The Invasion Year

Without forward motion, the cutter wallowed and rolled fitfully as the great cask was pulled up astern, right to the cutter’s transom. Lewrie laid his hat aside and leaned out as far as he could reach to take hold of it, but those spike bayonets and the grapnels fended the torpedo off like an aroused porcupine. It butted against the cutter’s rudder with loud thuds, keeping it even further away!

Well, this is hellish-awkward, Lewrie silently fumed.

“Let’s haul it round alongside the larboard quarter,” Lewrie ordered. That spared the rudder, but the bayonets still kept it too far away; the only way that he could see to remove the large bung-like tompion from the torpedo’s hemispherical top and reach down inside to set and activate its mechanism would be to leave the boat altogether and clamber on top of it… and if he fell off, he would surely drown, for Lewrie could not swim a single stroke! The last time he had been forced into the sea was at Toulon in 1794 when his mortar ship exploded, flinging him sky-high, and his cabin steward, Will Cony, had buoyed him up and towed him to the nearby beach!

“See if you can turn it halfway round, Furfy,” Lewrie snapped in frustration. “Spin it so the grapnels lay fore- and-aft, and take off two or three of the bayonets.”

“Touch it, sor?” Furfy yelped, wiping his big hands down both thighs of his slop- trousers. “Me, sor?”

“Aye, you, sir!” Lewrie insisted. “The bayonets fit over the barrel stubs like they do on yer own muskets. Furfy… the bloody thing can’t go off ’til I’ve set it!”

“Bear a hand, Pat,” Liam Desmond snapped, leaning over the side. “You too, Hartnett. Pass the gaff back here. Thomas, hook onto one o’ the liftin’ ring-bolts t’steady th’ bastard.”

They got the torpedo turned and removed three of the bayonets, which allowed the massive bulk to thud right against the cutter’s hull, sounding like a large wooden bell despite the need for silence. Lewrie turned his head to see that the larboard-side oarsmen not involved with the torpedo’s turning and steadying shrank back to starboard.

“Let’s see, now,” he muttered, leaning far out despite how close they had hauled it, grasping one of the ring- bolts with his left hand, and groping at the tompion with his right. “Damme, that’s snug!”

The tompion which kept the inner works dry was a flush fit into the low-domed wooden top, with only a small brass ring-bolt in the centre, only large enough to pass a thin rope through it, or one finger! Lewrie clawed the tompion’s edges with his fingernails, but that was of no avail. There was nothing for it but to lean out even further from the dubious safety of the cutter, chest pressed against the torpedo’s top and his legs from the knees down inside the boat so he could take hold of the ring-bolt and try to pull upwards. “Well, shit, finally! Here, Furfy.”

He handed the tompion back to Furfy, the nearest seaman, who acted as if Lewrie had just offered him a lit grenado bomb!

He still couldn’t reach inside, though.

“Hold it close alongside, lads, and very bloody steady, hey?” Lewrie whispered harshly to his sailors as he groped for the far edge of the torpedo to haul himself out half on top of the bobbing, rolling beast. “Hold my legs, Desmond.”

Even though he had managed to reach inside, the night was nigh as black as a boot, and even a tiny glim candle was right out of the question; too much gunpowder, and too many damned French patrols! He stuck one arm down inside, fumbled about, and found the clockwork mechanism. The only hand, the minute hand, was straight up at “midnight.” Lewrie gently pushed it down to what felt like a quarter past. Oops! As the cutter and torpedo bobbed opposed to each other, he had to fiddle some more to make sure that he hadn’t pushed the hand down too far! Now, where were the two trigger lines? He found them, drew them to their full lengths, and pulled his arm clear.

God, forgive a sinner! he prayed, then jerked them both, hard.

