“Ever’body chipper up forrard?” Gwynn asked.
“Aye, Mister Gwynn. Sleepy but trying.”
“Here, what’s got the cap’n onta ya?”
Not you, too, Alan thought. “I do not know what you mean, sir,” he replied evenly.
“He come over an’ asked me what ya was doin’ runnin’ the guns as ya were today, like ta give ma a cobbin’ about it. I told him ya was as good as any gunner’s mate but he didn’t wanta hear it,” Gwynn related.
“The captain has his … moods,” Alan said uneasily.
“Moods, shit!” Gwynn stuffed a quid of tobacco into his cheek and tore off a large bite. “Fickle as me old lady, ’cept fer Mr. Forrester an’ Railsford. Takes a great hankerin’ fer somebody an’ then turns on ’em an’ nobody knows why. Been in Desperate near two an’ a half years an’ it’s been like that ever since we commissioned.”
“Let’s just say he doesn’t like my choice of fathers,” Lewrie said after Gwynn’s indiscretion. “And it seems I’m too big a sinner to wear a Navy uniform.”
“Aye, that’s one reason we don’t have a chaplain aboard.” Gwynn laughed softly. “With him aft, we don’t need one.” Lewrie gave a grunt that might have been a mirthless laugh, or a sign of agreement, and Gwynn walked off to find the spit-kid by the binnacle.
Six bells chimed softly from the belfry up forward, and Alan checked his watch against it—11:00 P.M. and only an hour to go before he could go below and sleep four uninterrupted hours until the morning routine of a man-of-war claimed him once again.
“Sail ho!” one of the forward lookouts called. Lewrie shook himself into action, trotting forward to join him.
“Where away?”
“Two points off the larboard bow, Mister Lewrie,” the lookout said quietly, almost afraid to raise his voice. “He’s on the opposite tack an’ comin’ north. He’ll run right into the convoy!”
Lewrie hefted the heavy night glass, which showed images upside down and backward. He found their stranger, what seemed to be a full-rigged ship ghosting along under reefed tops’ls, inner jibs and spanker.
“Run aft and wake the captain,” Lewrie said. “Tell Mr. Gwynn we’ve a full-rigged ship coming right for us. Quick, man!”
Lewrie studied the stranger for a while longer, then shouted for the bosun’s mate of the watch, Toliver. “All hands on deck, Mister Toliver, no pipes or we’ll lose the chase.”
“No pipes,” the runty little man repeated before running off to shout down the midships hatchway to the off-duty watch. It was noisy enough as the hands rolled out of their hammocks and thudded to the deck to thunder up topside on bare feet.
Lewrie hurried back to the wheel and stood by Gwynn, who was using the other night glass to search for the strange ship.
“Have I your permission to close her, sir?” Lewrie asked him.
“Yes, let’s see what he’s doin’ runnin’ dark out here.”
“Duty watch to the braces! Quartermaster, put your helm down and lay her two points closer to the wind!” Alan shouted.
“What’s this about a strange sail, Mister Gwynn?” Treghues demanded, emerging on the quarterdeck.
“Here, sir, take a squint. Ship-rigged an’ runnin’ without a light, sir. Thus, quartermaster! ‘Vast heavin’! Belay every inch o’ that, Mister Toliver!”
“Harden up on the heads’l sheets,” Lewrie called to the foc’s’le captain. “Now belay!”
“Mister Gwynn, I have the deck,” Treghues said, still dressed in a nightshirt. “Lewrie, stop that caterwauling like you know what you’re doing. Judkin, fetch me up my breeches and sword.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Shall we clear for action, sir?” Gwynn asked as Railsford and Peck joined them.
“Aye, load and run out the larboard battery,” Treghues told him.
“I’ll need Mister Lewrie forrard, sir…” Gwynn said. “Robinson’s lost his leg, ya remember, sir.”
“Oh, very well,” Treghues sighed, after a long pause.
“Mister Lewrie, do take charge o’ the forecastle an’ the carronades, if ya please.” Gwynn was smiling in the darkness.
“Aye, Mister Gwynn.”
“All hands to Quarters!” Treghues shouted.
