A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Sir?” Knolles prompted at his elbow, his voice soft and confidential. “What reply do we send Ariadne? ”

  “The only one she’ll understand, I s’pose, Mister Knolles,” Alan snickered, with a lift of his eyebrows. “Bend on good old Number One.”

  Admiral Howe’s revisions to the code flags always put the most important message, the one that alerted warship captains to the prime reason for existence, at the very top of the list, and, in an easily understandable single-pennant hoist.

  Number One of the Howe System was, “Enemy in Sight!”

  C H A P T E R 2

  Mister Knolles, is there a code flag for ‘Suggestion’?” Alan inquired, once Jester had worn off the wind, and had begun to run alee toward her struggling prize vessels.

  “Uhm . . . there’s ‘Submit,’ sir,” Knolles answered.

  “And I s’pose that’s a picture of a man tugging his forelock?” Lewrie posed, tongue-in-cheek.

  “Groveling most humbly, as well, I should imagine, Captain,” his first lieutenant replied with a bright grin.

  “Make to Ariadne, then . . . most humbly, mind . . .” Lewrie ordered, “Submit—her number—Pursue Chases—uhm, Closer Action? He might make some sense of that. Followed by . . . Our number— Closer Action—Chase to Leeward. No sense losing those two pole-acres, to deal with a single armed ship. Jester can handle this’un, by herself.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Knolles agreed, full of pride in their ship.

  “Besides,” Lewrie continued. “Damme if I’ll make that fellow a richer man, at the expense of our people’s freedom. I’ll not lose ’em, when we’ve come this far together.”

  Farther off the wind, then, running almost “both-sheets-aft,” on a landsman’s breeze, due north; Jester passed the first of their prizes and put herself between the overly aggressive French poleacre and their tartane. The strange-acting Frenchman hardened up on the wind, as well, coming more nor’easterly, to meet them, ignoring the bilander and dhow.

  “Mister Bittfield, we’ll engage with the larboard battery,” Alan told his master gunner. “Porter! Be ready to brail up the main course. Chain-slings on the yards, now, and lay out the boarding nettings!”

  At least eighteen prime hands gone, Lewrie fretted; gunners, and tacklemen, rammers and loaders, off on the prizes. This short of a voyage from Toulon to Corsica, the Frog’ll most like have no need to worry ’bout victualing a large crew. He’s liable to have a hundred men or more, aboard that damn’ thing. Like a Breton chasse-marée privateersman. Two hundred, more like!, he thought, with a wary sniff. We have to stand off, so he doesn’t board us. But blow the living hell out of him! Lewrie thought a full cable’s range would be cautious.

  Both so eager for combat, the two ships closed each other rapidly. The range fell off to barely five cables—half a nautical mile—and Alan sorely regretted not having six-pounder chase guns up forrud on the forecastle, with which he could open the affair. He raised his telescope to scan the poleacre.

  Indeed, she swarmed with seamen, as thickly clustered as a pack of cockroaches around a butter tub. At least his estimated two hundred men, aboard a ship little larger than a merchant brig. ’Bout eighty-five feet, on her waterline? he pondered. Flush-decked, almost—gun deck and weather deck the same, with only a slightly raised quarterdeck astern. How many guns could she carry—and how heavy a battery could such a small ship bear? he wondered.

  There! Gun ports coming open.

  “Ready, Mister Bittfield?” he called in warning. “Make your first broadside count, sir! Full battery firing . . . on the uproll!”

  “Ready, sir!” Bittfield shouted back. “On the uproll . . . wait for it! . . . Fire! ”

  Almost as one, they opened upon each other; the poleacre disappearing behind a cloud of spent powder smoke, gushing from bow-to-stern as if she’d just blown up! And Jester, poised atop the scend, a stable gun platform for a breathless second or two without rolling, hammering and shuddering at the violence of her own broadside’s eruption.

  Then shaking and quaking, as round-shot hit her, almost flinching as thick iron ball droned or screeched past in near-misses! Spray flung high from strikes that landed short, wetting down her gunners and brace-tenders!

  Seven guns, at least, Lewrie thought, coughing on niters as the smoke-pall from Jester ’s broadside ragged away to leeward, creating a sour fog-bank just yards alee, through which he could barely make out their foe. And a heavy seven guns, he frowned in perplexity, seeing the quick damage done to Jester ’s larboard side. The twenty-six-foot cutter on the cross-waist beams had been shattered. There were hammocks and thin rolled-up mattresses scattered like so many fishing worms about the gangway bulwarks. Bulwarks that had been caved in, in places, by the impact of heavy shot! There were men down, lying still; men, too, who shrieked in sudden terror, writhing frantically over their wounds!

