'"Bout time to shift anchorage, Mister Spendlove. Lay below to the deck. Inform Mister Scott he is to ready the ship to hoist anchors, and for the comandante to secure his guns."
"Aye, sir," Spendlove replied crisply, then, agile as a monkey, took a stay in a hopeful, but sure, leap and slithered down, half sliding to the deck, hand-over-hand.
There were sharp noises, more bangs. For a moment, Lewrie thought that Fort St. Margaret had opened fire with her six- and twelve-pounders, to delude the French; though with the harsh pounding they'd taken earlier, he rather doubted they'd be that charitable. There was a splash, about the bows.
The bows? he frowned. And no explosion? Solid-shot!
He looked east, towards Notre Dame de Bon Salut.
There! A wisp of powder smoke. It hadn't come from the arrow-tipped bluff above the beach, the Lord be praised, but farther east on the coast road, just where it began to crest the eastern hill, firing from defilade. Sure enough, another shot erupted from what he took to be at least an eight-pounder. And Fort St. Margaret's shot moaned overhead in reply, to strike flinty, gravelly soil and leap and bound in deadly ricochet around it, puffing up clumps of dust at every touching.
"Damned right, we're shifting anchorage!" he groaned to himself. "We're getting out of here!" A second eight-pounder now opened alongside the first.
There was a moaning in the sky, the skree of a heavy shell on its way into the cove from La Garde. Lewrie stopped, with one hand on the standing-backstay, to see a second slow in its upward flight, to stand still in the air as a tiny black mote for a split second, then dash to invisibility again. Hadn't he heard, if you could see it, it was dead on, and…?
With a sick premonition, he looked down to the deck, where Comandante Esquevarre was looking up as well, his face blanched, even under the grime of gun soot. Then the gun deck disappeared.
They struck Zele, right in the mortar well. A shell must have been in the well, fixed and ready to be loaded. A powder charge, too, nearly twenty pounds' worth, free of its leathern cylinder, wrapped only in an easily ignited paper cartridge. There were two sharp explosions in one, almost atop each other, and a hail of splinters howled around him, blown upwards to spatter into the bottom timbers of the fighting-top!
Lewrie leaned back quickly, throwing himself flat, feeling wood jump beneath his belly, as smoke gushed up the lubber's hole, and the foremast shuddered and groaned. He started to rise, but fell flat at the second skree. That was the one he'd seen stopping, he hadn't even seen the first that took the well, he…
Another crash aft. No explosion. He turned his head to look and saw a star-shaped hole in the rear of the quarterdeck, right through the tough planking and beaming of what had been an upper gun deck… into the filling room! If it…
BLAM!
Timbers flew, heavy beams shattered, and wood splinters mixed with jagged iron splinters. More groanings and wood shrieks. And men crying out in pain and fear. The mizzenmast toppled forward, shorn off at its base, furled and gasketed sails smouldering, and rigging lines burning like slow match. Toppled forward by the force of the blast aft, draping itself over the larboard gangways, crushing them with its weight, that amputated trunk thrown forward of its stump!
Lewrie rose, saw that the standing-backstay was still firm, and slithered down to the deck through a fog of gun-smoke. And the smell of burning wood. Somewhere, they had a fire. Old and baked as their floating battery was, she'd go up like kindling, and soon.
"Where away?" he called to the first person he met, grabbing at the fellow's arm. The man howled with pain. That arm was cooked raw and black, still sizzling with embedded powder embers.
"Mon dieu, mon dieu!" The man staggered away, half his clothes blown off, screaming with terror and the agony of his burns.
"Scott? de Crillart?" Lewrie shouted above the din. "Spend-
love?"
"Ici, mon capitaine," de Crillart shouted back, emerging from the smoke. "Zere is beaucoup de tres feu! Ze shells stored…"
They both ducked as another tremendous blast erupted aft, this time with ragged, hungry flames licking upwards from the second great rent torn in the quarterdeck.
"Scott?" Lewrie demanded, taking de Crillart by both arms.
"I do not know," de Crillart replied, shaky but determined.
"Get the men over the side, Charles. She'll blow sky-high, soon as the fire reaches the main magazine. I don't think we can save her."
"Oui, Alain, elle est morte, pauvre Tile. Alors, mes amis! Nous abandonnons! Anglais! Ve abandon ship! Espagnole, el barco abandonar!"
There were not many Spanish gunners left alive to obey that command. Lewrie coughed on the smoke, looking down into the ruin of the mortar well. Sergeant Huelva, the aspirante, Esquevarre and the match-men, the loaders… there was a ragged hole where the well had been, blown to the base of the orlop, and both mortars had crashed through it. Ruddy sparks glowed down there on the orlop, and greasy smoke coiled upwards. Of the men serving the mortars at the moment of immolation, there was little sign.
"Sir!" Bosun Porter shouted. He and Spendlove skidded to a stop near him. "We goin' over, sir?"
"Aye, we are," Lewrie agreed quickly, trying to take a breath to steady himself. What he wanted most of all to do was jump howling over the side that very instant, anything counter to that wish could just be damned, and God help the trampled!
But he was the captain. If they went over the side in a panic, it would be even worse. And there was the fact that he couldn't swim a stroke! With more courage than he felt he'd ever deserved, he caught that smoky breath, and told his jibbering terror to wait a bit.
"Bosun, gather up oars, spare spars, hatch gratings, whatever is loose. Get it over the larboard side, in the lee, and lash it together. Mats of hammocks, between baulks of timber as floats. Hurry, we don't have much time. Mister Spendlove, gather some hands to help. Cony!" he bawled.
" 'Ere, sir! I'm a-comin'!" came a gladsome shout from somewhere forward. He looked singed as he came through the smoke, but Lewrie had never seen a cheerier sight.
"We have to leave her, Cony. We'll search for survivors first and get them over the larboard side."
"Got Gracey an' Sadler, sir, an' a coupla t'others. Hoy, here be Lisney!"
"How's it below, Lisney?" Lewrie asked.
"Fires is burnin', sir. Aft, mostly," Lisney coughed, hacking and spitting, blowing his nose on his fingers to clear soot from his nostrils and throat. "Transom's blowed clean out, sir. Ye kin see th' daylight through 'er. Floodin' bad."
"So we sink before the orlop magazine catches fire?"
"They's fires on th' orlop 'neath us, now, sir," Lisney cried between retches. "Nothin' big yet, but… after half, I reckon. Me'n th' gunner, an' 'is powder yeomen? Jus' come back. Too smoky t'see wot y'r doin'. 'Ey soaked th' made-up charges an' kegs good, long'z we 'ad water runnin' in th' 'ose, sir."
"We have to go below," Lewrie announced, chilling himself at his words, seeing the shiver of fear and awe reflected in his men, at what he was asking them to do. "There's gear below that'll float, lads. We need it. And, we have to check the magazine. Mister Spendlove, inform Lieutenant de Crillart where we're going, and have him round up as many as he can to assist the bosun. Then, see if you can find Lieutenant Scott. Right, men… after me. Let's go." Bloody daft, I am, he told himself; daft as bats!
But they followed him below, that clutch of shuddering men; went staggering down the companionway ladders into smoky darkness to gather up stools and armfuls of tightly rolled hammocks, which might make temporary life buoys before they soaked through. They ripped down partitions and doors from warrant and mates' cabins, cut down the mess tables hung from the overheads, and handed them up, looted the unused carpenter's stores for baulks and planks of dry timber.