A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “And for you, Able Seaman Kitch?” Lewrie asked. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  “I’ve never cared much for cruel, motherless bastards abusing younger lads, Cap’m sir,” Kitch declared, “I was coming back from the beakhead rails, sir, saw what Beckford and Stubble were doing from the foc’s’le, and went down to the waist to make them stop. Dasher was beginning to weep, pleading most dreadful in fear of what they would do to hurt or kill his wee pet. I never much cared for what people do by way of evil to wee beasts, either, sir, so I tried to get the rabbit away from them and for them to leave off. One thing led to the next, sir, and aye, it turned into a fight. The only way to keep some evil, godless people from doing bad, Cap’m sir. And aye, harsh words and curses got said on both sides, I admit.”

  “And you, Ordinary Seaman Beckford, and Landsman Stubble. What do you have to say for yourselves?” Lewrie demanded.

  With much shuffling of their feet, shrugs of their shoulders in dumb show, and gazes directed mostly at the toes of their shoes, they wheedled out a tale that it had all been done in idle fun, that they had meant no harm, that the rabbit wasn’t really hurt, and that Dasher couldn’t take a joke. If they pulled at their forelocks and called Lewrie “Yer honour, sir” as they would to their magistrates back home, they could not have appeared more contrite, or innocent.

  “Th’ lad’s too much of a babby, Cap’m sir,” the burly and dim-witted-looking Stubble concluded, with an attempt at a sly smile, “an’ Kitch, ’e cursed us an’ hit us f’r no good reason. We ’umbly beg your pardon, Cap’m sir, an’ we won’t be doin’ such, again.”

  “Idle fun, was it?” Lewrie barked. “Malicious and cruel evil is what I call it. If I could prove that you planned to bully a young lad just ’cause you could, for sport, I’d have your backs laid open!

  “I will not tolerate anyone quarrelling, or fighting, on my ship, a King’s Ship, nor will I tolerate bullying or taking unfair advantage of anyone aboard Vigilance,” Lewrie went on, pausing to pencil entries in the punishment book, then looked them in the eyes once more. “Not only are you guilty of violating the Twenty-Third Article of War, you forgot that Dasher was tending my part of the manger, and the rabbit you tossed about is my rabbit.

  “The punishment is one-dozen lashes for each of you, to be administered at Six Bells of the Forenoon tomorrow,” Lewrie decreed, “and following that, ten days’ bread and water, ten days with no rum issue, and ten days of no tobacco, whether you’re a member of a successful gun crew or not. Mister Stabler, see the miscreants to the orlop!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” the Bosun replied with a note of delight in his voice, and there was a general stir and murmur from the watching crew, though it did not sound dis-approving, making Lewrie think that Stubble and Beckford were not the most popular tars belowdecks, or in their eight-man mess.

  “Silence on deck!” Lieutenant Farley snapped to still them.

  “Able Seaman Kitch,” Lewrie said, turning to the stroke oar of his personal boat crew, and Kitch raised his chin to look him straight in the eyes. “What you did to stop their cruel bullying in any other situation would be commendable. Were you ashore and not in the Navy, I expect you’d be due a round of drinks from your mates, but … you did quarrel, responded with speech that further provoked the situation, and you did exchange blows in a fight, and the Articles of War leave me with little room. Good order must be maintained.

  “Six lashes,” Lewrie ordered, and Kitch nodded silent agreement, which surprised him, “at Six Bells of tomorrow’s Forenoon, but … you will be un-shackled and allowed to resume your duties ’til then.”

  That prompted many nods of agreement from the ship’s people, but in silence this time. Some even broke out relieved grins.

  “Landsman Dasher,” Lewrie said, and the lad looked up in terror, whey-faced. “The evidence given shows that you did nothing to start it, and that you … and my rabbit … were the victims. You both were innocent, though … you did admit to delivering some kicks and blows to aid Seaman Kitch once the fight became general, so … you will be bent over a gun and given a half-dozen strokes on your bottom with the Bosun’s starter. Will you wish to wait ’til Six Bells tomorrow, or would you prefer to receive your punishment now?”

