The King's Coat

Chapter 14

Desperate was at sea, reaching north with a soldier’s wind on her starboard beam. For once she had company as she followed the thirty-two-gun frigate Amphion, and was in turn trailed by two sloops of war, Commander Ozzard’s Vixen, and another sloop of war named Roebuck. They had sailed north from English Harbor after making their offing, destined for Anegada, a low sand-and-coral island at the eastern end of the British Virgins. Once there, they had to be careful to avoid the Horseshoe Reefs, where hundreds of ships had come to grief over the years. Commander Treghues had sealed orders, which he had not shared with anyone as of yet, but the presence of four cruising-type warships in company bespoke a major effort of some kind, and rumors were rife in every compartment.

Rumors were also flying about what Treghues had said to Lewrie in his cabins. The captain’s clerk and steward were silent about the matter, mercifully, and Treghues was also tight-lipped, but it did not stop the wildest speculations.

People were indeed curious, and expanded on the slightest hints. Treghues behaved as if Lewrie were not there. He paid not the slightest attention to him during the course of his duties, had absolutely no comment about his navigation work when he inspected the midshipmen’s slates at noon sights, indeed barely glanced at Lewrie’s, and as Amphion led them around Horseshoe Reefs into the lee of Anegada at dawn of their third day at sea it was Carey who had charge of the leadsmen in the foremast chains, Forrester who had charge of the cutter that probed ahead of them, and Avery by the wheel, leaving Alan to bide his time restlessly aft by the taffrail with a signalman.

Once safely in deeper waters all four ships hove to, cocked up to windward and gently making leeway on the tide to the west, while all captains were summoned to the temporary flag frigate. The conference lasted two hours, at which time Treghues came back aboard and went below with Mr. Monk, leaving Railsford to get the ship underway again. During the course of the day the squadron reached north and south behind Anegada, not straying too far north, nor coming too far south so that they could be seen from Virgin Gorda.

It was dusk before a conference was held aft, a conference in a hot and stuffy cabin with the transom windows covered, in a ship that burned no lights except for the binnacle lanterns. Treghues had included the midshipmen, master’s mates, master, Marine officer and Railsford. Lewrie sat far back from the glossy desk, where a chart was spread out. Treghues gave him a single darting glance of malice before opening the meeting.

“Tomorrow, we raid the Danish Virgins,” Treghues said.

“But they’s neutral, sir,” Monk said in the buzz of excitement that followed Treghues’ pronouncement.

“Aye, they are, Mister Monk. Neutral, but culpable,” Treghues said wryly. “Admiral Rodney was most clever to seize St. Eustatius, and keep the Dutch flag flying. He took over one hundred fifty ships intent on running our blockade. But now the word is out and that traffic has shifted to other harbors. At first the Danes winked at privateers using their islands, and the local governors had little military force to control the traffic. We complained diplomatically, and they ordered belligerents and smugglers to move their operations to Puerto Rico or Cuba, but they never seem to put any teeth in those orders as long as the privateers are subtle about their doings. Now our job is to stage a lightning raid as though we are part of the ships based on Tortola, and put the fear of God and the Royal Navy into these people, scour them until they concentrate somewhere else, and force the Danes to play fair.”

“Most clever,” Forrester said loud enough for Treghues to hear him, which brought a smile from their captain.

“By first light Roebuck and Amphion, with local pilots, shall be far enough down the Drake’s Passage to look into Coral Bay on St. John, and then run down to the west and snap up everything that moves off the port of Charlotte Amalie,” Treghues went on, using a pair of brass dividers to sketch a course, tapping at the great hurricane hole and bay on the southeast coast of St. John, which island had been made desolate by a slave rebellion years before and pretty much left to go to ruin.

“We shall enter the open waters south of the island of St. Thomas, and head for the island of St. Croix.”

Everyone leaned a little closer to look at the western end of the Drake Passage, which was littered with rocks, possible shoals and the mark of a wreck or two.

“Mister Monk advises the Flanagan Passage for us, south of the island of the same name,” Treghues continued. “Vixen shall lead our little flotilla and shall be inshore of us, off Christiansted, going no closer than two leagues to avoid entering Danish waters. We shall be farther offshore snapping up one prize after another. Coming from the east as we shall be, with the sun behind us, with the Trade Winds behind us and with the westerly-setting tide flow, we can catch anything at sea. All ships and prizes shall concentrate here, later in the day, off the island of Vieques in the Passage Group, to the east of Puerto Rico.”

“This’ll be a bitch, sir,” Monk said, scratching at his scruffy chin. “Drake Passage is as lumpy as a country road. Now, there’s twenty-four to twenty-five fathoms, safe as houses, down Drake’s Passage. It’s here off Norman Island, it gets tricky. The chart don’t show it but somewhere off the point here nor-nor’west o’ Pelican there’s a shoal with a deep channel between that an’ another shoal. There’s deep water between Flanagan an’ The Indians an’ Ringdove Rock, ’bout fourteen-fathom at high tide. An’ ya can’t go too far inshore o’ Peter Island to avoid the shoals. I’d feel my way down with the fores’ls, spanker an’ forecourse, an’ keep the tops’ls at three reefs until we’re in the clear.”

“We shall be following Commander Ozzard,” Treghues said, disliking the advice. “So I think we should not have too much difficulty.”

“But if he sets on one o’ them shoals, sir…”

“We shall depend on your skill to guide us, Mister Monk,” Treghues said, moving on to other matters. “Prize crews. First will be Forrester and a bosun’s mate … Weems, I think, and ten hands, if she’s big. Next, Avery and Mister Feather. We’ll be in deep water, so the third crew will be Mister Monk, young Carey, and some men, depending on her size. Lieutenant Peck, if you should be so good as to provide four private Marines to each prize, in full kit to cow any resistance, I would be much obliged.”

“Delighted, sir,” Peck said. It was rare that his Marines had a chance to wear their scarlet uniforms at sea; usually they were dressed in slop clothing much like the hands, to save wear and tear.

“Should we be so incredibly fortunate as to take a fourth ship as a prize, I shall send the first lieutenant and Mr. Toliver, which will still leave me a master’s mate aboard. Bosun, see that each crew has a quartermaster’s mate or senior hand able to steer, and let’s get all our boats down for towing tonight.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

There were a few looks in Lewrie’s direction. He was rated as able to stand as an acting master’s mate, had done so already, in fact, and yet had been pointedly left out of their captain’s reckoning.

“If a chase is too small, burn it. We can also ignore the many local fishing boats unless they seem to be heavily loaded, or act suspiciously, or show too many white faces.”

“What about putting captives overboard, sir?” Railsford asked.

“Any ship engaged in illicit trade, you may spare the blacks, Danes and neutrals. But any belligerent nationals, and especially any American rebels, or rogue Englishmen, be sure to retain so they may be taken to court for their activities. The French, Spanish and Dutch deserve to be placed in chains, as do any rebels. And any Englishman partaking in this business deserves to hang for treason.”

* * *

By first light Lewrie was on the gun deck below the gangways, swaying uncomfortably as the squadron seemed to fly down the Sir Francis Drake Passage. The Trades were steady and blowing quite fresh. With the wind nearly dead aft it never felt like they were making much gain over the ground since they had no noticeable breeze. The only way to judge was to stand on a gun breech or the jear bitts and watch the many isles and rocks slide past. There was a heavy chop in the passage, six-foot waves seemingly about six feet apart, and the frigate’s four hundred fifty tons thumped and pounded through them, flinging spray halfway up the jibs.

The crew had gone through the motions of dawn Quarters, the daily scrubbing of decks, like automatons, but now there was a tingle of excitement in the air as they stood easy to their guns. They were piped below to their breakfasts but didn’t stay below long and came back up still chewing, to stow their hammocks and resume their waiting among the artillery.

“Mister Railsford, I’ll have chain slings rigged aloft on the yards,” Treghues ordered, finding work for them to do in the meantime. “Bosun, lay out the boarding nettings and prepare for hoisting.”

Lewrie had been on the quarterdeck earlier and had gotten a good look at Mr. Monk’s chart, much marked and doodled on from his years of experience in these waters. He could recognize Norman Island off their larboard bow, could spot the hump that was Pelican Island.

