The King`s Commission l-3

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Two-masted schooner," Railsford said, studying the despatch boat with a telescope. "I believe we have the reach on her, sir. She'll not get past us, even as weatherly as she is."

  "That frigate is closing as well, though." Treghues nodded, lost in thought. "I make her a twenty-eight. Do you concur?"

  "Aye, sir," Railsford agreed, swinging his glass to eye the other vessel, which was coming on in the schooner's wake in her support, a little wider off the wind since she was a square-rigged ship and could not beat as close-hauled as a fore-and-aft rigged ship. They were on a general course far north of the British fleet anchorage, almost on a bearing for the northern limb of Frigate Bay, where the French Army had landed two weeks before.

  "One point harder up," Treghues said. "Lay her full and by as close to the wind as we may. I shall want the wind gauge even should she turn away and run down back to her protector."

  "Aye, sir."

  Alan turned to the starboard rails and looked back towards the fleet anchorage. There was another British frigate back there to the south trying to close up with them, but she was nearly two miles off, and could not be up with them for some time.

  Laid close to the wind, Desperate put up a brave picture, her battle flags streaming from every mast, her bow slamming into the bright tropical waters and flinging spray as high as the bow sprit, wetting the foresails with an atomized cloud of salt water, and the quarter wave hissed down her side and spread out like a bride's train of white foam.

  Alan leaned over the bulwarks to see how the suction of the wave on her quarter exposed the weeded quick-work of her bottom that rarely saw daylight, heeled over as she was against the wind. Spray flew about in buckets, splashing as high as the quarterdeck and showering him with cooling droplets now and again.

  Damme, this can be exciting on a pretty day like this. Alan beamed. This is a glory. Makes up for all the humbug.

  "Ahem!" Monk coughed, drawing Alan's attention back inboard, and he walked back down to the wheel and binnacle with some difficulty on the slant of the deck, his shoes slipping on fresh-sanded planking, getting traction from the hot tar that had been pounded between the planks.

  "I hopes the hull meets yer satisfaction, Mister Lewrie," Monk said. "The captain ain't payin' much attention now, but juniors don't go ta windward if the captain's on deck-that's his by right."

  "A cod's-head's mistake, Mister Monk, I admit," Alan realized. "But you'll be happy to know the coppering is fairly clean."

  "Aye, I'm sure the bosun un the carpenter'll be pleased," Monk drawled pointedly. "Now stay down ta loo'ard, iffen ya don't object."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Alan joined Sedge, the other master's mate. He was older, in his very early twenties, a Loyalist who had joined the Royal Navy years earlier, and who was thirsting for revenge against the Rebels who had ruined his family. He was a thatch-haired and ungainly fellow with a hard hatchet face, and so far had been no more friendly than he had to be to get along in the mess, or on duty.

  "Think we'll get a chance to fight 'em?" Alan asked.

  "Na, this schooner'll run to momma, an' momma'll drive us off," Sedge opined gloomily. "She's a twenty-eight. You kin mark her, if you've a mind now. Long nines for chase guns on her fo'c'sle, ten carriage guns abeam-twelve-pounders most like-and six-pounders on her quarterdeck."

  "Only one more gun than us per broadside."

  "Aye, but twelves, not our nine-pounders," Sedge said as though Alan had uttered some lunacy worthy of Bedlam. "An' two of our nines aft're short brass pieces just as like ta blow up in our faces sure as damnit."

  "Wish we still had the 'Smashers,'" Alan shrugged, giving up on making pleasant conversation with a man who looked more at home tumbling out of a hay-wagon than on a quarterdeck. "Then we'd give 'em the fear of God and British artillery."

  "Aye, but ya left 'em at Yorktown, didn' ya?" Sedge sneered. "I told ya. There she goes, haulin' her wind, runnin' for safety."

  Alan thought the comment was grossly unfair. The "Smashers," the short-ranged carronade guns that threw such heavy shot had been commandeered by the Army. They had lost them, not anyone in Desperate, and now two older long-barreled six-pounders graced the frigate's fo'c'sle as chase guns. But then, he realized, Sedge was ever the graceless lout.

  The despatch schooner had indeed fallen off the wind to wear to the west-nor'west to take the Trades on her larboard quarter, running off to leeward and the protection of the French frigate.

