white-sanded decks, thudding into the mizen-mast trunk, sparking off gun tubes with deep, bell-like Bongs!, and raising a cloud of splintered wood flying like terrified pigeons into flesh!
Eight guns… corvette! Lewrie's panicky brain told him as he stood stiff-legged, almost unable to move, to think of much more; She shot her bolt! Minute and a half t're-load. Good as our Navy?
There was a great pall of spent powder smoke astern, the hint of masts and sails above it, and the fore end of a warship emerging from behind it, sailing what looked to be Nor'westerly.
'Belay the last helm order!' Lewrie shouted, forcing himself to motion, seething with sudden rage for being caught so flat-footed, so stupidly, and with shame for letting it happen, to him, to his ship! 'Put yer helm down, steer Due North!'
Might open us to another rake, but, do we get a bit off from her… / he thought. Open the range, duck into the gloom, and hope the French corvette- for what else could it be?-lost sight of them for a moment. The wind was from the West, and the corvette was close-hauled, steering no better than Nor'-Nor'west, six points off of the wind, and obviously trying to get after the convoy and take at least one prize. With a relatively clean bottom and 'all plain sail' aloft, she might attain nine or ten knots, slightly better than what Proteus was making, Lewrie's senses told him. They could not hope to surge up abeam of her to swat the corvette with their heavier broadside, but… what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander!
'Mister Langlie, you still with us? ' Lewrie called out. 'Aye, sir. Still here,' came a reassuringly firm reply.
'Good. I want that saucy bastard! Free the last of the night reefs from the t'gallants, let fall and sheet home the royals, and let the main course stay full, fire hazard bedamned,' Lewrie schemed aloud. 'That Frenchman's after an Indiaman, hard on the wind, most-like, and should be about… there,' he said, pointing out into the darkness off the larboard quarters. 'Perhaps three or four cables off. With luck, we may be able to out- reach her and tack 'cross her bows, then serve her a bow-rake!'
Taunt me, will ye? Lewrie thought, in fury to be fired upon by a lighter warship, one that usually would shy away from action with a frigate… if the Frenchman had not mistaken Proteus for a Sloop of War or gun-brig, then his feat of tweaking the 'Bloodies' ' noses with such daring could get him dined-out for years.
'With a knot or two more in-hand…' Lewrie began to say, but a fresh series of explosions split the night; another eight bursts of hot, white powder smoke, bright amber juts from muzzles, and showers of embers! 'There she is!'
The corvette was, as he'd speculated, about three cables astern and farther up to windward than before. At that range, in the gloom, the Frenchman's new broadside was more of a threat than a killing blow. Reverting to the usual French Navy practice, these balls were fired at full elevation, on the up-roll, meant to dis-mast and cripple Proteus, not hull her, forcing her to fall away Eastward and astern to let the corvette get on with her depredations without further interference.
Lewrie involuntarily flinched into his coat as the round iron shot bowled overhead, ahead, and astern in a hopeful spread, but all of them clean misses, this time. And, by firing that broadside, 'M'sieur Frog' had given away his best weapon… his location and the direction of his course. He was still close-hauled, bound Nor'-Nor'west.
'Signal rockets, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie snapped. 'Let Grafton and the others know there's a wolf 'mongst the sheep, and carry on.'
'Aye aye, sir.'
Swivel-guns on the midships larboard gangway bulwarks were made ready by the few brace-tenders and waisters not part of the gun crews below on the main deck. Four yellow-white rockets flung themselves to the skies with sulfurous whooshes, slanting out over the dark sea that lay to the West, creating brief golden sparkles and fire-glades on the waters… faintly illuminating their foe, as well. Most-hearteningly revealing a frigate off to the West, as well, one which flew the Red Ensign of the Royal Navy, which looked to be sailing Due North or one point alee, a little ahead of Proteus and in a prime position to haul her wind and fall down to counter the French corvette, too!
'Mister Catterall!' Lewrie shouted down to the deck below him. 'Chock and check, starboard, and be ready to engage the Frog corvette off our larboard quarters when we wheel up to windward!'
