Then came the Nor'east leg, directly into the Trades, meaning a short board to either larboard or starboard, no closer to the wind than sixty degrees, the channel narrowing and shoaling, so that each attempt at making ground to the East'rd was measured in mere hundreds of yards to the good after each pair of tacks.
And the worst part were the sounds coming from shore; the faint, echoing sputter of musketry now and then, and the thin Crump! of field artillery that tolled like minute-guns at a steady pace. Someone needed them… soonest! But it took forever to get there. And as the day progressed, and the land and sea warmed, the thin skeins of smoke from ashore, drifting upwards through the jungley tree line went vertical, and the winds died away to nothing.
"Damme, we'll row her into range!" Lewrie snapped, pounding his fist on the cap-rails overlooking the waist. "Mister Langlie, do you lower the ship's boats and pay out towing cables!"
"Sir, there's a rowing boat coming offshore for us!" Midshipman Grace cried. "I can make out Army officers… I think!"
Through his glass, Lewrie could see at least two dozen rowboats already working 'round the few ships in harbour. There was a brig, and at least three large schooners, a small and dowdy three-master swinging at single anchors… hired ships, and lightly armed, thinly manned by civilian seamen with little experience-and even smaller will-to turn their pop-guns ashore. It was all they could do to stow supplies belowdecks, as fast as they could be stripped from the canvas-covered piles near the piers and the beaches.
"Topmen aloft! Hand all sail! We'll row her in, bare-poled!" Lewrie shouted to his crew.
"Uhm… the depth, sir," Mr. Winwood pointed out, coughing in his fist.
"How shoal does it get, sir?" Lewrie growled, turning on him.
"I'd not get closer than two cables from the docks, sir, else we run her into the mud. Mole Saint Nicholas can't dock deep-draught ships. They anchor out in the roads. I've hands in the chains, heaving the lead already, sir. Just wished you to keep it in mind, Captain."
"Damn!" Lewrie spat, making Winwood wince at the profanity. He was a sober hymn-singer. "Very well, Mister Winwood… two cables, no more. Our guns can range a mile inland. And, from the look of things, what targets we engage'll be a lot closer than that. Just beyond the town, more-like. Keep me apprised."
"I will, sir."
The rowboats were hoisted off the mid-ships tiers, then swayed out with the main-course yard as a crane, and slowly lowered into the water, with snub-lines to check the swing and sway. It took forever, it seemed! By the time even his own gig had been wetted, and the boat crews began to scramble over the side to man them, Bosun Pendarves had gone hoarse from shouts and curses.
"Pass the word for the Master Gunner, Mister Carling," Lewrie ordered. And once the Master Gunner had come up from the magazines to the rare privilege of the quarterdeck, Lewrie pressed him at once.
"We may have to fire over the heads of our own troops, Mister Carling."
"Dear Lord, sir," Carling said, grimacing and glancing ashore.
"I know," Lewrie said, in sympathy for the great risk of killing British soldiers with a graze or a short round. "Quoins full out, breeches resting on the carriages, for more loft. But with the foe so close to the town… what about reduced charges, perhaps saluting charges? So we don't throw iron half a mile beyond?"
"Could do that, sir, but… that'd be indirect fire, Captain," Mr. Carling countered, rubbing at his close-shorn scalp, "and no way to know the fall of shot. Could waste a deal of shot and powder and not ever hit a Godd-. A blessed thing, sir. Like firing mortars!"
He had stammered, noting that the prim Mr. Winwood was nearby.
"It worked for a Frenchman who sank my ship at Toulon, back in '93," Lewrie said with a snort, and his first real moment of humour of the morning. "Bastard spotted fire for his guns from a bluff. If the Army could signal us, were we long or short, on target or not…?"
So it's their responsibility, not mine! Lewrie could not help but conjure.
"Towing cables are ready, sir, and we're prepared to haul away." "Thankee, Mister Langlie, carry on. Smartly, now. So if they could signal us… would it work, Mister Carling?"
"Aye, sir… I s'pose, but…" Carling answered, rubbing his scalp more vigourously. "The six-pounders on the forecastle and here on the quarterdeck. Main battery twelves'd not be able to elevate in the ports high enough."
"The carronades!" Lewrie insisted. "They'd elevate. Even with a full charge, they don't throw much more than four hundred yards. If we loaded with reduced charges, but with star-shot, bar-shot, and chain-shot… grape or cannister atop those…!"
"Excuse me, sir, but the rowing boat with those Army officers is now close-aboard," Lt. Wyman interrupted.
"Very well, Mister Wyman!" Lewrie snapped, exasperated with all the demands upon him. "Pipe 'em aboard! Dust 'em off, and trot out a tot o' rum for 'em, I don't bloody care!"
"Uhm… aye, sir!"
Proteus began to move as the pair of Army officers appeared at the larboard entry-port, and took the hastily gathered salute from a much-reduced side-party. Lewrie hoped that they were unfamiliar with proper naval custom, and wouldn't know that they'd been slighted. He was more concerned with the helm, and the gelatinously slow creeping pace that the towing boats could generate. A fiddler and fifer atop the roundhouse overlooking the beak-head began to give them a tune to slave by, as the hands dipped their oars and strained red-faced for a yard-by-yard advance.
"Captain Lewrie," Lewrie said, announcing himself.
"Major James, sir… Captain Ward," the older officer replied, doffing his hat. "Damn' fortunate you were bound here, sir. We need a bit of help."
"Wasn't bound here, just saw your signalling in passing. Once in range, I intend to swing abeam the town and anchor with springs on the cables, so I can throw shot."
"That'd be most welcome, Captain Lewrie, most welcome, indeed. Though…'tis a hellish risk, d'ye see," Major James told him. "We are now entrenched not an hundred paces beyond the farthest houses on shore, and the Blacks are perhaps one or two hundred paces beyond."
Now that Proteus did not make her usual noises under way, nor had the wind-rush to mask sounds, Lewrie could hear the boom-boom-boom-b-boom of voudoun drums, far back in the forests. Much louder and closer than any he'd heard at Port-Au-Prince.
"Do your artillerists signal me, it could be done," Lewrie said.
"Well now, sir… I doubt my brigadier'd wish to risk our men in such a way," Major James objected.
"I'm to wait 'til the Cuffies are running down the piers, then? To keep them off you as you row away?" Lewrie said with a snort. "You say you need my support, but… how bad are things ashore?"
"Lord, sir!" Major James said with a sigh, fanning himself with his hat. "Two days ago, we held a perimeter nigh a mile inland. Only have the three regiments, d'ye see, and we thought most of the Blacks were off near Cape Francois, or down south near Port-Au-Prince, so we had no worries. But, they hit us at dawn, just popped up in front of the trench works…"
"Spent all night, crawling up to us in the grass, sir," Captain Ward supplied, looking as shaken as if it had happened this morning. "Quiet and slow as mice, they were."
"Drove us back… damn' near overran us," Major James admitted, casting a leery scowl at his junior officer for sounding as if he "had the wind up."
"Lost nigh on two whole companies, sir," Capt. Ward continued, despite his superior's look of distaste. But he was one of those boy captains, not a day over sixteen, whose parents had bought him a set of colours early enough in life so he could live long enough to make a full colonelcy, if not become a general, before retirement, or inheriting some share of the estate back home in England.