“Merciful God in Heaven!” Murray whispered in awe at what they had wrought. “Bloody …”
“And again, Mister Owen!” Lewrie bade. “Grape and canister!”
The next broadside only thrashed at the heels of the pirates, who fled that threat of death, back into the palisaded village for shelter, bold sea-rovers too afraid to save their ships.
“They’re afire up yonder, sir,” Murray pointed.
Lewrie raised his glass and looked toward the eastern end of the harbor. Praos were burning there, smudging the dawn with greasy coils of smoke and ruddy flame. “I see soldiers on the beach there!” he rejoiced. “Mister Owen, direct your fire upon the village walls and clear the way for the troops!”
“Aye, sir!”
“And a half, two!” the leadsman warned.
“I believe we may haul our wind a point or two for now, men,” Lewrie told his helmsman. The long sweep of the tiller was put over to starboard, and the bows swung off the wind. Deck crew flung themselves onto the belaying pins to free the sheets and ease the set of the sails to draw more wind.
And Culverin slid to a stop.
“One fathom and a quarter!” the leadsman called out, much too late.
“Well, shit!” Lewrie fumed, turning red with embarrassment at running solidly aground, right in the midst of a battle. Of all the places to choose from, he’d staggered right onto an uncharted sandbar!
“Uhm, she struck mighty easy-like, sir.” Murray frowned, his mouth working hard. “Prob’ly didn’t do no damage t’ her quickwork. Her gripe an’ her cut-water is solid enough, and she’s a tough old lady, she is, sir. Flat-run bottom, too. Ahh … er, that is, fer when the tide goes out, sir.”
“Ah,” Lewrie sighed, wishing it was possible to die of mortification. “Hmm. Yes. The tide. Bloody hell!”
“Aye, sir,” Murray commiserated, taking a pace away.
“Well, damn my eyes!” Lewrie sighed heavily, one hand on his hip and gazing up at the masthead for clues. “Look, have ‘Chips’ go below and sound the forepeak to see if there’s any leakage. A hand that’s a good swimmer over the bows to see how hard she’s … stuck! And boat crews into the launch and cutter to see if we may tow out the stream or kedge anchor and work her off. Before we’re left high and bloody dry ’til supper-time.”
“Aye, sir!” Murray replied, knuckling his brow.
“Damn all hard luck, sir,” Hogue told him.
“I feel like such a goose-brained … twit!” Lewrie confessed.
“Happens to the best, I’m told, sir,” Hogue added, though he had to work at keeping a straight face.
There was a shattering explosion just at that moment, which spun them about in their tracks. Something had set fire to Cuddalore, anchored farther to the east—perhaps a few diehards from the prize crew Choundas had put aboard to safeguard her from being plundered by his allies. She had just gone up in a titanic blast as her magazines burst, ripping her into a plume of fragments.
Farther east, and out in deeper waters, Poisson D’Or was still fighting, with Telesto close aboard on her left beam as they fell off the wind to the north for the chain of tiny islets that guarded this harbor from the opposite Monsoons. Lady Charlotte had continued on easterly as she could, to cross the French ship’s stern and rake her before turning north as well on the far side, to lay Poisson D’Or in a savage cross-fire.
“To think that but for a moment of stupidity, we could be a part of that!” Lewrie said with a bitter growl. “God, what a glorious fight they’re having. And we’ve missed it!”
“Grand seats, though, sir,” Hogue replied cheerfully. “Right in the stalls, as it were, to witness it.”
Owen came up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck and gave a cough to let them know he was there. “’Scuse me, sir, but I’ve flat run outa targets, sir. No more o’ those pirates t’ be seen, an’ half the village knocked down s’ far, sir. Want me t’ keep on?”
“No, Mister Owen. Continue to fire with one gun only, and I wish to have your other gunners for boat crews. We have to kedge off before the tide runs out too much.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Sir!” Murray called. “Those boats yonder! From Poison Door, sir! Tryin’ t’ land on the beach!”
Lewrie seized his glass and climbed up on the shore-side bulwark to peer at the two longboats being rowed ashore.
