"Mus' be worth fifty guineas, sor!" Able Seaman Clancey hooted, producing yet another. "An' thayr First Off 'cer's sword, 'ere, 'tis a fine'un, too, sor. Poor feller's not long f'r this world, neither, we reckon," Clancey callously snickered, pointing back towards the wheel, where an officer who'd had a leg shot off at the hip, and the other one bent at an un-natural angle, was being tended by two French sailors.
"A guinea for each of you, lads," Lewrie told them, "but, let's not be makin' a career of lootin' the dead… even Frenchmen." "Thankee, sor!"
"And, let's stay cold sober, too, 'fore I have ye all at 'Mast,' " Lewrie sternly reminded them.
Lewrie took a tour of the quarterdeck, taking in the heavy damage, the strewn corpses and dis-mounted guns, with his lips pursed in a silent whistle. Unlike most combats reported in the Marine Chronicle, where the French fired a few broadsides to salve their captain's conscience and uphold honour before striking, this ship had fought to win… and had paid the price. It was a slaughterhouse!
French frigates carried over-large complements compared to English warships, sometimes as many as 350 or more. For raiders such as this L 'Uranie, intent on prize-taking and long cruises, they carried more officers, petty officers, and sailors to man and safeguard those ships they took, leaving enough aboard to maintain the raider at full strength if she was required to fight to keep possession of her prizes.
But, with so many men aboard, it was no wonder that every shot through her hull or bulwarks had reaped L'Uranie's over-manned crew as thickly as a farmer's scythe would cut down a field of grain. Excess hands could replace gunners and sail-tenders for a time, but if battle lasted long enough…
To Lewrie, gazing down into the waist, it looked as if half of those 350 Frenchmen lay on deck where they fell, or whimpered their lives away in those two long rows of savagely mutilated! A few more lanthorns bobbed about, fetched from Proteus, so his own petty officers could survey their own frigate's damage from out-board, or rig thick rope mats as fenders to protect both ships as their hulls thudded together, or… to pick and hunt among the dead and wounded for their shipmates, leaving the French where they were, for now. Triage, but of a different form. From the French quarterdeck, Lewrie could look over at his own ship and shake his head at how many shot-holes and shattered planks he could count in the feeble, bobbing hand-lanthorn lights.
And what's me own "butcher's bill"? he sourly wondered, feeling sick at his stomach, in addition to bone-tired; What'd Twigg tell me, back in London? Save mine arse from the gallows whilst far overseas by doin' somethin'… glorious! He felt like spitting a foul taste from his mouth. This "glorious " enough for 'em, hey? I slay enough Frogs, sacrifice enough o'my people, t'keep me neck, un-stretched? Price is too damned high!
Surgeon Mr. Hodson and Surgeon's Mate Mr. Durant would tell him the cost, soon enough, Lewrie was sure.
He shoved himself erect from his slump on shot-gnawed railings, all but shook himself like a hound to wake himself from his lassitude. With three captured swords under his left arm, Lewrie descended an un-damaged ladderway on the larboard side to pace the main deck and waist of the French frigate, looking up at the cross-deck beams and the boat-tier, where the ruins of cutter, launch, gig, and jolly-boat sat like a pile of gayly-painted scrap lumber.
"Sir…" a voice intruded, and Lewrie turned to face it. Mr. Midshipman Darcy Gamble stood there, tears in his eyes. Nearby, Mr. Midshipman Grace knelt by a still form, just rolling it over face-up. " 'Tis Mister Larkin, sir," Gamble told him, and Lewrie looked down to see the rictus of agony on the poor lad's face, his final expression to the fact of his own hard death, so early in life. And the flickers of Midshipman Grace's cheap tin candle-lanthorn made the lad's wounds even more lurid. "Oh, damn," Lewrie softly muttered. "Poor, wee lad."
"Still has his pistol and dirk in his hands, sir," Grace added, snuffling as he looked up at his captain. "He went down fighting, sir."
"Honourable wounds to the front, aye," Gamble pointed out, striving for the stoicism the Navy demanded, but still on the ragged edge of open sorrow for a fallen mess-mate.
"We cannot let him just lie here, sir, perhaps…" Grace said.
"Time enough for Mister Larkin later, Mister Grace," Lewrie told him, after harumphing to clear his throat. "There's our ship, and our wounded, to see to, first. First, last, and always. Mister Gamble."
"Sir?"
