Havoc`s Sword

CHAPTER TWELVE

Pot this'un, too, sir?' Lt. Langlie asked as a saucy schooner hared off to leeward below their bows, about half a mile off.

Lewrie balefully looked at the potential prey, then forrud one more time, juggling speed and time. Three minutes more, he reckoned, and Proteus would just about be in close range of the French frigate. His gun crews had both batteries loaded and already run out ready for firing, ready… prepared in their minds, as well. To dash over to the starboard side, lever, shift, and take aim at the schooner that was opening the range rapidly, then take time to swab out, charge, reload, and run out, then dash back to larboard and just get their breath back before engaging a real foe… no, it'd only unsettle them. At that moment, they were oak-steady, whilst his view through his glass showed a French crew still at sixes and sevens; all atwitter and thinking dire, fretful thoughts, he hoped.

'Don't think so, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie decided. 'A waste of shot and powder. Mister Larkin?' he called to his seediest midshipman.

'Aye, sor?' the little Bog-Irish crisply replied in his 'Paddy' accent, lifting his right hand to knuckle his hat.

'Keep a weather-eye on yon schooner, and sing out if she comes back on the wind,' Lewrie ordered.

'Aye, Oi… I will, sor, Sir,' Larkin amended, blushing.

'Very good, Mister Larkin. Now, gentlemen, let's be about it.'

Lewrie said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. 'I think we will take a page from their book of tactics this morning, gentlemen. Mister Catterall? Your first broadside from the larboard battery will be on the up-xo\ … quoins out. Take her masts and rigging down, at about two cables' range. Second broadside, you will fire on the pent of the scend, double-shotted, 'twixt wind and water, and hull her from then on.'

'Aye aye, sir!'

No matter how sternly a British warship was disciplined, and no matter how cool-headed her people were to act when at Quarters, during a battle between ships, the men could not help but snicker, grin, and nudge each other, were they about to serve their foes something novel, something clever and unexpected, and this time was no exception. Alan Lewrie could almost grin in expectation, too, thinking about bar-shot, chain-shot, and bags of grape-shot waiting in the hard iron barrels of his guns. A few hands took time to look back at him as he stood over them at the break of the quarterdeck, beaming with pleasure at his sly-boots knackiness. Ship's boy-servants crouched [round the companionway hatches and on the ladders that led below with leather cartridge cases ready for the second broadside; gun-captains had already selected their roundest, truest 12-pounder shot- two per barrel for a second double-shotted broadside-the best from the garlands, without filed-away rust patches, the tiny dimples and slices that would have been ignored, or hidden in the rush of battle by an extra glob of blacking, but that would send them caroming off-aim when loosed.

'Brail up the main course, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said, with an upward glance. 'Wind's freshening. We still 'cut a fine feather' without it.' The last cast of the log had shown nigh ten knots, and steering Sou'east with the Trades fine on the larboard quarter, their frigate would still keep a goodly speed, perhaps a whole eight knots. Proteus was aroar with the slick bustle of her passage, her bow waves twin, creaming 'mustachioes' that hissed-sang down her flanks. 'Four cables, now, do you judge it, Mister Winwood?'

'Under four, sir,' the Sailing Master responded, after a ponder and a squint or two. 'Nearing three.'

'Three… seven hundred and twenty yards, hmmm. Ready to come to Due South, Mister Langlie, when I call. Two cables is our boy.'

Lewrie lifted his glass for a final look at their foe. Topmen were sliding down from aloft, her fighting-tops were still being manned, but her scurrying crew was now mostly out of sight behind or below her bulwarks, slaving away at her starboard guns, most-likely. There! He saw the frigate's gun-ports begin to hinge upward; the muzzles of her great-guns here and there started to emerge in jerks and twitches.

They aimin' high? Lewrie asked himself. That's their usual wont t'cripple first. Usually do it much sooner, were they ready to fight. Take our masts down, then close. But we're already closed, ain't we?

'Two and a half, Captain,' Mr. Winwood said, tenser and edgier.

'Take aim, Mister Catterall!' Lewrie barked. 'Take careful aim. No rushing, men. Be sure of your shots, with nothing wasted. By God just 'cause you wish t'hear some more loud bangs, this lovely mornin'! Slack in those trigger lines, now. Easy…!'

¹¹ Wait for it!' Lt. Catterall was wailing, sword held high, and almost on his tip-toes in expectation.

'Two, sir,' the experienced Winwood adjudged, at last.

'By broadside… on the up-roll… fire/' Lewrie bellowed.

Over Proteus rolled, with her sails straining wind-full from astern, slowly and majestically, larboard side dipping then rising up, to linger for a breath or two, pent atop the gentle scend of inshore waters. 'Fire/' Lt. Catterall howled, slashing down dramatically to the deck, almost bowed from the waist.

'Helm up a point, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie shouted in the roar as all her guns went off together. 'Due South, again!'

'Aye-aye, sir!' Langlie cried back, his voice lost in the din.

The larboard horizon disappeared in a sudden cumulus of powder smoke that the wind shoved back in their faces, keeping pace with them as Proteus bowled onwards, but slowly thinning to reveal…

'Damn my eyes, just lovely shootin'!' Lewrie crowed eagerly by the larboard bulwark. 'Choke on that, you snail-eatin' bastards!' he said in a chortle that didn't carry too far, filled with an impatient, leg-jiggly boy's elation, as if ready to titter or giggle with the joy of a Christmas Eve's anticipation.

The French frigate's upper masts and sails had been riddled and shattered. Her main top-masts over the fighting-top had been sheered away completely, hanging to windward. Her mizen tops'l had split open and the sail- less cro'jack yard sagged in two, in a downward vee. Her spanker had been shot free of its sheets and was winged out so far that Lewrie was seeing it edge-on of its leach. Ladder-like shrouds showed gaps where star-shot or chain-shot had scissored them above and below the fighting-top platforms, which had been swept clean of sharpshooters and swivel-guns. Her fore top-masts swayed forward ten degrees out of true, her mizen top-masts were slowly whip-sawing at each long roll.

'By broadside.. .fire!' Lt. Catterall shrieked as the frigates fell together at an angle, gun-drunk and lost in battle lust.

The French reply broadside, rushed and disorganised, was ragged. Heavy round-shot howled past in satanic moans and keens. Amid the gun-smoke, tall white feathers of spray leaped skyward as some balls struck short and caromed upwards over the deck, missing bulwarks and attacking Proteus in her rigging by accident, unintentionally cracking upon masts or spars, or pillow-thumping through rigidly wind-arced sails.

Even so, there were a few parrot-squawks, the quick rrawrks! of shot striking home ' 'twixt wind and water,' along with the yelps and shrieks of alarm or sudden pain and disbelief as sailors and Marines were showered with iron shards or flying splinters, some as long as a man's forearm and half as thick!

'Well, I'm damned!' Lt. Langlie cried, wiping his face, looking outward as the gun-smoke thinned once more. 'Sir! 'Less she bears up abeam the wind, we'll bow-rake her!'

The French frigate had already taken a fearful drubbing at that second broadside. Great shot-holes along her