H.M.S. COCKEREL

Chapter 9

"How did it go ashore, sir?" Lieutenant Scott asked when Lewrie came back aboard Zele from headquarters.

"Routed 'em, thank God," Alan replied sleepily, too sleepy to be enthused. "O'Hara's aide-de-camp was crowing merry. Six hundred Frogs dead or wounded, he said. We lost sixty-one or so."

"Bloody good odds, then," Scott crowed in his turn. "And damned good return on investment."

"They think the Frogs threw an entire corps against us," Lewrie yawned. It was barely first light, and a chill mist hung over Toulon. He'd been roused long before his usual hour-nothing new in the Navy-but with a bit more urgency than usual, too urgent to allow him his morning tea or chocolate or a morsel of bread. "Think of it, a whole corps! That's what… three divisions? Nine or ten thousand? If we'd lost Fort Mul-grave, we'd have lost the whole of the Heights de Grasse and both the forts by the Gullet. Then where'd we be, I ask you? If they have that many to throw at us on a whim, then…"

"Aye, and we'll keep on killing 'em, sir," Lieutenant Scott boasted with his usual scorn for French courage and skill, "at ten or twenty to one. They'll go bankrupt, wagerin' at those odds. On a whim."

"It's too early to argue the toss," Lewrie sighed. "Have we anything hot yet?"

"Frog coffee, sir," Scott scoffed. He was a tea-and-beer man. When forced to drink coffee prepared in French fashion, he found it a too-hot, too-stout and bitter brew.

"Gittons?" Lewrie called. "Send down to the galley for a mug of coffee for me. I'll be in the chart space."

"Aye, sir."

"Mister Scott, round up Lieutenant de Crillart and the Comandante, if you'd be so kind. We've something new planned for today."

"Here, sirs," Lewrie said, with a jab at the chart with a ruler. "On the east, for a change… in the Plaine de la Garde. We hold Forts Malgue and St. Catherine on the east side of town, the batteries at Cape Brun, the Post of Bran, and little Fort St. Margaret, about at the midpoint of the coast… here, to protect the Bay of Toulon. A few days ago, the Frogs… pardonnez-moi, Charles… the Republicans, under General Lapoype, moved into Fort La Garde and occupied it. And the ridge here, in the middle of the plain behind it. I'm told we had La Garde long enough to ruin it… blew its powder vaults, toppled the parapets, disabled the guns there…"

"No way to 'old eet, so far from ze ozzer posts, wizout cavalry for ze resupply, hein?" de Crillart surmised.

"Exactly, Charles," Lewrie agreed, much more agreeable with his second steaming mug of coffee in his other hand. "We have to resupply all our coastline posts by water, as it is. Well, General Lapoype has guns and mortars in the ruins of La Garde again, and he's opened on any supply boat he sees. Malgue's guns don't have the range to reach that far, and the ridge blocks St. Catherine's. The coastal strongpoints have guns, yes, but they're sited to fire to seaward, and the garrisons have only field guns… regimental six-pounders and such… facing inland. St. Margaret is taking a pounding, too. So, were we to work our way to… here, east of St. Margaret… There's a low spot along the coast road, near this beach. And about a quarter-mile offshore there's six-fathom depth. Stripped as this raft is, we only draw two. More muddy sand that close ashore, and the rocks are smaller, so we'll have better holding ground."

"An', ve observe s'rough zis gap, from ze fighting-tops, oui?" de Crillart smiled, then translated for Comandante Esquevarre.

"Ze Comandante, 'e say alzo, mes amis…" de Crillart supplied after a long palaver, "zat ze enemy 'ave tres difficulte to attack zose coastal posts, vere ve to destroy zese string of ponts. Deux roads de La Garde, sud of ze ridge. One eez good groun', direct at ze St. Margaret, 'ere. Go pas' Les Savaux, Plan Redon, to ze coast road. Mais ze ozzer, east of ze Plan de Galle, eet go sud, to Notre Dame de Bon Salut an' ze Chateau des Pradets, zen down to ze Plage de la Garonne."

