truck-carriages overturned on squashed men, splintered, dis-emboweled, half-charred gunners betrayed by their pieces when they burst, or the powder cartridges had blown up, turning flesh the colour of rare roast beef! And a
'Tell them!' Lewrie roared, pointing his hanger at the officer, then at the melee still going on from bow to stern. 'Order your men,
Lewrie looked aft, to where his own sailors had swept the quarterdeck clean of resistance, and were even then hauling down the French Tricolour, without their foes' approval.
'Quarter!' Lewrie bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth, to fore, aft, and amidships.
Guns, pikes, and edged weapons clattered from numb hands to the decks, and physically and spiritually exhausted sailors sagged to their knees… some completely spent and wheezing, some in shame, with tears streaking clean channels through powder-smut on their faces, and some ready to weep with joy for being alive and whole. Only a rare few remained on their feet, glaring defiance-wisely
'Mister Langlie?' Lewrie called out in the relatively peaceful silence, his ears still ringing from an hour and a half of cannon fire, and with the fingers of his left hand crossed for luck.
'Sir?' came the First Officer's weary voice.
'Parties to secure the on-deck prisoners, Mister Langlie. Then, Leftenant Devereux, his Marines, and a party of our Jacks to go below, and chivvy any skulkers on deck. Make sure they're all dis-armed, not even a pen-knife on 'em and no arms near them, should some have a sudden change of heart. And
'Aye aye, sir!'
Lewrie had seen defeat and victory before, both shivering losers and strutting winners, aloft and a'low, who'd use the chaos of the aftermath to guzzle themselves senseless, and did
'Mister Catter… no,' Lewrie began to call out, before remembering that he'd seen him fall. 'Mister Adair?' Another crossing of his fingers. To his relief, Lt. Adair piped up, too, and came to his side.
'Get with the Bosun and Carpenter, Mister Adair,' Lewrie ordered. 'Any spare hands, you may now put them to the chain-pumps to keep our own ship afloat 'til morning. A survey below of this'un, as well, sir. I'd admire could we get her to a Prize-Court, after all the trouble we went through t'win her.'
'Aye aye, sir,' Lt. Adair replied, performing a shaky doffing of his hat in salute.
'And, Mister Adair… you are now our Second Lieutenant,' he added in a sombre tone as he sheathed his hanger and un-cocked his pistol.
'Very well, sir,' Adair gravely answered.
He felt it, then, that shuddery weakness and lassitude that he had suffered at the end of every sea-fight. There were an hundred details to be seen to before dawn, a myriad of repairs to be made aboard both frigates before he could feel sanguine, but
It was 'bad form,' and un-gentlemanly, for Lewrie to accept it. The proper form would be to wave it off, tell the man whose throat one wished to slit and bowels one tried to spill what an heroic defence he had put up, so 'honourably,' but, Lewrie wasn't feeling especially charitable that evening, so he took hold of it and gave the young fellow a grave nod. Damned if he'd let
He stumbled aft along the enemy warship's starboard gangway, a tangle of dead and wounded, of splintered wood, sails, rigging, and hidden ring-bolts, to the enemy's quarterdeck, where some of his sailors were capering and laughing that particular uproarious good humour that only whole survivors could laugh, atop slain foes.
'Cap'm, sir!' Ordinary Seaman Martyn chortled, handing him yet another sheathed sword. ' 'Ere's 'er cap'm's blade, sir. Won't 'ave a need f'r it in
'Mus' be worth fifty guineas, sor!' Able Seaman Clancey hooted, producing yet another. 'An' thayr First Off 'cer's sword, 'ere, 'tis a fine'un, too, sor. Poor feller's not long f'r this world, neither, we reckon,' Clancey callously snickered, pointing back towards the wheel, where an officer who'd had a leg shot off at the hip, and the other one bent at an un-natural angle, was being tended by two French sailors.
'A guinea for each of you, lads,' Lewrie told them, 'but, let's not be makin' a career of lootin' the dead… even Frenchmen.' 'Thankee, sor!'
'And, let's stay cold sober, too, 'fore I have ye all at 'Mast,' ' Lewrie sternly reminded them.
Lewrie took a tour of the quarterdeck, taking in the heavy damage, the strewn corpses and dis-mounted guns, with his lips pursed in a silent whistle. Unlike most combats reported in the
French frigates carried over-large complements compared to English warships, sometimes as many as 350 or more. For raiders such as this
But, with so many men aboard, it was no wonder that every shot through her hull or bulwarks had reaped
To Lewrie, gazing down into the waist, it looked as if half of those 350 Frenchmen lay on deck where they fell, or whimpered their lives away in those two long rows of savagely mutilated! A few more lanthorns bobbed about, fetched from