The locations of those two shoals, of which Monk was so leery, were shadowy guesses in dark pencil markings, and Alan tried to triangulate a possible way to avoid them.

About five cables ahead of them, half a mile, Vixen tiptoed her way a little closer inshore, and Desperate leaned slightly as she wore to follow her around. The leadsmen were alternating tossing the lead from either foremast chain platform, calling out their soundings, which had remained stable at twenty-four or twenty-five fathoms. Desperate drew nearly three, so she was still safe if the charts were right, though that was a big if. Farther ahead and off to starboard a little, Amphion and Roebuck were threading the gap between Flanagan Island and Privateer Point and would soon be able to look into the deep bay which might shelter enemy merchantmen or a privateer ship or two.

“God Almighty, he’s found a shoal!” Monk shouted, and Alan took a peek over the bows. Vixen was wearing almost due south, coming about hard and beginning to heel to the stiff breeze.

There was collective relief as Vixen continued on her new course and a signal flag went up to her mizzen truck, a numeral 8.

“Safe, by God,” Monk said loudly, leaning over his chart and pencilling in another bit of arcana for the Admiralty to peruse some day in future when he handed in all his charts upon paying off.

Vixen hoisted another numeral group: 25. She had found their deep-water passage to the south of Flanagan Island, and from what Alan could remember, would encounter nothing shallower than twelve or thirteen fathoms from then on. Desperate wore early, cutting the corner slightly on Vixen’s course until they wore due south right in her wake.

“Hands aloft!” the Bosun sang out. “Hands aloft an’ make sail! Lay out an’ let go tops’ls!”

They threaded the Flanagan Passage—the Indian Rocks to their east, Pelican Island off their larboard quarter, waves breaking over Ringdove Rock and shoal water shading off from dark blue to turquoise and aqua and pale green. That they did it at nearly seven knots and gaining added a certain piquancy to it all, even though they had found deep water. By the time the preventer backstays and jiggers had been freed and triced up, and the tops’ls hauled down and puffed full of wind, they were on their best point of sail with the Trades on their larboard quarter making over nine knots, heading sou-sou’west half-west, the leadsmen steadily calling out twenty fathoms or better. It was a bumpy ride, as Monk had predicted, but most pleasant all the same.

“Sail ho!” the lookout called almost immediately. “Two points off the larboard bow!”

She was Vixen’s pigeon, and obviously a belligerent from the way she hauled her wind and turned to run. But there was no escaping the fleeter sloop of war, and before half an hour had passed they could see puffs of smoke as Vixen opened fire.

Treghues had his little band strike up a tune. The young drummers and fifers countermarched back and forth by the quarterdeck nettings over the waist, and a couple of landsman-fiddlers joined them to entertain the crew.

The seas between St. Thomas and St. Croix were working alive with shipping that fine, sparkling morning, and the crew danced their hornpipes exuberantly at the thought of action to come.

They were bearing down on the nearest chase, a full-rigged ship painted like an Indiaman and showing two rows of gun ports. She hoisted Danish colors but continued to flee, which made her most suspicious for a neutral.

Desperate cut inshore of her as she fled to the west, gybed to the opposite tack and began to close her rapidly. She was deeply laden, so the lower row of gunports was most likely false.

“Still,” Railsford bellowed through his speaking trumpet, stopping the people capering and dancing. “Gun crews, stand to, to starboard!”

Once within two cables, Mr. Gwynn was sent forward to the carronade on the forecastle and Lewrie drifted up in that direction to take his stance halfway up the ladder to spot the fall of shot. They had not used the carronades much, since “The Smashers” would have made kindling of most of their earlier prizes, but here was a suitable target for the heavy and destructive ball they fired.

In went a powder cartridge, four and a half pounds of powder. Then a thirty-two-pound shot, hollow-cast and filled with powder and a mixture of grape-shot and musket-shot. Gwynn fiddled with the lay of the gun, and the hands tugged on the swivel platform to adjust it. Gwynn hummed along with the musicians as he slid the quoin out slightly. A carronade had little range due to the light powder charge.

“Ready!” he called, stepping clear and raising his fist.

“Fire as you bear!”

The gun captain touched the vent hole. The quill took light and sparked down into the charge. The gun barked and recoiled on its wooden slide. The ball struck their chase squarely.

The massive ball hit the foe just at the break of the larboard gangway and the quarterdeck, a little ahead of the mizzen chains, and burst with a terrific energy and a satisfying puff of smoke, shrapnel, dust and splintered wood. The chains shivered and the heavy shrouds parted. Her mizzen t’gallant and topmast snapped and heeled over to starboard, yards crashing to the deck and smothering her wheel.

The masquerade of being Danish ended. French colors appeared for a moment, then fluttered down to the deck as people waved tablecloths in surrender. Both ships hauled their wind and rounded up. Forrester clumped his way down into a cutter and was off to take his prize. Even as the rowing boat was cast off, Desperate was paying off the wind and gathering way once more to pursue a second ship closer inshore that the Vixen could not reach.

This vessel, they did not even have to fire into. Her crew abandoned her quickly and began to pull hard for shore, hoping the current did not set them so far west they missed St. Croix altogether. Their chances in the nasty coral reefs on the north shore were iffy enough. Before Desperate could think of taking her, a heat wave shimmered over her and smoke began to flag downwind.

“I’d drop this’n, sir,” Monk warned. “They want off her awful bad. Might be loaded to the deck-heads with powder…”

“Still, they won’t have her, lads,” Treghues shouted with false cheer at being cheated of a prize. “Let’s go get another.”

It was fortunate they did, for once they were about a mile downwind of the abandoned ship, and she had become a raging inferno, she suddenly blew up, tossing timbers hundreds of feet into the air.

The next prize came within an hour, but she was only a lugger, run by a mulatto and crewed by blacks. She was local but carried barrels of salt-meat with French markings. Being too small to bother with, she was burned, to the distress of her owner.

An hour later they came within range of a brigantine, and after two broadsides she lowered her Spanish colors and surrendered. This time, Avery and Feather had success and took eight hands and four Marines over to her happily. Like most merchant ships she had a crew barely sufficient to work her, so Avery would have no trouble from them. They left her far behind as they chased after still another prize as four vessels came north from Fredericksted and tried to run.

By lunch they were up to the first, a racy-looking brig with raked masts, obviously American-built. She hoisted rebel colors and wore to open her gun battery, about four cables off, on their starboard side. The other three vessels continued to flee, and this American acted as if he would trade his ship for their safety, or attempt to delay the British frigate as long as possible.

The brig opened fire first, damned accurate fire! Desperate drummed to the shock of iron hitting her hull from the brig’s six side guns.

“Mr. Gwynn, fire as you bear,” Treghues ordered.

Desperate’s six-pounders began to speak; with a stern-wind taking the sound and powder cloud away, it sounded like the slamming of heavy iron doors. One at a time the guns rolled back inboard to snub against the breeching ropes, and the crews sprang to serve them while shot began to moan overhead or strike their ship once more.

The brig was not built to take such heavy punishment. When she was struck by round-shot her scantlings were punched clear through, and clouds of splinters erupted from her.

“Hands to the braces, Bosun. Close her!” Treghues ordered. The frigate swung until the wind was dead astern, went a point farther and swung her yards about to gybe gently. The brig wore at the same time, so that their courses were aimed for a convergence.

At three cables the rebel brig fired again, and this time she fired high. Desperate’s foret’gallant mast came crashing down, ripping down her outer flying jib, tangling her running and standing rigging in the foremast tops’l and course yards.

Desperate replied with a full broadside fired on the uproll, all nine starboard side guns and the starboard carronade together. The brig staggered as she was struck between wind and water, and the carronade shot blew her forecastle to pieces of lumber. Yet there were still men over there to serve her guns, and she struck back, ripping chunks out of Desperate’s bulwarks and hammock nettings!

Lewrie was almost downed by a Marine that was flung off the starboard gangway to drop like a beef carcass between the guns. Three gunners screamed and clawed at their flesh as long thick wood splinters were driven into them.

