Troubled Waters l-14

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie put those niggling, petty details away and lifted a telescope to his right eye as Erato began to round up into the wind, hands aloft to reduce sail even further. All her rowing boats, already off the cross-deck boat-tier beams and towed astern, were being hauled up close astern, to be led round to the entry-port. Kenyon would not let go anchors, but fetch-to, Erato's stern angled towards the beach. One great spin of her helm and she could fall off her precarious balancing act, and bare her own larboard 6-pounder cannon to the foe… assuming the French were there.

  He pulled out his pocket-watch, opened the cover with his thumb, and took a look at the time; ten minutes, and the boats were yet to be loaded and sent off.

  "Takin' his own sweet time, ain't he?" Lewrie muttered under his breath. "Come on, damn yer eyes, get a move on!"

  "Off Point Coober, sir… the good weather's brought out some of the local fishermen," Lt. Urquhart pointed out from the starboard side of the quarterdeck. "About six miles off, just outside the 'hook,' " he said, using the colloquial slang pronunciation the squadron had adopted.

  "Thankee, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie replied. "Time, I think, to round up and take in sail, though. Spanish Reef courses and tops'ls, let fly jibs and spanker, as we planned."

  "Aye aye, sir!"

  Finally, all three of Erato's boats were loaded with oarsmen and other hands armed to protect them. A few middling kegs were visible amidships all three, not the great butts usually stored on lower tiers, but the sort spotted on the weather deck and mess deck for the crew to dip into to slake their thirst.

  "Lovely day, really," Lt. Adair could be heard to comment to one of the Midshipmen. And it was, Lewrie thought. The sea was mostly calm, rippling with a myriad of wavelets of silvery blue, most artfully so, more like a lake stroked by gentle winds than a salt sea. The beaches were broad and inviting, with waves raling in and out almost sleepily, with light froth where they broke. A myriad of sea birds were a'wing, too, and flocks of gulls wheeled and gyred round the fetched-to ships. It was only the forests behind the beach, beyond the overwash dunes or scraggly salt grasses, that looked deep dark, and foreboding.

  "Coming? So is Christmas," Lewrie griped as Erato's boats, now within musket-shot of the beach, rocked and heaved slightly on the incoming waves, the sailors resting on their oars, and Coxswains and the Midshipmen commanding each boat peering intently through their telescopes at the woods. Lewrie raised his own glass to peer at them, then swivelled about to look at Erato's quarterdeck. Even at half a mile's separation, he could espy Commander Kenyon pacing the lee side of his ship, his own telescope to his eye, and now and then slamming a fist on the cap-rails of the bulwarks in frustration and fret.

  "A hoist from Erato, sir!" Midshipman Grisdale piped up, breaking the hushed, anxious silence. "It's… not for us, sir. It's…" He fumbled with his code book, for it was one rarely used and unfamiliar to him. "To his boats, it would appear, sir… 'Proceed.' "

  The lead boat, Erato's, cutter, began to stroke shoreward; slow, to be sure, with the brig-sloop's First Officer standing in the stern. A moment later, and the other two, the gig and launch, started to follow.

  "Didn't order him t'do that!" Lewrie all but yelped in worry. "What the Devil's he playin' at? Be ready to get a way on, sir," he called over his shoulder to Lt. Urquhart.

  The cutter was almost up to the gentle surf line, a musket-shot from the edge of the dense forest, a pistol-shot from the dunes, with the two other boats still following on either quarter of the leader's boat in a deep V.

  "Frogs!" came a howl from the main-mast tops.

  "Damn my eyes!" Lt. Urquhart cried, one hand leaping to seize the hilt of his small-sword, no matter how useless the gesture was.

  "Get under way, sir, this instant!" Lewrie barked. "Open ports, and run out the larboard battery, Mister Adair. To your stations for action, gentlemen."

  A two-deep line of French soldiers sprang from the earth, just back of the overwash dunes where they had hidden themselves from view in the shallow, natural ditches. Erato's cutter was frantically backing starboard oars, thrashing ahead with larboard oars, to try to turn her in her own length, the boat's Cox'n throwing his whole body on the tiller! The rest of the boats were wheeling about, too, but a massed volley of musketry spurted from the muzzles of at least three companies of infantrymen's musket barrels, and the shallows about each boat got churned by a torrent of lead ball.

