"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."