A King's Trade (58 page)

Lewrie grimly supposed that
Proteus
probably didn't look a whit better, after more than a full hour of trading shot, but…his masts still stood, whilst the Frenchman's lower main and mizen
seemed
canted from the proper angle of rake;
Proteus
's sails still drew, with only a few holes punched through them, and her yards, standing rigging, and running rigging were still mostly intact.

She's fallen astern a tad, too,
Lewrie took satisfying note;
a bit. Not enough for us t'draw ahead and bow-rake her, but… time to end this.

“Mister Catterall! Quoins fully out, and aim for her rigging!” Lewrie shouted down to the waist. “Mister Langlie, brace and sheet men will haul in
too
taut, and get us heeled
far
over!”

The French frigate, was it starting to brace up, as well, going more South of West…to break off the action and run? Lewrie speculated. “Mister Catterall, a
controlled
broadside! Shot
and
grape!”

“Aye, sir! Load, load, load, ye miserable cripples, or I…!” Lt. Catterall chortled in a voice gone creaky with over-use, stamping about the deck in blood-lusty glee.

Proteus
fell silent for about a full minute, as fresh 12-pdr. shot was fetched up from below, the hatchway shot racks and the thick rope shot-garlands between the guns nigh expended. Lewrie noted a gun here and there being charged with powder with wooden
ladles,
for, their over-ample store of pre-made powder cartridges, and empty flannel
bags
for filling in the magazine, had already been shot away. For certain, they had most-like used up the upper tier of powder casks, as well, and were into the older stuff from the second tier.

The French warship continued
her
fire, and
Proteus
had to stand and take it, but Lewrie could count only eight discharges from her battery, and those were fired independently, haltingly, with better than two minutes between explosions from those gun-ports.

“Ready, sir!” Catterall bellowed, his voice cracking raspily.

”
Thus,
Quartermasters!” Lewrie cried, chopping his hand to show the alteration of course desired. “Sheet home, brace up
sharp!
Stand ready…!”

Proteus
seemed to gather a bit more speed, a quarter-knot or so, like a good hunter bunching its hindquarter muscles to take a hedge. As she did so, amid the loud squealing of blocks as the square sails were drawn at right angles to the wind, and the fore-and-aft sails were put flat to it, she began to heel over onto her starboard shoulders. Rose, then paused, pent atop a passing beam wave, as well, steadied, and…

“Fire,
Mister Catterall!”

The brief gap between the frigates lit up harsh and orange, for a second, and the range was still so close that
Proteus
's weary gunners could see the results of
their handiwork, for once, before the bank of powder fog rolled back down on them and over the lee side, giving them a cause to cheer and howl in pleasure, no matter how dry-mouthed, weak, or tired.

The Frenchman's main mast shivered as a great rat-bite appeared in it halfway ‘twixt her bulwark and main top. Clouds of grape ravaged her upper and lower shrouds, blasting away the dead-eyes that kept her top-mast erect, by the edge of the main top, shattering her slender top-mast, and bringing the whole thing, from truck and cap to halfway up above the main top, swinging down in ruin, the furled and gasketed royal, half-reefed t'gallant, and tops'1, with all their mile of rigging, collapsed alee to drape utter chaos, and highly flammable sails, over her engaged side!

“Ease
her, Mister Langlie!” Lewrie shouted, so pleased that he just-about started to caper in delight. “Mister Catterall! Secure, arm your people, and prepare t'board her! Close reach for a bit, sir, and fetch us alongside, Mister Langlie! Mister Devereux, are you with us?”

“Aye, sir!” his Marine officer shouted from the larboard side.

“Ready to volley and clear the way for us!” Lewrie directed as he tore off his foul-weather coat, at last, and patted his pockets to assure himself that his pistols were still there, then drew his hanger an inch or two to determine that it would draw easily when needed, but was snug enough to stay in its scabbard during his clamber across.

With an upper mast and sails dragging over her lee side, and a catastrophic loss of sail area with which to maintain her speed and her agility, the French warship sagged down on
Proteus,
even as the British frigate swung up to meet her.

“Ready grapnels, there!” Bosun Pendarves was shouting.

Proteus
had not rigged boarding nets, and the French ship, with the intent of a rapid assault on a captured merchantman, had not rigged hers, either. There would only be wreckage to hack away…or use as a handy footbridge for the quicker and more agile.

