A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Ready, sir,” Knolles gasped.

  “Wear ship! Helm alee!” he snapped, soon as he heard, scampering to the larboard side so he could see, pressing up against the bulwarks to peer out through all that smoke to see if he’d hurt Choundas.

  Being flung backward, thrown off his feet as a ball blasted in just above the gunwale, splinters and shards flying upward, an erose chunk carving the face of the bulwark down to the thickness of a single plank! Feeling his ship being pummeled and punctured beneath him, her stout scantlings wailing in agony!

  “Sah, you kilt?” Andrews demanded, looming over him, filling his entire vision. Lewrie blinked, and kept on blinking, to clear the red haze that kept blinding him.

  Blind, he gibbered wildly; blind as Nelson! Oh, the bastard . . . he’s done for me! He flailed his arms and legs, found that they still were attached and obeying. Rolled to his side and retched the coppery taste from his mouth, knowing what blind fear tasted like at last . . .

  A crumpled calico handkerchief smeared his face, mildewy and redolent of tobacco. Blinking mindlessly, panting and gasping air in terror of what bad news might be coming. But his sight cleared, with Andrews’s ministrations. A firm hand clasped the handkerchief to his scalp.

  “Carry on, Mister Crewe!” he heard Knolles rasp. People were walking around him, as uncaring as if he were a misplaced hammock roll.

  He felt the guns go off, the deck on which he lay shiver as the ship was punched sidewise by her own recoil. There was a regular beat of juddering coming from her hull, even more insistent than his racing heart. God, there’d be another broadside in reply, soon!

  “You tell me, Andrews . . . am I killed?”

  “Got yah scalp shaved, sah. Blood in ya eyes, but . . .”

  “Help me up.”

  “Best hold dat right dar, sah . . . firmlike. Staunch de blood.” He held the cloth with his left hand, clung to the railing over the waist with his right, and almost swooned and saw double. The pain was coming, and he sucked air between his teeth as the first wave hit, going cross-eyed with it. He swabbed his face, his eye sockets, with his right sleeve, forever staining that fancy gold-lace slash-cuff . . . but he could see, with both eyes.

  “Ooh, Law’.” Andrews flinched for both of them, as a broadside came inboard.

  More smashing timbers, more screaming side planking, as French carronade shot joined their long guns. That juddering got noticeable, became a deep, plucking hum instead of an unnatural motion. Through it all, the gun crews slaved away, swabbing and overhauling tackle, rushing up cartridge and shot, ramming it home and pricking the vents.

  “Run out yer guns . . . !” Crewe roared, not so calm anymore, and caught up in the madness.

  Alan took another suck of breath! There lay Choundas’s vessel, not one cable to leeward of Jester ’s left side, just a little ahead, and sailing parallel to them, her own side looking gnawed at, stove-in here and there, her pristine white gunwale turning gray with spent powder stains.

  “On the uproll . . . Fire! ” Mister Crewe bugled. A ragged broadside crashed out, stuttering up and down. Jester ’s ports. The enemy corvette lurched and seemed to wince as she was struck again by a hailstorm of shot, delaying the run-out of her own guns a precious moment.

  “Payin’ off, sir!” Spenser called from the wheel. “No jibs . . .” Jester could not lay close to the wind without them, and slowly swung leeward, in spite of a large portion of lee-helm. She and that corvette would angle together slowly, closing the range, if Choundas held his course. Lewrie groaned as he saw that the wind would let her pinch up to weather, at least one point or more. Choundas could throw his ship up so close to luffing that he could bow-rake Jester, at nigh musket shot, in another minute,

  “Mister Knolles, ready to haul our wind, course nor-nor’east,” Lewrie snapped, the effort of shouting making his head seem to explode with fresh pain. “Mister Crewe, one more broadside, then switch over to the starboard battery! We’ll rake his stern!”

  “Oh, Lord,” someone whispered in awe as Choundas’s corvette lit up in flames, flinging long thrusts of smoke at them. She fired another broadside!

  Jester was pummeled, sent reeling, as iron smashed home, aimed at her midships. There was a tremendous pillar of spray alongside, then a second, the shuddery twist of the hull as it was struck, down low by a graze, then a direct hit, and a mighty thonk of rupture. A groan aloft, that juddery humming ended suddenly. Replaced by a wail of pine and fir as her mainmast began to topple—everything beyond the fighting-top swayed over the larboard side, coming down like some sawn tree! The main chains had taken another hit, and everything was shot away that held it upright! All they could do was duck and pray as it collapsed, crashing down into the ocean in a rat’s nest of torn sails, tangled rigging, and broken yards, to dangle on the gangway or bulwarks, further tangled with the collapsed boarding nettings, blinding the guns. A discharge from one of the nine-pounders might set alight the ruins. Jester was disarmed and powerless!

