The King's Marauder

by Dewey Lambdin

  Since that blabbed “dear to me”, and Maddalena’s declaration in kind, she had not said anything more upon that head, but she had become fonder, more affectionate, and even more passionate for a certainty, walking closer to him when they went about the town, reaching across restaurant tables to touch hands when they dined, and rewarded him with bright, adoring smiles. In her lodgings, she even hummed to herself, and her bird and her kitten, as if pleased with the entire world, and when in bed … frantically and often!

  A nap, definitely, Lewrie told himself; Else a hot kiss and a cold breakfast’d like t’kill me!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “It seems we’ve created quite a scramble already, sir,” Captain Pomfret said as he peered ashore with his pocket telescope. “Might I borrow your glass, Captain Lewrie?”

  “Certainly,” Lewrie said, handing over the much longer and much stronger day-glass as Sapphire and the transport closed the coast off Cabo de Gata under reduced sail.

  “Oh, yes!” Pomfret said, with a laugh. “The semaphore tower is whirling away like a Turk Dervish, and the tent camp looks like an ant hill that some boys have kicked … all the workers are hitching or saddling up, and running inland.”

  “El diablo negro,” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh, baring his teeth in a brief, harsh grin. “That’s what the Dons called us when we were taking and burning anything that would float, before all of the pieces of our force were assembled.”

  “Their troops … they’re standing fast,” Pomfret pointed out, lowering the heavier telescope for a moment. “They’re forming before the battery walls, those dozen cavalry on their left. Lancers, by God! How useless!” he scoffed.

  “They won’t be there long, after we open upon ’em,” Westcott said.

  “Those lancers might be better placed above the beach,” Pomfret said, handing the day-glass back. “To disrupt our landing, though once we’re ashore in strength they’d have no choice but to retreat up the draw, and it’s too rough ground for them to re-form and charge us … their infantry would be more a threat to us.”

  “You only see the one company reported to us?” Lewrie asked.

  “So far, yes, sir,” Captain Pomfret replied, “and what passes as roads leading to the Cape are empty. We could see any re-enforcement coming for a long way off, the land’s so open.”

  “Tell us when, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out to the Sailing Master, who, with a syndicate of older and more mathematically-inclined Midshipmen, had been taking the known heights of the headland to determine when Sapphire was roughly a mile off.

  “Almost, sir,” Yelland called back.

  “Seven fathom!” a leadsman in the fore chains shouted. “Seven fathom t’this line!”

  “Almost, indeed,” Lt. Westcott muttered under his breath.

  The Harmony transport stood at least half a mile off Sapphire’s starboard quarters, already beginning to fetch-to into the wind, with her six landing boats already being drawn up from towing to the chain platforms on either beam.

  “Six fathom! Six fathom t’this line!”

  “Now, sir!” Yelland called out.

  “Alter course to Due East, Mister Westcott, and run out the larboard guns,” Lewrie ordered. “I’ll have the upper-deck twelves as the first broadside, and the lower-deck twenty-fours the second.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Sapphire’s bows had been pointed at the headland, their view from the quarterdeck partially obscured by the jibs. As the helm was put over, the up-thrust jib boom and bowsprit swung clear, the jibs sweeping right like the parting of a stage curtain to reveal the headland and the battery to one and all. The ship rumbled and thundered as gun-ports were swung up and away, and the great guns were hauled to the port sills, already loaded with solid iron shot. Sailing Due East, their target lay four points off the larboard bows, slowly inching to abeam. A couple of minutes more, and fire could be opened.

  “Have ’em prime, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped, eager to be about it, even if he thought it could be a waste of gunpowder at that range. Below, gun-captains would be directing the crews to open the pans of their flintlock strikers to fill them with powder, then cock their locks, making sure that their trigger lines were slack. In the swab-water tubs between each gun, coils of slow-match sizzled, waiting to be wrapped round linstocks that would be applied to the touch-holes of the guns should the flintlock strikers fail, or a flint break at the wrong moment.

  “Cast of the log!” Lewrie shouted, and a long minute later, Midshipman Fywell snatched the log line as it paid out and read the knots which had slipped through his fingers.

