The Invasion Year

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After an hour or so, the winds returned, the faintest zephyr off the land, sometimes from the East, then backing into the Sou’east for a few minutes, allowing Reliant to stir, to ghost ahead on her former course of Due North, barely fast enough for the rudder to bite. It was a land-breeze, for the sea was much cooler, and shed its gathered heat more quickly than did the shores, the rocky hills, and the land of France. And even before the land-breeze arose, had come the fog, and it was as thick as a hand-before-your-face London “pea-souper.” Before the sun had risen, the fog had become so thick that the belfry lanthorn and its crispness had been turned to a vague blob of light, and even the larger taffrail lanthorns right aft on the quarterdeck had gone feeble.

Lewrie had gone below long enough to scrub up, fetch the keys to the arms chests and his own weapons-find his hat and boat-cloak-then returned to the deck, to slouch in his collapsible canvas sling-chair, now and then peering aloft at the commissioning pendant, now all but lost in mist, not darkness. Now and again, once the sun was up, a bank of fog would roll over the ship, a bank so thick that he couldn’t make out the forecastle, much less the jib-boom!

He breakfasted later than the hands, taking only a bowl of oat-meal with strawberry jam and mug after mug of coffee, with goat’s milk and sugar, and a fairly fresh piece of ship’s bisquit or two soaked for long minutes in the coffee to make them soft enough to chew. And, he fretted over his ship’s vulnerability, the lack of speed with which to flee, the thickness of the fog from which gunboats could come with not half a minute’s warning.

Lewrie tried to be the sort of captain that the Navy demanded: cool, serene, and stoic in the face of danger. But that sort of pose was not in his nature, never had been in the past, and, he freely admitted to himself, might never be in future. He had to rise at last and pace the quarterdeck, hands clasped in the small of his back, hidden by the folds of his boat-cloak so no one could see them being wrung. Up the windward side, which was his alone by right and long tradition, cross the forward edge of the quarterdeck by the stanchions and nets now full of rolled-up bedding and hammocks, then aft down the lee side right to the taffrails, flag lockers, and the now-extinguished lanthorns before beginning another circuit. He paused and looked aloft, again.

“Ha!” Lewrie barked. He could see the commissioning pendant as it lazily curled, could make out the maze of rigging, sails, yards, and top-masts once more. He could even see the tip of the jib-boom. Aft, he could see the two barges and both of Reliant’s cutters under tow. A half-hour before, all he could see was the towing lines, stretching out into nothing!

“It seems to be thinning, at last, sir,” Lt. Westcott said as Lewrie joined him by the helm. With the ship at Quarters, Spendlove and Merriman were at their posts in the waist, surpervising the guns.

“About bloody time, too,” Lewrie said with relief and evident enthusiasm. “Ye can see out-board a long musket shot or better. Any idea where we are now, by dead reckoning, Mister Westcott?”

“Uhm, about here, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, stepping forward to the chart pinned to the traverse board. “Coutances should be abeam of us to windward…”

“Windward, mine arse,” Lewrie japed. “Zephyr-ward, more like.”

“With this land-breeze and ebbing tide carrying us, I have no idea how far off the coast we are, sir… sorry,” Westcott added as he traced their course with a forefinger. “Our last sure cross-bearings put us six miles off, and I’d imagine that we’ve made enough lee-way to estimate that we might be eight miles off, by now.”

“In mid-Channel ’twixt France and Jersey, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “Does this scant breeze allow, we might bear a point more Westerly. I wouldn’t want t’run her too close to Cape Carteret, and on Due North, there’s Cape de la Hague beyond that.”

He looked up to sniff the air and peer about, then returned to the chart. “This has t’burn off, say, by Four Bells of the Forenoon and the winds’ll surely shift back from somewhere in the West, so-”

“Harkee, sir!” Mr. Caldwell barked. “Did any of you hear that?”

“Hear what, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

“I did, sir!” Midshipman Munsell piped up. “Over yonder?” the younker said, pointing out to starboard, his mouth agape and his eyes blared in alarm.