  “Ehm, ah … I’ll take it now, Cap’m sir,” Dasher said, betwixt relief that he was too young to be lashed to a hatch grating and flogged, dread that “kissing the gunner’s daughter” would hurt, and trying to pluck up his courage and accept his punishment as gamely as Kitch had.

  Bosun’s Mate Loftis took Dasher by the arm and led him to the nearest 18-pounder, tipping the lad a sly wink that Lewrie took as a sign that those half-dozen strokes from a stiffened rope starter would not be as hurtful as the ones he’d received when he was a Midshipman.

  “And Dasher,” Lewrie called out before he was bent over the gun, “I do believe that in future you might keep your bunny in a safer place, like my great-cabins. Caged, of course. You’ll be responsible for its care. And, if it chews the legs off my furniture, or leaves pellets on the deck, there might be another half-dozen in your future.”

  Gawd, though, what’ll Chalky make o’ that? Lewrie wondered.

  Whack … whack … whack! came the first slow-timed strokes.

  No, Loftis ain’t puttin’ half himself in ’em, Lewrie told himself, glad that he wasn’t; How’d my first Captain in old Ariadne say it? “I didn’t say dust him, Bosun! Make Midshipman Lewrie sting!”

  The last stroke was delivered, and Lewrie nodded to Lieutenant Farley, who shouted for the hands to be dismissed from watching punishment, and Lewrie went aft into his cabins, stowed away the rarely used punishment book in his desk, and sat down to pretend to read a novel. After a while, Dasher came in, still wincing a little even if Loftis had been lenient, carrying the plain grey rabbit in a wood-slat cage.

  “Over by the starboard quarter-gallery, for now,” Lewrie said.

  “Aye, sir,” Dasher replied. “An’ she won’t be no trouble.”

  “Tell that to my cat,” Lewrie japed, for as soon as the cage was on the deck, Chalky came prowling, whiskers stiffly forward, his tail cautiously lashing, in a stalk. Some sniffs, a tentative paw at the slats or two, and a curious Mrr? and he leaped atop the cage to try and paw down from above, claws out.

  “Now where’ll we be gettin’ fresh greens for it?” Turnbow asked.

  “Oh, Harriet gets by just fine on ship’s bisquit,” Dasher said, kneeling by his doe-rabbit’s cage, “the staler the better. Keeps her teeth from gettin’ overgrown!”

  I always wanted to go to sea with a menagerie, Lewrie thought; Wait’ll I write Jessica about this!

  *   *   *

  “Ya did good, Kitch,” Lewrie’s Cox’n, Liam Desmond, told him as off-watch sailors gathered round to commiserate.

  “Still gonna hurt, though,” another sailor in Kitch’s mess said.

  “Ain’t the first time I’ve been licked by the ‘cat’,” Kitch told them with a mirthless grin. “Ah, well. Only six? Won’t be all that bad. And I still get full rations, rum, and tobacco.”

  “Cap’m shouldna given ye any at all,” another sailor groused. “’Em two bashtits ’ad it comin’, long afore ye lit into ’em. Like ’e said, ye should be ’avin’ a round o’ drinks.”

  “Didn’t have no choice,” Kitch objected. “I fought, I called ’em bullies and cowards, and I earned my punishment.”

  “The worst went where it was most deservin’,” Desmond added.

  “I still say…,” the upset sailor tried to continue.

  “Oh, hesh yourself,” Kitch shot back. “Liam’s right. The true villains are payin’ for what they did, and Cap’m Lewrie’ll have his eye on them from now on, and I’ll lay ya a guinea to a pinch of pig shit it won’t be the last time they’re seized up and flogged. He let that lad off, didn’t he? That was more than fair.”

  “‘What you two forgot is,’” Desmond said, loosely quoting the Captain, “‘
you feckin’ idiots were feckin’ with my rabbit,’ hee hee!”

  “I’ll tell you true, lads,” Kitch sternly announced. “And it’s not because I’m in his boat crew trying to crawl up his bung hole … this ship’s got herself a good Captain for a change, a firm but fair man.”

  “And when we finally get into a battle,” Desmond assured them, “we’ll have a blood-and-thunder fighting Captain!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Five fathom!” a leadsman in the foremast chains shouted. “Five fathom o’ water!”

  “Just as those smugglers said, sir,” the Sailing Master, Wickersham, said with a sniff of satisfaction. “And I make it only half of a mile to the fort.”