  “Five and one-half knots, sir!” he piped back.

  Lewrie looked aloft at the set of the sails, the direction at which the commissioning pendant lazily fluttered, and decided that it could be possible to get off three or four broadsides before the battery was too far aft of abeam for the guns to point in their narrow ports.

  “As I told Mister Mountjoy, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said, “it would be better to anchor a bomb vessel and pound the place with sea-mortars, with thirteen-inch explosive shells. We can only elevate our guns so high, and shootin’ at an incomplete battery wall is too iffy. Go high and over by yards, strike short and tear up the ground under the battery, and the chance of solid hits is damned poor. We might as well shoot at a thin ribbon at a mile’s range.”

  “You believe the best we’ll accomplish will be to drive the enemy away, sir?” Pomfret said with a frown. “Hmm, I wonder what Mister Congreve’s rockets could do to the place.”

  “Rockets, my God!” Lewrie hooted in sour mirth. “We tried ’em at Boulogne three years ago, and they weaved all over the place, and a couple of ’em came damned close t’hittin’ my ship!”

  “They will need a lot more experimenting with before they are useful,” Lt. Westcott said with a shake of his head. “Our experience with them did put the wind up. Seared me out of a year’s growth!”

  “Time, I think, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided at last, feeling a rising excitement even so. “You may open fire.”

  “Aye, sir. By broadsides, fire!” Westcott shouted.

  All eleven of the upper gun deck’s 12-pounders lashed out as one in a titanic crash and roar, and the larboard side was swathed in a sudden cloud of sour-reeking smoke.

  “My word!” Pomfret gasped. “Impressive, even so!”

  “Hope ye remembered t’stuff some candle wax in yer ears,” Lewrie snickered. A moment later and the heavier 24-pounders bellowed even louder, and the concussion was strong enough to make his lungs flutter. Despite his own precautions, Lewrie’s ears rang.

  The ship rumbled and trembled as the guns of the larboard battery ran in to the stops of their breeching ropes, were re-loaded, and run out again, trundling tons of metal and gun carriages over the oak decks, with the squeal of wooden truck wheels added.

  “Sounds like gastric distress,” Captain Pomfret japed with his smaller pocket telescope to his eye, again. “Egad, Captain Lewrie, I don’t think those soldiers are there any longer!”

  Just before the guns delivered their second broadsides, Lewrie snatched a quick view of the headland and the battery, and saw that Pomfret was right; he could not see any Spanish casualties, but could espy a whole host of them running away, up towards the semaphore tower, in hopes that it might be out of range, or haring off along the rutted and dusty tracks to the East or West of the headland. Those lancers on their fine horses were galloping straight North into the foothills of the Sierra Alhamilla and the main road that led to Almeria, bent over their mounts’ necks and looking back in terror.

  The upper-deck 12-pounders roared again, followed long seconds later by the massive 24-pounders, and the view was blotted out, again. By the time Sapphire had sailed past the battery and the guns could no longer bear, they fell silent, and the ship was put about for another run, after a full three broadsides.

  “Mister Westcott, bowse the larboard guns to the sills, and be ready with
the starboard battery,” Lewrie ordered in a too-loud shout in the sudden relative silence. “Stations for stays, and prepare to tack.”

  Steering Due West and following the six-fathom line, Sapphire pounded the Spanish battery with another three broadsides, turned out to sea to tack, then went Due East, again, hammering the place with yet another three salvoes. They repeated the manouevre for the better part of an hour. On the next Due East run, before the battery came abeam, Lewrie went up to the poop deck for a better view, joined by Captain Pomfret.

  “Those soldiers are back,” Pomfret, said. “Look to the right and above the semaphore tower. They’re on a high knoll, just standing and watching. They seem to be in the same numbers as before.”

  “Now they’ve changed their breeches, aye,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “Too far off to interfere when you land your troops?”

  “I imagine that once they see the boats going in, they’ll find their courage and try to defend the place,” Pomfret shrugged off, “but they’ll also realise that they’re out-numbered, and won’t do much more than pestering us. I don’t think they’ll get too close, either, else we might direct all our cannonfire on them, hah hah!”