  "Three bloody companies, d'ye make it, Mister Devereux?" Lewrie asked of his Marine officer, more experienced with such matters.

  "Aye, sir… but, note their spacing," Devereux urgently said. "There must be fifty or sixty yards 'tween each company. I'd suspect an artillery piece in each gap, so they may fire upon Erato, without risking their own men."

  "Two gaps… say, another pair on the ends of the line," Lewrie quickly surmised, stunned by the suddenness of the French ambush. "Four guns, together. Mister Adair! Solid shot and grape, and order gun-captains and quarter-gunners to concentrate on the gaps between their troops, and on the woods at either end, as well. Might be guns…!"

  There were guns… great gouts of yellow-grey gunpowder smoke belched from the gaps, from the flanks. A second or two later, there came the sounds of the explosions, terrier-bark-sharp, and tinny with distance.

  "Six-pounders, perhaps," Lt. Devereux spat. "Perhaps as light as old regimental four-pounders, Captain. Four pieces would be right, and fit what little we know of current French Army practice."

  Savage was moving again, falling off alee, parallel to the seashore, her clumsy-looking clewed-up sails billowing and starting to fill with wind, her fore-and-aft stays'ls, jibs, and spanker filling with rustles and cracks.

  "A touch more to larboard, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie demanded. "Let her fall off to about a half-mile offshore before coming back to abeam the wind."

  Christ, what a pot-mess! Lewrie groaned to himself, peering at Erato's boats. They were now come about, and were being rowed madly out to sea, the gig and launch weaving from one beam to the other to make themselves unpredictable targets, but still followed by a veritable hailstorm of bullet splashes, and the occasional cannon shot.

  The cutter, though… she'd taken the full brunt of that first mass volley, and, while her oarsmen were bending their ash oars, going almost fiat on their backs and panting like dogs at each stroke, there were casualties among them. In the ocular of his telescope, he could see panicky sailors stumbling over each other to haul wounded men into the soles of the boat, a dead man or two being heaved overside to make room for the living to replace them. In the stern-sheets, the officer and a pair of tars were firing back, the Cox'n bent low over the tiller, almost hidden under the gunn'ls.

  Lewrie's view was blotted out by a white sheet of water as one of the cleverly hidden artillery pieces pounded a round-shot near the boat, thankfully an "over" 'twixt the cutter and Savage, which raised a tall feather of spray that slowly collapsed upon itself.

  The second cannon ball was much nearer, a half-minute after the first. And suddenly, the gig on the left-hand side of the reversed V took a ball so close that half of the oars on its starboard side were shattered, and it slewed about as if hulled, heeling over so far for a moment that it surely must capsize!

  Closer to, Erato's 6-pounders were barking at last, their round-shot and grape clusters bowling through the centre company of French infantry, scattering them like a cat's paws would a boy's toy soldiers, forcing the survivors to stumble back into the woods for cover, leaving their dead and wounded where they fell. And, seeing the appalling ease with which their fellow soldiers had been butchered, the officers of the two wing companies ordered their own men to retire into shelter among the forest, too. Their smoothbore muskets were almost out of practical range beyond seventy or so yards anyway, and they had drawn their enemy's blood. A few stalwarts did continue to shoot, fingers-crossed-hopeful, but there were no more massed volleys of an hundred or so muskets going off at once. They left the rest of the fight to their a
rtillery, which was still banging away rapidly.

  "Pardon, Captain Lewrie, but… were I in their shoes, I'd not count on the woods for shelter," Lt. Devereux said, his face looking feral and eager. "Better they'd return to the depressions behind the dunes, which would just soak up both round-shot and grape. What our eighteen-pounders can do to them…!" "They'll discover, to their sorrow," Lewrie completed for him. "Mister Winwood, the last time we were here, can you asssure me of the depth, do we stand in a little closer than half a mile?"

  "Uhm… ah," the Sailing Master flummoxed, looking stunned by the suggestion. " 'Tis a making tide, sir, and there should he thirty feet or better, perhaps, but, ah… I can offer no assurances, Captain."

  "Half a mile it is, then," Lewrie growled in frustration. "Pray place leadsman in the fore-chains, Mister Urquhart, directly." "Aye aye, sir!"

  "You mark those guns, Mister Adair?" Lewrie called down to the waist. " Very good. Do you direct at least two guns on each of 'em, and scour the woods with the rest."

