"About another quarter-mile, before we may open upon the left-most artillery, Captain," Lt. Urquhart adjudged. "I make the beach to be about half a mile off. Should we come up to the wind, sir? "
"Aye, make it so, Mister Urquhart. Course Due South, and wait for it," Lewrie agreed. "Mister Grisdale? Signal to Erato for her to 'Make Sail,' then, 'Windward,' else we'll either run right up her arse, or she'll lay there, blockin' our guns."
"Oh, dear Lord," Mr. Winwood commented again, sounding like some badly milked cow. "It would appear the French have found the range to her, sir."
Sure enough, Erato's slack sails twitched to round-shot passing low over her decks, and she shivered to a hit on her larboard side that raised a sudden cloud of engrained dirt, peeling paint flakes, and the usual small eruption of splinters.
Still, her hoist in reply was "Unable."
"Cock your locks!" Lt. Adair instructed his gun-captains. "Wait for it… wait for it! Ready, at your orders, sir!"
"Byyourbest judgement, Mister Adair," Lewrie called back.
"Very well, sir. On the up-roll… firel"
Smashing, lung-flattening, heart-skipping thunder-cracks! Huge gouts of powder smoke, jets of flame, and firefly swarms of hot embers shot from the muzzles of the great-guns! HMS Savage stuttered in her stately-slow progress, hull groaning and reverberating to the slamming of the explosions, shuddering again as the brutally heavy 18-pounders surged back from the port-sills to be checked by breeching ropes bound round the guns' cascabels, through the bulwarks' ring bolts!
"That's the way, you Savages!" Lewrie yelled, the battle-fever come over him at the first whiff of gunsmoke and the first crashing roars. "That's the way my bully lads!"
Thirteen of her 18-pounders on the larboard beam, four of her quarterdeck 9-pounders, hurled a blizzard of iron into the dark woods, and even stout old trees swayed and thrashed like saplings assailed by the gusts of a West Indies hurricane! Shattered limbs came whirling down, pines with trunks as thick as a young woman's waist burst twelve or fifteen feet from the ground, and came lancing down among a cloud of splinters. That first crushing broadside bracketed the left-flank gun position and the place where the left-hand company of infantry had gone to ground!
"Swab out! Up, powder boys!" Lt. Adair chanted, pacing behind the recoiled guns, now and then cautioning crewmen to overhaul the run-out and recoil tackles, and watch where they placed their feet, else a man could be crippled for life in a twinkling. "Shot your guns…!"
"Bloody grand, Mister Adair!" Lewrie shouted down, making their young Scot beam with pleasure. "Serve the snail-eatin' shits again!"
Spikes and crow-levers came out so the men could shift aim for the centre positions. Wood quoins beneath the gun breeches were carefully adjusted for elevation. Adair looked up and down the deck, and found every gun re-loaded. "Run out your guns! Clear away the tackle! Prime/"
"Four fathom! Four fathom t'this line!" the larboard leadsman shouted from the fore-chains.
"Half point t'windward, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie cautioned.
"Take careful aim, let's not waste 'em!" Lt. Adair was yelling. "The finer your eye, the more Frogs we get to kill."
"Jus' like ol' Mister Catterall, 'e is," a quarter-gunner cried with a laugh, referring to their former Second Officer, who had died the year before in the South Atlantic. " 'Orrid mad for fried Frogs!"
"Waste your fire, Pulteney, and I'll curse like Catterall, too!" Lt. Adair promised, japing back. Gun-captains' arms rose into the air to signal readiness. "Cock your locks/" The final step done, the arms went back up, the gun-captains' other hands drawing the lock cords taut as bow-strings. "On the up-roll.. .fire/"
Titanic roars, more heavy shudders, great clouds of powder smoke blotting out everything to leeward, and only slowly drifting away, and thinning, but Lewrie, now perched atop the larboard bulwarks with a hand to shield his eyes, could relish the avalanche of grape, and round-shot that harvested trees like a farmer's scythe for a joyous second before the smoke cloud took his view away-
"Uhm… should he be doing that, Mister Winwood, sir?" Midshipman Grisdale timidly asked the Sailing Master.
"Oh, this is nothing, Mister Grisdale," Winwood replied in his usual phlegmatic way. "You should see the way he acts in a real scrap. Our Captain is a man lorn to combat."
HMS Savage served the French positions yet another heavy broadside as she slowly cruised down the coast, passing in front o? Erato, which Kenyon had at last gotten under her own slow way, going up to windward just far enough for Savage to shave by down her larboard side. And, with the guns levered round 'til the muzzles, hot enough to scorch wood by then, pointed as far aft as they could bear for yet another, a parting broadside. And, there was not a single shot fired in reply by the French. Their light artillery might not have been smashed, crews who served them might not have been slaughtered to a man, but… they had all been buried under enough fallen trees and scrap lumber to make a good start at building a small Sixth Rate!
"Secure the guns, Mister Adair," Lewrie finally ordered as he hopped down from his perch atop the bulwarks. "Damned fine work, men! Damned fine shooting, by every Man-Jack! When the Bosun pipes 'Clear Decks and Up Spirits,' we shall 'Splice the Main-Brace'!"
"Stand out to sea, sir?" Lt. Urquhart enquired, looking a lot perkier than he had an hour before; action agreed with him, it seemed.
"if ye'd be so kind, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie told him, smiling back. "Sorry we could gather no souvenirs this time."
"Well, a bucket of what's left yonder, sir, is hardly what one might take home to boast of!" Urquhart rejoined with a chortle.
Lewrie gave him another grin and a reassuring nod, then went aft down the larboard side, past the quarterdeck 9-pounders and the gun crews who were now sponging out, to the taffrails and larboard lanthorn at the stern to survey the beach. With telescope extended to its uttermost, he could discern movement ashore; a few French soldiers in white trousers and blue coats staggering about amid the man-high reef of tree limbs, digging for their comrades, and dragging free the stunned living and the wounded.
Astern… Erato had fetched-to once more as her cutter limped alongside at last. Men swarmed over her larboard side to the boat to help their wounded aboard, and rope slings and a quickly rigged Bosun's chair were going over the side, as well. The Lieutenant in the cutter's stern-sheets seemed to have survived his ordeal, which was a glad sight to Lewrie; had the man been killed or "wounded, and were Lewrie to do the "charitable thing," he might have had to give up one of his Commission Officers into her. Charity? Lewrie queasily thought; or guilt? For it had been by his orders that Erato and her crew had been placed in jeopardy, and… he'd made an error.
Didn 't expect that sized French presence, he gloomed; infantry, yes, maybe one gun, or two, but… I told Kenyon t'pretend t'land, not go all the way! His cutter's bow was almost t'dry sand! Well, close enough ashore that the sailors could've stepped out and not gotten wet above their knees. Drab as Kenyon's career's been so far, perhaps he needed t 'exceed his orders, and get a line or two in the newspapers.