“Aye, Mister Josephs?”
“Pp . . . private signal aloft, sir, he bb . . . bade me tell you.” “Thankee, Mister Josephs,” Lewrie replied, looking down at him intently, his father’s heart softening. Sewallis was just as twitchy, just as miserable-looking, half the time. “Something to write home about, lad. To see a grand battle such as this’un. Perhaps the only one you’ll ever see, your entire career! Now, d’ye understand why we start off harsh? So you end up the sort o’ man’ll stand such.”
“I think so, sir,” Josephs said with a gulp.
“Good lad,” Lewrie said, rewarding him with a smile.
It was going to be Buchanon’s “close shave,” around the stern of that Frog 74, after all. Perhaps by no more than a quarter-mile. He could ease her off the wind a bit and parallel her, but the frigate on his starboard quarter was still pursuing, bulldog game.
“Broadside guns’ll no longer bear, sir!” Bittfield shouted up from the waist. The nine-pounders were sharply angled astern in the ports. Any more, and they’d snap their breeching ropes, sure.
“Cease fire, Mister Bittfield! Mister Rahl? Supervise carronades on the quarterdeck. They have a greater arc of fire.”
“Ja, zir!” Their emigrant Prussian barked, almost clicking his heels in glee to have some noisy toys to play with a bit longer.
And that frigate, Lewrie exulted to himself! She’ll have to fall in almost astern of me, if she wishes to continue. She stays that high up on our quarter, we’ll brush her off against the side of that last liner!
The frigate reopened fire, with her lighter forecastle chase guns. Five- or six-pound ball went sizzling across the quarterdeck.
“A little better shooting, at last,” Knolles commented. “They’re not the skillful shots their fathers were,” Lewrie agreed, with some relief.
“Bless me, sir,” Knolles scoffed. “They’re not the men they were two years ago!”
The starboard quarterdeck carronades belched fire, swathing them all in powder smoke for a period, before it was wafted away to the nor’east by the light winds, before Jester sailed past her own pall on the bruised air.
“ Hit, I t’ink, herr kapitan! Ja! ” Rahl delighted, watching heavy ball strike and raise a gout of splinters, dust, and oakum.
On they stood, continuing their duel. The last French warship in the battle line was left astern, off Jester ’s starboard quarter. A run of five minutes more would give her sea room enough to come about and resume her original course of west-sou’west, with the entire Royal Navy a protective fence between her and danger.
Gunners aft, and the after-guard, began to jeer, as the French frigate was forced to haul her wind to avoid a collision with that last, limping 3rd Rate.
“Frigate, sir!” Hyde pointed out. “One of our repeating frigates, four points off the starboard bows!”
“Acknowledging our private signal, sir!” Spendlove chimed in.
“Mister Knolles, you may secure from quarters, now,” Alan said with a great sigh of success. “Safe in Mother’s arms, from here on.”
“French frigate is wearing about, sir.”
Lewrie looked aft. Aye, she didn’t have room in which to tack so she was swinging broadside on to Jester ’s stern, presenting them her starboard side, to make the greater twenty-four-point circle off the wind to end up heading west, plodding along in company with the other vessels of her fleet. Deprived of her prey. Beaten.
“Better luck next time, you snail-eatin’ bastard!” Alan bellowed in triumph, cupping his hands so his words might carry. Though he doubted a shout across half-a-mile would register on French ears, it was, after all, the smug, insulting victor’s jeer—and thought—that counted!
Uh . . . sorry I did that, he told himself at once!
The frigate, outsailed then outshot, spent a last fit of Gallic pique upon Jester, rippling out one final, irregular broadside. A crash aft and below, as a ball scored at last, caving in the transom timbers abaft the stores rooms and officers’ quarters, a great thonk as the ball continued to carom down the length of the empty berth deck. Glass shattered as another exploded the larboard quarter-galleries— both Lewrie’s and the gunroom’s—toilets. Splashes and feathers to either beam around the stern, and a further hollow thonk and high whine as a ball ploughed a furrow down Jester ’s side.
And Josephs, up on the bulwarks, was beheaded.
One instant cheering and waving a fist in the air, the next he was flying, his small body flung almost amidships of the quarterdeck, minus his head, throat, and shoulders, which had been pulped into red mist by six pounds of wailing iron!