Moo-oo-wa!

“Sea-monsters?” Quartermaster’s Mate Malin whispered to another fellow manning the helm.

“Hist!” Quartermaster Rhys snapped back.

Moo-oo-wa! came from the fog, plaintive and hackle-raising eerie, answered a moment later by a second, then a third, and a fourth further off and fainter!

If any seals turn up, we’ll tow the ship out of here! Lewrie thought; That’s just… spooky!

“Sea cows?” Midshipman Munsell shudderingly asked.

“Fog horns!” the Sailing Master exclaimed. “Trumpets of some kind, or someone yelling through speaking-trumpets.”

“Where away?” Lewrie snapped, dreading the chance that there were what sounded like four gunboats out there, trying to find each other.

Moo-wa!

“There, sir!” Munsell cried, pointing off the starboard quarter. “I think.”

Moo-wa! And that one sounded as if it was out to larboard, out to sea of them! As the other fog horns mournfully lowed, Lt. Westcott pointed at one, and Caldwell at yet another, his arms out-stretched to encompass a section of the fog, swivelling his head and hands like an errant compass needle as his best estimate.

“Sir! Sir!” Midshipman Munsell was crying, hopping on his toes in urgency. “I think I can see a light out there, to starboard, where the loudest one was!” Without being ordered, Munsell sprang into the main-mast shrouds and scrambled up the rat-lines a few feet. “There, sir! I do see a light, a tiny one!”

Lewrie and the others peered out to find it on their own.

“Waving back and forth… hand-held?” Lt. Westcott speculated. “Like someone in a small boat?”

“A fleet of fishermen, perhaps,” Mr. Caldwell mused aloud.

So long as they ain’t gunboats! Lewrie thought.

“This far off the coast, sir?” Westcott countered. “In such a flat calm, with no wind? Were they fishing boats, they would have had to set out from Coutances or some other wee port very early last night to be caught by this fog.”

“In their home waters they know best?” Lewrie scoffed. “I don’t think French fishermen’d dare come out this far, not since the war reopened. Our close blockade keeps ’em a lot nearer port, as we saw in the Gulf of Saint Malo. It does look like a hand-held lanthorn, don’t it? So whatever sort o’ boat it is, it can’t be all that large.”

Lewrie gave it a long think, then went to the break of the quarterdeck to look down into the be-fogged waist of the ship where his men sat round the guns, ready to spring into action when ordered.

“Mister Merriman,” he called down, “see Bosun Sprague and assemble an armed boat crew. Mister Simcock?” he said to their officer of Marines, who had been idly pacing the starboard gangway behind the file of a dozen Marines posted by the bulwarks and rolled hammock nettings. “I’d admire some of your men to go with Mister Merriman to see just what’s out there, and board it, if it’s manageable.”

“Very good, sir!” Lt. Simcock replied, stiffening to attention and beaming at a chance to do something.

“May I have Cox’n Desmond and your boat crew, sir?” Lt. Merriman asked. At Lewrie’s emphatic nod, the Third Lieutenant turned about to point at Desmond, Furfy, and the rest, summoning them to the gangway and the starboard entry-port. “I’ll take one of the towed barges, sir, so we’ll have room enough for the ‘lobsterbacks.’ ”

“Very good,” Lewrie agreed. “Make sure you’ve a boat compass, and mark your reciprocal course. We’re not goin’ anywhere quickly, so we should be easy to find,” he japed.

Moo-wa! wailed from larboard, making Lewrie swivel his head to find her in the impenetrable banks of fog, and think that the source of that eldritch hooting might lay two points or more forward of abeam to Reliant. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought.

“Mister Houghton,” he called to their oldest Midshipman, “I wish you to take the second barge, and some Marines, and seek out the boat out yonder,” he ordered, pointing off in the general direction that his ears had determined, repeating his warning to take a good boat compass.

