"Hold fire, hold fire!" Lt. Adair cautioned his gun-captains, "Don't hit our brave fellows, yonder!" Flintlock strikers were taken away from the vents, discharged guns were re-loaded with single solid shot, and the guns were run in and bowsed down securely.
"Well, damme," Lewrie heard a faint, disgusted voice say. Lieutenant Urquhart, Midshipman Grace, and Midshipman Carrington stood on the larboard gangway's after end; looking as downcast as tots who had discovered lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings.
"Lots t'do yet, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie encouraged. "Ford and his lot can stand guard, up the point, whilst you and your lads place the explosive charges, and blow this place to flinders, hey?"
"But of course, sir," Urquhart replied, eyes almost glazed by how quickly the battery had fallen; no glory for him, poor fellow.
"Do you and your party man the boats, sir, and see to the loading of the powder kegs and fuses," Lewrie directed. "Quickly, Mister Urquhart. We must get under way and support the cutters, should they have run into trouble."
Lewrie looked out over the larboard bows, scenting for a threat, but Erato's and Mischief's guns had also ceased firing, and both brigs were shortening their stern cables and preparing to get under way, too. Abeam to larboard, nearly four miles across the Gironde, Commodore Ayscough's two-deckers had come to anchor just off Fort St. Georges, guns pounding by broadsides, deck at a time, and were wreathed in gunpowder smoke. Now and then, a stab of flame revealed a surviving French artillery piece responding… almost lost in the hot iron sparkles as the place was being pounded into ruin by heavy, impacting shot. The sound of 24-pounders and 32-pounders bellowing came faint cross the river, an over-the-horizon, stuttering series of thuds and thumps, and the echoey rumble of distant thunder.
Half an hour later, and the kegs of black powder had been slung over the side into the boats, and Lt. Urquhart and Marine Lt. Devereux and their people could at last debark.
"Signal rocket, sir!" Midshipman Dry announced, pointing with an extended telescope cross the point. "A single one, sir… no opposition found."
"Very well, Mister Dry. Mister Adair, clear away, the larboard gangway, and reply with one signal rocket," Lewrie ordered, extremely pleased that no French warships were in the bay North of Le Verdon… but, chiding himself for thoughtlessness. If Lt. Bartoe in HMS Penguin had found opposing forces, Savage's, reply would have been fired whilst the kegs of gunpowder were still on deck, and he winced and sucked his teeth to imagine how large the blast would have been, if only a trickle of powder had caught a spark, for wooden kegs could never be completely spill-proof!
"Ready to proceed, sir," Lt. Gamble told him at last, touching the brim of his hat in salute. "Hands to the after capstan?"
"Suits me right down t'me toes, sir," Lewrie said with a grin.
A half an hour more to haul Savage to short-stays to her kedge, for Mr. Win-wood's worry of obstructions on the bottom had proven true, and one of the anchor's flukes had fouled on something. The tide had gone slack an hour before and was just beginning its long ebb, taking Savage sternward, about ready to tuck the cable under her counter, and possibly damaging the rudder. The weakly ebbing tide took the frigate like a folded-paper boat, though, aslant the wind, and quickly hoisting the spanker and the inner and outer jibs gave her just enough way to stand out from the beach into the river and re-orient the anchor cable round so they pulled slantwise, from dead astern to the larboard quarter, and, at last, the fluke was freed, the hands breasting to the capstan bars could almost trot about, and the pawls clacked rapidly, 'til the anchor was up-and-down again, and just coming awash.
"Now, get way on her, Mister Gamble," Lewrie said, with an impatient sigh of relief. Erato and Mischief had rounded the point long before, and only their tops'ls and top-masts were visible above the low land.
HMS Savage stood out into the river, wind abeam for a time and pointing her jib-boom and bowsprit at St. Georges de Didonne, making a mile Due East as stays'ls, the forecourse and fore tops'l, and the big main tops'l filled with wind. The continuous gunfire from Commodore Ayscough's two-deckers had subsided to a desultory thumping, the cloud of spent powder smoke had thinned, and, beyond HMS Lyme's bows, rowing boats were swarming shoreward like a colony of scuttling cockroaches. For all that Lewrie could see with his day glass, all return fire from the fort had ceased.
"Haul our wind, Mister Gamble," Lewrie said, now they had enough offing from Pointe de Grave. "We shall wear about to Sou'east by South."
"Aye, sir."
"And we shall finally get a good look beyond the river narrows," Lewrie gleefully exulted to one and all on the quarterdeck. "Much like followin' an ancient sea-chart into waters marked 'Here be dragons'!"
"Or, discovering the Land of the Lotus Eaters in a portion that bears the caution terra incognita, Captain," Mr. Winwood solemnly said. He might be making a quip, but with Winwood it was always hard to tell.
Once worn about, and a mile inside the inner river past Pointe de Grave, the Gironde widened to nearly six miles across, a vast glittering expanse. The small town of Meschers sur Gironde lay two points off their larboard bows, and Tal-mont, the hidey-hole for ships running the blockade, much on the same bearing, but further away. The shallow bay above Le Verdon was to starboard, and was disappointingly empty of shipping; only some light rowboats were drawn up on the beach by some small huts.
Commander Hogue's Mischief was off their larboard side, bearing down on a three-masted merchant ship anchored close ashore just above Talmont, one with no national flag flying at the moment, and the crew huzzahed her, for their frigate was "In Sight," and any money Mischief made off her prize, was she "Good Prize," that is, they would share, no matter if that resulted in less than a pound apiece.
Kenyon's Erato was just off the "dragon's muzzle," about to enter the small harbour of Le Verdon, and the three cutters were further South of her, angling almost Due West in pursuit of something. Even as Lewrie eyed them with his telescope, tiny puffs of powder smoke burst from Penguins bow-chasers, and the sound of her light guns came as a pair of distant dog-barks.
"There's nothing for us to do, sir," Lt. Gamble commented, one hand fretting fingers on the hilt of his sword. "No French warships, no prizes in sight to be taken, but for Mischief *'s…"
"Success doesn't always come with close broadsides, sir," Lewrie told him with a faint smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "Both the fort and the battery will be destroyed, and the French will wear out a thousand pairs o' shoes marching and counter-marching. And, whatever re-enforcements they'll have to send to prevent a second beating will be just that many less available to Bonaparte for any future adventures of his, God rot the little bastard. Met him once, ye know."
"Indeed, sir?" Gamble marvelled.
"Toulon, in late '93," Lewrie said, explaining how his temporary command of a razeed French two-decker, Zele, fitted with two heavy mortars, had been exploded and sunk by Napoleon Bonaparte's guns, and how he and the survivors had made their way ashore to become Bonaparte's prisoners, 'til rescued by a troop of Spanish cavalry, and how he could not give his parole and keep his sword, not with French Royalist sailors helping man his artillery, and sure to be shot down instanter as traitors to the Revolution, right there on the beach. "The man still has my sword, damn 'is eyes. Besides, it would've cut rough, to live comfortably, waitin' t'be exchanged, while my people would've ended chained up in some French prison-hulk, starvin', and dyin' of sickness. But, I hope t'get it back, someday," Lewrie concluded, rocking on the balls of his feet with his hands in the small of his back. "Go to Paris, once we've beaten 'em, dig round in some palace, and find it.