"Ahah?" Lewrie inquired.

More palaver back and forth.

"Ah, ze Comandante, 'e say, vous e"tes sailors, mais 'e eez soldat. 'E see what vous do not. Zey place batteries on ze heights near ze Notre Dame de Bon Salut, an' to ze west… zey comman' ze Bay of Toulon. No sheep enter or leave ze bay. Zey shoot into ze Great Road."

"Ah," Lewrie said with slow comprehension. "That does put a different light on things."

"But, 'e say," Lieutenant de Crillart continued with a sly grin, "zere are le Petit Pont, 'ere. Groun' eez… mmm, 'ow you say…?"

"Marshy," Scott offered with an impatient grunt.

"Ah, oui, marshy! Merci, m'sieur Scott. Deux bridges, zen road cross zis stream on a s'ird… anozzer bridge cross marshy… marsh, zen a fift', ware ze sud road cross ze la Reguana Reever. Comandante Don Luis, 'e weesh to use ze mortars on zese bridges, aussi. After ve bombard ze Fort La Garde."

"So if they mean to move their army against Toulon, they'd have to come direct west, right into the teeth of our fire, or try to skirt past the end of the ridge and face the guns of Fort St Margaret, on their flank, while they're all strung out?"

"Ze Comandante do not believe zey do zis, mon capitaine. 'Ere are ze reever, an' ze stream, zey mus' still cross, on ze good road to Plan Redon, zen turn west across Pont de la Clue. But zat ees covered by Fort Malgue, Post de Brun, St. Margaret…" Charles shrugged in heavy, Gallic fashion, with a snort of amusement to show how hopeless an endeavour that might be.

"Comandante, just to do a complete bit of work, why don't we blow this Pont de la Clue whilst we're at it, today? Last of all?" Alan suggested. To which, after a translation, Don Luis was quick to express his agreement.

"Cony?" Lewrie called out the door to the gun deck.

"Aye, sir?"

"How's the fog?"

"Thicker'n London, sir," Cony answered, after a weather-wary eye at the sky. "But, 'ere's a wind comin' up, sir. Not much o' one, but a breeze. Might blow off, in'n 'our'r two, sir. I c'n see 'bout two musket shot'z all."

"That'd be just enough visibility for us to warp out and row," Lewrie speculated, tossing away his ruler and dividers. "Sound our way down to the entrance in the log boom, then set course through the Gullet. Hug the coast all the way, so they won't even know we're in place until the first shell. Let's be at it, then. Cony, my respects to the bosun, and he's to sound 'All Hands.' Stations for leaving harbour."

"I think I can see now," Lewrie enthused, aloft in the fore-top. It had been hours before they could make anything out farther off than a quarter-mile, and had more felt their way east, than anything else. But they had TMe anchored now in four fathoms of water, east of St. Margaret in a little cove where the Hieres Road ran close along cliffs which were much lower than the rest of that daunting coast, where that road dipped between two hills into a depression. "That's it, I think."

"Has to be La Garde, sir," Lieutenant Scott muttered, spying the place out with his own telescope. "Now the fog's burned off enough… sure to be. The only hill west of the ridge. Circular central keep, with four arms and circular ends. Just clear enough…"

Scott traded his telescope for a sextant and slate.

"I make it a mile and three-quarters, sir," he concluded. "And it appears we're anchored broadside-to."

Lewrie looked at his watch: quarter 'til ten in the morning and nothing stirring yonder, due to the fogs. The French had been bunded as effectively as everyone else on such a gloomy morning. There was a wind up now, from the sou'west, blowing into the cove quite briskly, and rattling a chop against the base of the cliffs, ruffling wavelets over the wide, shingly beach to their right. A wind which would blow their powder smoke away quickly, making it difficult for the French to discover their position. It might even take them a while to find that it wasn't a new mortar battery installed at Fort St. Margaret itself!

"Let's give it another quarter-hour, Mister Scott. Let Don Luis have a peek at it, and then we'll open fire," Lewrie decided.

"Aye, sir. I'll fetch him."

