Larcum Mudge (Alexander Clay Series Book 8)

by Philip K Allan

  Behind her the three British ships were in a ragged line abreast. All were pounding the Centaure’s stern with their chase guns, sending a glittering confetti of broken gilding and shards of glass tumbling into her wake, and inflicting further unseen damage on the packed gundecks beyond. All of them, even the portly Stirling, were steadily overhauling the Frenchman, their courses diverging like the spokes of a fan. The Daring was in the middle, with the flagship easing out to one side, and the Griffin pulling away on the other.

  Clay was nearer to the Centaure than he had been all day. She loomed very close, her enormous hull seeming to fill his view. The elaborate decoration of her stern continued a short way along her side until it blended into the double stripe of her gundecks. He could hear orders being shouted on board, the flap and whip-crack of her torn sails. Faces lined the rail of her poop, staring down at him, while individual crewmen peered out from some of the open gun ports along her side.

  ‘Open fire, as your guns bear, Mr Blake,’ ordered Clay.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied the officer. ‘Ready Larboards?’ The line of arms rose into the air once more and the crews settled down beside their cannon.

  ‘Luff up a little, Mr Armstrong,’ Clay said to the sailing master.

  ‘Point to windward, helmsman,’ said the American. The frigate turned a little up into the wind, losing some ground on her opponent, but swinging around until every gun could bear on the French ship’s quarter.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled Blake, and with a thunderous roar, the frigate poured her broadside into her opponent. For the first time the range was such that even the carronades on the quarterdeck had taken part. A curtain of brown smoke blanketed the target, as the Griffin rolled away from her opponent.

  ‘Back on course, Mr Armstrong, if you please,’ said Clay.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  All around him the carronade crews flew through their task of reloading, while ship’s boys raced away to collect fresh charges the moment they had handed over the ones they held. The frigate sailed on, leaving the bank of smoke she had created and emerging back into sunshine. Clay looked at his opponent. The broadside had been well aimed, striking home along the line of the Centaure’s lower deck. Many balls had struck at an oblique angle, leaving long scores and tears in the thick wood, but he could also see where other balls had punched their way through. The perfect symmetry of gun ports was spoilt, with one lid hanging down by a single hinge, and another that had disappeared entirely. All along her side, cannon were trained aft as far as possible, straining to reach the frigate. One of the figures standing at the rail drew his sword, and waved the glittering blade in the sunlight. Clay assumed this was a mark of defiance, but shortly after a thick line of soldiers appeared, almost all of whom were black, and muskets were levelled at the frigate.

  ‘Carronades, load with cannister!’ ordered Clay. ‘Mr Macpherson, I’ll trouble you to clear away those men.’

  There was a shouted order, the rail of the French ship disappeared in smoke and the air filled with the crack of passing bullets. It was long range for a musket, but the French soldiers had the advantage of firing down onto their opponent. A sailor manning the nearest carronade spun away, clutching his arm, and a marine toppled backwards onto the deck.

  ‘Marines, line the rail there,’ ordered Macpherson, calm as ever as he stepped over the body of the fallen soldier. ‘Rapid fire.’

  Clay watched as the big copper cylinders were loaded into the carronades, each one chinking slightly with the mass of balls they contained He was reminded of the improvised vase that Harte had made for his cabin. The gun captain nearest to him adjusted the elevation of his weapon slightly, raising his aim from the side of the Centaure to her rail. Another volley of musket fire crashed out from the enemy ship, and Clay felt his hat whisked from the top of his head with a loud smack. When he turned around to look for it, he noticed that one of the quartermasters at the wheel was being carried below.

  ‘Ready to fire, Mr Blake?’ he yelled, over the bang of the marines shooting beside him.

  ‘Ready, sir,’ came the reply.

  Clay watched the two ship’s courses with care, judging the right moment.

  ‘Your hat, sir,’ said a voice at his elbow.

  ‘Not now, Mr Todd,’ snapped Clay, still watching the Centaure. ‘Luff up again, if you please, Mr Armstrong.’