"Pick one," Lewrie told him, extending the three sheathed swords to him, hilts first. "With Lieutenant Catterall fallen, you are now an Acting-Lieutenant, and Third Officer into Proteus. You, Mister Grace, are now our senior Midshipman… for now, our only Midshipman, though there may be a likely lad or two I may advance, later."
"I see, sir," Grace replied, sadly thoughtful.
"Up to you t'show 'em the ropes of table, duties, and cockpit," Lewrie further said, hoping new and demanding duties and responsibilities might take his mind off Larkin's loss.
"Hmm… a bit grand, these, sir," Gamble said, his mouth cocked into a shy moue, selecting the plainer sword, though one with a finer and more serviceable blade. Midshipman The Honourable D'arcy Gamble came from well-to-do parents, and could, when confirmed by Admiralty, easily afford better to wear on his hip, but for now, his choice gave Lewrie an even better estimation of him.
"Very well, Lieutenant Gamble. Seek out Lieutenant Langlie and tell him my decision," Lewrie ordered. "My respects to him, and he is to work you 'til you drop to make both ships fit to sail, again."
"Aye aye, sir," Acting-Lieutenant Gamble said, with sudden pride awakening in his eyes.
"I'll have Andrews see to Mister Larkin, Mister Grace," Lewrie added. "For now, we've need… what?" he asked, feeling a cold chill in his innards as Grace's face screwed up in fresh, shy grief.
"Sorry, sir," Grace all but wailed as he got to his feet. "We saw your man fall. Didn't wish t'be the one t'tell you, sir, but… I s'pose I must. He… was in the main top with the other marksmen and… was shot, and tumbled out, and hit the…" Grace had to pause, and gulp, "the edge of the gangway, sir, and…!"
"He's gone?" Lewrie croaked, suddenly much weaker, and wearier. "Andrews is gone?" All these years, my right-hand man, Cox'n, and…? he thought, squinting his eyes in pain; How many people must I get killed? Strangers, enemies… friends? For he was…
"They… passed him out a starboard gun-port, sir, with the… other dead," Mr. Grace managed to relate. "Sorry, sir. Sorry."
Gone. "Fallen" was the euphemism of the age. It was what was done with Navy casualties in battle. The dead were put over the side, at once, to clear the decks for those who still fought, a brutal necessity to maintain their morale. In many cases, the hopelessly mangled and sure to die were "put out of their misery" by a petty officer with a heavy mallet, then shoved, un-conscious and un-knowing, out the ports, too, as a "mercy" for an old shipmate whom the surgeons couldn't save. It was why the inner sides of the hull, by the guns, were traditionally painted red, as red as fresh-spilled or fresh-splattered blood… in the heat of action, the living might not notice.
Lewrie looked down, not at Larkin, but at a bare patch of deck, willing himself not to weep. Andrews… Matthew Andrews!… a long-time companion, was dead and gone. No matter the gulf between common sailors and officers, how aloof and apart a captain must appear to his hands, Andrews and Aspinall had been his touchstones with reality, a pair of close friends, really, and his loss felt like an abyss, a part of his own years in-company with him, had been cut away and lost. In a way, perhaps it was best that Andrews had been put over the side… best that he was physically gone, for Lewrie didn't think he'd be able to bear to look on many more familiar dead faces. There would surely be enough of them, already.
Blaming himself, too, scathing himself, for Andrews had been the one to go ashore and lead his dozen "Free Black volunteers" aboard the night in Portland Bight on Jamaica when he'd stolen them from one of the Beauman family's plantations… as a cock-snooking lark!
Had he not, woul
d Andrews still live? Without that act, Proteus might still be in the Caribbean, not here, in this hour, engaged with a French frigate of greater firepower. Groome and Bodney might not have run away, were there no circus to lure them, no Africa in which to die. Whitbread, the others, might not be buried at Cape Town.
Yet, had not Andrews run from his own master on Jamaica, first? Bun from the softer chains of a house slave, better fed than the field hands, garbed in wealth-flaunting livery, yet run in spite of all? As the others had run, put everything at risk for a whiff of freedom, even the Royal Navy's harsh version. Andrews, and they, had endured sailors' poverty, plain victuals, and unending, back-breaking work in all sorts of weather, living with the constant risk of death or disablement, the sure coming of rheumatism or arthritis, the sicknesses that arose when hundreds of men were pent together so closely in a foul and reeking wet gun-deck, for… what? To be free men, to live a wild and adventurous life as free deep sea rovers; paid for their suffering, and worthy of their hire! Freely entered into, and, in the Navy, ready to fight the enemy, the ocean itself, to live, and maybe die, free!
