Troubled Waters

'The base of the wall is stout,' Lewrie supposed aloud, 'but the uppermost courses of stone are new-laid… done so recently the mortar hasn't hardened? They must have finished the parapets, but have yet to raise but the outer-most blocks to support the embrasures. Else, we'd not see heads and shoulders.'

'As you bear.. .firel' Lt. Adair shouted after the guns were re-loaded, run out, and the recoil tackles overhauled.

Lewrie looked beyond the point to see Erato and Mischief come to anchor by their sterns, streaming Sou'east, their own boats rowing hard for the shore, and their 9-pounders barking away. The cutters had run on round the point, and only their mast-tops were visible as they entered the wide, shallow bay above Le Verdon sur Mer. Above the thunderous, ear-splitting roar of cannon, Lewrie fancied he could hear Bongs/ as round-shot struck stone, and the splintering of shaped rock blocks; each strike raised large clouds of stone shards and showers of sparks like flints in titanic tinder-boxes.

No, it was the four 32-pounder carronades of the starboard battery that were doing the most damage. Their massive round-shot might be slower-flying, and they could not reach out much beyond four hundred yards, but when they hit the battery's walls, they dished out bites the diametre of serving platters, and the depth of soup tureens, shifting stone blocks inwards, and causing miniature avalanches of stone chips to dribble down the face of the walls.

The boats were ashore, bows grinding into the shingle! Sailors were leaping out to steady them, knee deep in the light surf; Marines and armed tars were flooding ashore, and officers with drawn swords, a sergeant or two with their ceremonial half-pikes, were sorting men out into skirmishers and two ragged lines. As quickly as the boats were emptied, their crews were shoving them off, going up to their waists before leaping back aboard even as oarsmen were stroking 'back-water' to fend them further off the beach, crabbing them round once in deep water, and returning to the frigate for their next load.

'Frog infantry! There, sir!' Lt. Gamble was pointing.

'See the French, Mister Adair? Serve 'em grape!' Lewrie yelled.

Second 18-pounder balls were set back in the shot garlands and racks; powder-monkeys scrambled below to the magazine, returning with flannel cartridge bags that held wooden top and bottom discs inside, and inch-round, plum-sized lead balls between. A pause in the firing to ram them down atop round-shot; the strain of running out the heavy artillery pieces, right to the port-sills; some toil with crow-levers to shift aim, some fiddling with elevating quoin-blocks to ensure the spread of grape-shot went over the heads of the shore parties… 'As you bear, on the French, mind! Fire! ' Lt. Adair bellowed.

An officer was chivvying thirty or fourty shakoed soldiers into a rough line two ranks deep, flooding from the western face of the battery, though clinging nervously close to it.

'Man's bloody daft,' Lewrie grumbled. 'What does he think he's facin'… big damned muskets?'

Lt. Ford's Marines were already firing, the first rank kneeling and the second waiting to fire 'til the first rank had discharged their muskets, catching the French soldiers at long range, not doing much to harm them, but quite a lot to daunt them and make them shrink back to their rear, and cram themselves elbow-to-elbow, as if that was shelter, even as their officer and their sergeants were shoving and cursing for them to open up their formation.

When the heavy round-shot howled through them, and when a cloud of loose-spaced grape-shot-a thousand or more balls-spattered sand and dirt round them, hammered bodies, smashed musket-butts, tore off limbs and heads, and cut a few of them in two at the waist, they simply melted away… dropped to the ground as if they'd never been there! The survivors, a sad few number, dropped their muskets and ran round the western end of the battery and took off in terror, leaving their formerly elegant officer on his knees, his sword broken, and his entrails spread before him as he vomited up blood on his white facings and waist-coat.

Lt. Ford's Marines and sailors gave out a great, jeering roar, and began a quick advance on the battery, muskets held extended, with fresh-ground bayonets winking wicked in the sunlight, at the 'Quick.' Before the boats had gotten back alongside under the now-silent mouths of the guns, they were in the battery, behind the walls, and into the courtyard, then appearing atop its firing platforms. To the east, Lt. Noble's men appeared atop that wall, too, with British colours waving bravely, even if the flag was only a small boat-jack mounted on a boarding pike.

