A King`s Trade

A sudden lull, a horrified, hushed second, before Lt. Catterall could be heard screeching raspy for them to 'by broadside.. .fire, and murder the bastards!' and Proteus shuffled to starboard to that shove of directed explosions a few feet alee.

And all Lewrie could do, by that point, was pace, observe, and behave stoically, for now that both warships were close-aboard of each other on the same course, their jib-booms and bowsprits almost level with the other, and the range down to less than sixty yards, it was up to his trusted warrants and petty officers, the steadiness of his gun-captains, the stolid courage of officers and midshipmen, the speed and stamina of his crew, despite the horrors they could see on every hand. Did he die, the next minute, it would make no matter. This was what a captain had to do, and no amount of hopping about, waving sword, and crying, 'Damn my eyes!' could change a thing 'til it was concluded. And there were horrors.

A decapitated Marine hanging half off the chewed-up gangway, to spurt, then ooze, his blood onto the gunners below, making the deck so slippery that a second bucket of sand had to be cast. The young Marine drummer boy's corpse, and his shattered drum, was slung against the main mast trunk, soon to be disposed of overside through a lee gun-port, to make fighting room. Half the crew of a quarterdeck 6-pounder was gone, strewn like bloody piles of laundry amidships. Another sailor from one of the engaged-side carronades was being carted below on a mess table by the Surgeon's loblolly boys, gasping like a landed fish with a two-foot length of bulwark splinter in his chest.

Somewhere, in all the bedlam, Lewrie could hear the sawing of a fiddle, a mad rush of improbable sound that soared now and again above the deafening, ear-hammering din; but then, all ships' fiddlers were as mad as hatters, as daft as March Hares. Lewrie looked forward, down the main deck between the guns, and saw their fiddler capering a horn-pipe or jig to his own urgent music… over and over, he played, what sounded like 'Pigeon on the Gate,' and beaming and cackling fit to bust!

Another hard hit! Another flickering, whining, keening flight of wood splinters, and Lewrie staggered, again, pausing in his pacing. God, but he wished to draw his sword, bark orders, shout encouragement, do something useful! Instead, he pulled out his watch and opened the ornately-engraved lid, grunting in utter surprise to see that the fight had gone on for over half an hour since the first broadsides were fired! He clicked the lid shut, carefully put the watch back into the pocket of his waist-coat, then paced over to the compass binnacle.

Due West, and away from the convoy, which, the last he had seen, had been steering Nor'west by West, escaping as he delayed the frigate. A quick look over at the French, and he walked the few feet aft to the Quartermasters on the helm. 'Another half-point to weather, lads. Get us up closer, still.'

'Aye aye, sir!' stoic older Austen agreed, shifting a dry quid of tobacco to his other cheek. Zip-zip-zip! A musket ball thudded off the forward wheel, taking a divot of ash with it, and sudden splintery quills arose from the deck as other musket shots missed. Mr. Motte, on the after wheel, gave out a sudden shriek and dropped as if pole-axed, with a musket ball in his neck.

'Another helmsman, here, Mister Langlie!' Lewrie barked, gulping down nausea, and shock, then turning away, as he must 'By God, those people are beginnin' t'make me angry! Still with us, Mister Langlie?' 'Aye, sir. 'Nother helmsman on the way.'

'Swivel-guns in the tops t'open on theirs, as we get closer!' Lewrie snapped, wishing he had his Ferguson, his fusil musket, or even his Girandoni air rifle.

Hell with this stoic shite, he determined; I'm gonna kill some of those bastards, myself! as he drew out his first double-barreled pistol to check the dryness of its priming.

'We've been hulled, several times, sir,' Lt. Langlie said, after he had done as Lewrie directed. 'The Carpenter reports better than one foot of water in the bilges, so far, and at least five shot-holes, that he can see near the waterline. He also found an intact round-shot, sir. An eighteen-pounder, wedged in a starboard timber.'

'I thought yon Frog was hitting rather hard,' Lewrie said, with a wince; he'd been sure that Proteus and the foe were of equal calibre and weight of broadside. But, perhaps the slowness of the French gun crews had given him that impression. 'Making fast, is the water, sir?' he asked Langlie.