Moo-wa! sounded from larboard again, in answer to a thin chorus of horn-amplified hoots very far out to starboard. Reliant was in the middle of the mysterious boats, slowly ghosting forward on the scanty wind. If the so-far-unseen boats were small fishing boats, as Mister Caldwell first supposed, Lewrie could not imagine them being much over thirty feet in length, with only a single lug-sail. His frigate sported acres of canvas aloft in comparison, and, once such a large ship got any way upon her, her weight and much longer hull allowed her to coast onward, when smaller boats would wallow to a stop and require a stouter wind to get moving once more. They might truly be becalmed and helpless… whatever they were!

Not gunboats, though, no gunboats, pray Jesus! Lewrie thought.

Moo-wa! and Hoo! from all quarters, some close, most distant and eerie, and Lewrie took note of his idle gunners looking at each other uneasily, a few of the ship’s boys who crouched down the centreline of the waist between the guns, leather-cased powder cartridges in their hands, peering about wide-eyed in fear.

“It ain’t whales, lads, and it ain’t sea-monsters,” Lewrie told them as loud as he dared. “They’re Frog fishermen, most-like, lost in the fog, and they haven’t a clue that Reliant’s the fox in the chicken coop!”

That seemed to satisfy most of the crew, though not all.

“Both the barges are away, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported. “Mister Houghton’s is almost out of sight, not a musket-shot off, and the other is already swallowed up. Wish you’d have sent me, sir,” he added.

“Are they gunboats, I need you here, sir,” Lewrie said. “If we end up seizing a couple of fishing smacks, there’s not enough glory in ’em. Why, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie posed with a grin. “Are ye in need of favourable notice with Admiralty? One of your amours isn’t some admiral’s daughter, is she?”

“Frankly, sir, but for the chance to be blown sky-high by one of our bloody torpedo contraptions, it’s been a dull Summer,” Lt. Westcott replied. “Looking for a bit of honest excitement was my desire.”

“Captain Speaks will be returning with a fresh lot of catamaran torpedoes,” Lewrie pointed out. “Perhaps we’ll actually employ ’em on the French… under return fire and at close range. Be careful what you ask for, Mister Westcott. There’s some honest excitement for you!”

“Just so long as we are in action, sir,” Westcott told him with a hungry grin and a flash of his teeth.

Lewrie paced back to the binnacle cabinet, with his First Lieutenant dutifully following him.

“We’re making two and a half knots, sir, barely,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, reported, his coat damp from supervising the cast of the log. “I was wondering about what you said, sir… that the local French fishermen would stay closer to shore, and no stiff wind could’ve blown them this far out where they might run into some of our ships on close blockade?”

“Aye, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie prompted, feeling a shiver that he might be wrong in thinking that they had blundered into only small boats. He was used to being wrong!

“Might the French have tried to sneak a convoy of invasion boats up the coast, and got caught the same as us in this odd turn of the weather?” Mr. Caldwell posed. “There’s a good, sheltered inlet South of us by Avranches and Saint Hilaire,” he said, referring to the chart for a moment. “Were they building caiques and such in there, they might have thought to sneak them as far as Cherbourg in one night.”

“And if they are a convoy of invasion craft, they might have an escort or two, is what you’re thinking?” Lewrie asked him, feeling yet another shiver of dread.

“Do we blunder up close to one, sir, perhaps they’ll take us for one of their big, three-masted prames,” Lt. Westcott said, shrugging.

Moo-wa! lowed from larboard once again, sounding much closer to them than before, followed by a thin voice!

“Quelq’un la-bas?… Allo?”

“Houghton’s boat must be upon it, whatever it is!” Lt. Westcott snapped, going to the larboard side in more haste than officers of the Royal Navy usually displayed. “French, for certain, by God!”

“Qui va la?” that distant voice came again, caution or alarm in its tone. “Qui vive?” more sharply and urgent.

That demand was answered by a volley of musket shots, soft pops, and cracks muffled by the fog, from Midshipman Houghton’s men or the French they could not tell, but there came a human wail of surprise or pain, and thin cheers!