  "Ease your helm, hands wear ship! Due north, quartermaster!"

  The waisters and idlers sprang to the braces to ease them out to larboard, angling the yards to allow Desperate to take the wind on her starboard quarter, so they could interpose between the schooner, frigate, and the shore, maintaining the wind gauge advantage. The French ship eased her helm as well by at least a point, screening her weaker consort. The two warships were now on two sides of a triangle; one headed north and the other nor'east. If allowed to continue, they would meet about two miles west of the port of Basse Terre.

  The schooner passed close ahead of her escort, then gybed to the opposite tack and began to reach sou'west away from the anchorage with the wind abeam. Moments later, the French man o'war came about as well, but instead of wearing down-wind, she threw herself up into the wind's eye for a tack. Since it slowed her down so much to do so, Desperate began to close her more rapidly.

  "Helm up a point, quartermaster. Hands to the braces!" Treghues bawled. Desperate turned a bit more westerly of due north, taking the Trades more directly up the stern, a "landsman's breeze."

  "She'll pass astern o' us; mebbe a mile, mile un a half off," Monk speculated, calculating speed and approach angles in his head after the Frenchman steadied on a course sou'sou'west to provide a mobile bulwark for the schooner.

  "About two miles off now," Treghues commented, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Once astern, they could come about and try again, with us north of them and to leeward. They'd get into Basse Terre before we could beat south to interpose again."

  He paced about at the windward rail, from the nettings overlooking the waist to the wheel and back, his fingers drumming on his ornately engraved and inlaid sword hilt.

  "Hands wear ship, Mister Railsford! Gybe her and lay her on the same tack as yonder Frog. If we shall not have her information, I do not mean to allow her to pass that same information ashore for lack of effort on our part."

  "Aye, sir!" Railsford shouted. "Stations for wearing ship! Main clewgarnets and buntlines, there, bosun!"

  "Spanker brails, weather main cro'jack and lee cro'jack braces!" Alan cried at the afterguard men. "Haul taut!"

  "Up mains'l and spanker!" Railsford went on with a brass speaking trumpet to his lips. "Clear away after bowlines, brace in the afteryards! Up helm!"

  Desperate fell off the wind more, her stern crossing the eye of the wind slowly, for she was no longer generating her own apparent wind but sailing no faster than the Trades could blow.

  "Clear away head bowlines! Lay the headyards square!" Railsford directed as the wind came directly astern, gauging the proper moment at which the foresails would no longer be blanketed by the courses and tops'ls. "Headsheets to starboard!"

  "Main tack and sheet. Clear away, there. Spanker outhaul and clear away the brails," Alan added as the wind drew forward on the larboard quarter.

  Within a breathless few minutes, Desperate was squared away on a new point of sail, paralleling the Frenchman to the sou'sou'west, and just slightly ahead of her by a quarter-mile.

  "Smartly done, Mister Railsford." Treghues nodded in satisfaction at how professionally Desperate's crew did their sail drill.

  "Thankee, sir." Railsford beamed. "Steady out bowlines! Haul taut weather trusses, braces and lifts! Clear away on deck!"

  "He's shivering his mizzen tops'l, sir!" Alan pointed out as the French frigate tried to slow down, possibly so she could pass astern of Desperate and still get up to windward for Basse Terre,

  "He's a game l
ittle cock, isn't he, Mister Railsford?" Treghues chuckled. "Once he gets an idea into his pate he won't give it up. Back the mizzen tops'l and haul in on the weather braces. Get the way off her."

  Realizing that he could not dodge about Desperate, the Frenchman came up close to the wind and began to put on speed once more close-hauled, closing the range slightly. Oddly, Treghues let her approach to within three-quarters of a mile; just about the range of random shot, before ordering Desperate to haul in once more and maintain the distance.

  "Pretty thing," Alan commented to Monk after a quick sharing of a telescope with the sailing master. The frigate had a dark brown oak hull, with a jaunty royal blue gunwale stripe picked out in yellow top and bottom, with much gilt trim about her bulwarks scroll-work and taffrail carvings of cherubs and dolphins and saints. Her figurehead could almost be discerned, a sword and shield-wielding maiden surmounted by a gilt fleur de lis crown.

  "She's hard on the wind to close us, sir," Alan noted.

  "Aye, but we'll draw ahead if she stays so," Monk growled.