“Loblolly boys!” Lewrie called out. “Here, you, take this man’s place as rammer man.”

“Oh God, sor, don’ lemme be took ta the cockpit, sor,” a gunner said as he was picked up. One splinter stood quivering in his upper right arm, and another in his lower chest, driven sideways under skin.

But Lewrie motioned for him to be hauled away, and kicking and fighting, he was dragged to the midships hatch. The Marine’s body was stuffed under the fore jear bitts.

“Shot your guns!” Lewrie ordered as Mr. Gwynn busied himself at the carronade. “Run out! Number four, overhaul that side-tackle now!”

The carronade slammed aloud once more as Lewrie supervised the battery. Gwynn gave a cheer as his latest shot went home somewhere in the brig.

“Prime your guns,” Lewrie commanded. “We shall fire together on the uproll.”

Carey was there at his side. “The captain wants you on the quarterdeck, Lewrie.”

“Aye. Point your guns.”

The range was now about two cables, and even a linstockfired gun with no sights of any kind could be devastingly accurate that close.

“On the uproll … fire!” Lewrie shouted, feeling the scend of the sea through his feet. The first gun bellowed, now hot and leaping straight back from the sill. He ran aft with the broadside, since some gunners did not get a clean ignition on the first uproll, and had to wait for the second, each gun captain now doing his own aiming.

“You wanted me, sir?” Lewrie said after gaining the quarterdeck.

“Mister Lewrie, Mr. Gwynn or the gunner’s mate are in charge on the gun deck, and I’ll thank you to remember that,” Treghues told him.

“Mr. Gwynn is dealing with the carronade, sir, and the gunner’s mate is below in the magazine, sir—”

“You shall return forward and remind Mr. Gwynn of his duties as master gunner, and you shall summon the gunner’s mate from the magazine for the forecastle gun. I shall not have any of my midshipmen circumventing the proper chain of command.”

“Aye aye, sir,” and Lewrie doffed his hat. Treghues turned his back on him, and Lewrie was left staring at Railsford and Monk as they shook their heads. He put his hat on, shrugged to them with a smile that seemed to say you-figure-it-out and ran back forward.

Gwynn really would much rather have played with his carronade, but he sighed and went down the ladder to the gun deck. Lewrie took time to see that the brig was taking a real beating, half her larboard side pitted with shot holes and her sail-handling gangway torn away.

Lewrie ran below down the midships hatch and rapped on the hatchway to the hanging magazine on the orlop deck. The gunner’s mate stuck his head out through the slitted felt curtain.

“The captain wants you to help Mr. Gwynn supervise the guns,” Lewrie panted.

Robinson spat. He and the Yeoman of The Powder Room were busy enough passing cartridges to the ship’s boys to run up to the guns, and no one ever allowed many cartridges to be made up, so he was busy filling silk bags and tying them off to service the hungry artillery. “What’s happenin’ up top?”

“We’re shooting hell out of a rebel brig.”

“Then whadduz ’e want me for?” Robinson asked.

“He doesn’t want me running the guns, Mister Robinson,” Lewrie said with another eloquent shrug as Robinson squeezed through the felt curtain and followed him toward midships.

“No pleasin’ officers,” Robinson said. “Nor figurin’ what they want, neither.”

Once on deck there was really nothing for Robinson to do, since they had closed to within half a cable of the brig and the remaining Marines were having a field day shooting by volley from the hammock nettings, ramming and spitting ball down the barrel, cocking and stepping up to the nettings, aiming and firing two rounds a minute at their hottest pace.

The brig was still fighting back gamely. Her colors now flew from her maintop, the gaff of the spanker having been shot away. It looked as though the flag had been nailed to the topmast.

“Damned tough, they is,” a quartergunner shouted to Robinson. “Cap’n called on ’em ta strike, an’ their master tol’ Treghues ta go fuck ’isself.”

“They’re Englishmen, by God,” Robinson said. “May be rebel Englishmen, but they’re our sort, game as guinea cocks.”

There was another volley from the brig’s guns, three distinct barks from all her surviving guns, and three hard knocks that rocked Desperate as though she had been kicked by a giant.

“Prime yer guns,” Robinson shouted. “Point. On the uproll…”

There was a flurry of gunfire from the rebel ship, swivels and musket fire that struck quills of wood from bulwarks and decks.

“They’ve men in the foretop,” Lewrie yelled to Lieutenant Peck but could not make himself heard.

“Christ!” Robinson grunted. He had been struck by a ball in the knee.

“Mister Gwynn,” Lewrie yelled. “It’s Mister Robinson.”

“On the uproll … fire!” Gwynn commanded, finishing the sequence that Robinson had started.

“They’ll take me fuckin’ leg, I knows it,” Robinson groaned as he rocked and shivered with agony. “I had ta leave the magazine fer this…?”

There was another volley of musket fire and two Marines went limp, falling back over the starboard gangway. Lewrie remembered what he had tried to tell Peck, and jumped for the gangway, levering himself up in clear shot to speak to the Marine officer.

“Sharpshooters in the foretop, sir.”

“Rifles, by God!” Peck called out, spotting where the fire was coming from. The men aloft on the enemy ship were dressed in some kind of uniform, rifle-green tunics with white facings and buff breeches, and round hats pinned up on one side. This was no expensively outfitted privateer or a merchant vessel feeling overly aggressive—this was a rebel warship of the so-called Continental Navy!

“By volley, at the foretop,” Peck ordered, pointing at the target with his smallsword.

“Mister Lewrie!” Gwynn roared. “Lay the carronade on them!”

It was an order he was glad to obey … he had not yet been allowed to play with the carronades and it relieved him from standing about like a supernumerary.

“Quoin out, gun captain,” Lewrie yelled in the man’s ear after failing to get his attention any other way. “Lay on her foretop!”

“Too close, sir, won’t bear that high.”

“The larboard gun.”

“Aye, might reach.”

“Even if you hit the mast, that’ll bring ’em down,” Lewrie said, running to larboard. The carronade mount could be swiveled about in a wide arc, so it was easy to lay it in the general direction. But their activity attracted the sharpshooters, and a powder boy screamed as his eleven-year-old life was snuffed out with a larger-caliber rifle ball through his spine.

Lewrie dove for the powder cartridge and shoved it into the muzzle, standing aside as the rammer man thrust away. They got a ball down the muzzle, but then the rammer man gave a shriek and spun about, a bullet through his brains.

“Jesus Christ, save us,” the gun captain said, picking up the rammer and giving the ball a few taps.

“Quoin out, there!” Lewrie told the man behind the gun. He felt a breath of air on his face, heard a hum like a summer bee and saw the larboard rail toss off a burst of tiny wood chips as a rifle ball nearly divided his skull.

“Hot work, sir,” the tackle man nearest him said with a gap-toothed smile.

“At least you’re getting paid,” Lewrie said, lost in a fighting fever.

“Stand clear!” the gun captain said, lowering his linstock.

Up close, the explosion of the powder charge was like having one’s head down the muzzle, and Lewrie’s ears rang and ached, but he saw the foretop shattered by the explosion of the carronade shot, and the cluster of sharpshooters was torn away in pieces as the topmast came down in chunks as well, and her rigging draped her like a netting.

The foremast gave a groan, and then the thick column of the lower mast began to split like a sawn tree that had been felled badly, pivoted forward with the pressure of the wind on a loose forecourse yard and came down with a crash across the enemy’s forecastle, crushing the bow-chaser gun crews that must have been firing at them at that point-blank range but had gone unnoticed in the general tumult and chaos.

The brig was now almost alongside, her gangways slightly below Desperate’s taller railings, and the Marines were having a great time shooting down into the enemy ship’s waist.

“Boarders,” Railsford yelled, drawing his sword. “Repel boarders…”

“Holy shit on a biscuit,” the carronade gun captain shouted. “I don’t believe these people!”

Lewrie seized a cutlass from a weapons tub and went to the starboard forecastle rail. The brig was bumping into Desperate, and such of her crew as had survived were tossing grapnels to hold their ship against the frigate even as the Marines’ volleys cut swathes out of their closely packed ranks.

