The King`s Commission

There was a volley of musketry of such volume and intensity that only a company of infantry could have made it. A larboard waister came tumbling down from the forebraces to sprawl across the breech of a gun, his face shot away and his brains oozing and sizzling on the hot metal.

Alan ducked to look out a gunport once more. Capricieuse was close-aboard, not fifty yards off, her bulwarks lined with men as though her last chance was to board Desperate and take her in a hot hand-to-hand action.

'Quoins out!' Alan yelled to his gunners. 'Load grape and canister atop ball! Cease fire and stand by for a broadside!'

'Double-shotted, zurr!' a gun-captain called back.

'Worm 'em out of there and reduce your powder charges! I'll not have another burst barrel!'

'Got grape, but no canister!' another shouted.

'Fuck it! Shoot out your loads!' Alan thundered, at the same time grabbing the nearest powder monkey on his way below with an empty leather cylinder. 'Tell Mister Tulley in the magazine I need grape and canister and reduced charges. I'm going to triple-shot the guns!'

That brought Tulley up from below in a rush, his ginger hair sticking up in all directions and his sun-burned complexion glowing at the danger to his precious artillery.

'Damme, sir, you'll burst my barrels! Where's the master gunner? I'll see him and…'

'He's dead and gone, Mister Tulley,' Alan said brutally. 'Now we have a Frog frigate at pistol-shot and I want round-shot, grape and canister with reduced charges or we're boarded and taken. So what are you going to do to help me?'

'Excess loaders from the starboard battery, fetch canister!' the burly gunner's mate said, his face paling with shock at hearing of his senior's demise, and the straits they were in. 'Boys, tell the Yeoman of the Powder Room to issue reduced charges! My God, Mister Lewrie, my merciful God!'

The sound of cannon fire had ceased. Either the French had stripped their gun deck of men for a boarding party, or they were also loading a massive broadside and were waiting for the proper time to fire it into Desperate to shatter resistance just before they came surging over the rails.

'Let's go, let's go!' Alan prodded as the case-shot and grape bags came up, along with the half-size saluting charges. With so much iron-mongery crammed into the muzzles, a larger powder measure would truly burst the barrels, and at such close range, a smaller amount of powder would be preferable anyway. Low velocity shot did not shoot through scantlings clean, but bulged and ravaged them, producing more splinters that ripped men apart, creating more havoc.

The midshipman was back, this time not so polite.

'The captain wants to know what the deuce you're playing at. Mister Lewrie, sir?' the boy wailed. 'They are close aboard and Mister Railsford demands you fire into them before they grapple to us!'

'Triple-shotted broadside, go tell them!' Alan growled, pacing past the boy as if he wasn't there. 'Go, get aft, you minnikin!'

'Charge yer guns… shot yer guns, round-shot, then grape, then case-shot…' Tulley was directing with the voice of a bawling steer, his face its usual red flush once more.

'Mister Lewrie!' the second young midshipman yelled, dashing to his side.

'Holy hell, will you stop pestering me?'

'Mister Railsford orders you prepare to repel boarders!'

'Run out!' Tulley screeched, and the hands tailed on the tackles to draw their pieces across the deck with the rumble of a cattle stampede as the small wooden wheels of the trucks squealed and drummed.

'Gun-captains to remain, tackle-men and loaders take arms and prepare to repel boarders!' Alan cried. 'Tulley, give 'em the broadside and then bring your hands to join me. Let's go, men!'

'Prick yer cartridges… prime yer guns…' Tulley droned on, as the excess hands dug into the weapons tubs for cutlasses and boarding axes, stripped the pikes from the beckets around the bases of the masts, and flung open the arms chests for heavy (and usually inaccurate) pistols. Once more Alan was at a disadvantage, for he did not have any of his pistols with him. He took a tomahawk-sized boarding axe for his off-hand and stuck it into his breeches, unwilling to try his luck with a Sea Pattern pistol again.

'Up to the gangway, quickly now!'