It was hard to see how the men could even see what they were doing as they unlashed the guns and rolled them back to the centerline, overhauled the side tackles and freed the train tackles, brought gun tools up from below and began to light fuses in the slow-match tubs.
“Damn fool,” Lewrie said, hearing Treghues’ musicians get going at “Heart of Oak.”
“Afternoon wadd’n enough fer ya, Mister Lewrie?” the larboard carronade captain joshed with him as they removed the tompion of their gun, and freed the lashings of the swivel platform.
“Wanted to see what they looked like going off in the dark,” Alan shot back. “Here, can we manhandle the other gun over here?”
“Take some doin’, Mister Lewrie, but I kin lash the breech ropes ta the cathead, iffen ya want it.”
“Load yer guns,” Gwynn called from aft on the main gun deck.
A squad of Marines under their sergeant came trooping forward along the gangway to take station from the forecastle aft.
The strange ship came awake. The wind brought them the faint sound of bosun’s pipes playing unfamiliar calls, and the sound of men running to stations. The wind also brought a brassy aroma mixed with the smell of a barnyard.
“Lord, what a stink,” Lewrie said. “What’s he carrying?”
“Moight be a slaver, sor,” the starboard gun captain said.
“He’s putting about,” Lewrie broke in, almost able to see a faint shadow that was darker than the night. “Going on the wind on the starboard tack.”
“Stations for stays!” Railsford ordered. “Stand by to come about.”
“Helm alee!”
“Rise tacks an’ sheets!” Toliver yelled. “Clew garnets!”
“Mains’l haul!”
Desperate came up to the eye of the wind, sails shivering and yards creaking as the hands leaned almost parallel to the deck to fetch her around without missing stays. The foc’s’le captain shifted his heads’l sheets to larboard, and the backed fore yards provided enough wind resistance to force her bows off the wind as the other yards drove her forward. She tacked smoothly, losing little speed in the dark, and hardened up on the same tack as the other ship, laid within six points of the winds and beginning to beat hard to weather.
“Waisters, harden up the tops’l braces. Now belay!” Railsford called, wanting to put a slight spiral set to the yards, the tops’ls more acutely angled to the wind than the courses for the most efficiency.
The stranger was now off their starboard bows, perhaps a mile off. Lewrie could barely make out ghostly specks of light like tiny candles along her leeward side.
“Slow-match,” Alan said. “They’ll make a fight of it.”
“Hope they ain’t like that last batch,” someone said.
“Gun captain, prepare the starboard carronade. Shift the larboard gun up abaft the roundhouse. Breech rope to the hawse buckler and the cathead,” Alan ordered, wanting to put both his “Smashers” to work.
He looked aft now to see an amber light burning on the taffrail, a fusee that smoked and flared like a holiday rocket, the night signal for danger. It would also warn the other prizes in convoy of where they were so as to avoid collision in the dark. Hurriedly, the rest of the ships began to light their taffrail lanterns.
“That’s Roebuck or Vixen out there, sir,” a hand shouted, waving a hand at a distant light to windward. “Bet he’ll tack agin.”
“Belay shifting that carronade.”
Within moments the dark shape of their quarry shortened and put her masts in line, tacking across the wind once more, but Desperate performed her own tack at the same time. And had the chase missed stays on that maneuver? They suddenly seemed much closer to her.
“Give me a point free,” Tre
ghues ordered. “Stand by the larboard battery.” Lewrie’s men secured the starboard gun and shifted once more, lashing the larboard carronade back into position.
“Can you reach him yet?” Lewrie asked.
“’Bout another cable, sir,” the gunner said, squinting at their spectral foe.
“Number one larboard gun … fire!” Gwynn called, and the six-pounder closest to them below the larboard gangway fired. It was a spectacular sight at night to witness the tongue of flame that stabbed out through a nimbus of gunsmoke, and the sound seemed much louder than during the daytime. Lewrie was almost blinded by the flash. When he looked for their target it had disappeared for him, though the experienced gunners still peered at it intently.
The enemy ship returned fire, a single gun from her stern-chaser, and the ball moaned into the night without hitting anything. By then Desperate was rapidly closing on the other vessel. The main guns began to bark regularly, though it was hard to tell if they were achieving any better results on their target than the enemy had.
