The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  “No stirrings from the French yet, Mister Lewrie?” he asked.

  “Nothing to be seen, sir,” Alan replied.

  “Might be a white uniform in those trees, sir,” Cox disagreed. “Sentries, most like so far. But no sign of a battery.”

  “They’ve had all night to prepare, even so.” Lilycrop frowned. “Well, Lieutenant Walsham. Rarin’ to have a crack at ’em, are ye, sir?”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Walsham answered, sounding a lot more somber than his usual wont. He was a recruiting flyer, the very picture of a Marine officer this morning, as if dirt and lint would never dare do harm to the resplendency of his red uniform. The gorget of rank at his throat flashed like the rising sun.

  “Doubt we’ll need springs on the cables,” Lilycrop mused. “I ’spect the frigates’ll cover the landin’, and we won’t be called for much firin’, ’less they try to sweep ’round to flank us once we’re ashore. If they do, they’ll be in plain sight of our guns over there. And it ain’t a full two cables to that low hill.”

  “Round-shot and grape should do it, sir,” Alan commented.

  “I’d worry more ’bout some Frog ship comin’ in from seaward, if I were you, Mister Lewrie,” the captain said, turning to look at the horizon from which the sun was threatening to rise. “Might’ve been more ships’n La Coquette and a sloop of war come here. Maybe a brace o’ sloops already sweepin’ the Caicos Passage up north to make some profit from this expedition of theirs. You keep a wary eye out for that.”

  “I shall, sir,” Alan told him.

  “An’ you’ll not muck about with my little ship while I’m gone, will you now, Mister Lewrie,” Lilycrop said in a softer voice for him alone, not so much a question as an order.

  “I’ll not, sir, but I cannot speak for any French battery up in those woods.” Alan grinned back, knowing by now that Lilycrop’s blusterings were not as dire as he made them sound.

  “Signal from Albemarle, sir!” Midshipman Edgar called.

  “We’re off, then,” Lilycrop said with a grin. “Only wished we’d o’ packed a heartier dinner. Ready, Mister Walsham?”

  “Aye, sir,” the Marine said moving towards the gangway entry port.

  “Boats are alongside to starboard, sir, so the French did not see any preparations,” Alan stuck in. “Side-party!”

  The seamen and Marines gathered to render salute to their captain as he stepped to the lip of the entry-port for the first boat, doffing hats and raising swords or muskets in honor as Lilycrop swung out and faced inward to lower himself down the man-ropes and battens to the boat.

  The entire squadron was issuing forth its landing force, most of it from the two remaining frigates, as they had more men to spare from much larger crews, while the little brigs below the Rate were perenially short of hands even on their best days. By counting heads in the boats nearest him, and then multiplying by the number of boats issuing forth, Alan could determine that they were fielding around one hundred eighty to two hundred men for the effort, minus those whose duty it would be to stay on the beach and safeguard the boats. They would at least equal the estimated French troops ashore. And the gunfire from well-drilled fighting ships would make the critical difference.

  “Pendant’s down, sir!” Edgar shouted.

  “Cast off! Out oars! Give way together!” the captain’s cox’n ordered as the signal for execution was given.

  It took about half an hour for all boats to gather before the frigates, line themselves up in some sort of order, and then shove off for the silent, waiting beach.

  “Albemarle signals ‘Open Fire,’ sir,” Edgar said.

  “Mister Cox, make it hot for them,” Alan directed. The ships began to thunder out their broadsides over the heads of the rowing boats, thrashing the woods above the beach and the low hills behind with iron sleet.

  “Slow but steady, boys,” Cox shouted to his remaining gunnery crews, and Shrike’s little six-pounders began to bark, one at a time, aiming high with quoins full out, which made the deck rock and seem to sag down with each blast. Cox and his gunner’s mate walked from one end of the waist to the other as the guns fired, counting out a pace which would allow the forward-most gun to be reloaded by the time the after-most piece had discharged, so a continual hail of round-shot and grape canister would keep the French down under cover, never allowing them to rise between broadsides for a musket volley.

  “A little low, Mister Cox?” Alan asked as he saw the trees and bushes just above the beach tremble to a well-directed shot.

