Ilya had come to his rescue, pouncing, rather playfully kitten-like it couldbe described, onto their backs, and naturally going for the tried-and-true neck-bite on one of them, jostling the other to his knees with his cutlass down, and Paddy whisked his blade like an axe, cleaving right down through the crown of his foe’s skull, deep into his brain. “Oi told ye, Oi warned ye! Oh, shite!” His foe bleated out a death-scream, Ilya’s prey shrieked his own as long fangs met together in the unfortunate sailor’s throat. Ilya gave him a good shake, then looked at Paddy with his eyes glowing in eager green chatoyance.
“Gooood kitty!” Paddy whinnied, leaping rather spryly, himself, for the main mast shrouds and rat-lines. “Noice kitty!” he whimpered as he shot up the stays past the cat-harpings in an eye-blink, hoping that lions didn’t much care for nigh-vertical ascents on shaky ropes, and swearing that if he survived, he’d never sign aboard a ship which carried any sort of critters! “Mither?” he cried to the main truck as the lion took a moment to look up at him and ponder his chances.
“What are you fools…?” a French Lieutenant bellowed as sailors came tumbling back aboard the frigate Vesuve. “Attack, I say, go back and attack… Eeekk!” as a lion—a shaggy-maned lion!—sprang from one bulwark to the next, balanced for a short second on all four paws like a domestic cat on a balcony railing, then sprang for him and took him down with his massive weight. The bloody-mawed beast landed atop him, embraced him with gigantic front paws, and clawed his torso from breastbone to groin with his hind paws, roaring in his face, and fine broadcloth wool and clean white silk—always to be worn when in combat, for it was easier to withdraw from wounds!—went flying like a ragpicker’s rejected quilt pieces! His sailors shot, stabbed, and bayoneted the beast, but it was far too late for the Lieutenant, and Ilya actually managed to claw a matelot to ribbons before he died, managing to shatter the night with one last, prideful roar that sounded like utter satisfaction, and the total domination of all Africa that he had been denied when captured as a cub so many years before.
“I not cry,” Arslan Durschenko muttered as he heard his lion’s last victory roar. Even so, he had to pipe at his good left eye for a second, before turning to receive a fresh-loaded rifled musket from a wee red-headed “actress,” and brought it to his left shoulder to take careful aim. The French were still so close that Durschenko could aim, then shut his left eye before he pulled the trigger to prevent the loss of his remaining sight. A lifetime of marksmanship assured him that he would strike his man, and even before he opened his eyes, the shout of pain that followed the snap of the lock and the flash in the pan, then the bark and recoil of the rifled weapon, told him he had scored.
“A pity,” the brazenly pert little redhead told him as she took the rifle back, and handed him a pair of double-barreled pistols. “‘E were a good lion… mostly.”
“Ilya was Devil son of bitch,” Arslan Durschenko snarled as he cocked all four locks. “But, he die good, I give him one last chance. Those two pistols, too, kraseeya dyevooshka, and I showink somethink. Keep down, dyevooshka. Too pretty to fight. Watchink this!”
The girl ducked down behind the compass binnacle as Durschenko strode forward towards the starboard gangway with a pistol in each of his hands. The French were retreating, flowing back to their frigate, but Durschenko’s blood was up. Off-handed, shooting from the hip with his left eye squinted, he volleyed off, first from the right hand, and then from the left, alternating right-side and left-side barrels from both guns, and four Frenchmen slumped to the deck! He dropped both of his empty pistols and drew his last pair of singlebarreled duellers, raising the right one to shoulder level.
The other foemen spotted the threat at last, some raising their cutlasses, or swinging muskets towards him, but not before Durschenko blasted one of them backwards to slam into the gangway bulwark with a ball in his heart, folded over himself. Durschenko raised his other pistol, just as the Frenchman who had levelled his musket right at him yelped in agony as an arrow drove deep into his right side, and pulled the trigger as the muzzle dropped, to drive the ball deep into the oak deck. Before the French could react to this new threat, yet another arrow went into the left eye socket of the man who had swung to find the source, and his death-scream was as un-nerving as a dying woman’s.
