Balls shrieked overhead, passing close-aboard the frigate's bow and stern. The roundhouse atop the forecastle was blown open with a round-shot that went clean through it; the larboard anchor cat-head was shattered with another parroty screech, and the best bower anchor, its cat and fish lines shot away, dropped free to splash into the harbour, lost forever, most likely. Yet a third ball, perhaps an 18-pounder, buried itself in the trunk of the foremast below the fighting top and made the mast, and the ship, sway to starboard, so that sailors and Marines in the tops had to hold on for dear life.
"Well, the Danish army may be half-blind dodderers, but it seems their navy knows their business," Lewrie said. "See to it, Mister Ballard."
"Aye, sir."
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Farley in the waist was yelling, his voice gone hoarse and raspy on smoke and excitement, and Thermopylae rocked to starboard a few degrees, settling an inch or two in the water to the massive recoil as the guns slammed backwards from the ports, the truck-carriages squealing and the breeching ropes and recoil tackle and ring bolts groaning. The guns were hot now, and 18-pounders weighing nearly two tons altogether were leaping from the deck as they lit off, thundering back down at the full extent of the breeching ropes at odd angles. Sure enough, there came a howl from a tackle man struck in the shins by an erratically recoiling carriage, and a scream as the heavy wood carriage and sizzling-hot gun rolled over one of his ankles.
"Loblolly boys, here!" Lt. Fox yelled. "Spare man from starboard, take his place. Quick now, lad! Overhaul tackle! Swab out!"
"Oh, poor fellow," Lt. Ballard calmly said, returning from up forward.
"The foremast sound, Mister Ballard?" Lewrie asked him.
"I would not trust it with more than forecourse and the fore tops'l, sir," Lt. Ballard gloomily replied. "The ball is half-buried in the trunk, fourty feet above the deck. It will need fishing, and banding, do we get the chance."
"Cold shot, I take it?" Lewrie asked with a wry grin. "Not sizzlin'?"
"Cold shot, aye, sir, not heated shot," Lt. Ballard replied with almost an impatient expression, as though he found Lewrie's attempt at humour disagreeable. "We've no fear of bursting aflame, sir."
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Farley yelled, and the guns roared and thundered yet again, re-wreathing the frigate in a dense cloud of spent powder smoke, adding to the acrid, rotten-egg cumulus that stood above and to leeward from their first broadsides, muffling Thermopylae in a white-yellow mist that made it hard to see the forecastle from the quarterdeck.
Lewrie paced aft to the taffrails, past the larboard carronades to the taffrail lanthorn, to see how the rest of the battle was going. But even his telescope could not pierce the palls of smoke towering over the British and Danish lines. He could make out the Lynetten, a smaller version of the Trekroner to the West-Sou'west, and only the nearest warships in the opposing lines of battle. Now and again, as the guns fired or the smoke pall cleared, he could espy a few Danish gunboats anchored with their bows pointing East behind the larger Danish vessels, great bow-mounted pairs of guns erupting, and sea-mortars huffing upwards with even more massive shot.
Dead astern lay HMS Defiance, Rear-Admiral Graves's flagship, belching broadsides at the furious rate of three rounds per gun every two minutes, the desired standard of the Royal Navy, with Graves's Red Ensign flying, along with Signal Number 16-"Engage the Enemy More Closely."
There came yet another broadside from the Danish two-decker as Lewrie turned to pace back forward. This one was even more irregular than the last, not quite as ordered and regimented, and… was it his imagination, or was it not quite as powerful as the ones that had come before? "Fool!" Lewrie spat, grinning as he realised that the Danish captain had split his fire, his upper-deck guns directed at his ship, his lower-deck 24-pounders angled in the ports to engage Amazon and Blanche, which were pummelling her hard.
"Over-haul tackle!" Lt. Farley cried, almost wheezing on smoke. "Swa-ab out!" From Lt. Fox came "We're latherin' 'em, lads!"
Lewrie paused to dig into his waist-coat pocket for his watch, and flipped open the lid. Amazingly, the action had been going on for an hour and a half; they'd weighed a little after 10 A.M., and here it was nigh 11:45!
Crash! came a ball right through the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck, just forrud of the first carronade, and a chorus of yells of alarm. Splinters the size of pigeons, the size of bed-slats, flew in a whirling, vicious cloud! The ball continued cross the deck, then exited by clanging off an idle starboard-side carronade barrel, darting skyward as a jagged blur of dark metal!
