Another hard hit! Another flickering, whining, keening flight of wood splinters, and Lewrie staggered, again, pausing in his pacing. God, but he wished to draw his sword, bark orders, shout encouragement, do something useful! Instead, he pulled out his watch and opened the ornately-engraved lid, grunting in utter surprise to see that the fight had gone on for over half an hour since the first broadsides were fired! He clicked the lid shut, carefully put the watch back into the pocket of his waist-coat, then paced over to the compass binnacle.
Due West, and away from the convoy, which, the last he had seen, had been steering Nor'west by West, escaping as he delayed the frigate. A quick look over at the French, and he walked the few feet aft to the Quartermasters on the helm. "Another half-point to weather, lads. Get us up closer, still."
"Aye aye, sir!" stoic older Austen agreed, shifting a dry quid of tobacco to his other cheek. Zip-zip-zip! A musket ball thudded off the forward wheel, taking a divot of ash with it, and sudden splintery quills arose from the deck as other musket shots missed. Mr. Motte, on the after wheel, gave out a sudden shriek and dropped as if pole-axed, with a musket ball in his neck.
"Another helmsman, here, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie barked, gulping down nausea, and shock, then turning away, as he must "By God, those people are beginnin' t'make me angry! Still with us, Mister Langlie?" "Aye, sir. 'Nother helmsman on the way."
"Swivel-guns in the tops t'open on theirs, as we get closer!" Lewrie snapped, wishing he had his Ferguson, his fusil musket, or even his Girandoni air rifle.
Hell with this stoic shite, he determined; I'm gonna kill some of those bastards, myself! as he drew out his first double-barreled pistol to check the dryness of its priming.
"We've been hulled, several times, sir," Lt. Langlie said, after he had done as Lewrie directed. "The Carpenter reports better than one foot of water in the bilges, so far, and at least five shot-holes, that he can see near the waterline. He also found an intact round-shot, sir. An eighteen-pounder, wedged in a starboard timber."
"I thought yon Frog was hitting rather hard," Lewrie said, with a wince; he'd been sure that Proteus and the foe were of equal calibre and weight of broadside. But, perhaps the slowness of the French gun crews had given him that impression. "Making fast, is the water, sir?" he asked Langlie.
"Not too quickly, sir… not yet," Langlie said with a shrug.
"Have to live with it, for a while, then," Lewrie decided. "No hands may be spared for the pumps, 'til it gets a lot worse. Have any more joy for me, Mister Langlie?"
"Mister Adair reports that the larboard six-pounder on the forecastle is dismounted, too, sir," Langlie added, looking grim and quite grey from head to foot with powder residues. "As is Number Two twelve-pounder, and Number Eleven in your cabins, from our larboard battery."
"I'll take joy from thinking that the Frogs are having a worse night than we are, Mister Langlie," Lewrie had to shout in his ear, as several guns below their feet erupted together. "Must have not had an impressive raiding cruise… if they felt the need to toe up and slug it out! Honour and glory, 'stead o' loot? Not their, ha!.. .forte!"
Lewrie said it with a fatalistic shrug of his own, to think they would continue to batter each other, perhaps for hours, but Lt. Langlie could see the feral rictus of a smile on his captain's face, take note in a flash of lighting that Lewrie's usually merry blue eyes were gone cold, Arctic grey, and snapping with battle joy.
"Carry on, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said, clapping his First Officer on the shoulder. "Pour it to 'em. The French aren't much good at this sort of yardarm-to-yardarm fight. Give it time enough, and they will lose their nerve, long before us. Hammer 'em, lads!" he shouted to the gunners, all that stern stoicism the Navy required gone at last. "Hammer 'em, and shatter their bloody bones! Pour it on, pour it on!"
"And damned be he who first cries, 'Hold, Enough!'" he thought, becoming gun-drunk on the bitter powder fog, and the heart-stopping, lung-shaking roar from his beloved artillery.
"Damned be he," "damned be him"? Never could keep that straight, he told himself with a deprecating chuckle and a faint grin, which, in the ruddy Hell-fire flashes of Proteus's guns, looked positively wolfish. Whichever's right, by God it won't be us!
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Oh, Jaysus, oh, Jaysus!" an Irish sailor whispered as he stood behind the starboard bulwark, a bare-bladed cutlass jammed into a wide belt, a clumsy-looking pistol stuck into a pocket of his slop-trousers, and gripping a Brown Bess Sea Pattern musket. In addition to all that, a keen-pointed boarding pike rested upright against the rack of belaying pins near the main mast's stays. He looked up and down the rainy gangway at his mates, similarly armed, who crouched down out of sight, and felt the need to cross himself. "Mither Mary, comfort me…!"