  Once more, the frigate turned a little away from her opponent, and again her broadside roared out. The tone of the carronades on the quarterdeck was subtly different, as they each spat a whining cloud of musket balls towards the enemy. Clay turned to grab his hat from the midshipman with a nod of thanks and clapped it back on his head. A flap of torn felt flopped down over one eye, and he snatched the hat off in irritation and tossed it into the scupper.

  ‘Back on course, Mr Armstrong,’ he ordered, continuing to watch their opponent.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Taylor, giving the order to the wheel. ‘Jacob is down, sir,’ he added.

  Clay spun round to see the big American being helped away by two sailors. With one hand he was clutching at his periwig which was sadly askew, while blood dripped freely from the other.

  ‘Leave me be, darn it!’ he protested. ‘It is little more than a scratch!’

  ‘Let the doctor be the judge of that,’ ordered Clay. ‘If he is content, then by all means return to your duties when you have been properly attended to.’

  The sailing master continued to grumble as he left the quarterdeck, but Clay had no more time for him. Once more the Griffin emerged from her gun smoke, level with the stern quarter of the French ship. The line of soldiers was much thinner, and several sections of the rail had been torn loose. But puffs of smoke blossomed briefly into view before the wind took them away, to mark where the survivors kept up a brisk exchange of fire with Macpherson’s marines. More damage was evident lower down on the hull, where the frigate’s eighteen-pounders had struck home. At this range, even the heavy timbers of an eighty-gun ship of the line could not keep them out. In addition to the holes that had been torn in the side, one of the lower deck guns pointed upwards at an impossible angle, a scar of bright silver on the barrel showing where it had been struck.

  After hours of patient chasing, things began to move swiftly. Swarms of French sailors appeared, racing up the two remaining masts to take in much of the sail. With a desperate fight inevitable, her captain wanted to preserve her surviving rigging for the battle ahead. On the far side of the Centaure, Clay saw the topsails of the undamaged Stirling as she arrived alongside at last. For a moment he could still see the blue sky of a late Caribbean afternoon behind her. Then there was a deafening roar as the two ships exchanged broadsides. A colossal wall of smoke billowed up, replacing sky with the choking fume of a furnace. Behind the slowing French ship the Daring was turning broadside on, ready to add her puny contribution to the fight. Clay looked around his ship with pride, noticing the calm efficiency all about him as his gun crews completed their reloading.

  ‘It is time to get this done, Mr Taylor,’ he said to his first lieutenant. ‘Lay us alongside the enemy. Half-pistol shot, if you please. And may God grant us victory this day, or have mercy on our souls.’

  *****

  Down on the main gundeck, the crew of Shango were so busy reloading their eighteen-pounder that they were oblivious to the subtle change in the frigate’s course. Outside their little world, the side of the French ship grew ever closer, rising above the Griffin like a sea cliff. Trevan had just thrust the latest powder charge into the barrel, pushing his arm deep into the muzzle, and Evans was poised to ram it home, when a huge fountain sprang up close alongside. Moments later water cascaded onto the gangway above their heads, and dripped down around them.

  ‘Where did that fecking come from?’ demanded O’Malley, cupping his hands protectively over the touch hole. Before anyone could reply there was a splintering crash from the bow, and they all felt the deck tremble beneath their feet. Trevan peered through t
he gun port, noticing for the first time that the frigate had now reached a point in overhauling their enemy where they were advancing into range of the main battery.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ demanded Fletcher, from behind them. ‘Quit gawking and get that gun loaded! It’s a bleeding Frog ship, in case you ain’t never seen the like. You fires at it, quick as quick until I tell you otherwise!’

  As the frigate steadily drew level with the Centaure, more and more of the double bank of enemy guns came into action, and the world ran mad around them. The men worked in a choking fog, filled with flame and smoke, until their universe shrank to just a single gun on one strip of deck. Shango had an insatiable hunger for more and more powder and shot, and they, his servants, rushed to feed him. Powder from the magazine, thrust into a barrel that had grown uncomfortably hot to the touch. Heavy iron balls from the shot garlands, each one brought from farther away as the line of spheres shrank. Evans hauled the rammer clear once more, the sweat that poured from him cutting fresh pink rivulets across his blackened chest.

