The King`s Commission

complete helm control from the moment the cable was let go, as smoothly as anyone could ask for, which made Alan grin inside at the ease of it.

It was only a couple of miles to a new anchorage opposite the town, with the leadsman singing out four or five fathoms the whole way, even though the waters were so clear they could see sharp coral below them as if they were skating over glass.

'Bring to. Mister Svensen,' Alan ordered at last. 'Round up into the wind and back the fore tops'l. Ready forrard!'

Her progress checked against the wind, they let go the best bower and veered out half a cable. The cable thumped and shuddered a few times before they found good holding ground.

'Kedge anchor into the boat and row her out, there,' Alan said, pointing aft and a little to larboard. 'And once she's holding, place springs on the cables to adjust our fire.'

'Aye, sir.' Fukes nodded.

It felt good, Alan decided, to have complete charge of Shrike, with Lieutenant Lilycrop off ashore. There were none of the nerves he had suffered before, in being asked to shift their anchorage or commit her to battle against a shore battery, if battery there were. Some concern that he did not look ridiculous, but none of the nail-biting fear of taking any action at all he had once experienced. With a wry grin, he was forced to believe that the Navy had drummed enough competency in him at last, enough to make him aspire to more opportunities for independence from someone's leading strings.

'Springs is rigged, sir,' Fukes reported.

'Very well. Mister Cox, stand by to open fire!'

Drake, as the flagship of their extemporized little subdivision, hoisted a signal, and all ships began a cannonade against the town.

'Seems a shame, sir,' Caldwell said, after measuring any change from shore marks that would indicate Shrike was dragging her anchors or being blown out of position.

'What is, sir?' Alan asked off-handedly.

'Well, sir, looks as if the Frogs has already torn the town up for building material, and here we go, shooting the rest of it apart. It may not look like much to our lights, but it's their homes, sir.'

'Umm, not for much longer, at this rate,' Alan commented as the round-shot from the light guns tore holes in walls and roofs.

'Who was it, sir, one of those pagan Roman poets, said 'they make a desert and call it peace'?' Caldwell mused.

'Tacitus, perhaps,' Alan answered. 'Couldn't have been Virgil or Caesar. They were too proud of making deserts.'

'Batt'ry, sir!' Cox shouted as a wall of gunpowder erupted from shore above the town. A round-shot, almost big enough to see in mid-flight, came howling over the bulwarks, and passed close enough to create a little back- eddy of wind.

'Damme, sir, that was a twenty-four-pounder, or I'm an Arabee!' Caldwell groused with un-wonted vehemence, shaken from his Puritan demeanor for once enough to curse.

'Mark that, Mister Cox?' Alan asked, scanning through the smoke of the broadside for sign of the guns.

'I think so, sir. There, or close enough as makes no diff'rence.'

The newly discovered French battery began to put shot around all the brigs. As Cox re-laid his guns to respond, Alan counted the shots, and tried to gauge what caliber they were.

'Mister Cox, let's concentrate our fire on one embrasure, if you will!' Alan shouted down to the waist. 'That one, there!'

'Aye, sir!'

'Six-pounders, there,' Alan said. 'About four or five of them.'

'Seems about right, sir,' Caldwell replied, his voice still a little shaky.

'And at least four twenty-four-pounders,' Alan added, feeling a little grim himself. 'This is going to be warm work for three little thin-sided brigs. And works with field-pieces up towards Britain Bay to counter Captain Dixon's shore party. More Frogs on this island than a dog's got fleas, more than reported, at any rate.'

They had to duck as one of those twenty-four-pounders placed a round-shot close aboard, close enough to raise a great waterspout that fell over the quarterdeck and wetted them down in a twinkling as it skipped overhead to fall into the sea on the disengaged side. Shrike was, at least, out of the main line of fire, a little more sheltered than the Drake or Admiral Barrington. As the day wore on towards noon, Drake took a ball aloft which brought down the gaff of her spanker, and the Admiral Barrington was hulled with solid thonks of iron smashing wood.

The artillery killed the wind; that was something Alan had heard mentioned before but had never witnessed for himself. Where before there had been fresh winds offshore that stirred up the waters of the deep passages and set the brigs to rocking like cradles, now the sea was flat as a mill-pond, and the wind had died to almost nothing. The ships were wreathed in their own palls of smoke, and the fort ashore could only be espied by looking for the base of the towering pillar of spent powder. It didn't do much for their aim, but at least it made the job of the French troops serving their larger pieces just as hard.

'Signal from Drake, sir,' Edgar said at his side, coughing on the sour smell of burned niters. 'Cease fire.'

'Very well, Mister Edgar. Mister Cox, cease fire!' Alan said. 'Mister Edgar, my compliments to the purser, and tell him it's past time for dinner. Have him issue some cold rations and small-beer for the hands.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

A rowing boat sped down from the frigates anchored in Britain Bay, and went aboard Drake while the men were eating and curing their battle-induced thirsts. After half an hour, the boat came back along the anchored brigs.

'Sir, Captain Nelson directs me bid you to weigh,' the midshipman in the stern yelled, his voice cracking a little; he was awfully young. 'You are to return to Britain Bay and re-embark your party.'

'Very well,' Alan replied. 'Well, that's another fine mess we've made,' he added, turning to his quarterdeck people. 'It'll take the frigates down here tomorrow to shoot that battery silent.'

'And make another landing, maybe on the other side of the island, now we know where the Frogs is concentrated, sir,' Cox said, free of his gun deck. He and his gunners looked black as Moors from all the grime of powder smoke on their skins. Alan could see the closest gun being sponged out with a water-soaked wool rammer, and other hands hoisting up buckets of seawater to sluice off the muzzles and touch-holes. The guns were hissing as the water cooled them like sated dragons.

'Bowse 'em down to the port-sills and secure, Mister Cox,' he said. 'Mister Fukes, get your people ready to veer out on the bower and take up the kedge soon as the gun crews are available. Wind's coming about a little more westerly. Quick as you can, both of you, or we'll end up rowing her out with the sweeps if the wind goes foul and leaves us on a lee shore.'

The wind had swung, not so noticeable during the cannonading that had deadened it; now more southerly, with a touch of westing. Sure sign of a change in the weather, and that was usually a sign of worsening weather, especially in the Caribbean.

They got the kedge up, heaved into short stays on the bower, but could not get it to release from the bottom. Damme, and this was going so well! Alan thought sadly.

'Flukes hung up on a coral head, feels like, sir,' Fukes told him. 'I can almos' see 'er down there.'

'Belay what you have, Mister Fukes. Hands aloft! Let go the driver and jibs! With a little forward way, we might sail her off.'

'Aye, sir.' Fukes sounded dubious. And with good cause. The anchor obstinately refused to let go her grip on the coral bottom, and no amount of straining at the capstans was going to shift her. The ship sailed up until she was almost standing directly over the anchor, with the cable bar-taut, and if anything, inclined slightly from the vertical, bent back under Shrike's forefoot and cutwater.

'Least this'un ain't the best bower, sir,' Fukes offered after coming aft from the beakhead. 'An' them other brigs ain't havin' much more luck'un us'un. Drake's arready cut, sir.'

'The captain will have my hide if I lose an anchor, even the small bower, Mister Fukes,' Alan groaned, thinking