A gawky, thatch-haired young man leaped up in front of Lewrie with a cutlass, and Lewrie engaged with him as more poured over.

The man was strong but clumsy. Lewrie beat his guard aside and cut back across, slashing the man’s throat. The man fell back into the sea, blood shooting out like a claret fountain. The next man up took a boarding pike through his stomach and also fell into the sea. The third, Lewrie had time to skewer with the point of his cutlass, and he too raised a splash alongside.

The enemy had gained the midships gangway but were being cut up by boarding pikes and Marine bayonets, and the enemy’s stern was pivoting away from Desperate.

Lewrie waved his cutlass, attracting more angry bees that rushed by him. “Fend ’em off the forecastle…”

With rammers, with handspikes, crows and boarding pikes, about a dozen hands were there with him, some slashing the air with cutlass steel, others fighting like wild Indians with tomahawks. The rebels who had gained the forecastle began to fall back, leaping for their own decks. A Marine corporal came forward with ten privates and began to volley into them.

“Do we board her?” the corporal asked.

“Won’t trap me over there,” a gunner said.

“I think she’s sinking,” Lewrie said. “Look how low in the water she is.”

The brig was indeed very low in the water now, the sea almost up to her gun ports; her wale and chain-plates were already under. Lewrie could see the tangle of bodies on her forecastle and forward gun deck, piled up like slaughtered rabbits after a successful hunt; how two guns were shot free of any restraints and rolled back and forth on the bloody deck.

But they were still firing. Swivels and light four-pounders on her quarterdeck, where the only resistance still stood, an occasional musket or rifled gun, and pistols still popped.

“Cut her free,” Lewrie ordered the tomahawk men. “We’ll not be able to save her, and if we roll over she’ll have the sticks out of us.”

The three-inch lines grappled to Desperate were already iron-hard and taut, groaning and crying with tension, and each time the brig slunk into a wave there was a pull downward on the frigate.

Once cut with an axe, the lines twanged like bowstrings and almost snapped a man’s right arm off as they parted. The brig’s forecastle was level with the sea, and her beakhead and jib boom was under, sinking quickly now by the bows. She would not last long. Ominous rumbles came from her as the surging waves explored her innards.

“Strike!” Treghues yelled. “In the name of humanity, strike!”

“Hell, no, you British duck-fucker,” their young captain yelled back, cupping his hands and standing foursquare on his shattered deck. “You tell the world, we were the brig o’ war Liberty, Continental By God Navy…”

Then with a foamy surge the ocean broke over her bows and she tilted up by the stern, gear and shattered timbers and loose guns and internal stores screaming in pain and bulkheads battered into ruin. She slipped beneath the sea, leaving a few survivors swimming in the light flotsam. Her mainmast was the last to go under, still bearing the striped rebel colors with the starry blue canton nailed to the mast. She had lost her fight, but it didn’t feel so.

They fetched up and went over with a boat to pick up survivors, but there weren’t a dozen men left and the young captain was not one of them. Treghues offered them dry clothes and rum and put them below.

Lewrie wished that the day was over but it was not to be. Once they had swayed up a new t’gallant mast, roved a fresh outer jib stay, taken down the damaged tops’l yard, fished it with a stuns’l boom, rehoisted it and bent on a new sail, they were off once more in search of prizes that lay tantalizingly to leeward.

After their labor a late meal was brought up from the galley, cold meat and cheese and biscuit. The rum ration was doled out along with as much small beer as they could drink. Their dead were hustled below out of sight by the loblolly boys and the decks washed clean of blood and offal to keep up their fighting spirit.

They came across another brig beating up to windward for Fredericksted from the west, unaware that anything was happening, and did not notice that Desperate was British until it was too late. She turned out to be French, come for a load of stores to smuggle, and was crammed to the deckheads with rum, molasses and naval stores. There was no resistance, and Mr. Monk went away with Carey in charge of her, leaving Alan as the last midshipman still aboard.

Let it be over, he thought in weariness, and the awful letdown he had come to know as his normal reaction after each hard fight. All he wanted to do was find a patch of shade and go to sleep as some of the hands could, never mind slinging a hammock below. They had finally stood down from Quarters … every sail still in sight was hull-down over the horizon running for their lives.

By late afternoon even Treghues had to admit that they had run out of hope of future prizes, that they had seemingly swept the ocean clean. On their way nor’west toward Culebra and Vieques Islands, they could see sails jogging along behind them, and in trail of the other warships, perhaps ten captures in all, in which all the frigates and sloops would share. Actually in material terms they had not made a real dent in the volume of imports to the rebellious Colonies, but perhaps the audacity of the raid would give the smugglers pause, or make them choose new areas in which to operate.

Lewrie stood by the taffrail, reveling in the quarter breeze now that the strength had gone out of the sun. The wind held his coat open, and he spread his shirt wide below the neckcloth to allow the cooling wind to play on his chest and sweaty ribs.

“Getting indecent with the mermaids, Mister Lewrie?” Lieutenant Railsford asked, coming aft to join him.

“That would be a novel experience, sir,” Lewrie said, taking off his hat to cool his scalp.

“That was good work you did up forrard today, Lewrie,” Railsford told him, letting his own coat spread open.

“Thank you, Mister Railsford, I am grateful that someone appreciated it.”

“I do not mean to pry, Mister Lewrie, but…” Railsford now spoke in a softer tone since Treghues’ cabin skylight was slightly forward of them, and was open for a breeze … “I get the feeling our lord and master no longer approves of you.”

“No need to worry, sir, I’ll bear up.”

“Take a round turn and two half-hitches?” Railsford grinned.

“And as Mister Monk says, sir, the more you cry, the less you’ll piss,” Lewrie bantered, his eyes overbright and his mood a bit too chipper to pass unnoticed.

“The captain has his … moods,” Railsford said, treading on soft ground … there had been officers who had been court-martialed for a habit of criticism. A captain could demand obedience from his officers and also a united front of one mind once he had determined what opinion should be held.

“If it is any comfort, Mister Lewrie, those moods can be swift to change in most instances.” That was as far as Railsford would go in criticism of the captain. Any gossip passed on would undermine both Railsford’s, and Treghues’, authority.

“Aye, sir.”

“Remember, every captain has something to teach you, for good or ill. Life in the Fleet can be a series of disasters to be borne sometimes.”

“I shall bear up, Mister Railsford. Thank you for that…”

Desperate took in her t’gallants and brailed them up, lowered the yards to the caps, took a reef in their tops’ls and got the speed off her for evening sailing at the rendezvous, as well as to allow her prize vessels to catch up with her. Then it was clear-decks-and-up-spirits, supper, evening Quarters and hammocks below for the night. At dusk the masthead lookouts came down, and hands took up upper-deck viewing posts.

Amphion ordered all prize vessels gathered in an impromptu convoy, with the sloops off to windward to guard the flank. Amphion brought up the rear and Desperate worked out ahead and to leeward of the convoy as they set off sou’east for the nearest British ports.

Lewrie had had his supper alone. Both master’s mates and all the other midshipmen were away in prizes. The steward brought him some boiled salt-pork, a couple of new potatoes, biscuit and Black Strap cut with water. Aft, the officers were celebrating loudly, those still on board. Their steward came through several times with bottles which had been cooling on the orlop, while Alan ate and drank in isolation, which condition he was sure was to be permanent.

He had the evening watch, and Mr. Gwynn stood in for a deck officer with him. The sky was clear, littered with bright stars, and though there was no moon, the sea shone at each wavetop, now and then breaking into a white chop. Lewrie made a tour of the lower deck with the ship’s corporal and master-at-arms to inspect the galley and lanterns to make sure all fires were out, then went back to the quarterdeck and loafed by the forward nettings. The Trades sang sweetly through the rigging, and the hull held at a slight angle of heel to starboard, hissing and groaning as she made her way toward home.

Gwynn was near him, looking up at the stars and the sails. There was a gurgling noise as Gwynn pulled on a pocket flask of rum, and the sweet odor wafted by like a woman’s perfume.

“Summat ta keep yer eyes open, Mister Lewrie?” Gwynn offered.

“That would have me snoring on the deck, Mister Gwynn, but I thankee,” Lewrie replied. “God, I am so tired.”