  “Aim’ll lift as the barrels get hotter, sir,” Cox said, replying with a touch of petulant whine to his voice, unwilling to be questioned at his science, or his skill in the execution of it. But Alan did note that Cox then sent a gunner’s mate to correct the elevation of Number 4 larboard gun, which had been shooting too low.

  The boats were having a lively time of it, even inside the reefs that should have protected them from the worst of the offshore rollers that swept in, driven by a fresh Sou’east Trade Wind. They rocked bow to stern, with the oarsmen slaving away to keep them moving.

  Then the first stems were grounding on the sands, and Captain Dixon was ashore and waving back at the frigates. A signal went up from Albemarle, ordering “Cease Fire” so their broadsides would not hurt their own landing parties.

  “Cease fire, Mister Cox!” Alan shouted down into the waist. “Mister Biggs, water butts for the gunners.”

  “Aye, sir,” their weasely purser replied, sounding as if he even begrudged issuing “free” water.

  “Looks like the landing is unopposed,” Alan said. “Might be some French troops up in those woods, but they couldn’t form for volleys under our fire.”

  “Marines are going in, sir,” Caldwell pointed out.

  Through the glass, he could see the thin red ranks form shoulder to shoulder, open out in skirmish order, lower their bayoneted muskets and start off for the interior, being swallowed up by the thick undergrowth almost at once, with the seemingly disordered packs of seamen in their mis-matched shirts following.

  From then on, it was anyone’s guess as to what was happening inland. There was no mast available for flag signals from the men ashore. Muskets popped, sometimes a whole squad fired by volley, and the rags of spent powder-smoke rose above the greenery, perhaps just above where they had been fired or perhaps blown through the trees before rising. It was impossible to know which side had fired, or where the true positions of whoever had done the shooting were. All in all, it didn’t sound or look like much of a battle so far; just a little skirmishing and skulking, very desultorily conducted.

  “Can’t see a damned thing from the deck, sir,” Caldwell growled.

  “Aye,” Alan agreed. “Nothing for it, then.”

  “Oh, send the lad, do, sir. Mind your leg,” Caldwell replied, and, was it perhaps Alan’s imagination, but he felt from Caldwell’s tone that he was “on to him” about his earlier malingering.

  “I told the captain I was spry enough, and I am, sir,” Alan shot back, going to the main-mast shrouds. He ascended slowly, but he gained the fighting-top; though instead of trusting his leg’s strength to go outboard on the futtock shrouds where he would have to dangle by fingers and toes like a fly, he took the easier path up through the lubber’s-hole like a Marine or landsman.

  Damme if I’m acting, he thought, massaging his thigh as it complained loudly at the demands made upon it. He sat down on the edge of the top facing inland, legs and arms threaded through the ratlines of the top-mast shrouds, and rested his telescope on one of the dead-eyes. Even from there, sixty or more feet above the deck and higher than the low hills of the island he could see nothing of note. The sun was up high enough to show him the small town on the western side, further down the coast. Was there a battery there, he asked himself, or was that a row of houses with their blank backsides to the offshore winds for comfort?

  Mister Edgar came up soon after, scrambling and puffing at the exertion of ascending the
shrouds (properly using the fut-tocks) and the concentration necessary to coordinate his body and mind to the task. He went on up past Alan to the cross-trees with the lookout, saying, “Mister Caldwell sent me, sir,” on the way up.

  As if his clumsy arrival had set events in motion, the lookout shouted not five minutes later. “Sail ho, to seaward!”

  “Where, away?” Alan demanded, getting to his feet with a thrill of dread. Perhaps Lilycrop had been right, and a French ship had come back to check up on her new base. “Mister Cox, prepare the starboard battery to engage!”

  “There, sir!” Mister Edgar called with excitement in his voice.

  The ship headed for the anchorage was a brig, about five miles off, but she had the wind free and was making good progress. Perhaps a privateer or a French—what did they call them, corvette?

  “Think you she’s French, sir?” Edgar called down from his higher perch.

  “If she is, we’ll serve her like Hood did de Grasse at St. Kitts,” Alan answered him. “Keep an eye on her, Mister Edgar.”

