The French Admiral

steward in the midshipmen's mess and my servant when I am commissioned.' It would be a soft job for the young man, but Alan was not about to promise that much, especially since getting back aboard ship and out to sea where he could pursue his career was looking more like a forlorn hope each day. Besides, he did not want the man to feel he was too beholdened to him that early on. Cony would make a fine gentleman's servant, but one did not let them know it until one could settle on a decent wage and conditions.

'Ye'll be needin' a shave, Mister Lewrie,' Cony volunteered. 'I have yer kit safe an' snug, an' can put an edge on yer razor while yer breakfast is acookin'.'

Alan was not so far advanced in his adolescence to need a daily shave, but his chin did feel promisingly raspy, so he nodded his assent.

Flattery will get you nowhere, Cony, Alan thought happily, glad to have a domestic situation to think about rather than the anonymous terror of the continuing bombardment.

And when it became plain that the main effort of the enemy gunners was on the south and west corner of the town ramparts, he could almost enjoy his breakfast in peace, looking forward to a clean shave and another cup of real coffee.

Besides, if Admiral Graves did not come from New York soon, his domestic arrangements might be the only thing he could contemplate with any hope as he lounged in some Rebel prison after the whole horrible muddle fell apart.

CHAPTER 10

The brutal cannonading went on for days, and the French and American batteries were prodigal with shot and shell. During the day their guns began to strike directly on the ramparts from a range of only six hundred to eight hundred yards, pounding the earthworks into ruin, smashing the fascines and gabions that reinforced them and dismounting guns that attempted to return fire. At night, high-angle shells burst with regularity in a firestorm horrendously loud and unceasing, shattering the night and everyone's nerves, flinging men about like straws if they happened to be too close to an explosion, sheltered in a trench or not.

Alan had been into town along with the marine officer he had once shared quarters with to search for fresh horsemeat for their men. They had located two once-magnificent saddle horses, now reduced to skin and bones, their heads hanging low in utter exhaustion. Hard as it was going to be, they would lead these once-proud blooded steeds back near their positions to be slaughtered for food. The corn and oats were almost gone, so dinners would be mostly fresh meat and biscuit, what little of that was left. What they had gathered and foraged had been eaten days before.

They had barely taken charge of the animals when there had been a manic howl as a huge sixteen-inch mortar shell came whistling down nearby, and Alan had dived to the ground in mortal terror. There had been a huge and deafening blast of sound, giving him the feeling that he was swimming in air and being pelted with rocks, and then he had found himself several yards away from where he had lain, covered with damp earth and blood, his uniform in tatters. The horses were splattered about the street like fresh paint and his companion had been shredded into offal as well, only his lower legs remaining whole. His smallsword was turned into a corkscrew that smoked with heat.

Badly shattered by the experience, Alan had almost crawled all the way back to his battery to find what comfort he could in others of his own kind, no matter how menial they were. Cony tended him, fetched out fresh togs, and put him to bed to sleep it off, which he did, in the middle of the deafening roar of bombardment.

It was the ships burning that finally broke his spirit.

After two days and nights of steady terror, Charon and Guadeloupe took advantage of the fact that they had been ignored so far and tried to maneuver further out into the river to make a stab at escaping, hoping that Charon, minus her artillery and stores, would be shallow enough in draft to make it between the shoals.

With twenty-four-pounder guns and heated shot, the big French battery on the enemy left on the York River had opened fire. Charon had been hit and turned into a heartbreaking torch, burned to the waterline. Guadeloupe had gotten under the town bluffs into safety, but several outlying small warships and transports had also been set on fire and abandoned. Their own ship Desperate had been hit twice with red-hot shot, and smoke had billowed from her, but there had been enough hands to put out the fire and work her up alongside Guadeloupe, where she would be safe.

If Alan's morale had finally given way, then he was not alone. He could not cross the camp without discovering drunken British, Hessian, or Loyalist soldiers who had broken into spirits stores and were deeply drunk for what they felt was the last time before death. Troops still held in better discipline by their officers served as field police to keep the vandalism and defeatism from turning ugly, but one could smell the fear on every hand, see the stricken expressions, the sense of loss in every eye. Cornwallis's force was an army waiting to die.

There were caves below the town bluffs and eastern entrenchments, where many well men sheltered from the continual firestorm without shame among the wounded. Even Lord Cornwallis and his staff had moved into a cavern, surrounded with their lavish creature comforts.

Had there been any liquor left within reach, Alan would have happily gotten besotted as the lowest sailor or soldier. He had worried before about the possibility of capture and imprisonment; now that was a fond wish, preferable to being blasted into so many atoms by the impersonal shells that drenched the garrison round the clock. The money he had hidden in his sea-chest could not buy him a single moment of life more, and his sense of loss about it was nothing more than a pinprick. There would be no escape from this debacle, and all he could do was curse the fools in New York who had not yet come, who now looked to never arrive in time to save the army or the remaining ships.

His men were not in much better condition. No amount of japery was going to put much spine back into them, and he knew it. They had that same haunted look he had seen in the soldiers and only went through the motions of duty, diving into the bottom of the trench and their new additional dugouts below the earthworks every time a shell came anywhere close and stayed there underground as long as possible no longer even much interested in the rum issue, not if it had to be taken in the open.

Alan himself was in the bottom of the trench, just at the edge of one of his gun platforms. So far, they had not suffered a strike so near that their guns had been dismounted, but that was not for want of trying on the part of the foe. They had been concentrating on the western wall and had reduced it to an anthill from which a stubborn flag still flew on a stub of pole, though its guns had been mostly dismounted and its continued usefulness was much in doubt.

'Lewrie?' an older marine captain called. 'This army officer has need of your remaining powder. Give it to him.'

'But what shall I defend my guns with, sir?' Alan asked, is voice a harsh rasp. The fog of powder smoke that seemed much like a permanent weather condition did not help.

'Doesn't matter much.' The marine shrugged. 'Keep back enough charges to fire a dozen canister shots to repel a landing. Let them have the rest.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' Alan said, rising from the trench. The army officer mentioned was the same goose who had so blithely positioned them alone in the hills in their first days of the occupation, still a dandy prat in clean breeches and waistcoat, his red coat still unstained and his gorget and scarlet sash bright as the day they were made. Alan took a sudden and intense dislike to him.

'I have to retain some charges premade for my swivels, sir,' Alan said wearily. 'And my hand's personal powder horns and cartouches. I can give you the rest.'

'Hurry with it, will you?' the man snapped. 'We're running low on every wall and no one would attack this rampart.'

'Knatchbull, open up the magazines and supply this gentleman with all our kegged powder.'

'And your gun cartridges,' the officer added. 'You have no need for them. There are no other nine-pounders still in action, so they will have to be emptied and resewn to proper size for our guns.'

'Retain a dozen, Knatchbull.'

'I ain't no scholard, sir,' Knatchbull said. 'Could ya count 'em out fer me, Mister Lewrie?'

'My God, how did you become a gunner?' the artillery officer said. 'I said I want them all.'