Troubled Waters

sailors were already ashore on the piers of the seaside village, and her guns had fallen silent. Close off the breakwater Lewrie could see other sailors aboard several large sailing barges near the jetties, and the only resistance seemed to come from within a maze of small shops and houses, and even then the expected, burning- twigs-crackle of musketry had subsided to an occasional pop.

Across the river, the tall pall of gunpowder smoke had mostly thinned and blown away up the Gironde, its large, wispy haze drifting over the chimneys and church spire of Meschers sur Gironde, where bells still pealed in alarm. Near 'Mashers,' HMS Mischief was standing out for the narrows, her prize close astern of her, and flying the Royal Navy ensign over a Danish flag. Lewrie pursed his lips, worried that taking a neutral, even one caught red-handed in enemy waters, and full of French export goods, would tie young Commander Hogue up for years in Admiralty Court, and end with the prize restored to her owners, with all expenses of the proceedings, and the years of the owners' loss while the merchantman was tied up in port in custody, on Hogue's shoulders.

I'd've burned her, and called it their fault, Lewrie decided; a drunken mate, an overturned lanthorn… woops! But, I doubt Ayscough will let him keep her past sunset, so all may be well.

If the Commodore didn't say anything, then he would warn Hogue, himself, and strongly suggest he let her go… after her cargo was put over the side of course. No sense in letting blockade runners profit.

'The cutters are coming out, sir,' Lt. Gamble pointed out, 'with the galley in tow. No value to her, unfortunately. Bless me if Erato isn't tied up along the piers, though!'

'Bring us up within five cables of the harbour mouth, and we'll send a boat in to find out what they're up to,' Lewrie said, idling his way to the larboard bulwarks. 'Fetch-to when in close, sir. It seems all the excitement is over, and there's no need for our services. Do you inform Mister Adair to secure the guns and stand down from Quarters… I haven't the heart t'be the one t'tell him it's over.' 'Aye aye, sir,' Lt. Gamble said with a twinkle in his eyes. By the time they had fetched-to, though, a rowboat was coming to them, with Erato's Second Lieutenant of Marines aboard. She had barely touched the main-chains when the young fellow scrambled up the side as agile as a teenaged topman. 'Lieutenant Thurston, sir, perhaps you do not remember me,' he said, doffing his hat in salute. 'Lieutenant Aubrey begs me report, Captain Lewrie, that we shall be ashore a while longer. We've discovered nigh a ton of gunpowder aboard one of those barges we captured, and there's heavy drays in the village, and teams of oxen, so… Lieutenant Aubrey wondered if it might he needed at the battery… to help blow it up, sir! Take a few hours to load it all up, and take it to the point, sir, but there's no more opposition.'

'My brief ends at the beach, Mister Thurston,' Lewrie allowed. 'But my First Officer is already laying charges, and he might go ahead with the kegs of powder we've already landed.'

'No worry on that score, Captain Lewrie,' the young fellow said. 'Lieutenant Aubrey sent a party of runners to Lieutenant Ford, on the point, and they will delay the demolition until our powder is added to theirs.'

'Oh, a bigger bang,' Lewrie chuckled. 'Just at sunset, like a Germanic opera, I take it, sir? '

'Wouldn't know about operas and such, sir,' Lt. Thurston said with a briefly furrowed brow and a shrug of indifference. 'It will be spectacular, is all I know, Captain Lewrie.'

'Much of a fight ashore, sir?' Lewrie asked.

'For a bit, sir, aye,' Thurston explained with recalled relish. 'Short, sharp, but all in our favour… there were about an hundred French infantry in the village, but we routed them right-sharply, and the ship's guns and swivels took the fight out of them.' There came a few more faint pops from muskets, perhaps a faint, distanced scream as someone saw his death-wound, or got bayonetted, then it was quiet again.

'We've taken five barges, sir!' Lt. Thurston happily related. 'Four filled with stone and mortar mixings, the last'un loaded with the powder, and the artillery pieces that were to go in the battery. Lieutenant Cottle says he'll scuttle or burn four in the deep river channel, but wishes to tow out the fifth as prize.'

