Troubled Waters

hein? But, if there is a force in his rear…? It may not cause our defeat, but…,' Lt. Brasseur pointed out with another of his iffy shrugs. 'And, who knows how many more Anglais ships lurk offshore, to follow up on their initial lodgement, messieurs?'

'Warn that regiment, Lieutenant, the Fifty-seventh?' Loudenne sternly ordered. 'They must keep watch near La Palmyre for movement by these ships. Vite, vite! Take my horse, Capitaine Dournez's, too! Go, mes enfants! By sunset, we can stain the sands red with British blood!'

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Mister Gamble, we'll have the people's washing taken in now, I think,' Capt. Alan Lewrie gleefully told the officer of the watch.

'Hoist from Chesterfield , sir,' Midshipman Dry called out. 'The signal is 'Prepare for Battle,' sir!'

'Once the dirty shirts are below, Mister Gamble, do you order Bosun Thomlin to pipe 'Stations' for hoisting anchor and making sail,' Lewrie added, checking the looseness of his hanger in its scabbard. 'You are ready, sir?' he asked Lt. Urquhart.

'Completely, sir,' Urquhart crisply and firmly replied, nodding his head, as sober and grave as a churchman. If he had been thirsting for action, for significant honour and glory, he had an odd way to show eagerness, Lewrie thought. 'As are my seconds,' Urquhart added. He'd chosen Midshipman Grace, and, wonder of wonders, Midshipman Carrington, now better-known among the hands as 'Mister Foggy,' to help him keep good order of the landing-party of armed sailors. Why Lt. Urquhart had chosen the young twit, no one could fathom; sympathy, perhaps, for a sprog whose head was so full of clouds, and not much else; or, as a wag in the wardroom had speculated, a 'noble' way to rid themselves of a hen-head more dangerous to Savage's people than the French.

'Should I fall, sir,' Urquhart solemnly intoned, 'I have left a packet of letters to my kin in my sea-chest.'

'Of course, sir,' Lewrie said, stifling his own rising excitement and eagerness for a moment to reply in kind.

'All cleared away, sir,' Lt. Gamble reported.

'Very well, Mister Gamble. Pipe 'Stations,' and hands to the capstan,' Lewrie directed. Fleeting the messenger, binding on nippers, and preparing the decks to receive the thigh-thick anchor cable was, to an uninitiated 'lubberly' observer, a form of organised chaos; not even the gigantic three-decked First Rates had enough room on their decks when hundreds of men breasted to the capstan bars and began to walk the contraption round, for 'nippers' to rush continually 'twixt hawse-holes and capstan to lash the messenger to the cable, for men with middle mauls to pound the turns of the messenger round the capstan drum upwards so it would not bind upon itself.

Today was not so bad; the river bottom was mostly gritty sand, not so much sucking ooze, and with only the best bower down, the cable came in fairly quickly, the hands at the capstan bars urged on by the Marine boy drummer and the ship's fiddler, who, despite the stricture that only 'Portsmouth Lass' was acceptable aboard a Royal Navy warship, played a lively version of 'The Jolly Thresher.'

'Heave chearly, lads!' Lt. Adair called out. Moments later and it was 'Heave and pawl! Get all you can!' After a look over the bows and he changed to 'Surge-ho! Heave, and in sight! Up and down, walk away with it, lads!'

'Bosun, pipe hands aloft!' Lt. Gamble ordered from the quarterdeck as the iron ring and the top of the anchor stock became awash and the new-model geared capstan clanked merrily away. 'Trice up and lay aloft… lead along tops'l sheets, halliards, and jib halliards!'

Lewrie opened the face of his watch as he paced far aft by the taffrails, staying out of the way of men who knew what they were about; a quarter-hour to get the anchor up, catted, and fished, which wasn't bad time for a 950-ton frigate streaming bows-on to wind and tide. Ten more minutes, he judged, would have Savage under way off the wind, all hands on deck, the running rigging squared away, and the guns run out and loaded.

