The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Eighteens if they’s a pound!” Monk managed to say, grabbing onto the binnacle and traverse board table to stay erect.

  “No more than twelve-pounders, surely, Mister Monk,” Alan said in a shaky voice, trying to maintain that maddening sang froid demanded of a professional Sea Officer.

  “Felt like eighteens, anyway,” Monk spat.

  As the smoke began to rag away, Alan could see that the enemy was now on a parallel course, just two cables off. She would not get closer; but then he realized, she didn’t have to, for she could lay out there a fifth of a nautical mile away and shoot Desperate to lace unless they did something soon.

  “Helm up, quartermaster!” Treghues yelled through the din as the guns belched fire again. “Bear down on her!”

  Two loblolly boys stirred the savaged body of a petty officer by the tom-up starboard gangway. They shrugged and rolled the body to the hole in the bulwarks and tipped the corpse over the side.

  “That was Mister Weems!” Alan burst out in shock.

  “Aye, poor bastard,” Monk agreed. “There’ll be an openin’ fer a new bosun’s mate tamorra.”

  A screaming waister was picked up on a carrying board and taken below to the cockpit surgery as they watched. There was nothing to be done with the dead or the hopelessly wounded but to get them out of sight and out from under foot. Words could be said later from the prayer book.

  More shot screamed in, and Desperate reeled with its impact. More screams from the waist, a puff of smoke from the nettings that set hammocks writhing like a box of worms as a round-shot scattered them. A Marine keened and fell from the gangway clutching his belly. Dull flames licked around the torn canvas from a small explosion, and men from the larboard side rushed to pour water on the fire before it could take hold and eat their ship.

  One cable’s range now; two hundred yards. Alan went forward to the quarterdeck rail to look down into the waist. A larboard gun had been overturned and its crew decimated. As he watched, the loblolly boys dragged another screaming unfortunate to the midships hatch, a man as quilled with jagged wood splinters as a hedge-hog. The dead Marine was being passed out a larboard gunport and someone was retching bile as he used a powder scoop to shovel up the man’s spilled intestines. The gun crews labored away with their scarves around their ears to save their hearing, intent on their artillery. Burney, up by the fo’c’sle, and Avery in the waist, were pacing among their men, shoving them to their places and speeding them along. Then the guns were barking and recoiling back against their breeching ropes, hot enough now to leap from the deck instead of rolling backwards on their small trucks.

  Another broadside from the French, and this one felt like an earthquake. Alan clung to the hammock-nettings as the ship felt as if she had been slammed to a halt. Something whined past his head, and the hammocks before him punched him in the crotch. He looked down as he was bent over by the pain and saw a chunk of the bulwark, nearly three inches across and a foot long, sticking from the far side of the barrier.

  “Bloody Christ!” he yelped, feeling his crotch in fear he had been de-bollocked, and was relieved to feel that his “wedding-tackle” was still there. The deck continued to tremble with each strike and there was a lot of screaming from back aft as he winced with his pain.

  “Lewrie, stir yourself!” Treghues bellowed, pointing behind him to the wheel, where men lay tom and bleeding.

  Alan limped aft, bent over. Mr. Monk was propped up by the binnacle with Sedge bending down over him. The rotund sailing master had been struck in the leg with a grape-shot ball, a full ounce of lead that had almost ripped his limb off above the knee, and was now hanging by a few tattered sinews. Sedge was seizing a piece of small-stuff about the upper thigh to staunch the copious spurting of blood, and Lewrie knelt to aid him.

  “Sedge, ya’ve more experience, do ya take charge,” Monk gasped from a pasty white face sheened with shock-sweat.

  “Aye, I shall, Mister Monk,” Sedge promised as the surgeon’s assistants rushed to his side with a carrying board.

  “At least Dome won’t have ta saw much to take this bugger,” Monk tried to jest, too freshly wounded to feel much pain yet. The loblolly boys rolled him onto the board, strapped him down, and made off with him by the larboard ladder, and Monk began to moan as the pain hit him. “Hurry me below, damn yer blood!” he cried out.

  “Spare quartermaster to the wheel,” Sedge barked. “Hot work, ain’t it, Lewrie?”

