An Onshore Storm

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Mister Farley? Hands aloft to take in all sail, and let go the bower and a stern kedge anchor,” Lewrie was forced to order. It appeared that they were going to be there quite awhile.

  * * *

  “Might as well be hackin’ away in a coal or tin mine,” stroke-oar of Lewrie’s boat, John Kitch, carped to his mates as he paused to take a sip from his canteen.

  “Coal mine’d be easier,” another sailor griped as he swung his pick, raising a shower of flinty sparks and a fine shower of stone chips from the base stone he was attacking. “Dammit!” he spat as he felt the ring of iron on stone right up the wooden handle that stung him up his arms to his shoulders. “I know coal. Joined the Navy t’get away from all this, I did. Jesus, we’ll be at it all damned day!”

  “Put yer backs in it, lads!” a Bosun’s Mate encouraged.

  “Ah, fuck yerself,” Kitch muttered. “I don’t see your back in it!”

  “Crow-levers!” Lt. Rutland was yelling as bundles of gun tools were fetched up from the beach. “Anyone has a gap ’twixt the stones yet, sing out, and try prying with a crow-lever!”

  Kitch’s team stopped work to inspect what they’d accomplished by the light of a torch, shrugged to each other, and went back to it, without the aid of a crow-lever.

  “Look out below!” someone on the bridge called down, a moment before long ropes were dropped over, four from each span, that would hoist the cargo nets full of fused powder kegs up snug beneath them, when the explosives were prepared.

  “It gettin’ lighter?” someone asked, looking round.

  “Close t’false dawn, I expect,” another opined.

  “Shit,” someone spat, then took another swing with his pick. “Should’a brought gloves.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Rutland was back aboard by 7 A.M., just as Six Bells chimed from the forecastle belfry, a sound which made Lewrie grind his teeth each time the bell sounded.

  “Any progress, Mister Rutland?” Lewrie asked; wished for, in truth.

  “We’ve two places where we’ve managed to chip out and lever the outer course of stones out, sir,” Lt. Rutland reported, “but there’s another course inside those. God only knows how many layers there are to go. Captain Whitehead thinks we should lay the charges now, and hope for the best. He’s read that the Romans filled the middle of their bridge pillars with rubble, so the charges may succeed.”

  “Or, it’s solid stone right through, and they won’t,” Lewrie said with equal gloom. “Very well, let’s fetch the Marines and all but the Gunner’s Mate’s men off, and have them prepare the charges.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rutland replied, turning to look about for a likely Midshipman to go ashore and relay that order.

  “Still no sign of French troops, sir,” Lt. Greenleaf cheerfully pointed out. “We may get everyone away, Scot free, and not one man injured … but for blisters, haw!”

  Lewrie turned his head to glare at Greenleaf, brows furrowed, and his usually merry blue eyes gone Arctic grey, and Lt. Greenleaf shrank into his coat and found something important to see to.

  “Mister Upchurch, you’re in charge of signals?” Lewrie called out.

  “Aye, sir!” Midshipman Upchurch answered from the taffrails aft.

  “Make Dis-Continue The Action, then spell out Recall,” Lewrie said, looking up the coast where Bristol Lass lay at anchor, waiting for her boats and the soldiers to return to her. Before they had left Milazzo, Lewrie had made sure that Col. Tarrant and his officers had a simplified book of code flag signals.

  * * *

  “Vigilance is making a signal hoist, sir!” an Ensign from the Ninety-Fourth piped up. “It is Recall.”

  “And about time, too,” Col. Tarrant said with a firm nod as he peered over the side of the bridge into the gorge to see Marines and sailors gathering up their tools, casting off coats and shirts, and making a weary way down to the boats at the foot of the gorge. “Carson, run tell Captain Meacham to shift his company up the road closer to where we came ashore. Skirmish order, just to be wary, mind. Wiley, let’s get your men ready to haul the nets up against the bottom of the spans, soon as the Navy says they’re fused and ready.”

  “Yes, sir,” Capt. Wiley replied.

  “Ah, Signore Tomasso,” Tarrant said, turning to his English-speaking interpreter, “we’re about ready to prepare the charges and light the fuses. You might tell Signore ‘Spada’ that he might move his men back to a safe distance.” Tarrant shook his head at the pretension of the partisan leader’s insistence upon keeping his real name secret, choosing instead “Sword” as a sobriquet.

