A King`s Trade l-13

by Dewey Lambdin

  Then, the bears arrived from up forward, both Fredo and Paulo clumsily stalking aft on their hind feet, rolling their massive heads and roaring with their mouths open and their upper lips laid back from long, though un-bloodied, fangs. Durschenko fired his last pistol and found his mark, and the French at last broke and ran, scrambling from Festival to the relative safety of their frigate, abandoning weapons to free their hands for the desperate and dangerous crossing. Men on both ships, with good reason, were hacking at the grapnel lines with boarding axes and swords.

  Astern of them, Capt. Weed was shouting orders for brace-tenders and sheet-handlers as he spun the spokes of the wheel to a blur to get his ship away into the darkness as quickly as he could. Her own battle lust not yet slaked, Eudoxia smoothly plucked a shaft from the sheaf on her back, notched it, and drew to her cheek in one slick motion, firing four more arrows in as few seconds, it seemed, and tumbling all four of her marks into the widening gap between the hulls, or making them drop onto the frigate's gangways where their shouts and cries and confusion-causing bodies kept the recent shock and terror redly alive.

  "Urrah!" Arslan Durschenko shouted, both arms and empty pistols thrust at the stormy night sky in triumph. "We win! Urrah!" he cried, looking up at the poop deck, where a bandaged Black man stood with his hunting rifle in one hand, and cheering, too.

  "Urrah!" Eudoxia seconded, coming to hug her father, to dance in place and bounce on her toes in victory.

  "Cossack forever, Fransooski bastards!" her poppa howled.

  "Damned h'if we didn't!" Daniel Wigmore marvelled in complete astonishment, ready to feel himself over for wounds as he rose from a handy hiding place near the break of the poop. He had an un-fired pistol and an un-bloodied sword, but he waved them aloft with as much exuberance as the rest. "Damme h'if h'it didn't work, ha ha! Eeek!" he added, as Fredo and Paulo, their "play-pretties" now gone, came loping aft, looking for more excitement. "Jose, come git yer damn' bears, I say! P… please? Jose!"

  "Hoy, th' deck!" came a forlorn voice from the main mast truck, astride the furled and gasketed sail and yard. "Kin I come down, now? Is 'at lion gone, arrah?"

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  HMS Proteus shuddered to another hit, thick oak scantlings crying as they were punctured, and a framing timber under the Number Five larboard gun-port gave out a great groan of pain as the 18-pdr. round-shot thonked into it inches deep and lodged there.

  "Two feet or more in the bilges, now, sir," Lt. Langlie had to report, his cocked hat gone, and his face smeared with grey gun-grit.

  "Their rate of fire's slackin'," Lewrie commented, giving that dire news but half an ear. The storm was finally blowing itself out, the winds moderating, and the rain coming down in sullen, vertical showers, instead of being whipped horizontally into their faces. The worst of the weather had scudded off Nor'west with its heavy lightning, so if a bolt now struck, it was no longer close-aboard, and there were several seconds between the crack and the rumbling thunder roll.

  "There!" Lewrie snapped, pointing at their foe in a weaker glimmer of a distant lightning strike. "See there, Mister Langlie! Hands to the braces, and we'll make up a bit closer to her, still. Quartermasters… another half-point to weather!"

  The enemy frigate, in that blink-of-an-eye flash, stood revealed as a battered shell, her hull planking stove in, and riddled with star-shaped shot-holes, several of her gun-ports hammered into one, and her starboard bulwarks gnawed away in places, from abaft her cat-heads and swung-up anchors to abeam of her mizen-mast.

  Lewrie grimly supposed that Proteus probably didn't look a whit better, after more than a full hour of trading shot, but… his masts still stood, whilst the Frenchman's lower main and mizen seemed canted from the proper angle of rake; Proteus's sails still drew, with only a few holes punched through them, and her yards, standing rigging, and running rigging were still mostly intact.

  She's fallen astern a tad, too, Lewrie took satisfying note; a bit. Not enough for us t'draw ahead and bow-rake her, but… time to end this.

  "Mister Catterall! Quoins fully out, and aim for her rigging!" Lewrie shouted down to the waist. "Mister Langlie, brace and sheet men will haul in too taut, and get us heeled far over!"

  The French frigate, was it starting to brace up, as well, going more South of West… to break off the action and run? Lewrie speculated. "Mister Catterall, a controlled broadside! Shot and grape!"