Then, the bears arrived from up forward, both Fredo and Paulo clumsily stalking aft on their hind feet, rolling their massive heads and roaring with their mouths open and their upper lips laid back from long, though un-bloodied, fangs. Durschenko fired his last pistol and found his mark, and the French at last broke and ran, scrambling from Festival to the relative safety of their frigate, abandoning weapons to free their hands for the desperate and dangerous crossing. Men on both ships, with good reason, were hacking at the grapnel lines with boarding axes and swords.
Astern of them, Capt. Weed was shouting orders for brace-tenders and sheet-handlers as he spun the spokes of the wheel to a blur to get his ship away into the darkness as quickly as he could. Her own battle lust not yet slaked, Eu-doxia smoothly plucked a shaft from the sheaf on her back, notched it, and drew to her cheek in one slick motion, firing four more arrows in as few seconds, it seemed, and tumbling all four of her marks into the widening gap between the hulls, or making them drop onto the frigate’s gangways where their shouts and cries and confusion-causing bodies kept the recent shock and terror redly alive.
“Urrah!” Arslan Durschenko shouted, both arms and empty pistols thrust at the stormy night sky in triumph. “We win! Urrah!” he cried, looking up at the poop deck, where a bandaged Black man stood with his hunting rifle in one hand, and cheering, too.
“Urrah!” Eudoxia seconded, coming to hug her father, to dance in place and bounce on her toes in victory.
“Cossack forever, Fransooski bastards!” her poppa howled.
“Damned h’if we didn’t!” Daniel Wigmore marvelled in complete astonishment, ready to feel himself over for wounds as he rose from a handy hiding place near the break of the poop. He had an un-fired pistol and an un-bloodied sword, but he waved them aloft with as much exuberance as the rest. “Damme h’if h’it didn’t work, ha ha! Eeek!” he added, as Fredo and Paulo, their “play-pretties” now gone, came loping aft, looking for more excitement. “Jose, come git yer damn’ bears, I say! P…please? Jose!”
“Hoy, th’ deck!” came a forlorn voice from the main mast truck, astride the furled and gasketed sail and yard. “Kin I come down, now? Is ‘at lion gone, ar-rah?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
HMS Proteus shuddered to another hit, thick oak scantlings crying as they were punctured, and a framing timber under the Number Five larboard gun-port gave out a great groan of pain as the 18-pdr. round-shot thonked into it inches deep and lodged there.
“Two feet or more in the bilges, now, sir,” Lt. Langlie had to report, his cocked hat gone, and his face smeared with grey gun-grit.
“Their rate of fire’s slackin’,” Lewrie commented, giving that dire news but half an ear. The storm was finally blowing itself out, the winds moderating, and the rain coming down in sullen, vertical showers, instead of being whipped horizontally into their faces. The worst of the weather had scudded off Nor’west with its heavy lightning, so if a bolt now struck, it was no longer close-aboard, and there were several seconds between the crack and the rumbling thunder roll.
“There!” Lewrie snapped, pointing at their foe in a weaker glimmer of a distant lightning strike. “See there, Mister Langlie! Hands to the braces, and we’ll make up a bit closer to her, still. Quartermasters … another half-point to weather!”
The enemy frigate, in that blink-of-an-eye flash, stood revealed as a battered shell, her hull planking stove in, and riddled with star-shaped shot-holes, several of her gun-ports hammered into one, and her starboard bulwarks gnawed away in places, from abaft her cat-heads and swung-up anchors to abeam of her mizen-mast.
Lewrie grimly supposed that Proteus probably didn’t look a whit better, after more than a full h
our of trading shot, but…his masts still stood, whilst the Frenchman’s lower main and mizen seemed canted from the proper angle of rake; Proteus’s sails still drew, with only a few holes punched through them, and her yards, standing rigging, and running rigging were still mostly intact.
She’s fallen astern a tad, too, Lewrie took satisfying note; a bit. Not enough for us t’draw ahead and bow-rake her, but… time to end this.
“Mister Catterall! Quoins fully out, and aim for her rigging!” Lewrie shouted down to the waist. “Mister Langlie, brace and sheet men will haul in too taut, and get us heeled far over!”
The French frigate, was it starting to brace up, as well, going more South of West…to break off the action and run? Lewrie speculated. “Mister Catterall, a controlled broadside! Shot and grape!”