  “Again, Mister Bittfield! Quickly!” Lewrie shouted. Quicker to load and fire, the quarterdeck carronades behind him were coughing thunderously. Followed by the pleasing sound of French timbers being penetrated with booming thonks and rawrkks! No hastily converted merchantman, no matter how billeted in-board with reinforcing baulks, had a chance against the weight of eighteen-pounder iron!

  A second broadside, still controlled, but a little more ragged this time, spat from Jester ’s larboard guns. Aiming was perhaps more a hoped-for thing, though; blazing away through a bitter haze, firing into a thicker bank of smoke, now only four cables off.

  “Tricolor, sir!” Buchanon pointed out. “French national ship, no error! Damme! She’s comin’ hard on th’ wind! Clewin’ up, sir!”

  Out of that fog-bank came the thrusting jib boom and bowsprit of the poleacre, her anchor catheads jutting through the haze. That taller mainmast bore topmen aloft, taking in her tops’l and t’gallant sails, clewing them up to the yards by sloppy “Spanish Reefs”! Using her weatherly fore-and-aft lateen sails to keep drive on her!

  “Christ!” Lewrie gasped, appalled by his stupidity. She would claw up abeam the wind, cross his stern, and rake Jester at close range!

  “Quartermaster, helm hard alee!” he cried, trying not to sound panicky, as Jester trundled on north, with the poleacre slipping astern on her, moving from afore the main chains to afore the mizzen chains in the blink of an eye. Shorthanded, he could not man his starboard guns in time. He must keep the larboard battery engaged! And round Jester up abeam the wind on the opposite tack, to keep her thicker side wood facing those unexpectedly heavy guns, instead of her frail transom!

  “Mister Knolles, scandalize her, every square sail!” Alan said in a rush. “Waisters, bend on main and mizzen stays’ls! Bow-rake her now, Bittfield, while we have the chance!”

  A bloom of smoke from the French poleacre’s bow, from her forecastle. A damn’ heavy chase gun, its report deeper-bellied than a six-pounder, as ominously loud, even upwind of her for the moment, as any twenty-four-pounder gun aboard a 3rd Rate! A tremendous pillar of spray, which leapt into being close-aboard. Jester feeling almost wrenched off her course by the slamming impact! A damn’ heavy gun, of some kind!

  “ Carronade, Mister Lewrie!” Cony screeched from the gangways, reverting to his old form of address to him. “Th’ buggers got a carronade’r two, yonder, sir!”

  The French warship was blotted out of sight by the blossoms of gun smoke as Bittfield got off his broadside. A ragged effort, starting amidships of the waist, and stuttering left or right from there, or from the far ends to the center, the gunners half blinded and pulling their lanyards as quick as their sweating crews could stand clear.

  Jib boom tip, poking through the sudden pall, abaft the mizzen stays! Jester heeling hard to starboard, as her wheel was forced hard-over. Square-rig canvas aloft shivering and flapping.

  “Carronades!” Lewrie screeched. “Load with canister . . . grape-shot! Mister Rahl, hear me? Clear her decks with canister! And her quarterdeck, when we’re close-aboard! Ease your helm, Quartermaster. Steer du
e west, as best you’re able.”

  “Aye aye, zir!” Brauer, the Hamburg seaman replied crisply. Jester had just worn from one tack to the other, off the wind, everything crying and screaming aloft, as out of order, and confusing as a rioting mob, yards cocked any-old-how, some tops’ls and t’gallants aback against the masts, others flapping useless.

  Aye, canister, Lewrie thought grimly! Murder that bastard over there who outsmarted me! Powder monkeys staggered under the weight of the canister tins come up from the lower deck shot-lockers as the guns on the quarterdeck were loaded.

  “Ready, larboard, Mister Bittfield! At ‘close pistol shot’! Fire as you bear!” he cautioned. “She’s coming up, fast!”

  And did his foe have men enough to man both his own batteries, Lewrie gulped with a sudden cringing, in a throat gone bone-dry from shock, and excitement? And, did that Frenchman have his own artillery loaded with canister and grape, to return the favor? If he was smart he did. And this’un was bloody clever!