  “God’s teeth, yes!” Alan concurred.

  Sedge laughed and strode away to assist Toliver the bosun’s mate in ordering the afterguard into shape once more, leaving Lewrie by the wheel with two new white-eyed quartermasters who flinched every time something whined nearby, their feet slipping in the blood trails of their predecessors.

  “Watch your helm,” Alan told them, being careful to station himself to windward, using them and the wheel drum as a shield.

  The guns were now firing as fast as the frightened and weary crews could load and run out, all order lost in the maelstrom of battle. Every few seconds there was discharge, followed by one from their foe. Lieutenant Peck and his Marines were now firing by squads from the rail, and the masts of the French frigate were towering alongside, nearly as high as Desperate’s own; less than half a cable off, perhaps sixty yards and adequate musket-shot. To confirm it, a volley of balls hit the quarterdeck, one warbling off the rim of the compass bowl, another raising a large splinter from the deck before Alan’s feet.

  Desperate reeled again like a gut-punched boxer.

  “Mister Lewrie, come here!” Railsford yelled through a speaking trumpet. “Go forrud into the waist and take charge!”

  “Aye, sir?” Alan said, dashing to his side.

  “Gwynn is down!” Railsford snarled, shoving him to the larboard ladder. “Go, no time to chat about it! Keep the guns firing!”

  Alan hammered down the ladder to the waist. The master gunner Mr. Gwynn was stretched out on the deck to larboard, his shirt and waist-coat sodden with blood, and flecks of bloody spume on his lips as he tried to breathe.

  “God save me!” Alan whispered, then mastered himself. “Avery?”

  “Aye, sir?” a white-faced David Avery asked, trotting aft.

  “I’ll take charge. Go aft and tend the gunners there. Is Burney still alive?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Good. Quarter-gunners!” Alan bawled, glad to have something concrete to do. “Pace your damned gun-captains! Ordered firing!”

  Alan watched as the senior quarter-gunners passed among their charges and stilled their individual efforts, making them work in unison once more, loading and touching off together. He bent down to peer out a gunport at the enemy.

  “Direct these guns at the same aiming point, here! Base of the main-mast is your target. Punch a hole clean through her! Burney, do you aim at the base of their foremast!”

  “Wait for it, ya stupid get!”

  “Prime your guns … point your guns … on the up-roll … fire!”

  Three at a time, the guns barked and leaped backwards, first Burney’s charges, then Alan’s, then the guns below the quarterdeck in the cabins aft.

  “Better,” Alan snapped. He strode aft to look at the hands as they swabbed out and began to load. Gwynn gave a mournful groan as one of the men did him the merciful favor of smacking him on the head with a heavy mallet to knock him unconscious. He was too badly hurt to live, and the surgeons could do nothing with such a savage chest wound. Out cold and knowing nothing of the indignity, he was passed out through a larboard gunport where he splashed into the sea to drown quickly.

  More French iron hammered into them, and Alan fell to the deck as a rammer man staggered into him. A covey of splinters took flight like passing quail over his head, and his head rang with the shock wave of a concussion somewhere. The rammer man was sprawled across his lap with his back flayed open to the spine, and Alan gave it a long thought before shoving him off and getting back to his feet. Damned if it h
ad not felt rather safe flat on his back, out of the line of fire.

  “Spare man from the larboard battery here,” Alan directed, and a rabbity man darted forward to scoop up the discarded rammer and take his place in the starboard battery.

  One of the new midshipmen, the youngest and stupidest, tugged at his coat tails, and he turned to look down at the child.

  “Mister Railsford says prepare the larboard battery as we’re … we’re …” The boy fumbled, his teeth chattering in fear.

  “We’re ready to what, damn your thin blood!” Alan barked like an exasperated commission officer. It felt damned good to yell at the boy instead of musing on his own quaking.

  “We’re to come about and rake her, sir,” the boy finished.

  “Larboard quarter-gunners, to me!” When they had gathered round he told them to ready their pieces, double-shotted with grape for good measure.

  “We’m short, sir,” a grizzled older man told him.

  “Then fetch the hands from the starboard chase gun,” Alan told him. “That six-pounder is only making them sneeze. Run out as you are ready and get those ports open now. Starboard battery, load and stand by for broadsides!”