  “Well, it looks as if we’ve done all we can to damage the battery,” Lewrie said, leaning his elbows on the cap-rails of the bulwarks to steady his heavy day-glass. “And, as I feared, that ain’t much.”

  The slope up to the parapets was so gouged with heavy iron shot that it appeared as if many tribes of badgers had dug their lairs, replete with several openings to each. The wooden barracks behind the battery had been turned to kindling, and the rooves had fallen in on the shattered walls. Several wild shots had even reached the semaphore tower, severed one long timber leg, and lopped off the platform at the top. The stone battery itself, though … the thick base wall had been undermined, and several of the massive stone blocks had been shifted. One upper section between openings for gun-ports was chipped and downed. All that expenditure of powder and shot, with little to show for it.

  “We’ve accomplished nothing that the Spanish couldn’t repair in a month,” Lewrie sourly gravelled, lowering his telescope. “With no store of powder in their magazine, your men might have to take all our mauls and crow-levers and try t’tear the bloody thing down!”

  “Iron mauls?” Captain Pomfret asked in sarcasm.

  “Wood,” Lewrie told him.

  “Hah!” Pomfret barked in mirthless humour.

  “Do you think it’s worthwhile t’land the troops?” Lewrie asked.

  “Well … we might set fire to what’s left of the tower and the barracks,” Pomfret allowed with a grimace, lifting his telescope for a another look. “There are some heavy waggons to haul the stone blocks left behind, and there are the hoisting frames. They’d burn well, too.”

  “Mister Westcott?” Lewrie called down to the quarterdeck. “Do you secure the guns. We’ve no more need of ’em. Hands to the braces and sheets, and prepare to fetch-to.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied.

  “Fetching-to,” Pomfret asked. “Is that like anchoring?”

  “No, we cock up into the wind with the fore-and-aft sails trying t’keep us moving, and the forecourse laid a’back so she can’t,” Lewrie explained. “We’ll slowly drift alee, but won’t go anywhere all that fast. Of course, I’ll want more sea-room ’fore we do, ’fore we drift into the shallows.”

  “Deck, there!” one of the lookouts in the mainmast cross-trees shouted. “Two … strange … sail! Two points off th’ larb’d bows!”

  “Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie barked in astonishment. “They managed t’get out?”

  “The Spanish frigates your mentioned before we left Gibraltar?” Captain Pomfret asked.

  “They very might be,” Lewrie said, lifting his head and cupping hand round his mouth to shout aloft. “How far away?”

  “Hull-down, sir! T’gallants an’ royals is all I kin make out!” was the reply.

  “Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said from the top of the poop deck’s larboard ladderway, “we will not fetch-to. Nor will we land the soldiers. Alter course to Sou’east and make more sail.”

  “Aye, sir!” Westcott replied, looking wolfish at the prospect of a sea-fight.

  “Mister Fywell?” Lewrie instructed the Midshipman aft by the flag lockers and log line. “Fetch out and hoist ‘Discontinue The Action’. Mister Westcott? Load and fire two of the six-pounders of the starboard battery for the General Signal.”

  He looked aloft at the commissioning pendant, noting that the winds had altered during the course of the morning, and it was now more from the South; Sapphire could not steer Sou’east, and even driving at the closest “beat” to weather, could only make East-Sou’east. She’d clear Cabo de Gata easily, and might gain enough sea-room to get to windward of the two approaching strangers and hold the weather gage against them should they turn out to be Spanish.

  “East-Sou’east is the closest she’ll bear, sir,” Lt. Westcott told him.

  “Good enough, then. Lay her close-hauled on that course, and let’s get the old scow plodding into action,” Lewrie said, japing at his ship’s slowness.

  “To glory we steer, sir!” Westcott replied, quoting a snippet from Arne’s famous song.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Captain Hedgepeth aboard Harmony had gotten his ship under way as soon as the signal guns were fired off, and the flag hoist soared up Sapphire’s halliards. The six heavy 36-foot landing boats were led astern to be towed, but, if they proved too much of a drag, he could cast them loose. Lewrie suspected that Hedgepeth would, and that Captain Middleton would never get them for his desired gunboats. With all to the t’gallants and all jibs and stays’ls set, Harmony galloped off West, slightly canted over to starboard on larboard tack and an easy beam reach, spreading an impressive and broad white bridal train wake. She, the soldiers of the 77th detachment, and the sailors from Sapphire’s crew, would be safely out of it.

