Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (28 page)

Charles assumed that the admiral was saying he had potential. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

Jervis extended his hand and Charles rose from his chair to shake it. “You’d better get started while you still have the tide.”

“BEAT TO QUARTERS,
Mr. Bevan,” Charles said, staring absently over the lee rail at the dark form of Cape Roxant, rapidly disappearing over the stern quarter.

“Have the marine drummer beat to quarters please, Mr. Beechum,” Bevan ordered, looking quizzically at Charles. The very short, fourteen-year-old drummer in his scarlet jacket and white trousers marched stiffly to the fore of the quarterdeck and started a ponderous roll. Almost immediately hands appeared, rushing up the ladderways from below to take their battle stations.

Charles cleared his throat and spit over the railing. “It’s about time we practiced with the guns.” He had told Bevan the essence of his conversation with Jervis shortly after he’d set foot on board, including their intended rendezvous with Captain Ecclesby, their patrol area, and the half-repaired Spanish frigate in the Ferrol yard. Charles had never heard of a Captain George Ecclesby. When he’d asked Bevan about him, the lieutenant shook his head in response. Together they examined the most recent Navy List—more than six hundred names, ordered strictly by seniority, starting with Admiral of the Red and ending with the most junior commander—Charles himself was third from the bottom—and found Ecclesby quite high up: high up enough to have been passed over several times for a larger command. It entered Charles’s mind that the northwest coast of Spain might be a place where the navy hid its incompetent and inexperienced commanders to keep them out of harm’s way.

When he was satisfied that the crew was all present and accounted for, and every man at his correct station, Charles said, “You may clear the ship for action, Mr. Bevan.”

The shrill of the bosun’s whistle and calls of “All hands clear for action” resounded along the
Louisa
’s decks as men raced in all directions to carry below everything not essential for battle. The temporary bulkheads in the officers’ quarters were struck and stored in the hold along with their furnishings and sea chests, the galley fires put overboard, the courses hauled up and put in brails, the gundecks cleared, and sand spread on the decking around the guns to improve footing and absorb blood. Charles watched the operation carefully and noted a good deal of confusion, but not nearly as much as they had experienced leaving Plymouth Harbor.

“Ship cleared for action, sir,” Lieutenant Winchester reported somewhat sourly to Bevan. Both Charles and Bevan were studying their watches. Bevan glanced momentarily at Charles and received a silent nod in return. Then he turned to Winchester, who had also noted the time on his own watch. “Thirty-two minutes,” Bevan said. “I’ll settle for twenty-seven minutes next time, but before a real fight they have to be able to do it in twenty. Have them put it all back and we’ll try again.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Winchester responded with the smallest of grimaces. The courses were refurled, the bulkheads and officers’ furnishings replaced, the galley fire relit, and in general the
Louisa
restored to her original condition.

“Clear for action, Mr. Bevan,” Charles said. This time it took twenty-five minutes. After that he ordered that the ship’s main armament of twelve-pounder long cannons be run out. Each of the now newly black-painted monsters was eight and a half feet long from muzzle to cascabel and together with its carriage weighed two tons. Charged with four pounds of powder, it would throw a
4
.
4
-inch-diameter twelve-pound shot almost a mile before it first hit the water; at two hundred yards it could penetrate two feet of solid oak. Charles directed Winchester to have the guns run in and out a half-dozen times so that the gun captains could organize their crews and the newer hands would become accustomed to the sequence of actions involved in loading, firing, cleaning, and reloading them. After that he permitted them to fire several slow salvos with powder only so they might appreciate the recoil of the guns against their restraining ropes and become familiar with the noise and smoke. Finally, just before dinner, he allowed each crew to fire a single round shot just so they could witness the satisfying splash in the distance.