  “’Ware below!”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Someone cringed as the repaired main yard came down with a crash across the cross-deck beams where the boats usually nestled.

  “So much fer fixin’ that fucker,” a quarter-gunner spat, drooling tobacco juice from a massive wad in his cheek.

  With a loud creak, the mizzen tops’l was thrown aback to slow their ship down. Alan bent down to peer out a gunport and saw that the Frogs were drawing ahead rapidly.

  “On the up-roll … fire!”

  At such close range, even their light nine-pounder shot could do harm to a frigate with heavier scantlings, and the broadside brought a groan of racked timber from the French ship as she was struck hard. Nettings and bulwarks flew, and screams sounded from French throats this time. Alan could feel when Desperate’s helm was put hard up to windward, even without looking at the waisters on the riddled gangways as they flung themselves on the braces to wear ship.

  “Take your time and reload the starboard guns! Sponge out your guns! Overhaul that tackle there, or you’ll get mashed like a pasty,” Alan called. “Mister Burney, do you take charge of readying the battery. Larboard guns, stand by.”

  The ship swayed like a drunkard as she wore down-wind, and the yards and masts of the French ship swung across the bow, with the tip of Desperate’s bow-sprit barely clearing her mizzen shrouds and taffrail lanterns.

  “We may only get one chance at this, so make your shots count,” Alan warned his larboard gunners. “Don’t aim too high and blow holes in her quarterdeck. Let’s put round-shot and grape down the full length of her gun deck, just like a good game of bowls. Tear her stern out, shake her mizzen to shreds.”

  Willing or not, Alan had to climb up onto the larboard gangway to judge the best moment, his hanger tangling between his shins. They would pass the Frenchman’s stern at close pistol-shot.

  Damme if we might win this yet! Alan thought as he drew his lovely gift hanger and let the pristine blade flash silver in the sun.

  “Ready … as you bear … Fire!”

  The larboard chase gun went off and its load of double-shot and grape gouged the taffrail open, shattering the carved cherubs, dolphins and saints into gilt tatters, strewing six French naval infantry down like corn-stalks. Then the nine-pounders began to discharge, and the stern windows, the larboard quarter-gallery and the transom were riddled in a flurry of broken planking. The rudder twitched back and forth and the mizzen mast shivered as it was struck. Screams from the French ship could be heard as her gun crews were mown down by the shot passing down the length of her decks.

  “That’s the way, Desperates!” Alan howled in triumph, waving his sword over his head in derision at the French he could see on the poop and quarterdeck. Swivels barked from the tops and the Marine sharpshooters let fly. Peck and his squads formed up to larboard and began to volley into her. “Sponge out! Overhaul your tackle! Charge guns!”

  Desperate put her helm down and began to swing back onto the wind to rake the Frenchman’s stern with the other battery, but the frigate, bearing the name Capricieuse on her tom gilt stern-placque tried to bear up as well, blocking their way.

  “Avast!” Railsford screamed. “Helm hard up! Lewrie, ready to rake her again with the larboard battery!”

  Quicker to return to her original course, Desperate wavered, then got herself under control. Capricieuse tried to sag down off the wind with her, but Desperate was already to leeward. The angle was acute, but it would be a stern rake, right up through the shattered wood, at least into her after batteries.

  “Wait for the transom, wait for the transom!” Alan screamed in glee as he capered up and down the gangway, looking down on his gun crews. Sweating men hauled on tackles to heave the heavy guns up the slightly canted deck. Priming quills were inserted. Crows and levers were shouldered and muscles strained near to rupture to shift the aim of the barrels. Fists were raised in the air as gun-captains signaled their readiness. A few shots were fired by the French from their own larboard side before Desperate passed out of their gun-arcs.

  “As you bear … fire!”

  One at a time, the guns roared out their challenge, and spat their tongues of flame through the smoke. Wood on the larboard quarter was chewed up. The rudder twitched again as a ball smacked into the transom post. The mizzen swayed and jerked, and Alan could see one ball carom off an interior beam with a puff of smoke and dust and paint to go ricocheting down the length of the gun deck. The after guns belched fire, then Desperate was staggered once more as though she had just been struck hard herself, but Alan could not see one French gun that could bear to do that damage.