“Choundas!” Lewrie howled with frustration. “Can we lay a gun on him? He’ll get away into the jungle, else!”
“Er, nossir,” Owen almost moaned, wringing his grimy hands in frustration. “He’s outa our gun-arcs, ‘less we had a fo’c’sle chase-gun. An’ it don’t look like he’ll put it anywhere close t’ our poor range!”
“He’ll get away at last!” Lewrie snorted in disbelief. All of their labors and suffering for nothing … again! “Mister Hogue!”
“Sir?”
“Take charge of the ship, sir,” Lewrie exclaimed. “Keep Mister Murray and Mister Owen with you, and defend her should the pirates try to get off the beach and take her now she’s aground. Use your artillery over our heads should we run into trouble on the beach. Are the boat crews assembled? Good. Arm them. Muskets, a pistol each and a cutlass. Cony, fetch my case of pistols!”
The cutter had eight oarsmen, a bow-man and Cony as coxswain. The launch had a total of eight men aboard. Instead of a kedge anchor lowered into the stern-sheets, or one of the stern cables, the men were surprised to receive arms.
“Row for the beach!” Lewrie snapped, “Row like the Devil was at your heels. I want yon bastard!”
They cast off and put their backs to it, digging in deep with their oar-blades and grunting with the exertion, Lewrie’s cutter in the lead. He stood in the bows, loading his pistols.
“Not straight for the beach, Cony. Take us east up the coast for a ways before cutting in. Closer to them before we ground.”
“Aye, sir,” Cony replied, angling the tiller-bar under his arm to steer them more slant-wise across the lapping wavelets.
Choundas looked up from gazing at the bottom-boards of his boat with a bleak expression. The eastern palisade of the village was yet being defended, but he could see most of the pirates streaming off for safety, south through the longest wall and over the rice-paddies into the jungle. The remaining praos on the strand were on fire, damaged or under the guns of the ketch-rigged gun-boat. There would have been no safety aboard Cuddalore, minus her topmasts and rigging, so after picking up his tiny watch party from her, he had set her on fire, so the “biftecs” would not have the satisfaction of recapturing her.
“She’s aground, I think,” he said to no one, turning to look at the saucy little ketch. “And a dropping tide.”
No means of escape there, either, even if his small party could take her.
Coehorn mortar shells were bursting farther inland, over those rice-paddies, and he could hear the muffled popping and crackling of musketry in a steady, rolling platoon-fire. They would have to run that deadly gauntlet across the paddy dykes to escape. And from the continual, thin screaming they could barely hear, that way was being turned into a killing-ground.
Choundas swiveled aft to look at his beautiful ship. Poisson D’Or, one of the finest thirty-two-gunned frigates that had ever swum, was almost hull-down up the fringe of islets, wreathed in a mushroom cloud of gunpowder, with two of her masts gone. As thinly manned as she was, after losing La Malouine and his best hands, she was putting up a marvelous fight, but she was going to lose. It was fated.
And he wasn’t aboard to lead the fight in her, when she was battling for her life, as a captain, as an officer of the French Navy should be! No, he had waited too long, trying to put some spine into that churlish native chieftain. Who could have expected the damned English to land their troops on the east side of the island and march overland through all that trackless jungle, and then attack him from the west with their ships? Only the insane would beat against the wind and attack from leeward, when the best approach
would have been to ghost into harbor with a following wind, with the rising sun at their backs to ruin his gunners’ aim. Everything had gone wrong!
“What shall we do now, sir?” one of his surviving garde de la marines asked him in a soft whisper close to his ear. Choundas lifted his face to gaze at him. Nineteen years old, the equivalent of an English midshipman, an officer-in-training. Choundas wondered just what sort of lesson Valmette was learning today.
“Steer for the beach, timonier,” Choundas instructed his new cox’n. “Land us west of the land fighting, but out of range of those guns on the ketch. This side of the eastern palisade. We shall take a path through the village, go out its western side, and get into the jungle away from the ’biftecs’ artillery. Then strike down the western coast and find a decent seagoing boat. A prao, perhaps.”
“Two boats setting out from the ketch, sir,” Valmette warned. “To kedge her off? Could we take her?”