"Arr, stop yer gob, Paddy," one of the hidden chid him. "Where away, now?"
"M… musket-shot, Oi thinks," the Irishman said with a shudder as lightning crashed bright ghoul-blue and lit up the sea, showing the dark frigate closing rapidly. Sailors stood atop her bulwarks, up her larboard shrouds, with even more crowding elbow-to-elbow along her sail-tending gangway… every mother-son of them waving cutlasses, hooting, jeering, and whooping fit to bust. Like Beelzebub's demon army!
"Fook if they are!" the hidden sailor spat, after a quick peek. "Still 'arf a cable off. No wonder th' doxies don't fancy ye, Paddy. Cain't judge distance worth a tinker's dam. Tells 'em 'e's got seven inches, an' th' hoors kin only mark three, har har!"
"Wait fer it!" the First Mate was intoning from the quarterdeck. "Wait fer it! Ever'body stay hid, 'til th' cap'm says 'leap,' there."
"Gonna kill us all," Paddy whispered, his lips trembling, and a hand clawing inside his sodden shirt for his rosary. "Gonna…!"
"Hesh, lad!" an older shipmate hissed. "Buck up, laddy." The frigate sidled down upon them, no matter the futile alteration of course, the dangerous release of reefed sails. But, her gun-ports were still closed, and did not flap open to her rolling motion; they weren't even freed… yet. It would be a boarding, hull pressed and grinding against hull.
"Wait for it… almost there!" the First Mate shouted, again.
"Heu!" a harsh voice came down to them on the noisy wind, from the foe. " Void le frigate Vesuve, a Marine Francais! 'Eave to, z'ere, et surrendre. Vous not, ve fire on vous, comprendre?"
"We cannot heave-to in this weather, you no-sailor, you!" Capt. Weed could be heard shouting back through a speaking-trumpet. "We must keep a way on, downwind. Comprendre?"
"Surrendre, vite vite!" came the harsh answer as the Vesuve continued to close. "Take in votre voiles… you damn' sails!" And, in seeming obedience, some free sailors began to clew up tops'ls, as the French frigate shuffled down within mere yards of them. And, the gun-ports were still shut! French sailors at bow, stern, and amidships on her bulwarks appeared with heaving lines and grapnels to bind the two ships together.
"We're all gonna die, damn yer blood!" Daniel Wigmore said from chattering jaws, snuffled, and wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.
"Aw, you lived too long, anyway, you old fraud," Weed told him. " Jamaica 's but five miles off, and coming hard. Who knows? With any luck at all, you'll live, and reap a year's free advertisements from this. Wait for it…!"
"Thousands o' th' buggers, though…"
"Hundreds, anyways," Capt. Weed professionally noted; he'd had his own start in the Royal Navy during the American Revolution. "And, I do think I see half her crew or better still below her gangways, on her starboard guns, and such. They mean to send a fair-sized boarding party to us, yet keep enough men in-hand to stall Jamaica whilst they make off with us. This just might work, after all!"
The heavy grapnels flew, biting into Festival's timbers as the Vesuve came to within hand-shaking distance.
"Now, by God!" Capt. Weed howled. "Now! Up, and repel boarders! Gunners… fire!"
French sailors were leaping across the empty air between ships, howling in glee, or swinging in piratical fashion on freed li
nes, but were countered by the acrobats' and aerialists' nets hung from the tips of the yardarms, pinning themselves against them like flies glued to a spider's web, and their victory cries turned ugly and harsh.
But, then the muskets began to bark and flash, as pistols were emptied right in their faces, as cutlasses and small-swords and sabres were thrust into the bellies of those clambering upon the nets… as the puny old cast-off artillery pieces, double-shotted with scrap metal, musket balls, and grape, erupted, quoins fully out and aimed up high to scythe the French frigate's bulwarks and gangway. Rusty swivel-guns in the tops yapped, pointing down at acute angles at the gangway, as well, and French sailors were suddenly screaming in pain and terror as they were plucked from the rails, caught in mid-swing, and dropped in the foaming mill-race between the hulls, to be crushed or drowned!