Both mechanisms sounded off together, making him gasp in fright; there was a hellish clank! as the fire-lock on the pistol drew back to full cock, and a bladder-emptying whirr-tick! as the snugly wound clock began to function. After a few panting breaths to calm himself-and realise that he hadn’t been blown to atoms!-Lewrie coiled up those lines and dropped them to a far corner of the torpedo’s interior.

“Right, Furfy. Hand me the bung, again,” he bade. Sliding just a bit more into the cutter, he carefully placed it atop the torpedo’s top, rattled it round into the hole, and tried to push it back down.

“Christ on a crutch! Mine arse on a bloody band-box, it won’t seat!” Lewrie spat. Had it swelled in the few minutes it had been out? The tompion was only halfway home, and the priming and the powder in the pistol barrel which fired the larger charge would be soaked as the torpedo bobbed its way inshore, with the chop sloshing over it!

“Hand me an oar, somebody. I’ll have t’hammer it home!”

Every sailor in the boat croaked, taking in great gasps of air! Someone-it might have been the bow man-let out a wee whimper!

But they passed him an oar, which he shortened up on as he slid back into the cutter, feeling an immense sense of relief, it must here be noted! He turned the loom of the oar flat to the tompion, lifted it, then gave it a couple of hard whacks.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be…!”

“Does it look flush yet, Desmond?” Lewrie asked.

“Oh, flush’z yer dinin’ table, sor, aye!” Desmond whinnied, seconded by a chorus of hearty agreement from the rest.

“I don’t know…,” Lewrie speculated, using the loom of the oar to prod the rim of the tompion; if it slid smooth, that was fine, but… he reckoned there might be an inch to go for sure water-tightness.

Well, it ain’t gone bang yet, so…, he thought, rising to stand in the boat, with Furfy clinging to his legs to steady him; or cringe in terror. Lewrie slammed the oar down on the tompion one more time, much harder, causing a deep empty-barrel thud from the torpedo, a thud that sounded very much like Doom! Several sailors stuck fingers in their ears and squinted their eyes tight shut!

“Look flush now, Desmond?” he asked again.

“I, ah… wouldn’t know, sor,” Desmond croaked.

“Wouldn’t want water gettin’ in and ruinin’ it, right?”

“Perish th’ fackin’ thought, sor!” Desmond assured him.

“That should do it, I think,” Lewrie decided, passing the borrowed oar back forward. “Let’s free the gaff and the tow-line and get away from it. Bugger the bayonets. Just toss ’em over and get a way on.”

Only the forward-most larboard oarsmen could get their oars in the water, whilst the starboard-side rowers were free to work. The tow-line was tossed free, and the cutter began to move again.

“It’s followin’ us!” someone cried.

With only the full bank of starboard oars at work, the cutter was circling round to its left despite Desmond holding the tiller hard over to larboard to steer away; they were circling the torpedo, and it was still right alongside!

“We’re spiked to it!” Furfy pointed out, most anxiously.

“Must’ve spun about and stuck a bayonet into the hull,” Lewrie said, hoping that MacTavish had spent a goodly sum on his clocks! “Get us free. Gaff, here! Shove the bastard off!”

“Un-screw the bayonet from the barrel stub!” another suggested.

“Won’t come free! Th’ bitch’s rollin’ too much t’get a grip!”

“Arms and legs, over the side and push, lads!” Lewrie snapped. “Heave, heave, heave!”

“ ’At done it, sir!”

The torpedo at last drifted a few more feet away, bobbing like a gigantic cork, the lights from the town and anchored invasion boats glinting off its painted top and steel grapnels and bayonet blades.

“Ain’t natural…’tis Devil’s work, them things!” a sailor whispered to his mate as they got both banks of oars working in unison and made their escape. Lewrie opened his pocket compass and held it close to his face but could not quite read it. On the way in, before they had left Fusee, the course had been Sou’- Sou’east, and the reciprocal to take them back near the converted bomb vessel should be Nor’-Nor’west, but… he looked astern to the lights of St. Valery and Le Crotoy. “Keep the towns on our starboard