Proteus
drew ahead, angling to windward, the French ship's foremast falling astern of abeam before the hulls met with a titanic thud, rebounded a foot or two, then clashed back together as grapnels flew.

“Ready, sir!” Lt. Catterall rasped, his teeth white in a wild and wide smile. “Aye aye, sir!” Lt. Adair up on the forecastle cried as well, his smaller party of gunners and sail-handlers gathered round him by the larboard cat-head.

“Boarders!” Lewrie ordered in a quarterdeck roar. “Away!”

Swivel-guns yapped from both ships, from the bulwarks and tops, though British guns vastly out-numbered the French. Lt. Devereux and his Marines
levelled their muskets, volleyed as one, and nigh a dozen Frenchmen waiting with cutlasses and axes in hand to repel them reeled away from sight, shot dead in their tracks!

“Let's go, Proteuses! Kill me some Frogs, ha ha!” Lt. Catterall encouraged as he stood atop their bulwarks, shrouds in one hand, and a glittering sword in the other. His gunners began to surge forward, in obedience to his urging, leaping and scrabbling across the gap between the tumblehome of hulls, though both frigates' waterlines were inches apart.

A swivel-gun coughed, and Catterall grunted in agony, his right arm torn completely off, and his shoulder shredded. “Well, just damn my eyes, if I …” he loudly cursed, before swaying backwards to fall dead on the gangway.

“Come on, lads!” Midshipman Larkin, their little Bog-Irish imp, shrilled as he swung across on a freed line. He gained the Frenchman's gangway, atop that pile of wreckage, dirk in one hand and a pistol in the other. He shot down one French sailor, and hopelessly clashed his short and slim dirk against another's cutlass, slyly kicking his opponent in the teeth to drive him back. But, a boarding pike came driving upwards, taking him deep in the stomach. A twist of the long and slim pikehead to make it even crueller, then the French pikeman lifted him like a forkful of reaped hay to fling him in-board to the enemy's gun-deck!

Lewrie slid down the larboard mizen-mast shrouds to the channel and dead-eyes, leaped onto the French ship's main mast chain platform, and began to scramble up, praying that his left arm, slightly weakened after being broken by a Dutch musket ball at the Battle of Camperdown, would serve him, for he already held one of his double-barreled pistols in his right. British sailors followed his path alongside him, others made the risky leap over his head. Muskets, pistols, and swivels made a minute-long fusillade, before hard-pressed men on both sides ran out of time for re-loading, and the clatter of blades replaced them. Up to the level of a French gun-port, the hint of a shadowy figure within…
Bang!
went his first shot, rewarded by a throaty, gobbling scream, and Lewrie clambered higher, cursing his left arm for its slowness, wishing that he didn't have to
do
this, just this once, for every now and then, the hulls rebounded off each other, despite the taut grapnel lines, and the mill-race below his feet sounded as loud as a rain-choked Scottish river.

Up to level with the bulwarks, into a snarl of rigging, broken spars, and sailcloth, but a wide gap had been blown through it, and it was with a great sense of relief that he flung his right arm, then his right leg, over the splintery timbers, and crawled to his feet, on the enemy's decks, at last!

Shoot
that
bugger, close enough for his pistol to set his shirt on fire, before he could skewer him with a pike! Drop empty pistol…draw sword… fill his
left hand with the other pistol, and draw back to half-cock on both barrels with his right forearm! Look about, and discover his own sailors and Marines either side of him, thank God!

“Take it to ‘em, lads!
Skin
the bastards!” he shouted, taking a tentative step forward to peer over the inner edge of the gangway to see… a butcher's yard! Guns were dis-mounted, massive barrels and truck-carriages overturned on squashed men, splintered, dis-emboweled, half-charred gunners betrayed by their pieces when they burst, or the powder cartridges had blown up, turning flesh the colour of rare roast beef! And a
sheet
of gore on the main deck, reflecting battle-lanthorn light like a reddish full moon on a calm lake!
Mounds
of bodies about the main and foremast trunks, smaller piles of arms, legs, and bits of men, as well…and two ragged rows of screaming, writhing wounded by the unengaged larboard side, still waiting to be carried below to their Surgeons, the French cockpit surgery already filled to bursting with the
worst-off.