  “Mister Crewe, starboard battery! Waisters and idlers,” Alan cried in despair. “Chop all that away, now, Mister Porter! Spenser, steer due north, best you’re able with all that dragging. Hurry!”

  There was nothing left aloft for drive but the mizzen sails— spanker, top’sl, and t’gallant, and they’d be lucky indeed to be able to steer effectively, if at all, with all that force so far astern.

  “Spare stays’l, jury-rigged from foc’s’le to the foretop!” Knolles was shouting forward to the hands digging free of the ruins.

  Jester had slowed, drastically, dragging herself almost to a stop, bereft of wind power. Beyond crippled. Almost conquered.

  He’s going to win, damn him, Alan felt like weeping! His ship turned to scrap lumber, defenseless against whatever might come. He suspected Choundas would close and board, to take her as prize. Take his ship, in a sea of bloodshed. Take him prisoner, and what he felt like inflicting on him, once they were anchored in a French port, he . . . no, By God! You want me, you’ll have to kill me! You want Jester . . . then you’ll have her over my dead body!

  Lewrie drew his sword and let it glisten in the sun.

  “Starboard batt’ry ready, sir!” Crewe rasped. He looked down on his gun deck. On his people. The ports were open, the artillery runout. Grimy, bleeding from cuts and splinters, mouths agape with terror, and some of them shivering, amid the carnage, the dead.

  “They’ll not have us!” Lewrie roared. “They’ll not have her! If they try, we’ll kill every last mother-son of ’em! Close shooting, and make ’em pay, Mister Crewe!”

  And he was amazed, that they could raise a cheer! A weak one, aye. But an angry, defiant cheer for their ship.

  Choundas had slipped ahead, of course, his rigging mostly free of damage and his sails still drawing power. Headed east-nor’east on the wind, but even then easing her braces and sheets to fall off, and employ her larboard guns. And her stern, her vulnerably thin stern . . . !

  “Fire as you bear, Mister Crewe! Hold her, Spenser! Nothing to loo’rd, for just a minute!” he pleaded.

  “Aye aye, sir!” Spenser grunted, as he and Brauer and two more hands threw all their weight on the spokes to hold full lee-helm, the rudder jammed hard-over.

  “Point . . . !” Crewe ordered. “As you bear . . . Fire! ”

  From the foc’s’le carronade, then aft to the quarterdeck, some swivels firing, too; a controlled, steady tolling, the guns so hot by now they leapt off the deck with recoil, titanic crashes and bellows of rage, deafening thunders and harsh ejaculations of gunpowder, all dun gray and brown, shot through with embers and flaming bits of wad. The range was little over a cable, and the results were immediate.

  The corvette’s stern was caved in! Glass sash-windows blown in, both quarter-galleries shattered, her taffrail and flag lockers blown skyward. The name board and dead lights to the officers’ ward-room all were smashed beyond recognition. Her transom post was whittled by shot, and her rudder twitched like a hound’s e
ar. And there would be carnage further forward, as hard nine-pound shot caromed down the length of her open gun deck, breaking into hundreds of jagged shards on gun barrels and carriages, creating a maelstrom of wood splinters to quill her crew, to rip and rend! They could hear her, and them, wail, they imagined!

  “Can’t ’old ’er, sir,” Spenser gasped. “Sorry, but they’s too much drag t’larboard. Payin’ off, again. Make due north, just.”

  “Reload, Mister Crewe!” Alan demanded. “One more time!” “Tackin’!” Knolles countered. “She’s going over to larboard, sir!” “Now she’ll rake our stern,” Lewrie groaned. Once she gets settled down on larboard tack, she’ll make sou’west, easy, he thought. “Get that raffle chopped away, Porter! Hurry with that stays’1. And rig the main topmast stays’l from the maintop to a foc’s’le ladder, if that’s all you have. I need jibs. Any sort o’ jibs! Now!”

  Close as Choundas was, he’d get a quartering slant across HMS Jester ’s stern. At about the same range as the shot she’d delivered! Lewrie paced to the larboard side, to see the last of the mess going over the side, the last raveled stays and braces cut. With a great splash, the last of the upper masts hit the water to float away aft.

