A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Mister Hyde!” Lewrie shouted, fanning in front of his face for fresh air. “Hoist the signal to Mister Knolles. Mister Buchanon, we’ll put the ship about on the larboard tack. Porter? Pipe ‘Stations for Stays’ and ready to come about!”

  Little Bombolo wheeled about from her position astern and to seaward of Jester, easing the set of her conventional jib, winging out her large lateen mains’l, and bore off north for the harbor entrance. At the same time, Jester swung south into the wind, tacked, and sailed to her support, to re-engage what was left of the battery with her right-hand guns.

  “Steady . . . thus,” Lewrie told the helmsmen. “All yours, Mister Bittfield!”

  “Starboard batt’ry . . . ready broadside . . . on the uproll . . . Fire! ”

  Closer, this time, within a quarter-mile of the shore, and even the carronades blazing away from foc’s’le and quarterdeck bulwarks. A hailstorm of round-shot savaged the entrance face of the battery, and more stone flew in the air, more gravel and dirt slipped down the hillside to patter into the sea. One shot from the French, who had gamely wheeled one of their light field guns to a spare embrasure, from that unequal combat on the sea face. A shot that went warbling low astern to raise a tiny splash seaward of Jester ’s wake. The tricolor showed itself again, risen on the stump of the flagpole by some brave soul . . . now only a little higher than an infantry regiment’s banner.

  “’Ey got spirit, Cap’um,” Buchanon commented, when he took his attention off the sea to starboard for a moment.

  “We’ll shoot that out of ’em, sir.” Lewrie grinned.

  “Ah, ’ere’s ’at rock ledge . . . well t’starb’d. Missed it by at least a quarter-cable, sir” Buchanon grunted with professional pride. “No worries. Deep water, clear t’th’ entrance.”

  With the fort so busy with Jester, and being pounded into road gravel, little Bombolo was free to breeze into the small harbor without a shot being fired at her. Around the point, behind the bluff fort, there sounded the panicky patter of musketry, fired at impossible range.

  “Broadside . . . ready . . . on the uproll . . . Fire! ”

  And another exchange of shots. Two French guns, this time, but still badly laid and aimed. One ball struck short, skipped twice, and struck Jester ’s starboard side, just below the mainmast chains with a dull thud. It hung for a second in the dent it had created in the oak planking just below the stout chain wale, then dribbled off to splash into the sea. The second whined overhead, not even clipping rope.

  Once more the tricolor went down, as the fort shivered to the monstrous weight of iron, and the wall between the embrasures slumped. Flinty sparks, smoke, and dust flew. Then the Whoomph! of gunpowder cartridges as a reserve went off like a miniature Vesuvius, flinging rock and gravel a hundred yards offshore, creating a rising gout of smoke, and the hint of flames at its base.

  “Near midchannel. Ease her, Quartermaster. We’ll enter harbor in midchannel. Mister Buchanon, hands to the braces,” Lewrie called. “Wind’s from the sou’east. Wear us for a run, with the wind large on the starboard quarter.”

  Around the point and under the bluff, the land fell away toward the town on the right-hand side, the shoreline of the harbor almost a full circle, as if cut from the rocky coast with the rim of a cup, with high hills all about behind the bluff’s short peninsula. He could see that Bordighera held slim pickings. There were three shabby locally built tartanes tied up to a stone quay near the center of town, a narrow and rocky beach to the right, and a much wider, softer beach to the left of the inlet, where at least two-dozen small fishing boats no bigger than the ship’s jolly boat rested with their bows on the shingle and gravel.

  Bombolo was coasting toward the quay, prompting the crews of the tartanes to flee ashore, into the streets leading uphill. But down from the battery, at least a hundred French infantry—two companies? Alan thought—that had formed a line midway between the fort and the town, were jogging townward to intercede. The mounted officer appeared again, this time at the infantrymen’s backs, his sword drawn, to spur them on.

  “Mister Bittfield, that lot!” Lewrie shouted. “Load with grape and canister. Quartermaster, put your helm alee two points, to lay us closer inshore o’ those buggers.”

