A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  Taunt me, will ye? Lewrie thought, in fury to be fired upon by a lighter warship, one that usually would shy away from action with a frigate…if the Frenchman had not mistaken Proteus for a Sloop of War or gun-brig, then his feat of tweaking the “Bloodies’” noses with such daring could get him dined-out for years.

  “With a knot or two more in-hand …” Lewrie began to say, but a fresh series of explosions split the night; another eight bursts of hot, white powder smoke, bright amber juts from muzzles, and showers of embers! “There she is!”

  The corvette was, as he’d speculated, about three cables astern and farther up to windward than before. At that range, in the gloom, the Frenchman’s new broadside was more of a threat than a killing blow. Reverting to the usual French Navy practice, these balls were fired at full elevation, on the up-roll, meant to dismast and cripple Proteus, not hull her, forcing her to fall away Eastward and astern to let the corvette get on with her depredations without further interference.

  Lewrie involuntarily flinched into his coat as the round iron shot bowled overhead, ahead, and astern in a hopeful spread, but all of them clean misses, this time. And, by firing that broadside, “M’sieur Frog” had given away his best weapon…his location and the direction of his course. He was still close-hauled, bound Nor’-Nor’west.

  “Signal rockets, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie snapped. “Let Grafton and the others know there’s a wolf ‘mongst the sheep, and carry on.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Swivel-guns on the midships larboard gangway bulwarks were made ready by the few brace-tenders and waisters not part of the gun crews below on the main deck. Four yellow-white rockets flung themselves to the skies with sulfurous whooshes, slanting out over the dark sea that lay to the West, creating brief golden sparkles and fire-glades on the waters …faintly illuminating their foe, as well. Most-hearteningly revealing a frigate off to the West, as well, one which flew the Red Ensign of the Royal Navy, which looked to be sailing Due North or one point alee, a little ahead of Proteus and in a prime position to haul her wind and fall down to counter the French corvette, too!

  “Mister Catterall!” Lewrie shouted down to the deck below him. “Chock and check, starboard, and be ready to engage the Frog corvette off our larboard quarters when we wheel up to windward!”

  In the last lingering glimmer of the signal rockets, Lewrie had time for a look into the waist, and was appalled. The 12-pounder gun nearest to the larboard ladderway sat on a shattered truck-carriage at a crippled angle, and there were two bodies beside it, in the awkward sprawls of the dead that could be mistaken for piles of old clothes! Four more corpses had been laid out round the trunk of the main mast, the broad pools of spilt blood glittering evilly in the light of the battle lanthorns. Even as he watched, Mr. Hodson’s loblolly boys were bearing a gasping wounded man to the main hatchway ladders on a mess-table for a stretcher, a sailor so quilled with finger-thick splinters he more-resembled a hedgehog! A bit farther forward, another gun had not only been dis-mounted, but had been struck so hard with a cannon ball that a large divot had been taken from its thick breech!

  Thirteen guns left? No, Lewrie fumed to himself; Ten, more-like, for God knows what happened to the ones in my cabins, aft!

  “All sail set, sir, ready to go about,” Lt. Langlie reported.

  “Begin, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie ordered, tight-lipped. “Mister Catterall, we’re bearing up! Fire as you bear!”

  “Stations for stays! Quartermasters, put your helm down!”

  Proteus was now sailing at nearly ten knots, her bottom was as clean and swift as could be expected, so recently after a re-coppering, and her turn up towards the wind was quick. Leaving that to Langlie, Lewrie went to the larboard, soon-to-be engaged, side, gripping at the cap-rails and peering wide-eyed into the night, and, yes!, there she was, four cables off, but making a goodly way, her location revealed by the creaming white swash of her wake and bow-wave! Lt. Catterall’s gunners groaned, grunted, and cursed as they levered their loaded guns about to point so far aft in the gun-ports, lifting, bodily shifting the rears of both gun and carriage to the right, heaving on the run-out tackle and breeching tackle so, when fired, those monsters didn’t slew about and crush their tenders, or snap free. At this angle, the guns’ right-hand second re-enforcing rings were out the ports, the trunnions, upon recoil, might barely clear the bulwarks. The gun-captains urged them on with shouts and fists, blows un-noticed by the sweating tars, for all of them, just as much as Lewrie, craved at least one broadside for revenge…for pay-back! And, to prove to the world, and to themselves, that they could give as good as they got.