  “Better, sir!” Spenser encouraged, spinning the spokes.

  “Due east?” Lewrie asked him.

  “ Mebbe, sir!” Spenser allowed, chomping on his tobacco quid in a frenzy. “Nor’east, at best, I think, Cap’um. We’re so slow.”

  “Good enough, then. Ready, Mister Crewe? We’re coming about to weather some more for you!”

  “We’ll be ready, sir!” Crewe stolidly assured him.

  “Give him a broadside, while he’s tacking, then. Then load and run out, quick as you can. Soon as he’s in arcs.”

  Choundas was standing away southerly, already on the eyes of the wind, sails rustling and luffing, and jibs just beginning to fill, and draw. His ship would heel over as she felt the force of the wind upon her braced-around square sails, delaying that raking broadside a little. Until she was more in control, her decks more level. And then . . .

  “ Meleager, sir!” Hyde crowed. “Signal, sir! ‘Do You Require Assistance!’ ”

  “Hoist ‘Affirmative,’ Mister Hyde!” Lewrie yelped in relief. “You’re goddamned right we do!”

  And there she was, about a mile off and coming hard, beating to windward with a bone in her teeth, guns run out and ready! She’d clear that western headland by miles, pass ahead of Jester ’s bows even if she managed to attain nor’east. And chase this foe away!

  Lewrie went to the starboard side of his quarterdeck, wincing in agony with each step, left hand still clamped atop his skull. Choundas was there, he was certain. Even at two hundred yards, he thought there was a man on that opposing quarterdeck, a slight man with pale skin and dull reddish hair. A man who wore a large black patch. A man who was shaking his fists at him, his mouth open to howl curses at him.

  “Got jibs, sir, at last!” Buchanon told him. “Come a’weather?” “Close as she’ll lay, aye, Mister Buchanon,” Alan replied, with the shuddery sort of giggle a condemned felon might essay right after a hanging rope snapped and dumped him alive in the mud under the gallows.

  Jester came up toward the wind, struggling to lay nor’east. As Choundas heeled over and stood out to sea, bearing sou’west. Men were aloft, letting the corvette’s royals fall. Stern-to-stern, they were separating, no guns able to bear. Choundas had been driven away, not able to deal with a frigate’s fire. Jester had been saved, would go on living. It was over.

  For the moment, Lewrie thought wearily. There’d be a next time. Twigg would see to that, damn his blood! Pray God Cockburn catches him up and shoots him to toothpicks! Spares me the . . . spares me!

  “We continue on this course, sir, we’ll block Meleager ’s course,” Buchanon cautioned, close by his side. Buchanon put a steadying arm to Lewrie, as he swayed and sagged, utterly spent.

  “Aye, come about, again, Mister Buchanon. Due north, steer for the western headland, so Cockburn gets a clear passage to seaward close-hauled. Unless he wishes to come inshore of us, cut the corner . . . ?”

  Too tired to think, as if he’d gone fifteen rounds with a bully-buck at a village fair; it always was this way after a hard fight with him. He leaned on the bulwarks, tried to sheath his sword.

  “Mister Hyde, hoist ‘Submit,’ followed by ‘Pursue the Enemy More Closely.’ ‘Vast coming about,’ Mister Buchanon. We’ll stand on. Cockburn can gain on the bastard, if he cuts inshore of us. Stand on,” Lewrie decided. He’d wait until Meleager was abeam, then come about, into the shelter of Alassio Bay. Jester would need quick repairs, perhaps even a tow, to get back to safety at Vado. She’d never crawl there on her own.

  “Porter?” he shouted, wincing again. “Pipe ‘Secure from Quarters,’ then let’s see what needs doing we can do for ourselves.”

  “Er . . . aye aye, sir!” Will Cony shouted back. He shrugged and pointed to a broken figure being borne below by the surgeon’s loblolly boys on a carrying board. Bosun Porter was groaning and writhing over several large, jagged splinters, his right arm ravaged and soaked with gore. “I’ll tend t’ h’it, sir,” Cony assured him, beginning to rouse stunned hands back to their posts.

  “Fancy a sip o’ somet’in’, Cap’um?” Andrews tempted, offering a small pewter flask, on the sly. “Neat rum, sah. Put de fire back in yah belly.”

  “Thankee, Andrews.” Lewrie sighed, taking a small sip.