  "Aye, sir! Load, load, load, ye miserable cripples, or I…!" Lt. Catterall chortled in a voice gone creaky with over-use, stamping about the deck in blood-lusty glee.

  Proteus fell silent for about a full minute, as fresh 12-pdr. shot was fetched up from below, the hatchway shot racks and the thick rope shot-garlands between the guns nigh expended. Lewrie noted a gun here and there being charged with powder with wooden ladles, for, their over-ample store of pre-made powder cartridges, and empty flannel bags for filling in the magazine, had already been shot away. For certain, they had most-like used up the upper tier of powder casks, as well, and were into the older stuff from the second tier.

  The French warship continued her fire, and Proteus had to stand and take it, but Lewrie could count only eight discharges from her battery, and those were fired independently, haltingly, with better than two minutes between explosions from those gun-ports.

  "Ready, sir!" Catterall bellowed, his voice cracking raspily.

  " Thus, Quartermasters!" Lewrie cried, chopping his hand to show the alteration of course desired. "Sheet home, brace up sharp Stand ready…!"

  Proteus seemed to gather a bit more speed, a quarter-knot or so, like a good hunter bunching its hindquarter muscles to take a hedge. As she did so, amid the loud squealing of blocks as the square sails were drawn at right angles to the wind, and the fore-and-aft sails were put flat to it, she began to heel over onto her starboard shoulders. Rose, then paused, pent atop a passing beam wave, as well, steadied, and…

  "Fire, Mister Catterall!"

  The brief gap between the frigates lit up harsh and orange, for a second, and the range was still so close that Proteus's weary gunners could see the results of their handiwork, for once, before the bank of powder fog rolled back down on them and over the lee side, giving them a cause to cheer and howl in pleasure, no matter how dry-mouthed, weak, or tired.

  The Frenchman's main mast shivered as a great rat-bite appeared in it halfway 'twixt her bulwark and main top. Clouds of grape ravaged her upper and lower shrouds, blasting away the dead-eyes that kept her top-mast erect, by the edge of the main top, shattering her slender top-mast, and bringing the whole thing, from truck and cap to halfway up above the main top, swinging down in ruin, the furled and gasketed royal, half-reefed t'gallant, and tops'1, with all their mile of rigging, collapsed alee to drape utter chaos, and highly flammable sails, over her engaged side!

  "Ease her, Mister Langlie!" Lewrie shouted, so pleased that he just-about started to caper in delight. "Mister Catterall! Secure, arm your people, and prepare t'board her! Close reach for a bit, sir, and fetch us alongside, Mister Lang-lie! Mister Devereux, are you with us?"

  "Aye, sir!" his Marine officer shouted from the larboard side.

  "Ready to volley and clear the way for us!" Lewrie directed as he tore off his foul-weather coat, at last, and patted his pockets to assure himself that his pistols were still there, then drew his hanger an inch or two to determine that it would draw easily when needed, but was snug enough to stay in its scabbard during his clamber across.

  With an upper mast and sails dragging over her lee side, and a catastrophic loss of sail area with which to maintain her speed and her agility, the French warship sagged down on Proteus, even as the British frigate swung up to meet her.

  "Ready grapnels, there!" Bosun Pendarves was shouting.

  Proteus had not rigged boarding nets, and the French ship, with the intent of a rapid assault on a captured merchantman, had not rigged hers, either. There would only be wreckage to hack away… or use as a handy footbridge fo
r the quicker and more agile.

  Proteus drew ahead, angling to windward, the French ship's foremast falling astern of abeam before the hulls met with a titanic thud, rebounded a foot or two, then clashed back together as grapnels flew.

  "Ready, sir!" Lt. Catterall rasped, his teeth white in a wild and wide smile. "Aye aye, sir!" Lt. Adair up on the forecastle cried as well, his smaller party of gunners and sail-handlers gathered round him by the larboard cat-head.

  "Boarders!" Lewrie ordered in a quarterdeck roar. "Away!"

  Swivel-guns yapped from both ships, from the bulwarks and tops, though British guns vastly out-numbered the French. Lt. Devereux and his Marines levelled their muskets, volleyed as one, and nigh a dozen Frenchmen waiting with cutlasses and axes in hand to repel them reeled away from sight, shot dead in their tracks!