“I kin hit him now, sir, I think,” the gun captain said.
“Blaze away!”
“Stand clear.”
The carronade lurched inboard on its slide. Seconds later the sure sign of a solid hit on the hull flashed into life, and the night was full of the thin sound of screaming.
“Jaysus,” a hand said.
“Mules, sir. Or horses. No wonder he stinks.”
“God help the poor beasts,” Lewrie said, and the men around him echoed his sentiments. For the enemy, they would have no mercy, yet could weep real tears over their birds and dogs and manger animals.
Desperate was now within a cable, and one could discern the foe clearly in the starlight well enough to aim true. They put another ball from the carronade onto the poop of the enemy, and this time the screams were men, not dumb beasts. There was a hail of musket and swivel fire from the quarterdeck, and the ship’s guns, sounding like nine-pounders, began to fire irregularly, but their aim was incredibly poor and did little more than raise great splashes close aboard.
Close enough to see people … Lewrie could make out a mass of men in white uniforms on the quarterdeck, almost a full company of troops that were firing by volley with their muskets. A ball from the carronade took a third of them down like a reaper. Desperate’s guns were speaking as regular as a tolling bell from bow to stern, about ten seconds apart, each shot painting the water between the two dueling ships blood red and amber and lighting up their sides. The carronade fired again, providing enough of a light as the ball exploded to see the men with muskets writhing in agony as another third were scythed down and the remainder were faltering in their musket drill, falling back from the rails as Desperate’s own Marines began to volley into them.
Once more that day, musket balls began to buzz about Lewrie’s ears, and strike the decks and rails with solid thuds. There were more men across the way in white uniforms, now on the gangways and forecastle, loading and firing their muskets regular as clockwork. Their own Marines were taking a toll of those people with musket and swivels.
“That bunch, gun captain,” Lewrie ordered.
The carronade spoke once more, and the range was so close that the bursting of the shot was almost instantaneous, flicking whining bits of shrapnel around their own ears, but the well-drilled platoon of men on the gangways disappeared in the flash and the bang.
There was a narrowing tide-race of channel between the two ships, and Desperate’s guns were spitting blazing wads at the enemy ship in addition to the solid shot, firing point-blank across the foamed breadth of water as their bow waves merged.
“Reload larboard gun … quickly! There’s some men on her forecastle. Take ’em down,” Lewrie said.
“Grapnels! Prepare to board!” Railsford called out from aft.
There was little return fire from the enemy ship now, her gun ports silent and not a muzzle showing, though the resistance from her musketeers was still hot. There was a dense knot of them on the forecastle, first rank kneeling and second and third ranks alternated, lowering their muskets for a volley.
“Fire as you bear!” Lewrie ordered, his testicles shrinking up inside him at the sight of glittering bayonets and musket bores.
The carronade belched fire and smoke, and when the residue blew back over them downwind there was nothing left of the forecastle but a pile of bodies in white uniforms painted red with gore.
“Bow chaser, sir,” a gunner warned.
There was a light cannon on the forecastle, and the sailors in slop clothing were running to man it while more men in uniform ran forward with them to where the two ships would bump together.
Lewrie tried to attract the Marine sergeant’s attention to them, but he was busy directing musket volleys farther aft. Alan saw the other crew removing the tompion of the bow chaser.
“Load, Goddamnit! Kill those people!”
A musket barked, and the larboard carronade rammer screamed and fell to the deck, the rest of the crew shrinking away.
“Load, damn you, load.” Lewrie plucked a heavy Sea Pattern pistol from a weapons tub, checked to see it was primed and drew back the heavy cocking lever.
There was a volley of musket fire that spanged off the carronade, driving men into hiding behind the bulwarks and taking down two more men. Lewrie turned to face the enemy. He could see a man passing up a powder charge, leveled his pistol and took aim. He fired, and the ball hit the barrel of the bow chaser, spanging off with a flash of sparks, and took a side-tackle man in the stomach. The rammer man was now tamping down his charge.
