It was Midshipman Sevier… as pale as death!
"Row like the Devil, Andrews, they're both wounded!" Lewrie bellowed, his innards churning to think that his decision might have gotten both lads maimed or killed.
"Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu! Canga, bafio tй!"
The enemy's chant seemed a cruel mockery.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Boat's comin' alongside!"
"Pass word for the Surgeon Mister Shirley!" Lewrie shouted.
"Signallers are waving once more, Captain Lewrie," Captain Wandsworth pointed out. "Hellish urgent-like? Do you have any cannister or grape stands remaining, I think it's needed something desperate."
"Very well…" Lewrie began.
"Excuse me, sir, but Halifax spells out. 'Up Anchor' and 'Move.' "
"He can go bugger himself!" Lewrie snapped. "Second hoist for Halifax.. . make 'request all your cannister and grape-shot.' That'll keep that pestiferous bastard busy, Mister Grace. Well? Run and send it!" Lewrie growled, noting Grace's wide-eyed goggling of the stir by the entry-port, where Sevier and Nicholas were being hoisted aboard.
"Aye aye, sir," Grace gulped, and dashed for his flag locker and halliards.
"Mister Foster? Break open the shot lockers and make up charges for the guns, quick as you can, and keep it coming 'til it's completely gone," Lewrie said, wanting to dash to the entry-port himself to see to Sevier and Nicholas. Things were coming too thick and fast to suit him, unlike the long minutes of an evolution at sea.
"Charge yer guns… shot yer guns…" a grizzled quarter-gunner was intoning to his weary crews, who had set their rum rations down on the quarterdeck, that priceless elixir of ease abandoned for a rare once, in the face of need. Other crewmen who had gone forward for
their rum ration had gulped it down then returned to their posts, their prime moment of relaxation and jollity stolen by stern Duty.
Wandsworth and Scaiff fiddled and calculated, gazing heavenward and counting on their fingers, muttering and whispering to themselves before reaching a mutual decision. A quick trot down the deck to see to the elevation, and…
"By broadside.. .fire!"
The 6-pounder long guns and the stubby 24-pounder carronades lit off together, shuddering Proteus anew, refogging her in a reeking pall of powder smoke, and making everyone's ears ring. Seconds later, the sound of musketry ashore rose in volume, crackling down the line of trenchworks like the advance of a brushfire, with the crisp sound of burning twigs. There was a roar of several light field pieces, then a howl of human voices raised in rage or fear or glee, the daft bray of a foxhunting horn to urge them on, just before another musket volley.
"Samboes broke the entrenchments," Wandsworth found time to say, tugging at his ear again, "and I think we just saw 'em out. Where your midshipman was wounded, I shouldn't wonder."
"Mister Langlie, you have the deck," Lewrie said, going to the gangway where Sevier was being hoisted inboard.
"Easy with him, lads," Mr. Shirley was saying, already clad in his "butcher's apron" of light leather for surgery, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. The grey army-issue blanket was lowered to the deck, already half soaked in gore, and Mr. Shirley sadly shook his head for a moment as the loblolly boys transferred Sevier's body to a carrying board, an eight-man mess table with rope straps to bind the patient to it, and other rope straps for lifting.
Shirley looked up at Lewrie and grimaced in sadness with another wee shake of his head. Sevier had been savaged by thrusts from bayonets or swords; the cloth and lace of his shirt, the flap of his white breeches were cut open, baring the hideous wounds beneath, cloth stained bright red over purpling puckers and slashes. His face was a new-paper white, his eyes unfocused, and his breath a faint, labouring wheeze, with small flecks of foamy blood on his lips.
"Mister Durant, Mister Hodson… see to Mister Nicholas, while I see Mister Sevier below," Shirley said, getting to his feet and leading the loblolly boys and their burden to the gun-deck ladder.
"What happened, Mister Nicholas?" Lewrie asked the terrified boy, who stood and shuddered, all but blubbering, as blood dripped from his injured arm.
"S-Samboes, sir," Nicholas replied between chattering teeth, "Hundreds of 'em! Broke the line. They were in the trenchworks with knives and bayonets, killin' our people left and right, and laughing fit to bust, sir! Jemmy, he… him and the Army signallers against a dozen, and him with just a pistol and his dirk! They got that far behind our lines, sir, before… I saw. one of the signalmen running and shouting they were all being slaughtered, and I…"
What little Mister Nicholas needed, first of all, was a hug and a lap, Lewrie thought, but that was impossible; he was a "gentleman volunteer," a future officer.
"I tried, sir, honest I did!" Nicholas wailed, fresh tears coursing down his cheeks, cutting clean runnels in the filth on his face as he shivered, trying to remain "manful" before the ship's people. "But they were jab-bin' him and cuttin' at him after he was down, before we got there, and then they came for me, and they were so big and horrid, sir, and if the soldiers hadn't come… I lost my dirk, sir. I looked for Jemmy's, too, but they took it 'fore they were run back across the trenchworks. I'm sorry, sir! I lost my dirk!"
A gentleman's blade, be it inherited sword or humble dagger, was part of his honour; to Nicholas, he had failed miserably at saving his fellow midshipman and friend, had been bested and wounded when faced with face-to-face combat, and, to top it all, had lost his blade. Sure sign of failure, perhaps even a sign of cowardice, to drop it and run.
The 6-pounders and carronades bellowed again; Lewrie had to wait to speak 'til the echoing roar passed.
"No matter, Mister Nicholas," he said, touching Nicholas on his left shoulder. "You went to his aid like a brave fellow, and helped the Army stop their charge after he rushed to yours. Then you brought him back aboard, so he could be among his shipmates. No shame in any of that."
So he can most-like perish among his shipmates, Lewrie thought.
"Now, let the surgeon's mates tend you," Lewrie said, giving him another reassuring pat on the shoulder before returning to the quarterdeck. But he could hear Mr. Nicholas's cries when they tried to peel his coat off, to cut his shirt sleeve away and lift the cloth from the wound; Nicholas sounded like one of his sons after skinning a knee, and nowhere near a stoic young "gentleman volunteer."
"Ready way up there?" Wandsworth was shouting to the 'gunners on the foc'sle. "Ready, here? Fire!"
Midshipman Grace interrupted Lewrie's gloomy thoughts. " Halifax has hoisted another signal, sir. It's 'Captain Repair on Board.' "
"We still fly 'Unable' and 'Am Engaged,' Mister Grace?" he asked, hands in the small of his back.
"Aye, sir."
"Haul 'em down, then rehoist 'em in reply," Lewrie said with a snarl. "He don't like that, he can go fuck himself."
"Uhm… aye, aye, sir!" Grace said, blushing and tittering.
By dusk, when the wagging signal flags could no longer be read and Proteus had shot away her last stand of grapeshot, her last cannister of musket balls, even the lot scavenged from pre-made loads for the 12-pounder great-guns, the ship fell silent.
Halifax had not responded to her call for shot, but had anchored about a cable's distance away in deeper water, along with the merchant ships she had escorted into Mole Saint Nicholas.
Rather surprisingly, those hired ships had become beehives of activity, disembarking boatloads of soldiers who were quickly rowed to the beaches and quays, followed by heaping piles of supplies, ammunition, and field guns.