"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 for 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.