  There was a sudden puff of smoke from the Frenchman that blossomed on her far bow, then was blown away to a mist by the Trades. Seconds later, the sound of a shot could be heard, a thin thumping noise. She had fired one gun to leeward, the traditional challenge to combat. Evidently the French captain was so angered at being stymied by Desperate's maneuverings that he wanted to vent some round-shot spleen upon her.

  Alan looked back at Treghues and saw the glint in his eyes. It would be galling to refuse combat, especially for a ship and captain under a cloud for previous actions, no matter how unfair the accusation was, and Alan could see Treghues' jaws working below the tan flesh of that narrow, patrician face.

  No, he can't be thinking of it! Alan quailed. We can't fight a twenty-eight. We've done enough to clear our hawse already!

  "Mister Gwynn, fire the leeward chase gun," Treghues said. "Brail up the main course, Mister Railsford. I think this stubborn Frog needs a lesson in manners. Mr. Peck, would you be so good as to assemble the band and have them give us something stirring?"

  The starboard six-pounder banged, and the ship's boys with the drums and fifes met in the waist just below the quarterdeck rails and began a tinny rendition of "Heart of Oak," as the waisters and topmen took in the large main course and brailed it aloft on the main yard. The Marine complement paraded back and forth on the lee gangway by the bulwark and the hammock stowage, which would be their breast-works in the battle to come. A few of them who were better shots than others went aloft into the tops with their muskets and their swivel guns.

  The Frenchman was closing fast, close enough to make out her open gunports. Alan groaned to himself when he saw that there were eleven of them. Two bow chase guns, six-pounders like Sedge thought, but only four quarterdeck guns, and eleven bloody twelve-pounders in each broadside battery, not ten! he noted with a sick feeling.

  He wished he could squat down below the bulwarks of their own quarterdeck, for with her angle of heel, Desperated decks were bared just enough to make everyone aft a prime target.

  The French ship fired, a solid broadside as all her guns lit off together, and his flesh quivered as the shot moaned in at them at twelve hundred feet per second. The range was just about five cables, half a nautical mile. Black shot droned overhead, slapping a hole in the spanker over where Lewrie stood. Fired on the up-roll, upward from a slanting deck, the lee ship had the advantage of range over Desperate. Alan's passion was artillery of all the skills he had been forced to learn in the Navy, and he knew Desperated nine-pounders could not be elevated high enough to reach as long as she was close-hauled and heeled over.

  "Finish that verse and then get below," Treghues told his band, and the ship's boys scattered after a final tootle, to stow away their instruments and revert to their roles as powder monkeys who would fetch up the wooden or leather cylinders that held pre-measured charges from the magazines, or to assist the surgeon in the cockpit once the wounded worth saving were hauled below by older men.

  "Ease her helm a point free, Mister Railsford, get the heel off her and we'll try our eye," Treghues snapped. "Stand by, Mister Gwynn!"

  "Aye aye, sir!" the master gunner said in reply from the waist.

  Desperate came more upright by a few feet, the bulwarks seeming to rise up like stage machinery, with the French frigate just slightly aft of abeam, and the range dropping to four cables.

  "Quoins half-out!" Gwynn instructed his gun-captains. "Point yer guns! Ready!"

  "I leave it to you, Mister Gwynn," Treghues said cheerfully.

  "As you bear… fire!"

  First the reloaded starboard chase gun, then the first of the long nine-pounders began to bark, the firing rippling down the ship's side one at a time as steady as a fired salute, with Gwynn pacing aft at the same pace as the ignitions. Shot erupted from the black iron muzzles in a rush of flame and sparks and thick clouds of spent powder, and bright beautiful feathers of spray leapt up close-aboard the enemy frigate's side as iron shot ricocheted to thud home below her gunports.

  "Lovely shooting, Mister Gwynn!" Treghues commented. "Load with double-shot and hull him this time!"

  Alan's legs were quivering with excitement, almost too tremulous to keep him erect as he stood by the wheel with the sailing master. In previous actions, he had been a midshipman on the gun deck, too busy supervising the loading, firing and running out, too intent on gunnery to think much about being afraid, about being maimed or killed, lost in the heat of the moment. But as a master's mate, his main role was to act as a sitting duck of no mean seniority on the bare quarterdeck, which would be the prime target of the French after they got within musket-shot.