  "Let's go, Proteuses! Kill me some Frogs, ha ha!" Lt. Catterall encouraged as he stood atop their bulwarks, shrouds in one hand, and a glittering sword in the other. His gunners began to surge forward, in obedience to his urging, leaping and scrabbling across the gap between the tumble-home of hulls, though both frigates' waterlines were inches apart.

  A swivel-gun coughed, and Catterall grunted in agony, his right arm torn completely off, and his shoulder shredded. "Well, just damn my eyes, if I…" he loudly cursed, before swaying backwards to fall dead on the gangway.

  "Come on, lads!" Midshipman Larkin, their little Bog-Irish imp, shrilled as he swung across on a freed line. He gained the Frenchman's gangway, atop that pile of wreckage, dirk in one hand and a pistol in the other. He shot down one French sailor, and hopelessly clashed his short and slim dirk against another's cutlass, slyly kicking his opponent in the teeth to drive him back. But, a boarding pike came driving upwards, taking him deep in the stomach. A twist of the long and slim pikehead to make it even crueller, then the French pikeman lifted him like a forkful of reaped hay to fling him in-board to the enemy's gun-deck! Lewrie slid down the larboard mizen-mast shrouds to the channel and dead-eyes, leaped onto the French ship's main mast chain platform, and began to scramble up, praying that his left arm, slightly weakened after being broken by a Dutch musket ball at the Battle of Camperdown, would serve him, for he already held one of his double-barreled pistols in his right. British sailors followed his path alongside him, others made the risky leap over his head. Muskets, pistols, and swivels made a minute-long fusillade, before hard-pressed men on both sides ran out of time for re-loading, and the clatter of blades replaced them. Up to the level of a French gun-port, the hint of a shadowy figure within… Bang! went his first shot, rewarded by a throaty, gobbling scream, and Lewrie clambered higher, cursing his left arm for its slowness, wishing that he didn't have to do this, just this once, for every now and then, the hulls rebounded off each other, despite the taut grapnel lines, and the mill-race below his feet sounded as loud as a rain-choked Scottish river.

  Up to level with the bulwarks, into a snarl of rigging, broken spars, and sailcloth, but a wide gap had been blown through it, and it was with a great sense of relief that he flung his right arm, then his right leg, over the splintery timbers, and crawled to his feet, on the enemy's decks, at last!

  Shoot that bugger, close enough for his pistol to set his shirt on fire, before he could skewer him with a pike! Drop empty pistol… draw sword… fill his left hand with the other pistol, and draw back to half-cock on both barrels with his right forearm! Look about, and discover his own sailors and Marines either side of him, thank God!

  "Take it to 'em, lads! Skin the bastards!" he shouted, taking a tentative step forward to peer over the inner edge of the gangway to see… a butcher's yard! Guns were dis-mounted, massive barrels and truck-carriages overturned on squashed men, splintered, dis-emboweled, half-charred gunners betrayed by their pieces when they burst, or the powder cartridges had blown up, turning flesh the colour of rare roast beef! And a sheet of gore on the main deck, reflecting battle-lanthorn light like a reddish full moon on a calm lake! Mounds of bodies about the main and foremast trunks, smaller piles of arms, legs, and bits of men, as well… and two ragged rows of screaming, writhing wounded by the unengaged larboard side, still waiting to be carried below to their Surgeons, the French cockpit surgery already filled to bursting with the worst-off.

  Triage, the Frogs call it? Lewrie numbly recalled, appalled and about to retch. If these men were the better-off,- he did not want to see what an urgent case looked like!

  "Reddition, m'sieur!" a young, wide-eyed French officer in the ship's waist called out, taking Lewrie, in his cocked hat with a pair of epaulets on his shoulders, as in command. "Nous surrendre, please? Nous amener.. . strike, oui? Quarter, m'sieur capitaine." He tossed away a pistol and let his sword dangle from his right wrist by a strap of leather. "Ze fregat L'Uranie surrendre, m sieur!

  "Tell them!" Lewrie roared, pointing his hanger at the officer, then at the melee still going on from bow to stern. "Order your men, votre matelots, to… desarmer! Lay down their arms… vite, vite!"

  Lewrie looked aft, to where his own sailors had swept the quarterdeck clean of resistance, and were even then hauling down the French Tricolour, without their foes' approval.