  "Oh, dear Lord," Mr. Winwood moaned, drawing his attention back shoreward. The cutter, slowest and most crippled of the three boats, had been bracketed by two round-shot, rocking her onto her beam ends to larboard, then to starboard, the feathers of spray so close that their collapse came down in a deluge that nearly swamped the boat!

  Erato was still firing, quick as individual guns could be served, Kenyon no longer waiting for controlled broadsides. Six-pounder shot and grape lashed the trees and raised clouds of dirt and sand from the overwash dunes. Commander Kenyon had reduced sail almost to nothing; he'd not sail away and abandon his sailors. The French response, when it came, was to lift their aim from the rowing boats to Erato herself, and shot splashes began to blossom round her, now.

  "Stout fellow," Mr. Winwood congratulated.

  If ye only knew, Lewrie sarcastically told himself.

  Erato's gig and launch had finally reached her sides, though it was no longer a place of safety with the French artillery banging away at her. After a close shot splash, the boats hastily ducked round her bow and stern to the unengaged side, so they could get back aboard at the starboard entry-ports.

  The cutter still struggled, crawling snail-slow even though she was no longer a target, still a heartbreaking two hundred yards short of salvation, with the remaining armed men lending their strength upon the oars to spell those who were utterly exhausted, their bodies most-like shaking, palsied with panic and weakness.

  "About another quarter-mile, before we may open upon the left-most artillery, Captain," Lt. Urquhart adjudged. "I make the beach to be about half a mile off. Should we come up to the wind, sir? "

  "Aye, make it so, Mister Urquhart. Course Due South, and wait for it," Lewrie agreed. "Mister Grisdale? Signal to Erato for her to 'Make Sail,' then, 'Windward,' else we'll either run right up her arse, or she'll lay there, blockin' our guns."

  "Oh, dear Lord," Mr. Winwood commented again, sounding like some badly milked cow. "It would appear the French have found the range to her, sir."

  Sure enough, Erato's slack sails twitched to round-shot passing low over her decks, and she shivered to a hit on her larboard side that raised a sudden cloud of engrained dirt, peeling paint flakes, and the usual small eruption of splinters.

  Still, her hoist in reply was "Unable."

  "Cock your locks!" Lt. Adair instructed his gun-captains. "Wait for it… wait for it! Ready, at your orders, sir!"

  "Byyourbest judgement, Mister Adair," Lewrie called back.

  "Very well, sir. On the up-roll… firel"

  Smashing, lung-flattening, heart-skipping thunder-cracks! Huge gouts of powder smoke, jets of flame, and firefly swarms of hot embers shot from the muzzles of the great-guns! HMS Savage stuttered in her stately-slow progress, hull groaning and reverberating to the slamming of the explosions, shuddering again as the brutally heavy 18-pounders surged back from the port-sills to be checked by breeching ropes bound round the guns' cascabels, through the bulwarks' ring bolts!

  "That's the way, you Savages!" Lewrie yelled, the battle-fever come over him at the first whiff of gunsmoke and the first crashing roars. "That's the way my bully lads!"

  Thirteen of her 18-pounders on the larboard beam, four of her quarterdeck 9-pounders, hurled a blizzard of iron into the dark woods, and even stout old trees swayed and thrashed like saplings assailed by the gusts of a West Indies hurricane! Shattered limbs came whirling down, pines with trunks as thick as a young woman's waist burst twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, and came lancing down among a cloud of splinters. That first crushing broadside bracketed the left-flank gun position and the place where the left-hand company of infantry had gone to ground!

  "Swab out! Up, powder boys!" Lt. Adair chanted, pacing behind the recoiled guns, now and then cautioning crewmen to overhaul the run-out and recoil tackles, and watch where they placed their feet, else a man could be crippled for life in a twinkling. "Shot your guns…!"

  "Bloody grand, Mister Adair!" Lewrie shouted down, making their young Scot beam with pleasure. "Serve the snail-eatin' shits again!"

  Spikes and crow-levers came out so the men could shift aim for the centre positions. Wood quoins beneath the gun breeches were carefully adjusted for elevation. Adair looked up and down the deck, and found every gun re-loaded. "Run out your guns! Clear away the tackle! Prime/"

  "Four fathom! Four fathom t'this line!" the larboard leadsman shouted from the fore-chains.

  "Half point t'windward, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie cautioned.

