It was on the lower gun deck, though, that Telesto hid her heaviest punch. Roughly amidships, behind what seemed to be unused gunports that had been expanded in size for ventilation in harbor or ease of cargo-handling, she had a battery of thirty two-pounder carronades. These were light, short-barreled guns that could be handled by only two men per gun. They threw a massive six-and-two-thirds-inch shot, not for much over two cables, or thirteen hundred feet, but when that solid shot hit at lower velocity than the conventional guns above them on the upper deck, they ravaged whatever they struck. They were mounted on slides, with a greased block of elm between two wooden rails, with an iron roller to handle the lighter recoil, and they could pivot on a large iron wheel much farther forward or aft than a gun on a wheeled truck, and had a much higher rate of fire than anything but a light swivel gun.
As junior officer, that was Alan's station; the carronades were his charge. He thundered down to the lower gun deck, passed down the narrow passageway between bales and crates of cargo, into the secret section amidships that held his battery. Four guns to each side.
"Tompions out," he ordered, tossing his hat to one side. "About ten native pirate ships. Stand ready to engage on either beam. Let's keep the gunports shut until they're close enough in to scare the bejeesus out of 'em."
"Aye, sir."
"Charge your guns!" Serge bags of mealed gunpowder came up from the magazine on the orlop and were handed over by the powder-monkeys to the gun-captains, who inspected them for dampness, weight and rips or tears. Then they were handed off to the loader, who inserted them into the short, wide-mouthed barrels. The guns had been run back to the last extent of their recoil slides so a flexible rope rammer with a wooden head could push the charges down to the base of the gun with a hard shove.
"Shot your guns!" Both men heaved up solid iron balls from the shot garlands made of arm-thick hoops of discarded anchor cable.
With a little elevation screwed in already, the balls rolled down to thump against the powder bags easily, requiring a lighter shove with the rammers to seat them firm. To cut down on too much of the charge escaping past the windage difference of ball and muzzle, thick hairy patches of raveled rope were soaked in the fire-buckets and rammed down atop the balls.
"Prime your guns."
Cartridges were pricked with the sharp end of a linstock. A measure of powder from a flask hanging from around the gun-captain's neck was dribbled into the touch-holes and pans of the flintlock mechanisms, now pulled back to half-cock. The frizzens over the pans were shut.
"Stand easy," Lewrie ordered. He wished they could open the ports. If the deck had been a roasting pan, then below decks was an oven, and the aroma of crate after crate of opium, balls of it as big as a man's head, was making him a trifle dizzy. The hatchway over his head was rigged with a grating, that grating covered with a tarred sheet of sailcloth, so there was no hope for any air.
The gun crews swayed to the easy motion of the ship, sweat running down their bodies in buckets. Shirts cast off, loose-legged slop-trousers rolled up to the knee, legs and feet bare, with only their kerchiefs above the waist, now tied 'round their heads to save their hearing once the guns began to sing.
"Stand by, the forrud chase guns!" a voice bellowed. And above the sound of the ship as she worked and groaned, they could hear drumming. Not the jerky, uplifting drumming of the ship's bandsmen, but a steady, monotonous boom-boom, boom-boom.
"Reckon 'at'll be th' slave-drivers, sir," the senior quarter-gunner speculated as he shifted a large cud of tobacco in his mouth. "Keep t' pace fer th' oars."
"Saints praysairve us!" an Irish loader whispered, crossing himself, and fingering a tiny silver crucifix 'round his neck.
"And good artillery preserve us, Hoolahan," Alan said with a brief grin. "Good artillery and sharp-eyed gunners."
A twelve-pounder barked from the starboard battery, then the lower gun deck drummed and echoed as the upper deck ports were drawn up and out of the way, and ten eighteen-pounders rumbled across the oak decks on their little wheels and ungreased axles loud as a cattle stampede. Alan crossed to the starboard side to peer out a slit-drain in one of the gun-ports. "About eight cables off now, half a dozen of them. I can see…"
He was interrupted by the blast of the forward-most eighteen-pounder as it lit off, followed in stately, controlled progression by the rest of the starboard battery. Telesto groaned and rocked, gun-carriages squealed as they ran in to the limit of the breeching ropes with the recoil. "Oh, good shooting! The leader's been hit hard. Dismasted. Lot of oars smashed, too."
As he watched, a gun in the bow of the prao returned fire, a large brass gun overly adorned with the scales, mouth and dorsal fin of a dragon. For such a large burst of smoke, the shot fell short, throwing up a huge gout of water in a tall feather of spray.
"Stone shot, sir," the quarter-gunner said. "Bad powder."
"Wind's dying," Alan whispered, and shared a worried look with the man. The ocean was flatter, hardly ruffled by wind, heaving slow and steady, almost glassy-calm farther off toward the horizon. "Do you know how to whistle, Owen?"
"I'll get on it directly, Mister Lewrie, sir."
Telesto sagged a little, heaved and rolled more gently, a sure sign that the wind was failing them, and that they would be becalmed at the worst moment in the middle of a fleet of pirate vessels that could row circles around them. It was an ancient belief that whistling aboard ship brought more wind than any seaman could handle. At that moment, Alan would have settled for a Good Hope gale.
The hatch grating over their heads was drawn back and cast aside, and Hogue, the master's mate, stuck his head down to yell at them. "Mister Lewrie, you're to try your eye once they're in your range. Both sides at once, if you please, sir!"
"Undo the lashings on the gunports and be ready to raise them." Gunfire roared out again, this time from the larboard battery. And they could hear other guns off in the distance. Pirates' guns. Telesto rocked a little more energetically as a heavy stone-shot struck her somewhere aft. There were some warbling sounds as hand-hewn shot crossed over her decks from either beam. But then the starboard battery crashed out its defiance once more, and men above them gave a great cheer. Alan put his eye to the vent-hole of the gunport and saw that one of the praos had been struck in the best English manner, 'twixt wind and water, and had opened up to the sea like a shattered tea cup!
"We've one to starboard, closing us bows-on, about three cables off!" Alan shouted. "Open the ports! Run out your guns! Take aim! Cock your locks!"
This prao was about seventy or eighty feet long, low and rakish. There was no deck, just a platform in the stern for the helmsman and captain, and a fo'c'sle deck forward for two guns. Between there was a walkway that ran the full length of the boat, like an etching of an ancient Roman war-galley. It bristled with flat-faced little men in turbans and printed skirts, armed with spears and swords and a few muskets here and there. There was one mast amidships, with an Arabic-looking lateen sail furled up. Rowers thrashed the water to a foam as they drove in on Telesto. The guns fired.
Telesto was hit once solidly, and once in ricochet as one ball splashed short and raised a great water-plume close aboard.
"Ready!" Alan called. "As you bear… fire!"