  Tomasso relayed that to his leader, then engaged in some more palaver before saying “Signore Spada, he ask again if you can spare some muskets, Signore Colonnello.”

  “Tell him that I cannot spare any at the moment,” Tarrant said with a moue, “and that if I could, only fourty cartridges could be given him, and then they would be useless. Better for him to take sixty-three calibre muskets from the French, for ammunition for them is closer to hand.”

  As he waited for that to be explained to “Spada,” Tarrant had an idea.

  “Tell him that I will relay his best wishes to a fellow by the name of Quill,” Tarrant continued, inspired, “who lives in Messina. He is a British agent who urgently wishes to speak with, and aid, anyone in Calabria who fights for liberation from the French. Send a letter to him by smuggler, or send a messenger to speak directly with him. Mister Quill can arrange arms and ammunition for you, and he and your leader can make arrangements for one of our ships to come meet you at some safe place to deliver what you need.”

  Tomasso’s face lit up at the promise of aid, and after he had relayed all that to his leader, so did Spada’s face.

  “Hoy, the bridge!” someone shouted from the gorge below.

  “Yes?” Captain Wiley shouted back.

  “Ready t’tail on them lines an’ haul taut when we tells ya!” Gunner’s Mate Finney bawled aloft.

  * * *

  Finally! Lewrie thought with rising excitement as the barges with the Marines and sailors returned aboard. One barge remained on the beach, bow barely resting on the sand and gravel, oarsmen holding their oars aloft, ready to stroke away. Lewrie raised his day-glass to study the activities. He could see kegs of gunpowder stacked by the foot of the bridge pillar, dirt and gravel packed in heaps to contain the blasts even a little bit. The cargo nets with more kegs of powder were inching upwards, with his shore party carefully spooling out long slow-match fuses as the nets rose.

  Lewrie raised his glass to study the bridge and its approaches; the raggedly-dressed partisans had gone south for safe vantage points, now almost invisible in the scrubby trees and bushes. The soldiers of the 94th had marched away to return to their beach and recovery, leaving only a small party to do the hauling, and Lewrie recognised Col. Tarrant, who had shed his stovepipe shako for a feather-adorned bicorne. Some last lashings, and even the men atop the bridge took up their arms and trotted north away from the blasts to come.

  Lewrie pulled out his pocket watch, begrudging the fact that it was now three quarters past eight in the morning, well into the Forenoon Watch.

  Now there were only three men left in the gorge, Gunner’s Mate Finney, Yeomen of The Powder Gullick and Yates, each with a leftover torch in their hands. They dipped them to the fuses as one, tossed the torches aside, and ran for the boat, bounding down the boulder-strewn gorge to the sand, their feet raising spurts of beach to fling themselves over the bows of the barge even as it was shoved off and stroked astern, so they splashed knee-deep through the surf before getting away. Once in water deep enough, the oarsmen stroked about, turning the barge bows-out, then putting their backs into their oars, raising a bow wave and rushing seaward as if the Hounds of Hell were gnawing at the transom.

  Three slow-match fuses were fuming, emitting clouds of smoke as the fires slowly made their spitting, fuming way up towards the slung kegs, to the kegs packed round the pillar.

/>   “How long now?” Lt. Grace wondered aloud.

  “Captain Whitehead said they estimated ten minute fuses,” Lt. Rutland told him. “Soon now … if God’s just.”

  “And everything works,” Lt. Greenleaf quipped.

  “It must,” Rutland said. “Don’t be a croaker.”

  Lewrie pulled out his pocket watch, again, his attention torn ’twixt the passage of time, and the view ashore in his telescope. The barge with the last shore party was almost alongside, and yet the fuses continued to shorten and sputter, closer and closer to the kegs.

  Come on, come on, come on! Lewrie fumed; Go bang, please!

  The smoke and red-hot glows on the fuses reached the suspended nets, and the kegs, at last, and the explosions should have come, but a long breath or two later, there was still nothing …

  Baroom! and a massive cloud of powder smoke erupted under the bridge, followed a moment later by another Whoom! under the northern span, as flame-shot belches of stone soared aloft, lighter material pattering all round the bridge, onto the beach, and raining down onto the sea, raising great splashes. Then came a last gigantic explosion under the southern span, and the whole bridge and gorge were smothered with a towering, spreading blanket of gunsmoke!

