The King's Privateer

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Stand by, men. We’ve spotted him. Starboard battery first, right up his stern, then larboard guns at twenty paces.”

  They could hear gunports being drawn open overhead, and the heavy, dull rumble of gun-trucks as the eighteen-pounders were drawn foot by foot to emerge from the opened ports. They unpegged and opened their own. Cool night air, damp and salty, entered, making them all tremble with chill. With anticipation, and a little fear, too.

  “Ah, yes,” Alan said, sticking his head out a port. Once one spotted La Malouine, it was hard to believe that she could ever have been hidden by the night. There was the wash and greenish phosphor glow of her wake. The faintest reflection of that phosphorescence on her lower hull at the waterline, and those betraying glimmers of belfry and binnacle lanterns. “Can you mark her, Owen?”

  “Uhmm … might need a set of younger eyes, sir. Here, Hoolahan, you could poach a bunny at midnight.”

  “Why, so oi kin, sor!” Hoolahan grinned, ever the cheerful one. “Jus’ don’t let ’im be loik t’ last lot. Barely got the deck clean.”

  “Just look, don’t prose on, boy,” Owen groaned.

  “Aye, sor. Mebbe cable, cable ’un t’half now, Mister Owen.”

  Telesto leaned to starboard more as she went up to windward. Gunners removed tompions, spun the elevating screws to compensate for the heel of the ship. Greased slides whispered as the short, brutal thirty-two-pounder carronades were run out. Iron wheels creaked as the lay of the barrels was corrected.

  “Oi kin smell ’er now, sor. Gahh, bloody Frog stink!”

  “As you bear!” a voice shouted. “Fire!”

  It crossed Lewrie’s mind that this ship had better indeed be La Malouine, and not some parsimonious merchantman that begrudged even a ha’porth of whale-oil for lanterns.

  The starboard twelve-pounder chase gun barked as the forecastle ranged even with the strange ship’s stern, sending a hellish finger of pink-and-coral flame into the night, fuzee-flashing just how near they were to their target, and how large she bulked. There were not a hundred yards between them! Then the larger, deeper-throated eighteen-pounders spoke, loud as thunderclaps from a lightning bolt’s near miss. Shot after shot as each barrel came even with the foe, more pink-and-coral flames, more red-and-amber sparks of half-spent gunpowder. Clouds of foul-smelling smoke wafted downwind, wreathing about the other ship.

  “Ready … cock your locks … as you bear … fire!” Lewrie intoned. The forward-most carronade belched with a fiery eructation, whipping backward on its greased slide quick enough to shriek wood on wood, and set the grease smoking. Most satisfying deep bangs of guns going off, followed immediately by the crash of heavy iron hitting timbers, the moaning wail of oak and teak as scantlings were shattered, and the thonk of balls ranging down the entire undefended length of the hull inside their target. Shattering tableware and vases, ripping precious cargo of wallpaper, silks, teas apart in aromatic clouds. Ripping men apart as they hung close-packed as sausages in a butcher’s window in their hammocks. Killing men with the air of their passage without making a mark upon them. Breaking at last into savage iron shards among a sleet-storm of broken beams and frames, which in those enclosed spaces below decks would whirl and maim as ruthlessly as irate, razor-tipped sparrows.

  “Now, ready the larboard battery!” Lewrie yelled as the last of their carronades had recoiled inward. Ports slammed open, making space for the wide-mouthed barrels to be run out. “Hull the bastards when I give the word, Owen.”

  “Aye, sir,” Owen replied around the stem of his pipe. “Now, gun-captains, lowest elevation, an’ wait for the down-roll! Wads atop your ball, rammer-men! Don’t dribble the damn things out now!”

  The ship creaked ominously as she slewed about. Cargo made dry rustling sounds as crates and bundles shifted slightly against restraining ropes and baffle-boards. The helm was put over so quickly Telesto churned the sea to a green-white froth of phosphor and foam, being over-steered so that she would slow down and not run her jib-boom and sprit into the stern of the enemy. She went wide off the wind as her deck-hands strained to loose sail and haul the yards around to gain speed, no longer working slack with the sea but beginning to oppose its will with her own desire for a faster pace.