  “Ready…!” Lt. Catterall was bellowing, stepping well clear of his charges, the crews gathering well away from the possible result of recoil, too, each gun-captain standing with one fist in the air, with the triggering lanyards to the cocked flintlock strikers taut in the other. “Well, damme!” Catterall barked, frustrated.

  As Proteus came up on the wind, as waisters and tenders braced her sails and yards up sharper, she began to wallow as if sailing with the wind nearly right-aft on a long-scending following sea. Lewrie looked to the helm, of a mind to curse the four helmsmen on the double wheel for the worst sort of lubbers, to see them heaving away, making the spokes blur…first to helm down, then to helm up!

  “Steady her, dammit!” Lewrie bawled. “Thus!” he snapped, using his right hand to indicate the best course. By the light of the blue fusee at the main-mast top, he could see the commissioning pendant, so why couldn’t they, for God’s sake? “Steady on!”

  She did steady up, though with a manic effort on her helm; she came to a constant course, at last. “As you bear…fire!” came the eager and relieved shriek from Lt. Catterall, and the 12-pounders began to bellow! Lewrie turned back to watch the corvette, picking her up by her frothing wake along her waterline, again, as the first round-shot was fired. There! A tall feather of water leaping up under her bows, a second about amidships of her length, a “short,” but close enough to graze up and hit her ‘twixt wind and water! Her forecourse twitched as a ball punched right through it; there came a faint “Rrawk!” from a direct hit into her scantlings or timbers; he saw her foremast shiver from top to trunk, vibrating like a harpsichordist’s tuning-fork as a ball struck it! Another feather of spray from a ball that just barely cleared her starboard quarter, another close-aboard her after thirds, and caromed off her at a shallow angle, ripping side planking to bits!

  Proteus began to wallow, again, bowsprit and jib-boom swinging and hunting left and right in wide and lazy yawings, with the convoy’s stern lanthorns, now faint and far-off glows, to track by.

  “Dammit to Holy Hell, what…?” Lewrie roared, about ready to strangle someone.

  “No helm, sir!” Quartermaster Austen shouted back. “No helm!”

  “Christ shit on a biscuit,” Lewrie muttered. “See to it, Mister Langlie!” he shouted back, though fearing the worst. That stern-rake surely had blown away steering tackle, smashed into the tiller-flat or the rudder, itself! Could relieving tackle be rigged and re-roved… else, Proteus would go from warship to drifting hulk in a twinkling. A helpless hulk, at the mercy of a pitiless Frenchman’s guns!

  The last gun in the larboard battery erupted, even though a hit was out of the question as Proteus fell off the wind. Only nine had fired, by Lewrie’s count…even worse than he’d feared. On this wind and without steering, Proteus could do nothing but slump shoreward, her stern and weakened gun battery open to the foe.

  Lewrie turned back to peer after the French corvette. Her wake still gave her position away, but she seemed farther away, not quite as long as she’d been before, perhaps, that creaming froth too short for a ship within four cables, he speculated. There came a bellowing up to windward, a series of gun flashes that revealed HMS Stag, which was on a course of about Nor’east, now, sailing to interpose herself between the convoy and the intruder. Moments later, far-distant HMS Horatius lit up the seas to the West w
ith another full broadside of her own at something beyond her, silhouetting herself for several long seconds.

  “Deck, there!” a main-mast lookout shouted down. “Th’ enemy’s goin’ about! Tackin’! Two point off th’ larb’rd quar-ter!”

  “Thank God for small mercies,” Lewrie whispered, no matter how ignominious it was to be “rescued” by a sister ship. It felt much like playing the role of a breeding bull being saved from the terror of a vicious, marauding terrier by the arrival of a cow from his own herd!

  Sure, I’ll never hear the end of it, Lewrie bemoaned.

  “Pardon, sir,” Lt. Langlie said, coming to his side and tapping the brim of his hat in salute. “The Bosun’s Mate has been below, with the Carpenter, Mister Garroway. Mister Towpenny reports that all the steering tackle is taut and sound, with no shot holes near the tiller head. He fears ‘tis the rudder itself, sir.”

  “Mast-head!” Lewrie barked aloft. “Where away that corvette, now?”

