At last, though, the jib-arms and fore-course yard dipped far enough to lower the torpedo out of Reliant’s sight, below her starb’d bulwarks, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. If the torpedo slammed against Penarth’s hull hard enough, would that set the pistol off?
He heard a long “whew!” nearby, and turned to see Lieutenant Clarence Spendlove, still with a wince on his face and his eyes wide.
“Perhaps they’d do better towed by the collier from the outset, sir… if they are as water-tight as they claim them to be,” Spendlove said with a dubious shake of his head. “Anything but a flat calm…?”
“Then the sight of ’em’d let the secret out of the bag, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said, “and scare the Hell out of everyone in Portsmouth! And with good bloody reason!”
“There is that, sir,” Spendlove agreed, chuckling a little. He sobred quickly, though. “If they prove successful, and we launch them by the dozens against the French, though, sir… by the hundreds, what will the world make of them, sir? What will they say of us, of Great Britain, for using them? That we’re clever, or that the torpedoes are infernal engines?”
“Frankly, Mister Spendlove, novel ways t’blow Frogs t’Hell are fine with me,” Lewrie told him with a wry grin and a shrug expressing dis-interest in the world’s opinion. “The onliest problem I have with ’em is that none of the devices we’ve seen or heard described to us are worth a tinker’s dam, and if we do launch ’em by the hundreds, we’ll look hellish-desperate, and the failure’d give us a black eye. Mark my words, sir, fail they will. The duty assigned us… well, at least it keeps us from more convoy work, and it does keep us close to port. Almost like day-sailin’, or yachtin’ like the royal family!”
“Fresher victuals, aye, sir,” Spendlove said, perking up a bit, relieved to know that his captain somewhat shared his distaste for the devices… if not for the same reasons as he held.
“And nigh-daily mail service, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie added, thinking of Lydia Stangbourne’s latest chatty letter.
Lewrie took a sip of his coffee, then wandered over to the larboard bulwarks for a bit, grimacing at the sight of the bow and stern anchor cables slanting away at noticeable angles from the bow hawse-hole and the taffrail hawse. The wind pressed upon Reliant’s hull, on her freeboard, and the tide-race shoved at her “quick-work” below the waterline, together. He’d posted a Midshipman at either cable to keep an eye on the angles, and their tautness, for the first sign of slippage, but was still worried. He looked up to the mast-heads where lookouts were posted to sing out at the first glimpse of French snoopers. They were alert, intent on their portion of the horizon, but silent so far. So far so good, he thought, with fingers covertly crossed.
“Mister Westcott and Mister Houghton are setting out from the collier, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported.
“Very good,” Lewrie said, returning to the starboard side. He got there just in time to espy the two barges standing out, clear of Penarth, lug-sails and jibs squeaking aloft and beginning to fill.
Much as Lewrie had loathed going too far aloft since his Midshipman days, he had to. With a telescope slung over his shoulder he mounted a carronade slide, then its barrel, to the cap-rails of the bulwarks and swung out into the main-mast stays and rat-lines, slowly and deliberately making his way almost to the cat-harpings below the fighting top. Boot heels snug on the rat-lines and one arm looped to a stout stay, he turned to face out-board and extended the telescope.
At first, Penarth’s masts were in the way before the two barges got a goodly way on and began to bound towards the island. Lewrie had to laugh out loud to spot both the “beef to the heel” Lt. Clough and the stocky older “gotch-gut” Captain Speaks high aloft in her rigging, their own telescopes extended!
Reliant was rolling, making it difficult to keep the boats in his ocular; the urge to pull out his pocket-watch to check the time, and to keep his precarious hold aloft, and keep the telescope aimed at the same time, was a bit awkward, but…
Both barges were lowering their sails, at last, and hands began to haul the torpedoes in close alongside. The ant-sized Lt. Westcott and Midshipman Houghton clambered atop the torpedoes to remove those tompions, both clinging for dear life to the stand-pipe as the things rolled and wallowed, and the choppy sea broke over them.
In for a soakin’, and dry breeches, once back aboard, Lewrie thought as he watched them scramble. Seconds later, and they were in a clumsy rush back aboard their boats, and in understandable haste to quickly get away from those now-primed fourty kegs of gunpowder! As they gained their boats’ safety, each man displayed a bright yellow signal flag, wig-wagging to beat the band for a few seconds, in sign that they were successful. Tow-lines were cast off, and sails began to sprout; tillers were put hard-over, and the boats began to ghost away from the freed torpedoes, rapidly gathering way and coming about to beat “full and by” back towards Penarth and Reliant.
“What’s the rate of the tide, Mister Rossynton?” Lewrie called down to the Midshipman he had posted with the chip-log.
“Ehm… four and three-quarter knots, sir!”
Lewrie stayed in the shrouds long enough to make sure that the boats had made sufficient clearance from the torpedoes, even if they mal-functioned and blew up prematurely, then stowed away his telescope and carefully turned his body to face the shrouds and make his way to the deck.
“It will be a long slog back,” Lt. Merriman was telling Midshipman Entwhistle, “short-tacking home dead downwind of us.”
“Is someone keeping the time?” Lewrie asked, safely in-board and on solid oak planking once more.
“Aye, sir,” Merriman told him. “By pocket-watches and glasses. Though we don’t know which of our boats was in charge of the one set for a quarter-hour, or the half-hour.” Merriman had a watch with a second hand, as did Entwhistle, and a ship’s boy standing nearby had turned a set of sand-glasses as soon as the yellow signal flags had been displayed. The boy swiped his runny nose on his shirt sleeve, almost dancing a jig as he divided his attention between the timing glasses and the sea shoreward, impishly grinning in anticipation of a very big pair of bangs.
Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and paced along the starboard bulwarks to the taffrails and back, chiding himself to act “captainly” and stoic, for a rare once. He tried humming a tune for a bit, but thought that a bit too much a sham, and left off. He resisted looking at his watch again as long as he could, then…
As soon as he pulled it from his breeches pocket, there came a stupendous roar, and he looked up to see what looked to be a mountain of seawater and smoke jut skyward!
“Huzzah!” the ship’s boy squealed, hopping up and down in glee.
And, “Huzzah!” from Reliant’s crew, most of whom were standing by the starboard rails, or in the rigging like so many starlings on a bare tree’s limbs.
“That’s the quarter-hour one, to the minute, ha ha!” Lieutenant Merriman gloated. “Tremendous! Simply tremendous, hey, Clarence?” he asked Spendlove. “God, look how tall and big a blast it is!”
“Rather big, aye, George,” Lt. Spendlove agreed rather glumly. “However… it was released about a mile from shore, as I adjudged by sextant, and even with nigh a five-knot tide to drive it, it still only made half a mile, by my reckoning.” Spendlove had a slate covered with trigonometric equations (he was a dab-hand navigator and mathematician), which he showed to one and all. “It appears that even this strong making tide is not enough to carry the things within range to do much real damage.”