"Good Christ!" the civilian Capt. Hardcastle cried aloud, struck dumb by the sudden carnage that had, like the plague of Egypt that had taken the first-born and spared the Israelites, sprung up all about him. "Oh, my Good God!" he yelped, just before staggering away to heave his stomach's contents.
The captain of the Afterguard and two men of the mizen mast crew were down, gobbling fear and pain over their hurts, or lying dazed in sudden shock. Midshipman Privette was sprawled on the deck, his head and face completely covered in blood.
And the First Officer, Lt. Ballard, was down, his head and his chest propped up on the Sailing Master's lap.
"What are his-?" Lewrie began to ask, then clamped his mouth shut as he saw that Arthur Ballard no longer had a left leg; the heavy 24-pounder ball had taken it off at mid-thigh!
"Loblolly boys to the quarterdeck, now, damn yer eyes!" Lewrie bellowed. "Mister Tillyard… do you go below and warn the Surgeon the First Officer is comin' down to him."
"Aye, sir," Tillyard said with a gulp, his face as pale as new laundry. He staggered to his feet, recovered his hat, and headed for the larboard gangway ladder; rapidly, at first, then more slowly as he recalled that his actions could cause panic and despair.
Christ, why him? Lewrie asked the aether.
"Pass word for Lieutenant Farley," Lewrie snapped, forced by grim duty to continue as before. "My compliments to him, and he is to assume the duties of First Officer. Pass word to Midshipman Sealey, and inform him he is to replace Lieutenant Fox up forrud, and consider himself an Acting-Lieutenant, for the time being."
"Aye, sir!" Marine Corporal Frye replied, heading off quickly.
"Help's coming, Arthur," Lewrie said more gently as he took time to kneel beside Ballard, who was rolling his head back and forth, his agony already clawing at him, his weathered face gone whitish-grey as he bit his lips to keep from howling and jibbering. Lewrie took his hand as Mr. Lyle whipped out a length of small-stuff rope to bind about Ballard's leg near his groin to staunch the heavy bleeding. "Help's on the way. Stay with us, Arthur." Lewrie repeated, feeling helpless and holding out but the slimmest hope that his old friend would survive his horrid wound.
"Damn you!" Lt. Ballard hissed, "You lucky bastard, you always were… ah-ah!" he had to pause as a wave of pain hit him. "Dumb blind luck, always get what you want, not…! Aahh! Walk through shit with nought stickin' to… Christ!" Ballard loudly howled as the loblolly boys arrived with a mess-table stretcher to fetch him to the surgery on the orlop.
And what's all that about? Lewrie helplessly wondered as he let go Ballard's hand, the hand snatched from his grasp, more-like by Ballard himself, not from a need to writhe in pain, or…
Lewrie got back to his feet, dusting the knees of his breeches, and his fingers came away bloody with Ballard's gore, which had spread in a wide pool.
"Very well, then, gentlemen… carry on," he ordered, reaching out to help the Sailing Master to his feet.
"Here, sir," Lt. Farley reported himself, dashing two finger to the brim of his hat in a casual salute. "Mister Fox has taken over my place, and Midshipman Sealey now commands the foredeck."
"The Dane, yonder, is mistakenly dividing his fire 'tween us and Amazon and Blanche, Mister Farley," Lewrie icily told him, his eyes gone Arctic grey. " 'Twixt the three of us, we should give her a hellish- good pounding. Keep up the rate of fire, sir."
"I shall, sir," Farley
firmly declared, though his eyes rolled in horror of the bodies being borne off, and all the blood soaking in the snow-white plankings and the tarred oakum between.
Lewrie forced himself to pace to the larboard bulwarks by the head of the larboard gangway ladder, quite near the place the Danish 24-pounder shot had entered, and took out his pocket-watch, again. It was almost Noon of Maundy Thursday, and the day showed no sign of ending.
"Run-out your guns!" Lt. Fox was bellowing in Farley's stead. "Prime! Take aim! By broadside… Fire!"
And the chief of the loblolly gang paused, snapped his fingers as if remembering something, then bent over to lift Lt. Ballard's leg, shoe, and what was left of his silk stocking and breeches, and tossed them over the starboard side.
CHAPTER FORTY
Pace… fret… set a brave example, Lewrie chid himself as the hours crawled by, for there was little for a captain to do once his ship was engaged at such long range; it was all up to the skill and the speed of his gunners, the steadiness of his crew. Look at your watch, he reminded himself, finding that it was now half past one in the afternoon, which made him shake his head in wonder. Not too strongly, for the continual roar of the guns had given him a headache and rendered him half-deaf despite the candle wax in his ears.
