completed for him, unwilling to let the civilian get the last word on anything.
'And it's a bugger,' Capt. Hardcastle said, straightening up.
'We're well within her greatest range,' Lewrie noted, lifting his telescope once more. 'Same as the guns of Kronborg Castle, up the Narrows. Their ramparts are, what…'bout a thousand yards or so to loo'rd? They've at least five hundred yards range over us.'
'The fortress's gunners don't seem that well drilled, though, sirs,' Lt. Ballard contributed to the conversation, his demeanour the required cool and unruffled sang-froid that British Sea Officers were to display. 'And no more accurate than the gunners of the Kronborg were, when the fleet passed them without a single hit.'
' 'Sound and fury, signifying nothing,' hey, Mister Ballrd?' Mr. Lyle japed. 'To quote Shakespeare.'
'Wrong play,' Capt. Hardcastle quipped. 'The First Lieutenant is correct, Captain Lewrie. The fortresses are manned by the Danish army, and I cannot recall seeing them practice with live powder and shot in all my years passing through the Narrows.'
'Well, they're getting some practice today,' Lewrie said with a smirk. 'Hello! Well shot, Mister Farley! Hammer the bitch again!' he cheered as iron shot pummeled the Danish two-decker, smashing scantling planks and stoving in her bulwarks in showers of splinters. For good measure, there was an explosion aboard her, fire stabbing upward, and powder smoke jutting skyward… a sure sign of a burst gun!
A second later, though, the Danish gunners responded, their side erupting in a staggering, stuttering series of explosions as her guns went off, no longer in controlled broadsides, but as quickly as gunners could swab out, re- load, and run out.
Balls shrieked overhead, passing close-aboard the frigate's bow and stern. The roundhouse atop the forecastle was blown open with a round-shot that went clean through it; the larboard anchor cat-head was shattered with another parroty screech, and the best bower anchor, its cat and fish lines shot away, dropped free to splash into the harbour, lost forever, most likely. Yet a third ball, perhaps an 18-pounder, buried itself in the trunk of the foremast below the fighting top and made the mast, and the ship, sway to starboard, so that sailors and Marines in the tops had to hold on for dear life.
'Well, the Danish army may be half-blind dodderers, but it seems their navy knows their business,' Lewrie said. 'See to it, Mister Ballard.'
'Aye, sir.'
'By broadside… Fire!' Lt. Farley in the waist was yelling, his voice gone hoarse and raspy on smoke and excitement, and Thermopylae rocked to starboard a few degrees, settling an inch or two in the water to the massive recoil as the guns slammed backwards from the ports, the truck-carriages squealing and the breeching ropes and recoil tackle and ring bolts groaning. The guns were hot now, and 18-pounders weighing nearly two tons altogether were leaping from the deck as they lit off, thundering back down at the full extent of the breeching ropes at odd angles. Sure enough, there came a howl from a tackle man struck in the shins by an erratically recoiling carriage, and a scream as the heavy wood carriage and sizzling-hot gun rolled over one of his ankles.
'Loblolly boys, here!' Lt. Fox yelled. 'Spare man from starboard, take his place. Quick now, lad! Overhaul tackle! Swab out!'
'Oh, poor fellow,' Lt. Ballard calmly said, returning from up forward.
'The foremast sound, Mister Ballard?' Lewrie asked him.
'I would not trust it with more than forecourse and the fore tops'l, sir,' Lt. Ballard gloomily replied. 'The ball is half-buried in the trunk, fourty feet above the deck. It will need fishing, and banding, do we get the chance.'
'Cold shot, I take it?' Lewrie asked with a wry grin. 'Not sizzlin'?'
'Cold shot, aye, sir, not heated shot,' Lt. Ballard replied with almost an impatient expression, as though he found Lewrie's attempt at humour disagreeable. 'We've no fear of bursting aflame, sir.'
'By broadside… Fire!' Lt. Farley yelled, and the guns roared and thundered yet again, re-wreathing the frigate in a dense cloud of spent powder smoke, adding to the acrid, rotten-egg cumulus that stood above and to leeward from their first broadsides, muffling Thermopylae in a white-yellow mist that made it hard to see the forecastle from the quarterdeck.
