The King`s Commission

'Bloody awful, sir,' Alan told him, beginning to realize just what an improbable thing they had just pulled off.

'Who'd a thought such a thing possible?' Railsford enthused at some length. 'Of course, yon thirty-two helped them make up their mind to strike. But ours is the principal effort, and there's glory enough to share.'

Alan noted a British frigate of thirty-two guns falling downwind to them rapidly from the main anchorage, possibly the ship he had spotted before fire had been exchanged. Lashed as she was to Desperate, Capricieuse would have been made a prize even if she had emerged victorious over their puny efforts.

'Here, I can't make out a word this queer-nabs is trying to say, not half of it, anyway,' Railsford said, gesturing casually with his sword to a knot of French officers, and a suitably senior man jumped back with a start as the tip of that bloody blade got within scratching distance of his nose. 'I thought you might help interpret.'

'Pardon a mois, monsieurs, parle vous l'Anglais?' he asked hopefully, doffing his hat to the startled senior officer who seemed to be in command, but that worthy merely pinched his nostrils and went into a positive flood of rapid Frog, and stepped back, snapping his fingers to summon a junior officer.

'Monsieurs, permittez-vous, ici l'troisiиme lieutenant de Marine Royale… 'ow you say, three officeur? I 'ave en peu English,' the junior officer volunteered.

'Bloody good,' Railsford beamed.

'Charles Auguste Baron de Crillart, а votre servis. Notre capitaine la frйgate Capricieuse, Jules Marquis de Rosset.' The Frenchman handled the introductions with all of them bowing in congй and doffing their cocked hats. 'My capitaine 'e say 'e is 'ave tres honneur to be striking to you, monsieurs.'

In sign of their victory, a Blue Ensign was hoisted on a mainmast signal halyard, with the white and gold Bourbon banner displayed below it, and the crews of both British ships raised a great cheer. The French captain screwed his face up into a grimace worthy of a half-frozen mastiff and undipped his smallsword from his belt frog to hand it over with a polished gesture.

With de Crillart translating as best he could, arrangements were made for quartering of prisoners, the care of the many French wounded, and the Christian disposal of the dead. Railsford had to protest that their captain should not have to surrender his sword, since he had put up such a spirited resistance, and after more florid speeches, this privilege was extended to the surviving commission officers as well. De Rosset then bowed his way to the ladders leading to his quarters as though leaving the presence of royalty where one never gave the monarch the sight of a human back, and went below, probably to see what he had been looted of while honor was being satisfied.

'Thank God that's over,' Railsford said softly as they turned to go back aboard Desperate. 'The prize isn't that damaged, but our poor ship was knocked about pretty badly. Get me a report from the carpenter, and then see who's left in charge of the various departments.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Desperate had indeed been knocked about; she looked as though she had been eaten at by giant rats, her bulwarks jagged and her decks ruptured and sprung. Nettings, rigging and sails hung about her like a funeral shroud, and those spars and sails still aloft had been shot through so completely a brisk breeze would have brought them down in a total ruin. The sound of chain-pumps clanking made a mournful tempo as streams of flood-water gushed from her. Men picked about her decks to find the wounded or the dead, and the sailmaker and his crew were already at work on the quarterdeck sewing up shrouds for burials.

A quick trip below into the holds assured Alan that their ship would not sink, though the repairs and patches had not stopped the leaks but had only slowed them to a manageable in-flow.

'We'll be at the pumps all the way ta Antigua, sir, but we've got a chance, iffen we could fother a patch er two,' 'Chips' told him.

That seemed good encouragement, which lasted only until Lewrie got to the surgery on the lower decks, and Dorne gave him the bad news.

'Mister Monk has passed over,' Dorne began, in between suffering seamen as the leather cover over the midshipmen's chests was sluiced clean of blood and torn flesh with a bucket of seawater. 'The loss of blood was too great, I'm afraid. And our captain was struck down in his moment of greatest triumph as well.'

'Dead?' Alan asked, ready to spew at the sights and smells and sounds of the surgery. Could we be lucky enough to be rid of him? he thought.

'No, praise a merciful God, merely splintered, and if suppuration does not set in, he stands a fair chance for recovery. Hoist him up here,' Dorne directed as a moaning body was laid out on the table. 'That arm shall have to come off. Who is he, one of ours?'

'A French seaman, I believe,' Cheatham the youngish purser informed him after looking at the pile of clothing on the deck that had been cut off the unfortunate. Cheatham took a swig of rum from a cup, to steady his own nerves, then offered it to the Frenchman's lips for him to suck on as an anodyne.

'Wondered where he was,' Alan muttered, shivering with chill at the sight of the man's rivened arm, and the instruments that Dorne was removing from a bucket of bloody water for reuse.

'Who?'

'Treghues,' Alan said.

'Non, non, mon dieu, non!' the Frenchman screamed as the weary loblolly boys took hold of him to keep him still, and Dorne lifted up that arm and quickly flensed the flesh away above the major wounds, not five inches below the shoulder. Cauterizing irons sizzled to stop the flow of blood from opened arteries and veins, and the air was putrid with the reek of scorched flesh, and the savage rasp of a bone saw.

'Oh, Jesus,' Alan said, turning away, ready to faint, ready to 'cast his accounts' on the slimy deck.

'Fifteen seconds, I make it,' Dorne grunted, pleased with himself as the amputated limb dropped to the deck. 'It is a point of pleasure to my professional skills that I never cause undue suffering by taking long, once a course of action has been found. Sutures, quickly now, while he is unconscious. Hogan, more cotton bast for this.'

Alan staggered away from the table, almost tripping on the legs of the many wounded who groaned and cried out in agony.

'We win, sor?' someone asked.

'Aye, yes we did,' Alan nodded, almost unable to speak.

'Tis Judkin, sir, is the captain arright?' the captain's servant asked, his face almost muffled with bast and bandages, with only part of his mouth free.

'I am told he shall live, Judkin.'

''At's right good, sir, 'e's a good master ta me. 'Ere, Mister Lewrie, 'tis Mister Avery over here,' Judkin piped, full of good cheer. 'Mister Avery, sir, Mister Lewrie's come a'callin' on ya.'

Avery had been stripped bare and covered with a scrap of sail, and what flesh was exposed had been scorched by the explosion of that burst gun, cooked the color of a well-done steak, oozing red.

'Oh, Jesus,' Alan reiterated, kneeling down by his friend as David Avery gasped air through his open mouth. 'David? Hear me?'

Avery seemed to be trying to whisper; his lips moved, but no words could be made out. His eyes opened for a moment, bloodshot as cherries floating in coal sludge, staring blankly at the deckhead.

'David, 'tis Alan,' Lewrie said louder, bending down near the young man's ear. Avery only closed his eyes and gave no sign of awareness, but continued to breathe as though each one would be his last. His body was shivering as though the touch of air on that overheated flesh was excruciating. 'Do you want anything, David? Water?'

There was no response, just the uneven heaving of that charred chest. Alan stood back up, almost cracking his head on a deck beam in his haste to flee the compartment, tears flowing down his face.

Too many people he had come to like had just died, too many of the warrants and mates he had dealt with on a daily basis for nearly a year in Desperate, so that it felt much like the grief a sole survivor would feel of a Red Indian massacre.

'Ah, Lewrie!' Sedge called out as he spotted him on deck. 'I was wondering where you'd got to. Mister Coke needs help with jury-rigging the mizzen mast. Well, get with it! We've not time to moon about!'

Chapter 3