"We seem to be gaining the upper hand, sir," Lt. Farley said as Lewrie paced near his post at the forrud edge of the quarterdeck. "The Danish fire is slackening… has been for some time now. Even that Three Crowns fort is firing slow."
"Umphf" was Lewrie's comment on that, not quite sure if he had heard the Acting First Officer correctly. He returned to the bulwarks with his telescope, laid it through the stays and rat-lines of the larboard shrouds to steady it, and looked about.
The old two-decker on which they'd directed their fire was now mostly silent, only a gun here and there still firing, with most of her gun-ports devoid of black-iron barrels. The frigate anchored North of her-! "She's struck her colours!" Lewrie shouted. "Look, there!" he insisted, jabbing his arm at her. "They're abandonin' her, see?"
The frigate was surrendered, the Danish flag meekly draped over her transom, and a white bed-sheet hoisted aloft in her damaged rigging. Rowboats were departing her unengaged side, heading for the shore.
Lewrie spun about to look South, eyes wide in wonder to note how much the dense pall of gunpowder smoke had thinned, to see several of the Danish warships nigh-dismasted, and slowly drifting into the mudflats without controlling hands on their helms. They, too, were being abandoned. The rowboats that had fetched out a continous supply of powder and shot and fresh volunteers were now busy bearing away survivors, coming out to the silent warships empty but for their oarsmen. Almost all of those pesky little gunboats to leeward of the Danish main line had drifted away, too. Smoke billowed from a couple of larger Danish "liners" and older 60s and 64s, and while they had not yet struck their national colours or hoisted white flags of surrender, their guns were silent. For the most part, it was the forts, the Lynetten and Three Crowns, that continued the fight.
"Damned if it don't look as if we're beatin' 'em, Mister Farley," Lewrie exulted as he lowered his glass. "Beatin' 'em like a rug!"
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Fox yelled yet again, and the 18-pounders barked and roared, recoiling inboard. It was ragged, and it was slower than desired practice after all this time, but Thermopylae's "teeth" could still bite, and were just as sharp as they had been hours before.
Lewrie looked down into the waist at his gunners. Despite a cold day, men were now stripped bare-chested, streams of sweat coursing pale as winter creeks through a coal-dust grime of blackpowder and gunsmoke, and their white duck slop-trousers had gone grey and grimy. Some shook their heads to clear their hearing, vainly protected by neckerchiefs bound round their heads to cover their ears; they served their guns by weary rote, by then. Idle gunners from the silent starboard battery spelled their larboard mates long enough for weary hands to go to the scuttle-butts for water, and to lean on their knees and gasp for air for a precious minute or two. The powder monkey lads no longer dashed up from the magazine with their cylinders, but seemed to belly-crawl up the steep companionway ladders, mouths agape and panting.
"Oh, lovely shootin', there!" Lewrie shouted for all to hear as their latest broadside smashed into the stump-masted Danish two-decker, their main target all morning. Chunks of wood flew fighting-top high, as bulwarks and sides were struck, more shot-holes punched through her hull planking, some low on her weed-fouled waterline.
And there was no reply!
"By God, I think we've done it!" Lewrie cried again.
Now the smoke was thinned, Lewrie could ascertain that she was not a Third Rate 74 gunner, but an older 60 or 64… with not a gun firing!
"Yes!" he exulted, rising on his boot toes as the Danish flag, which had been shot away at least three times, fluttered down a halliard to disappear behind what was left of her poop deck bulwarks And a minute later, as Thermopylae drilled yet another broadside into her, a white flag took its place!
"About time, too," the Sailing Master muttered.
"Well, the Danes are a stubborn lot, Mister Lyle," Marine Lt. Eades quipped.
"Oh, not them, sir," Lyle countered. "I mean them, yonder. Sir Hyde's squadron… here at last."
"Cease fire on the two-decker, Mister Fox!" Lewrie shouted to the waist. "Quoins out, and be ready to engage the fortress. Parker's come, did ye say, Mister Lyle?"
"Aye, sir. Yonder. Still about four miles North'rd."
Sure enough, Lewrie could espy at least three British "liners" ever so slowly creeping to the mouth of the harbour entrances, short-tacking ponderously and most-like making no more than a mile per hour, but they were making their presence known, at long last.