  “One point off th’ larb’rd quar-ter, six cable’r more, sir!” an anonymous cry came back. “Might jis’ be past Stays, an’ bound to th’ Sou’west! Breakin’ away, looks like, sir! Made a big, frothy patch!”

  “Very well!” Lewrie shouted, then turned to his First Officer. “In that case, get the way off her, ‘fore we rip what little’s left clean off, Mister Langlie. Bosun and Carpenter to the quarterdeck at once, and I’ll have a battle lanthorn fetched with ‘em. Order Mister Catterall to secure his guns, and stand ready to assist where he can.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  When a ship tacked, she slowed, wheeled 90 degrees or more, created a large patch of disturbed water, and fell off the wind for a spell before firming up on a new course; that was what the lookout had seen, that pale phosphorescent halfacre of foam of a ship gone about, daunted from her desires by the presence of two frigates, and unready to trust her luck against the second one. This brief fight was over.

  As the guns were levered back to right angles to the hull, and swabbed clean, tompioned, and bowsed to the bulwarks, as freed sailors went aloft to take in the royals and t’gallants, and once more reduce the tops’ls, Lewrie, Mr. Towpenny, and Mr. Garroway went aft with the lanthorn and a coil of light rope to inspect the rudder.

  “Sonofabitch…sorry, sir,” Towpenny gasped as the lanthorn bobbed, dangled, and swung, lowered halfway to the waterline under the frigate’s counter. “No wonder she’s yawin’ like she’s drunk as Davy’s Sow … th’ lower part o’ th’ main piece’s swingin’ like a barn door!”

  “Upper stock of the main piece is nigh shot clean through, sir,” the Carpenter also marvelled, “‘tween the second and third pintles and gudgeons, and, I suspect the lowermost’s been torn completely away.”

  “Else she’d not sway like that, aye,” Mr. Towpenny spat. “Fir baulks t’th’ trailin’ edge has been shot off, too. Hangin’ on by less than a fingernail, she is, sir.”

  He shifted the lanthorn lower, and then slowly raised it, bumping up along the sternpost. “Ah, ‘tis bad. Horrid bad, that,” Towpenny sorrowfully commented with a wince, and a sucking hiss. “Nigh shot through ‘twixt the second an’ third pintles, an’ both fourth an’ fifth torn free, too, sir. An’ wot’s left o’ th’ sternpost below th’ waterline’s anybody’s guess. Bronze gudgeons, an’ pintle arms…”

  “Seasoned oak for a replacement…” Carpenter Garroway mourned. “Fir’s no problem, perhaps, but…there’s no oak in Africa, is there?”

  “Good, dense English elm f’r sole an’ back, an’ wot them balls did t’th’ fayed triangle strips o’ th’ sternpost an’ rudder, both …” Mr. Towpenny added.

  “Could it be ‘fished,’ like a broken yardarm, Mister Towpenny?” Lewrie hopefully enquired, ready to all but cross his fingers behind his back. “Some vertical iron strips, bolted through, ‘stead of fore-and-aft strapping like the tiller head?”

  “Might could try, Cap’m, but I’d not trust it in anythin’ more than calm seas,” Towpenny said with a sad sigh. “Do it get boist’rous, th’ rollin’ gits too heavy, she might snap like a fresh carrot, an’ then where’d we be, sir? Nossir, we need a whole new main piece.”

  “Any other wood besides English oak that might serve?” Lewrie asked him. Towpenny hoisted the lanthorn up to the taffrails, with a distant look on his grizzled face, waiting ‘til the lamp was in-board before he spoke.

  “Mahogany or teak, sir,” Towpenny speculated. “‘Tis dense an’ stiff enough, but th’ findin’ o’ such, long an’ broad enough… an’ seasoned enough, not green, wellsir. That’d be a real poser, Cap’m.”

  “Damn!” Lewrie spat, clapping his hands behind his back, pacing forward and away. There were Cuban-built Spanish ships fashioned from truck to keel of mahogany, and the envy of anyone who captured them, for they were incredibly strong and long-lasting. He’d seen merchant vessels in the Far East, “country ships” in the local trade, made from teak, and they bore reputations for strength, too, but…India was a long way off, and without a rudder, they’d never get there to find the material necessary to fashion a new rudder! And, Lewrie rather doubted there were any Spaniards still in the Far East trade, who might put in at Cape Town and just happen to have a spare rudder gathering cob-webs in their bosuns’ lockers!