At the end of the day, after the excited and talkative hands had their dinner and their spirits, Charles retired to his cabin (now replaced as if it had never been disturbed). He sat at his table while Attwater brought him his supper. As it did most nights after he had finished reviewing the ship’s ledgers and made the necessary entries in his log, his mind drifted to home and Cheshire and Penny Brown with a sense of longing. He enjoyed reliving the things he and Penny had talked about and done together. He especially savored the memory of their last day, her touch and the moist softness of her lips on his cheek. Sometimes he allowed himself to think about a future with her and what they might yet do together. He had not heard from her during the time the
Louisa
was still in Plymouth, nor did he expect to. Winchester, he knew, received multiple letters from Ellie with every packet. Ellie had mentioned several times that she continued to visit Penny, but that was all. In order to give him something to occupy his mind, and in the hopes of communicating at least indirectly with Penny (it would be highly improper to write to her directly—they weren’t even engaged), he began a letter to his sister in the expectation that she would share it with her friend. He wrote a few paragraphs nearly every evening, mostly describing the day’s events. Occasionally he would write of his feelings for Penny, that he missed her and hoped that she might think of him from time to time. The act of writing took some of his feelings of loneliness away.

He also thought about the changed and sometimes awkward relationship between himself and Daniel Bevan. They had been fast friends and nearly equals on the old
Argonaut.
Now their roles were different and rigidly defined by centuries of naval tradition. Charles felt awkward when Bevan saluted him or called him “sir,” and he guessed that his friend felt the same. After thinking on this for some time, he decided that the
Louisa
could make some of her own traditions.

THE WATERS OFF
Cape Finisterre, the westernmost point of Spain and a major landmark for Atlantic shipping, lay calm and nearly empty in the late-spring sunshine. A few dun-colored fishing boats could be seen in the distance around the shoaling waters at the base of the Finisterre promontory that jutted from the mountainous Galician shore, but no merchantmen or warships, and no sails on the distant horizon.

“Crosstrees, what do you see?” Charles shouted to the lookout stationed high in the mast.

“Naught, sir,” came the reply, “’cept for them few fishing barks alee’ard.”

The ship’s bell rang four times—four bells in the forenoon watch. “Seems Ecclesby’s gone on,” Bevan said, stating the obvious. The
Louisa
glided slowly onward, creaking gently as she rolled under topsails and topgallants in a steady westerly breeze over the placid Atlantic swells.

“Yes,” Charles answered absently, thinking of Penny and wishing he could share the beauty of the scene with her, the rugged Spanish mountainsides covered in the fresh green of spring cascading down to the deep blue of the sea. He reluctantly shifted his attention to the present. Should he order further gun practice? The gun crews were becoming more adept with the weapons, but were still slower from one broadside to the next than he liked. And God alone knew how accurate they would be—they had not as yet practiced with shotted guns against a target. But it was Sunday and he had worked his crew hard since leaving Plymouth. He decided to give them an easy day. He would also make one other small change in the
Louisa
’s social routine.

“Let’s get the courses and royals on her, Daniel,” Charles said casually, omitting the customary “Mr. Bevan” for the first time since he’d taken command of the ship. “Once we clear the headland, I want to steer east by northeast. We’ll have a look into Coruna Bay before nightfall.”

“Aye aye,” Bevan said, giving Charles a sideways glance and a small smile.

___

THE CORUNA LIGHTHOUSE
showed first. Kept dark during the war, it could be seen from fifteen miles away or more on a clear day, even from
Louisa
’s decks. It looked to be a very old stone tower indeed. Some said that it was built by the Romans when they ruled Galicia; others thought earlier, by the Phoenicians. Nearby, atop the bluffs that marked the southern entrance to the bay, sat a stark fort housing one of the batteries protecting against intruders. The fort was clearly marked on Charles’s charts, as was a second battery on the Ferrol promontory at the northern entrance to the bay. The width of the mouth of the inlet and the distance between the forts was less than three miles, close enough for the forty-two-pounder cannon on both sides to pour down a deadly crossfire on anyone who dared try the passage.