  ‘Loaded!’ he croaked, stepping back to let the crew run the gun up. A cannon ball from the upper gundeck of the Centaure howled overhead, causing him to flinch and duck. The gun crew heaved back on the tackles, driving the big cannon forwards, and O’Malley crouched over the touchhole, stabbing his barbed rod through into the serge charge bag, and then pouring fine powder into the hole. When it reached the top, he snapped back the lock, grabbed the lanyard and stepped out of the path of the recoil.

  ‘Clear!’ he yelled, checking both sides of the gun carriage, before he jerked on the line. A white spark in the gloom, a bright glow of flame, the gun roared back across the deck, and the weary crew stepped forward again.

  The two ships were separated by fifty yards of water, a ravine of fire and smoke between their hulls. Forcing the Centaure to fight on both sides had stretched the French crew’s ability to man all her guns. Those who faced the frigate were barely achieving half the rate of fire of the men of the Griffin, but each huge ball dealt a hammer blow that rocked the whole ship. Her scantlings were made from over a foot of cured oak, but the iron shot smashed through them as if they were little more than damp card. One struck the carriage of an eighteen-pounder, tossing the barrel onto the line of crewmen that stood braced against its gun tackle. Another took the bow clean off the frigate’s longboat, sending splinters flying across the deck. As the crew of Shango worked on and on, the carnage mounted around them. A steady procession of sailors emerged from the smoke, bearing the wounded down to the surgeon, and the row of dead that lay along the centre line of the main deck began to lengthen.

  Evans dipped the swab end of his rammer into the bucket, and thrust it down the barrel. Water hissed and jumped from the scalding metal. ‘Clean,’ he croaked, pulling it free, and another charge was pushed down the gun. More work ramming the charge home, then the ball, then the wad. The sweat in his eyes made him almost blind, and he felt leaden with weariness. In his mind, he was back in the prize ring once more, toeing the scratch, unable to remember which round he was fighting. Every muscle was aflame, and nothing but his will not to step back was keeping him in the fight.

  ‘Clear,’ yelled O’Malley, the eighteen-pounder roared out again, and another round began for the exhausted Londoner.

  Above it all, on his quarterdeck, stood Clay, aloof from the battle going on around him. He was still hatless, and now had his left hand bandaged with his handkerchief. It was nothing more than a nasty cut caused by a fragment of musket ball as it ricocheted off the barrel of nearby carronade. He was trying to stand back from the fray, balancing what he knew was happening on his own ship with what he felt was happening on the Centaure.

  ‘The carpenter reports a foot in the well and gaining, sir,’ said Preston. ‘We have been struck twice between wind and water. One hole he has plugged, but he has yet to attend the second.’

  ‘My thanks to Mr Kennedy, and tell him to have the starboard pump manned,’ replied Clay. A gust of wind tore a rent in the smoke that blanketed the ships, and for a moment Clay could see the upper masts of his French opponent. Her foremast stood defiant, rising up like a forest giant, but her main topmast was down, the wreckage festooned across her deck.

  ‘Mr Blake has sent word that four of his guns are unserviceable, sir,’ said the first lieutenant, arriving from the other side. He glanced up as something caught his attention. ‘Have a care!’ he yelled, and shouldered his captain to one side. A wooden block smashed onto the deck beside them, followed by a hissing tail of rope.

  ‘My thanks to you, Mr Taylor,’ said Clay, pulling his coat straight and checking aloft for any more falling debris. ‘You were telling me of the state of our guns?’

  ‘Indeed, four cannot fire, but the rest are all in action, although the crews begin to grow weary.’

  ‘They shall have to endure that,’ said Clay. ‘We cannot pause before the enemy does.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Taylor.’ The older man touched his hat, and Clay was most of the way to responding to the salute before he realised that his own headgear was a crumpled wreck lying somewhere on the quarterdeck.

  ‘Mr Hutchinson’s compliments sir, and the end of the bowsprit has been shot away,’ said a breathless sailor, who had run the length of the ship.

  ‘Does the forestay yet hold, Stevens?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Aye, for now, sir,’ said the messenger.