  Pistols were popping on the quay. With his telescope, Alan saw a few men in French naval uniforms, falling back from their vessels to the buildings as Knolles’s raiding party came alongside the largest of the tartanes . No more than half-a-dozen, against Knolles’s fifteen, he thought, abandoned by the rest but still game. A swivel gun banged and a uniformed Frenchman went down. A two-pounder boat gun went off aboard Bombolo, spraying canister into the front of an impressive shorefront commercial building, and dropped another. The rest at last fled, far outnumbered and outgunned.

  “Loaded an’ run out, sir,” Bittfield reported. “Range ’bout two cables. Too far forrud o’ th’ carriage-gun ports, but we’re sailin’ faster’n they can trot, sir!”

  “Steady, Quartermaster. We’ll stand on a little closer. Do you be ready, Mister Bittfield.”

  “Ready!” Bittfield yelled to his gun captains. Tacklemen and loaders, rammermen and powder monkeys stepped dear of recoil, of the rope tackle that could ensnare a foot and have it off. Lanyards were pulled taut to the flint-lock strikers. Quarter-gunner Rahl, more used to the employment of artillery against troops in the field, scampered onto the forecastle, after directing the train of the forward-most gun.

  The French soldiers were intent on getting to the quay, to stop Knolles from taking those small coasters, of getting into the town and the main square just above the quay, to volley or snipe from cover. A moment more, Lewrie thought, wondering if those local charts were right, and he had depth enough along that shore. But for the creak and groan of the hull, the swash of water, and the rustle of the wind and sails, it was, for a moment, peacefully silent. He could distinctly hear the rattle and thud of boots on the roadway, of musket butts clapping upon bayonet scabbards and sheathed short swords, canteens and metal plates and cups hung from knapsacks tinkering one another, as they jogged at the double-quick.

  “Helm up to windward, Quartermaster. Lay us parallel to them,” Lewrie said at last.

  “ Wait for it!” Bittfield soothed as Jester swung her bows about, and the shoreline road and its panting target appeared in the gun ports. “Wait for ittt! ” He squatted to point over the number one nine-pounder.

  “Nein, Herr Bittfield!” Rahl countered from the foc’s’le. “ Der mitte kanon! Middle, zir!” He fanned his hands to mime the spread of shot of a full-dozen barrels; carronades and long guns. “ Verbreitung . . . der spread!”

  Bittfield swore under his breath, but trotted aft to the waist. Wiser than the small French garrison, the Savoians of Bordighera had gone to earth, or run for the hills above their hard-scrabble little town. The dusty harbor street down which the infantry pounded, among the first shantylike outlying homes and tiny shops, was shuttered and closed, not even a dog or curious cat in sight.

  “Proceed, Mister Bittfield.

  “On the uproll . . . !” Bittfield screeched, drawing breath for his final shout.

  The mounted officer reined in his horse savagely, making it rear once more, as if suddenly realizing he’d bitten off more than he or his men could chew. The rear-rank men at the tail of the column, the file closest to the low stone boundary markers of the shoreline road, suddenly shrank in on themselves, looking over their shoulders, hunched as pensioners.

  “Fire!”

  It was not over three hundred yards from ship to shore when that broadside erupted. Canister, so Army artillery texts stated, was most effective out to nearly five hundred yards. And, in Army usage, Jester carried the equivalent of three four-gun batteries—a battalion of guns!

  The ship shuddered and complained with wooden groans as gun smoke blotted out the view. Ashore, it was an avalanche that swept everything away in a twinkling. Dust flew, low shrubbery wavered and frothed, and the stucco fronts of low
houses and shops were dimpled and crazed to the brick beneath, and roof tiles were flung into the air, some in shards, or whole. Precious glass windows shattered, wood shutters and awnings disappeared, all those screechings and crashings lost in the terror-stricken wails—the death screams— of the infantrymen, who were scythed away. Plebeian dun stucco was splattered or sheeted with gore. The officer’s horse was flung over a waist-high fence of a pigsty, its rider—minus an arm and a leg—flung the opposite direction, and his gleaming sword did a silvery pirouette, twirling over and over.

  When the smoke cleared, there weren’t a dozen Frenchmen who still stood, to stagger blindly away. For another long moment, all was quiet. Then the moaning began, the panicky yelps and whimpers of the dying, as they felt themselves over to discover their mortal hurts.