"Tarakans!" Whoosh. "Nasyekomayehs!" Whoosh. "Peesas!" Whoosh. "Cockroaches! Insects! Pricks.'" Eudoxia Durschenko shrilly hallooed, each curse a punctuation to a loosed arrow. "Chyepooha!" Whoosh, and that for rubbish! as another broad-point hunting arrow skewered a well-dressed man, with a fore-and-aft bicorne hat and a costly sword, who'd gained Festival's bulwark and was chopping at the nets. He screamed as he looked down to the doom buried deep in his chest, eyes widened by utter astonishment that he'd be slain by such an ancient thing, just before he tottered backwards and disappeared between the grinding hulls!
"Snova, girl!" her father bellowed. "Again, and again!"
"Bast'rd, yew mine!" Rodney swore as he took careful aim from behind the poop deck's bulwarks, alongside the clowns firing one of the swivel-guns. His target was an older man, maybe a petty officer, who was shoving French sailors forward. The musket shoved him in his good shoulder as he fired, and that petty officer died so quick he didn't even have time to clap a hand to his chest, where a.75-calibre ball smashed his heart, and fell off the gangway to sprawl atop one of the cannon. The clowns, in full white-face-their war-paint, they said!- whooped over his accuracy as they charged their rail-mounted shot-gun for another round. "Got you, yeah!" Rodney cheered, too, as he tossed the musket to the rear, and flapped his right hand to demand a fresh weapon from the little blond acrobat girl who was loading for him. This weapon was one of Durschenko's Pennsylvania rifles, like the ones that he and Proteus's Marine marksmen used from the tops in action, and he smiled an evil little smile as he brought it forward, over his injured left forearm for a rest, and drew the dog' s-jaws back to full cock. There, on the quarterdeck! That was an officer, for sure, he reckoned, all bellow, gilt-and-beshit. "You mine, butt fuckah!"
Lashed together, hulls grinding paint, tar, and linseed oil off, the French were but briefly daunted. The unexpected check was like a red flag waved at a bull, enflaming their blood lust. Swords chopped through nets, slashing suspending ropes, and parts of the netting came down at last, allowing a small flood of boarders to gain footing along Festival'?, gangway.
" Vaya con Dios, amigos, " Jose whispered as he removed muzzles from his bears, and cuffed them hard on their snouts to enrage them. "Go, hasta luego, ninos! Eat Frenchmen!" he directed, pointing, then shoving them in the right direction. Fredo and Paulo might not have been all that hungry, or all that enraged, either, perhaps imagined a time free of their constricting muzzles was a time to play. Whatever they made of it, the pair of brothers, usually as gentle as baa-lambs as Jose had promised, made a distinct impression on the French sailors who had gained the gangway as they loped towards them on all fours with their mouths open, their fangs flickering in the back-flashes of the lightning, and their claws skittering rather loudly on the oak planks!
It didn't help that Jose, in his second role as knife-thrower, was whickering butcher-knives at the French as he ran behind his bears, and shrieking curses, aiming to hit for a change, not outline the girl who spun on his large wooden wheel with near-misses!
"Ilya, mean old son of bitch," Arslan Durschenko cooed into one ear of his lone adult lion after he had led him up from his cage down in the upper hold. "Ya lyubeet tiy, syegda. Lovink you, always, even if you no damn' good. Chase there, da? Want head for bitink? There, Ilya, there Sweet meat, Fransooski bastards!"
The lion whuffed at the din of combat, of clashing swords, and howling men, his mane shivering at every discharge of musket or pistol. Ilya was old, as old as poor, dead Vanya, and he had never had what one might call a sweet disposition. His rheumy eyes lit up with an ancient joy, though, and, free for once of a controlling leash and collar after Durschenko removed it and gave him an encouraging slap on his rump, the lion just had to do what a lion had to do. He leaped from the weather deck to the gangway with the spryness of a young male, huge hind paws not even having to scrabble at its edge, found himself a victim on the gangway, and rose up to drape his front paws on a man's shoulders, his gaping, fang-filled mouth inches from his nose as he let out a roar!
Thankfully for Festival's crew, Ilya's first choice was French, though nothing about lions was gilt-edged guaranteed. The French tar shrieked, sword clattering to the deck in terror, and fainted away, a good thing for him, for Ilya didn't think that was very much fun, nor was it even tasty, so he rose up again and began slapping those plate-sized, sharp-taloned paws about to right and left, this time draping himself on the sole remaining trio of Frenchmen who hadn't been swatted into bloody tatters, and took himself a lovely mouthful of face!