  "Take careful aim, let's not waste 'em!" Lt. Adair was yelling. "The finer your eye, the more Frogs we get to kill."

  "Jus' like ol' Mister Catterall, 'e is," a quarter-gunner cried with a laugh, referring to their former Second Officer, who had died the year before in the South Atlantic. " 'Orrid mad for fried Frogs!"

  "Waste your fire, Pulteney, and I'll curse like Catterall, too!" Lt. Adair promised, japing back. Gun-captains' arms rose into the air to signal readiness. "Cock your locks/" The final step done, the arms went back up, the gun-captains' other hands drawing the lock cords taut as bow-strings. "On the up-roll.. .fire/"

  Titanic roars, more heavy shudders, great clouds of powder smoke blotting out everything to leeward, and only slowly drifting away, and thinning, but Lewrie, now perched atop the larboard bulwarks with a hand to shield his eyes, could relish the avalanche of grape, and round-shot that harvested trees like a farmer's scythe for a joyous second before the smoke cloud took his view away-

  "Uhm… should he be doing that, Mister Winwood, sir?" Midshipman Grisdale timidly asked the Sailing Master.

  "Oh, this is nothing, Mister Grisdale," Winwood replied in his usual phlegmatic way. "You should see the way he acts in a real scrap. Our Captain is a man lorn to combat."

  HMS Savage served the French positions yet another heavy broadside as she slowly cruised down the coast, passing in front o? Erato, which Kenyon had at last gotten under her own slow way, going up to windward just far enough for Savage to shave by down her larboard side. And, with the guns levered round 'til the muzzles, hot enough to scorch wood by then, pointed as far aft as they could bear for yet another, a parting broadside. And, there was not a single shot fired in reply by the French. Their light artillery might not have been smashed, crews who served them might not have been slaughtered to a man, but… they had all been buried under enough fallen trees and scrap lumber to make a good start at building a small Sixth Rate!

  "Secure the guns, Mister Adair," Lewrie finally ordered as he hopped down from his perch atop the bulwarks. "Damned fine work, men! Damned fine shooting, by every Man-Jack! When the Bosun pipes 'Clear Decks and Up Spirits,' we shall 'Splice the Main-Brace'!"

  "Stand out to sea, sir?" Lt. Urquhart enquired, looking a lot perkier than he had an hour before; action agreed with him, it seemed.

  "if ye'd be so kind, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie told him, smiling back. "Sorry we could gather no souvenirs this time."

  "Well, a bucket of wha
t's left yonder, sir, is hardly what one might take home to boast of!" Urquhart rejoined with a chortle.

  Lewrie gave him another grin and a reassuring nod, then went aft down the larboard side, past the quarterdeck 9-pounders and the gun crews who were now sponging out, to the taffrails and larboard lanthorn at the stern to survey the beach. With telescope extended to its uttermost, he could discern movement ashore; a few French soldiers in white trousers and blue coats staggering about amid the man-high reef of tree limbs, digging for their comrades, and dragging free the stunned living and the wounded.

  Astern… Erato had fetched-to once more as her cutter limped alongside at last. Men swarmed over her larboard side to the boat to help their wounded aboard, and rope slings and a quickly rigged Bosun's chair were going over the side, as well. The Lieutenant in the cutter's stern-sheets seemed to have survived his ordeal, which was a glad sight to Lewrie; had the man been killed or "wounded, and were Lewrie to do the "charitable thing," he might have had to give up one of his Commission Officers into her. Charity? Lewrie queasily thought; or guilt? For it had been by his orders that Erato and her crew had been placed in jeopardy, and… he'd made an error.

  Didn 't expect that sized French presence, he gloomed; infantry, yes, maybe one gun, or two, but… I told Kenyon t'pretend t'land, not go all the way! His cutter's bow was almost t'dry sand! Well, close enough ashore that the sailors could've stepped out and not gotten wet above their knees. Drab as Kenyon's career's been so far, perhaps he needed t 'exceed his orders, and get a line or two in the newspapers.

  And, Lewrie could savour one good that had come from the action; the French had reacted to his recent ambush and the slaughter of their soldiers over-reacted, really, and had committed about a half of a regiment and, what Lt. Deveroux told him was the entire artillery complement of that regiment. What little joy the French might have taken from their clever ambuscade, he had dashed by decimating the soldiers and artillery pieces assigned to it!