A King`s Commander

Better pickings, he speculated; easier pickings? Troops all off far to the east, with only small garrisons left in the backwaters, and shipmasters thinking themselves safe as houses that far west. Around Cape Antibes and San Remo, he thought, defenses might be lighter, yet the effect of a raid could hurt the long French supply trains just as badly. Maybe worse; they'd have to divert troops and guns from their march on Genoa to protect those neglected ports, spread their ships too thin, which escorted or patrolled…! And, most profitably, yield the value of contraband cargoes as prize money, with no other British warships 'In Sight'!

Confusion to the French, indeed, he thought with a feral grin of anticipation. Eager to be at it. And to get ashore quickly to grab a tender before the others thought of it. And get those changes to his uniforms done, after all; as long as he was at it.

CHAPTER 3

Lewrie's problem was being a bit 'skint' himself, short of the wherewithal to pay the outrageous prices Genoese masters or captains asked for their fishing boats. So Jester had departed Genoa in mid-July without a tender. Once at sea, though, he'd simply taken a suitable vessel.

Bombуlo, her owner had named her, a tartane of only forty feet in length, tubby and broad-beamed. She'd been running along the Riviera coast, fat, dumb, and happy-Thomas Mountjoy, whose command of Italian idiom was growing by leaps and bounds, told him her name meant 'A Fat Person,' and was therefore particularly apt-off San Remo. There'd been no beach to ground on, no convenient inlet into which she could slip, and Jester had cut inshore of her. She was Savoian, and empty of anything of value, save for a few casks of fresh-caught fish. But she had attempted to flee, which Lewrie wrote up in his report as the sort of 'suspicious activity' Nelson's orders had warned him to be on the lookout for.

A quick palaver, at gunpoint, with her terrified captain, and the deal had been struck. With three casks of their catch in her longboat, the captain and his small crew allowed their freedom to row away-and Lewrie's offer of Ј30, in silver shillings-he'd 'bought' her.

'Quoins full out. When you're quite ready, Mister Bittfield,' Lewrie ordered.

'Number one larboard gun… fire!' Bittfield shouted. A ranging shot howled away for the tiny, extemporized 'fort' sited on a low bluff overlooking the entrance to the harbor of Bordighera. A,sleepy town awoke to the clap of thunder, and the crunching rattle of rocky soil and shale blasted loose from the bluff, just below the redoubt.

There was an answering bang from the shore, as one of the guns in the three-gun battery returned fire, adding a bloom of smoke to the cloud of dust that hazed the morning air below the thin flagpole and French Tricolor.

'Cold iron,' Lewrie spat to Mister Buchanon, as he saw the shot fall far short, and wide to the left by at least a hundred yards. And if the battery corrected their lateral aim, they'd still fire astern of Jester, for at least their first or second full salvos.

'Number two gun… fire!' Bittfield shouted, pacing aft as if he were firing a timed salute, with the Prussian quarter-gunner Rahl almost frantic as he scampered in advance of him, tugging and trimming the aim and elevation, casting urgent glances over his shoulder to Mister Bittfield, to see if he was still scowling at him.

A touch higher, a touch to the right, that second shot; fountaining gravel and dirt just short of the low stone rampart. An officer on horseback appeared, with one or two aides, to the right of the battery, and unslung a telescope. So close was Jester to the steep-diving shore that they could hear the faint, whistle-through-your-teeth tootle of the garrison being called to battle by fifes and drums.

'Number three gun… fire!' Bittfield barked.

'Oh, bloody lovely!' Lewrie beamed.

That shot scored a direct hit on the rampart; nine pounds of iron ball striking between the two right-hand embrasures. Poor mortar, or no mortar-perhaps the wall had been quickly erected with its stones laid as loose as a Welsh pasture fence-but when the dust cleared, down it had come, creating a fourth embrasure on the seaward side, a ragged gap, with a skree-slope of tumbled rock below it.

'Number four gun… fire!'

Down the deck the tolling went, gun after gun lurching backward on its truck carriage, to chip away at the top of the rampart, smash in low on the wall, skim just over it, or pummel the soil beneath, making a pall of dust and smoke to obscure the French gunners' aim.

'Larboard batt'ry… make ready for broadside!' Bittfield cried, raising a fist in the air. 'Wait for it On the uproll… Firel'

Nine carriage guns went off as one, this time, shaking Jester to her very bones, reeling her sideways to windward a foot or two. A shot amputated the flagpole, bringing down the tricolor; the rest battered down a stretch of wall, flinging rocks as big as men's heads into space. The officer on horseback fought to control his terrified, rearing mount, and the mounted aides vanished. As the dust and smoke cleared, Lewrie could see at least one French field-artillery piece laying canted on a smashed wheel and carriage through the vast gap his guns had blown.

'Mister Hyde!' Lewrie shouted, fanning in front of his face for fresh air. 'Hoist the signal to Mister Knolles. Mister Buchanon, we'll put the ship about on the larboard tack. Porter? Pipe 'Stations for Stays' and ready to come about!'

Little Bombуlo wheeled about from her position astern and to seaward of Jester, easing the set of her conventional jib, winging out her large lateen mains!, and bore off north for the harbor entrance. At the same time, Jester swung south into the wind, tacked, and sailed to her support, to re-engage what was left of the battery with her right-hand guns.

'Steady… thus,' Lewrie told the helmsmen. 'All yours, Mister Bittfield!'

'Starboard batt'ry… ready broadside… on the uproll… Fire!'

Closer, this time, within a quarter-mile of the shore, and even the carronades blazing away from foc's'le and quarterdeck bulwarks. A hailstorm of round-shot savaged the entrance face of the battery, and more stone flew in the air, more gravel and dirt slipped down the hillside to patter into the sea. One shot from the French, who had gamely wheeled one of their light field guns to a spare embrasure, from that unequal combat on the sea face. A shot that went warbling low astern to raise a tiny splash seaward of Jester's wake. The tricolor showed itself again, risen on the stump of the flagpole by some brave soul… now only a little higher than an infantry regiment's banner.

' 'Ey got spirit, Cap'um,' Buchanon commented, when he took his attention off the sea to starboard for a moment.

'We'll shoot that out of 'em, sir.' Lewrie grinned.

'Ah, 'ere's 'at rock ledge… well t'starb'd. Missed it by at least a quarter-cable, sir.' Buchanon grunted with professional pride. 'No worries. Deep water, clear t'th' entrance.'

With the fort so busy with Jester, and being pounded into road gravel, little Bombуlo was free to breeze into the small harbor without a shot being fired at her. Around the point, behind the bluff fort, there sounded the panicky patter of musketry, fired at impossible range.

'Broadside… ready… on the uproll… Firel'

And another exchange of shots. Two French guns, this time, but still badly laid and aimed. One ball struck short, skipped twice, and struck Jester's starboard side, just below the mainmast chains with a dull thud. It hung for a second in the dent it had created in the oak planking just below the stout chain wale, then dribbled off to splash into the sea. The second whined overhead, not even clipping rope.

Once more the tricolor went down, as the fort shivered to the monstrous weight of iron, and the wall between the embrasures slumped. Flinty sparks, smoke, and dust flew. Then the Whoomphl of gunpowder cartridges as a reserve went off like a miniature Vesuvius, flinging rock and gravel a hundred yards