"Stay th' Divil away f'um me, ye bastards!" Paddy was shouting, musket emptied into one man, pistol emptied into another, then used as a club to shatter a third's skull. His boarding pike had been lost in a Frenchman's belly, a man who had joined his shipmates in the sluice between the hulls, and he was now reduced to whirling his cutlass like a frantic St. Catherine's Wheel, and he was holding off two sword-armed enemies by creating a steel fan in front of him, but his arms were now growing lead-heavy and weak. "I don't wanna die, Jay-sus, Mary, an' Joseph! Don't hurt me, or Oi'll kill yd Go-od damn!" he gawped.
Ilya had come to his rescue, pouncing, rather playfully kitten-like it could be described, onto their backs, and naturally going for the tried-and-true neck-bite on one of them, jostling the other to his knees with his cutlass down, and Paddy whisked his blade like an axe, cleaving right down through the crown of his foe's skull, deep into his brain. "Oi told ye, Oi warned ye! Oh, shite!" His foe bleated out a death-scream, Ilya's prey shrieked his own as long fangs met together in the unfortunate sailor's throat. Ilya gave him a good shake, then looked at Paddy with his eyes glowing in eager green chatoyance.
" Gooood kitty!" Paddy whinnied, leaping rather spryly, himself, for the main mast shrouds and rat-lines. "Noice kitty!" he whimpered as he shot up the stays past the cat-harpings in an eye-blink, hoping that lions didn't much care for nigh-vertical ascents on shaky ropes, and swearing that if he survived, he'd never sign aboard a ship which carried any sort of critters! "Mither?" he cried to the main truck as the lion took a moment to look up at him and ponder his chances.
"What are you fools…?" a French Lieutenant bellowed as sailors came tumbling back aboard the frigate Vesuve. "Attack, I say, go back and attack… Eeekk!" as a lion-a shaggy-maned lion!-sprang from one bulwark to the next, balanced for a short second on all four paws like a domestic cat on a balcony railing, then sprang for him and took him down with his massive weight. The bloody-mawed beast landed atop him, embraced him with gigantic front paws, and clawed his torso from breastbone to groin with his hind paws, roaring in his face, and fine broadcloth wool and clean white silk-always to be worn when in combat, for it was easier to withdraw from wounds!-went flying like a ragpicker's rejected quilt pieces! His sailors shot, stabbed, and bayoneted the beast, but it was far too late for the Lieutenant, and Ilya actually managed to claw a matelot to ribbons before he died, managing to shatter the night with one last, prideful roar that sounded like utter satisfaction, and the total domination of all Africa that he had been denied when captured as a cub so many years before.
"I not cry," Arslan Durschenko muttered as he heard his l
ion's last victory roar. Even so, he had to pipe at his good left eye for a second, before turning to receive a fresh-loaded rifled musket from a wee red-headed "actress," and brought it to his left shoulder to take careful aim. The French were still so close that Durschenko could aim, then shut his left eye before he pulled the trigger to prevent the loss of his remaining sight. A lifetime of marksmanship assured him that he would strike his man, and even before he opened his eyes, the shout of pain that followed the snap of the lock and the flash in the pan, then the bark and recoil of the rifled weapon, told him he had scored.
"A pity," the brazenly pert little redhead told him as she took the rifle back, and handed him a pair of double-barreled pistols. " 'E were a good lion… mostly."
"Ilya was Devil son of bitch," Arslan Durschenko snarled as he cocked all four locks. "But, he die good, I give him one last chance. Those two pistols, too, kraseeya dyevooshka, and I showink somethink. Keep down, dyevooshka. Too pretty to fight. Watchink this!"
The girl ducked down behind the compass binnacle as Durschenko strode forward towards the starboard gangway with a pistol in each of his hands. The French were retreating, flowing back to their frigate, but Durschenko's blood was up. Off-handed, shooting from the hip with his left eye squinted, he volleyed off, first from the right hand, and then from the left, alternating right-side and left-side barrels from both guns, and four Frenchmen slumped to the deck! He dropped both of his empty pistols and drew his last pair of single-barreled duellers, raising the right one to shoulder level.
The other foemen spotted the threat at last, some raising their cutlasses, or swinging muskets towards him, but not before Durschenko blasted one of them backwards to slam into the gangway bulwark with a ball in his heart, folded over himself. Durschenko raised his other pistol, just as the Frenchman who had levelled his musket right at him yelped in agony as an arrow drove deep into his right side, and pulled the trigger as the muzzle dropped, to drive the ball deep into the oak deck. Before the French could react to this new threat, yet another arrow went into the left eye socket of the man who had swung to find the source, and his death-scream was as un-nerving as a dying woman's.
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