  Another broadside from the French, a positive avalanche of iron, and Desperate shrieked in oaken agony as things let go aloft. The mizzen royal and't'gallant yards were smashed by bar-shot or chain-shot, and the pieces rained down into the overhead nettings. A Marine and a top-man from the mizzen tops'l thumped onto the nettings like bloody steers, the Marine minus both legs at the crotch and spraying a scarlet shower on the deck.

  "Firing high as usual," Treghues noted with a frown of disapproval. "When shall they learn?"

  Desperate's guns were thundering once more, slamming four-inch, nine-pounder iron balls into the French ship, this time concentrated 'twixt wind and water, right into her hull. Planks were shattered and nibbles were taken out of her upper-works bulwarks, scattering the enemy Marines who had been gathered for a musket volley or two. But, being bigger and heavier enough to handle 22 twelve-pounder guns, it would take a lot of nibbling to do her damage, for her scantlings were thicker, her beams and cross-pieces were heavier and stronger.

  "You've made your point, you damned fool," Alan grumbled aloud under the sound of the cannonading. "Now get a way on and get us out of here. Honor is redeemed and all that shit!"

  But Treghues was in nautical Paradise, pacing back and forth in a maniacal joy, oblivious to the blood trails on the quarterdeck, or the hurt Desperate had suffered aloft.

  "For what we're 'bout ta receive…" Monk whispered the old saw as the Frenchman's side lit up like red signal fuses seen through a thick fog, a fog of powder smoke that rolled down from Desperate to the foe. The smoke seemed to glow, and then the world was hammered into matchwood.

  The starboard bulwark by the ladder leading below to the waist was flung into ruin, and a cloud of oak splinters flicked through the air like startled sparrows. Men were screaming like frightened horses, and Desperate staggered as heavy shot burst through her sides. The deck below Lewrie's feet jumped, almost throwing him to his knees.

  "Eighteens if they's a pound!" Monk managed to say, grabbing onto the binnacle and traverse board table to stay erect.

  "No more than twelve-pounders, surely, Mister Monk," Alan said in a shaky voice, trying to maintain that maddening sang froid demanded of a professional Sea Officer.

  "Felt like eighteens, anyway," Monk spat.

  As the smoke b
egan to rag away, Alan could see that the enemy was now on a parallel course, just two cables off. She would not get closer; but then he realized, she didn't have to, for she could lay out there a fifth of a nautical mile away and shoot Desperate to lace unless they did something soon.

  "Helm up, quartermaster!" Treghues yelled through the din as the guns belched fire again. "Bear down on her!"

  Two loblolly boys stirred the savaged body of a petty officer by the torn-up starboard gangway. They shrugged and rolled the body to the hoie in the bulwarks aid tipped the corpse over the vide.

  "That was Mister Weems!" Alan burst out in shock.

  "Aye. poor bastard," Monk agreed. "There'll be an openin' fer a new bosun's mate tamorra."

  A screaming waister was picked up on a carrying board and taken below to the cockpit surgery as they watched. There was nothing to be done with the dead or the hopelessly wounded but to get them out of sight and out from under foot. Words could be said later from the prayer book.

  More shot screamed in, and Desperate reeled with its impact. More screams from the waist, a puff of smoke from the nettings that set hammocks writhing like a box of worms as a round-shot scattered them. A Marine keened and fell from the gangway clutching his belly. Dull flames licked around the torn canvas from a small explosion, and men from the larboard side rushed to pour water on the fire before it could take hold and eat their ship.

  One cable's range now; two hundred yards. Alan went forward to the quarterdeck rail to look down into the waist. A larboard gun had been overturned and its crew decimated. As he watched, the loblolly boys dragged another screaming unfortunate to the midships hatch, a man as quilled with jagged wood splinters as a hedge-hog. The dead Marine was being passed out a larboard gunport and someone was retching bile as he used a powder scoop to shovel up the man's spilled intestines. The gun crews labored away with their scarves around their ears to save their hearing, intent on their artillery. Burney, up by the fo'c'sle, and Avery in the waist, were pacing among their men, shoving them to their places and speeding them along. Then the guns were barking and recoiling back against their breeching ropes, hot enough now to leap from the deck instead of rolling backwards on their small trucks.