Havoc`s Sword

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Soft Rabbit in a fashionable gown and picture hat was laughing with glee as he danced with her at Ranelagh Gardens, under the myriad candles, white-silk heeled shoes and stockinged ankles flirting under the froth of lace at her hems, whilst Theoni Connor stood and fanned herself near the string orchestra in livery and powdered wigs playing, inexplicably, a lively jig called "Go To The Devil And Shake Yourself." Theoni had a mug of ale in her other hand-and a Muskogee "papoosa" cross her back which bore twin boys, peering over one shoulder and beneath an armpit. Theoni was quite fetching in beaded buckskins, but a pair of gnarled, tanned, and sooty bare feet quite put him off, and…

"Sir! Sir!" Midshipman Grace said in a harsh whisper near his bed-cot. "Mister Adair's duty, sir, and he says to tell you that the enemy is in sight, sir!"

"Woof?" Lewrie grunted, pushing himself up from his face-down frog sprawl to an elbow. "Umm… where away?"

"Two points off the starboard bows, sir, and almost hull-up to us, sailing about Nor'west-by-North… reefed down for the night, he said to tell you, sir!" Grace tumbled out with eagerness. "It is now a quarter-glass shy of Four Bells, and Mister Adair has doused all of our lights, soon as the starboard bow lookout sang out, and…!"

"Very well, Mister Grace," Lewrie replied, shaking his head to clear the cob-webs; the cool air streaming into his cabins had put him into a deep, muzzy, and dizzying sleep, as he had expected the afternoon before. "Move, Toulon, there's a good cat!" he hissed as he flung off the sheet and quilt he'd drawn up sometime after he'd caulked out cold. Toulon was curled up atop the quilt, between his spread thighs, taking his sweet time to stretch at being wakened at such an ungodly hour.

Aspinall had been summoned from his hammock a deck below in the after stores room, but was taking his sweet time arriving, too. Lewrie grabbed the first clothes his hands encountered off the back of a chair near his bed-cot and hurriedly dressed.

"Mister Adair is to call all hands to Quarters, Mister Grace," he snapped as he drew a shirt over his head. "No pipes, no fifes and drums, and tell him I'll be on deck, directly. Go! Scamper, lad!"

Shirt and breeches, shoes and coat, and no time to fool with a pair of stockings; a trundle cross the cabins to his arms rack for his hanger, and to hell with his hat. Within a frantic two minutes in the dark, he was out past the Marine sentry on the gun-deck and scampering up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck scant moments ahead of the hands who'd come to strip his great-cabins of partitions, furniture, and fittings, to man the 12-pounders mounted right-aft.

"Captain, sir," Lt. Adair reported, knuckling his forehead for a salute, instead of doffing his hat. "You can see her in the night-glass, sir… two points off the starboard bows. Three-masted, full-rigged, but reefed down to tops'ls, jibs, and spanker for the night."

Lewrie accepted the heavy night-glass and lifted it to his eye, espying the strange ship, upside-down and backwards, as if sailing on a reciprocal course to her real one, due to requirements of the optics in the tube, as Lt. Adair prosed on to finish his report.

"… about a half-hour before, sir, just looming behind Pointe Al-legre. Her going Northerly, us fetching the point? Saw her lights, but we thought she was just a fishing smack, out night-trawling, 'til we got close enough for her sails to catch some moonlight, sir, and we divined how big she was."

"Very well, Mister Adair. My compliments to the lookouts, and to your quick judgement regarding our taff-rail and binnacle lights. I will… ah, Mister Langlie? That you in the night-shirt, is it?"

"Aye, sir," his First Lieutenant said, sounding sheepish about his catch-as-catch-can state of dress.

"Hands aloft, and shake out the night reefs in the main and the mizen tops'ls, let fall one reef in the main course," Lewrie directed. "Waisters to the braces, and steer for a point ahead of her bows. She shows no sign of spotting us yet, and bows-on to her, she might not 'til we're close-aboard! Expect to engage with the larboard battery. And where's Mister Devereux?"

"Here, sir," the Marine officer replied from near the larboard quarterdeck ladder. Lewrie could barely make him out by the sheen of his white silk shirt and white cotton breeches, quickly masked back to darkness by his batsman, who was pushing him into his red tunic, black in the faint moonlight of predawn. "Will you be requiring a boarding-party, pray God, sir?" Lt. Devereux enquired, carefully making his way over tackle, ring-bolts, and the neatly coiled jear and halliard lines by a series of shuffling, probing scuffles.

"Sorry we've proved boresome of late, Mister Devereux," Lewrie said, chuckling. "Aye. Man the larboard gangway, and be ready to go over to her, should she prove to be hostile."

There were many more comings and goings, with a deal of grunts, curses, and muffled yelps as less-careful or less-fortunate crewmen or officers stubbed their shoes or bare toes on deck obstructions in the darkness. Proteus thudded and slammed with the sounds of preparation for battle as sea-chests, furnishings, and partitions were slung below or out of the way, as gun-tools were fetched from the racks overhead of the raised mess tables one deck below; as shot, wadding, and powder cartridges began to come up from the rope-garlands or the magazine. A deaf man, Lewrie imagined, could have heard the ruckus aboard the ship off their bows, what with all the creaking and skreaking of the parrel balls binding the yards to the masts as they changed angles, the cries from the hoisting blocks, and the loud rustles of freed canvas as the night-reefs were unbound and the yards hoisted higher, the clew-lines drawing tauter, the halliards, and even the braces "sawing" cross wood belaying pins and the tops of the pin-rails.