“Whatever it is, it sounds as if Mister Houghton thinks he can board it and take it, sir!” Westcott called over his shoulder. Even as he turned back to look out-board, there came a few more muffled cracks too soft for muskets; it sounded as if Houghton, his sailors, and the Marines might actually be aboard and close enough for pistol-shots!

“Dear Lord, if they’ve troops aboard!” Mr. Caldwell cautioned.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Lewrie said after listening intently for more clues. There were no more shots, and only one more chorus of cheers, triumphant sounds, before the day went still once more, and he could not tell if it was British cheers, or from the French, who might have out-manned, swarmed, and over-awed Midshipman Houghton’s party to take them all prisoner. All Lewrie could hear was the groans from the barely swaying masts, the tilting yards, and Reliant’s hull timbers.

“More shooting, sir, from starboard!” the Sailing Master yelled. “Lieutenant Merriman’s at it!”

“Somethin’ orf th’ starb’d bows!” a lookout shouted from the forecastle. With the fog so thick, they had kept night-time deck lookouts posted as well as the day lookouts placed high aloft in the top-masts. “Strange boat t’starb’d… close aboard!”

It took a few more seconds for that strange boat to appear to the people on the quarterdeck. First there was nothing but whiteness and fog, then a faint and darker shadowy bulk that magically materialised, only slowly taking solid form.

“What the Devil is that?” the Sailing Master barked as the oddity fully emerged.

Salvation from that threatened court-martial? Lewrie thought in sudden glee.

The French boat looked to be no further off than a long musket-shot, a two-masted thing with its lug-sails and jibs hanging limp and the booms sweeping uselessly to either beam. It resembled an inverted serving platter or shallow soup tureen, with a long rectangular box on its back that ran down the centreline, from the small cockpit to the rhino-like proboscis in the bow.

“A beetle?” Lt. Westcott deemed it, sounding awed. That was a fair-enough first guess, for near its forward third there were wide-bladed oars jutting to either side, at least half a dozen on the larboard side that faced them, and they were being worked like scoops to crawl it forward, just like a water-beetle that had lost most of its legs!

“Qui vive? Heu, mort de ma vie!” the lone Frenchman aft at the thing’s helm wailed. Just aft of him at its taffrail stood a staff, from which a small French Tricolour windlessly dangled.

“Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie yelled to the gun-deck. “Take that… thing under fire!”

One of the big’uns, I think, Lewrie adjudged after a dash for the starboard bulwarks for a better look; fourty-five or fifty feet in length… the type Peel said could carry an hundred French troops!

“As you bear… fire!” Lt. Spendlove cried in sing-song.

Even with the wood quoins fully inserted under the breeches of the guns, the odd French invasion barge lay so low to the water that half the shots only scythed away the two masts and lug-sails, crashed clean through that long centreline box that should protect French soldiers and let them re-load in shelter, carrying most of it away in a whirl of shattered lumber! It was the carronades on the quarterdeck with their screw adjusters under their breeches that could be depressed low enough to score solid hits, and they were awesome! They were 32-pounders firing solid shot, and they punched huge holes right through the carapace of the “beetle’s” back and, from the parroty Rrawk-screech sounds which followed the initial timber-screams on entry, carried on at a shallow angle out the boat’s starboard side!

The French boat’s helmsman, before being cut in two by roundshot, had put its helm hard-over, and though the rest of its crew that had been manning the paddles had abandoned them and come rushing on deck, the strange craft swung its bows shoreward, coasting along on a scant momentum. What little wind there was that moved the banks of fog blew the gunsmoke back into the faces of the gun crews as they swabbed out and began the ritual of re-loading, blinding everyone for long moments with thick yellow-white clouds of sulfur-reeking smoke.

By the time the guns were run out in-battery once more and the gun-captains could take aim, the range was just long enough for surer aim.

“As you bear… fire!” Lt. Spendlove screeched again.