  And wondering what thanks he’d have to give Cockburn, for saving his bacon. He grimaced at the sharp bite of the rum; and how even more insufferable Captain Cockburn might be, in future. Or how low he’d be groveling in gratitude, pretending to like the taste of boot polish.

  Grateful, aye . . . Alan realized with a small, mournful groan of relief. He takes him or kills him, ’stead of me, I’ll buss his blind cheeks! I don’t ever wish to cross that bastard’s hawse again. Ever!

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  A desperate action, sir,” Nelson told him in the privacy of Agamemnon ’s great-cabins. “Gallantly carried,” he added. A bit more praise, very similar to their last meeting; though thrown out rather offhandedly, not quite so congratulatory, and bitten off, delivered in a moody, frownful snappishness. “Five dead, a dozen wounded? I am sorry for your losses. The only losses the squadron suffered in our cutting-out expedition. Not a single man even hurt aboard the rest. My condolences.”

  “The rest of the squadron didn’t have to contend with Choundas, sir,” Alan told him, a bit put off by Nelson’s less than charitable air, wondering if the killed and wounded had ruined what might have been a fine report for Nelson to submit to Admiral Hotham.

  “You’re quite sure it was him, I take it?” Nelson demanded of him. “My opposite number, this will-o’-the-wisp, Choundas?”

  “No error, sir. Saw him with my glass as he hauled his wind to break off the action, stern-to to us. A mite uglier than last I saw of him in the Far . . .”

  “So this Mister . . . Silberberg wrote to me, Lewrie,” Captain Nelson grumbled, his long dainty fingers fretting papers on his desk, still standing and looking down distractedly. “I do not very much care for spy-craft, nor for those who engage in it. Valuable though their information may be at times . . . they . . . some of them, put far too little emphasis or value on the fighting man, take too much upon themselves, and too much of the credit . . .”

  “It sounds as if Mister Silberberg is now attempting to dictate to you as well, sir?” Alan scoffed, offering a commiserating grin. And thinking Twigg had a challenge on his hands, for once.

  “That is of no matter, sir,” Nelson grunted, vexing his mouth in annoyance, or a bad memory. He looked up at last, as if resolved to the solution of a matter that plagued him. “There are before me, Commander Lewrie, at least three grave items anent you and your ship. Items most vexing. I thought it best to discuss them with you here, in total privacy, before they become formal complaints, answerable to higher
authorities. Perhaps a court.”

  “What . . . a court?” Lewrie gawped. He creased his brow in utter puzzlement, which caused pain in his shaved and restitched scalp wound, and wriggled in his chair, recrossing his legs in defense.

  “The first, sir,” Nelson bleakly intoned, perhaps even with some anger (which was something new about him for Alan to discover) “concerns your raid on Bordighera. There’s a letter of complaint just given Mister Drake, from the Savoian government, that your ship, cited by name, fired upon the town center, their fishing fleet, and homes and shops along the eastern shore, resulting in damage and destruction, and in some civilian injuries and deaths. I am told that Mister Drake is on warning that their former masters, our Sardinian allies, also contemplate a formal diplomatic grievance. The Genoese have also formally demanded an explanation. As to whether the charges are true, and if so, is this the way we mean to enforce our embargo—by the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents, and the destruction of civilian property. Now, sir . . . for the record, did you engage in any indiscriminate firing?” he coldly demanded.

  “What the . . . no, sir! By God I did not, sir!” Lewrie countered quickly, outraged. “You have my report. We fired shoreward just twice, once we’d silenced the battery and entered harbor. First, to eliminate the French troops, so my Lieutenant Knolles had a free hand. Our aim was those soldiers, with canister and grape, not solid-shot to level buildings. A bit of damage might have been done, I grant you, sir . . . windows smashed and such, but . . . ! We never fired on the town proper, never fired upon the beached fishing boats, since they were Bordighera’s livelihood. Our second was a single round-shot over the heads of the looters to dissuade them pillaging the French dead and wounded, sir. Far over, sir. Fall-of-shot was beyond the town, in the eastern hills. We were about two cables off the beach, sir, and fired at maximum elevation, quoin out, so there’s no way any civilians could have been harmed, sir!”

  “A bit unfortunate, though. Perhaps unnecessary,” Nelson said gloomily. “The specific charges are replete with eyewitness testimony that you loosed a full broadside, not a single round, killing or wounding many of those who’d come out to succor the wounded.”