  Vigilance erupted in cheers of joy as her crew celebrated that destruction, tossing hats in the air, her rigging crowded with hands seeking a better view, and even Commission Sea Officers whooped and huzzahed as loudly and as enthusiastically as the Midshipmen and the ship’s boys.

  For long minutes there was nothing to see ashore as the smoke slowly dissipated and blew inland on a light sea wind, long enough for Lewrie to look to the north towards Bristol Lass, where barges were alongside her on both beams, disgorging Tarrant’s two companies to safety aboard their transport.

  “Ehm, sir,” Lt. Farley drew his attention back.

  “Hey?” Lewrie said, returning his telescope to the bridge.

  “It, ah…” Farley said, coughing into his fist.

  The smoke had finally blown clear enough to reveal what they’d accomplished, wisps of smoke still rising as if they’d lit a fire.

  The north span of the bridge was almost gone, leaving a stub of roadway from each end, loosened stones still dribbling away to clash into the gorge like the slow fall of leaves from a winter-killed tree. The south span was also gone, though a roadway jutted from the end on the edge of the gorge.

  “It appears we’ve blown a gap of at least thirty feet on the north end, sir,” Sailing Master Wickersham opined, “but only about twenty feet on the south span. It could be bridgeable, with enough timber. The ah, pillar, though…”

  The bastard still stood! Stones in the outermost course where they had managed to pry openings had been blasted away, scattered in the gorge, leaving greater, ragged gouges, with the inner course of stones blackened. But, the base had not been harmed, and the bastard still stood in its ancient Roman-engineered defiance!

  “Well, shit!” Lewrie spat. “Just damn my eyes. Mine arse on a band-box!”

  Now, what the Hell do we do? he asked himself, pounding an impotent fist on the lee bulwarks’ cap-rails; What we do best, I s’pose.

  “Mister Farley, beat to Quarters,” he snapped. “Man the larb’d lower-deck twenty-four-pounders. If we can’t blow it up, we’ll have to pound it down with roundshot!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Cast off your guns!” Lt. Greenleaf’s voice roared on the lower gun-deck, barely muffled by distance below. The young Marine drummer and flautist rattled off the Long Roll and a squeaky rendition of “Hey, Johnny Cope.” Wooden-wheeled gun truck carriages rumbled over the oak decks as the bowsings of the massive 24-pounder cannon were loosed to allow them be hauled inboard so gun crews could withdraw wood tompions, and prepare to load their charges.

  “Mister Page?” Lewrie called out to the nearest Midshipman, “Do you go below and inform Mister Greenleaf to aim small, fire gun-by-gun from bow to stern, and the hands are to consider this a competition, with tobacco and full measures of rum for successful crews.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Page replied before dashing for the ladderways.

  That’s one way t’put a gloss on things, Lewrie thought, still in dis-belief that all that gunpowder hadn’t brought the damned bridge down; Bloody damned Romans, hah! And I used t’like Latin at school!

  The 24-pounders were charged with serge cartridge bags of gunpowder, wads, then shotted, with a second wad inserted with a thump of ramrods to seat everything firm. “Run out your guns!” was ordered, and Vigilance rumbled and faintly vibrated as thirteen loaded cannon and their truck carriages lurched outwards to thud against the stout timbers of the hull, black, menacing barrels projecting from the gun-ports. Recoil tackle was overhauled for safety in equal bights either side of the carriages, so that when fired, the carriages would rush straight back without slewing and hurting someone.

  “Prick cartridge!” Lt. Greenleaf bellowed, followed by “Prime!” and sharp tools were jammed down the touch-holes, the flintlock strikers’ pans were filled with fine-mealed ignition powder, the firelocks not yet drawn back to cock.

  “Take aim!”

  Secondary men of each gun crew used crow-levers to shift right or left, lifting the carriages an inch or two off the deck to align the crude-cut notch sights, and the wood quoin blocks beneath the guns’ breeches were either shoved deeper to level the barrels, or withdrawn to elevate them, and gun captains hopped, knelt, and squinted to lay their best aim.

