"God's sake, Cony, we don't wish to burn her!"
"Nossir, but Mister Bittfield, 'e cut me some slow-match fusees, an' 'twixt us, 'im an' 'is powder yeomen, we made up some grenadoes. Oncet we're aboard, sir… thought they might come in 'andy." Cony chortled, quite half-seas-over after his "sampling," and full of cherry-merry bonhomie. "Mayn't kill too many, do they work. But they might put th' wind up 'em, yonder. Keep 'em from rushing th' foc's'le too eager."
"Cony, you're a godsend. Aye, good thinking," Lewrie praised. "Wish I'd had half the wits to think of 'em, myself! Go at 'em, man. And Cony?"
"Aye, sir?"
"I expect to see you among the quick, once we're done. I don't relish breaking in a new bosun's mate after all this time, any more'n you… well," Lewrie said, turning sombre. "God go with you, and all good fortune, Will Cony."
"Same t'yew, sir," Cony chirped. "B'sides, sir, z'much trouble I'm in back in Anglesgreen? I reckon the Good Lord knows a rogue and a weed when 'E sees one, Mister Lewrie. An' 'E jus' might get a laugh outa seein' me try t'wriggle, when we gets back 'ome."
"True enough," Lewrie laughed, turning back to his worries.
Dear Lord, You know Your weeds, don't You, Lewrie addressed his Maker silently; You know me for a rogue, already. I'm sorry 'bout my doin's in Naples. I'm sorry for… well, no, I'm not really sorry 'bout Phoebe. Plain truth, Lord? Started out of sympathy-pity for her. Now… God save me, I think I'm half in love with the little mort! I fall before the hour's out-thankee for Caroline, and the children. Look after 'em for me, as best You're able. And-thankee for Phoebe, Lord. You made a poor rakehell sailor damn'… awfully happy, for a few days. Don't let any harm come to her. I left a note, should I not be 'mongst the quick when this is over. Let 'em find it, so she could draw on my funds, start over somewhere. Not be…
He shook himself all over, lifted his head and took a deep lungful of air to clear his gloomy thoughts. There was the corvette, close now. Less than one hundred yards astern, less than fifty yards upwind. More of her starboard gunports were opening as she ran them out to fire. They'd bear now, levered to the forrudmost rims of the gunports. But even with quoins fully out, breeches hard on the carriages, she'd not be able to shoot high enough to damage rigging or harm the upper decks, as heeled-over as she was by the press of wind. Another advantage to be below her, he took time to gloat, the one thing he had over which he could gloat. These last few minutes of stern-chase they had not been able to fire at anything but his water-line or his stern. Up to windward, the lee guns were always canted too low for good gunnery.
He squatted down as the corvette let fly, even so. Four balls struck almost immediately, thanking into Radical below the quarterdeck. There were screams, womanly cries, grunts of alarm from men. But his ship had taken the corvette's best fire, and his frigate's timbers had proven tough enough to hold.
He stood back up, wincing as some French marksmen began to fire with their muskets. A ball whistled past his ears like a bumblebee. Alan ignored it, judging his moment. Lifting his arms slowly, taking in a breath with which to scream… wait for it… wait for it…!
Now!
"Porter!" he bawled, feeling faint and dizzy with the effort he put into his cry. "Scandalise her! Quartermaster, helm hard alee! Ready, the larboard battery! Troops on deck, muster in the waist!"
Round she came, luffing up to windward, yards crying and sails cracking like gun-shots, masts groaning and loose gear coming adrift from aloft. The square sails were being brailed up, goosewinged by Spanish reefs, the foresails and jibs' sheets freed, the braces let ease. Radical slowed quickly, going from a painful struggle to flee to a weak surrender, the sort of rubbery-legged shudder a deer chased to exhaustion might display as it came to a halt at last, tongue lolling and ribs heaving to face the dogs, and its death.
The French corvette stood on for a startled moment, laid as full and by as she could lay, as Radical fetched up across her course, under her bows, almost at right-angles to her. She began to swing away, haul her wind, hoping to shave past Radical's stern, within spitting distance.
But Lewrie's borrowed frigate had come up in-irons, dead in the eye of the wind, her square-sail yards purposely thrown ail-aback, flat against the apparent wind, then against the true wind, as she groaned to a dead halt in a welter of disturbed water, began to make a slight stern-board!