“Too few of us,” Choundas snapped, having already counted heads and discounted their chances. “And their boats are no better than ours for deep ocean.”
Choundas took a second look. Small as his party was, he had more men, well-armed men, than what appeared in the English boats.
“Hostages, perhaps, mes amis!” Choundas brightened. “For safe passage out of here. Timonier, steer to meet them in the shallows. Men, ready your muskets! I want prisoners. An officer if we can.”
“They’re turning to meet us shy of the beach,” Lewrie told his boat crew. “We’re going to have a fight on our hands, lad. A devil of a fight! Load muskets and pistols, and lay your swords to hand.”
Lewrie looked back at Culverin. There was not one gun barrel that could be cranked around in its port to lay on the French. Even if they could have pointed, the range was too great. He looked back to the shore, to the eastern end of the beach where the boats were on fire; it would appear that his father’s regiment had been held up in their advance. There would be no aid from that quarter, either.
I could meet ’em gunnel to gunnel, he thought, but one peek over the side canceled that thought. The water may have been clear as gin but there was the niggling little matter of his not being able to swim, and boats were sure to be capsized if they meleed like miniature frigates! The water was so clear it was impossible to judge its depth but for the faint sunrise shadow of his hull on the bottom-sand, and he judged that to be over his head, perhaps a full fathom still.
“Cony, put your tiller over hard a’larboard,” he ordered. “We beach and meet them with the boats for cover and steadier aim.”
“Aye, sir,” Cony parroted, and shoved the tiller bar over. The second boat in his wake followed suit a moment later.
“We’ll be the stone fortress, he’ll be the enemy squadron, men,” Lewrie told both boat crews to cover his queasy fear of being drowned. “Once ashore, get down below the gunnels and we’ll skin ’em. And if they want to come to us, then bedamned to ’em, I say! Save your pistols for when they get close.”
The French boats changed course once more, and the oarsmen laid almost flat on their thwarts to drive faster, once they saw their plan for a miniature naval engagement was for nought.
“Row! Row! Get us ashore, quickly now!” Lewrie urged his hands. The French were aimed right for him, trying to be upon them even before they could jump over the gunwales or get the oars shipped! Musketeers lay in the bows of the French boats, and one or two tried shots at long range. A stroke oar aft by Cony shrieked and fell back among his mates, upsetting the furious stroke, his neck shattered by a ball.
“Toss yer oars!” Cony yelped as the surf heaved them forward on a limp wave. The cutter lurched and slithered with a wet hiss as her keel ran onto the sand.
“Damn the oars!” Lewrie shouted. “Over the side and make ready!” The bow man leaped shin-deep into water and started to drag the bows farther up the beach, while the oarsmen let go of their oars and took up their weapons. The bow man was hit, flung backward with a grunt of ruptured lungs, which encouraged them to make haste and slither over the off-side gunwale instead of standing and leaping out with a care to staying erect and dry.
Muskets were popping, and bits of the cutter were flying into the air as ball splintered the wood. Lewrie had gone sprawling once over the side, and when he raised his head, there was the lead boat not ten yards off, ready to ground almost alongside!
“Cock your locks … take aim … fire!” he shouted as he drew his first pistol. Six muskets spat out a thin volley. The seventh had soaked priming and only squibbed with a dull phutt! But three French oarsmen had been hit as they stowed their oars and took up weapons from the bottom boards. The second French boat, the one with Choundas aboard, was landing ten yards farther up the beach. Lewrie drew back the lock of his pistol and took aim at a French musketman. He pulled the trigger and his weapon squibbed.
“Well, damme!” he spat, tossing the useless pistol aside and drawing its mate. By then, his target was kneeling out of side on the far side, his arm appearing as he rammed down a fresh load. He popped back up and Lewrie fired. This time, the weapon gave out a sharp bark and the Frenchman fell back with a shrill scream as the top of his head was blown off. “Fire at will!”
His second boat grounded, and the musketmen came running for shelter behind his cutter as four muskets fired. The French sailors were returning fire at a suicidal range.
“Cony, our crew. Steel!” Lewrie snapped. “Witty, give ’em a volley and then join me!”