  “Christ.” Alan sighed as the poleacre loomed up, as if sailing through a parting in a stage curtain. Not sixty yards off, larboard to face the poleacre’s larboard. Gunners and sailors lined her bulwarks, French Marine Infantry with muskets leveled. Her antiboarding nets were down, and her guns were run out in-battery; at least one carronade on her foredeck to fear, Lewrie saw. Another aft on what passed for a quarterdeck. And five long guns amidships, upon that flush spar-gun deck; Frog eight-pounders, thank God, no heavier than his.

  “Feuer!” Quarter-gunner Rahl shouted up forrud, and the lar-board eighteen-pounder carronade lit off with a deafening roar.

  “Fire as you bear!” Mister Bittfield screamed, as soon as the first larboard gun could bear in its port, and the long guns began to bark like ferocious guard dogs.

  Out of my hands, now, Lewrie groaned to himself, heaving a philosophical shrug; our weight of iron prevails . . . or theirs does. Sweet Jesus, just a little help, here, he prayed. Let ’em not have thought to load with grape or canister!

  Jester bucked and trembled like a first-saddled colt as her guns, the enemy’s guns, filled the short space between the racing hulls with hot gushes of gray-tan smoke, as both ships screamed in agony as heavy iron took them in their vitals!

  Lewrie could barely see enemy sailors at her rails, being tossed aside; bulwark timbers flying, bodies flying, hear the stupendous boomings of guns fired straight into his face. Oak screamed, masts cried, short stabbing blooms of pink fire lilies and swarms of amber-reddish sparks swirled spent as dazed lightning bugs in the smoke wall! Quick splinters of wood flew from Jester ’s wounds, flicking past, whickering and fluting, a giant’s toothpicks, their sharp edges hungry for flesh!

  The high, terrier-yip blasts of swivel guns at the rails, which spewed loose bags of pistol shot and langridge—scrap-iron bits—at the French. And then the blessed barrooming! of the quarterdeck carronades, as the enemy command staff came abeam!

  Lewrie shut his eyes, staring directly down the barrel of their quarterdeck carronade the instant before the sight of his own death was blotted out, and he was staggered almost off his feet by the noise and the shock waves. Another shock wave, which made his heart flutter and pause, the breath stop in his chest! Turned half sidewise, and hammered to his knees for real, this time, as a round-shot passed within a few feet of him, howling over the quarterdeck, ululating off into the distance like an irate eagle robbed of its prey at the last moment!

  “Jesus, sir, ya hurt, sir?” his cabin steward whimpered, coming to his side with a box of pistols. Aspinall was shaking like a sodden hound might just after leaving a stream, terror-tears streaking, lower lip blubbering.

  “Don’t think so, Aspinall.” Alan grimaced, as if in real pain, feeling himself over quickly. “But thankee for askin’. Bloody hell, what’re you doing on deck?” Aspinall’s post during quarters was down on the orlop, to assist “Chips,” Ship’s Carpenter Mister Rees, as a dumb carrier and fetcher should any repairs be necessary.

  “B . . . bosun’s mate, sir,” Aspinall wailed, his teeth chattering so badly he could barely avoid biting his tongue. “Mister Cony, he tol’ me t’fetch ya yer pistols, sir. Said ’e thought ya’d be needin’ ’em, so I did, an’. . . kin I go below, agin, Captain, sir? Now ya have ’em, like?”

  “Aye, with my gratitude, Aspinall, me lad. Just help me to my feet, first. Mister Knolles?”

  “Aye, sir?” the first lieutenant rasped back, his throat raw with gun smoke, and his hat gone somewhere on its own.

  “Helm down, sir!” Lewrie ordered, once he’d gotten erect. “A tack, cross the wind, and keep the wind gauge ’bove that bastard! My telescope.”

  So close, one bloody instant; so far apart the next. The Frog pole-acre had fallen off the wind, was running large to the nor’east— minus her mizzenmast and lateen spanker. In the round ocular, Lewrie saw she’d been beaten to a pulp by that broadside, fired so close they could have spit at each other. Her larboard side was bashed in, with several large punctures below her gun ports, and about a third of her bulwarks had been torn away, merging two gun ports into one long tear. Larboard mainmast stays were sagging loose, the chain platforms, and the deadeye blocks that tensioned those shrouds savaged! And on her quarterdeck! That mob on her stern, her officers and after-guard, were gone! Barely half a dozen figures could be seen moving about, mostly throwing themselves on the abandoned helm. Topmen were sheeting home her main course and tops’l, not trusting the upper t’gallant mast with the pressure of canvas, her foremast lateen sail swung almost athwart-ship. Trimmed for a run!