  “Eight and a quarter knots, sir!” Midshipman Fywell reported.

  “Damn’ near enough t’take your breath away,” Lewrie scoffed at that news, recalling how swift his Reliant frigate had been, hard on the wind. His Fourth Rate trundled, her larboard shoulders set to the sea, canted over from horizontal only about fifteen degrees, stiffer than he expected since the winds were not all that strong this late morning. He reckoned that if Sapphire could be gotten far enough up to windward of the two strange sail, and he had time to come about to larboard tack to engage them, she’d only be pressed over from level by about ten degrees or less, once the large main course was brailed up against the risk of fire from the discharge of her guns, and that would turn her into a very steady gun platform.

  From his perch on the poop deck, Lewrie could make out two sets of sails from the deck, by now; t’gallants and royals, perhaps a hint of their tops’ls when the scend of the sea lifted them a few feet more. Whoever they were, they were bows-on to Sapphire, on larboard tack, a bit of separation between them as if sailing abreast of each other. By the slight cant of their sails, he suspected that they were also going close-hauled. If he managed to get to windward, they could not swing up any closer to him, but would have to stay on larboard tack, ceding him the right to fall down to them when he willed.

  “Not exactly how I expected this morning to turn out, what?” Captain Pomfret commented as he paced up near Lewrie’s shoulder.

  “Not how I thought it would go, either, sir,” Lewrie said with a rueful grin. “If they do turn out to be Spanish, you can write home to tell your people that you’ve been in your first sea-fight.”

  “What do you call it, ‘yardarm to yardarm’?” Pomfret asked.

  “I’d prefer not to,” Lewrie admitted, laughing briefly. “That sort of battle’s costly. You see how they’ve slipped to about three points off our larboard bows? We’re close-hauled on one tack, they’re doin’ the same on opposite tack. Unless something goes smash aloft, I hope to get seaward or them,” he sa
id, explaining what that meant as an advantage, and how he would come about and match tacks to engage, and how he hoped to fall down upon them in his own good time.

  “But, how do you expect to fight two of them?” Pomfret went on. “You said they might be two big frigates. How big?”

  “They’re most-like what we call Fifth Rates, mounting the Spanish equivalent of our eighteen-pounders,” Lewrie said. “Does it come to about two cables’ range, our lower-deck twenty-four-pounders should prove the difference … unless the Dons’ve developed carronades … those fat, stubby barrelled ones there?… there’s more twenty-fours, though they’re short-ranged. About four hundred yards is the most one can expect. But that gives us sixteen heavy guns to each beam.

  “See the Dons yonder?” Lewrie pointed out, gesturing towards the pair of sails on the horizon. “They’re hard on the wind and they can’t steer any higher … like a coach on a narrow country lane with a rock wall on one side which it can’t go through. Those frigates can’t come near us, so long as I stand aloof to windward. They could tack or wear about to the same heading we’re on now, but that’d make no sense. When a ship tacks, or alters course that drastically, it slows down and it takes a while t’get back up to speed, so even if they do tack, we end up chasin’ them. They could split up, but that’d put ’em miles apart, and the idea is t’stay and support your consort. Strength, and comfort, in numbers, hey?”

  “I think I see, but still…” Pomfret said with a frown, and a hapless shrug, for half of what Lewrie had said was Greek to him.

  “If they’re Spanish, they could be the finest frigates in their entire navy,” Lewrie continued, lifting his telescope for another look at them. “The Dons, and the French for that matter, build grand ships, but, it’s seamanship, gunnery, and experience at sea that matter, and according to Mountjoy’s reports, they’ve only had their yards crossed for a fortnight or so … sittin’ idle, swingin’ at their anchorages, and their crews goin’ stale and bored, and, I hope, dis-spirited by our blockade. All make-work and ‘river discipline’?”