Fleet at Portsmouth have to stop them? Or even get word of their coming in time to…?
Takin' this lot on's like a horsefly deliberately landin' on a game-table; sure t'get swatted! Lewrie speculated. Has t'be done, no error. Growl ye may, but go ye must, and all that…
'Cah-rrisstt!' was Lewrie's sudden, un-captainly comment. And a rather loud comment it was too.
In his telescope's ocular, he'd just discovered the fore-end of a ship of the line which wasn't crossing right-to-left, sailing obediently in the battle-line. He was looking at the beak-head and figurehead, the cutwater and frothing bow-wave below an out-thrust bowsprit and jib-boom of a warship-pointing right at him!
'Hands wear ship!' Lewrie yelped, eyes wide in disbelief, as he lowered his glass in shock. 'Helm hard a'weather!' Seen with normal vision, un-enlarged, wasn't much better as she bored direct for his Jester. HMS Captain, third but last from the tail end of the line, was swinging out of line alee and loomed close enough to trample them, if Jester didn't get out of her way!
'The Captain,' Mr. Midshipman Hyde gawped.
'Commodore Nelson,' Mr. Midshipman Spendlove supplied.
'That… bugger!' Lewrie opined, as his crew sprang to loosen braces and heads'l sheets. He heard Lieutenant Knolles and Bosun Cony barking urgent orders, felt the deck shift under his feet as his ship heeled to wear about, falling off the wind, spared a second to observe that things were well in hand. Then spared a longer glower at Nelson and his two-decker.
No one left the sacred order of the line of battle, no one, not ever! The Fighting Instructions were nigh to Gospel, and God pity the fool who disobeyed them. To turn away leeward, away from presenting a broadside to those Spanish warships, that could be called Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy-a hanging offence!
'Bugger!' Commander Lewrie snarled again. Not only was Nelson swinging clear of danger… he was forcing him to swing clear too!
Jester had been a cable to leeward of the line when HMS Captain began her turn, a fairly wide one to retain her speed. Being a smaller ship with smaller sails than a liner, she could cut a smaller radius of turn. So they ended up close together, once both ships had worn about to larboard tack, with the scant winds crossing their left-hand sides, for Captain was standing on almost Easterly to build back up to speed. They were within shouting distance.
Lewrie stood by the larboard bulwarks, hands fisted and akimbo on his hips, wondering just how much of what he had to say to a man who had just quit the line he could get away with.
Damn 'im, he's still a Commodore! Lewrie fumed to himself.
'Hoy, Jester.1' came a high-pitched, slightly nasal shout from a runtish little dandy by Captains starboard rails. The dandy's hands were cupped round his mouth. 'Follow me into clear air for signals!'
'Hoy… sir!' Lewrie replied, deliberately delaying his 'sir.' 'And what…?'
What the bloody Hell you think yer playin' at? was Lewrie's real question. He amended it though, regretting the necessity.
'Where are you going… sir?' he bellowed instead.
'No time to explain!' Nelson hallooed back, sounding infinitely pleased with himself, damn' near laughing with joy in point o' fact! 'Before they join both bodies astern of us in the Nor'east! Follow me, Jester! We're off to glorrryyy!'
'Cack-handed, brainless bloody… cavalry charge… pip-squeak!' Lewrie grumbled in a harsh mutter, his face stretched into a toadying rictus of a smile. 'Death or glory, mine arse! Mine arse on a bloody… bandbox.1'
Then the Captain, with her longer waterline and taller, wider sails aloft, was surging past, beginning to turn even more Westward as wind filled her rigging and her greater speed returned.
'Do we follow him, sir?' Lieutenant Knolles wondered, still aghast.
'Christ, I don't… Christ! He's…!'
Captain was now aiming to pass between the last two ships of the line. Diadem and Excellent, to shorten the distance she'd have to sail to engage the entire Spanish Fleet!
'He's gone lunatick!' Lewrie breathed in awe.
But he's right… damn 'im! Lewrie had to admit to himself. Do we hope Collingwood's on a run o' luck today and doesn't collide!
'Have a prayer…' Sailing Master Mr. Buchanon moaned, crossing his thick fingers for luck as Captain Collingwood's Excellent seemed to shy, dithering whether to shorten sail, back the tops'ls to brake… or haul her wind and leave the line too.
'Aye, we'll follow, Mister Knolles,' Lewrie sighed. 'Well alee of Excellent, mind. Somebody has to do signals. Old Jarvy to Nelson or vice versa. Clap him in irons…? This gap's too narrow, and closing. They'll merge, if we don't… get past us without a real fight. Haul taut to windward, Mister Knolles, course Nor-Nor'west.'
'Aye, sir!'
'And Mister Buchanon? Do you keep those fingers crossed.'
'Oh, aye, Cap'um,' Buchanon rather soberly assured him. 'Now 'til Epiphany, if 'at's what it takes. God help us, we're in for th' most confounded scrape!'
Lewrie shared a quick, quirky, and sardonic smile with his stolid Sailing Master, then turned away to look outward once more. The small batch of Spanish ships to leeward were almost level with them now and level with the tail end of the British line, which was still labouriously wheeling about one after the other… at a point which seemed to Lewrie's fevered imagination to be too damn' far South to be of any comfort.
To the West, Captain Troubridge's Culloden, at the head of that wheeling line, was almost level with the rear of the Spanish main body. Again, too far to windward to be of much immediate use to them. Apart from the fleet and its palls of gunfire, they were in clearer air, in undisturbed, un-roiled winds which cupped the sails taut and full, the two lone ships who'd disobeyed. Now going like Cambridge coaches!
Aft… Was Excellent dithering again, he wondered? Coming off the wind to wear, he hoped most fervently? Was Diadem too…?
Forrud-over Jester's larboard bows. There lay the Spaniards at which they charged, like naive house-terriers at an enraged bull on their first day of a country weekend. A very menacing and formidable pack of Dons they looked too! Though not in any particular order, he also noted. Though it must be said that at that moment Lewrie would have grasped at any straw of encouragement, no matter how frail. They were bunched, more like three ragged lines overlapping each other, and not a well-ordered in-line-ahead. Earlier, Jervis's line had shifted from two cruising lines into one battle-line, crossing the Dons' bows, while they'd come to do battle in three or four columns, as if to bore through in several places at once. But they'd been shot out of that plan-if plan it had been.
They could only fire the guns of those which were nearest, Lewrie grimly decided-only the first six or so! That, unfortunately, seemed to be more than enough to swat Captain away, for it included that four-decker which that moment erupted again in a ragged broadside he could almost count.
He quit when his tally rose over 60-odd guns along her starboard beam-times two equaled a sum too terrible to contemplate. He felt like a headache was coming on.
Yet, like a city-bred terrier too stupid of the consequences of tackling a huge farm animal, Captain opened fire as she neared the middle of that nearest line-of-battle, delivering a well-timed broadside from her 32-pounders and 18-pounders that pummeled her target like an Alpine avalanche of boulders.
