it down their muzzles; either blue-hot or yellow-amber, like a half-made horseshoe on a forge, but sometimes a dull red from those careful souls who did not want to deform the shot in the barrels or set the propellant charges off with the heat of the projectiles before the crews could stand back for safety.
Fused shells, those filled with powder and designed to burst and rend anything near their impact with shattered iron balls, came flicking in slowly, their fuses glowing like tiny fireflies as they descended to the earth to thud into the ground, hiss malevolently, then blow up and raise a gout of clay and rock. Sometimes the fuses were cut too short and the ball exploded before it hit the ground, scattering death about it below the burst, and no one in a trench could be safe from such a blast.
The guns worked over the north end of the town for a while, then shifted further south, allowing Cony and Lewrie to run for the safety of the trench beside their gun platforms.
'Everyone well, Knatchbull?' Alan asked his senior gunner. He had to take hold of the man's shoulder and almost shout into his ear. Either Knatchbull had been concussed or deafened or frightened out of his wits.
'Two samboes gone, sir,' Knatchbull finally replied. 'Shell damn near got 'em all back there. Daniels had ta go ta the surgeons. Hit with splinters, sir.'
Daniels. Alan remembered that he had been in his boat crew the night they had burned the French transport. 'Is he much hurt?'
'In the lungs, sir.'
So much for Daniels, Alan thought grimly. A lung wound was sure death within days… perhaps even hours, if Daniels was fortunate. He could get drunk one last time on the surgeon's rum and go quickly.
'Nothing on the river?'
'Nothin', Mister Lewrie,' Knatchbull said with a shake of his shaggy head. 'They kin keep this up fer days afore tryin' us direck.'
'Then what's all the fuss about, then?' Alan said with a smile he did not feel. He went along the parapet to his gunners, those keeping a watch with muskets and those clustered by the nine-pounders, clapping a shoulder here and there, telling them to rest easy and keep their heads down until they heard something, assuring them no one in their right minds would try a frontal attack, not tonight at any rate.
Their own guns were firing in response, flinging shot and shell into those artillery parks out in the darkness, measuring the fall of shot by the glows of their own fuses, though it seemed that Cornwallis's batteries were not as numerous, or not firing in such a hasty volume as the enemy's. It would make sense, Alan realized, to conserve the powder and round shot they had in the fortifications until they could find a good target, for they could not be resupplied until their relief force arrived, and the French had most likely brought tons of the stuff and could get more from the 36 or so warships in the bay.
There was nothing else to do but wait some more, no longer in so much suspense, but wait in terror and trepidation for the next burst of shell. Narrow ramparts were hard to hit with mortars and howitzers firing blind at night at high angle, so except for that one lucky shot (which was all it would take) they would stew and fret at every wailing infernal engine that the enemy fired in their general direction squat down when it sounded close, and stand up and grin foolishly after it had struck away from them. Had it not been for the screaming, it would have been almost a game that they were watching.
Hideously wounded soldiers were screaming their lives away back in the town in the surgeries and dressing stations. Horses and mules were screaming in terror as they dashed back and forth through the fortification's enclosures, dashing from one end of their pens to another, or were out in the open, galloping away from each new sound and bloom of dirt and smoke, only to be hewn down by the shells and then bleed to death, with broken spines, broken legs, spurting wounds in innocent, dumb bodies, entrails hobbling them as they tried to run; always screaming and neighing in fright, wondering why their masters did not make the noises and the lights stop, why no one could make their screaming stop.
At first light Alan called his gunners to quarters to stand by their guns and parapets. He kept his blanket over his shoulders to ward off the early morning chill and joined them from the trench in which he had tried to rest during the night.
From their eastern wall he could see the Star Redoubt, not much pummeled and still flying a French flag, and the huge battery further west. With a glass he could see that the positions on the Gloucester side had gotten the treatment, too, but not as heavily. Those positions had not changed much.
The town, though, had suffered from the shelling, and crushed buildings showed like newly missing teeth from the order of the day before. The fires had burned out and a haze of sour smoke lay over the entire encampment, thick with the stench of charred wood and expended gunpowder.
Going on tour along the north and west walls, Alan could see that there was nothing to their fronts. The redans guarding the road into town were still there, as were the ramparts, battered but still whole, and the fields before their positions were empty of threat. Nothing stirred in the ravines of the ceek, and not a bird fluttered in the woods.
'Knatchbull, see to breakfast,' he said upon returning.
'We're a might short, sir,' Knatchbull told him. 'Nought but gruel an' some biscuit, an' this ain't no Banyan Day, Mister Lewrie.'
'Nothing left from supper?'
'Nossir, they ain't.' Knatchbull was almost accusatory.
'Send two men back for meat, then. Enough for the slaves, too.'
'Ain't none o' ours, Mister Lewrie,' Knatchbull complained.
'By God, they stood by as scared as the rest of us, and if they serve powder and shot to my guns, they are ours, even if they were creatures from a Swift novel,' Alan snarled, too testy and exhausted with a night of fear to be kind. 'Feed 'em. Ration for a half mess.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' Knatchbull quavered, never having seen Lewrie on any sort of tear against another man. He had been too junior, too hard pressed himself by the officers and warrants in
Knatchbull returned half an hour later with a sack filled with meat, two four-pound pieces to be shared out by the two gun crews, another four-pound piece for Alan, Knatchbull, Cony, and the four remaining blacks.
'Tis horse, Mister Lewrie,' Knatchbull apologized. 'They's shorta salt beef 'r pork. Ain't never eat horse afore.'
'Ever go to a two-penny ordinary in London?' Alan teased.
'Aye, sir.'
'Then you probably have eaten horse, and in worse shape than any you'll sink your teeth into today.' Alan laughed. 'Boil it up.'
'Yer coffee, Mister Lewrie,' Cony said, seeming to pop up out of the ground with a steaming mug in his hands. It had been battered in the bombardment, but Alan recognized it from the house.
'Goddamn my eyes, Cony, this ain't Scotch coffee!' Alan said, marveling at the first sip. 'This is the genuine article!'
'Them marines fetched it offa
There was a sudden loud shriek in the air of an incoming shell as French or American gunners began to work over the north end of the town once more. Everyone ducked as the sound loomed louder and louder and changed in pitch, howling keener and higher like a bad singer searching for the right note. BLAMMM!
They stood up to see the ruin of the kitchen outhouse of the abode Alan had been using as his quarters. The entire back porch of the house was gone in a shower of kindling, and there was a new crater in the ground that steamed furiously with half-burned powder particles.
'I hope you liberated a power of it, Cony,' Alan said, brushing dirt from his sleeve. 'That may be the last good coffee I'll see for some time.'
'Never fear that, Mister Lewrie. I made off with nigh about a pound an' a half. Might have ta make do with that corn whiskey fer yer spirits from now on, though.'
'I imagine I could cope,' he allowed with a taut grin.
Cony was waiting for Lewrie to say something more, such as 'Cony, what would I ever do without you; be my