“Allus like that after a hard fight,” Gwynn said. “God, they fought grand. Can’t remember the Continental Navy showin’ that much bottom. Privateers get the best men. Rebels’re too independent ta take ta Navy-style discipline.”

“If they’d had nine-pounders, or carronades, they’d have done for us, I think, Mister Gwynn,” Lewrie said, nodding in agreement.

“Right enough.”

Treghues emerged on deck from aft, and the pair of them went down to leeward to give him the entire windward side of the quarterdeck for his pacing. Treghues was in breeches and open shirt, quite informal for a change, a spooky apparition in the faint starlight, pacing back and forth quite regularly; not as though he were in deep thought but as if it was a duty to walk for a while before retiring. To escape, Lewrie went forward to tour the lookouts on the forecastle and gangways and make certain they were more awake than he was. He had to shake a couple of men into full wariness. By the time he had returned to the quarterdeck, Treghues had gone below and only a dim glow could be seen from his skylight. And then as Alan watched, that was snuffed out.

“Ever’body chipper up forrard?” Gwynn asked.

“Aye, Mister Gwynn. Sleepy but trying.”

“Here, what’s got the cap’n onta ya?”

Not you, too, Alan thought. “I do not know what you mean, sir,” he replied evenly.

“He come over an’ asked me what ya was doin’ runnin’ the guns as ya were today, like ta give ma a cobbin’ about it. I told him ya was as good as any gunner’s mate but he didn’t wanta hear it,” Gwynn related.

“The captain has his … moods,” Alan said uneasily.

“Moods, shit!” Gwynn stuffed a quid of tobacco into his cheek and tore off a large bite. “Fickle as me old lady, ’cept fer Mr. Forrester an’ Railsford. Takes a great hankerin’ fer somebody an’ then turns on ’em an’ nobody knows why. Been in Desperate near two an’ a half years an’ it’s been like that ever since we commissioned.”

“Let’s just say he doesn’t like my choice of fathers,” Lewrie said after Gwynn’s indiscretion. “And it seems I’m too big a sinner to wear a Navy uniform.”

“Aye, that’s one reason we don’t have a chaplain aboard.” Gwynn laughed softly. “With him aft, we don’t need one.” Lewrie gave a grunt that might have been a mirthless laugh, or a sign of agreement, and Gwynn walked off to find the spit-kid by the binnacle.

Six bells chimed softly from the belfry up forward, and Alan checked his watch against it—11:00 P.M. and only an hour to go before he could go below and sleep four uninterrupted hours until the morning routine of a man-of-war claimed him once again.

“Sail ho!” one of the forward lookouts called. Lewrie shook himself into action, trotting forward to join him.

“Where away?”

“Two points off the larboard bow, Mister Lewrie,” the lookout said quietly, almost afraid to raise his voice. “He’s on the opposite tack an’ comin’ north. He’ll run right into the convoy!”

Lewrie hefted the heavy night glass, which showed images upside down and backward. He found their stranger, what seemed to be a full-rigged ship ghosting along under reefed tops’ls, inner jibs and spanker.

“Run aft and wake the captain,” Lewrie said. “Tell Mr. Gwynn we’ve a full-rigged ship coming right for us. Quick, man!”

Lewrie studied the stranger for a while longer, then shouted for the bosun’s mate of the watch, Toliver. “All hands on deck, Mister Toliver, no pipes or we’ll lose the chase.”

“No pipes,” the runty little man repeated before running off to shout down the midships hatchway to the off-duty watch. It was noisy enough as the hands rolled out of their hammocks and thudded to the deck to thunder up topside on bare feet.

Lewrie hurried back to the wheel and stood by Gwynn, who was using the other night glass to search for the strange ship.

“Have I your permission to close her, sir?” Lewrie asked him.

“Yes, let’s see what he’s doin’ runnin’ dark out here.”

“Duty watch to the braces! Quartermaster, put your helm down and lay her two points closer to the wind!” Alan shouted.

“What’s this about a strange sail, Mister Gwynn?” Treghues demanded, emerging on the quarterdeck.

“Here, sir, take a squint. Ship-rigged an’ runnin’ without a light, sir. Thus, quartermaster! ‘Vast heavin’! Belay every inch o’ that, Mister Toliver!”

“Harden up on the heads’l sheets,” Lewrie called to the foc’s’le captain. “Now belay!”

“Mister Gwynn, I have the deck,” Treghues said, still dressed in a nightshirt. “Lewrie, stop that caterwauling like you know what you’re doing. Judkin, fetch me up my breeches and sword.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Shall we clear for action, sir?” Gwynn asked as Railsford and Peck joined them.

“Aye, load and run out the larboard battery,” Treghues told him.

“I’ll need Mister Lewrie forrard, sir…” Gwynn said. “Robinson’s lost his leg, ya remember, sir.”

“Oh, very well,” Treghues sighed, after a long pause.

“Mister Lewrie, do take charge o’ the forecastle an’ the carronades, if ya please.” Gwynn was smiling in the darkness.

“Aye, Mister Gwynn.”

“All hands to Quarters!” Treghues shouted.

It was hard to see how the men could even see what they were doing as they unlashed the guns and rolled them back to the centerline, overhauled the side tackles and freed the train tackles, brought gun tools up from below and began to light fuses in the slow-match tubs.

“Damn fool,” Lewrie said, hearing Treghues’ musicians get going at “Heart of Oak.”

“Afternoon wadd’n enough fer ya, Mister Lewrie?” the larboard carronade captain joshed with him as they removed the tompion of their gun, and freed the lashings of the swivel platform.

“Wanted to see what they looked like going off in the dark,” Alan shot back. “Here, can we manhandle the other gun over here?”

“Take some doin’, Mister Lewrie, but I kin lash the breech ropes ta the cathead, iffen ya want it.”

“Load yer guns,” Gwynn called from aft on the main gun deck.

A squad of Marines under their sergeant came trooping forward along the gangway to take station from the forecastle aft.

The strange ship came awake. The wind brought them the faint sound of bosun’s pipes playing unfamiliar calls, and the sound of men running to stations. The wind also brought a brassy aroma mixed with the smell of a barnyard.

“Lord, what a stink,” Lewrie said. “What’s he carrying?”

“Moight be a slaver, sor,” the starboard gun captain said.

“He’s putting about,” Lewrie broke in, almost able to see a faint shadow that was darker than the night. “Going on the wind on the starboard tack.”

“Stations for stays!” Railsford ordered. “Stand by to come about.”

“Helm alee!”

“Rise tacks an’ sheets!” Toliver yelled. “Clew garnets!”

“Mains’l haul!”

Desperate came up to the eye of the wind, sails shivering and yards creaking as the hands leaned almost parallel to the deck to fetch her around without missing stays. The foc’s’le captain shifted his heads’l sheets to larboard, and the backed fore yards provided enough wind resistance to force her bows off the wind as the other yards drove her forward. She tacked smoothly, losing little speed in the dark, and hardened up on the same tack as the other ship, laid within six points of the winds and beginning to beat hard to weather.

“Waisters, harden up the tops’l braces. Now belay!” Railsford called, wanting to put a slight spiral set to the yards, the tops’ls more acutely angled to the wind than the courses for the most efficiency.

The stranger was now off their starboard bows, perhaps a mile off. Lewrie could barely make out ghostly specks of light like tiny candles along her leeward side.

“Slow-match,” Alan said. “They’ll make a fight of it.”

“Hope they ain’t like that last batch,” someone said.

“Gun captain, prepare the starboard carronade. Shift the larboard gun up abaft the roundhouse. Breech rope to the hawse buckler and the cathead,” Alan ordered, wanting to put both his “Smashers” to work.

He looked aft now to see an amber light burning on the taffrail, a fusee that smoked and flared like a holiday rocket, the night signal for danger. It would also warn the other prizes in convoy of where they were so as to avoid collision in the dark. Hurriedly, the rest of the ships began to light their taffrail lanterns.

“That’s Roebuck or Vixen out there, sir,” a hand shouted, waving a hand at a distant light to windward. “Bet he’ll tack agin.”

“Belay shifting that carronade.”