  Then she was brought back up to the wind a couple of points, to steady on a parallel course to the stranger, to steady her own decks for a surer gun-platform.

  “Half a cable!” Lewrie estimated, leaning out one of the ports alongside the cold iron barrel of a carronade. The larboard chase-gun banged, and he ducked back inboard quickly. “Wait for it!”

  Eighteen-pounders roared out their challenge, lighting the sea amber and bright red between the two ships, giving him short snatches in which to see the other ship. It was La Malouine! He’d stared at her long enough for seven months to recognize every tar stain!

  “Cock your locks … stand by … on the down-roll … together … Fire!”

  All four larboard carronades took light as one. There was some spectacular noise that had everyone’s ears ringing, a brilliant burst of light worthy of a lightning strike, fading from bright yellow to a dull burgundy, and a wave of burnt powder rushed back in the ports as bitter as rotten eggs. With the wind fine on their larboard quarter once again, most of it blew away past the bows, but enough was blown back onto the lower gun deck to be-fog them and set them all wheezing.

  Damme to hell, but I love artillery, Alan exulted silently! The power, the noise, even the stink of ’em! And what they can do.

  “Yes, by God!” he crowed, leaning out the port once more. In the after-flash of the last eighteen-pounder, he could see large ragged rents in La Malouine’s lower hull, one right on the waterline that sucked and blew spumes of foam as the waves rushed past the hole, the other three higher up in her chain-wale. They’d nailed her ’twixt wind and water, shattering her main-mast’s starboard chains, that complicated array of dead-eyes, shroud-tensioners, heavy horizontal timber through which the stays for the lower mast threaded and terminated. “Reload!”

  La Malouine was not as asleep as they had thought. Her side lit up in flashes as well, her twelve-pounder cannon returning fire, but not as organized as the ship-killing broadside they’d just delivered. Here a forward gun, there a piece in her wardroom aft, then two guns from her waist together.

  “Musta kept ’alf their hands at Quarters t’ fire that quickly, sir,” Owen guessed. Usually it took ten minutes for even a Royal Navy vessel to clear decks, load and run out their batteries. “Mighta been plannin’ on doin’ the same for us this night.”

  “There’s a biter bit, boi God!” Hoolahan whooped.

  Then the gun-captains were standing back from priming their carronades, fists in the air while their excess hands tailed on the tackles to haul the guns up to the port-sills once more. The upper deck guns began to howl again, and it was time for another crushing broadside.

  Five, six times, they fired—about ten minutes of battle at the hottest pace the crews could sustain for a short time. Slowly, the return fire from La Malouine slacked off. She was not built to take such punishment. She was a merchant ship, with wider-spaced timbers and lighter scantlings of perhaps no more than six inches thickness. Strong enough to protect her in storms, against rocks and shoals, and to stiffen her when she was laden with cargo, but not enough to guard her vitals when heavy iron was flying. Even the toughest oak or teak gives way when hit with eighteen pounds of metal at twelve hundred feet per second at such short range.

  Telesto had been built to bear twenty-four-pounders on her lower deck, twelve- or eighteen-pounders on her upper deck, and her sides were ten to twelve inches of seasoned English oak laid over much heavier and thicker framing spaced closer together. She had been laid down for warfare. Some of La Malouine’s twelve-pound balls hurt her, even so, but she was built to take much heavier battering and live for hours in the line of battle.

  La Malouine had drifted down closer to her, as Captain Ayscough had predicted she would. Pe
rhaps her helmsmen had been scythed away by the quarterdeck twelve-pounders, the two-pounder swivel-guns, and the muskets of Chiswick’s sepoys. Perhaps her crew had been so decimated that no one could tend her braces, or be spared from the gun battery to go aloft and loose more sail. Now the range was almost hull-to-hull, and when the carronades erupted, shattered wood came flying in the ports at once, making more hazard for Lewrie’s crews than anything that the French had done yet.

  “Mister Lewrie!” one of their midshipmen yelled from the after companion-way. “Close your ports, secure your guns, and come on deck for the boarding party, please sir!”

  “Aye aye.”

