The King`s Commission

figurehead could almost be discerned, a sword and shield-wielding maiden surmounted by a gilt fleur de lis crown.

'She's hard on the wind to close us, sir,' Alan noted.

'Aye, but we'll draw ahead if she stays so,' Monk growled.

There was a sudden puff of smoke from the Frenchman that blossomed on her far bow, then was blown away to a mist by the Trades. Seconds later, the sound of a shot could be heard, a thin thumping noise. She had fired one gun to leeward, the traditional challenge to combat. Evidently the French captain was so angered at being stymied by Desperate's maneuverings that he wanted to vent some round-shot spleen upon her.

Alan looked back at Treghues and saw the glint in his eyes. It would be galling to refuse combat, especially for a ship and captain under a cloud for previous actions, no matter how unfair the accusation was, and Alan could see Treghues' jaws working below the tan flesh of that narrow, patrician face.

No, he can't be thinking of it! Alan quailed. We can't fight a twenty-eight. We've done enough to clear our hawse already!

'Mister Gwynn, fire the leeward chase gun,' Treghues said. 'Brail up the main course, Mister Railsford. I think this stubborn Frog needs a lesson in manners. Mr. Peck, would you be so good as to assemble the band and have them give us something stirring?'

The starboard six-pounder banged, and the ship's boys with the drums and fifes met in the waist just below the quarterdeck rails and began a tinny rendition of 'Heart of Oak,' as the waisters and topmen took in the large main course and brailed it aloft on the main yard. The Marine complement paraded back and forth on the lee gangway by the bulwark and the hammock stowage, which would be their breast-works in the battle to come. A few of them who were better shots than others went aloft into the tops with their muskets and their swivel guns.

The Frenchman was closing fast, close enough to make out her open gunports. Alan groaned to himself when he saw that there were eleven of them. Two bow chase guns, six-pounders like Sedge thought, but only four quarterdeck guns, and eleven bloody twelve-pounders in each broadside battery, not ten! he noted with a sick feeling.

He wished he could squat down below the bulwarks of their own quarterdeck, for with her angle of heel, Desperated decks were bared just enough to make everyone aft a prime target.

The French ship fired, a solid broadside as all her guns lit off together, and his flesh quivered as the shot moaned in at them at twelve hundred feet per second. The range was just about five cables, half a nautical mile. Black shot droned overhead, slapping a hole in the spanker over where Lewrie stood. Fired on the up-roll, upward from a slanting deck, the lee ship had the advantage of range over Desperate. Alan's passion was artillery of all the skills he had been forced to learn in the Navy, and he knew Desperated nine-pounders could not be elevated high enough to reach as long as she was close-hauled and heeled over.

'Finish that verse and then get below,' Treghues told his band, and the ship's boys scattered after a final tootle, to stow away their instruments and revert to their roles as powder monkeys who would fetch up the wooden or leather cylinders that held pre-measured charges from the magazines, or to assist the surgeon in the cockpit once the wounded worth saving were hauled below by older men.

'Ease her helm a point free, Mister Railsford, get the heel off her and we'll try our eye,' Treghues snapped. 'Stand by, Mister Gwynn!'

'Aye aye, sir!' the master gunner said in reply from the waist.

Desperate came more upright by a few feet, the bulwarks seeming to rise up like stage machinery, with the French frigate just slightly aft of abeam, and the range dropping to four cables.

'Quoins half-out!' Gwynn instructed his gun-captains. 'Point yer guns! Ready!'

'I leave it to you, Mister Gwynn,' Treghues said cheerfully.

'As you bear… fire!'

First the reloaded starboard chase gun, then the first of the long nine-pounders began to bark, the firing rippling down the ship's side one at a time as steady as a fired salute, with Gwynn pacing aft at the same pace as the ignitions. Shot erupted from the black iron muzzles in a rush of flame and sparks and thick clouds of spent powder, and bright beautiful feathers of spray leapt up close-aboard the enemy frigate's side as iron shot ricocheted to thud home below her gunports.

'Lovely shooting, Mister Gwynn!' Treghues commented. 'Load with double-shot and hull him this time!'

Alan's legs were quivering with excitement, almost too tremulous to keep him erect as he stood by the wheel with the sailing master. In previous actions, he had been a midshipman on the gun deck, too busy supervising the loading, firing and running out, too intent on gunnery to think much about being afraid, about being maimed or killed, lost in the heat of the moment. But as a master's mate, his main role was to act as a sitting duck of no mean seniority on the bare quarterdeck, which would be the prime target of the French after they got within musket- shot.

Another broadside from the French, a positive avalanche of iron, and Desperate shrieked in oaken agony as things let go aloft. The mizzen royal and't'gallant yards were smashed by bar-shot or chain-shot, and the pieces rained down into the overhead nettings. A Marine and a top-man from the mizzen tops'l thumped onto the nettings like bloody steers, the Marine minus both legs at the crotch and spraying a scarlet shower on the deck.

'Firing high as usual,' Treghues noted with a frown of disapproval. 'When shall they learn?'

Desperate's guns were thundering once more, slamming four-inch, nine-pounder iron balls into the French ship, this time concentrated 'twixt wind and water, right into her hull. Planks were shattered and nibbles were taken out of her upper-works bulwarks, scattering the enemy Marines who had been gathered for a musket volley or two. But, being bigger and heavier enough to handle 22 twelve-pounder guns, it would take a lot of nibbling to do her damage, for her scantlings were thicker, her beams and cross-pieces were heavier and stronger.

'You've made your point, you damned fool,' Alan grumbled aloud under the sound of the cannonading. 'Now get a way on and get us out of here. Honor is redeemed and all that shit!'

But Treghues was in nautical Paradise, pacing back and forth in a maniacal joy, oblivious to the blood trails on the quarterdeck, or the hurt Desperate had suffered aloft.

'For what we're 'bout ta receive…' Monk whispered the old saw as the Frenchman's side lit up like red signal fuses seen through a thick fog, a fog of powder smoke that rolled down from Desperate to the foe. The smoke seemed to glow, and then the world was hammered into matchwood.

The starboard bulwark by the ladder leading below to the waist was flung into ruin, and a cloud of oak splinters flicked through the air like startled sparrows. Men were screaming like frightened horses, and Desperate staggered as heavy shot burst through her sides. The deck below Lewrie's feet jumped, almost throwing him to his knees.

'Eighteens if they's a pound!' Monk managed to say, grabbing onto the binnacle and traverse board table to stay erect.

'No more than twelve-pounders, surely, Mister Monk,' Alan said in a shaky voice, trying to maintain that maddening sang froid demanded of a professional Sea Officer.

'Felt like eighteens, anyway,' Monk spat.

As the smoke began to rag away, Alan could see that the enemy was now on a parallel course, just two cables off. She would not get closer; but then he realized, she didn't have to, for she could lay out there a fifth of a nautical mile away and shoot Desperate to lace unless they did something soon.

'Helm up, quartermaster!' Treghues yelled through the din as the guns belched fire again. 'Bear down on her!'

Two loblolly boys stirred the savaged body of a petty officer by the torn-up starboard gangway. They shrugged and rolled the body to the hoie in the bulwarks aid tipped the corpse over the vide.

'That was Mister Weems!' Alan burst out in shock.

'Aye. poor bastard,' Monk agreed. 'There'll be an openin' fer a new bosun's mate tamorra.'

A screaming waister was picked up on a carrying board and taken below to the cockpit surgery as they watched. There was nothing to be done with the dead or the hopelessly wounded but to get them out of sight and out from under foot. Words could be said later from the prayer book.