The corvette's bowsprit and jib boom came thrusting inward like a lance, soaring over the larboard side, steeved high into the air, almost as high as the main-course yard, just before the main-mast chains. Her sprits'l yard, crossed beneath her bows but not deployed, tangled in the stays, ripping off, rigging lines parting like pistol shots, timbers moaning in agony as her elaborate beakhead rails were crushed back into her bows, as her cut-water slammed into Radical with a monumental, hollow booming that shook both ships like striking a rocky shoal at-speed!
Everyone was knocked off their feet-Radical shuddered- her side gave way to the impact of nearly four hundred tons of oak and iron striking her almost at right-angles!
"First grapnels, away!" Lewrie howled, getting to his own feet, even without looking. 'Tireurs, there! You marksmen! Tirez! Charles, give her a broadside!"
Radical's gunners clambered back to their guns, opened their gunports, and ran out. Men teamed up on crow-levers to shift their charges to aim inward, aiming point-blank at oak scantlings mere feet away, the twelve-pounders far fore and aft laid so canted at their ports they'd snap their breeching ropes. Musketry aloft snapping and cracking, shouts of fear from the French gunners on the foredeck and foc's'le as lead struck about them, clawing at their wounds as they were picked off before they could get back to serving their guns. Or freeing the flung grapnels.
Then Radical fired her broadside. Twelve hundred feet per second, a ball flew when it left the muzzle of a naval artillery piece. Grape-shot… more like a sack of hard iron plums… and eighteen-pounder solid round-shot behind that… the corvette screamed! Wood cried out as it was blasted away, timbers flew, scantling planking whirled in the air! Thuds and thonks rose from her as her gun deck and mess deck were turned into a pair of bowling pitches, and heavy iron tore through tight-pressed men, overturning artillery on carriages, shivering masts as they struck on the lower trunks. Carline posts, scantling, decks, overhead deck beam timbers broke or were turned by caroming ricochets into jagged clouds of wood sprinters, bits and pieces as big as bayonets, flicking quick as birds, quilling sailors and making them cringe or cry in terror.
Lewrie scampered to the larboard gangway above his guns, sword drawn. "Cockerels, to me!" he called, waving his tars to join him at the bulwarks. "Grapnel men? Boarders? Boarders, first! You, too, my man!" he shouted as he espied Cony and his French mate with their port-bottle grenadoes. They came with muskets, pistols and cutlasses bare and brutally glittering. There was nothing subtle or scientific about cutlasses-they were choppers, not really swords.
"Now, Cockerels… ready? Follow me, lads!" he screamed, to left and right. "Boarders! Awwayy, boarderrss!"
They surged across the narrow space, scrambling along the foot ropes and bracing cables below the ruin of the corvette's jib boom and bowsprit, weapons in one hand and leaping from fore stay to fore stay with the other. Some spryer topmen sprinted down the jib boom, as if running across a wide log footbridge, horny bare feet tough and sure on pine spars and wound-rope doubling bands. All with a hank of white cloth tied round their left biceps over their shirts or jackets, marking an ally for the sharpshooters above.
There was a quick mкlйe among the survivors of the bow-chasers' crews, those who had not already been picked off, or had fled. French sailors were overrun in a twinkling, hacked down with cutlasses or axe heads, a fleet few screaming in terror and scampering over the top of, around the sides of, the petty officers' heads in the roundhouses of the forward bulkhead.
"Kennedy!" Lewrie shouted from the beakhead platform. "Bring your men, now! Grapnels! We'll take 'em to the anchor cat-heads! Be ready with
pistols!" he said, drawing the first of a borrowed pair.
He climbed up from the beakhead platform to the foredeck, and the abandoned chase-guns, shouldered into the bulkhead, and hopped up for a view, trying to scale it. A French sailor was climbing atop it with a musket in his hands. Eye to eye, not a single yard between!
He brought up his pistol cack-handed, snapping it back to full-cock with his sword-hand wrist, leveled and fired. The man's forehead turned plummy, and the back of his skull was blown out, flinging blood and brains in a sudden rain behind him. His own dying scream was echoed by the men who'd been in his rear, trying to dash forward to repel.
"Up, men!" Lewrie yelled. "Give 'em pistols! Point-blank!"
His men erupted from either side of the bulkhead and the roundhouses, shouldering into rough line and leveling their weapons. Guns went off from both sides. A British sailor was flung backwards with a howl. There was a sharp crack, a cloud of smoke from the far side, and more howls among the French, followed by another light explosion, and the air sang with lead and broken glass! Cony and his grenadoes!