  They gained the upper deck, dug into the open weapons tubs at the base of the main-mast and fetched cutlasses and pistols. This time, Alan had his own pistols: the small pair he’d purchased long ago in Portsmouth when he first kitted out as a midshipman, and a brace of dragoon pistols he’d carried away from Yorktown. He checked the primings and stuffed them into the Hindoo cummerbund he still wore, drew his sword, and led his party to the larboard gangways where Chiswick’s troops were still firing away with their muskets

  “Grapnels, bosun!” Choate was yelling. “Form up, lads! Stand ready! Lower the boarding nettings. Now, away boarders!”

  With a concerted howl, they were up and over their own bulwarks, leaping onto La Malouine’s bulwarks across the gap created by the tumble-home of the two hulls. There was an irregular volley of pistol and musket fire as the French met them. Men shrieked and clawed at sudden hurts, lost their footing or their handholds and fell into the narrow tide-race between the ships to be crushed to death as the hulls ground and bumped together every half-minute or so. Pike-heads stabbed up at them, stopping leapers in mid-air. One sailor screamed as sharp iron found his belly, his weight dragging the shaft of the pike down atop the bulwark. The wielder must have been a strong man, for he held the sailor there, kicking wildly and vomiting blood and half-digested rations before he slipped off and fell howling between the hulls.

  Lewrie leaped, banging one knee on the ship’s side, getting one foot on the Frenchman’s bulwark, and a precious handhold on a loose stay that felt like it was half shot-through and ready to come free at any second. He had a brief glimpse downward at the bloody water foaming between La Malouine and Telesto, saw a man’s head crushed as flat as a frying pan, an imploring arm and hand waving madly at him as another drowned below the surface, trapped by untold tons.

  He hauled hard on the stay to throw himself forward out of danger, and stumbled to his knees to the deck. Ignoring the pain in his knee, he rose up and started swinging his sword for his life! A man tumbled into him from behind, knocking him flat once more. Then there was a volley of shots that cleared the deck around him for a moment, allowing him to get to his feet.

  “At ’em, Telestos!” He yelled. A French sailor came at him with a pike leveled like a charging cavalry lancer. A quick move to parry from left and below, pushing that wicked pike-head away to his right and past his shoulder, then a riposting thrust at the belly.

  The Frenchman screamed almost in his ear, a foot of Gill’s best English steel in his entrails, lost his grip on the pike, and dropped away like a spilled sack of meal, almost dragging Lewrie with him as his ravaged stomach muscles tried to clench around the blade. Alan had to plant a foot on the man’s chest and thighs to drag his sword back out, bringing forth the slithering horrors contained within.

  Dark faces with swarthy mustaches and whiskers came raving on La Malouine’s gangway. Chiswick’s sepoys, less practiced at boarding and slower to cross over. Now that the seamen had cleared them some room, they were trotting forward and aft, bayonets fixed, and their havildars shouting encouragement.

  “Maro, maro ghanda Fransisi!”6

  Percival and McTaggart were headed forward with a large pack of seamen, teetering their way over the boat-tier beams to get to the larboard side as well. Alan spun about and led his men aft. Where it came from, he had no idea, but there was now some light on deck, enough to see the party of Frenchmen rushing to defend their quarterdeck. It was disconcerting to see Marcel Monnot in their lead, the sailor he’d spoken to on the docks one morning. But Monnot had a cutlass in his hand, and he began hacking away at an English sailor.

  Lewrie let his hanger dangle from the wrist-strap, pulled out his first dragoon pistol and pulled it back to full cock. Stepping forward with his men, he took aim and let fly. The fight with Monnot swirled out of his aim, but another Frenchman was struck by the ball in the chest, plumping a sudden burst of scarlet on his white shirt front and dropping him out of sight. He drew his second pistol and shot a hulking French seaman right in the face, who gave a great howl and flipped over backward, making a gap for more English sailors to dash forward and crowd the French back. Cutlasses sang and whished in the air, ringing steel on steel. Pikeheads and bayonet points stabbed out in short thrusts.

  Then there was Monnot again, leaping back into action and hewing a sailor down, pushing forward and leading more of his hands with him against everything.

  “Vous!” he exclaimed, spotting Lewrie. “Espèce de salaud!”

  “Strike, Monnot! Throw down your sword! It’s over!”

  “Va te faire foutre!” Monnot cried, throwing himself forward.