Within moments the dark shape of their quarry shortened and put her masts in line, tacking across the wind once more, but Desperate performed her own tack at the same time. And had the chase missed stays on that maneuver? They suddenly seemed much closer to her.

“Give me a point free,” Treghues ordered. “Stand by the larboard battery.” Lewrie’s men secured the starboard gun and shifted once more, lashing the larboard carronade back into position.

“Can you reach him yet?” Lewrie asked.

“’Bout another cable, sir,” the gunner said, squinting at their spectral foe.

“Number one larboard gun … fire!” Gwynn called, and the six-pounder closest to them below the larboard gangway fired. It was a spectacular sight at night to witness the tongue of flame that stabbed out through a nimbus of gunsmoke, and the sound seemed much louder than during the daytime. Lewrie was almost blinded by the flash. When he looked for their target it had disappeared for him, though the experienced gunners still peered at it intently.

The enemy ship returned fire, a single gun from her stern-chaser, and the ball moaned into the night without hitting anything. By then Desperate was rapidly closing on the other vessel. The main guns began to bark regularly, though it was hard to tell if they were achieving any better results on their target than the enemy had.

“I kin hit him now, sir, I think,” the gun captain said.

“Blaze away!”

“Stand clear.”

The carronade lurched inboard on its slide. Seconds later the sure sign of a solid hit on the hull flashed into life, and the night was full of the thin sound of screaming.

“Jaysus,” a hand said.

“Mules, sir. Or horses. No wonder he stinks.”

“God help the poor beasts,” Lewrie said, and the men around him echoed his sentiments. For the enemy, they would have no mercy, yet could weep real tears over their birds and dogs and manger animals.

Desperate was now within a cable, and one could discern the foe clearly in the starlight well enough to aim true. They put another ball from the carronade onto the poop of the enemy, and this time the screams were men, not dumb beasts. There was a hail of musket and swivel fire from the quarterdeck, and the ship’s guns, sounding like nine-pounders, began to fire irregularly, but their aim was incredibly poor and did little more than raise great splashes close aboard.

Close enough to see people … Lewrie could make out a mass of men in white uniforms on the quarterdeck, almost a full company of troops that were firing by volley with their muskets. A ball from the carronade took a third of them down like a reaper. Desperate’s guns were speaking as regular as a tolling bell from bow to stern, about ten seconds apart, each shot painting the water between the two dueling ships blood red and amber and lighting up their sides. The carronade fired again, providing enough of a light as the ball exploded to see the men with muskets writhing in agony as another third were scythed down and the remainder were faltering in their musket drill, falling back from the rails as Desperate’s own Marines began to volley into them.

Once more that day, musket balls began to buzz about Lewrie’s ears, and strike the decks and rails with solid thuds. There were more men across the way in white uniforms, now on the gangways and forecastle, loading and firing their muskets regular as clockwork. Their own Marines were taking a toll of those people with musket and swivels.

“That bunch, gun captain,” Lewrie ordered.

The carronade spoke once more, and the range was so close that the bursting of the shot was almost instantaneous, flicking whining bits of shrapnel around their own ears, but the well-drilled platoon of men on the gangways disappeared in the flash and the bang.

There was a narrowing tide-race of channel between the two ships, and Desperate’s guns were spitting blazing wads at the enemy ship in addition to the solid shot, firing point-blank across the foamed breadth of water as their bow waves merged.

“Reload larboard gun … quickly! There’s some men on her forecastle. Take ’em down,” Lewrie said.

“Grapnels! Prepare to board!” Railsford called out from aft.

There was little return fire from the enemy ship now, her gun ports silent and not a muzzle showing, though the resistance from her musketeers was still hot. There was a dense knot of them on the forecastle, first rank kneeling and second and third ranks alternated, lowering their muskets for a volley.

“Fire as you bear!” Lewrie ordered, his testicles shrinking up inside him at the sight of glittering bayonets and musket bores.

The carronade belched fire and smoke, and when the residue blew back over them downwind there was nothing left of the forecastle but a pile of bodies in white uniforms painted red with gore.

“Bow chaser, sir,” a gunner warned.

There was a light cannon on the forecastle, and the sailors in slop clothing were running to man it while more men in uniform ran forward with them to where the two ships would bump together.

Lewrie tried to attract the Marine sergeant’s attention to them, but he was busy directing musket volleys farther aft. Alan saw the other crew removing the tompion of the bow chaser.

“Load, Goddamnit! Kill those people!”

A musket barked, and the larboard carronade rammer screamed and fell to the deck, the rest of the crew shrinking away.

“Load, damn you, load.” Lewrie plucked a heavy Sea Pattern pistol from a weapons tub, checked to see it was primed and drew back the heavy cocking lever.

There was a volley of musket fire that spanged off the carronade, driving men into hiding behind the bulwarks and taking down two more men. Lewrie turned to face the enemy. He could see a man passing up a powder charge, leveled his pistol and took aim. He fired, and the ball hit the barrel of the bow chaser, spanging off with a flash of sparks, and took a side-tackle man in the stomach. The rammer man was now tamping down his charge.

Lewrie took up another pistol and aimed for the man who cradled a bag of musket shot. Not only did he miss him, he punched a scarlet bloom dead in the chest of a man with a handspike on the other side of the gun.

“Shitten goddamn pistols!” He threw the thing across the gap, which by then could not have been fifty feet. If that bow chaser went off, they were all dead.

He was amazed to see the heavy, long-barreled (and wildly inaccurate) Sea Pattern pistol knock the teeth out of the gun captain with the slow-match ignition fuse and drop him out of sight.

“Stand clear!” the carronade gun captain finally barked out. The men on the opposing forecastle began to shrink away.

“About bloody time,” Lewrie said in profound relief as his life was spared once more, but his relief was lost in the explosion of the powder charge and the bursting of the shot.

As the two forecastles nudged together, and grapnels flew across to lash the two ships together, it was nearly as silent as the grave.

“Boarders!” Railsford ordered by Lewrie’s side, waving his bright sword. “Away, boarders!”

Lewrie scrabbled for a cutlass from the weapons tub and then was borne forward like a pinnace surged onto a beach by a powerful burst of surf as the men who had gathered forward went over to the enemy ship in a howling mob.

He had no choice but to leap across the narrow gap—either that or fall and be ground to sausage meat between the hulls—where he was immediately tripped by a bight of shredded heads’l sheets and fell to the deck, to be almost trampled by his own people, as they screamed and whooped and fell on the enemy.

Haven’t I done enough, dammit? he thought to himself, feeling the pain in his knees and shins. There was a strong arm lifting him up, a flash of smile in a dark face from one of the West Indian hands, and then he was stuck into it whether he cared to participate or not.

He headed aft for the larboard forecastle ladder and began to descend, but a pike head came jabbing out of nowhere, bringing a scream to his lips. He thrust out in the general direction of the pike’s wielder, and his sword met meaty resistance.

The pike was withdrawing for a second thrust, and he grabbed the shaft behind the wickedly gleaming point and was pulled into the enemy, his cutlass sinking deeper into whoever it was. Suddenly there was a shrill yell almost in his ear, a hot and garlicky breath on his face, and he slammed into the man.

There was enough light to see that he had his cutlass sunk hilt-deep into an enemy sailor, and it could not be withdrawn. Lewrie let go the pike shaft and twisted and pulled, bringing another shriek of agony. The sword came free, as did the man’s entrails, slithering out like some image from a nightmare.

The entire waist of the enemy ship was a heaving mass of men who were clashing blades like a tribe of Welsh tinkers. Steel flickered and struck, knives flashed, bayonets and pikes dipped and thrust and came away slimed with blood. Underfoot there were already bodies enough, sailors and soldiers ripped to pieces by carronade shot, the decks gleaming wet and sticky. Pistols spat, muskets barked, giving little flashes of light on the scene.

Alan left the waist, going back to the silent forecastle, and made his way aft along the larboard gangway, picking his way across tangled rope piles and torn nettings and bodies. There was hardly any fighting there. He would have liked to have assisted but wasn’t sure who was friendly and who was an enemy. He advanced slowly, his cutlass ready.

