"Damned if it don't look as if we're beatin' 'em, Mister Farley," Lewrie exulted as he lowered his glass. "Beatin' 'em like a rug!"
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Fox yelled yet again, and the 18-pounders barked and roared, recoiling inboard. It was ragged, and it was slower than desired practice after all this time, but Thermopylae's "teeth" could still bite, and were just as sharp as they had been hours before.
Lewrie looked down into the waist at his gunners. Despite a cold day, men were now stripped bare-chested, streams of sweat coursing pale as winter creeks through a coal-dust grime of blackpowder and gunsmoke, and their white duck slop-trousers had gone grey and grimy. Some shook their heads to clear their hearing, vainly protected by neckerchiefs bound round their heads to cover their ears; they served their guns by weary rote, by then. Idle gunners from the silent starboard battery spelled their larboard mates long enough for weary hands to go to the scuttle-butts for water, and to lean on their knees and gasp for air for a precious minute or two. The powder monkey lads no longer dashed up from the magazine with their cylinders, but seemed to belly-crawl up the steep companionway ladders, mouths agape and panting.
"Oh, lovely shootin', there!" Lewrie shouted for all to hear as their latest broadside smashed into the stump-masted Danish two-decker, their main target all morning. Chunks of wood flew fighting-top high, as bulwarks and sides were struck, more shot-holes punched through her hull planking, some low on her weed-fouled waterline.
And there was no reply!
"By God, I think we've done it!" Lewrie cried again.
Now the smoke was thinned, Lewrie could ascertain that she was not a Third Rate 74 gunner, but an older 60 or 64… with not a gun firing!
"Yes!" he exulted, rising on his boot toes as the Danish flag, which had been shot away at least three times, fluttered down a halliard to disappear behind what was left of her poop deck bulwarks And a minute later, as Thermopylae drilled yet another broadside into her, a white flag took its place!
"About time, too," the Sailing Master muttered.
"Well, the Danes are a stubborn lot, Mister Lyle," Marine Lt. Eades quipped.
"Oh, not them, sir," Lyle countered. "I mean them, yonder. Sir Hyde's squadron… here at last."
"Cease fire on the two-decker, Mister Fox!" Lewrie shouted to the waist. "Quoins out, and be ready to engage the fortress. Parker's come, did ye say, Mister Lyle?"
"Aye, sir. Yonder. Still about four miles North'rd."
Sure enough, Lewrie could espy at least three British "liners" ever so slowly creeping to the mouth of the harbour entrances, short-tacking ponderously and most-like making no more than a mile per hour, but they were making their presence known, at long last.
"Damn my eyes!" Capt. Hardcastle yelped as a 36-pounder shot from the Trekroner fortress howled close overhead. "Isn't it over and done yet?" He sounded more affronted than frightened.
Captain Riou's frigate, Amazon, and the other ships under his command, were shifting their fire onto the Three Crowns fortress, as futile as that seemed to be. Though the army gunners over there had begun the day un-practiced and raw, they had learned a few lessons in gunnery over the hours, and though firing very slowly, were becoming more accurate.
"Signal from London, sir!" Midshipman Tillyard barked in a professional manner, the excitement drubbed out of him by then. "It's… Number Thirty-Nine. 'Discontinue the Action.' Can't be!" he gawped as he re-read the signal through his telescope, comparing it to his illustrated signals book.
"Discontinue, mine arse!" Lewrie snapped, lifting and extending the tubes of his own glass to confirm it. "Dammit. Dammit to Hell!" He spun about to look astern to Defiance, to Monarch, Ganges, and Lord Nelson's flagship, the Elephant. Number Sixteen was still flying at their signal halliards' peaks.
"Number Thirty-Nine with two guns, sir… the 'General' for all ships," Midshipman Tillyard reported.
"We've won this battle, what's that man yonder thinking?" Is he blind?" Lewrie blustered. "Well, I'll be damned if we will. Not 'til I see Nelson repeat the signal, we won't!" Open fire on the fortress, Mister Farley. Pin their ears back."
"Elephant has hoisted 'Acknowledged,' sir, but still has Number Sixteen aloft," Tillyard reported, mystified by this turn of events. "Defiance still flies Number Sixteen, too."
"The signal is 'General,' though, sir," Lt. Farley pointed out.
It was not directed to Nelson in Elephant; Sir Hyde Parker's signal was speaking to every ship under his command, his own squadron up to the North, and Nelson's, and Graves's, and Capt. Riou's, too. For any ship, any captain, to disobey would mean a court-martial!
"The signal is dog shite, sir!" Lewrie snapped back. "A steamin' pile o' horse turds!" Sir Hyde can't see we've got the Danes beaten."
"Uhm, sir… signal from Defiance," Midshipman Tillyard called out, sounding nervous. "Now she's hoisted Number Thirty-Nine to her main tops'l yardarm… but, she's still Number Sixteen aloft at the main-mast head!"
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Fox rasped behind the guns, even as shot from the Lynetten and Three Crowns forts still howled overhead, and a fresh squadron of Danish warships, anchored in the merchantman channel behind the forts, began to fire.
Lewrie turned his back on Defiance and her contradictory flags, looking to Amazon, and the sturdy Capt. Riou. "Mine arse on a band-box!" he said with a groan to see HMS Alcmene, then the Blanche frigate, acknowledge HMS London's signal and hoist Number Thirty-Nine as well!
"Alcmene and Blanche appear to be cutting their kedge anchor cables, sir," Lt. Farley gravelled. "Really isn't much we could hope to do against stone forts, I suppose, so…"
Lewrie stood and stared, hands on his hips and glaring at the Amazon, waiting to see what Riou would do. Did he not acknowlege the damned signal and continue the action, his mind was made up that he, and Thermopylae, would stand by him to the last.
Oh, for the love o'…! Lewrie despaired, his heart sinking at the sight of Amazon suddenly ceasing fire, and almost shame-facedly hoisting Number Thirty-Nine. Even Riou was daunted.
"Cease fire, Mister Farley," he spat in anger. "Hands aloft to make sail, and just cut the damned kedge cable. Mister Tillyard, I'll thankee t'find that bloody Number Thirty-Nine in the flag lockers, and hoist it."
"Very well, sir," Lt. Farley said with a weary sigh. "Hoy, Fox! Cease fire, and secure your guns! Cease fire, d'ye hear, there! Bosun, pipe hands aloft to make sail. Mister Pulley, do you fetch boarding axes and cut the stern cable. Save the spring, mind."
Within ten minutes, HMS Thermopylae was once more under way for the North end of the Middle Ground shoals, the Southerly wind on her starboard quarters, fine, bound to join Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and his squadron… as ordered. It was galling, especially given the fact that the line-of-battle ships anchored astern of her still fought, despite their commander-in-chief's signal, and the Danish line was now a ragged string of silenced warships, grounded and dis-masted hulks, or half sunk, with one of them spectacularly ablaze!
"The foremast trunk won't take much sail, sir," Lt. Farley cautioned. "I expect we'll have need of a yard re-fit to replace it. For now, there's a spare main course yard we can use to 'splint' it, sir."
"As you say, Mister Farley," Lewrie glumly agreed, massaging his aching forehead, and clawing the wax plugs from his ears. "Perhaps Sir Hyde thought to bring along spare masts and spars, and will give us one."