  Lewrie jerked his wrist and brought his sword into his palm, leading with a thrust that Monnot beat aside, but the speed of it made him drop back a pace. Alan stamped forward, countering a hard counterswing of Monnot’s cutlass blade. They were too hemmed in by struggling bodies to do anything more than beat at each other vertically after that. Bayonets stabbed on either side, and Frenchmen were dying, going down as the sepoys loaned their strength to shove their foes backward and upward to the quarterdeck, beginning to thin them out enough for Lewrie to have more fighting room.

  It was disconcerting to fight a man he knew, even slightly. He had nothing against Monnot personally, so it felt less like a duel. A stranger he could have crossed swords with gladly. But it was his life to not kill him. Monnot was monstrously strong. A bit unskilled with a more gentlemanly smallsword, perhaps, but ruthlessly competent with a cutlass, his wrist hard as an iron anvil.

  Monnot fetched up against the ladder that led to the quarterdeck, last of his men still standing on the gangway, and he howled in glee as he swung his sword in the full cutlass drill. There!

  An opening, as Monnot swung backhanded, fumbled backward to take a step up the ladder, still facing his foes. Lewrie leaped for him, raising his sword to block a further swing, but ramming the lion-headed pommel of his sword into Monnot’s mouth!

  The man stumbled onto his back, one hand grasping at the rope balustrade of the ladder, thrusting with his cutlass, a thrust which Lewrie parried off low, and then he was inside Monnot’s guard with a backward slash of that superbly strong and razor-honed hanger across the man’s belly and chest.

  Monnot howled again, reaching upward to take Lewrie’s throat in one hand, drawing his cutlass back with the other. Alan started turning purple as he reached out to take Monnot’s sword-arm wrist in his hand and hold off a killing blow, drawing his hanger back behind his knee to turn it upward, and thrust the point into the Frenchman’s jaws. Up through throat skin, through the tongue, into the sinuses and the brain! Monnot grunted and twisted like a piked fish, bumping down the steps of the quarterdeck ladder one at a time, dragging Alan with him with one hand yet gripping his throat in a final, inhuman spasming strength!

  Sailors and soldiers dashed past them while Alan was dragged to his knees, gasping for air and watching the world go dim, until at last Monnot’s heels began to drum on the deck, and his hands lost all strength. His eyes flared once more with anger, then rolled up into his head and glazed over unblinking. Alan rocked back onto his heels and gulped great lungfuls of air, massaging his throat with one hand and tugging his sword free with the other. He felt like shooting the man, just to make sure he was dead, not shamming until he’d stepped over him to ascend to the quarter
deck, then strike him from behind!

  He settled for a slash across Monnot’s throat as he sprang up and rushed aft, getting away from the brute as quick as he was able.

  “Jesus Christ!” he muttered, once he’d gained the deck. No wonder it was light enough to see! La Malouine was on fire! After lights-out aboard any ship, it was the officers aft who could keep a lantern or two burning past nine P.M., and their gunfire must have overturned a lamp, killed a gun-captain who had dropped his smoldering slow-match onto something flammable. Smoke drifted and curled from between the deck planks. Pounded tar to waterproof the joins was running slick and hot, sticking to his shoes. One corner of the poop deck farther aft already showed gaps through which tiny flames licked. He turned to see if Telesto was safe, and saw no sign of fire. But amidships, in La Malouine’s waist, there was a bright red glow under the tarred canvas that covered the midships cargo hatches and companion-way hatches. Even as he watched, the tarred canvas took fire with a sullen whoomp and disappeared in a sooty shower, and long, licking flames leaped aloft with a roar like a bellows had been applied to a forge!

  “Back to the ship!” Choate was yelling, waving their men back to Telesto with his sword. “Move, lads, if you don’t want to burn!”

  There was no greater fear for a sailor than fire aboard ship.

  Once it got a good hold on the dry timbers, the tarred ropes, greased running rigging and canvas sails, a fire was almost impossible to extinguish. In the blink of an eye, a ship could flash into a ruddy horror, roasting her crew, who would be fearful to abandon her until the last minute, for most sailors could not swim.

  “Back!” Alan yelled. “Back aboard our ship, stir yourselves!”