'Hold fire, hold fire!' Lt. Adair cautioned his gun-captains, 'Don't hit our brave fellows, yonder!' Flintlock strikers were taken away from the vents, discharged guns were re-loaded with single solid shot, and the guns were run in and bowsed down securely.

'Well, damme,' Lewrie heard a faint, disgusted voice say. Lieutenant Urquhart, Midshipman Grace, and Midshipman Carrington stood on the larboard gangway's after end; looking as downcast as tots who had discovered lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings.

'Lots t'do yet, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie encouraged. 'Ford and his lot can stand guard, up the point, whilst you and your lads place the explosive charges, and blow this place to flinders, hey?'

'But of course, sir,' Urquhart replied, eyes almost glazed by how quickly the battery had fallen; no glory for him, poor fellow.

'Do you and your party man the boats, sir, and see to the loading of the powder kegs and fuses,' Lewrie directed. 'Quickly, Mister Urquhart. We must get under way and support the cutters, should they have run into trouble.'

Lewrie looked out over the larboard bows, scenting for a threat, but Erato's and Mischief's guns had also ceased firing, and both brigs were shortening their stern cables and preparing to get under way, too. Abeam to larboard, nearly four miles across the Gironde, Commodore Ayscough's two-deckers had come to anchor just off Fort St. Georges, guns pounding by broadsides, deck at a time, and were wreathed in gunpowder smoke. Now and then, a stab of flame revealed a surviving French artillery piece responding… almost lost in the hot iron sparkles as the place was being pounded into ruin by heavy, impacting shot. The sound of 24-pounders and 32-pounders bellowing came faint cross the river, an over-the-horizon, stuttering series of thuds and thumps, and the echoey rumble of distant thunder.

Half an hour later, and the kegs of black powder had been slung over the side into the boats, and Lt. Urquhart and Marine Lt. Devereux and their people could at last debark.

'Signal rocket, sir!' Midshipman Dry announced, pointing with an extended telescope cross the point. 'A single one, sir… no opposition found.'

'Very well, Mister Dry. Mister Adair, clear away, the larboard gangway, and reply with one signal rocket,' Lewrie ordered, extremely pleased that no French warships were in the bay North of Le Verdon… but, chiding himself for thoughtlessness. If Lt. Bartoe in HMS Penguin had found opposing forces, Savage's, reply would have been fired whilst the kegs of gunpowder were still on deck, and he winced and sucked his teeth to imagine how large the blast would have been, if only a trickle of powder had caught a spark, for wooden kegs could never be completely spill-proof!

'Ready to proceed, sir,' Lt. Gamble told him at last, touching the brim of his hat in salute. 'Hands to the after capstan?'

'Suits me right down t'me toes, sir,' Lewrie said with a grin.

A half an hour more to haul Savage to short-stays to her kedge, for Mr. Win-wood's worry of obstructions on the bottom had proven true, and one of the anchor's flukes had fouled on something. The tide had gone slack an hour before and was just beginning its long ebb, taking Savage sternward, about ready to tuck the cable under her counter, and possibly damaging the rudder. The weakly ebbing tide took the frigate like a folded-paper boat, though, aslant the wind, and quickly hoisting the spanker and the inner and outer jibs gave her just enough way to stand out from the beach into the river and re-orient the anchor cable round so they pulled slantwise, from dead astern to the larboard quarter, and, at last, the fluke was freed, the hands breasting to the capstan bars could almost trot about, and the pawls clacked rapidly, 'til the anchor was up-and-down again, and just coming awash.

'Now, get way on her, Mister Gamble,' Lewrie said, with an impatient sigh of relief. Erato and Mischief had rounded the point long before, and only their tops'ls and top-masts were visible above the low land.

HMS Savage stood out into the river, wind abeam for a time and pointing her jib-