“Right, Furfy. Hand me the bung, again,” he bade. Sliding just a bit more into the cutter, he carefully placed it atop the torpedo’s top, rattled it round into the hole, and tried to push it back down.
“Christ on a crutch! Mine arse on a bloody band-box, it won’t seat!” Lewrie spat. Had it swelled in the few minutes it had been out? The tompion was only halfway home, and the priming and the powder in the pistol barrel which fired the larger charge would be soaked as the torpedo bobbed its way inshore, with the chop sloshing over it!
“Hand me an oar, somebody. I’ll have t’hammer it home!”
Every sailor in the boat croaked, taking in great gasps of air! Someone-it might have been the bow man-let out a wee whimper!
But they passed him an oar, which he shortened up on as he slid back into the cutter, feeling an immense sense of relief, it must here be noted! He turned the loom of the oar flat to the tompion, lifted it, then gave it a couple of hard whacks.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be…!”
“Does it look flush yet, Desmond?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh, flush’z yer dinin’ table, sor, aye!” Desmond whinnied, seconded by a chorus of hearty agreement from the rest.
“I don’t know…,” Lewrie speculated, using the loom of the oar to prod the rim of the tompion; if it slid smooth, that was fine, but… he reckoned there might be an inch to go for sure water-tightness.
Well, it ain’t gone bang yet, so…, he thought, rising to stand in the boat, with Furfy clinging to his legs to steady him; or cringe in terror. Lewrie slammed the oar down on the tompion one more time, much harder, causing a deep empty-barrel thud from the torpedo, a thud that sounded very much like Doom! Several sailors stuck fingers in their ears and squinted their eyes tight shut!
“Look flush now, Desmond?” he asked again.
“I, ah… wouldn’t know, sor,” Desmond croaked.
“Wouldn’t want water gettin’ in and ruinin’ it, right?”
“Perish th’ fackin’ thought, sor!” Desmond assured him.
“That should do it, I think,” Lewrie decided, passing the borrowed oar back forward. “Let’s free the gaff and the tow-line and get away from it. Bugger the bayonets. Just toss ’em over and get a way on.”
Only the forward-most larboard oarsmen could get their oars in the water, whilst the starboard-side rowers were free to work. The tow-line was tossed free, and the cutter began to move again.
“It’s followin’ us!” someone cried.
With only the full bank of starboard oars at work, the cutter was circling round to its left despite Desmond holding the tiller hard over to larboard to steer away; they were circling the torpedo, and it was still right alongside!
“We’re spiked to it!” Furfy pointed out, most anxiously.
“Must’ve spun about and stuck a bayonet into the hull,” Lewrie said, hoping that MacTavish had spent a goodly sum on his clocks! “Get us free. Gaff, here! Shove the bastard off!”
“Un-screw the bayonet from the barrel stub!” another suggested.
“Won’t come free! Th’ bitch’s rollin’ too much t’get a grip!”
“Arms and legs, over the side and push, lads!” Lewrie snapped. “Heave, heave, heave!”
“ ’At done it, sir!”
The torpedo at last drifted a few more feet away, bobbing like a gigantic cork, the lights from the town and anchored invasion boats glinting off its painted top and steel grapnels and bayonet blades.
“Ain’t natural…’tis Devil’s work, them things!” a sailor whispered to his mate as they got both banks of oars working in unison and made their escape. Lewrie opened his pocket compass and held it close to his face but could not quite read it. On the way in, before they had left Fusee, the course had been Sou’-Sou’east, and the reciprocal to take them back near the converted bomb vessel should be Nor’-Nor’west, but… he looked astern to the lights of St. Valery and Le Crotoy. “Keep the towns on our starboard quarter, Desmond, and that’ll take us somewhere near Fusee.”
“Aye, sor,” Liam Desmond replied with a firm mutter and a nod. Now they were getting away from their infernal device, he sounded in much calmer takings. By the faint whispers and brief flashes of his sailors’ teeth, the cutter’s crew seemed much relieved, too, some even uttering very soft laughter.
Jesus, what a shitten mess! Lewrie thought, letting out a sigh, relaxing himself, falling into an exhausted lassitude. That happened to him, now and then, at the conclusion of battle aboard ship, or the end of a person-to-person fight with his sword; the intensely keen concentration at either left him so spent of a sudden that he sometimes needed a good sit-down to regain his strength, and his wits. Lewrie shook himself back to full awareness, and groped round the sole of the cutter for his hat. It was soaked, of course, and trampled into ruin, but he clapped it back on his head.
And what was the time when the damned clock began to run? he suddenly thought; You bloody fool, ye didn’t note it! How’ll I know if the bastard blows up on time? Shit, shit, shit!
“Coffee, sir?” Lt. Johns’s cabin steward offered.
“Aye, more than welcome,” Lewrie replied, accepting a battered pewter mug of scalding-hot black coffee, waving off the further offer of goat’s milk or sugar. They had found Fusee by steering blind ’til espying the long, irregular skirt of foam breaking round the anchored bomb’s waterline. MacTavish and Midshipman Frederick had come along a few minutes later, and lastly, Lt. Merriman’s cutter had approached, coming alongside to starboard, having steered too wide and to seaward for a time.
“Cup for you, too, sir?” the steward offered Merriman.
“God, yes!” the cheerful Merriman (so aptly named) answered.
“Four minutes by my reckoning, for mine, McCloud!” the inventor, MacTavish, said to his artificer in a loud whisper.
“Pardon, sir, but, did you have any trouble with yours?” Lieutenant Merriman softly asked Lewrie. “Mine was a total bastard.”
“A complete shambles, aye,” Lewrie muttered back, “gettin’ it alongside with all those bloody bayonets, gettin’ the tompion out, and fumblin’ in the dark, then gettin’ the bung back in? We got spiked to the damned thing for a bit, too.”
“Aye, sir. I can’t see how the torpedoes can be managed in the dark. And, if we launch them in daylight, it will have to be done so close inshore that the French shore guns and gunboats shoot us all to flinders,” Lt. Merriman told him, shaking his head. “I don’t know…”
“Launchin’ ’em by the dozens,” Lewrie muttered back. “I can’t picture our sailors gettin’ it done right, night or day. They’re too damned complicated t’set and prime.”
“About time, gentlemen! It’s about time!” MacTavish enthused, drawing all participants, officers and sailors, to the bulwarks to peer shoreward. That was anti-climactic, though, for at least three more minutes passed before the first explosion.
There was a distant and dull Boom! as a torpedo at last went off, shooting a geyser of spray and foam into the air, and sounding no louder than the slam of an iron oven door. And much further out to sea than the tide should have taken it, according to MacTavish’s last-minute estimations. It had not gone much more than half a mile.
“Hmmm, I’d have thought…,” MacTavish fretted, then drew out a sheaf of papers from his coat and tried to decypher them in the dark.
Even more long minutes passed before the second torpedo burst, and they almost missed that one, for though this one had drifted in to roughly the proper distance to reach a trot of caiques, the geyser of spray, foam, and gunpowder smoke looked little taller than the splash of a 32-pound shot dapping along from its First Graze, and the sound of its expected titanic explosion was little more than a fumph!