'I doubt a sailin' barge'd survive her first deep ocean storm,' Lewrie speculated. 'But, does Mischief's prize prove legitimate, they could be placed aboard her, and sailed to the nearest Prize- Court.'

'Oh, goody… that would be excellent, mean t'say, sir,' Lieutenant Thurston amended, blushing at his youthful slip. 'Lieutenant Cottle bade me say that he will sail out with the barges, once we have the waggons on the way out of town, sir, and Lieutenant Aubrey's men to escort them. My Marines and our sailors will be coming back aboard Erato, soon as they set off.'

'And what does Commander Kenyon say, Mister Thurston?' Lewrie enquired, mystified by the absence of his name in the proceedings. He join the Great Majority, pray Jesus? he thought, with imaginary fingers crossed for good luck.

'Uhm… Commander Kenyon fell, sir,' Thurston reported, going solemn for a very brief moment. 'Right as he stepped ashore upon the town piers… he and several of his boat crew, all at once. A French volley,' the Marine officer offered as the cause, though looking a tad cutty-eyed, to Lewrie's lights. 'About the only casualties we had, sir.'

'I see,' Lewrie intoned, with a grave nod of his head, though feeling he'd break out in maniacal cackles and do a little jig of mourning if he didn't get below in private… soonest. Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow, he thought, biting the lining of his mouth to prevent a broad smile. And there's that problem solved, for good an' all by God!

'My most utter condolences, Mister Thurston,' Lewrie managed to say with a straight face, and a brief semblance of sorrow, himself. 'Pray, do you relate to Lieutenant Cottle that I shall take Savage to anchor off Pointe de Grave, for the nonce, and wish him to join me as soon as he may be able… so we may take all our people off before the battery goes up. And, my congratulatons to Lieutenant Aubrey, and Mister Cottle… to you, as well, sir, on your quick victory.'

And, just at sunset, after all the surviving sailors and Marines were back aboard their respective ships, the stone-bearing barges had been torched and sunk in mid-river, and all the two-deckers, cutters, and brigs had made their crawling way back into the estuary against the wind, but with a falling tide, there came two spectacular explosions. Fort St. Georges split apart in a titanic, roaring fireball first, and stout stone walls collapsed in a roar as the magazine blew, then kegs of powder at each wall. Heavy artillery pieces, already slighted by having their trunnions sawed off, and their muzzles packed over-full with powder and round-shot, then choked with mud, burst apart as fuses set off by the initial explosions reached the touch-holes, shattering hard iron like papier-mache. And the rubble from the walls came down like an avalanche on the flagstone 'deck' of the water battery, just as the charges laid underneath it went off as well, blasting parapet and embrasures into the river, and littering the beach.

Major Loudenne, his two Captains, and four Lieutenants, standing by the bulwarks of HMS Chesterfield as prisoners to watch the ending of his fort, all were later reported to be in tears at the sight.

Then… just as the sun touched the horizon, the Pointe de Grave battery exploded, too. Rectangular stone blocks went soaring into the sky, silhouetted against the livid blue-white blast of exploding gunpowder smoke, lit from within almost pale yellow for a moment, before turning ruddy amber, and all the waggons, all the construction timbers and scaffolding, all the out-of-town workers' huts piled in the centre of the battery's future courtyard, caught fire… helped along by the barrels of lamp oil, resin, turpentine, pitch, and tar that Lt. Urquhart had 'borrowed' from bosun's stores to help things along… and torched upwards in an instant, volcanic plume of flames that lit up the night, and glowed like a lighthouse long into the evening, visible at sea for over ten miles 'til the wee hours just before dawn.

'Damn' good work, Mister Urquhart,' Lewrie told him. 'Simply damned fine! Pass word to all your people, they did grand work today.'

'I suppose I must feel gratified by it, sir, if there was little combat,' Urquhart bemoaned. 'Still… it does feel some satisfying.'

'As I told Mister Gamble, not all victories involve blood and thunder,' Lewrie cajoled. 'Well, we did make thunder, at least, but we accomplished what we came to do, and hardly any of our men were hurt, and none killed, while the French lost hundreds.'