“Salaud!” someone snarled, leaping for him. Alan clashed blades with him, using both hands to go into the murderous cutlass drill, and also trying to remember his poor French … had the man just called him a “dirty beast”? … The man stumbled backward from a hard blow, and Alan brought the blade flashing down once more, catching him on the side of the neck, slicing down through the collarbone. This time the cutlass could not be dislodged, so he bent down and took the man’s rapier and a pistol from his waistband, pulled the gun back to half-cock and went on aft.

By the main chains he got into another melee. Three men in slop clothing were falling back from about half a dozen men in white infantry uniforms, mostly armed with short hangers.

“At ’em, Desperates,” Lewrie yelled, partly to let them know that he was not a foe to be chopped into chutney sauce, and partly to encourage them. He found himself at the head of the pack, slashing away with abandon. One of his men struck forward with a cutlass and ripped the groin out of a foeman, which brought such a shriek that the others turned to run. Alan chopped a second man down across the spine as he faced away but could not escape past his friends.

A musket thrust for him, its bayonet sharp and hungry. He put up the pistol to bind with it, slashing backward with his rapier and opening up the man’s chest. As the man stumbled and went down, Alan struck again across the neck, then vaulted the body as it sank to the deck.

Now he was on the quarterdeck, as British Marines and sailors swarmed up the ladders from the waist in a rush, and Lewrie’s people took the crumbling opposition in the flank, doing great damage before they were spotted.

Lewrie faced off with a boy, perhaps a midshipman like him, and almost without thought beat the young man’s guard aside and ran him through with the razor-sharp rapier.

Next there was a real swordsman, an officer by his clothes and breeches and good stockings and shoes, with a rapier and what looked like a poignard.

“To me!” Alan screamed, but he’d been cut off by the swirling fight, almost backed up against the larboard bulwarks and nettings. The man was fast and strong, his wrist like an iron bar as their blades met. Alan retreated slowly, parrying the sword with his rapier and trying to keep the poignard away from his belly with the long barrel of the pistol.

The French officer stamped and lunged, and Alan beat him aside in quartata, but the Frenchman was there with the poignard going for his throat, and they binded, thrusting forward at each other. The poignard snapped the gun back to full cock and Alan took aim in the general direction and pulled the trigger. The powder in the pan flashed, but the gun hung fire, the muzzle not three inches from the man’s head …

The Frenchman actually smiled as he leaped back, devilishly quick on his feet, before driving forward again. Lewrie held him off with the rapier, going onto the attack to keep the poignard away. He still held the gun pointed at the man, hoping it would make up its mind to fire.

Then they were almost chest to chest again, and Lewrie had to lower the pistol to deflect the poignard. The gun went off. The French officer grunted and fell backward, all his strength gone. The pistol had finally discharged, in the man’s groin.

“Quarter,” someone yelled in English. “Give ’em quarter, I say…”

It was not that easy to turn aside the men’s blood lust. Three Marines ran past Lewrie, muskets held right-forward, stabbing, slaughtering broken men like rabbits.

Alan leaned on the railing and became aware of a pain in his gun hand. The Frenchman’s poignard had cut deep into his fingers on the butt as he had tried to fend off sure death from that dagger.

“Goddamn it, give ’em quarter,” Railsford was shouting. “Stop that.”

Slowly the fight drained out of the men as they realized they had slaughtered and butchered from the forecastle to the after quarterdeck, and that there were very few enemy left standing. The ship was alive with cries of agony and terror, and the screaming of those horses or mules continued from the first moment they had opened fire.

“Mister Lewrie, is that you?” Railsford demanded, coming toward his side of the quarterdeck.

“Aye, Mister Railsford,” he shouted back through a cracked and dry throat.

“Take a party below and roust out the survivors.”

Lewrie found half a dozen Marines and sailors, and went from one compartment to another, down into the orlop and the holds in search of those who had hidden from death. They ran about ten men topsides.

“What’s below?” Railsford asked him.

“Gun caissons, limbers, gun carriages, looks like six- or nine-pounder artillery, sir,” Lewrie said, his hand throbbing now. “There’s draft horses, sir, shot up and screaming.”

“Toliver,” Railsford called.

“Aye aye, sir?”

“Take a party below, and put those horses out of their misery.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Hollo, what’s happened to your hand?”

“Cut it, sir. French officer over there with a dagger.”

“You go see Dorne, then report right back to me, hear?”

“Aye, sir.”

The two ships were now lashed firmly together, heading south on a soldier’s wind on the beam, as they tried to sort things out. There was a hatch grating lashed to the bulwarks over which Lewrie scrambled to his own ship, still gripping the strange rapier. He went below to the orlop and found surgeon Dorne busily cutting and sewing, his leather apron awash in blood, with gore up to the elbows. There were few of the Desperate present, but plenty of unfamiliar faces on the deck were twisted in pain.

“Bide a moment, Mister Lewrie,” Dorne said, his head bare for once in the dancing light of the lanterns over the operating table made of chests. He was removing the arm from a French soldier, which had been shattered by grape-shot. “No, can’t help this one anymore. Lewrie, come here. Anything wrong?”

The soldier had died, and was being lugged out by the loblolly boys to be tipped over the side without ceremony.

“Ah, flex your fingers for me,” Dorne said, peering at the cuts. “Everything still works. Drink this.”

There was a mug of rum, barely cut by an equal mixture of water, which Alan drank down greedily. Dorne sponged his hand with seawater, got out his sewing kit and began to stitch the worst ragged tears while Alan set his face in a mask. Life was full of pain, anyone could tell you that, and it had to be borne as best as one could, without a show of fear. Men had been operated on for the stone, had their limbs severed, and never uttered a peep … they knew that pain could be stood, and once stood, was over.

“Once you are through with that, sir, I have a pair of breeches need mending,” Alan said tightly, looking off into the middle distance at Frenchmen in much more pain than he. At least he hoped they were!

“Give it a week and you’ll be sewing yourself,” Dorne said. “There. Soak daily in salt-water, which is an excellent prevention of suppuration. The stitches will weep for a while, but no lasting damage has been done. Hogan, wrap this in clean cloth, will you? And you come see me if you have any discoloring or odorous discharge.”

“Aye, Mister Dorne,” Lewrie said, happy to escape that place, as another man was slung onto the table with both legs slashed open. Once Hogan had bound his worst-cut finger and wrapped a bandage around his whole hand, Alan went back on deck, reeling from the drink.

He reported to Railsford and was soon in charge of a working party hoisting out the dead horses. The cook was slaughtering them and carving them into chunks of roughly four pounds apiece for fresh meat for each mess. Other teams were identifying Desperate’s dead and wounded, carrying them aboard for burial or surgery, tipping dead or badly injured Frenchmen over the side and shoving over offal from shattered bodies.

“Whole company of French infantry,” Railsford said as dawn began to tint the eastern horizon. “And a battery of artillery going to the Virginia colony. Not a corporal’s guard of them left.”

“Virginia, sir?” Alan asked, reeling once more, this time with exhaustion as they labored to set the ship to rights for the prize crew to handle.

“Aye, I thought we had that safe, but things must be happening up north,” Railsford told him. “There’s a French officer left … not for long; that man over there in the green coat and red breeches, War Commissary Corps to Rochambeau and Lafayette … He makes it sound like the whole bunch of Southern colonies has been stripped bare for some major fight in the Virginias.”

An older French officer had been wounded in the belly and was propped up as comfortably as possible near the double wheel by his orderly, who was sponging his brow.

“He won’t last,” Lewrie said.

“I know, but he’s full of information and cares little for keeping it to himself. You understand French, Lewrie?”

“Just barely, sir. There’s a lot would go right past me.”

“Well, I’ll keep at it, then,” Railsford said. “God, I wish we had our people here.”

During the night the convoy of prize ships had plodded past the ship and Desperate, once Amphion had assured herself that they had things in good order. The larger frigate had given up half a dozen hands and a master’s mate into Desperate to help work her, but this prize would require thinning out the crew further.

“Anything more you want me to do, sir?” Alan asked.

“Check the cargo manifests. Toss any drink over the side that the prize crew might be able to get to. We shall have to get underway.”

