Not so much a sudden detonation as it was a physical force, Alan felt his lungs rattle, his groin shrink, and his heart flutter when the mortar touched off, felt an invisible wave of pressure shove him back, rattle his coat-tails and hat, and fill his ears with a sound beyond a sound, almost too loud to register, except to set them ringing. Spent powder smoke spurted aloft in a sickly yellow-white column, reeking with sulphur and rotten eggs, smelling singed as lit kindling.
"Bloody Hell, that was…," he coughed, fanning the air for some fresh as the gush of gun-smoke dissipated. "That was magnificent"
He'd loved the great-guns best of all the things he'd learned in the Navy; the power, the stink of them, their recoil and shud-derings. From little two-pounder boat-guns and swivels to long-twelves, from far-firing twenty-four-pounders to the stubby, ship-breaking "Smashers," the carronades, Lewrie delighted in things that went Boom!-and exulted in seeing the damage they caused aboard a foe. It was irrational, brutish and savage, this joy he found in gunnery, so viscerally beneath a reasonable man's ken, so insensible a passion, yet…
"Damme!" Lewrie called, feeling a boyish glee rise in him. "Don Luis! Volver a hacer? Let's do that againl"
That afternoon, St. George retired from the artillery duel, due to depart for Genoa, and her place was taken in the Little Road by the Princess Royal, another 98, Rear-Admiral Goodall's flagship. In lieu of his presence, her captain, John Childs Purvis, commanded. A Spanish 74 joined the bombardment.
French bursting-shell drummed around Zele all day, fortunately never discovering the right solution in propellant charge and length of fuse, though it did get interesting at times when a shell would splash somewhat nearby, raise a feather of spray by its impact, then explode underwater a second or so later to produce an even more prodigious spout of brine which would fall like a cascade on the decks and gangways.
Don Luis Esquevarre concentrated their fire upon the lesser battery to the sou'west, the one with two guns. Patiently, firing perhaps a round every two minutes, he probed the hills, first with the left mortar, then with the right hand. A dram less powder in the charge cartridge, three drams more the next shot; a tiny tinkering with elevation, half a turn on the great screw by the bracing block; heaving to turn about a single degree on the pintle.
"Fosforo… preparado…" he called, coatless and hatless by then, his voice hoarse from inhaling spent gunpowder and shouting for half a day. "Fuego!"
Another monumental clashing roar, and the floating battery shuddering to her very bones, timbers crying in torment. Lewrie stood aft away from the noise, on what passed for a quarterdeck, a telescope to his eye, rested steady on the larboard mizzen-stay ratlines.
"Nineteen… twenty… twenty-one…" Midshipman Spendlove tolled off, counting on his fingers, for his watch only had a minute hand.
Bruml Umumm. Came from the hills.
"Struck, sir. Twenty-two seconds," he announced, and looked up to see a darker gout of smoke rise, almost mingling with the forest-fire pall that hovered continually over the Republican mortar battery. "Oh, well. Closer, I think, though, sir," he sighed disappointedly.
Suddenly, there was a massive eruption of smoke yonder, rising as silent as a squall cloud might on the sea's horizon, as if the French had reinforced the masked battery, and had just let fly half a dozen shells.
Brummmbrummmm-Bummm! spoke the masking hill, later than the gunpowder pall. And the pall swelled upward, outward, turned darker, shot through with dark flecks, with black writhing licorice sticks of smoke-tinged at the bottom, just atop the hill, with dying embers, with a ruddy orange loom-like flickering, like a lighthouse's loom just over the horizon's knife edge.
"Hola!" Don Luis shouted, raspily enthused, and his bombardiers began to cheer and dance, to caper round the deck and in the wells in triumph.
"We did it!" Lewrie cried, ready to dance himself. "We hit 'em! Blew 'em to hell, by Jesus!"
Bumm-bumm-brubrumbumm, more secondary explosions thundered, and the hills quaked to the destruction, and they could feel it in their bones and on their faces, a tremendous distant blast that rattled the earth, the shoals, and transmitted itself through the waters. They'd holed out, not on the mortars themselves, but in their magazine, where fixed and kited shells had been stored. Too many of them, fixed ready to fire, kited too close together, and even being sunk into the earth, protected by wet hides and hair-cloth, hadn't saved them.
Lewrie dashed down to the gun deck where Spanish, French and English sailors cavorted and clapped, tossing their caps or hats into the air and huzzah-ing.
"Marvelous!" Lewrie told Esquevarre when he reached him. "Magnifico! Marveloso! Genius!"
Esquevarre was thumping de Crillart on the back, de Crillart was bestowing Gallic kisses on those lean aristocratic cheeks, and Don Luis tweaked Charles' nose playfully as he stepped back to clasp Lewrie to him and dance him around the deck in a stumbling bear hug.
Must be something in the water, Lewrie thought, not exactly that pleased to be bussed and hugged by a man; bloody foreigners!
"Charles, tell him we'll celebrate," Lewrie called over Comandante Esquevarre's shoulder as they tripped past him in a shuffling circle. "Vino! Plus vin? My treat! We'll splice the main-brace… uh, splice-o las main-brace-o? Si, amigo, si, Don Luis? Bueno!"
By sundown, they heaved to short stays on the kedge and broke it free of the rocky bottom, heaved then to short stays forrud on the bower and sailed back to the fortified jetties. The larger three-gun masked-battery's fire had sputtered out by then, daunted perhaps by the sudden destruction of its fellow, and the Little Road became peaceful. Sweeps had to be used as the wind faded to puzzling little zephyrs across the lake-smooth waters. Once tied up, instead of boiling salt rations in steep tubs, appropriated charcoal braziers were lit atop the jetty and fresh meat was roasted. Wine and beer were doled out, the rum ration was issued, and fresh bread and butter appeared from the town for all hands.
De Crillart, Scott, Esquevarre and Lewrie left the ship, repaired to a restaurant and celebrated-rather heavily, in point of fact, in all respects-wine, cuisine, music-and ended up being run out after they called for dancing girls. Esquevarre couldn't quite understand a restaurant that didn't have people who could play the guitar or do the flamenco-nor "do" the appreciative patrons who flung coins to them.
" France," de Crillart translated haltingly on their way back aboard. " 'E say, mon ami… ve are la nation du… 'tight-arses'? Comment?"
The next morning, with a monumental head, Lewrie arose to the softfiimphing of thunder. He flung off his blanket and staggered to a water butt, his mouth as sour and dry as desiccated ordure. There was a knock on the door to his tiny cabin.
"What?" he croaked.
"Sir? Midshipman Spendlove, sir."
"Enter."
Spendlove came inside, dry as a bone; Lewrie expected rain, with that far-off thunder. He was too bleary to puzzle it out.
"Excuse me, sir, but… the Frogs are at it again. There's a midshipman aboard from Admiral Goodall, sir. He says we're to stand out into the Little Road, with all despatch."
"Uhuh," Lewrie nodded heavily. "Very well, Mister Spendlove. Do you wake the others, and I'll be on deck directly. Warn Porter to have the hands roused and at stations for shoving off."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Already at it again, he wondered as Spendlove departed; don't the Frogs ever learn their lessons? Wondering, too, if, after the celebrations of the past evening, they could hit a bull in the arse with a bass viol this day.