A King`s Trade

gnawed away in places, from abaft her cat-heads and swung-up anchors to abeam of her mizen-mast.

Lewrie grimly supposed that Proteus probably didn't look a whit better, after more than a full hour of trading shot, but… his masts still stood, whilst the Frenchman's lower main and mizen seemed canted from the proper angle of rake; Proteus's sails still drew, with only a few holes punched through them, and her yards, standing rigging, and running rigging were still mostly intact.

She's fallen astern a tad, too, Lewrie took satisfying note; a bit. Not enough for us t'draw ahead and bow-rake her, but… time to end this.

'Mister Catterall! Quoins fully out, and aim for her rigging!' Lewrie shouted down to the waist. 'Mister Langlie, brace and sheet men will haul in too taut, and get us heeled far over!'

The French frigate, was it starting to brace up, as well, going more South of West… to break off the action and run? Lewrie speculated. 'Mister Catterall, a controlled broadside! Shot and grape!'

'Aye, sir! Load, load, load, ye miserable cripples, or I…!' Lt. Catterall chortled in a voice gone creaky with over-use, stamping about the deck in blood-lusty glee.

Proteus fell silent for about a full minute, as fresh 12-pdr. shot was fetched up from below, the hatchway shot racks and the thick rope shot-garlands between the guns nigh expended. Lewrie noted a gun here and there being charged with powder with wooden ladles, for, their over-ample store of pre-made powder cartridges, and empty flannel bags for filling in the magazine, had already been shot away. For certain, they had most-like used up the upper tier of powder casks, as well, and were into the older stuff from the second tier.

The French warship continued her fire, and Proteus had to stand and take it, but Lewrie could count only eight discharges from her battery, and those were fired independently, haltingly, with better than two minutes between explosions from those gun-ports.

'Ready, sir!' Catterall bellowed, his voice cracking raspily.

' Thus, Quartermasters!' Lewrie cried, chopping his hand to show the alteration of course desired. 'Sheet home, brace up sharp Stand ready…!'

Proteus seemed to gather a bit more speed, a quarter-knot or so, like a good hunter bunching its hindquarter muscles to take a hedge. As she did so, amid the loud squealing of blocks as the square sails were drawn at right angles to the wind, and the fore-and-aft sails were put flat to it, she began to heel over onto her starboard shoulders. Rose, then paused, pent atop a passing beam wave, as well, steadied, and…

'Fire, Mister Catterall!'

The brief gap between the frigates lit up harsh and orange, for a second, and the range was still so close that Proteus's weary gunners could see the results of their handiwork, for once, before the bank of powder fog rolled back down on them and over the lee side, giving them a cause to cheer and howl in pleasure, no matter how dry-mouthed, weak, or tired.

The Frenchman's main mast shivered as a great rat-bite appeared in it halfway 'twixt her bulwark and main top. Clouds of grape ravaged her upper and lower shrouds, blasting away the dead-eyes that kept her top-mast erect, by the edge of the main top, shattering her slender top-mast, and bringing the whole thing, from truck and cap to halfway up above the main top, swinging down in ruin, the furled and gasketed royal, half-reefed t'gallant, and tops'1, with all their mile of rigging, collapsed alee to drape utter chaos, and highly flammable sails, over her engaged side!

'Ease her, Mister Langlie!' Lewrie shouted, so pleased that he just-about started to caper in delight. 'Mister Catterall! Secure, arm your people, and prepare t'board her! Close reach for a bit, sir, and fetch us alongside, Mister Lang-lie! Mister Devereux, are you with us?'

'Aye, sir!' his Marine officer shouted from the larboard side.

'Ready to volley and clear the way for us!' Lewrie directed as he tore off his foul-weather coat, at last, and patted his pockets to assure himself that his pistols were still there, then drew his hanger an inch or two to determine that it would draw easily when needed, but was snug enough to stay in its scabbard during his clamber across.

With an upper mast and sails dragging over her lee side, and a catastrophic loss of sail area with which to maintain her speed and her agility, the French warship sagged down on Proteus, even as the British frigate swung up to meet her.