“That’s better!” Lewrie cheered. “That’s the way, lads!”

Before a fresh bank of gunsmoke blotted out their view again, Lewrie could see shot-splashes all round the boat, close aboard its waterline, and more holes punched into her larboard side and stern-quarters!

“Overhaul tackle… staunch and swab out!” Lt. Spendlove was hoarsely ordering. “Cartridges up!”

“Sir! Sir!” Midshipman Munsell shrilled, still at his post in the main-mast shrouds. “She’s sinking, sir! She’s sinking!”

The French build ’em out o’ papier-mache? Lewrie wondered as he leaned far out over the quarterdeck bulwarks to see for himself.

Damned if the boat wasn’t sinking! Instead of an up-turned soup tureen, the thing now more-resembled a large-holed colander, with shot holes riddling its stern and larboard side. There was no sign of the other French sailors who had dashed to the deck. It was both down by the bows, most-likely dragged by the weight of the rumoured 24-pounder bow gun, and heeled over to starboard, the result of the 32-pound shot from the carronades, the “Smashers,” that had gone completely through her hull to her starboard side below the waterline.

It rolled onto its beam ends, revealing a clean, new bottom but without the normal protection against barnacles, weed, and wood-boring worms; the French had not coppered her bottom! The curve of the lower hull was shallower than the upperworks, and most of its length was flat-bottomed, like a river barge.

“They think to dare the open sea, the Channel, in that?” Lieutenant Westcott hooted in derision as the odd, alien-looking boat went down by the bows, cocking its riddled stern in the air for an instant like a feeding duck, then sank in a welter of foam and released air.

“Pray God they do, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie said, laughing out loud with his arms outstretched in joy. “Fetch ’em up to half a cable in clear weather, and one broadside’ll do for each. When they come we can make a meal of ’em!”

“What was that, sir?” Mr. Caldwell asked.

“A French secret weapon, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie happily told him, “one that doesn’t seem worth a tupenny shit. They’re supposed to paddle themselves right onto a beach, use that twenty-four-pounder in the bow t’clear the way, and land about one hundred Frog troops each.”

“Then Bonaparte’s dafter than I thought, sir!” Caldwell replied, with a chuckle, though he shook his head in amazement.

“You knew of them, sir?” Westcott asked.

“Unofficially,” Lewrie admitted. “Some months ago before they saddled us with the torpedo experiments.”

“D’ye hear, there! Strange boat off the starboard quarters!” a deck lookout aft by the transom shouted.

“Hoy, Reliant!” a voice shouted from the fog. “Merriman here! Hold your fire! We’re returning with a prize!”

Lewrie returned to the starboard bulwarks, clambering atop one of the carronades’ slides for a better view. Another of the strange boats swam slowly into view, its broad-bladed paddles clawing at the sea, all out of coordination… and the first part of it that seemed completely solid from out of the thick fog was that snout at the bows, that 24-pounder!

“Ahoy, Mister Merriman!” Lewrie called back through his cupped hands. “Is that bow gun loaded?”

“No, sir! There’s no shot or powder aboard!” Lt. Merriman gaily called back. “We’ve two prisoners, one of them wounded, and one of our Marines slightly hurt. Cox’n Desmond is ready to pass a towing line, when you’re ready!”

“She’s an ugly bitch, ain’t she, lads?” Liam Desmond yelled to the ship as he stood just beside that large gun, with a heavy coil of line readied.

“An’t worth half a crown in prize-money!” his mate, Furfy, just had to add, capering a jig on the boat’s sloping foredeck.

The Hell she ain’t! Lewrie thought; There’s people in London, at Admiralty, who’ll turn Saint Catherine wheels t’see one, close up!

The Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, came up from his surgery in the cockpit on the orlop, accompanied by a party of loblolly boys bearing a pair of mess tables for stretchers as the odd boat, and the borrowed barge, came close alongside to transfer all the Marines, the two French prisoners, and Lt. Merriman back aboard.

