Lewrie could see two faint grey smears off to his left as the two barges slowly stroked away to form half of the line-abreast, white-painted hulls sooted to blend in with the sea and the night. He turned to look aft again, and made out Lt. Merriman’s cutter just beginning to stroke free of Fusee’s sides.
“Let’s be about it, then, Desmond,” Lewrie told his Cox’n. “We will form line-abreast with those two boats to larboard.”
“Aye, sor,” his usually cocky Irish Cox’n grimly replied.
The oars creaked in their canvas-wrapped tholes in unison, and the cutter surged to each long stroke, rocking and wallowing between to the chops and rolls of the sea, rising and dipping to the scend with a faint sound of surging water down its flanks. The hands dug in and uttered faint grunts to drive forward, the cask torpedo’s towing line raising a groan of its own, dragging against the rowers’ efforts as if the cutter was tethered to a stone landing stage. So slowly it seemed that the time went by, with the lights of Le Crotoy and St. Valery drawing no closer, the anchored trots of invasion boats remaining tiny and distant, with the threat of a cruising gunboat lying just beyond their sight ’til one might suddenly loom up, demanding identification, with its guns run out and ready for firing!
Then, in a twinkling, Lewrie thought them too close to the enemy boats, as if he’d managed to nod off for long minutes and was presented with being at close quarters, awakened by some Frenchman crying, “Qui va la?” or the bark of a gun! He could make out individual shops and houses ashore, spot waggons in the streets, espy people strolling about, and the peniches and caiques anchored in their dozens were so close that he could almost make out details in their rigging!
Close enough, dammit? he asked the aether, turning to peer out to larboard for MacTavish’s signal, for a spark from his flintlock and tinder lighter, or the covert flash from his hooded lanthorn, but there was nothing to pierce the darkness. He couldn’t even see either of Fusee’s barges. If it had been up to him, he’d have signalled for the torpedoes’ release five minutes before! Off to starboard, there was no sign of Lt. Merriman’s cutter any longer. So when…?
“Izzat a spark, sir?” an oarsman whispered.
Yes, and just thankee, Jesus! Lewrie crowed to himself, for he could see it, too, as MacTavish cocked and fired his igniter over and over.
“Easy all, Desmond,” Lewrie whispered to his Cox’n. “Furfy and Hartnett… haul on the tow-line and bring the thing alongside.”
“Aye, sor!” Furfy softly replied, crossing himself once more.
Without forward motion, the cutter wallowed and rolled fitfully as the great cask was pulled up astern, right to the cutter’s transom. Lewrie laid his hat aside and leaned out as far as he could reach to take hold of it, but those spike bayonets and the grapnels fended the torpedo off like an aroused porcupine. It butted against the cutter’s rudder with loud thuds, keeping it even further away!
Well, this is hellish-awkward, Lewrie silently fumed.
“Let’s haul it round alongside the larboard quarter,” Lewrie ordered. That spared the rudder, but the bayonets still kept it too far away; the only way that he could see to remove the large bung-like tompion from the torpedo’s hemispherical top and reach down inside to set and activate its mechanism would be to leave the boat altogether and clamber on top of it… and if he fell off, he would surely drown, for Lewrie could not swim a single stroke! The last time he had been forced into the sea was at Toulon in 1794 when his mortar ship exploded, flinging him sky-high, and his cabin steward, Will Cony, had buoyed him up and towed him to the nearby beach!
“See if you can turn it halfway round, Furfy,” Lewrie snapped in frustration. “Spin it so the grapnels lay fore-and-aft, and take off two or three of the bayonets.”
“Touch it, sor?” Furfy yelped, wiping his big hands down both thighs of his slop-trousers. “Me, sor?”
“Aye, you, sir!” Lewrie insisted. “The bayonets fit over the barrel stubs like they do on yer own muskets. Furfy… the bloody thing can’t go off ’til I’ve set it!”
“Bear a hand, Pat,” Liam Desmond snapped, leaning over the side. “You too, Hartnett. Pass the gaff back here. Thomas, hook onto one o’ the liftin’ ring-bolts t’steady th’ bastard.”
They got the torpedo turned and removed three of the bayonets, which allowed the massive bulk to thud right against the cutter’s hull, sounding like a large wooden bell despite the need for silence. Lewrie turned his head to see that the larboard-side oarsmen not involved with the torpedo’s turning and steadying shrank back to starboard.
“Let’s see, now,” he muttered, leaning far out despite how close they had hauled it, grasping one of the ring-bolts with his left hand, and groping at the tompion with his right. “Damme, that’s snug!”
The tompion which kept the inner works dry was a flush fit into the low-domed wooden top, with only a small brass ring-bolt in the centre, only large enough to pass a thin rope through it, or one finger! Lewrie clawed the tompion’s edges with his fingernails, but that was of no avail. There was nothing for it but to lean out even further from the dubious safety of the cutter, chest pressed against the torpedo’s top and his legs from the knees down inside the boat so he could take hold of the ring-bolt and try to pull upwards. “Well, shit, finally! Here, Furfy.”
He handed the tompion back to Furfy, the nearest seaman, who acted as if Lewrie had just offered him a lit grenado bomb!
He still couldn’t reach inside, though.
“Hold it close alongside, lads, and very bloody steady, hey?” Lewrie whispered harshly to his sailors as he groped for the far edge of the torpedo to haul himself out half on top of the bobbing, rolling beast. “Hold my legs, Desmond.”
Even though he had managed to reach inside, the night was nigh as black as a boot, and even a tiny glim candle was right out of the question; too much gunpowder, and too many damned French patrols! He stuck one arm down inside, fumbled about, and found the clockwork mechanism. The only hand, the minute hand, was straight up at “midnight.” Lewrie gently pushed it down to what felt like a quarter past. Oops! As the cutter and torpedo bobbed opposed to each other, he had to fiddle some more to make sure that he hadn’t pushed the hand down too far! Now, where were the two trigger lines? He found them, drew them to their full lengths, and pulled his arm clear.
God, forgive a sinner! he prayed, then jerked them both, hard.
Both mechanisms sounded off together, making him gasp in fright; there was a hellish clank! as the fire-lock on the pistol drew back to full cock, and a bladder-emptying whirr-tick! as the snugly wound clock began to function. After a few panting breaths to calm himself-and realise that he hadn’t been blown to atoms!-Lewrie coiled up those lines and dropped them to a far corner of the torpedo’s interior.