  “Mister Farley, you may open, as the guns bear,” Lewrie ordered.

  “As you bear!” the First Officer yelled, “Fire!”

  And the bucolic view of a peaceful seaside fishing port vanished as a rising cloud of spent gunpowder smoke blotted it out for a while, before slowly rolling shoreward on a light breeze.

  Just like their sketches, and their maps! Lewrie exulted to himself. There was the town to the right on a higher spur of a headland, there was the sandy beach to the left, the slight slope above it that led to a road, and rows of houses, barns, and storefronts, just as described, with the little harbour notched deep between, a harbour full of boats, from wee rowing boats to larger sail-rigged fishing boats to a gaggle of coastal trading vessels, some of them rigged in ancient Arabic lateen style, tied up along the low stone quays as if unloading cargo into the stone warehouses that took up a goodly stretch of the town along the water.

  “Troops are going in now, sir!” Lieutenant Farley pointed out as soon as the gunsmoke cleared enough for him to see.

  Sure enough, the barges filled with soldiers were well clear of the quickly-anchored transport ships and rowing quickly towards the beach, in a fairly good line-abreast formation, a far cry from their initial practice landings. Within five minutes, those eighteen barges would be grounding their bows on the sand and shingle, and the soldiers of the 94th would go leaping ashore.

  “Return fire, sir!” Lieutenant Farley said.

  The ancient castle-like fort that brooded over Tropea did not, as Caesar had said, have any openings for guns, having been built long before artillery came into general use. There were some wee windows and arrow slits, and the only places to site cannon were atop the old round tower, and along the seaward ramparts of a long, barracks-like adjoining building.

  Lewrie raised his telescope to watch tiny ant figures in French blue uniforms and shakoes scurrying round some artillery pieces, and a blossom of smoke here and there as a gun was fired. Shot whistled and moaned overhead, a couple of balls skip-splashed between Vigilance and the shore, and the ship drummed to at least one hit.

  “Aim closer, aim closer, you buggers!” some gunner was crying.

  “Not too many of them, it appears,” Lewrie said to the quarterdeck with his glass still pressed to one eye. “Twelve pounders? They should have twenty-fours, or thirty-twos to defend proper.”

  “Might not have had guns at all, sir, ’til the French came,” the Sailing Master commented. “Oh, well shot, I say!”

  Vigilance’s sketchy efforts at close aiming were beginning to pay off, for, still firing individually instead of broadside, her guns were hammering the notched stone ramparts at the top of the tower, and stone blocks, raised and mortared into place perhaps six hundred years before, were coming loose, falling down in cascades with each roundshot’s impact, leaving the few cannon atop the tower nakedly exposed, and the fort’s guns without ring-bolts for run-out or train tackle. One cannon got dragged off the tower roof as the stones in front of it gave way!

  “That was a field piece, by God!” Wickersham laughed. “A high-wheeled twelve-pounder, by God!”

  “And some very surprised Piedmontese gunners,” Lewrie agreed.

  He swung his telescope over to see how the soldiers were doing, wishing yet again for some way that he could devise that could provide the element of surprise. The small squadron had sailed from Sicily in the wee hours, after taking apart the shore camp and bringing all that and the troops aboard the transports the afternoon before. They had come to anchor off Tropea round Ten in the morning, and no matter how fast they had gotten the soldiers into the boats, the enemy in the fort and the town had had bags of time to prepare to receive them. Lewrie could only see the road above the beach and the low buildings behind it, the lower part of town and the old fort, and what lurked beyond, up in the maze of narrow lanes leading up to a rather fine church and a hint of a public square or two, a palazzo or two, was completely unknown.

  Lewrie glanced up at the ship’s fighting tops and cross-trees, where he had posted three Midshipmen with telescopes. Perhaps, they could see further, or deeper into the town. He opened his mouth to shout a demand of what they saw, but stopped after taking a deep breath. He’d given strict orders for them to sing out if they saw troop movement, or a threat to Colonel Tarrant’s soldiers, stressing that the 94th’s safety was in their hands. He had to trust that those Mids would take their duties seriously.