'Mister Dry,' he told the signals Midshipman of the watch. 'It is time to break out 'Form Line of Battle.' '

'Aye aye, sir!' the young fellow answered, almost tail-wagging like a puppy in eagerness. The cutters broke off their patrols, coming out to meet her; Erato and Mischief came to take station in line-ahead of Savage, which idled under loose and nagging sail, having fallen off the wind to face Pointe de Grave. A look to larboard showed the other ships under Commodore Ayscough's command were beginning to sort out in a line-ahead column as well, with the 74-gunned two-deckers in the van, so their heavier guns would be the first to engage Fort St. Georges.

'Not much of a wind, today, sir,' Lt. Gamble commented, now that he was satisfied of the frigate being squared away.

'Surprisingly, aye,' Lewrie agreed, looking up at the commissioning pendant as it slowly undulated like a boa- constrictor-long, colourful snake. 'Seven, eight knots o' breeze, I'd guess. Perhaps eight to ten,' he amended with a shrug. 'Half an hour or better before we come to gun-range of the Point Grave battery. See the people all have a go at the scuttle butts. It'll be dry work, then.'

'Aye, sir,'

Erato and Mischief were now off their larboard bows, a mile or so off, beginning to haul their wind to steer Sou'west for a time 'til they had Savage abeam their starboard sides. Mischief was hard on the wind, whilst Erato was nearer to a close reach to reduce the separation between them to less than a quarter-mile when they hauled wind again, and fell into place in line-ahead.

'And Mister Gamble? I s'pose it's time to let our 'passengers' on deck,' Lewrie chuckled. 'No point in hidin' 'em below any longer.'

'Aye, sir.' And Marine Lt. Ford and his hundred men clattered up from the pre-stripped gun deck to join Lt. Devereux's fourty, some of them looking sweaty and red in the face even though the morning had come cool, and the approaching mid-day did not promise much of a rise in temperature. Some fanned themselves with their hats, and some japed and elbowed their mates, but the bulk of them, Devereux's Marines and Lt. Urquhart's landing- party, appeared sobered by what they were to attempt, with the chance to go bayonet-to-bayonet with French infantry.

'We've the depth to go within a cable of the point, in your estimation, Mister Winwood?' Lewrie asked the Sailing Master, who was also looking as if a final prayer might not go amiss.

'Argosy skirted the point after dark last week, sir, and by her soundings with the lead, at the peak of high tide, which should be…,' Winwood pulled out his pocket-watch and peered at its face, 'just past four minutes ago, we should have five and a half fathoms within a two cable range, Captain. I'd not advise going closer, for they did not trawl a grapnel looking for any wrecks which might have gone aground on the point over the years. God knows what lurks below.'

'Two cables it will be, then, Mister Winwood,' Lewrie decided. Savage's 18-pounder great-guns, and their 32-pounder carronades, could hurl solid shot at the stone battery with great effect at such short range, and could switch to bags of grape-shot, as well. Beyond musket-range, fifty or sixty yards, grape-shot would scatter rather far, but it could keep any defenders' heads down, and still would have enough force when it struck the unwary (or the unfortunate) to reap lines of opposing infantry in windrows. In Army practice, Lewrie knew from his brother-in-law Burgess Chiswick (the one who would still talk to him) defending artillery would switch to grape when a foe's infantry approached within three hundred yards, so he supposed his own pieces, much larger and of greater calibre, would suit.

He strolled to the hammock nettings overlooking the waist, now arseholes and elbows thick with men and weapons. He took another peek at his watch, looked outward to Erato and Mischief, which were close to within a single point off the larboard bows, about to be occluded by a fluttering mass of inner and outer jibs. It was time.

'Lieutenant Ford… Lieutenant Devereux, and Lieutenant Urquhart…,' he called down. 'Do find a way t'make