"Damme," Lewrie softly spat, raising his head, at last, stiffening his spine after a long, sad sigh. Steeling himself to play-act a role of captain, second only to God. He had two ships to save, perhaps hundreds of men, his own and the enemy's, to succour and tend to, prisoners to keep a wary eye on, and, sometime after the sun rose, another French frigate to be alert for, and possibly fight.
And, he was mortal-certain, the first of many at-sea burials, as early as tomorrow's Forenoon Watch, with more to follow as they sailed into the equatorial heat. There was a convoy to re-join and round back up, should anything have happened to Jamaica . Duty, that grim, demanding bitch, come to call with all her nagsome sisters, would never give a man a moment of his own! There would be a time to grieve Andrews and all his dead… once anchored in a safe harbour.
"Very well, sirs," Lewrie forced himself to rasp, clapping both hands together in the small of his back. "Let's be about it, hmm?"
Stern, now, a facade of grim stoicism back on his face, Lewrie made the shaky crossing back aboard Proteus, though his shuddery limbs threatened to betray him. There was no formal welcome from side-party or bosun's calls, just a bone-weary man clumping awkwardly to the oak planks of the larboard gangway of a shot-to-pieces ship.
"Sir," Sailing Master Winwood said, doffing his hat as he came forward from the quarterdeck, limping from a leg wound upon his right thigh, his breeches cut away to reveal a thick, padded bandage.
"Mister Winwood," Lewrie acknowledged. "Oh. I know." Mr. Winwood held in his hand a coin-silver bosun's call on its chain, Andrews's call, and mark of his post as Coxswain. Crushed… by the musket ball that slew him, or by his fall from high aloft?
"So many, sir," Mr. Winwood said in his usual mournful way. "I am told by Mister Hodson that we've nigh twenty fallen, and ten more in a bad way, with at least thirty others more-or-less lightly wounded."
"Admiralty will be so impressed," Lewrie sarcastically growled.
"Even so, it is a signal victory, sir," Mr. Winwood said in his gravest manner.
"Off to the Nor'east, Jamaica has come to grips with the other Frenchman, or so it would appear. The lights of both ships are close-aboard each other, and all gunfire has ceased, so one might assume that she has conquered her foe, as well, Captain. We have won. And, from what little I saw aboard our foe, before I sustained my own trifling wound," he proudly alluded to his leg, no matter how stoic he wished to appear, "they must have suffered over an hundred fallen, and a like number disabled. Aye, Captain Lewrie, Admiralty should be impressed. Perhaps a quarter, or a third, of the French squadron in the Indian and Southern Oceans eliminated at one blow, too, sir? Well!"
"Forgive me, Mister Winwood, but, at the moment…" Lewrie attempted to apologise.
"I understand completely, sir," Winwood replied with a knowing nod, no matter how much he didn't really understand. "Andrews was your Cox'n for a long time. God save me, I shall even miss Mister Catterall, impious as he was, but… Andrews gave his all. As they all did. Did their best, and we shall miss them all, some more personally, d'ye see."
Lord, don't give me a sermon, you… ! Lewrie silently fumed. "… up to us to do our best to honour their memories, and take comfort from the thought that they passed over doing what they freely agreed to endure," Mr. Winwood was prosing on. "In Andrews' case, and the other Black volunteers, perhaps it is also up to us to shew all of Britain that they could fight, and fall, as bravely as British tars, I do believe, sir. Prove to the world the truth of the tracts from the Evangelical and Abolitionist societies declare…"
"Aye, we could," Lewrie suddenly decided, and not just to stop Winwood's mournful droning, either. "They did, didn't they. Andrews, and all our Blacks who ran away to… this. You have a point, Mister Winwood. We could… we should… and, we shall!"
Then you wouldn't have died for bloody nothing, Matthew! Lewrie told himself, feeling a weight depart his shoulders, a half-turn wrench of his heart tell him that it wasn't expedience, had nothing to do with saving his precious neck from a hanging, but might become a real cause! A noble cause!