Lewrie got to the top of the bulkhead, crawled across it and looked down onto the forecastle. There were half a dozen dead below, a like number writhing and shrieking… but a full two dozen running forward towards him. Muskets crackled near his ears, making them ring, and a few of the French skidded or tumbled to a halt, the ones behind tripping over them, and coming to a stop. Lewrie drew his second pistol, glanced left to see a reassuring flash of red uniform coat. The Irish had made it across!
The French took pause, confused by the sight of British Red, a heartbeat standing still. Then the corvette was quaking to a second broadside, and the men below were scythed away by raking fire, as more iron bowled and caromed the length of her gun deck!
'Take the forecastle!" Lewrie pleaded, turning to search for Lieutenant Kennedy. There he was! "Kennedy! Take the forecastle! Right to the railing! Volley and cover us!"
The Irish swept past him, bayonets winking, muskets presented at hip level; about twenty men shuffling into ranks whilst the first brave ten hurriedly reloaded to a clatter of ramrods.
"Grapnels, now! Set 'em to the cat-heads, behind the troops!"
He took the larboard side, Bosun Porter the starboard, trailing heavy four-inch manila lines across from Radical, heavy-barbed grapnels being carried by seamen. Skulking low, as the French got organised at last, as they picked themselves up amid a welter of blood and smoke, of sensible order overturned. Ignoring the shrieks of men torn in half by iron shards, those quilled like hedgehogs by splinters, or crushed and howling beneath shattered gun carriages, they were advancing, their numbers growing quickly. Musket fire began to buzz around them. Men went down. Lewrie lost his second hat, felt a brush against his scalp, and staggered, as a musket ball clipped the hair above bis left ear.
But they had the grapnels set, two wraps about the projecting cat-head timbers, then driven deep into the bulwarks. Lewrie could see the strain coming on the lines, lifting them like snakes from the deck and turning them bar-taut. And a look forward showed him de Crillart and some of his regular gunners coming over, with French soldiers in a bunch along Radical's gangway, clumsily scrambling for handholds.
"Hurry!" he shouted to them, waving Charles forward. "For God's sake, hurry 'em over! We can't hold long!"
Sure enough, there were men dashing along either gangway towards his outmanned boarding party. Porter to starboard had two pistols in his hands, seamen-Royalist French and British-at his back, ready with cutlasses or a few loaded muskets. Lewrie cocked his second pistol and leveled it, glaring down the barrel at the men running directly at him.
Hoping they might flinch. And his own body turned side-on, like a duellist. Hoping he wouldn't be shot!
"First rank… y'r lef front!" Kennedy bawled. "Level! Fire!"
Ten men fired by volley, into the head of the pack facing Bosun Porter, taking down five and throwing the rest into confusion, which Porter exploited with a pistol or musket volley of his own.
"First rank, recover and reload. Second rank, y'r right front! Level! Fire!"
Lewrie shot first, taking down a French midshipman, an aspirant who had been brave enough to charge him, until he'd seen the pistol in a dead line with his chest. He'd stumbled to a halt, bringing up his own, getting bowled over by his seamen. The boy's waist-coat turned red as he was flung backwards by the ball, almost going erect again, before being trampled by the ones behind. Alan brought up his sword, matched blades with a cutlass-swinging petty officer who'd outrun the pack as Kennedy's soldiers tore gaping holes in the men who'd been slow to follow him. Screams of alarm, of disbelief as men realised they had been shot down, or that they'd been spared whilst a friend had not.
Two, three engagements, clashing steel against steel, high then low, to his left as the petty officer swung again, parrying him off to the right and over his head. Tripping him with his foot and shouldering the burly man off balance. A heart-pounding gasp as he leapt back and ran him through, sideways, ducking as the cutlass came swinging at his head, backhanded. But the petty officer going down to his knees, with a death wound below his ribs.
No time to reload, no time to think! Another man, leaping the carnage the 18th had strewn on the gangway, confronted him, an officer for sure, with a smallsword. Up came his bloody blade to ring upon the foe's. But Lisney was beside him with a cutlass, at the head of the larboard forecastle ladder, making him spin away to confront them both. And Gittons beside Lisney, two more British sailors following them. The officer broke off, beginning to backpedal, glancing over Lewrie's head, as if to draw his attention off, now and again.