'Not too quickly, sir… not yet,' Langlie said with a shrug.

'Have to live with it, for a while, then,' Lewrie decided. 'No hands may be spared for the pumps, 'til it gets a lot worse. Have any more joy for me, Mister Langlie?'

'Mister Adair reports that the larboard six-pounder on the forecastle is dismounted, too, sir,' Langlie added, looking grim and quite grey from head to foot with powder residues. 'As is Number Two twelve-pounder, and Number Eleven in your cabins, from our larboard battery.'

'I'll take joy from thinking that the Frogs are having a worse night than we are, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie had to shout in his ear, as several guns below their feet erupted together. 'Must have not had an impressive raiding cruise… if they felt the need to toe up and slug it out! Honour and glory, 'stead o' loot? Not their, ha!.. .forte!'

Lewrie said it with a fatalistic shrug of his own, to think they would continue to batter each other, perhaps for hours, but Lt. Langlie could see the feral rictus of a smile on his captain's face, take note in a flash of lighting that Lewrie's usually merry blue eyes were gone cold, Arctic grey, and snapping with battle joy.

'Carry on, Mister Langlie,' Lewrie said, clapping his First Officer on the shoulder. 'Pour it to 'em. The French aren't much good at this sort of yardarm-to-yardarm fight. Give it time enough, and they will lose their nerve, long before us. Hammer 'em, lads!' he shouted to the gunners, all that stern stoicism the Navy required gone at last. 'Hammer 'em, and shatter their bloody bones! Pour it on, pour it on!'

'And damned be he who first cries, 'Hold, Enough!'' he thought, becoming gun-drunk on the bitter powder fog, and the heart-stopping, lung-shaking roar from his beloved artillery.

'Damned be he,' 'damned be him'? Never could keep that straight, he told himself with a deprecating chuckle and a faint grin, which, in the ruddy Hell-fire flashes of Proteus's guns, looked positively wolfish. Whichever's right, by God it won't be us!

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Oh, Jaysus, oh, Jaysus!' an Irish sailor whispered as he stood behind the starboard bulwark, a bare-bladed cutlass jammed into a wide belt, a clumsy-looking pistol stuck into a pocket of his slop- trousers, and gripping a Brown Bess Sea Pattern musket. In addition to all that, a keen-pointed boarding pike rested upright against the rack of belaying pins near the main mast's stays. He looked up and down the rainy gangway at his mates, similarly armed, who crouched down out of sight, and felt the need to cross himself. 'Mither Mary, comfort me…!'

'Arr, stop yer gob, Paddy,' one of the hidden chid him. 'Where away, now?'

'M… musket-shot, Oi thinks,' the Irishman said with a shudder as lightning crashed bright ghoul-blue and lit up the sea, showing the dark frigate closing rapidly. Sailors stood atop her bulwarks, up her larboard shrouds, with even more crowding elbow-to-elbow along her sail-tending gangway… every mother-son of them waving cutlasses, hooting, jeering, and whooping fit to bust. Like Beelzebub's demon army!

'Fook if they are!' the hidden sailor spat, after a quick peek. 'Still 'arf a cable off. No wonder th' doxies don't fancy ye, Paddy. Cain't judge distance worth a tinker's dam. Tells 'em 'e's got seven inches, an' th' hoors kin only mark three, har har!'

'Wait fer it!' the First Mate was intoning from the quarterdeck. 'Wait fer it! Ever'body stay hid, 'til th' cap'm says 'leap,' there.'

'Gonna kill us all,' Paddy whispered, his lips trembling, and a hand clawing inside his sodden shirt for his rosary. 'Gonna…!'

'Hesh, lad!' an older shipmate hissed. 'Buck up, laddy.' The frigate sidled down upon them, no matter the futile alteration of course, the dangerous release of reefed sails. But, her gun-ports were still closed, and did not flap open to her rolling motion; they weren't even freed… yet. It would be a boarding, hull pressed and grinding