Triage, the Frogs call it?
Lewrie numbly recalled, appalled and about to retch. If these men were the better-off, he did not want to see what an urgent case looked like!

“Reddition, m'sieur!”
a young, wide-eyed French officer in the ship's waist called out, taking Lewrie, in his cocked hat with a pair of epaulets on his shoulders, as in command.
“Nous surrendre,
please?
Nous amener…
strike, oui? Quarter,
m'sieur capitaine.”
He tossed away a pistol and let his sword dangle from his right wrist by a strap of leather.
“Ze fregat
L'Uranie
surrendre, m'sieur!”

“Tell them!” Lewrie roared, pointing his hanger at the officer, then at the melee still going on from bow to stern. “Order your men,
votre matelots,
to…
désarmer
Lay down their arms…
vite, vite!”

Lewrie looked aft, to where his own sailors had swept the quarterdeck clean of resistance, and were even then hauling down the French Tricolour, without their foes' approval.

“Quarter!” Lewrie bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth, to fore, aft, and amidships.
“Quarter,
lads, they've struck! Their ship is ours!” And, to the shuddery young French officer, he added, “Best ye sheath that damned sword o' yours,
m'sieur,
‘fore one o' my men takes ye for a die-hard,
comprendre?”

Guns, pikes, and edged weapons clattered from numb hands to the decks, and physically and spiritually exhausted sailors sagged to their knees…some completely spent and wheezing, some in shame, with tears streaking clean channels through powder-smut on their faces, and some ready to weep with joy for being alive and whole. Only a rare few remained on their feet, glaring defiance—wisely
dis-armed
defiance, as British tars, sore losers, and spiteful
victors, jeered them and spat curses that they
could
have killed all of them, if allowed.

“Mister Langlie?” Lewrie called out in the relatively peaceful silence, his ears still ringing from an hour and a half of cannon fire, and with the fingers of his left hand crossed for luck.

“Sir?” came the First Officer's weary voice.

“Parties to secure the on-deck prisoners, Mister Langlie. Then, Leftenant Devereux, his Marines, and a party of our Jacks to go below, and chivvy any skulkers on deck. Make sure they're all dis-armed, not even a pen-knife on ‘em, and no arms near them, should some have a sudden change of heart. And
drink,
Mister Langlie! Don't care it it's a vintage bottle, you discover spirits, drain ‘em into the bilges. Keep a keen eye on
our
people, keen as you will on the French, right?”

“Aye aye, sir!”

Lewrie had seen defeat and victory before, both shivering losers and strutting winners, aloft and a'low, who'd use the chaos of the aftermath to guzzle themselves senseless, and did
Proteus
's sailors get in drink, the French could turn the tables on them and cut
their
throats!

“Mister Catter…no,” Lewrie began to call out, before remembering that he'd seen him fall. “Mister Adair?” Another crossing of his fingers. To his relief, Lt. Adair piped up, too, and came to his side.

“Get with the Bosun and Carpenter, Mister Adair,” Lewrie ordered. “Any spare hands, you may now put them to the chain-pumps to keep our own ship afloat ‘til morning. A survey below of this'un, as well, sir. I'd admire could we get her to a Prize-Court, after all the trouble we went through t'win her.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lt. Adair replied, performing a shaky doffing of his hat in salute.

“And, Mister Adair…you are now our Second Lieutenant,” he added in a sombre tone as he sheathed his hanger and un-cocked his pistol.

“Very well, sir,” Adair gravely answered.

He felt it, then, that shuddery weakness and lassitude that he had suffered at the end of every sea-fight. There were an hundred details to be seen to before dawn, a myriad of repairs to be made aboard both frigates before he could feel sanguine, but
God,
he felt spent! What he most craved, that moment, was a bracing drink, a pint of water to put moisture back into his tongue and gums, then a brimming bumper of brandy or Yankee-Doodle corn-whisky… followed by a lie-down and perhaps a nap, maybe a long one since he wasn't getting any younger, but… “Um,
m'sieur capitaine?”
It was the wide-eyed young officer below him on the main deck, who still stood there, looking up
at him, looking a bit embarassed to bother him. “Mon
épée…
sword,
m'sieur,”
he said, offering up his small-sword, now sheathed in its scabbard, in formal sign of personal surrender.