Lewrie paced aft to the taffrails, past the larboard carronades to the taffrail lanthorn, to see how the rest of the battle was going. But even his telescope could not pierce the palls of smoke towering over the British and Danish lines. He could make out the Lynetten, a smaller version of the Trekroner to the West-Sou'west, and only the nearest warships in the opposing lines of battle. Now and again, as the guns fired or the smoke pall cleared, he could espy a few Danish gunboats anchored with their bows pointing East behind the larger Danish vessels, great bow-mounted pairs of guns erupting, and sea-mortars huffing upwards with even more massive shot.
Dead astern lay HMS Defiance, Rear-Admiral Graves's flagship, belching broadsides at the furious rate of three rounds per gun every two minutes, the desired standard of the Royal Navy, with Graves's Red Ensign flying, along with Signal Number 16-'Engage the Enemy More Closely.'
There came yet another broadside from the Danish two-decker as Lewrie turned to pace back forward. This one was even more irregular than the last, not quite as ordered and regimented, and… was it his imagination, or was it not quite as powerful as the ones that had come before? 'Fool!' Lewrie spat, grinning as he realised that the Danish captain had split his fire, his upper-deck guns directed at his ship, his lower-deck 24-pounders angled in the ports to engage Amazon and Blanche, which were pummelling her hard.
'Over-haul tackle!' Lt. Farley cried, almost wheezing on smoke. 'Swa-ab out!' From Lt. Fox came 'We're latherin' 'em, lads!'
Lewrie paused to dig into his waist-coat pocket for his watch, and flipped open the lid. Amazingly, the action had been going on for an hour and a half; they'd weighed a little after 10 A.M., and here it was nigh 11:45!
Crash! came a ball right through the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck, just forrud of the first carronade, and a chorus of yells of alarm. Splinters the size of pigeons, the size of bed-slats, flew in a whirling, vicious cloud! The ball continued cross the deck, then exited by clanging off an idle starboard-side carronade barrel, darting skyward as a jagged blur of dark metal!
'Good Christ!' the civilian Capt. Hardcastle cried aloud, struck dumb by the sudden carnage that had, like the plague of Egypt that had taken the first-born and spared the Israelites, sprung up all about him. 'Oh, my Good God!' he yelped, just before staggering away to heave his stomach's contents.
The captain of the Afterguard and two men of the mizen mast crew were down, gobbling fear and pain over their hurts, or lying dazed in sudden shock. Midshipman Privette was sprawled on the deck, his head and face completely covered in blood.
And the First Officer, Lt. Ballard, was down, his head and his chest propped up on the Sailing Master's lap.
'What are his-?' Lewrie began to ask, then clamped his mouth shut as he saw that Arthur Ballard no longer had a left leg; the heavy 24-pounder ball had taken it off at mid-thigh!
'Loblolly boys to the quarterdeck, now, damn yer eyes!' Lewrie bellowed. 'Mister Tillyard… do you go below and warn the Surgeon the First Officer is comin' down to him.'
'Aye, sir,' Tillyard said with a gulp, his face as pale as new laundry. He staggered to his feet, recovered his hat, and headed for the larboard gangway ladder; rapidly, at first, then more slowly as he recalled that his actions could cause panic and despair.
Christ, why him? Lewrie asked the aether.
'Pass word for Lieutenant Farley,' Lewrie snapped, forced by grim duty to continue as before. 'My compliments to him, and he is to assume the duties of First Officer. Pass word to Midshipman Sealey, and inform him he is to replace Lieutenant Fox up forrud, and consider himself an Acting-Lieutenant, for the time being.'
'Aye, sir!' Marine Corporal Frye replied, heading off quickly.
'Help's coming, Arthur,' Lewrie said more gently as he took time to kneel beside Ballard, who was rolling his head back and forth, his agony already clawing at him, his weathered face gone whitish-grey as he bit his lips to keep from howling and jibbering. Lewrie took his hand as Mr. Lyle whipped out a length of small-stuff rope to bind about Ballard's leg near his groin to staunch the heavy bleeding. 'Help's on the way. Stay with us, Arthur.' Lewrie repeated, feeling helpless and holding out but the slimmest hope that his old friend would survive his horrid wound.
'Damn you!' Lt. Ballard hissed, 'You lucky bastard, you always were… ah-ah!' he had to pause as a wave of pain hit him. 'Dumb blind luck, always get what you want, not…! Aahh! Walk through shit with nought stickin' to… Christ!' Ballard loudly howled as the loblolly boys arrived with a mess-table stretcher to fetch him to the surgery on the orlop.