'Ready grapnels, there!' Bosun Pendarves was shouting.

Proteus had not rigged boarding nets, and the French ship, with the intent of a rapid assault on a captured merchantman, had not rigged hers, either. There would only be wreckage to hack away… or use as a handy footbridge for the quicker and more agile.

Proteus drew ahead, angling to windward, the French ship's foremast falling astern of abeam before the hulls met with a titanic thud, rebounded a foot or two, then clashed back together as grapnels flew.

'Ready, sir!' Lt. Catterall rasped, his teeth white in a wild and wide smile. 'Aye aye, sir!' Lt. Adair up on the forecastle cried as well, his smaller party of gunners and sail-handlers gathered round him by the larboard cat- head.

'Boarders!' Lewrie ordered in a quarterdeck roar. 'Away!'

Swivel-guns yapped from both ships, from the bulwarks and tops, though British guns vastly out-numbered the French. Lt. Devereux and his Marines levelled their muskets, volleyed as one, and nigh a dozen Frenchmen waiting with cutlasses and axes in hand to repel them reeled away from sight, shot dead in their tracks!

'Let's go, Proteuses! Kill me some Frogs, ha ha!' Lt. Catterall encouraged as he stood atop their bulwarks, shrouds in one hand, and a glittering sword in the other. His gunners began to surge forward, in obedience to his urging, leaping and scrabbling across the gap between the tumble-home of hulls, though both frigates' waterlines were inches apart.

A swivel-gun coughed, and Catterall grunted in agony, his right arm torn completely off, and his shoulder shredded. 'Well, just damn my eyes, if I…' he loudly cursed, before swaying backwards to fall dead on the gangway.

'Come on, lads!' Midshipman Larkin, their little Bog-Irish imp, shrilled as he swung across on a freed line. He gained the Frenchman's gangway, atop that pile of wreckage, dirk in one hand and a pistol in the other. He shot down one French sailor, and hopelessly clashed his short and slim dirk against another's cutlass, slyly kicking his opponent in the teeth to drive him back. But, a boarding pike came driving upwards, taking him deep in the stomach. A twist of the long and slim pikehead to make it even crueller, then the French pikeman lifted him like a forkful of reaped hay to fling him in-board to the enemy's gun-deck! Lewrie slid down the larboard mizen-mast shrouds to the channel and dead-eyes, leaped onto the French ship's main mast chain platform, and began to scramble up, praying that his left arm, slightly weakened after being broken by a Dutch musket ball at the Battle of Camperdown, would serve him, for he already held one of his double-barreled pistols in his right. British sailors followed his path alongside him, others made the risky leap over his head. Muskets, pistols, and swivels made a minute-long fusillade, before hard-pressed men on both sides ran out of time for re-loading, and the clatter of blades replaced them. Up to the level of a French gun-port, the hint of a shadowy figure within… Bang! went his first shot, rewarded by a throaty, gobbling scream, and Lewrie clambered higher, cursing his left arm for its slowness, wishing that he didn't have to do this, just this once, for every now and then, the hulls rebounded off each other, despite the taut grapnel lines, and the mill-race below his feet sounded as loud as a rain-choked Scottish river.

Up to level with the bulwarks, into a snarl of rigging, broken spars, and sailcloth, but a wide gap had been blown through it, and it was with a great sense of relief that he flung his right arm, then his right leg, over the splintery timbers, and crawled to his feet, on the enemy's decks, at last!

Shoot that bugger, close enough for his pistol to set his shirt on fire, before he could skewer him with a pike! Drop empty pistol… draw sword… fill his left hand with the other pistol, and draw back to half-cock on both barrels with his right forearm! Look about, and discover his own sailors and Marines either side of him, thank God!

'Take it to 'em, lads! Skin the bastards!' he shouted, taking a tentative step forward to peer over the inner edge of the gangway to see… a butcher's yard! Guns were dis-mounted, massive barrels and