  “’Ware, below!” Bosun Porter shouted, as Jester swung up close to the wind. There was a rending screech of pine as top-hamper ripped, as Jester ’s own royal and t’gallant topmasts sagged backward, shedding blocks and rigging. Crosstree slats snapped like twigs, freeing tension on shrouds, and the entire mess slowly inclined farther astern, until everything above the crosstrees sagged back into the mainmast stays, and hung up on the main t’gallant yard, tangling stays’ls and halliards, jears, and lift-lines, into a rat’s nest!

  “In der irons, Herr Kapitan!” Brauer reported from the wheel, as Jester poised in the very teeth of the wind, and stalled, unable to complete her tack and slowing to a crawl.

  “Secure from quarters. Porter, Cony! Secure what you can, till she pays off,” Lewrie ordered. However much a draw the battle had been, it was now over. It would be long minutes before Jester could fall off to either beam, even more a long half hour to clear away all the raffle and take up pursuit once more. By which time that poleacre would have sailed herself almost hull-under for Toulon or Hyeres Bay. Beaten, at everything she’d tried; ignored when she’d attempted to lure them away, useless when charged with protecting her convoy. And, shot to ribbons when she’d tried to retake the prizes, denied even that crumb of comfort. Still, she would escape them. Lewrie devoutly hoped he’d slain her captain. Had it become a real broadside-to-broadside slugging, he wasn’t sure he might have won, after all, unless that bugger had died.

  Aye, he hoped that poleacre’s commanding officer had been shot to a blood pudding, by a cloud of canister! Should he live to fight another day . . . there was a damn’ dangerous Frenchman on the loose, a one too clever for anyone’s good. A one too dangerous to live!

  “Two dead, outright, sir,” Surgeon Mister Howse related grumpily, still streaked with splotches of blood on his butcher’s apron. “One more to pass, by sunset, if God’s good to him. Nine injured.”

  “I see.” Lewrie nodded, almost numb, still shaken by how brief, yet how savage, the engagement had been, “Those injured, uhm . . .”

  “Two, Captain.” Howse scowled, a bite to his voice, as if war’s mayhem was Lewrie’s fault, and the “butcher’s bill” the captain’s debt. “Amputees, to be discharged. Both Marines. T’other seven, well . . . few weeks to mend, light duties after. Assuming suppuration does not take them. I have their names. For your clerk.”

  Howse offered a quick-scribble
d list, almost official-looking . . . but the red “wax” seals were his gory thumb and fingerprints.

  “Thankee, Mister Howse,” Lewrie replied, gingerly accepting it and passing it to Knolles at once. “Adjust the watch-and-quarter bills accordingly, Mister Knolles. I’ll go below, to the surgery, for a moment . . .”

  “Aye, sir, but . . .” Knolles answered. “Uhm, as to the foremast. You said you wished to oversee . . . ?”

  “Aye, right with you, then,” Lewrie harrumphed. There was little more to do, for the short run, than to strike all that damaged top-hamper off the foremast, right down to the fighting top. The mainmast, too, had lost its royal and t’gallant topmasts and spars. A spare foremast tops’l pole stood, quickly doubled to the lower foremast cap, so they could raise jibs to work her to windward, into shelter. And the hands to see to, to visit the wounded, tell them their suffering was . . .

  “’Scuse me, Cap’um,” Bosun Porter intruded, doffing his hat to him. “But th’ hands from th’ prize crews you recalled is come aboard.”

  “Aye, Mister Porter,” Lewrie all but snarled. “Do you and Cony tend to alloting them work. With Mister Knolles, and his damn’ list! ”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Porter nodded, almost scraping his feet as he backed away from his captain’s foul mood.

  Damme, so much for being a lucky ship, Lewrie mourned in silence. Everything going so bloody good, so far, the crew shaken down and main-well content. Proud of her; and now this! Should have been a day to celebrate, taking three prizes, and sharing in another two, then . . .

  He hoped they weren’t as dispirited as he felt, right then. He heaved another bitter sigh, and started forward to judge their jury-rig repairs on the foremast.

  “Sir!” Spendlove cried, as he came back inboard on the larboard gangway. “Sir?”

  Another damned interruption! “ What, Mister Spendlove?”

  “Sorry, sir, but . . . this fellow . . . master of that dhow-thing-gummy?” Spendlove said, gesturing to a civilian he’d fetched along with him in a borrowed longboat. “Spot of bother, sir. Says he’s Genoese, and he has papers and manifests you must see, sir. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered so far, sir. Speaks damn-all French or English, a word or two, and I’ve no Italian, so . . .”