In an inlet on the northern edge of Coruna Bay, behind the Ferrol fortifications, lay the Spanish naval shipyard. It was from this yard and the bay itself that Philip II’s “Invincible Armada” sailed to invade England in
1588
, and it was the city of Coruna that Drake captured and burned in retaliation a year later. With the sun low on the horizon lighting the hillsides in a warm glow, it was hard for Charles to imagine the now-empty roads as they must have been then, crowded with ships of war readying to make sail. The distant sounds of Coruna’s church bells reached him from over the water, and he could just see the steeples behind the headlands and Coruna’s whitewashed houses scattered like bread crumbs over the slopes. It looked tranquil—and would remain so, as long as he stayed out of range of the batteries in the forts.

The
Louisa
glided north by east across the mouth of the bay under shortened sails. In a few moments the lookout should be able to see into the naval yards.

“Do you see anything yet?” Charles shouted up to the top.

“Not yet, sir. Just a minute.”

Charles waited, tapping his fingers absently on the lee rail. “Sir, I see one ship-rigged craft in the yards, just the one. A frigate, I think,” the lookout reported. “There’s some small coastal craft and a hulk or two. That’s all.” That was what Charles had expected, one half-repaired Spanish frigate. A gun sounded unexpectedly from the fort at the southern entrance to the bay. Charles turned in time to see its smoke drift lazily past the battlements. What was that for, he wondered. The
Louisa
was well out of range of either battery. He saw no telltale splash of a ball.

“Very well,” Charles said to Bevan, “we’ve—”

“The frigate’s dropped her sails!” the lookout shouted excitedly.

“What?” Charles said. He grabbed his telescope from its place by the mast and started up the mizzen shrouds to see for himself. At the platform at the mizzentop he steadied the glass on the entrance to the yards. He found her immediately, a large frigate with filling sails and a black hull, beating up against the wind. Charles snapped the telescope shut and turned to start back down, then he stopped and opened it again. There was something familiar about the ship. He studied her lines with his glass and it came to him. She was the
Santa Brigida,
the same ship that had cruelly raked the battered
Argonaut
at St. Vincent. “You son of a bitch,” Charles muttered to himself.

“Shoals dead ahead,” the lookout cried. He looked and could see the white line of surf among black rocks over the bow, about a mile distant. He had expected them. They were marked on his chart as “
Dientes del Diablo
”—the Devil’s Teeth.

Back on the quarterdeck, he ordered to the quartermaster at the wheel, “Two points to windward please, Mr. Mahone.” Turning to Bevan, he said, “Let’s get the sails back on her, courses to topgallants and a full set of jibs.” Charles knew there was little chance that any ship, especially a heavy frigate, coming out of Ferrol would overhaul them. Not only because the
Louisa
would show a clean pair of heels in light winds and moderate seas, but also because, with the wind west by northwest, the Spaniard would have to beat against it for several miles before she could round the reef and take up the
Louisa
’s wake in pursuit. Still, there was no point in taking chances.

BY NIGHTFALL THEY
had watched the
Santa Brigida
’s sails sink below the horizon and by midnight had worn around Cape Ortegal and afterward changed heading to due east to sail along the southern rim of the Bay of Biscay in search of the
Syrius.
They found her the next morning hove to off Luarca.

Captain George Ecclesby was everything Charles expected and more, an old, tired man with unkempt hair, an unhealthy pallor, and a persistent cough. “Where in damnation have you been?” Ecclesby greeted him angrily. “I should have left weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles began, trying to be contrite, “I came as soon as—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ecclesby interrupted him. “You’re more than welcome to this pestilent, godforsaken region. Good day to you.”

“Good day?” Charles repeated. The
Louisa
had only just arrived. This wasn’t how brother officers treated each other.

“Yes, good day. You’re my replacement. I’m returning to England.”

“But, but…” Charles didn’t know where to begin. “What about the frigate at Ferrol?”

“Oh, she won’t be ready for sea for months, years, if ever.” A coughing fit seized the withered man. “Good day,” he wheezed when he regained his voice.

“But she’s out now,” Charles persisted. “I saw her. She chased me.”

“Not my problem,” Ecclesby snapped, his patience with Charles apparently at an end. “Now get off my ship.”

“Just a minute…” Charles began, his anger and alarm rising quickly to the surface.