"My brief ends at the beach, Mister Thurston," Lewrie allowed. "But my First Officer is already laying charges, and he might go ahead with the kegs of powder we've already landed."
"No worry on that score, Captain Lewrie," the young fellow said. "Lieutenant Aubrey sent a party of runners to Lieutenant Ford, on the point, and they will delay the demolition until our powder is added to theirs."
"Oh, a bigger bang," Lewrie chuckled. "Just at sunset, like a Germanic opera, I take it, sir? "
"Wouldn't know about operas and such, sir," Lt. Thurston said with a briefly furrowed brow and a shrug of indifference. "It will be spectacular, is all I know, Captain Lewrie."
"Much of a fight ashore, sir?" Lewrie asked.
"For a bit, sir, aye," Thurston explained with recalled relish. "Short, sharp, but all in our favour… there were about an hundred French infantry in the village, but we routed them right-sharply, and the ship's guns and swivels took the fight out of them." There came a few more faint pops from muskets, perhaps a faint, distanced scream as someone saw his death-wound, or got bayonetted, then it was quiet again.
"We've taken five barges, sir!" Lt. Thurston happily related. "Four filled with stone and mortar mixings, the last'un loaded with the powder, and the artillery pieces that were to go in the battery. Lieutenant Cottle says he'll scuttle or burn four in the deep river channel, but wishes to tow out the fifth as prize."
"I doubt a sailin' barge'd survive her first deep ocean storm," Lewrie speculated. "But, does Mischief's prize prove legitimate, they could be placed aboard her, and sailed to the nearest Prize-Court."
"Oh, goody… that would be excellent, mean t'say, sir," Lieutenant Thurston amended, blushing at his youthful slip. "Lieutenant Cottle bade me say that he will sail out with the barges, once we have the waggons on the way out of town, sir, and Lieutenant Aubrey's men to escort them. My Marines and our sailors will be coming back aboard Erato, soon as they set off."
"And what does Commander Kenyon say, Mister Thurston?" Lewrie enquired, mystified by the absence of his name in the proceedings. He join the Great Majority, pray Jesus? he thought, with imaginary fingers crossed for good luck.
"Uhm… Commander Kenyon fell, sir," Thurston reported, going solemn for a very brief moment. "Right as he stepped ashore upon the town piers… he and several of his boat crew, all at once. A French volley," the Marine officer offered as the cause, though looking a tad cutty-eyed, to Lewrie's lights. "About the only casualties we had, sir."
"I see," Lewrie intoned, with a grave nod of his head, though feeling he'd break out in maniacal cackles and do a little jig of mourning if he didn't get below in private… soonest. Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow, he thought, biting the lining of his mouth to prevent a broad smile. And there's that problem solved, for good an' all by God!
"My most utter condolences, Mister Thurston," Lewrie managed to say with a straight face, and a brief semblance of sorrow, himself. "Pray, do you relate to Lieutenant Cottle that I shall take Savage to anchor off Pointe de Grave, for the nonce, and wish him to join me as soon as he may be able… so we may take all our people off before the battery goes up. And, my congratulatons to Lieutenant Aubrey, and Mister Cottle… to you, as well, sir, on your quick victory."
And, just at sunset, after all the surviving sailors and Marines were back aboard their respective ships, the stone-bearing barges had been torched and sunk in mid-river, and all the two-deckers, cutters, and brigs had made their crawling way back into the estuary against the wind, but with a falling tide, there came two spectacular explosions. Fort St. Georges split apart in a titanic, roaring fireball first, and stout stone walls collapsed in a roar as the magazine blew, then kegs of powder at each wall. Heavy artillery pieces, already slighted by having their trunnions sawed off, and their muzzles packed over-full with powder and round-shot, then choked with mud, burst apart as fuses set off by the initial explosions reached the touch-holes, shattering hard iron like papier-mache. And the rubble from the walls came down like an avalanche on the flagstone "deck" of the water battery, just as the charges laid underneath it went off as well, blasting parapet and embrasures into the river, and littering the beach.
Major Loudenne, his two Captains, and four Lieutenants, standing by the bulwarks of HMS Chesterfield as prisoners to watch the ending of his fort, all were later reported to be in tears at the sight.
Then… just as the sun touched the horizon, the Pointe de Grave battery exploded, too. Rectangular stone blocks went soaring into the sky, silhouetted against the livid blue-white blast of exploding gunpowder smoke, lit from within almost pale yellow for a moment, before turning ruddy amber, and all the waggons, all the construction timbers and scaffolding, all the out-of-town workers' huts piled in the centre of the battery's future courtyard, caught fire… helped along by the barrels of lamp oil, resin, turpentine, pitch, and tar that Lt. Urquhart had "borrowed" from bosun's stores to help things along… and torched upwards in an instant, volcanic plume of flames that lit up the night, and glowed like a lighthouse long into the evening, visible at sea for over ten miles 'til the wee hours just before dawn.
"Damn' good work, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie told him. "Simply damned fine! Pass word to all your people, they did grand work today."
"I suppose I must feel gratified by it, sir, if there was little combat," Urquhart bemoaned. "Still… it does feel some satisfying."
"As I told Mister Gamble, not all victories involve blood and thunder," Lewrie cajoled. "Well, we did make thunder, at least, but we accomplished what we came to do, and hardly any of our men were hurt, and none killed, while the French lost hundreds."
"Well, there is that, sir." Lt. Urquhart seemed to brighten as he absorbed that concept. "The greater good, as it were."
"Exactly, so, Mister Urquhart," Lewrie said with a sage nod… though, in point of fact, the "greater good" was rather hard for him to swallow, too; especially the part where the more senior he rose, the smaller role he might play when his beloved great-guns roared. Oh, it was all very fine to plan something, then watch as it unfolded successfully, but… all he'd done this day was stand round like a fart in a trance and observe the derring-do of othersl
"You did obtain some rather fine remembrances, sir," Devereux said from the side. Lt. Urquhart had at least come offshore in possession of an elegant French infantry officer's bicorne hat, and that poor fellow's excellently crafted Solingen sabre, scabbard, and snake-clasp belt. Well, he'd had to pay Landsman Newcastle, one of their "volunteer Black" sailors, three shillings for the hat, and Able Seaman Bannister a crown for the sword… a fact that would be conveniently forgotten in a year or two, once they were hung on his parents' walls.
"Lord, Cocky, don't nip my boots, ye daft little bugger," Lieutenant Devereux griped as the Marine complement's pet, the champion rat-killing mongoose that had simply turned up after a drunken night ashore in the West Indies, pounced and tried to gnaw on his new-blacked leather. "Private Cocky, M." was distracted from his mischief by Lewrie's cats, which resulted in a three-way tail chase round the quarterdeck.