  “Reload,” Lewrie barked, though his knees juddered as he beheld the enormity, and the suddenness, of that slaughter. “Round-shot this time, Mister Bittfield.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the master gunner muttered, in awe himself. “Mister Buchanon, hands to the braces. Ready to wear about, to the larboard tack. We’ll circle the harbor, until Mister Knolles has way on the prizes. Mister Porter? Clew up courses and tops’ls. Keep way on her with t’gallants, jibs, and spanker.”

  “Fire on the town, sir?” Bittfield inquired from the gun deck. “Those fishin’ boats?”

  “No, Mister Bittfield.” Lewrie grimaced. “No call to ruin the civilians’ lives. Unless we’re fired upon, that is. Andrews?”

  “Heah, sah,” his cox’n replied, leaving his quarterdeck carronade.

  “Three prizes, and Bombolo to manage. Take my gig, with a full boat crew, and row over to join Mister Knolles’s party. My compliments to him on his quick seizure, and he is to get them underway as soon as possible. He is to . . .” Lewrie ordered, then paused, looking astern. “He is to lay off the entrance, until I join him. I’ll be tending to that damn’ battery.”

  “Aye aye, sah.” Andrews nodded, dashing off to gather the men who usually made up the captain’s boat crew.

  “Sergeant Bootheby?” Lewrie called. “Mister Porter? Join me on the quarterdeck, if you please.”

  “Sah!” Jester ’s most-senior Marine barked, in his best parade-ground fashion. The Admiralty put little faith in the abilities of a lowly second lieutenant to lead a shipboard detachment. Post-ships got a Marine captain, with at least one lieutenant as his assistant, while vessels below the rate such as Jester rated only a senior, but experienced, noncommissioned officer.

  “Mister Porter, lead the cutter and jolly boat around from the stern,” Lewrie instructed. “Full crews for both boats. Sergeant, I would like you to take your men ashore, and spike those guns. Better yet, tumble them down the bluff, into the sea. Take powder and oil . . . so you may set their carriages alight, too. I’ll send Mister Meggs the armorer, and Mister Crewe the gunner’s mate, to assist you. We’ve shot most of the garrison to rags, I expect, so there should be little opposition.”

  “Aye aye, sah!” Sergeant Bootheby bellowed fiercely, pleased to get a chance to shine at something more useful than polishing brass.

  “We’ll debark your party as we sail back out toward the bluff. Five minutes, I make it, before we let you slip. Hurry.”

  Lewrie looked back toward the quay as Bootheby assembled troops, calling some of them from the guns to dash below and fetch their coats and hats, spatter-dash gaiters, belts, and gear. Knolles had the lines cast off, and the first rags of sail were being hoisted.

  Andrews with the gig was almost to them, and he could see shouted exchanges as his cox’n relayed his orders.

  Above Bordighera, some civilians at last showed themselves, on the rocky, low-shrubbed heights. No threat there . . . yet, Alan thought grimly, as he eyed them with his glass. No sign of reinforcements, or that Bordighera had had a larger garrison. The crowd grew larger, and thinking themselves safely distanced, began to wave their fists, shout silent imprecations and curses. A few mounted men, waving swords about in the air, though they were dressed as civilians. No, there were some few men in uniform climbing up to them, stragglers from the tartanes , he surmised; in French Navy uniforms, what appeared to be a lieutenant leading them. No sign of firearms, though. Or not too many, he told himself. At that distance, it would be hard to discern a musket from a manure fork!

  What could they be so angry about? he wondered. They were Savoians, conquered by Frogs, ripped away from their longtime allegiance to Sardinia!

  Rather a lot of fit young men up there, he frowned; and them the angriest. Don’t tell me they prefer the Frogs, he gawped to himself! Worse than Yankee Doodles, I swear . . . !

  Throw off your kings, your princes, the French cooed. Stand up and be free men, with liberty, equality, fraternity for all. Had their blandishments taken root here, in tiny, sleepy Bordighera? In spite of how butcherous the French Revolution really was, how two-faced the real motives were . . . they weren’t out to liberate Europe, they were out for conquest and domination! . . . as callous and canting . . .

  Well, there was Holland. Sensible damned people, peaceful, and prosperous. In point of fact, rather a damned dull people, the ones he had met. Yet thousands had been elated to see their nation conquered, a Batavian Republic proclaimed, and thousands more had enlisted in the army, to fight alongside the Frogs. What on earth, Lewrie puzzled; it don’t make sense, the allure the Frogs had on people!