Lewrie took up another pistol and aimed for the man who cradled a bag of musket shot. Not only did he miss him, he punched a scarlet bloom dead in the chest of a man with a handspike on the other side of the gun.
“Shitten goddamn pistols!” He threw the thing across the gap, which by then could not have been fifty feet. If that bow chaser went off, they were all dead.
He was amazed to see the heavy, long-barreled (and wildly inaccurate) Sea Pattern pistol knock the teeth out of the gun captain with the slow-match ignition fuse and drop him out of sight.
“Stand clear!” the carronade gun captain finally barked out. The men on the opposing forecastle began to shrink away.
“About bloody time,” Lewrie said in profound relief as his life was spared once more, but his relief was lost in the explosion of the powder charge and the bursting of the shot.
As the two forecastles nudged together, and grapnels flew across to lash the two ships together, it was nearly as silent as the grave.
“Boarders!” Railsford ordered by Lewrie’s side, waving his bright sword. “Away, boarders!”
Lewrie scrabbled for a cutlass from the weapons tub and then was borne forward like a pinnace surged onto a beach by a powerful burst of surf as the men who had gathered forward went over to the enemy ship in a howling mob.
He had no choice but to leap across the narrow gap—either that or fall and be ground to sausage meat between the hulls—where he was immediately tripped by a bight of shredded heads’l sheets and fell to the deck, to be almost trampled by his own people, as they screamed and whooped and fell on the enemy.
Haven’t I done enough, dammit? he thought to himself, feeling the pain in his knees and shins. There was a strong arm lifting him up, a flash of smile in a dark face from one of the West Indian hands, and then he was stuck into it whether he cared to participate or not.
He headed aft for the larboard forecastle ladder and began to descend, but a pike head came jabbing out of nowhere, bringing a scream to his lips. He thrust out in the general direction of the pike’s wielder, and his sword met meaty resistance.
The pike was withdrawing for a second thrust, and he grabbed the shaft behind the wickedly gleaming point and was pulled into the enemy, his cutlass sinking deeper into whoever it was. Suddenly there was a shrill yell almost in his ear, a hot and garlicky breath on his face, and he slammed into the man.
T
here was enough light to see that he had his cutlass sunk hilt-deep into an enemy sailor, and it could not be withdrawn. Lewrie let go the pike shaft and twisted and pulled, bringing another shriek of agony. The sword came free, as did the man’s entrails, slithering out like some image from a nightmare.
The entire waist of the enemy ship was a heaving mass of men who were clashing blades like a tribe of Welsh tinkers. Steel flickered and struck, knives flashed, bayonets and pikes dipped and thrust and came away slimed with blood. Underfoot there were already bodies enough, sailors and soldiers ripped to pieces by carronade shot, the decks gleaming wet and sticky. Pistols spat, muskets barked, giving little flashes of light on the scene.
Alan left the waist, going back to the silent forecastle, and made his way aft along the larboard gangway, picking his way across tangled rope piles and torn nettings and bodies. There was hardly any fighting there. He would have liked to have assisted but wasn’t sure who was friendly and who was an enemy. He advanced slowly, his cutlass ready.
“Salaud!” someone snarled, leaping for him. Alan clashed blades with him, using both hands to go into the murderous cutlass drill, and also trying to remember his poor French … had the man just called him a “dirty beast”? … The man stumbled backward from a hard blow, and Alan brought the blade flashing down once more, catching him on the side of the neck, slicing down through the collarbone. This time the cutlass could not be dislodged, so he bent down and took the man’s rapier and a pistol from his waistband, pulled the gun back to half-cock and went on aft.
By the main chains he got into another melee. Three men in slop clothing were falling back from about half a dozen men in white infantry uniforms, mostly armed with short hangers.
“At ’em, Desperates,” Lewrie yelled, partly to let them know that he was not a foe to be chopped into chutney sauce, and partly to encourage them. He found himself at the head of the pack, slashing away with abandon. One of his men struck forward with a cutlass and ripped the groin out of a foeman, which brought such a shriek that the others turned to run. Alan chopped a second man down across the spine as he faced away but could not escape past his friends.
The King's Coat Page 37