  “Oh, I shall …” Edgar replied as Alan glanced up at him, and Alan winced and sucked in his breath as Edgar, in swiveling back to gaze seaward, almost lost his seat on the slight support of the thin timbers of the cross-tree platform. Only the lookout’s quick action in grabbing the lad by the collar had saved him from a deadly tumble to the deck. “Do have a care, Mister Edgar! Remember where you are!”

  “Aye, sir,” Edgar said, red with embarrassment and fright. He put his telescope back to his eye, then looked down once more. “One of ours, sir. Blue Ensign, and a private signal flag.”

  “Saying what?” Alan demanded.

  “I, un …” Edgar stammered, searching his pockets for his sheaf of notes and almost over-balancing again. “Here it is, sir.”

  Alan shared a look with the lookout while Edgar thumbed through the papers, almost losing them to the fresh winds, until he found the month’s private signals. The lookout raised his eyebrows and sighed heavily, making Alan grin back at him in a moment of secret amusement.

  “Admiral Barrington, sir, hired Brig O’ War,” Edgar announced at last. “Lieutenant Charles Cunningham in command.”

  “Thank you, Mister Edgar. Why do you not go down to the deck and inform Mister Cox that he shall not have to engage her for now, but stand easy. I’d feel much easier with you there, sir.”

  “Aye, sir.” Edgar nodded, and fumbled his way to a stay which he rode down to the quarterdeck bulwarks.

  Admiral Barrington exchanged signals with Albemarle, then took course to Britain Bay, and anchored about an hour later. She was much like Shrike, a brig of only twelve guns, and from the looks of her decks, had only seventy or eighty men aboard total; not much reinforcement.

  As she did so, there was more firing from inland, some volleys quite substantial, though they still couldn’t see where they were coming from, or from which side. To Alan’s ears, though, it sounded as if there might be more firing from higher up and inland, after a while. And more firing than about one hundred fifty French soldiers could make. There were, finally, some larger puffs of smoke and louder cracks of sound that could only come from field-pieces. So the French had artillery on the island, perhaps in some well-sited works, to deny the landing party any further progress towards the town.

  Sure enough, around ten in the morning, a runner appeared on the beach and took a boat out to Albemarle to report. And a few minutes after that, small boats made their way from the flagship to the brigs. Alan slung his telescope and stepped out of the top. If his leg was quarrelsome this morning, there was nothing wrong with his arms. He rode a stay to the deck in proper seamanly fashion, making sure to land on his good leg. Even so, the shock made his game limb twinge.

  “Ahoy the boat!” Fukes called.

  “Passing!” the bowman shouted.

  “Ahoy, Shrike!” an officer in the stern-sheets demanded. The hands eased their stroke to loiter near her side. “Have you an officer aboard?”

  “Lieutenant Lewrie!” Alan replied, using a speaking trumpet.

  “Lieutenant Bromwich, sir, second into Albemarle! Lieutenant Hinton and I are to take charge of the brigs and direct them to weigh. Captain Dixon is checked by a strong work, and requests we make a diversion with artillery opposite the town, sir. Do you need any assistance in so doing?”

  Goddamn the man! Alan thought cynically. Do they think aboard Albemarle that we’re cripples? “No, sir, we shall weigh directly. I think we may cope, sir,” Alan drawled back.

  “Very well, sir!”

  “Mister Cox, secure from Quarters. Mister Fukes, hands to the capstans and prepare to weigh. Veer out on the stream anchor and heave in to short stays on the best and small bowers. I’ll have the kedge served out for later use. Slip the stream cable once we’ve loosed tops’ls, and buoy it. We’ll pick it up later.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Fukes replied, knuckling his thick brows.

  Within half an hour, their evolutions were complete. They got up the bow anchors, and were held in check only by the smaller stream anchor off their stern. The fresh winds made the ship strain down from that anchor, and when they loosed tops’ls to put a way on her, and let slip the stream cable, they were underway and under complete helm control from the moment the cable was let go, as smoothly as anyone could ask for, which made Alan grin inside at the ease of it.

  It was only a couple of miles to a new anchorage opposite the town, with the leadsman singing out four or five fathoms the whole way, even though the waters were so clear they could see sharp coral below them as if they were skating over glass.