“Aye, sir! Load, load, load, ye miserable cripples, or I…!” Lt. Catterall chortled in a voice gone creaky with over-use, stamping about the deck in blood-lusty glee.
Proteus fell silent for about a full minute, as fresh 12-pdr. shot was fetched up from below, the hatchway shot racks and the thick rope shot-garlands between the guns nigh expended. Lewrie noted a gun here and there being charged with powder with wooden ladles, for, their over-ample store of pre-made powder cartridges, and empty flannel bags for filling in the magazine, had already been shot away. For certain, they had most-like used up the upper tier of powder casks, as well, and were into the older stuff from the second tier.
The French warship continued her fire, and Proteus had to stand and take it, but Lewrie could count only eight discharges from her battery, and those were fired independently, haltingly, with better than two minutes between explosions from those gun-ports.
“Ready, sir!” Catterall bellowed, his voice cracking raspily.
” Thus, Quartermasters!” Lewrie cried, chopping his hand to show the alteration of course desired. “Sheet home, brace up sharp! Stand ready…!”
Proteus seemed to gather a bit more speed, a quarter-knot or so, like a good hunter bunching its hindquarter muscles to take a hedge. As she did so, amid the loud squealing of blocks as the square sails were drawn at right angles to the wind, and the fore-and-aft sails were put flat to it, she began to heel over onto her starboard shoulders. Rose, then paused, pent atop a passing beam wave, as well, steadied, and…
“Fire, Mister Catterall!”
The brief gap between the frigates lit up harsh and orange, for a second, and the range was still so close that Proteus’s weary gunners could see the results of their handiwork, for once, before the bank of powder fog rolled back down on them and over the lee side, giving them a cause to cheer and howl in pleasure, no matter how dry-mouthed, weak, or tired.
The Frenchman’s main mast shivered as a great rat-bite appeared in it halfway ‘twixt her bulwark and main top. Clouds of grape ravaged her upper and lower shrouds, blasting away the dead-eyes that kept her top-mast erect, by the edge of the main top, shattering her slender top-mast, and bringing the whole thing, from truck and cap to halfway up above the main top, swinging down in ruin, the furled and gasketed royal, half-reefed t’gallant, and tops’1, with all their mile of rigging, collapsed alee to drape utter chaos, and highly flammable sails, over her engaged side!
“Ease her, Mister Langlie!” Lewrie shouted, so pleased that he just-about started to caper in delight. “Mister Catterall! Secure, arm your people, and prepare t’board her! Close reach for a bit, sir, and fetch us alongside, Mister Langlie! Mister Devereux, are you with us?”
“Aye, sir!” his Marine officer shouted from the larboard side.
“Ready to volley and clear the way for us!” Lewrie directed as he tore off his foul-weather coat, at last, and patted his pockets to assure himself that his pistols were still there, then drew his hanger an inch or two to determine that it would draw easily when needed, but was snug enough to stay in its scabbard during his clamber across.
With an upper mast and sails dragging over her lee side, and a catastrophic loss of sail area with which to maintain her speed and her agility, the French warship sagged down on Proteus, even as the British frigate swung up to meet her.
“Ready grapnels, there!” Bosun Pendarves was shouting.
Proteus had not rigged boarding nets, and the French ship, with the intent of a rapid assault on a captured merchantman, had not rigged hers, either. There would only be wreckage to hack away…or use as a handy footbridge for the quicker and more agile.
Proteus drew ahead, angling to windward, the French ship’s foremast falling astern of abeam before the hulls met with a titanic thud, rebounded a foot or two, then clashed back together as grapnels flew.
“Ready, sir!” Lt. Catterall rasped, his teeth white in a wild and wide smile. “Aye aye, sir!” Lt. Adair up on the forecastle cried as well, his smaller party of gunners and sail-handlers gathered round him by the larboard cat-head.
“Boarders!” Lewrie ordered in a quarterdeck roar. “Away!”
Swivel-guns yapped from both ships, from the bulwarks and tops, though British guns vastly out-numbered the French. Lt. Devereux and his Marines levelled their muskets, volleyed as one, and nigh a dozen Frenchmen waiting with cutlasses and axes in hand to repel them reeled away from sight, shot dead in their tracks!