  He spun back around. “I take it we’ve not enough seasoned oak of the proper size to fashion a new’un, either, Mister Towpenny?”

  “Nossir, we’ve not,” the Bosun’s Mate replied, after sharing a quick, silent conference with the Carpenter. “Nothin’ thick or long enough t’make new, Cap’m.”

  “Well, damn my eyes,” Lewrie growled.

  One good point, he thought, taking what wee scrap of fortune he could from mis-fortune; ‘thout a rudder, surely to God, we’ll not have t’go on to Bombay or Canton in Sir Tobias-bloody-Treghues’s company!

  Assuming they survived ‘til dawn, for Lewrie was reminded that Proteus, with the way now almost completely off her to save what was left of her shattered rudder, was still prey to the West wind and the Eastward-setting current. Mr. Winwood had thought them about twenty sea-miles offshore when the action had begun, and they had worn away to leeward and steered Nor’east for a time before coming back to Due North to follow the convoy, which might have resulted in their losing a mile or better shoreward… a high-cliffed, rocky shore where the bottom rose up steeply and quickly, and the waves crashed with a fury, even on the best days. There would be no chance to come to anchor as they drifted ashore with the sea-bottom so far below.

  Neither could they come up to the wind close enough to attempt a tack, or even fetch-to, for God’s sake! Such a swing might rip the tatters right off the sternpost. Besides, it took a sound rudder for fetching-to, to maintain her head when the fore-and-aft sails and the back-braced sails on the yards countered each other in a constantly-shifting balancing act!

  Are we fucked, or what? Lewrie miserably thought.

  “Mister Langlie,” Lewrie called out.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “I think it’s time we fired some more of those signal rockets,” Lewrie said, admitting to himself that he could think of nothing else to do, for once. “What is the number to convey ‘Need Assistance’?”

  “Five at once, sir,” Lt. Langlie quickly replied.

  “Make up a sea-anchor, get it over the side; and we’ll hope for the best, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said, glad that no one could see him blushing with embarrassment in the dark.

  “At once, sir.”

  About a half-hour later, HMS Stag came looming up in the gloom, surging alongside under reduced sail, but still going a lot faster than Proteus, within a long musket shot of her larboard, seaward, beam.

  “Hoy, Proteus!” Capt. Philpott cried through a brass speaking trumpet. “You there, Captain Lewrie? Something amiss, is there?”

  “Hoy, Captain Philpott!” Lewrie shouted back. “I’m still here, but we’ve a wee problem with our rudder. Shot halfway off!”

  “That’s what happens wh
en you let a bad’un sneak up and spank you on the arse, aye!” Philpott cried, sounding like he was chortling.

  God, I didn’t know how much I despise him, ‘til now! Lewrie took a moment to think.

  “Do you request a tow, Lewrie?” Philpott offered.

  “Aye…we need a tow into harbour, Philpott!” Lewrie shouted, figuring that if Philpott would drop the honourifics, he would, too, no matter did he outrank him on the Captain’s List.

  “Be ready when we come round, again, sir!” Philpott ordered. “I’ll fetch-to off your bows, do you reduce to bare poles, and lower a boat to transfer the towing cable. Your cable, or mine, ha ha?”

  “I will supply!” Lewrie replied.

  “Good-ho! Mind, Lewrie…towing you in, I’ll not demand that you fly my flag over yours, as my ‘prize’!”

  Choke on it, an’ damn yer sense of humour, ye bastard! Lewrie furiously thought, wondering if it could get any more humiliating.

  After a moment, Lewrie took evil glee in the comforting thought that whilst Proteus swung to her anchors at Cape Town, making repairs, it would be Philpott who would have the utter delight in accompanying Grafton and Horatius ‘cross the Indian Ocean, with not a jot of shore liberty…and Lewrie would have free access to the Cape, “the tavern of the seas”!

  Do I thank that Frenchman for that? Lewrie wondered; Mine arse on a bandbox if I will!

  BOOK IV

  “Contemner?, miser! Vitanda est improba Siren desidia, aut quidquid vita meliore parasti ponendum aequo animo.”

  “You will earn contempt, poor wretch. You must shun the wicked Siren, Sloth, or be content to drop whatever honour you have gained in nobler hours.”