“My . . . word! ” Lieutenant Knolles gasped, as his compatriot on the bulwarks, his mate Rydell, hopped down and began shrieking utter horror, and terror. He’d escaped unscathed, though they’d been close enough to rub shoulders. Close enough, though, to be spattered with droplets of gore, brains, and bone chips!
“Surgeon’s mate!” Lewrie shouted uselessly. “Loblolly boys!”
Whey-faced himself, but determined not to show it, nor allow this horror to demoralize his crew, he was forced by duty to cross to Rydell.
“Shut your mouth, Mister Rydell! Stop that noise!” he rasped. “Go below, if you wish to unman yourself. Loblolly boys? Get that . . . that, off the quarterdeck, at once!”
And turn his back, to deal with Duty.
“Oh, dear Jesus,” LeGoff whispered as he came up from the cockpit on the orlop, the place of surgery during quarters. “Poor little chub!”
“Deal with it, Mister LeGoff,” Knolles ordered coolly, after he was over his own funk. “Anyone else injured below, or aft?”
“No one, Mister Knolles, praise God,” Lewrie heard LeGoff say to the first officer. “Here, you men. Scrap o’ canvas. The carrying board. Take him below to the cockpit, and ready him for burial.”
“Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie inquired, his face a stony mask. “I believe we have enough sea room to return to larboard tack?”
“Aye, sir,” the sailing master muttered, as shaken as anyone.
“Very well, then. Mister Knolles? Stations for Stays. Come about. New course, west-by-south, till we’re well up to windward of our line-of-battle ships. Then we’ll ease her due west, to parallel.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Knolles replied, happy to have something constructive to do. “Mister Porter? Stations for Stays!”
“Onliest one, sir,” Buchanon continued, with a whimsical air.
“Hmm?” Lewrie grunted, still in pain, but curious about that tone in Buchanon’s voice.
“Josephs, Cap’um. Onliest one e’en scratched!” Buchanon said more soberly, almost in a rueful awe. “We got our comeuppance from th’ ol’ mad buggers. An’ ’ey took ’eir due from us. Th’ gods o’ th’ sea, Cap’um. Th’ ol’ pagan gods o’ winds an’ seas, ’ey took ’im.”
“Surely, Mister Buchanon, in this modern age . . .” Lewrie began to scoff, a little angered by such a heretical suggestion. Or, maybe a little angered at what he did not yet know. At himself, perhaps, for having the boy “started.” For making his last days fearful.
“Me da’, he was Welsh, Cap’um,” Buchanon related. “’Twas oft he tol’ me ’bout ’em. Him an’ th’ granthers, all, sir, on th’ stormy nights, with th’ rain an’ winds a’howlin’ ’gainst th’ shutters, ’r th’ public house. Onliest folk still take note o’ ’em’z sailormen, sir. Priests an’ Church, ’ey drove ’em out, into th’ wide, trackless seas. But ’at don’t mean ’ey passed away, Cap’um. Oh no, not at all!”
“Ready about, Captain,” Knolles intruded.
“Very well, Mister Knolles. Put the ship about,” Lewrie said in response, mesmerized, and only half paying attention to his first.
“Helm’s alee! Rise, foretack and sheets!”
“One ’ey named th’ most, sir, ’at’d be Lir,” Buchanon went on, paying only half attention himself, as Jester began to come about to the eye of the wind. “Don’t know much ’bout th’ ones crost th’ seas,
in th’ heathen latitudes. Ones I read about in school, sir, ’em ol’ Roman an’ Greek sea gods, ’ey sounded like gennlemen ya could deal with, so long’z ya didn’ cross ’em ’r ’eir boss Zeus. Sportin’ sort o’ gennlemen, who didn’ mean much by it. But Lir, now, Cap’um. Ol’ Irish an’ Welsh sea god, one th’ Scots dread, too, sir? Oh, he’s a right bastard, sometimes. Jealous an’ vengeful. Hard-hearted sort. A blood-drinker, some say. Nacky’un, too, Cap’um . . . smart’z paint. Th’ sort who’ll bide his time, ’til a body’d gone an’ forgot what he done ’gainst ’im. But, he always takes his pound o’ flesh, in th’ end. He always gets his due, when ya least expect, an’ hurts most.”