By the time Don Luis de Esquevarre, his aspirante and sergeant-gunner Huelva had ascended the mast, though, the fog had been blown clearer. Fort La Garde was no longer nebulous, but sharp-edged in the telescopes, and Don Luis was eager to open upon them at once, pleading that it would take hours to further reduce the place. It was a masonry fort, after all!

"Bueno," Lewrie grinned, clapping Esquevarre on the shoulder. "We begin, Don Luis. Si. Fuego."

Lewrie went back to the deck by a standing backstay while Comandante Esquevarre and his aides had to use the lubber's hole in the top and clamber down the ratlines and shrouds with landsmen's clumsiness. A full ten minutes was spent inspecting safety precautions, just to be sure no one had omitted a step in the drill due to overfamiliarity or boredom. The gun deck was running with water from the pumps, the companionway to the orlop was trickling sea water, the magazine passage was wetted down from overhead to decking, the felt screen was soaked, the hides were up in the laboratory aft… Only four kegs of powder were aft to fill shells at any one time, the excess covered with wet haircloth, the fuse chest covered except for extraction of the called-for timing. Thirty-two-pounder great-guns empty and tompioned, bowsed up to the port sills, and only two sets of slow match burning in the mortar well, properly guarded.

"Garguen los morteros," Esquevarre ordered. "Garguen a bombardear."

The left-hand mortar was prepared, the touch hole reamed out and primed with fine-mealed powder. The tallow seal was scraped off the top end of the fuse. "Fosforo… preparado… fuego!"

Another day of noise and smoke had begun.

"Over… and left, sir!" Mister Midshipman Spendlove shouted down from the fore-top. "At the foot of the hill!"

"Close, for a first try," Lewrie beamed, as the aspirante told his commander what that meant in Spanish. Esquevarre fiddled with the traverse a touch, cranked in a tiny change in elevation for the right-hand mortar whilst the left hand was being thoroughly swabbed out. Up came a powder charge. Out came a fixed shell.

"Fosforo… preparado… fuego!"

Blam went the world, loud as thunder at one's elbow, rocking the floating battery so hard it felt like she'd been hit with a substantial slab of cliff.

"On target! Right in the center, sir!" Spendlove screamed with delight. "Spot-on! Yayy, give 'em another!"

"Carry on, sir," Lewrie laughed. Damme, but we've gotten main-good at this service, he thought smugly, going to the ratlines to go aloft to enjoy the morning's work.

With French and British help to do the carrying, they got into a rhythm of one shell a minute. It took the French at least ten to even begin to respond, and their first shots in reply were directed at the closest coastal fort, St. Margaret, just as Lewrie had thought. And he didn't think the small garrison there enjoyed being taken for the goat.

Within an hour of hot practice, the fire from La Garde began to slack off. It had been furious for a while, shells dropping all over on the cliffs, on either side of the saddle between the hills, probing far afield, into the cove and upon the beach as they shot over initially.

Then the first shell came singing overhead with a whistling moan. It landed far out to sea, perhaps half a mile away, to splash a feather of spray, then burst. A minute later there came a second, also an over, more off the bows, to their right, but closer in.

"They're correcting to our smoke," Lewrie sneered to Spendlove as yet a third shell followed the same path, and blew up close to shore but far to the right, almost dead on their bows. The wind was veering, more from the west now, ragging then-stupendous powder pall eastward, lower to the water before it collided with the back eddies off the bluffs, so it might appear to the French that a gun-boat was hidden in a cove even farther east, where it at last arose beyond the lip of the cliffs.

"Just as long as they can't see our fore-top, sir?" Spendlove inquired, full of good cheer. Nothing tremulous to that young man's tone!

"It's barely over the saddle, e'en so, Mister Spendlove," Lewrie chuckled. "And with no topmast standing?"

"Preparado… fuego!" BLAM!

They turned to the next fall-of-shot. They were firing 3,080 yards: twenty-seven seconds of flight time for a shell, with a quim-hair less than a six-inch fuse, and four drams shy of twenty pounds of powder down the chamber of the mortar. Zele was shuddering like a kicked hound to each shot. In the fore-top that resulted in a shock, then a sway, judders so short and sharp it felt like the mast was going to be kicked out of its step far below on the keel.