"Damn my eyes!" Capt. Hardcastle yelped as a 36-pounder shot from the Trekroner fortress howled close overhead. "Isn't it over and done yet?" He sounded more affronted than frightened.
Captain Riou's frigate, Amazon, and the other ships under his command, were shifting their fire onto the Three Crowns fortress, as futile as that seemed to be. Though the army gunners over there had begun the day un-practiced and raw, they had learned a few lessons in gunnery over the hours, and though firing very slowly, were becoming more accurate.
"Signal from London, sir!" Midshipman Tillyard barked in a professional manner, the excitement drubbed out of him by then. "It's… Number Thirty-Nine. 'Discontinue the Action.' Can't be!" he gawped as he re-read the signal through his telescope, comparing it to his illustrated signals book.
"Discontinue, mine arse!" Lewrie snapped, lifting and extending the tubes of his own glass to confirm it. "Dammit. Dammit to Hell!" He spun about to look astern to Defiance, to Monarch, Ganges, and Lord Nelson's flagship, the Elephant. Number Sixteen was still flying at their signal halliards' peaks.
"Number Thirty-Nine with two guns, sir… the 'General' for all ships," Midshipman Tillyard reported.
"We've won this battle, what's that man yonder thinking?" Is he blind?" Lewrie blustered. "Well, I'll be damned if we will. Not 'til I see Nelson repeat the signal, we won't!" Open fire on the fortress, Mister Farley. Pin their ears back."
"Elephant has hoisted 'Acknowledged,' sir, but still has Number Sixteen aloft," Tillyard reported, mystified by this turn of events. "Defiance still flies Number Sixteen, too."
"The signal is 'General,' though, sir," Lt. Farley pointed out.
It was not directed to Nelson in Elephant; Sir Hyde Parker's signal was speaking to every ship under his command, his own squadron up to the North, and Nelson's, and Graves's, and Capt. Riou's, too. For any ship, any captain, to disobey would mean a court-martial!
"The signal is dog shite, sir!" Lewrie snapped back. "A steamin' pile o' horse turds!" Sir Hyde can't see we've got the Danes beaten."
"Uhm, sir… signal from Defiance," Midshipman Tillyard called out, sounding nervous. "Now she's hoisted Number Thirty-Nine to her main tops'l yardarm… but, she's still Number Sixteen aloft at the main-mast hea
d!"
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Fox rasped behind the guns, even as shot from the Lynetten and Three Crowns forts still howled overhead, and a fresh squadron of Danish warships, anchored in the merchantman channel behind the forts, began to fire.
Lewrie turned his back on Defiance and her contradictory flags, looking to Amazon, and the sturdy Capt. Riou. "Mine arse on a band-box!" he said with a groan to see HMS Alcmene, then the Blanche frigate, acknowledge HMS London's signal and hoist Number Thirty-Nine as well!
"Alcmene and Blanche appear to be cutting their kedge anchor cables, sir," Lt. Farley gravelled. "Really isn't much we could hope to do against stone forts, I suppose, so…"
Lewrie stood and stared, hands on his hips and glaring at the Amazon, waiting to see what Riou would do. Did he not acknowlege the damned signal and continue the action, his mind was made up that he, and Thermopylae, would stand by him to the last.
Oh, for the love o'…! Lewrie despaired, his heart sinking at the sight of Amazon suddenly ceasing fire, and almost shame-facedly hoisting Number Thirty-Nine. Even Riou was daunted.
"Cease fire, Mister Farley," he spat in anger. "Hands aloft to make sail, and just cut the damned kedge cable. Mister Tillyard, I'll thankee t'find that bloody Number Thirty-Nine in the flag lockers, and hoist it."
"Very well, sir," Lt. Farley said with a weary sigh. "Hoy, Fox! Cease fire, and secure your guns! Cease fire, d'ye hear, there! Bosun, pipe hands aloft to make sail. Mister Pulley, do you fetch boarding axes and cut the stern cable. Save the spring, mind."
Within ten minutes, HMS Thermopylae was once more under way for the North end of the Middle Ground shoals, the Southerly wind on her starboard quarters, fine, bound to join Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and his squadron… as ordered. It was galling, especially given the fact that the line-of-battle ships anchored astern of her still fought, despite their commander-in-chief's signal, and the Danish line was now a ragged string of silenced warships, grounded and dis-masted hulks, or half sunk, with one of them spectacularly ablaze!
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