And a hellish gobble more’n a pound of flesh, he took, Lewrie thought, trying to stifle an involuntary shiver of awe, himself, as he recalled the sight of that pitiful remaining husk. He turned his attention to his ship, away from this spectral higgledy-piggledy that Buchanon spoke of, this ancient superstitious folderol that he sounded as if he really believed! Buchanon, a man who’d dragged himself out of the fisheries, gone to sea in the fleet, come up on science, for God’s sake! Astronomy, mathematics, the art of navigation, study of weather, charts . . . the sailing of a ship, which was man’s greatest, most complex engine!
“Now mains’l haul!” Knolles was crying, as Jester finished most of her tack passing the eye of the wind, as braces dragged the sails aloft to the starboard side where they began to fill and draw.
“Um, this Lir . . .” Lewrie asked of Buchanon in a conspiratorial voice, eerily fascinated in spite of himself. “Sea god of the British Isles, in other words.”
“Maybe all of ’em have ’eir own domain, Cap’um,” Buchanon said softly. “Poseidon around th’ Greek Isles an’ Aegean . . . ol’ Neptune, he has th’ rest o’ th’ Mediterranean. Wherever Roman sailors went, sir? Lir, now . . . I’d expect he’s got th’ Channel, North Sea, all ’round th’ British Isles, an’ far down inta Biscay. Celts were ’ere, too, long ago. Down south o’ Cape Finisterre we’ll leave him, Cap’um. Now he has his revenge.”
Lewrie shivered for real, in spite of his best intentions, as a cool zephyr of clearer air not shot to stillness crossed the deck. Almost an icy-cool zephyr, that raised his hackles and his nape-hairs as it passed. The sort of eldritch feeling Caroline sometimes called “having a rabbit run ’cross your grave,” that unbidden spook-terror of the unknown, that harbinger of dire tidings.
“That far,” Lewrie said, after clearing his throat.
“We should be fine, though, sir. His price’z paid, now. Lir’s took th’ mocker. Long’z ’ere isn’t another, we can go in peace.”
“Ahum,” Lewrie commented, sealing his lips in a thin and wary line. “Ahum.”
C H A P T E R 6
Toss yah oars,” Andrews ordered as his captain’s gaily painted gig came alongside Queen Charlotte, a venerable old three-decker; and the flagship of Admiral Earl Howe, better known as “Black Dick.”
“Hook onta th’ chains . . . boat yah oars!” Andrews snapped.
It was a hellish-long climb, up past an ornate lower gun-deck entry port as solid as an Inigo Jones house-front, to an upper gun-deck entry port, thence to the uppermost, on the gangways. Larboard side, though, Lewrie griped to himself; not the side of honor where subordinate commanders were usually received. Jester’ s position up to windward saw to that. And the proper side was probably shot half through, after a full morning of battle, he decided.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” a lieutenant greeted him, with a minimum of fuss. “And you are, sir . . . ?”
“Alan Lewrie, of the Jester sloop,” he replied. Short as the time had been between attaining safety behind that wooden wall of warships, and receiving a flag hoist for “Captain Repair on Board,” with his number, he’d had a quick shave, and thrown on his dress coat and hat. Admiral Howe was a stickler for details. And he hadn’t earned that sobriquet, “Black Dick,” simply because he didn’t often crack a smile, either! “Come aboard, as ordered, sir.”
Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered, this once, since the strange lieutenant’s white-lapeled coat, waistcoat, and breeches were stained gray with powder, and Queen Charlotte looked as if she’d been rather badly knocked about.
“Allow me to name myself, sir . . . Lieutenant Edward Codrington. Welcome aboard, sir. If you’d come this way?” the young man said as he gestured aft toward the poop. Lewrie followed him along the larboard gangway to the quarterdeck. A rather tall and slim, and rather handsome post-captain looked up as they passed. He wore a short tie-wig, no hat, and was holding a white cloth against his head. Looking rather befuddled and forlorn, too, Lewrie noted, hoping his battle had gone well for him, and that he wasn’t looking so sunk in the “Blue-Devils,” sitting on an arms chest like a felon, for good reason.
“You are feeling better, I trust, Captain?” Codrington took the time to inquire.
“Some better, aye, thankee, Mister Codrington,” the man said, though looking as pale as a cross-eyed corpse. “And you, sir?”
Codrington did the introductions, naming him to Captain Sir Edward Snape Douglas, Queen Charlotte’ s commanding officer. Then, they were off for the great-cabins under the poop deck, the admiral’s quarters. That grand space was being put back in order again, guns bowsed taut against the bulwarks, furniture and partitions being restored by a procession of seamen. “Took something on the noggin, d’ye see.”