"Could be a neutral, I s'pose, sir," Mr. Winwood cautioned from near the darkened binnacle cabinet.

"Then we're about to scare some poor Yankee or Dane out of his shoes, and a year's growth," Lewrie japed. "But I doubt that. Mister Adair said she was ghosting along behind Pointe Allegre, well within sight of Guadeloupe from her own decks, and what neutral'd risk that?"

"Mmm," Winwood pondered. Lewrie could hear his new footwear, a handsome pair of Hessian boots he'd bought at English Harbour, creak as he rocked on the balls of his feet. "Then perhaps our last raid makes them sail after sunset, hoping to be a good half-day's sail out to sea before false dawn, Captain. Beyond the ken of any blockaders?"

"I'd be gratified to hear that our last visit resulted in such a panic, aye, Mister Winwood," Lewrie snickered. "Good God, who's that?" he asked as a meaty thud, two grunts, and a faint "Dammit!" arose from the larboard ladder.

"Bosun, sir," Mr. Pendarves reported in a harsh, gravelly voice. "Ship's at Quarters, Mister Catterall begs me t'report."

"Very good, Mister Pendarves! And who's that with you?" "Me, sir," Mr. Peel told him in a loud, theatrical whisper. "I beg your pardon, Mister Pendarves, for colliding with you. Seems this set of stairs isn't wide enough for two at the same time, what?"

"Ladder, sir… ladder!" Pendarves snarled as he made his way forward. "Bloody damned civilian… lubbers, by…!" They could all hear him seethe under his breath. "Clumsy, cack-handed, cunny…" "Midshipman of the watch?" Lewrie softly asked, hugely amused, but holding in his guffaws. "Do you take my keys to the arms lockers forrud to the Bosun, will you? He is to arm waisters, brace-tenders, and landsmen, and be ready for a boarding action to larboard."

"Oi, sor," Mr. Larkin said, stumbling forward to take the keys, and not even bothering to disguise his sniggers as he deftly sprang to a ladder and sprinted forward.

"Now, where's our spook, goin' bump in the night?" Lewrie asked, lifting the heavy night-glass, again. She was right ahead, smothered by Proteus's jibs. Quartermaster Austen and Quartermaster's Mate Toby Jugg were on the large helm, and steering as if to ram her just abaft of her starboard anchor cat-head. They could all see her without the use of telescopes, now, not two cables distant. And still as blind as a bat, it seemed! Lewrie could see people round her helm and compass binnacle, ghostily underlit by the binnacle lamps, see the amber glow of a pipe bowl as a watchstander took a deep draw on it. Her taff-rail lanthorns were merrily agleam, and another glow of light loomed below her rails and bulwarks, up near her forecastle belfry, like the lamps of a lighthouse just under the horizon.

"Dear God, but they're clueless!" Lt. Langlie chortled softly.

"Quartermasters," Lewrie bade. "We'll round up alongside her at about a third of a cable, thankee, our mizen even with their mizen then let wind and sea push us down hull-to-hull. Gently, and I leave that to your best judgement t'just kiss her."

"Aye, sir," Austen and Jugg both chorused in tense whispers.

"At a cable, Mister Langlie, let fly all to get our way off, so we don't scud right past her," Lewrie continued. "Grappling hooks and boarding parties to be ready… the larboard bow-chaser to fire, when I call for it."

"Aye aye, sir," Lt. Langlie replied, leaning over the rail and nettings to pass the word forward and below to the crew. Barely had he done so when the unidentified ship's watchstanders stiffened and froze in surprise, having spotted Proteus bearing down on them, at last, and began to fling their arms about and tumble out a string of orders.

"Mon Dieu, qu'est-ce que tues fous? Ca va pas, non?" the senior watchkeeping mate howled with the aid of a brass speaking-trumpet, his voice a horrified screech. "Detourner, detourner, maintenant!"

" 'What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? Turn, now,' " Mr. Peel was translating, quite enjoying the Frenchman's discomforture.

"Bow-chaser, Mister Langlie," Lewrie drawled.

"Larboard chase-gun… fire!" Followed by a loud bang!

"Open the larboard gun-ports," Lewrie instructed, "and begin to round up on her, if you please. Mister Peel, you speak good Frog. Do you inform her that we're British, and I'll blow her to kindling if she doesn't surrender, this instant. Ici la fregate anglaise Proteus, and all that. And we'll see which gives 'em the collywobbles… our artillery, or dare I hope, our fearsome name!"

Peel took Lt. Langlie's speaking-trumpet and went over to larboard-not without a new tangle with a ring-bolt and a curse or two-and shouted their identity and demands. At the same time, Proteus seemed to roar and snarl as the heavy gun-carriages' trucks thundered forward, as the gun-ports swung upward to bare blood-red squares above, and the sight of glossy-black muzzles below them, run out in battery.

"Putain! Mon Dieu, merde alors! Mort de ma vie ! Aack!" could be made out among screeches, shrill screams, and distressed howls of sudden terror as the off-duty watch came boiling up from below to gape at the slaughter which lay not a ship-length from them. "Oui! Not to fire, we are the surrender! Reddition, please!"

"Ease us alongside, Quartermasters. Mister Devereux! Ready to board her and round her rabble up!" Lewrie chortled. "Ready, boarders!

Order was being sorted out of the French crew's panicky chaos. Braces and sheets were being released from the pin-rails to allow her sails to flag and luff, powerless, as Proteus thundered again with the roar and snarl of defiance, from every hand's throat, this time. With throat-tearing, savage yells of triumph!