“Ready? By broadside … fire!” Westcott roared.
“Yes! Yes, that’s the way!” Midshipman Harvey yelled, far above the massive smoke clouds and able to see.
French shot was still striking close aboard, the ship boomed to hits crashing into her thick timbers and stout scantlings, and wood shrieked and squawked as the lighter upper bulwarks were ravaged. The fore course yard was hit, amputated just below the foremast fighting top, and both ends of the yard sagged downward in a steep V to drape furled canvas, and snap brace line, clews, and jeers. A Marine tumbled from the foremast fighting top with a thin scream, crashing to the deck in a pinwheel of arms and legs.
“Spot … on, sir!” Harvey reported, going hoarse.
“Pass word below,” Lewrie yelled, “our aim is spot on, and no adjustments are needed! Pour it on, Mister Westcott, pour it on!”
He lifted his telescope as the smoke thinned once more, peering hard to see the results of that last broadside. He saw raw divots in the slope just below the French guns, where roundshot had hit short and buried themselves, some lines ploughed a bit further upslope where other shot had ripped long troughs in the earth, as if God had drawn His fingers to rake at the French.
Damme, is that an over-turned gun yonder? he wished to himself.
Two-thirds of a mile range was just too far to make out close details, even with his strong day-glass, but he could make out French gunners scurrying to fetch powder cartridges from the limbers, which were hidden behind the crest of the hill. Their cannon and their wheeled carriages were little black H-shapes, surrounded by gunners who wheeled them back into position, fed their maws with powder and fresh shot … all pointed directly at him; he was looking straight down their muzzles!
“By broadside … fire!”
“Dammit!” he spat as his view was blotted out, lowering his telescope in mounting frustration. He wanted to see!
Climb the shrouds, high as the cat-harpings? he thought; No, it wouldn’t be high enough. I’d have t’join Harvey, and I’ve not been in the cross-trees in ages!
There were some good things about being a Post-Captain, or pretending to be one, after all!
“A gun dis-mounted, sir!” Harvey yelled down.
Lewrie whipped up his telescope again as the smoke cleared to a haze and did a quick count of the little H-shapes. Yes, there was one of them leaning to one side, with no one standing round it!
“Serve ’em another, Mister Westcott!” he roared.
Firing, running in, swabbing out, loading, then running out and shifting the aim with crow levers; he lost track of how long Sapphire kept up her fire; he lost count of how many times his ship was hit. After a time, though, reports of damage came less often, and Midshipman Harvey’s shouts became more excited, raw and rasping as his throat gave out. Finally …
“Deck, there!” Harvey cried. “They are bringing up limbers! Three guns dis-mounted … they are retiring!”
Lewrie took a long, hard look, even though his eyes burned from all the irritants in gunpowder smoke, blinking away tears, swiping at his face with the cuffs of his coat sleeves.
Yes, by God! he told himself; They’ve had enough of us, they’re pullin’ out!
Horse teams, which had been sheltered near the caissons of shot and powder cartridges, could be seen near the surviving guns, being hitched up; carriage trails were being lifted to re-assemble guns to the limbers. One by one, the French battery was withdrawing to the shelter behind Santa Lucía Hill!
“Cease fire, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade in a croak through his dry and smoked throat. “Cease fire, and pass word below that we shot the living shit outa those bastards! Damn my eyes if we don’t have the best gunners in the whole bloody Fleet, tell ’em!”
“Took the better part of two hours, but we did it, sir,” Westcott said, grinning fiercely, his white teeth startlingly bold against the grime of gun-smoke that had coated him from head to toe.
“It did?” Lewrie said in wonder. “I didn’t keep track. Secure the guns, see that the hands have a turn at the scuttle-butts, then let’s take in the bower, make sail, and fall down on the kedge.”
“Aye, sir, I’ll see to it,” Lt. Westcott promised.
“Mister Yelland, still with us?” Lewrie asked, turning round to survey the quarterdeck.
“Here, sir,” the Sailing Master said. “My congratulations to you, sir.”
“Mine to you, sir,” Lewrie replied, shrugging off the compliment with a weary modesty. “I wonder, sir … might you have a flask on you?”
“Just rum, sir,” Mr. Yelland said, sounding apologetic.
“I think we’ve earned ourselves a ‘Nor’wester’ nip, don’t you, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie asked.
“Why, I do believe we have, sir!” Yelland cried, breaking out into a wide smile as he handed over his pint bottle.
* * *
“There is a hoist from Admiral Hood’s flagship, sir!” one of Undaunted’s Midshipmen announced to the officers on her quarterdeck. “It is … Sapphire’s number, and … Well Done, no … spelled out … Bravely Done!”
“And so it was,” Captain Chalmers said with a vigourous nod of his head, “though I do wish that Captain Lewrie had summoned us to aid him.”
HMS Sapphire was standing out from her close approach to the shore, gnawed and evidently damaged, but putting herself to rights even as she made a bit more sail. Captain Chalmers could hear the embarked soldiers and transport ship sailors raising cheers as the old 50-gunner Fourth Rate passed through their anchorages. Ship’s bells were chimed in salute, clanging away tinnily like the parish church bells of London. Chalmers’s own crew was gathered at the rails waiting for their chance to cheer, her, too. He looked round cutty-eyed to seek out Midshipman Lewrie, and found him up by the foremast shrouds, safely out of earshot.
“Pity that the ‘Ram-Cat’ is such a rake-hell of the old school,” Chalmers imparted to his First Officer in a close mutter. “He don’t even have a Chaplain aboard! From what I’ve heard of him, it’s doubtful if one could even call him a Christian gentleman. A scandalous fellow, but a bold one. Runs in the family, I’ve heard.”
“Surely not in his son, sir,” the First Officer said.
“Perhaps we’ve set him a finer example, and altered the course of his life,” Chalmers said, congratulating himself for being one of the principled, respectable, and high-minded sort.
Then, as HMS Sapphire began to come level with Undaunted, about one cable off, Captain Chalmers doffed his hat, waved it widely, and began to shout “Huzzah!”, calling for his crew to give her Three Cheers And A Tiger!
Scandalous reprobates still had their uses.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Night on the open sea, as dark as a boot, with the Westerlies keening in the rigging, and HMS Sapphire plunging and hobby-horsing under reduced and reefed sail. The clouds overhead were thick, and there was no moon. Captain Alan Lewrie was on deck, bundled up in his boat cloak, with a wool muffler round his neck, and his oldest hat on his head, peering into the darkness to count the many glowing taffrail lanthorns of the transports ahead of his ship to make sure that none of them were veering off, or lagging. There were even more astern, a second convoy low on the Southern horizon, with its own escorts over-seeing its safety. And, far out on the Northern horizon, beyond his own group, hull down and barely guessed at, there were even more, their night-lights winking as the sea surged ships atop the long rollers, then dropped the trailing ships into the deep troughs. All bound for some port in England.