He drew his hanger as the last of the French weapons popped. “Boarders! Away boarders!”
He went round the bows of his boat and ran straight for them.
Pistols were going off. A Frenchman leaped up with a musket to confront him, but was shot down. Another spun about in his tracks and fell into the surf with a great splash. And then Lewrie was upon his first man. Two-handed, he slashed upward, forcing the man’s long musket barrel high, stamping forward with his left foot to get inside the reverse swing of that hard metal-plated butt as it came for his skull, only pummeling his shoulder. A quick downward slash that left him kneeling, and his foe was howling with pain, his belly laid open from left nipple to right hip.
A cutlass came probing from his dying foe’s right, tangled in the man’s flailing arms, and Lewrie drew back and thrust, taking this enemy in the stomach. Lewrie sprang erect, pushing himself forward to stay close, so Choundas’ musketeers could not take a shot at the melee and pick out Englishmen to kill. He was met by a flaxen blonde sailor who was trying to decide if he wanted to finish ramming home a charge in his musket or drop it and draw his cutlass. Lewrie towered over him and cut downward through shoulder and collar bone, bringing a huge gout of blood that shot into the air like a fountain.
There was a volley of musketry, and two of Lewrie’s hands went down as they clambered over the boat to get at the Frenchmen. From higher up the beach, there was an answering volley. Choundas had gotten his crew organized and they fired. Able seaman Witty had taken his hands out to the right flank where they could get a clear shot.
“Pistols, Witty, then charge!” Lewrie howled. “Come on, men! At ’em, Culverins!” Without looking to see how many hands remained he waved his sword and ran for the second French boat.
Choundas waved his men on, too, so no more shots could be fired at his own hands. Those who had fled from the first boat found nerve to turn and join the charge as their gallant captain led them.
They met in the shallows between the boats, up to their knees in water with the light surf surging up to their crotches, and their feet sinking into the swirling sands as the waves lapped in and drew back. Witty’s hands were coming in from the shore side, forcing the fight into deeper water. Pistols were popping, and a feather of spray from a near-miss leaped up between Lewrie and the young Frenchman he faced off with.
He’s a gentleman, Lewrie thought, seeing the fineness of the young man’s smallsword. They crossed blades, and Lewrie was sure of the man’s background. He had a good wri
st and arm, and quick nerves, meeting a direct attack with a prime movement, going to a high guard over his head at fifth to fend Lewrie off, then swinging under his blade to second before launching a thrust of his own. Lewrie let his left hand go and counter-thrust at the young man’s lower sword arm, which was blocked by a marvelously well-executed circular parry to spiral Lewrie’s point wide to the left. But Lewrie drew back out of range, two-handing his hanger again, and cut over from left to right, dragging the officer’s blade back up to a high fifth position. As he did so, he waded forward to get inside the man’s guard, feinting a thrust. The young man’s reflexes, learned in an elegant sword-master’s salon, made him step back, and he tripped over his own feet, bouyed free of the sand momentarily by the surf. As he came back up, spouting and blowing, flinging stinging salt from his eyes, Lewrie overhanded a thrust down like stabbing at some fish and speared the young man through the side of the neck. With a gasp of surprise, the man sank once more with bright arterial blood looping and trailing in the sea.
“Vous!” Choundas screamed, beating his breast and striding easily through the surf toward Alan. “Timonier a mois, I think ’e slay ze wrong man in zat alley! En garde! I eat your brains and shit in your skull!”
Lewrie waded shoreward to meet him, to avoid the clumsy fate of the younger officer, sword held at third, waiting for Choundas’ first move. It was like an explosion!
Choundas had no grace, no elegance to his swordplay, coming from a rougher school. With howls he was upon Alan with his smallsword swinging like a cutlass. Blades rang, not in beat, but with the rasp of a farrier’s hammer, and the shock sang up Lewrie’s arm like a bell’s echo with each blow. Try as he would to thrust and counter-thrust, to slash with the point and cut over from defensive guards to direct or even indirect cuts, Choundas was always there, quick as lightning, all attack and very little defense of his own.
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