  Over to the left, Lewrie caught a flicker from the corner of his eyes; the troops of the 94th were all on top of the road, now, and had stripped the leather covers off their furled colours, freeing the King’s Colours and the dark green Regimental Colours to flutter in the soft morning wind. He could see that Colonel Tarrant was cautiously deploying skirmishers to guard the road approaches from the next town up the peninsula, Vibo Valentia, and others were set to breaking in doors of every building alongside the road before marching into Tropea’s warren of streets and dockside district.

  “Load grape atop roundshot!” Lieutenant Rutland’s deep voice could be heard shouting to the gun crews of the upper gun-deck. “Let’s make it hot for their damned gunners!”

  “Oh, crash-bang and down it goes, hah!” Mr. Wickersham roared in joy to see a substantial part of the old tower crumble from continual heavy blows from the ship’s lower-deck 24-pounders, The few remaining cannon crammed into its top, and the gunners manning them, fell in a jumble of stone blocks. Some of it collapsed onto the skree slope and steep cliffs at the fort’s base, and some crashed down onto the roof of the long barracks-like building, smashing even more guns into ruin, and silence. Vigilance’s sailors gave a great cheer at the sight.

  “Shift fire to the left, to the long building!” Lieutenant Farley was shouting through a brass speaking trumpet. “D’ye hear, there? Shift to the remaining guns!”

  “Wouldn’t work on a properly built stone fortress, you know,” the Sailing Master was idly informing the two Midshipmen who stood waiting to run messages from the quarterdeck. “A modern fortress is stronger than that old ruin. But, we could do one of those harm, young sirs. Oh, my, yes! Our eighteens and twenty-fours from just one side of the ship is the equivalent of an entire army’s siege train.”

  “How many guns remain ashore, Mister Farley?” Lewrie asked the First Lieutenant.

  “No more than two, or three perhaps, sir,” Farley replied.

  “And, they’re busy dealing with us,” Lewrie said, making up his mind. “Time to send our boats in and raise Hell in the harbour and the quays. Mister Whitehead? Mister Greenleaf? Off you go!”

  “Marines, stand to!” Captain Whitehead roared. “Man the boats!”

  Seventy Marines, barge crews, and a party of armed sailors under the Third Officer swarmed over the bulwarks, onto the boarding nets, and clambered down into the boats arrayed along the ship’s larboard, dis-engaged side. Their departure took longer than usual since the starboard side could not be used, but in short order, all four barges and the gig were stroking over the relatively calm offshore waters close to shore, and into the much calmer waters in the harbour.

  Vigilance’s upper gun deck 18-pounders and the lower gun deck 24-pounders were still banging away at the longer building, turning its upper ramparts jagged where blocks had been shot away
, and some of the roof platform stone had fallen inwards, exposing the floor below. The upper parts of the building seemed to shine with flinty sparks where Lieutenant Rutland’s grapeshot struck and whined away in ricochet. One minute, then two minutes passed, and there was no more return fire from the fort. It, and its guns and gunners, had been shot to silence.

  “Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, stepping close to be heard over the din of the ship’s guns. “Lay a spring on the cable, and direct our fire at the vessels in harbour, and the Quays, to cover our boats as they approach them.”

  “Over their heads, sir,” Farley said, trying not to make it a question, for it would be a risky proposition.

  “Slow, aimed fire, sir,” Lewrie repeated. “Over their heads.”

  “Aye aye, sir! Bosun Gore! Spring on the cable!” Farley called.

  Before that could be obeyed, though, all three Midshipmen in the tops and cross-trees shouted together in a babble of excitement. “Deck, there! Enemy troops ashore! Moving from behind the fort for the town centre, and the quays!”

  “Numbers!” Lewrie shouted aloft even as he stepped on the slide carriage of a starboard carronade, the stubby barrel, then to the bulwarks so he could take hold of the mizen stays to get a higher, closer look.

  “Hundreds, sir!” was one guess, “Two hundred!” was a second.

  Settling in with one arm laced round a stay, Lewrie raised his telescope to make a guess of his own. He beheld wee ants crawling into view, black shakoes with flashing brass face plates, blue tunics with white crossbelts, dingy white waist-coats and trousers, bunched into three distinct groups of soldiers marching at the double-quick, muskets erect and close to their shoulders.