  He lowered his glass as the quartermasters steered Jester along the western beach, crabbing up into the wind and preparing to tack, to make a short board across the harbor toward the peninsula, and those bluffs, where the shattered battery still smoldered. The winds were scant, as usual, and she barely ghosted. Across her bows, Lieutenant Knolles aboard Bombolo was leading out their prizes toward the entrance channel. Waving and shouting in glee. Lewrie counted heads. Not a single man down, no casualties! That’d make good reading in his report.

  “We could wear off th’ wind, sir,” Buchanon suggested. “Or we could fetch-to. Light as ’is wind be, do we bare a jib or th’ driver, it’d be as good as heavin’ in on a spring line, ’thout anchorin’.”

  “Fetch-to, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie decided. “So we may keep the larboard battery directed at the shoreline road. Should that mob work up its courage, the sight of our guns should daunt ’em.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Landing party’s ready, sir!” Porter reported.

  “Away, the landing party, Mister Porter.”

  Now he could do nothing but wait. Oh, a dashing captain might go ashore himself. That made hellish-good reading in reports, too, at the Admiralty. Made for good fiction, Lewrie snorted in derision; the plucky, aspiring young captain at the head of his troops, doing what a junior officer was hired on for. Lieutenants were expendable; and he’d been “expended,” or nigh to it, often enough in his past to know that, now hadn’t he? Under the right circumstances, he still might have to exert himself beyond his captain’s role. But if one wished officers in one’s wardroom to aspire, one gave them first shot at the sharp end of the dirty stick, and didn’t go about trying to hog all the glory at their expense. How else were they to rise, without getting their name mentioned in dispatches? They usually resented that type of captain.

  A quarter-hour of fidgeting and fretting that his plan misfired, that he hadn’t thought of everything. A captain’s proper duties, Alan glowered, worrying without showing it; about French cavalry, a battalion appearing over the heights, a battery of siege guns that might just be in-transit on the coast road toward San Remo and pop up to take Jester under fire, forcing him to sail off or lose her, abandoning the Marines. Survivors lurking in the kinky shrubs behind the battery, sniping and skirmishing. A French warship happening by out to sea, espying smoke from the bluff, and . . . That damned mob gathering its courage?

  At last!

  Smoke curling and wavering over the battery. Thicker smoke and the red flicker of flames as field carriages, wheels, limbers, and shot and pow
der caissons were set ablaze. A gun barrel, man-hauled by rope about its cascabel, went rumbling down the steep slope of the entrance face, to tumble and roll, turning muzzle-up as the heavier weight of the breech dragged it. And trailing a plume of dust, gravel, and rock behind it as it fell, so that it looked as if it reeked powder smoke after being fired. A second followed it, and with his telescope, he could determine that Meggs and Crewe had done a very thorough job of it; trunnions blown or hammered off, making it impossible to mount it on a carriage again, even should the French recover it from the shoal beneath the bluffs.

  As overburdened as the supply roads already were, useless but valuable guns sent back to a foundry to be recast or repaired might be an even greater delay to the French, taking precious draught animals from moving things forward! Lewrie strongly suspected they’d rust out where they lay, alongside the detritus of Roman triremes, till the Last Trumpet, too hard to dredge for, or raise.

  Bootheby and his Marines appeared, a slim scarlet snake curving down the bluff road. A fife and drum playing, a short column of twos tramping in good order, with skirmishers thrown out ahead and to both sides. And sailors in slop clothing a shambling blot in the rear. A five-minute march, and they’d be at the boats again. Lewrie heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was almost done. He turned to look at Bombolo, which drifted bare-poled about one cable seaward of the channel. There was no signal from her that an enemy ship had come into sight, either!

  That mob . . .

  Finally, they were moving downhill, the mounted men leading them. Nothing like an army, it was still a righteous but disordered mob, with women and children alongside. No fight in them, Lewrie thought with even more relief; they just want a good excuse to shout. Probably hasn’t been this much excitement in Bordighera since the Crusades, he allowed himself to chuckle.

  And along the eastern shore road, where the two French companies had been slaughtered. Hullo, there were Bordigherans there, he started. No, no threat in them, either. Old women in black, a few younger women in gayer gowns, some gaffers and kids.