"Didn't order him t'do that!" Lewrie all but yelped in worry. "What the Devil's he playin' at? Be ready to get a way on, sir," he called over his shoulder to Lt. Urquhart.
The cutter was almost up to the gentle surf line, a musket-shot from the edge of the dense forest, a pistol-shot from the dunes, with the two other boats still following on either quarter of the leader's boat in a deep V.
"Frogs!" came a howl from the main-mast tops.
"Damn my eyes!" Lt. Urquhart cried, one hand leaping to seize the hilt of his small-sword, no matter how useless the gesture was.
"Get under way, sir, this instant!" Lewrie barked. "Open ports, and run out the larboard battery, Mister Adair. To your stations for action, gentlemen."
A two-deep line of French soldiers sprang from the earth, just back of the overwash dunes where they had hidden themselves from view in the shallow, natural ditches. Erato's cutter was frantically backing starboard oars, thrashing ahead with larboard oars, to try to turn her in her own length, the boat's Cox'n throwing his whole body on the tiller! The rest of the boats were wheeling about, too, but a massed volley of musketry spurted from the muzzles of at least three companies of infantrymen's musket barrels, and the shallows about each boat got churned by a torrent of lead ball.
"Three bloody companies, d'ye make it, Mister Devereux?" Lewrie asked of his Marine officer, more experienced with such matters.
"Aye, sir… but, note their spacing," Devereux urgently said. "There must be fifty or sixty yards 'tween each company. I'd suspect an artillery piece in each gap, so they may fire upon Erato, without risking their own men."
"Two gaps… say, another pair on the ends of the line," Lewrie quickly surmised, stunned by the suddenness of the French ambush. "Four guns, together. Mister Adair! Solid shot and grape, and order gun-captains and quarter-gunners to concentrate on the gaps between their troops, and on the woods at either end, as well. Might be guns…!"
There were guns… great gouts of yellow-grey gunpowder smoke belched from the gaps, from the flanks. A second or two later, there came the sounds of the explosions, terrier-bark-sharp, and tinny with distance.
"Six-pounders, perhaps," Lt. Devereux spat. "Perhaps as light as old regimental four-pounders, Captain. Four pieces would be right, and fit what little we know of current French Army practice."
Savage was moving again, falling off alee, parallel to the seashore, her clumsy-looking clewed-up sails billowing and starting to fill with wind, her fore-and-aft stays'ls, jibs, and spanker filling with rustles and cracks.
"A touch more to larboard, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie demanded. "Let her fall off to about a half-mile offshore before coming back to abeam the wind."
Christ, what a pot-mess! Lewrie groaned to himself, peering at Erato's boats. They were now come about, and were being rowed madly out to sea, the gig and launch weaving from one beam to the other to make themselves unpredictable targets, but still followed by a veritable hailstorm of bullet splashes, and the occasional cannon shot.
The cutter, though… she'd taken the full brunt of that first mass volley, and, while her oarsmen were bending their ash oars, going almost fiat on their backs and panting like dogs at each stroke, there were casualties among them. In the ocular of his telescope, he could see panicky sailors stumbling over each other to haul wounded men into the soles of the boat, a dead man or two being heaved overside to make room for the living to replace them. In the stern-sheets, the officer and a pair of tars were firing back, the Cox'n bent low over the tiller, almost hidden under the gunn'ls.
Lewrie's view was blotted out by a white sheet of water as one of the cleverly hidden artillery pieces pounded a round-shot near the boat, thankfully an "over" 'twixt the cutter and Savage, which raised a tall feather of spray that slowly collapsed upon itself.
The second cannon ball was much nearer, a half-minute after the first. And suddenly, the gig on the left-hand side of the reversed V took a ball so close that half of the oars on its starboard side were shattered, and it slewed about as if hulled, heeling over so far for a moment that it surely must capsize!
Closer to, Erato's 6-pounders were barking at last, their round-shot and grape clusters bowling through the centre company of French infantry, scattering them like a cat's paws would a boy's toy soldiers, forcing the survivors to stumble back into the woods for cover, leaving their dead and wounded where they fell. And, seeing the appalling ease with which their fellow soldiers had been butchered, the officers of the two wing companies ordered their own men to retire into shelter among the forest, too. Their smoothbore muskets were almost out of practical range beyond seventy or so yards anyway, and they had drawn their enemy's blood. A few stalwarts did continue to shoot, fingers-crossed-hopeful, but there were no more massed volleys of an hundred or so muskets going off at once. They left the rest of the fight to their artillery, which was still banging away rapidly.
"Pardon, Captain Lewrie, but… were I in their shoes, I'd not count on the woods for shelter," Lt. Devereux said, his face looking feral and eager. "Better they'd return to the depressions behind the dunes, which would just soak up both round-shot and grape. What our eighteen-pounders can do to them…!" "They'll discover, to their sorrow," Lewrie completed for him. "Mister Winwood, the last time we were here, can you asssure me of the depth, do we stand in a little closer than half a mile?"
"Uhm… ah," the Sailing Master flummoxed, looking stunned by the suggestion. " 'Tis a making tide, sir, and there should he thirty feet or better, perhaps, but, ah… I can offer no assurances, Captain."
"Half a mile it is, then," Lewrie growled in frustration. "Pray place leadsman in the fore-chains, Mister Urquhart, directly." "Aye aye, sir!"
"You mark those guns, Mister Adair?" Lewrie called down to the waist. " Very good. Do you direct at least two guns on each of 'em, and scour the woods with the rest."
"Oh, dear Lord," Mr. Winwood moaned, drawing his attention back shoreward. The cutter, slowest and most crippled of the three boats, had been bracketed by two round-shot, rocking her onto her beam ends to larboard, then to starboard, the feathers of spray so close that their collapse came down in a deluge that nearly swamped the boat!
Erato was still firing, quick as individual guns could be served, Kenyon no longer waiting for controlled broadsides. Six-pounder shot and grape lashed the trees and raised clouds of dirt and sand from the overwash dunes. Commander Kenyon had reduced sail almost to nothing; he'd not sail away and abandon his sailors. The French response, when it came, was to lift their aim from the rowing boats to Erato herself, and shot splashes began to blossom round her, now.
"Stout fellow," Mr. Winwood congratulated.
If ye only knew, Lewrie sarcastically told himself.
Erato's gig and launch had finally reached her sides, though it was no longer a place of safety with the French artillery banging away at her. After a close shot splash, the boats hastily ducked round her bow and stern to the unengaged side, so they could get back aboard at the starboard entry-ports.
The cutter still struggled, crawling snail-slow even though she was no longer a target, still a heartbreaking two hundred yards short of salvation, with the remaining armed men lending their strength upon the oars to spell those who were utterly exhausted, their bodies most-like shaking, palsied with panic and weakness.