"Oui, M'sieur Lieutenant! I hope I am not too late to see the battle," the aide told him with a broad, eager grin.
"As little as I am used to horses, I will ride with you, oui!" Brasseur instantly decided. "What a grand sight, to see these Anglais salauds bayonetted into the surf, and slaughtered by their boats!"
"I will ride fast, I warn you, m'sieur," the aide cautioned. "If you are not a strong horseman… but, we will need fresh mounts."
"There are many in Royan," Brasseur told him with a shrug. "What are they doing here, though?" Loudenne still fretted, concerned about his lack of re-enforcements. "What are they doing?" he snapped, raising his telescope and resting it atop the parapet.
All three officers turned their glasses seaward; all three saw hundred of enemy sailors clambering up the rigging, standing atop the stout oak bulwarks and lining gangways of the anchored warships. Some were lowering…
''''Mon Dieuf" the aide primly gasped. "They show their arses to us? Les Anglais… the 'Bloodies' are an uncouth people! Swine!"
"They mock us," Brasseur said with a snarl. Even though what the British were shouting could not carry that far, he could imagine what came from those widely opened mouths. "They think they have deluded us, and played their part in the charade. Oui, let us get fast horses, Lieutenant. We must get to your general, vite, vitel These ships hold nearly seven hundred potential fighters, and I think I know what they plan. That regiment you encountered must be alerted." "M'sieur?" the aide asked with a raised brow; Loudenne was not the only one who thought a sailor spouting land tactics presumptuous.
"Their main landing is on the barren coast, oui?" Brasseur impatiently snapped, jutting one arm to the nor'west. "But, if the enemy lands behind your general's main line, up the coast from here…!"
"There is a road from La Palmyre to Arvert, on the northern side of the Cote Sauvage," Major Loudenne all but gasped, and sang-froid bedamned. "From there to La Tremblade it is less than four kilometres."
"Your general masses to contain them, let half get ashore before his riposte, hein? But, if there is a force in his rear…? It may not cause our defeat, but…," Lt. Brasseur pointed out with another of his iffy shrugs. "And, who knows how many more Anglais ships lurk offshore, to follow up on their initial lodgement, messieurs?"
"Warn that regiment, Lieutenant, the Fifty-seventh?" Loudenne sternly ordered. "They must keep watch near La Palmyre for movement by these ships. Vite, vite! Take my horse, Capitaine Dournez's, too! Go, mes enfants! By sunset, we can stain the sands red with British blood!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mister Gamble, we'll have the people's washing taken in now, I think," Capt. Alan Lewrie gleefully told the officer of the watch.
"Hoist from Chesterfield , sir," Midshipman Dry called out. "The signal is 'Prepare for Battle,' sir!"
"Once the dirty shirts are below, Mister Gamble, do you order Bosun Thomlin to pipe 'Stations' for hoisting anchor and making sail," Lewrie added, checking the looseness of his hanger in its scabbard. "You are ready, sir?" he asked Lt. Urquhart.
"Completely, sir," Urquhart crisply and firmly replied, nodding his head, as sober and grave as a churchman. If he had been thirsting for action, for significant honour and glory, he had an odd way to show eagerness, Lewrie thought. "As are my seconds," Urquhart added. He'd chosen Midshipman Grace, and, wonder of wonders, Midshipman Carrington, now better-known among the hands as "Mister Foggy," to help him keep good order of the landing-party of armed sailors. Why Lt. Urquhart had chosen the young twit, no one could fathom; sympathy, perhaps, for a sprog whose head was so full of clouds, and not much else; or, as a wag in the wardroom had speculated, a "noble" way to rid themselves of a hen-head more dangerous to Savage's people than the French.
"Should I fall, sir," Urquhart solemnly intoned, "I have left a packet of letters to my kin in my sea-chest."
"Of course, sir," Lewrie said, stifling his own rising excitement and eagerness for a moment to reply in kind.
"All cleared away, sir," Lt. Gamble reported.
"Very well, Mister Gamble. Pipe 'Stations,' and hands to the capstan," Lewrie directed. Fleeting the messenger, binding on nippers, and preparing the decks to receive the thigh-thick anchor cable was, to an uninitiated "lubberly" observer, a form of organised chaos; not even the gigantic three-decked First Rates had enough room on their decks when hundreds of men breasted to the capstan bars and began to walk the contraption round, for "nippers" to rush continually 'twixt hawse-holes and capstan to lash the messenger to the cable, for men with middle mauls to pound the turns of the messenger round the capstan drum upwards so it would not bind upon itself.
Today was not so bad; the river bottom was mostly gritty sand, not so much sucking ooze, and with only the best bower down, the cable came in fairly quickly, the hands at the capstan bars urged on by the Marine boy drummer and the ship's fiddler, who, despite the stricture that only "Portsmouth Lass" was acceptable aboard a Royal Navy warship, played a lively version of "The Jolly Thresher."
"Heave chearly, lads!" Lt. Adair called out. Moments later and it was "Heave and pawl! Get all you can!" After a look over the bows and he changed to "Surge-ho! Heave, and in sight! Up and down, walk away with it, lads!"
"Bosun, pipe hands aloft!" Lt. Gamble ordered from the quarterdeck as the iron ring and the top of the anchor stock became awash and the new-model geared capstan clanked merrily away. "Trice up and lay aloft… lead along tops'l sheets, halliards, and jib halliards!"
Lewrie opened the face of his watch as he paced far aft by the taffrails, staying out of the way of men who knew what they were about; a quarter-hour to get the anchor up, catted, and fished, which wasn't bad time for a 950-ton frigate streaming bows-on to wind and tide. Ten more minutes, he judged, would have Savage under way off the wind, all hands on deck, the running rigging squared away, and the guns run out and loaded.
"Mister Dry," he told the signals Midshipman of the watch. "It is time to break out 'Form Line of Battle.' "
"Aye aye, sir!" the young fellow answered, almost tail-wagging like a puppy in eagerness. The cutters broke off their patrols, coming out to meet her; Erato and Mischief came to take station in line-ahead of Savage, which idled under loose and nagging sail, having fallen off the wind to face Pointe de Grave. A look to larboard showed the other ships under Commodore Ayscough's command were beginning to sort out in a line-ahead column as well, with the 74-gunned two-deckers in the van, so their heavier guns would be the first to engage Fort St. Georges.
"Not much of a wind, today, sir," Lt. Gamble commented, now that he was satisfied of the frigate being squared away.
"Surprisingly, aye," Lewrie agreed, looking up at the commissioning pendant as it slowly undulated like a boa-constrictor-long, colourful snake. "Seven, eight knots o' breeze, I'd guess. Perhaps eight to ten," he amended with a shrug. "Half an hour or better before we come to gun-range of the Point Grave battery. See the people all have a go at the scuttle butts. It'll be dry work, then."
"Aye, sir,"
Erato and Mischief were now off their larboard bows, a mile or so off, beginning to haul their wind to steer Sou'west for a time 'til they had Savage abeam their starboard sides. Mischief was hard on the wind, whilst Erato was nearer to a close reach to reduce the separation between them to less than a quarter-mile when they hauled wind again, and fell into place in line-ahead.