Lewrie went aft under the poop to the master’s cabins. There had been some minor looting done and furniture was overturned, but the glossy desk was still in good order. Lewrie opened drawers until he came across the ship’s log, manifests and daily books.

Their prize was a merchantman owned by Mulraix et Fils, Bordeaux, named the Ephegenie, chartered by the Royal War Commissary on Martinique and Admiral DeGrasse to carry a full battery of artillery to Rochambeau. Twenty-four stout European draft horses, now mostly dead and soon to be dinner, worth their weight in gold in the Colonies compared to smaller native-born horses; a line company of replacements for the Régiment Soissonois, which explained the soldiers in white uniforms with rose facings; a full artillery company of men in dark blue and buff, both sorts also mostly dead. There were stands of muskets for Washington, crates of swords, bales of uniforms, new boots and gaiters, field tents, horseshoe blanks and farrier’s equipage for Lauzun’s Legion of Dragoons, over 200 kegs of wine, tons of biscuit and salt-meat, a field bakery and wagon (disassembled), over two tons of six-pounder artillery cartridges, and half a million rounds of musket shot, pre-made into paper cartouches.

When the wine kegs were broached the hands groaned to see good red wine go cascading over the side. Cheatham took several kegs into Desperate for issue at six-to-one dilution, but the rest had to go; no officer could keep order in a prize crew with such a temptation.

The sun was well up before the prize was rerigged well enough to sail for Antigua or another British port. Alan made one last tour of the cabin to see if he had missed anything. He probed into the transom settee lockers, and found personal wine stocks.

There was also a wooden box with holes in the side, holes in the lid which fit down inside the box like a wine-press, though Alan didn’t think the French master would squeeze his own grapes. He fetched it out and found canvas-bound packets wrapped up in ribbons like naval orders, weighted down with grape-shot sewn into the canvas binders.

He read the first. DeGrasse to Rochambeau: what sounded like a reply to a request of some kind, full of all the flowery gilt and beshit compliments Frenchmen were capable of. Agreement with plans, fleet being assembled … There was a second letter to Washington, also in French, but of much the same tone.

Lewrie hurried on deck to find Railsford, and quickly showed them to him. Railsford read closely, his lips moving with the effort of translating a foreign language to himself.

“Have we found something important, sir?” Alan asked, eager to have done something clever, something arse-saving.

“Indeed we have,” Railsford said, almost clicking his heels as he bounced about the deck. “This DeGrasse bugger is going to sail north with a fleet to meet Rochambeau and Washington, somewhere in Virginia or Delaware … either Delaware Bay or the Chesapeake…”

“And the rebels won’t know it!” Lewrie crowed.

“Oh, there’s probably half a dozen sets of these that have already gone north, so one of them would make it through the patrols,” the lieutenant said. “But we’ve intercepted one, and if we can get word to Hood he might just be able to square DeGrasse’s yards before he gets anywhere with his plans. Get over to Desperate and show these to the captain at once.”

Lewrie had not seen Treghues for some time, so he assumed that he was aft in his quarters. He raced up to the Marine sentry and was admitted with the usual ceremony of stamping, slamming and shouting.

“Damn you,” Dorne hissed at the Marine sentry. “Lewrie, what’s the call for all this noise?”

“Papers from the Frenchman that the captain must see, sir.”

“Right then, but make it quick.”

Dorne pointed to the small cabin to the port side, where Treghues had a hanging bed box, chest and dressing area shared with a six-pound gun. Lewrie stuck his head in, and there was Treghues, in bed, his chest bare and his head wrapped up in a bulky bandage. His steward Judkin was holding up a mug of watered wine for him to sip, and Lewrie caught the scent of fruit juices mixed into it. Treghues’ face was puffy and marred with a massive bruise on one side from scalp to jaw.

“What is it?” Treghues snapped, not exactly cheered to see Lewrie and obviously in some pain from a heavy blow to the head.

Lewrie blurted out his news but Treghues was off in his own little world, from the injury or some medicine that Dorne had given him. He could only rave and quote scripture about fornicators and Absalom’s rape of Tamara, and all through it cob Lewrie for a miserable sinner of the worst stripe.

“Just thought you’d like to know, sir,” Lewrie said, and left the cabins, knowing he was not going to get any sense through to the captain in his state.

“He acts out of his wits,” Lewrie said to Dorne in the passageway to the gun deck.

“Some French gunner laid him out with a rammer,” Dorne said. “I have given him laudanum to let him sleep. Best treatment for now. I have good hopes he shall recover his senses in a few days.”

“Let us pray he does,” Lewrie said with a solemn expression that was expected, but secretly was delighted. Him whom the Lord loves, he chastiseth, he quoted to himself wryly. Pious bastard.

He reported back to Railsford, still holding on to the letters.

“We must get word to Antigua quickly,” Railsford said after a long moment. “And if Commander Treghues needs further medical treatment he must have it soon. Desperate must go direct to English Harbor. The prize can catch up the convoy for safety, and pass word to Amphion regarding our discovery.”

“Aye, sir,” Lewrie said, handing Railsford the packets.

“I recall you have stood deck watches and run a schooner before, Mister Lewrie.”

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, beginning to quiver with joy.

“I shall give you Mister Toliver, an acting quartermaster’s mate, and a dozen hands. Transfer the physically able prisoners to Desperate, where I can guard them the better. The prize is yours.”

“Thank you, Mister Railsford!”

“Might take your sea chest,” Railsford suggested. “No, don’t think I want to get rid of you, but you may be separated from the ship for some time and will need your things. Mind you, I’d be proud to have you aboard after what you’ve accomplished, but our captain may not see his way to being reconciled to your presence.”

“Thank you, Mister Railsford. I appreciate your good opinion of me,” Alan told him, and meant it, appreciating such kindness from a man he had not overly cultivated.

“On your way, then.”

An hour later, Ephegenie cast free of Desperate, and the frigate began to surge past her, spreading her tops’ls and the hands tailing on the jears to raise her t’gallants to the accompaniment of a fiddler’s hauling chanty.

Alan watched her go, stout oak hull gleaming brown, her wale a black curve at the waterline, her gunwale streaked bright and jaunty green, her taffrail carvings and gold leaf gleaming in the sun. She was home, for all her frustrations, and she was leaving. He got a lump in his throat at the sight of her.

I never realized that ships could be so beautiful, he thought. Hard work and ruptures, bad food and no sleep, so complex and nothing goes a day without needing fixing, but they can be so Goddamned lovely!

“We’ll be back aboard again, don’t you fret, sir,” Toliver told him, working on a quid of tobacco.

“Get the ship underway, bosun,” Lewrie ordered. “Quartermaster, lay her head sou-sou’west, half-south.”

“Hands ta the braces,” Toliver bellowed. They braced her yards around first, shorthanded as they were, then went aloft and shook out reefs in her courses and tops’ls. The convoy was ahead of them but not sailing fast. With all plain sail they could catch them up by nightfall.

Lewrie looked at his pocket watch. Eleven-thirty in the morning. Time to think about feeding the men some of that fresh horsemeat before it spoiled. He found a man that claimed he could cook, a former waiter at an inn who had been caught poaching on his squire’s lands.

“Boiled horse, an ammunition loaf of that fresh bread per man, an onion, watered wine, and an apple to polish it off,” Lewrie directed. “Same for me. I’ll take my dinner aft.”

“Rum issue, sir?” the cook asked.

“Mister Toliver.”

“Aye, sir?”

“Supervise the spirits issue, if you please. A pint of wine, if there’s no rum.”

“No rum, sir,” Toliver said, “I checked.”

“I’m sure you did.” Lewrie smiled slightly. “Carry on. And don’t give out more than a pint. And make sure the dinner wine is mixed six-to-one. I don’t want to have to flog anyone for drunkenness.”

“Aye, sir.”

The bosun’s call piped and Toliver shouted, “Clear decks an’ up spirits!”

“And Toliver?” Lewrie said, standing by the wheel with his hands in the small of his back, watching the luff of the main course, like a real watch-officer.

“Aye, sir?”

“Use the kid. Don’t spit tobacco on my decks.”