"Ah, there ye are, sir!" his cabin-servant, Aspinall, exclaimed in great relief to see him, at last, as he came forward from where the great-cabins would be, once the deal and oak partitions were erected. "Sorry t'say, sir, but yer cabins're a total wreck, again, but soon to be put t'rights. The kitties are safe, 'long with the mongooses, an' that damn' bushbaby. He's took up with Toulon an' Chalky, an' hardly don't cry no more, long as he can snuggle up with 'em. No coffee-" "Aspinall…" Lewrie interrupted.
"I know I'm babblin', sir, 'tis just hard t'know ol' Andrews is gone," Aspinall said, after a gulp, and a snuffle on his sleeve. "Him an' so many good lads. But, didn't we hammer th' French, though!"
"Aye, we did," Lewrie agreed, beginning to realise what they'd done, what a victory they'd accomplished, at last. And, beginning to feel that it had been worth it, no matter the price they'd paid. "Is that Irish rogue, Liam Desmond, aboard, do you know, Aspinall?"
"Aye, sir. On th' pumps, I think."
"Pass the word for him, then," Lewrie ordered. A minute later, Liam Desmond came cautiously up the ladderway to the quarterdeck; he'd been summoned before, usually to suffer for his antics. Lewrie noted that his long-time mate, Patrick Furfy, lurked within hearing distance at the foot of the steps.
"Aye, sor?" Desmond warily asked, hat in hand, looking fearful.
Lewrie held out the crushed bosun's call to him.
"Ah, I know, Cap'm," Desmond said with a sad sigh of his own at the sight of it, glittering ambery-silver in the glow of oil or candle lamps. "Andrews woz a foin feller, he woz, always fair an' kindly with us. Sorry we lost him, sor."
"You once said, during the Mutiny at the Nore, that you'd be my right-hand sword, if all others failed me," Lewrie gravely said. "I've lost my right-hand man, Desmond. Are ye still willing?"
"Be yer Cox'n, sor?" Desmond gaped in astonishment. "Sure, and I meant it, Cap'm! Faith, but ye do me honour, and aye, I'll be!"
"We'll get a better, when next in port, but…" Lewrie said as Desmond took the call from him and looped it round his neck on its silver chain. He took a moment to look down at it, battered though it was, sitting on the middle of his chest, and puffed up his satisfaction.
"Have to stay sober and ready at all hours, mind," Lewrie said, and could hear Furfy groan in pity on the main deck, even starting to snigger over his friend's new, more demanding, predicament. "And, we could do with Furfy in my boat crew, too, hmm? A strong oarsman. And, we wouldn't let him go adrift without your… influence."
"A right-good idea, that, sor," Desmond chuckled, looking over his shoulder and calling out, "Hear that, Pat?"
"Another favour, Desmond," Lewrie said. "Get your lap-pipes, a fifer, too, perhaps, and play something for us, now. For Andrews and those who won't get a proper burial sewn up in canvas, under the flag."
>
"Have ye a tune in mind, Cap'm?" Desmond asked.
"Play 'Johnnie Faa,'" Lewrie told him. It was sad, slow, Celtic, and poignant, sad enough for even the French survivors to feel what it spoke.
Sad enough a tune to excuse even a Post-Captain's quiet tears?
EPILOGUE
"Quid stutdiosa cohors operum struit? Hoc quoque curo.
Quis sibi res gestus Augusti scribere sumit?
Bella quis et paces longum diffundit in aevum?"
"What works is the learned staff composing?
This too I want to know. Who takes upon him to
record the exploits of Augustus? Who adown distant
ages makes known his deeds in war and peace?"
Horace, Epistles I, in, 6-8
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
There was no need for a fire in the magnificently, and ornately, carved fireplace in the Board Room of Admiralty in London, for it was a fine summer day, and the tall windows had been thrown open to take the stuffiness and enclosed warmth from the room. The equally-showy chronometer on one gleaming panelled wall slowly ticked, and now and then a shift of wind off the Thames forced the large repeater of the wind vane on the roof to clack about to display whether the weather stood fair or foul for British warships and merchantmen to depart, or whether Nature might favour a sally by the French, or a combination of French, Dutch Batavian, and Spanish navies together.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, John, Earl Spencer, sat at the head of a highly-polished table. To his right sat the Controller of the Navy, Adm. Sir Andrew Snape Hammond. Down at the other end of the table, not so far away as to be out of ear-shot, for the Board Room was not so grand in scale as most imagined, Sir Evan Nepean, the First Secretary to Admiralty, sat and shuffled his notes and records brought by a junior clerk, a pen poised to record decisions.
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