  ‘Thank the boatswain for me, and tell him …’ but the man was gone, falling to the deck with a thump at his feet. Clay dropped down beside him, but the musket ball from the Centaure had killed him instantly. Lifeless eyes stared towards the mizzen top, and a dark mass stained his blond hair just above his ear.

  ‘Get him moved away, Mr Preston,’ ordered Clay, letting the body slide back down onto the planking. The carronade next to him roared out, sending tendrils of smoke snaking around him. He closed his eyes, partly to blank out the crumpled figure at his feet and partly to concentrate on the battle. Listen, he urged himself. What is really going on?

  For a moment he could only hear the noise that was close to him. The bark of orders from the carronade’s gun captain, urging his crew on. The bang of muskets from the marines. The splintering blow as the enemy sent another huge cannon ball deep into his ship. The pitiful cries of the wounded, desperate for relief, and yet fearful of what horrors awaited them in the cockpit below. Then he groped beyond that. The sharper bark of the Daring’s little cannon from someway close, still firing into what remained of that gilded stern. His own guns, a steady, rumbling roar, moving up and down the main deck of the frigate. And the enemy, barely firing at all. That should be a sign of victory, he pondered, and yet it felt wrong. Worryingly wrong. He opened his eyes wide, and the battle rushed back in, close on every side.

  ‘Mr Taylor!’ he yelled. ‘Can you hear the flagship firing?’

  The older man paused, his head on one side, like a terrier in a barn. ‘Can’t say as I can, sir.’

  ‘Mr Preston!’ he called. ‘You have young ears.’

  ‘No, sir,’ he confirmed. ‘The French are barely firing either, but I can still hear a deal of noise from the Centaure.’

  ‘Yelling and the like?’ queried his captain.

  ‘Aye, that might be it, sir.’

  ‘Arm the crew for boarding,’ ordered Clay. ‘Swiftly now. Mr Macpherson, get your men down from aloft, and assemble them here on the quarterdeck.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Mr Preston, start to edge us in alongside the enemy, if you please.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Mr Todd, run down and find Mr Blake. Tell him he is to secure the guns, and bring his crews up on to the gangways.’

  While Clay watched the youngster dash away, Taylor came over to stand beside his captain. ‘Those big eighty-gunners carry over seven hundred men, sir,’ he said. ‘Not to mention any additional soldiers she may have picked up in Guadeloupe. I doubt if w
e can muster beyond two hundred, all told.’

  ‘Which is why I believe she has opted to try and board the Stirling, and win victory at the point of a cutlass, since cannons will not serve,’ said Clay. ‘We must come to the admiral’s aid, and swiftly, if all is not to be lost.’ He saw the concern in the older man’s eyes, and took him by the arm. ‘Trust me on this, George. You forget that she will have suffered cruelly from all our fire. And I doubt she will expect our little crew to dare an assault on such a leviathan. They do say surprise is half the battle.’

  Chapter 12 Larcum Mudge

  After noise and thunder came calm. The guns down on the main deck stood silent, surrounded by scarred planking strewn with debris. The odd wisp of smoke still curled out from their muzzles, and their bright red carriages were filthy with powder stains, but the crews who had worked them with such fury in the heat and smoke were gone. They had come up from the main deck, dirty and tired, and now thronged the side of the frigate, fingering their weapons. Some of the topmen had climbed a little way up the surviving shrouds, each with a grappling hook dangling from his fist.

  In the relative quiet fresh sounds were heard. From deep in the hold came the reverberating beat of hammers as the carpenter and his mates worked in the cramped dark. Somewhere beneath Clay’s feet, they would be struggling amid cascades of water. The clank of the pump, sending water gushing into the sea alongside. The sound of sharp pleading from one of the surgeon’s patients as he was carried away to be treated.

  Clay looked over his battered command and was content with what he saw. To an outsider the shot-torn rigging, shattered side and overturned guns spoke of bare survival, but he knew otherwise. The fighting power of any ship lay in her crew, and he studied his men with care. Although their ranks were thinner than he would have liked, and they looked tired, he could sense there was plenty of fight still left in them. They stood with an arrogant swagger, calmly checking over their weapons, or exchanging nods of recognition with fellow survivors.