  “Lower deck ready, sir!” Midshipman Page shouted, panting from his exertion as he regained the weather decks.

  “Very well,” Lewrie said, extending his telescope, “my respects to Mister Greenleaf, and he is to open upon the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir!” Page piped up, dis-appointed that he could not stay on deck to witness the fall of shot, but had to dash below again to relay that order.

  “Number One gun … fire!” Greenleaf yelled, and the forward-most 24-pounder exploded in a great gush of amber flame and an immense cloud of yellow-white powder smoke, instantly blotting out most of the view. And, with the light offshore breeze, it seemingly took forever for that bank of smoke to thin and drift shoreward. Half a dozen telescopes were snapped to their owners’ eyes.

  “Clean miss, it appears, sir,” the First Officer, Mr. Farley opined, lowering his glass.

  “Try Number Two gun,” Lewrie snapped, hoping that his gunners would recover their former skills. In his last ship, the Sapphire, his gunners had gotten quite accurate. Vigilance’s gunners had practiced aimed fire at his insistence, but of late, they had had little reason to stay competent.

  Boom! and Vigilance drummed and echoed to Number Two gun’s discharge. Once more, the target disappeared behind a rolling fogbank of smoke. There was a faint, far-off Spang! from shore, though, raising hopes—but that, they could see a minute later, was the result of a near-miss that had struck in the gorge beyond the bridge, the roundshot cracking itself into shards on the boulders, leaving glaring white scars on the dark stone.

  “Carry on, Mister Greenleaf!” Lewrie shouted. “Even if it takes all bloody day!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Greenleaf shouted back, not quite as enthusiastic as before. “Number Three gun … fire!”

  Some more last-instant fiddling with crow-levers and the quoin block, the gun captain nervous under the glare of an officer and the jeering, scoffing attention of competitors, and … Boom!

  Lost in the roar and the gush of powder smoke, there came a wee Crump! from shore, to which everyone on deck cocked an ear, peering intently to see the result.

  “I think I see … yes, a hit, by God!” Lt. Farley cheered.

  A few feet below the top of the pillar, on the left-hand side, there was a gap in the ancient stonework where a large block had been driven in and knocked askew.

  “Number Four gun … fire!”

  On down the larboard battery the firing went ’til all thirteen 24-pounders had tried their skill, and there had been
only three hits on the bridge pillar, the last from the after-most gun knocking down a square stone block which took three more with it as it fell into the gorge.

  “Now you’ve your eyes in, pound it down, lads!” Lewrie cried, and the re-loaded Number One gun far up forward erupted in flames and smoke, and there came yet another Crump! as solid iron roundshot struck the bridge pillar. When the smoke cleared, the top of the pillar now looked to be about two feet shorter than it had been, and jaggedly erose.

  “Deck, there!” a lookout in the mainmast cross-trees shouted down. “Enemy soldiers on the road! Cavalry t’th’ north, an’ infantry t’th’ south!”

  “Took ’em long enough,” Lewrie scoffed as he pulled out his pocket watch, and was faintly alarmed to note that it was half past ten of the morning. Damme, he thought; this is like ‘Church work,’ it goes hellish-slow!

  “Could we take them under fire, sir?” Lt. Grace eagerly asked.

  “Only if they’re stupid enough to stand round what’s left of the bridge ends, Mister Grace,” Lewrie told him with a grin. “Best would be grapeshot from the carronades, but they’d only reach halfway to the area, more’s the pity.”

  “The upper-deck eighteen-pounders, though, sir,” Grace pointed out. “We could put the wind up them.”

  “Only if they interfere, sir,” Lewrie decided, “the main thing is to bring the pillar down.” Though, as he turned back to look at the shore, he could not miss the expectant expressions on the faces of the upper-gun deck crews, perched along the sail-tending gangway and bulwarks.

  Boom! went the Number Five gun below, and, when the gunsmoke had cleared, there was a large hole in the pillar’s seaward face where several blocks of stone had been loosened, exposing an inner course of stone. Number Six gun’s captain took longer to fire, making everyone bristle with impatience, then finally let loose. And when the smoke cleared, the ship rang with cheers at the sight of the inner course of stone tumbling away into the gorge, with a flood of rubble and earth cascading down with the blocks as if the pillar was gushing entrails.