  Capricieuse sagged down off the wind, fully presenting her stern to Desperate, trying to bring her unused starboard battery into action, and there was no movement from aft to shift their ship’s course. Alan scrambled back down to the gun deck off the gangway, where it would be safer to suffer what they were about to get in retribution.

  “Got a gun burst aft, sir!” a runner told him. “One o’ them brass nines. Blew a hole right up through the deckhead!”

  “Tell Avery to deal with it.” Alan shrugged, intent on his men. “Load with double-shot! Run out!”

  “Tha’s just it, sir, Mister Avery’s bad hurt, an’ the quarter-gunner’s dead,” the man told him.

  “Oh, shit. Hogan, leave the chase gun and go aft. You’re a quarter-gunner now!” Alan chilled. He grabbed Hogan as he trotted by and held him close for a moment. “Avery’s been hurt. Get word to me on how he is.”

  “Aye, I’ll do that, sir.”

  “Ports is openin’!” someone warned.

  “Gun crews, lay down!” Alan yelped. If they were struck while the men were still on their feet, it would be a slaughter. A second later, the broadside from the fresh battery struck them, and wood and iron howled in agony and the deck shuddered beneath them. Alan stuck his head up and looked around, coughing on smoke and engrained dust.

  “Up and at ’em, Desperates, come on, larboard!” he called, rising. “Prime your guns! Point! On the up-roll … fire!”

  A ragged cheer arose as the tortured mizzen-mast of the French frigate gave a final shudder and toppled forward, chopped to flinders below the deck by those stern rakes. It fell into component pieces, top-mast dropping straight down as the lower mast fell forward, and the t’gallant and royal masts and spars spiraled about to drape themselves over the main topmast, dragging it sideways in a tangle of rope and canvas.

  “Damme, will you look at that!” Alan hooted. “Just bloody beautiful! Keep it up, lads, and we’ll have the bastard!”

  The aged carpenter came scrambling up from below decks past the parade of powder monkeys, shoving them out of the way in his haste to get to the quarterdeck, and Alan noted that “Chips” was soaking wet from mid-thigh down, which m
ade him suddenly wonder if Desperate would stay afloat long enough to actually “have the bastard,” or whether the bastard, damaged as the French frigate was, would end up having them!

  The youngest midshipman was back suddenly, tugging on Alan’s coat once more, his face streaked with soot and powder stains, the tracks of tears carved into the grime.

  “Please, Mister Lewrie, sir, the captain presents his respects, and requests could you spare half a dozen hands to assist the carpenter.”

  “Hulled and leaking, are we?” Alan asked close, so the hands would not hear.

  “Sinking, sir!” The boy quailed, but soft enough for discretion.

  “God’s balls,” Alan breathed. “What next, I wonder? Maple?”

  “Aye, sir,” the fo’c’sle gunner answered, breaking free of the larboard battery.

  “Select five hands who aren’t doing us much good at the moment and assist the ship’s carpenter, if you would be so kind,” Alan directed, trying to remain calm, but it didn’t fool Maple, who rolled his eyes in alarm and glanced upward at the cross-deck beams where the boats most definitely weren’t any longer. Other than flotsam from a wreck, the boats were the only lifesaving devices available.

  “Oh, shit, Mister Lewrie, sir!” Maple sighed, dashing off. If I’d stayed in London, I’d have become a wealthy pimp by now, Alan speculated sourly. I can’t even bloody swim!

  There was a volley of musketry of such volume and intensity that only a company of infantry could have made it. A larboard waister came tumbling down from the forebraces to sprawl across the breech of a gun, his face shot away and his brains oozing and sizzling on the hot metal.

  Alan ducked to look out a gunport once more. Capricieuse was close-aboard, not fifty yards off, her bulwarks lined with men as though her last chance was to board Desperate and take her in a hot hand-to-hand action.

  “Quoins out!” Alan yelled to his gunners. “Load grape and canister atop ball! Cease fire and stand by for a broadside!”

  “Double-shotted, zurr!” a gun-captain called back.