“Let’s go, Proteuses! Kill me some Frogs, ha ha!” Lt. Catterall encouraged as he stood atop their bulwarks, shrouds in one hand, and a glittering sword in the other. His gunners began to surge forward, in obedience to his urging, leaping and scrabbling across the gap between the tumblehome of hulls, though both frigates’ waterlines were inches apart.
A swivel-gun coughed, and Catterall grunted in agony, his right arm torn completely off, and his shoulder shredded. “Well, just damn my eyes, if I …” he loudly cursed, before swaying backwards to fall dead on the gangway.
“Come on, lads!” Midshipman Larkin, their little Bog-Irish imp, shrilled as he swung across on a freed line. He gained the Frenchman’s gangway, atop that pile of wreckage, dirk in one hand and a pistol in the other. He shot down one French sailor, and hopelessly clashed his short and slim dirk against another’s cutlass, slyly kicking his opponent in the teeth to drive him back. But, a boarding pike came driving upwards, taking him deep in the stomach. A twist of the long and slim pikehead to make it even crueller, then the French pikeman lifted him like a forkful of reaped hay to fling him in-board to the enemy’s gun-deck!
Lewrie slid down the larboard mizen-mast shrouds to the channel and dead-eyes, leaped onto the French ship’s main mast chain platform, and began to scramble up, praying that his left arm, slightly weakened after being broken by a Dutch musket ball at the Battle of Camperdown, would serve him, for he already held one of his double-barreled pistols in his right. British sailors followed his path alongside him, others made the risky leap over his head. Muskets, pistols, and swivels made a minute-long fusillade, before hard-pressed men on both sides ran out of time for re-loading, and the clatter of blades replaced them. Up to the level of a French gun-port, the hint of a shadowy figure within… Bang! went his first shot, rewarded by a throaty, gobbling scream, and Lewrie clambered higher, cursing his left arm for its slowness, wishing that he didn’t have to do this, just this once, for every now and then, the hulls rebounded off each other, despite the taut grapnel lines, and the mill-race below his feet sounded as loud as a rain-choked Scottish river.
Up to level with the bulwarks, into a snarl of rigging, broken spars, and sailcloth, but a wide gap had been blown through it, and it was with a great sense of relief that he flung his right arm, then his right leg, over the splintery timbers, and crawled to his feet, on the enemy’s decks, at last!
Shoot that bugger, close enough for his pistol to set his shirt on fire, before he could skewer him with a pike! Drop empty pistol…draw sword… fill his left hand with the other pistol, and draw back to half-cock on both barrels with his right forearm! Look about, and discover his own sailors and Marines either side of him, thank God!
“Take it to
‘em, lads! Skin the bastards!” he shouted, taking a tentative step forward to peer over the inner edge of the gangway to see… a butcher’s yard! Guns were dis-mounted, massive barrels and truck-carriages overturned on squashed men, splintered, dis-emboweled, half-charred gunners betrayed by their pieces when they burst, or the powder cartridges had blown up, turning flesh the colour of rare roast beef! And a sheet of gore on the main deck, reflecting battle-lanthorn light like a reddish full moon on a calm lake! Mounds of bodies about the main and foremast trunks, smaller piles of arms, legs, and bits of men, as well…and two ragged rows of screaming, writhing wounded by the unengaged larboard side, still waiting to be carried below to their Surgeons, the French cockpit surgery already filled to bursting with the worst-off.
Triage, the Frogs call it? Lewrie numbly recalled, appalled and about to retch. If these men were the better-off, he did not want to see what an urgent case looked like!
“Reddition, m’sieur!”a young, wide-eyed French officer in the ship’s waist called out, taking Lewrie, in his cocked hat with a pair of epaulets on his shoulders, as in command. “Nous surrendre, please? Nous amener… strike, oui? Quarter, m’sieur capitaine.” He tossed away a pistol and let his sword dangle from his right wrist by a strap of leather. “Ze fregat L’Uranie surrendre, m’sieur!”
“Tell them!” Lewrie roared, pointing his hanger at the officer, then at the melee still going on from bow to stern. “Order your men, votre matelots, to… désarmer Lay down their arms… vite, vite!”
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