'Twenty-five… twenty-six… twenty-sev… hit!" Spend-love said with glee, as he had every shot of the morning, hit or miss.

Brumm! La Garde groaned, as a section of tumbled wall was blown out, massive blocks of masonry sent flying like so many rooks, scared from one gleaning to the next by a farmer's fowling piece. Dirty rags of smoke gushed out behind them, gunpowder-tan at first, then darkening as other things began to burn in the aftermath of a magazine strike to grow to a spreading, wind-flattened pillar of smoke worthy of a burning city.

And a shell splashed down behind Zele, out to sea on her starboard side. But close enough to rock her when the fuse burned down underwater and made it explode as it sank to the rocky bottom.

"Found us," Lewrie frowned. "Well, it only took the clowns over an hour, this time. That may have been their parting shot, though."

Esquevarre kept on throwing a shell a minute at La Garde. Once more, though, there was a shell thrown back-two, in fact One burst on the beach, scooping up a hail of gravel to add to its shattered iron cloud of shrapnel. Rocks and metal slivers pattered in a rain into the sea between the beach and the larboard bows. The second shell struck in the middle of the cove, equally between their floating battery and shore. And even on the fore-top, Lewrie and Spendlove were doused by spray.

'"Bout time to shift anchorage, Mister Spendlove. Lay below to the deck. Inform Mister Scott he is to ready the ship to hoist anchors, and for the comandante to secure his guns."

"Aye, sir," Spendlove replied crisply, then, agile as a monkey, took a stay in a hopeful, but sure, leap and slithered down, half sliding to the deck, hand-over-hand.

There were sharp noises, more bangs. For a moment, Lewrie thought that Fort St. Margaret had opened fire with her six- and twelve-pounders, to delude the French; though with the harsh pounding they'd taken earlier, he rather doubted they'd be that charitable. There was a splash, about the bows.

The bows? he frowned. And no explosion? Solid-shot!

He looked east, towards Notre Dame de Bon Salut.

There! A wisp of powder smoke. It hadn't come from the arrow-tipped bluff above the beach, the Lord be praised, but farther east on the coast road, just where it began to crest the eastern hill, firing from defilade. Sure enough, another shot erupted from what he took to be at least an eight-pounder. And Fort St. Margaret's shot moaned overhead in reply, to strike flinty, gravelly soil and leap and bound in deadly ricochet around it, puffing up clumps of dust at every touching.

"Damned right, we're shifting anchorage!" he groaned to himself. "We're getting out of here!" A second eight-pounder now opened alongside the first.

There was a moaning in the sky, the skree of a heavy shell on its way into the cove from La Garde. Lewrie stopped, with one hand on the standing-backstay, to see a second slow in its upward flight, to stand still in the air as a tiny black mote for a split second, then dash to invisibility again. Hadn't he heard, if you could see it, it was dead on, and…?

With a sick premonition, he looked down to the deck, where Comandante Esquevarre was looking up as well, his face blanched, even under the grime of gun soot. Then the gun deck disappeared.

They struck Zele, right in the mortar well. A shell must have been in the well, fixed and ready to be loaded. A powder charge, too, nearly twenty pounds' worth, free of its leathern cylinder, wrapped only in an easily ignited paper cartridge. There were two sharp explosions in one, almost atop each other, and a hail of splinters howled around him, blown upwards to spatter into the bottom timbers of the fighting-top!

Lewrie leaned back quickly, throwing himself flat, feeling wood jump beneath his belly, as smoke gushed up the lubber's hole, and the foremast shuddered and groaned. He started to rise, but fell flat at the second skree. That was the one he'd seen stopping, he hadn't even seen the first that took the well, he…

Another crash aft. No explosion. He turned his head to look and saw a star-shaped hole in the rear of the quarterdeck, right through the tough planking and beaming of what had been an upper gun deck… into the filling room! If it…