  "Quarter!" Lewrie bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth, to fore, aft, and amidships. "Quarter, lads, they've struck! Their ship is ours!" And, to the shuddery young French officer, he added, "Best ye sheath that damned sword o' yours, m'sieur, 'fore one o' my men takes ye for a die-hard, comprendre?"

  Guns, pikes, and edged weapons clattered from numb hands to the decks, and physically and spiritually exhausted sailors sagged to their knees… some completely spent and wheezing, some in shame, with tears streaking clean channels through powder-smut on their faces, and some ready to weep with joy for being alive and whole. Only a rare few remained on their feet, glaring defiance-wisely dis-armed defiance, as British tars, sore losers, and spiteful victors, jeered them and spat curses that they could have killed all of them, if allowed.

  "Mister Langlie?" Lewrie called out in the relatively peaceful silence, his ears still ringing from an hour and a half of cannon fire, and with the fingers of his left hand crossed for luck.

  "Sir?" came the First Officer's weary voice.

  "Parties to secure the on-deck prisoners, Mister Langlie. Then, Leftenant Devereux, his Marines, and a party of our Jacks to go below, and chivvy any skulkers on deck. Make sure they're all dis-armed, not even a pen-knife on 'em and no arms near them, should some have a sudden change of heart. And drink, Mister Langlie! Don't care it it's a vintage bottle, you discover spirits, drain 'em into the bilges. Keep a keen eye on our people, keen as you will on the French right?"

  "Aye aye, sir!"

  Lewrie had seen defeat and victory before, both shivering losers and strutting winners, aloft and a'low, who'd use the chaos of the aftermath to guzzle themselves senseless, and did Proteus's sailors get in drink, the French could turn the tables on them and cut their throats!

  "Mister Catter… no," Lewrie began to call out, before remembering that he'd seen him fall. "Mister Adair?" Another crossing of his fingers. To his relief, Lt. Adair piped up, too, and came to his side.

  "Get with the Bosun and Carpenter, Mister Adair," Lewrie ordered. "Any spare hands, you may now put them to the chain-pumps to keep our own ship afloat 'til morning. A survey below of this'un, as well, sir. I'd admire could we get her to a Prize-Court, after all the trouble we went through t'win her."

  "Aye aye, sir," Lt. Adair replied, performing a shaky doffing of his hat in salute.

  "And, Mister Adair… you are now our Second Lieutenant," he added in a sombre tone as he sheathed his hanger and un-cocked his pistol.

  "Very well, sir," Adair gravely answered.

  He felt it, then, that shuddery weakness and lassitude that he had suffered at the end of every sea-fight. There were an hundred details to be seen to before dawn, a myriad of repairs to be made aboard both frigates before he could feel sanguine, but God, he felt spent! What he most craved, that moment, was a brac
ing drink, a pint of water to put moisture back into his tongue and gums, then a brimming bumper of brandy or Yankee-Doodle corn-whisky… followed by a lie-down and perhaps a nap, maybe a long one since he wasn't getting any younger, but… "Urn, m'sieur capitaine?" It was the wide-eyed young officer below him on the main deck, who still stood there, looking up at him, looking a bit embarassed to bother him. "Mon epee… sword, m 'sieur," he said, offering up his small-sword, now sheathed in its scabbard, in formal sign of personal surrender.

  It was "bad form," and un-gentlemanly, for Lewrie to accept it. The proper form would be to wave it off, tell the man whose throat one wished to slit and bowels one tried to spill what an heroic defence he had put up, so "honourably," but, Lewrie wasn't feeling especially charitable that evening, so he took hold of it and gave the young fellow a grave nod. Damned if he'd let any armed Frog ponce about with a sword… he might relent and give it back, once sure that both ships would float and sail. "Merci, "he said, its hilt to his face in salute.

  He stumbled aft along the enemy warship's starboard gangway, a tangle of dead and wounded, of splintered wood, sails, rigging, and hidden ring-bolts, to the enemy's quarterdeck, where some of his sailors were capering and laughing that particular uproarious good humour that only whole survivors could laugh, atop slain foes.

  "Cap'm, sir!" Ordinary Seaman Martyn chortled, handing him yet another sheathed sword. " 'Ere's 'er cap'm's blade, sir. Won't 'ave a need f'r it in 'is life no more, Cap'm, nosirree!"