as doleful reports came to him. His monstrous countenance was set in a grim and stoic, brooding death-mask, broken only by a snarling decision or abrupt jerk of his head as the messengers stood near, shivering in dread of him. His cane was leaned on the gun-carriage, so he could use his remaining hand and a silk handkerchief to whisk the swarms of flies, and the stinks, briefly away.

  The flies, large and pustulently bottle-green, had found them even before the frigate had begun to limp shoreward, two whole miles offshore; moments after the thrice-damned British frigate had jauntily sailed out of arcs, or reach, of their guns. The flies’ numbers had only increased once they had anchored within a cable of the quays.

  Though their numbers were equal to a Biblical Plague, Choundas noted that they no longer darted about quite as frantically as before. He imagined they were now sated, merely buzzing about to boast another of their…victories. Another of their mortal feasts!

  “…able to get one boat down before the fire got so hot that we had to abandon her, mynheer,” grizzled Dutch captain Haljewin was explaining, a dirty, rumpled handkerchief to his own nose.

  “Lost your ship, lost the munitions and rations for our General Rigaud and his Mulatto Republic,” Choundas rasped, not even bothering to glance at the man. “Better you pretended to strike, and fetched-to.”

  “The British devil gave us no chance, mynheer,” Haljewin protested. “He crossed my stern and shattered us, crushed our side in with a second broadside, then sailed on without a second glance, as if they’d known whose cargo it was! Had they fired a warning shot and ordered me to strike, I would have, believe me. It would have given you half an hour to come to my rescue, while they were fetching-to and boardingus, but…”

  “You knew we were here, Citizen Haljewin,” Choundas said, looking up at last, his one eye ablaze in accusation. “You saluted us as you cleared the port, when we came in plain sight, rounding Le Vieux Fort! Had you been the slightest bit clever, scared to save your…”

  “He gave me no time, I tell you, mynheer!” Haljewin interrupted. “Perhaps he recognised you as a frigate, and would not…”

  “I’ll take no back-talk from you…Citizen!” Choundas bawled. “Citizen…not mynheer,” he insisted, sneering over the word. “You utter, spineless failure. You idiot! Get out of my sight!”

  “I did save your sailors off L’Abeille…Citizen,” Haljewin pointed out, though gulping with sudden dread.

  “But not the fool in charge of her, who should pay with his head for her loss,” Choundas barked.

  “In the beginning, she did fly French flags, she looked so…” the Dutch merchant master all but babbled in deepening dread. “I was fooled, as were the shore watchers, I gather. She displayed the proper identity signals. I suspect there is a British spy on Guadeloupe who told them everything. If that is the case, Citizen Kaptein, I do not see how I was so much at fault. I’ve lost my ship and half my stalwart lads, my livelihood…and I saved at least a dozen of your poor sailors. One would hope that counts for something. One would hope that some recompense is made, in recog—”

  “Go to the Devil!” Choundas roared, fumbling for his cane as an impromptu weapon. “You knew the risks and you took them, eagerly, for gain, you wheedling…shop-keeper! Get…off…this…ship…and…off…Guadeloupe…Island, before I kill you myself!” he thundered, so irate that he was almost breathless, spacing out his words more in need than emphasis.

  The Dutchman backed away, eyes saucered in stark terror, breaking into a quick scamper for the entry-port as soon as he was past the reach of Choundas’s cane. A naval officer coughed into his fist, and scraped his feet, having waited with his news until the dread harangue had ended.

  “What?” Choundas snapped. “You are?”

  “Pardon à moi, m’sieur Le Capitaine,” the officer, with an arm in a sling, and his coat draped over his shoulders. “I am Lieutenant Mercier, Second Officer? Lieutenant Houdon, our First Officer, wishes to report that the shot-holes on the waterline are now plugged, with no need for entering the graving dock, m’sieur. If she is careened at the beach, permanent replacement planking can be done quickly. Pointeà-Pitre’s storehouses can supply us with new top-masts. Enough rope of sufficient thickness and quality to replace stays, and the running rigging may be a difficulty, unless…”

  “We will take it from some merchantman,” Choundas gravelled as he looked aloft in the fading light to assay the gaps in the maze of rigging and masts. “Why isn’t Lieutenant Houdon reporting to me?”

  “The First Officer, m’sieur, is aft in the great-cabins, with Capitaine Desplan,” Mercier explained. “The Capitaine goes away from us,” he said, using the squeamish euphemism for “dying.”

  Choundas had despaired. For a brief minute or two, he thought that Le Bou
clier had won through, after all, and had gotten organised for a single-ship battle…’til that first, devastating broadside in her masts and rigging that was so un-English an opening move. Draped in wreckage, gun-ports masked and artillery smothered, making it too dangerous a risk of fire to reply, he and Capitaine Desplan could do nothing but stand on the quarterdeck and grieve, wincing at the coming broadsides, which had killed or wounded nearly an hundred of her crew. The sad grimace on Desplan’s honest, Celtic-Breton face…! A moment later, and the mizen top-mast and shattered cro’jack yard crashed down on him, mashing his midsection and hips, breaking both legs in several places. Manful, without a cry, Desplan had been freed, borne aft by loyal, weeping matelots who truly admired him, uttering faint gasps, flinching, and going “ah-ah-ah!” at each searing jounce. He had known, even as the masts came down, that the gallant Desplan would be dead by sundown. It had been a fellow Breton’s “sight.”

  Perhaps Desplan had felt one, himself, for he had not tried to move out of the way, but had just gazed upwards as if transfixed before being enveloped and crushed. Had he had a sudden foreboding that his race was run? Choundas idly drew the brass foot of his cane over the irregularities in the splintered and warped deck. Omens and portents. Signs and messages from elder Celtic gods…in whom Choundas still believed. For had not the ominous raven cawed and alit, on his right, just minutes before that salaud Lewrie had all but blown his arm away with an impossible single shot, three times the best musket range, the last time they had crossed swords in the Genoese hills?