In the last lingering glimmer of the signal rockets, Lewrie had time for a look into the waist, and was appalled. The 12-pounder gun nearest to the larboard ladderway sat on a shattered truck-carriage at a crippled angle, and there were two bodies beside it, in the awkward sprawls of the dead that could be mistaken for piles of old clothes! Four more corpses had been laid out round the trunk of the main mast, the broad pools of spilt blood glittering evilly in the light of the battle lanthorns. Even as he watched, Mr. Hodson's loblolly boys were bearing a gasping wounded man to the main hatchway ladders on a mess-table for a stretcher, a sailor so quilled with finger-thick splinters he more-resembled a hedgehog! A bit farther forward, another gun had not only been dis-mounted, but had been struck so hard with a cannon ball that a large divot had been taken from its thick breech!
Thirteen guns left? No, Lewrie fumed to himself; Ten, more-like, for God knows what happened to the ones in my cabins, aft!
'All sail set, sir, ready to go about,' Lt. Langlie reported. 'Begin, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie ordered, tight-lipped. 'Mister Catterall, we're bearing up! Fire as you bear!'
'Stations for stays! Quartermasters, put your helm down!' Proteus was now sailing at nearly ten knots, her bottom was as clean and swift as could be expected, so recently after a re-coppering, and her turn up towards the wind was quick. Leaving that to Langlie, Lewrie went to the larboard, soon-to-be engaged, side, gripping at the cap-rails and peering wide-eyed into the night, and, yes!, there she was, four cables off, but making a goodly way, her location revealed by the creaming white swash of her wake and bow-wave! Lt. Catterall's gunners groaned, grunted, and cursed as they levered their loaded guns about to point so far aft in the gun-ports, lifting, bodily shifting the rears of both gun and carriage to the right, heaving on the run-out tackle and breeching tackle so, when fired, those monsters didn't slew about and crush their tenders, or snap free. At this angle, the guns' right-hand second re-enforcing rings were out the ports, the trunnions, upon recoil, might barely clear the bulwarks. The gun-captains urged them on with shouts and fists, blows un-noticed by the sweating tars, for all of them, just as much as Lewrie, craved at least one broadside for revenge… for pay-back! And, to prove to the world, and to themselves, that they could give as good as they got.
'Ready…!' Lt. Catterall was bellowing, stepping well clear of his charges, the crews gathering well away from the possible result of recoil, too, each gun-captain standing with one fist in the air, with the triggering lanyards to the cocked flintlock strikers taut in the other. 'Well, damme!' Catterall barked, frustrated.
As Proteus came up on the wind, as waisters and tenders braced her sails and yards up sharper, she began to wallow as if sailing with the wind nearly right-aft on a long-scending following sea. Lewrie looked to the helm, of a mind to curse the four helmsmen on the double wheel for the worst sort of lubbers, to see them heaving away, making the spokes blur… first to helm down, then to helm up!
'Steady her, dammit!' Lewrie bawled. 'Thus!' he snapped, using his right hand to indicate the best course. By the light of the blue fusee at the main-mast top, he could see the commissioning pendant, so why couldn't they, for God's sake? 'Steady on!'
She did steady up, though with a manic effort on her helm; she came to a constant course, at last. 'As you bear… fire!' came the eager and relieved shriek from Lt. Catterall, and the 12-pounders began to bellow! Lewrie turned back to watch the corvette, picking her up by her frothing wake along her water-line, again, as the first round-shot was fired. There! A tall feather of water leaping up under her bows, a second about amidships of her length, a 'short,' but close enough to graze up and hit her 'twixt wind and water! Her forecourse twitched as a ball punched right through it; there came a faint 'Rrawk!' from a direct hit into her scantlings or timbers; he saw her foremast shiver from top to trunk, vibrating like a harpsichordist's tuning- fork as a ball struck it! Another feather of spray from a ball that just barely cleared her starboard quarter, another close-aboard her after thirds, and caromed off her at a shallow angle, ripping side planking to bits!
Proteus began to wallow, again, bowsprit and jib-boom swinging and hunting left and