'Take yer aim… stand by…' Tulley called as they scrambled up to the larboard bulwark behind the Marines, who were still volleying into the foe. Sedge dashed past him on his way forward to join the youthful Burney to protect the fo'c'sle. Alan looked back to see Railsford bringing all the afterguard and mizzen mast crew to the break of the quarterdeck to defend the after portion of the ship. Musket bayonets glinted dully from those hands who had gotten a chance to break out the long-arms. Pike heads bristled like medieval infantry ranks, and cutlasses fanned the air as men loosened their arms for the bloody work to come. The French lined their own rails, striped-jerseyed sailors and men in check shirts much like British seamen, naval infantry in blue coats with red facings, with here and there an officer in blue coat edged with gold oak-leaf lace and epaulettes, with red waist-coats.

'Fire!' Tulley finally shouted, and everyone ducked below the bulwarks and nettings as the guns erupted so loudly, avoiding the rush of hot gases and the clouds of smoke, and the whining, ricocheting bits of grape-shot and canisters of musket balls as each piece was turned into a scatter-gun.

Alan stood back up just in time to see Railsford leaping onto the after bulwarks and waving his small-sword in the air. 'Boarders!' he screamed. 'Away boarders!'

With a lusty roar, Desperate's crew went up onto the bulwarks themselves. Grapnels had been thrown by the French, and British implements flew across to complete lashing the hulls together. Nettings came down as they surged across, leaping the churning mill-race of white water between the ships.

There wasn't much opposition. That final broadside fired at the highest angle of a naval carriage gun had shattered the upper-works of Capricieuse, ripping the rails to knee height and scything boarders into mangled meat. Alan landed atop the torso of a French marine who had lost belly and intestines, his feet slipping in entrails and excrement as he staggered to the inner side of the riddled gangway and fetched up on the rope railing overlooking the waist of the gun deck.

A weak volley of bullets fanned the air and he jerked his head back quickly. There was resistance forward, but Sedge and Lieutenant Peck of the Marines were dealing with that. There was a large party of Marines on the frigate's quarterdeck, but nothing much between, the waist having been stripped of men, and those men mostly were now dead or dying, the few still on their feet tossing down their weapons and raising their hands in surrender, too shocked by the sudden carnage and boarding to wish to continue fighting.

'Take the larboard gangway!' Alan shouted, pointing with his hanger at a knot of men still armed on the other side of the ship.

He dashed out onto one of the wide cross-deck beams that spanned the waist and reached the far side. A man confronted him with a cutlass, but before he could engage, a hole sprang up in his chest and he tumbled to the deck. Alan whirled to engage a second, but a boarding axe sprouted from that man's shoulder, thrown by one of his men, and that foe fell down as well, screaming in agony. The rest threw up their hands quickly and congregated into a submissive knot by the main chains.

'Stap me, that wuz easy,' a Marine corporal said at Alan's side. 'Jus' 'bout wot ye'd expect from Frogs, ah reckon, sir.'

'Disarm the buggers before they get their wits back, corporal,' Alan shrugged, sheathing his still unbloodied sword. 'Herd 'em up forward with that other lot and don't forget to pat 'em down for knives and such.' The corporal's eyes lit up at that order, for it would be a good excuse to loot the prisoners of what little value they carried on their persons, regulations be damned.

'Ah 'spects ye're right, sir, ah'll atten' ta that direckly.'

Alan strode aft to the quarterdeck where Railsford seemed to be in complete charge. The first lieutenant had a bloody gash on his head from which gore still oozed, but his blade was properly slimed with the life's blood of a foe, and his face was split open in a magnificent and triumphant grin. There were French dead laying about like rabbits underfoot all over the quarterdeck, over which he paced unconcernedly.

'I give you joy of this day, Mister Lewrie!' he shouted.

'And to you, sir,' Alan replied, studiously trying to avoid the sight of so many men reduced to bloody offal.

'God, what a victory!' Railsford went on. 'An old tub such as Desperate taking a 5th Rate with twenty-eight guns. How's your French?'