"Third rank… advance to the railings… cock y'r locks! And level!" Kennedy was shouting. And there were French shouts, too, of encouragement, coming from the beakheads and bulkhead behind Lewrie.
He advanced with a leap, sure he was being reinforced at last. The French officer was forced to meet his blade, begin the clashing of steel, the thrust, parry and anticipation amid the clatter of metal on metal as if an itinerant tinker band was repairing pots. Hilt to hilt, the Frenchman growling as one of his best overhand thrusts was averted. He leapt back, stamped his foot to advance, fencing-school fashion, and came spiralling in. Lewrie met his blade on the edge of his, about midlength. And the damned thing snapped!
His foe grinned as he cleared his arm for a thrust. Desperately, Alan was on him, right shoulder forward, brawling now instead of fencing, seizing the man's sword-hand wrist and jabbing him through the throat below his jaw with the ragged stub! Gave him another, lower down in the belly as he sagged against him. Nose to nose, looking into those dying eyes for an instant, jumping back to avoid the rush of gore from his mouth as he tumbled face-down. And taking his sword from him.
"Cockerels!" he bawled, waving his new weapon on high. 'To me, lads! Kennedy, take the gun deck! Now! Don't give 'em time to think!" He turned about to see Louis and his cavalrymen mustering to starboard on the forecastle. "Louis! The gangway! Charge! Et… damme! Dйbarquement! The gangway! Clear it! Porter, show 'im!"
"We 'ave arrive, mon ami," Charles de Crillart said breathlessly. He shouted over his shoulder, ordering his gunners to join Porter and Louis on the starboard gangway, as Major de Mariel's first soldiers came up.
"Join Kennedy and de Mariel, clear the gun deck. I'll take the larboard gangway. Meet you aft, Charles. Bonne chance."
"Oui, bonne chance, Alain," Charles agreed, drawing his sword.
"Cockerels, let's go!" Lewrie shouted, advancing.
Kennedy's 18th Royal Irish, not waiting for de Mariel's men to take order in their rear, advanced, bayonets leveled, down the ladders to the gun deck, forming up before the foc's'le belfry in two long ranks across the deck. "Forward, the 18th! Up, the Irish!" Lieutenant Kennedy cried. And «hey charged. "Hoolooloolooloo!" they screamed, an ancient, pagan Gaelic war cry, full-throated, ululating hatred and slaughter, the wolves of Erin, who had never been conquered by Caesar's legions; th
ese fierce rejects of that unhappy land. "Hoolooloolooloo!" they bayed. And foes shrank in terror before them.
A continual fusillade of pistol pops, musket reports, screams and wails, the tinny sounds of blades battering against each other. Mкlйe and mayhem, a swirling, twisting, nightmare dream of killing, of being killed, of narrowly avoiding death. Down went a man with a boarding pike to Lewrie's new sword, skewered through the belly. Another blade glittering as it descended towards his outstretched arms. Lisney there to fend it off, to hack the next foe down. Midshipman Spendlove under his arm, to dash forward, dirk in one hand, cutlass in the other, cutting right and left, horizontal. Sweeping the cutlass upwards to tear a topman open, stamping and extending his left arm to stab another.
Lewrie sagged against the bulwarks, panting for air, wincing to a cut on his left leg he couldn't recall receiving, his mouth dry as dust. Looked to his left, saw Chevalier Louis at die head of his thrusting, swinging cavalrymen, popping off with mus-ketoons and pistols. And saw Louis and the three men behind him taken down by a blast from a swivel gun on the quarterdeck! The gunner, leaning far out over the bulwark to fire down the gangway, was shot through the heart the next moment. Below, Irish bayonets jabbing, overhand and underhand, a French sailor with an frish soldier by the throat, dirk stabbing, all the while his own body rising off the deck, hoisted by three more bayonets. A pistol going off near Kennedy's head, missing at point-blank range, and Kennedy hewing the shooter down!
Cony's grenadoes going off, far aft, lofted as far as he could throw them, waiting dangerously long as the fuses burned down, so that they went off in midair, at eye or waist-level!
And dragging himself back into the fray, as the French sailors began at last to give way, falling back as far as the main chains. Half the corvette was theirs! Slipping and sliding aft along the larboard gangway, stepping over dead men, the cruelly wounded, hacked and chopped open or apart by British sailors going through the whole brutal ballet of the full cutlass drill.
H.M.S. COCKEREL l-6 Page 41