"Half a dram more, loose poured atop the bagged charges, and a single cannister atop a stand of grape to each barrel," the lieutenant pointed out. "Spread of two degrees 'twixt guns?"
"Yes, that'd share the grief about. Direct the aim of the guns back there, whilst I see to these two," Wandsworth ordered.
"Aft," Lewrie stuck in, feeling he had to contribute something.
"I've my pocket compass," the lieutenant told his senior.
"But of course you do, dear boy." Wandsworth chuckled. "With a bit of luck, and two-and-one-quarter pounds of powder per barrel, we could duplicate these results with the six-pounders, hmm…"
"Once you find the proper angle, I'll send a man forrud to the forecastle and he may lay those guns, as well," Lewrie offered.
"Oh no, sir!" Wandsworth countered. "Once we've found our pace way back here…"
"Aft," Lewrie supplied again, feeling more than useless now.
"I'll send Scaiff to deal with those," Wandsworth bulled on. "That's his name, d'ye know. Now, let's see… hmmm."
This time, all four 24-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck lit off, almost as one, the heavier charges punching the air with an earthquake of sound, and a mountain of roiling smoke, making the ship reel and shiver. For long minutes, with so little wind in the harbour, the gun smoke lingered, only slowly drifting away to let them see the flags waving from the end of the longest pier.
"Think we caused a stir, that time," Wandsworth said. "Thought I heard screamin'… could've been the shot fallin'. Oh, well. Now… dear me, what hath we wrought?"
They had stirred up something. Suddenly, there came a crackle of musketry, brisk and urgent; volley fire, followed by a rolling platoon fire up and down the central lines, punctuated by the louder barks of field guns. Piles of smoke began to build in the forests like the thunderheads of a sea-squall, hanging thick and greasy-grey.
"Under assault, dammit," Wandsworth spat. "Stirred 'em to rise up and charge. Stung 'em to move or die, I'm hoping. Half dram less, and the same loads, if ya please!" he shouted to the gunners. "Ready? Stand clear… by battery… fire!"
This time, they could hear faint and thin screaming! A moment before, there had come the chanting, that chilling "Canga, bafio tй!" shout. Then the screaming. The musketry and cannonfire went on for a minute or two, before fading away to a last few sputtered shots.
"Damn this smoke," Wandsworth said, coughing and fanning the air with his hat, as if that would disperse such a gigantic pall. Proteus was almost completely wreathed with it. "Ah, here's something… well, I'm damned! Charge… broken! Shift… right. Range… same."
"Easier do we haul in on the springs, Mister Wandsworth," Lewrie reminded him. "How far?"
"Oh, 'bout ten or fifteen degrees, I s'pose," Wandsworth mused, conjuring on his slate, and squinting at it and the shore.
"Mister Langlie? Haul in the stern spring-line."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Deck, there!" a lookout called down. "Ships off the larboard beam… workin' into harbour! Five sail… full-rigged ships! First is a seventy-four!"
Lewrie walked over to the larboard side and raised his telescope, but it was hopeless; Proteus was so swathed in spent powder that everything beyond fifty yards from the deck was lost in a bellicose haze.
"What flag?" Lewrie shouted upwards.
"Ours, sir! Leadin' seventy-four is Halifax! Know her tops'l patches!" the lookout confirmed.
"Did your brigadier send a small boat for aid?" he asked of the Royal Artillery man.
"Might've, but there hasn't been enough time, surely," Wandsworth replied, acting irritated that his work on his slate was interrupted.
"Perhaps not," Lewrie had to agree, thinking that a small boat would barely have had time to reach Port-Au-Prince, and certainly could not have stirred up a rescue force that quickly.
"Just this set of guns, at first," Wandsworth decided, " 'til we are shot in, and then we'll use those up yonder."
"The quarterdeck carronades… then the forecastle guns," Lewrie prompted.
"Whatever you say," Wandsworth muttered, bending over a carronade barrel with a triangular piece of metal; graduated in arcane marks and bearing a plumb-bob. "Challenging, this. No dispart sights, and no elevation screws on your long guns… just the carronades. Do it by guess and by God… oh, well. Ready? By battery… fire!"
It went on for hours under a blazing hot noonday sun, and well into a sultry, airless afternoon. The guns hammered and bellowed and spewed, 'til even the officers bound kerchiefs over their ears to protect their hearing. Proteus reeked of sulfur and rotten-egg fumes, and trickled tendrils of spent powder gases at her planking and seams as if being smoked belowdecks to drive out the rats and insect pests. The swab-buckets and fire-buckets were filled at least twice with water, and the carronade and 6-pounder crews were rotated every half-hour with re-enforcements from the main-battery men, so those relieved could search for a patch of shade and sluice down a tot of water, panting for a single breath of clean air. Shift left, shift right on the spring-lines; reduce the charges and loft murder shorter; add a dram or dram-and-a-half, and spew grape and cannisters of musket balls, sometimes solid roundshot in conjunction with a slightly greater range, all around the perimeter of the town. Wherever there was an upsurge of enemy activity, the guns were there, shot sleeting into the dense forest and undergrowth to the point that, whenever the smoke cleared a bit, they could see whole new clearings, whole new glades, that their guns had made.
"By God, Captain Lewrie, d'ye know, there just might be something in this indirect fire twaddle!" Wandsworth chortled, clapping his hands together over and over in glee. "There's an article in it, for certain. Some mathematics to be worked out, so others could copy what we've done, but… hmmm. Dare I imagine it could someday be termed the Wandsworth System, hey? Usin' naval guns as mortars, and usin' flag signals t'mask one's own batteries? Woolwich Arsenal, t'be sure, but…! Perhaps the Royal Academy, too, for the science of it?"
" 'Scuse me, Cap'um," Foster, the Yeoman of the Powder, said as he scampered past the First Officer, after receiving permission to be on the quarterdeck. "We've run clean outta made-up cartridge bags for the carronades an' six-pounders, and fired off almost three whole kegs o' powder. Haveta break out another, Cap'um… outta the second tier."
"How long?" Lewrie asked, nigh deaf and having to lean close to hear what the fellow was saying.
"Quarter hour, Mister Bess the Gunner's Mate says, sir."
"Very well, thankee, Foster. Captain Wandsworth?"
"Hey?"
"Captain Wandsworth?" Lewrie repeated, louder and nearer.
"Heard ye the first time, no need t'shout, d'ye know, Captain Lewrie," Wandsworth said, cupping a hand to his ear, even so.
"We have to cease fire! Out of made bags, and low on powder!"
"Uhm, sir…" Foster added, still on the quarterdeck, most likely for a breath of air himself, Lewrie didn't wonder. "We're low on grape and cannister, too. Mighty low. We can make up stands from the twelve-pounder supply, but it'll take some time, Cap'um."
"Low on grape and cannister, too!" Lewrie shouted to Wandsworth.
"Yes, I could use a glass!" Wandsworth shouted back, beaming.
Exasperated at the bobbing, grinning fool, Lewrie took hold of Wandsworth's slate and wrote his message down.
"Oh! Silly me!" Wandsworth barked. "Yes, we'll cease fire!"
And the silence, after so long, was almost painful.
Lewrie took out his watch and opened the face, shocked that it was nearly 5 p.m., an hour into the First Dog. He looked forward and saw a ship's boy, smeared with powder stains from serving as a monkey to a forecastle gun, peering into a sandglass and ready to ring the ship's bell to mark the hour. Someone may have done that for all the time they'd been firing, for all Lewrie knew; to his senses, everything rang, by then. "Mister Coote?" Lewrie called down to the waist to the purser. "How is the scuttle butt?"