“We can take it under tow, but that may slow us to nothing,” Lewrie said, looking up hopefully at the sails and commissioning pendant, which still hung limp, only its free end being lifted. “Welcome back aboard, Mister Merriman, and congratulations on carrying out your action so briskly.”

“Thank you, sir. It was simple, really,” Merriman said. “The thing loomed up, we scrambled up the slope of the hull, gave them one volley and cold steel, and it was done. The hardest part was climbing the slope. Whatever that thing is, it’s only sixteen or eighteen feet abeam, and it looks as if it rises about eight feet to the turtleback… or beetleback, ha ha! A bit slippery,” he said with a glad shrug.

“Metalled hull, was it?” Lewrie asked, hoping that it was not. “That… box down the centreline. Armoured, was it?”

“Lord, no, sir, just wood!” Lt. Merriman laughed. “The box is made of one-inch deal planking over four-by-four posts!”

“D’ye hear, there!” another lookout cried from up forward. “A boat off the larboard beam! ’Tis another o’ the things!”

“Stand by, the larboard battery!” Lt. Spendlove on the gun-deck warned his gunners.

“Ahoy, Reliant! Barge number two, with prize!”

“That you, Mister Houghton?” Lewrie shouted back, with a brass speaking-trumpet this time.

“Aye, sir! Permission to come alongside? We’ve a wounded man, and a prisoner!” Midshipman Houghton called out.

“Very well, Mister Houghton!” Lewrie agreed. “Pass us a line, and we’ll try t’take you under tow. We’ve a second prize t’deal with as well.”

“The fog’s thinning to seaward, sir, and there’s a bit of wind from the West,” Houghton informed him as his capture solidified from the fog; she could be made out nearly two hundred yards off, about the range of Lewrie’s breech-loading Ferguson rifle-musket. With any luck, the sea-breeze would spring to life and would be strong enough for towing both prizes out on larboard tack, one bound to Reliant’s stern and the second bound to the stern of the first barge!

And alter course, at last, a bit more Nor’westerly, and clear the French coast before the fog burns completely off, Lewrie schemed.

“Listen, sir,” Westcott pointed out. “It seems we’ve upset the French.”

The mournful baying of fog horns had turned urgent and rapid, more like a pack of hounds that had run a fox to its earth. Added to that baying were a couple of trumpets.

“I didn’t know the French were much fond of fox-hunting, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh. “Hear that? ’Ta-tara-tara!! Yoicks, tally-ho! There must be one sporting fellow out there.”

“It does sound like a fox-hunt, doesn’t it?” Lewrie mused. “Are you a hunter, Mister Westcott?”

“We’re small-holders, sir… just fifty-odd acres,” Lt. Westcott said with a dismissive shrug, “so we only get invited the once each year, and I never saw the point. Steeplechasing at the gallop’s more to my liking, and I could do that any time. In fact, I’ve always felt sorry for the fox. Tried to make a pet of one when I was little, and you can imagine how that played out,” he added, chuckling.

“Fox kits and otter cubs… my son Hugh was mad for either, or both,” Lewrie rejoined with a laugh.

“Damn my eyes, is that a breeze, sir?” Westcott said, turning to look seaward, then aloft.

“Not much of one, but it’s from the West,” Lewrie replied as he looked aloft to the sails, which were, rustling uncertainly, trimmed to cup the land-breeze and now presented with one from the opposite tack. “Hands to the braces and sheets, Mister Westcott. Let’s make the most of it and get a goodly way on her. Mister Merriman?”

“Here, sir!”

“Rig towing lines from the stern to one boat, and another to the second,” Lewrie ordered. “And have the prize parties take in those paddle things, with an experienced helmsman in each.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Once we’re trimmed to the wind, Mister Caldwell, shape course Nor’-Nor’west, so we pass between Jersey and Alderney,” Lewrie told the Sailing Master. “Once we’re out in the Channel, we’ll take a bee-line for Portsmouth!”