  “Bring to, Mister Svensen,” Alan ordered at last. “Round up into the wind and back the fore tops’l. Ready forrard!”

  Her progress checked against the wind, they let go the best bower and veered out half a cable. The cable thumped and shuddered a few times before they found good holding ground.

  “Kedge anchor into the boat and row her out, there,” Alan said, pointing aft and a little to larboard. “And once she’s holding, place springs on the cables to adjust our fire.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fukes nodded.

  It felt good, Alan decided, to have complete charge of Shrike, with Lieutenant Lilycrop off ashore. There were none of the nerves he had suffered before, in being asked to shift their anchorage or commit her to battle against a shore battery, if battery there were. Some concern that he did not look ridiculous, but none of the nail-biting fear of taking any action at all he had once experienced. With a wry grin, he was forced to believe that the Navy had drummed enough competency in him at last, enough to make him aspire to more opportunities for independence from someone’s leading strings.

  “Springs is rigged, sir,” Fukes reported.

  “Very well. Mister Cox, stand by to open fire!”

  Drake, as the flagship of their extemporized little subdivision, hoisted a signal, and all ships began a cannonade against the town.

  “Seems a shame, sir,” Caldwell said, after measuring any change from shore marks that would indicate Shrike was dragging her anchors or being blown out of position.

  “What is, sir?” Alan asked off-handedly.

  “Well, sir, looks as if the Frogs has already torn the town up for building material, and here we go, shooting the rest of it apart. It may not look like much to our lights, but it’s their homes, sir.”

  “Umm, not for much longer, at this rate,” Alan commented as the round-shot from the light guns tore holes in walls and roofs.

  “Who was it, sir, one of those pagan Roman poets, said ’they make a desert and call it peace’?” Caldwell mused.

  “Tacitus, perhaps,” Alan answered. “Couldn’t have been Virgil or Caesar. They were too proud of making deserts.”

  “Batt’ry, sir!” Cox shouted as a wall of gunpowder erupted from shore above the town. A round-shot, almost big enough to see in mid-flight, came howling over the bulwarks, and passed close enough to create a little back-eddy of wind.

 
; “Damme, sir, that was a twenty-four-pounder, or I’m an Arabee!” Caldwell groused with un-wonted vehemence, shaken from his Puritan demeanor for once enough to curse.

  “Mark that, Mister Cox?” Alan asked, scanning through the smoke of the broadside for sign of the guns.

  “I think so, sir. There, or close enough as makes no diff’rence.”

  The newly discovered French battery began to put shot around all the brigs. As Cox re-laid his guns to respond, Alan counted the shots, and tried to gauge what caliber they were.

  “Mister Cox, let’s concentrate our fire on one embrasure, if you will!” Alan shouted down to the waist. “That one, there!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Six-pounders, there,” Alan said. “About four or five of them.”

  “Seems about right, sir,” Caldwell replied, his voice still a little shaky.

  “And at least four twenty-four-pounders,” Alan added, feeling a little grim himself. “This is going to be warm work for three little thin-sided brigs. And works with field-pieces up towards Britain Bay to counter Captain Dixon’s shore party. More Frogs on this island than a dog’s got fleas, more than reported, at any rate.”

  They had to duck as one of those twenty-four-pounders placed a round-shot close aboard, close enough to raise a great waterspout that fell over the quarterdeck and wetted them down in a twinkling as it skipped overhead to fall into the sea on the disengaged side. Shrike was, at least, out of the main line of fire, a little more sheltered than the Drake or Admiral Barrington. As the day wore on towards noon, Drake took a ball aloft which brought down the gaff of her spanker, and the Admiral Barrington was hulled with solid thonks of iron smashing wood.

  The artillery killed the wind; that was something Alan had heard mentioned before but had never witnessed for himself. Where before there had been fresh winds offshore that stirred up the waters of the deep passages and set the brigs to rocking like cradles, now the sea was flat as a mill-pond, and the wind had died to almost nothing. The ships were wreathed in their own palls of smoke, and the fort ashore could only be espied by looking for the base of the towering pillar of spent powder. It didn’t do much for their aim, but at least it made the job of the French troops serving their larger pieces just as hard.