“Ahem . . .” Codrington said, clearing his throat. “Sir, I have the captain of that sloop of war for you.”
“Ah, good, good,” a heavier-set post-captain said, leaving the desk where he’d been rummaging through a stack of hastily ordered papers. “Lewrie, hey?” He sniffed, after the introductions were once more done. “Can’t say as I’ve heard of you, sir. Well . . . no matter.”
Sir Roger Curtis was Admiral Howe’s captain of the fleet, suave and slightly flesh-faced. Lewrie took an instant dislike to him, if for no other than that very reason.
“And what fetched you to our little dance this morning, sir?” Curtis asked. “Some dispatches from London for us, hey?”
“Dispatches for the Mediterranean, sir,” Lewrie began to tell him, but was interrupted by Admiral Howe’s arrival from farther aft, beyond some re-erected wood partitions.
Good Christ, Lewrie gasped, though in silence! “Black Dick”— with a smile on his phyz? That’s a new world’s seventh wonder!
“Milord, Commander Lewrie here, off Jester —that ship sloop that popped up like a jack-in-the-box—on passage for the Mediterranean already, to Lord Hood, I s’pose. The perfect thing.”
“Damme, do I know you, sir?” Howe inquired with a puzzled look.
“Lewrie, sir. You interviewed me, early spring of eighty-six, before giving me Alacrity in the Bahamas, milord.”
“Oh, my yes. That piratical business in the Far East.” Howe sighed, squinching his mouth as if his dentures pained him. “ Telesto, I seem to recall? Come to see the show, did ye, Commander Lewrie? A chair arrived yet? Damme . . .” Howe frowned, turning away before he could hear Alan’s answer. Like a good sycophant, Sir Roger Curtis had a seat whistled up for the old fellow before one could say “knife!”
“Not quite my doing, milord,” Lewrie smarmed, with his hat under his arm, once Howe had his chair. The battle seemed to have aged the old fellow dev’lish-hard. And he was sixty-nine, to begin with!
He quickly related his leaving Portsmouth five days earlier—the pursuit by French frigates, and his escape. Hoping the smoke had been too thick for anyone aboard Queen Charlotte to have seen him open fire upon the foe, still under false colors. Sadly, he’d assumed he was going to be chastised for it. Why else have him come aboard, when the decks were still reddened with casualties’ blood, and the stench of gun smoke still lingered?
“Damme, Commander Lewrie,” Howe almost wheezed with delight at the end of his narration. “A hellish well-managed affair. Wasn’t to know, d’ye see . . . your gaining a command. But, from what I recall of
our last recontre, you always were the plucky’un. Now, sir. During your passage, did you see any sign of Admiral Montagu? Gave him eight liners to escort a ‘trade,’ far as Finisterre. And he should have rejoined me, long since.”
“Sorry, milord, but we neither spoke nor saw any English ships of war since sailing,” Lewrie had to tell him. “Had a bad slant, the second day, sir.” He dared to continue to, to “prose on” to a senior officer who hadn’t asked yet. “Almost into Torbay, and nary a sign of him did I see, sir.”
“Well, we did manage quite well, without Admiral Montagu, sir,” Curtis said, sounding very smarmy himself. Boot-lickin’ toady-ish, to Lewrie’s lights. As a fellow who’d always known how to toady to those above him, Lewrie could appreciate a good performance. And did.
“Forgive me for being remiss about doing so, milord, but . . .” Alan could not resist interrupting, “allow me to extend to you congratulations ’pon your splendid victory this morning.”
“Damme, Lewrie, we laid into ’em, aye!” Howe barked with a tiny yelp of rare amusement. “Twenty-five of us. Lost the use of Audacious early on, the first day—and Montagu already off with eight. Almost equal in strength to my opposite number, Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, I’m told he’s called. Four days of sparring with him, daring him to fight toe-to-toe. Him hanging up to windward of me, down south? Nettling him? Cost him the use of four ships or better, he had to send back to Brest undertow. Knocked three about . . . was that yesterday, Curtis?”
“Two days ago, milord,” Curtis supplied, all but wringing his hands in concern for his chief’s health. Howe looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, and his face-flesh so worn down it appeared to hang in tatters. “Cut off his rear, two days ago, sir, that’s when we isolated those three, and shot them to rags.”
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